'No, please.'A pause. 'I've just tumbled out of bed, don't you see?
You'll have to give me an hour. Can you give me an hour?'
'If I have to.'
'One hour, then, and you'll come round. You have the address, I suppose?'
I told her I did. I rang off and sat at the counter with a cup of coffee and a roll. I faced the window so that I could keep an eye on her building, and I got my first look at her just as the coffee was getting cool enough to drink. She must have been dressed when we spoke because it only took her seven minutes and change to hit the street.
It wasn't much of an accomplishment to recognize her. The description pinned her all by itself- the fiery mane of dark red hair, the height. And she tied it all together with the regal presence of a lioness.
I stood up and moved toward the door, ready to follow her as soon as I knew where she was going. But she kept walking straight toward the coffee shop, and when she came through the door, I turned away from her and went back to my cup of coffee.
She headed straight for the phone booth.
I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised. Enough telephones are tapped so that everyone who is either criminally or politically active knows to regard all phones as tapped and to act accordingly. Important or sensitive calls are not to be made from one's own phone. And this was the nearest public telephone to her building. That's why I had chosen it myself, and it was why she was using it now.
I moved a little closer to the booth, just to satisfy myself that it wouldn't do me any good. I couldn't see the number she was dialing, and I couldn't hear a thing. Once I'd established this, I paid for my roll and coffee and left.
I crossed the street and walked over to her building.
I was taking a chance. If she finished her call and hopped into a cab I would lose her, and I didn't want to lose her now. Not after all the time it had taken me to find her. I wanted to know who she was calling now, and if she went someplace I wanted to know where and why.
But I didn't think she was going to grab a taxi. She hadn't even been carrying a purse, and if she wanted to go somewhere, she would probably want to come back for her bag first and throw some clothes in a suitcase. And she had set things up with me to give herself an hour's leeway.
So I went to her building and found a little white-haired guy on the door. He had guileless blue eyes and a rash of broken capillaries on his cheekbones. He looked as though he took a lot of pride in his uniform.
'Carr,' I said.
'Just left a minute ago.You just missed her, couldn't have been more than a minute.'
'I know.' I took out my wallet and flipped it open quickly. There was nothing there for him to see, not even a junior G-man's badge, but it didn't matter. It's the moves that do it, that and looking like a cop in the first place. He got a quick flash of leather and was suitably impressed. It would have been bad form for him to demand a closer look.
'What apartment?'
'I sure hope you don't get me in trouble.'
'Not if you play it by the book. Which apartment is she in?'
'Four G.'
'Give me your passkey, huh?'
'I'm not supposed to do that.'
'Uh-huh. You want to go downtown and talk about it?'
He didn't. What he wanted was for me to go someplace and die, but he didn't say so. He turned over his passkey.
'She'll be back in a couple of minutes. You wouldn't want to tell her I'm upstairs.'
'I don't like this.'
'You don't have to.'
'She's a nice lady, always been nice to me.'
'Generous at Christmastime, huh?'
'She's a very pleasant person,' he said.
'I'm sure you've got a swell relationship. But tip her off and I'll know about it, and I won't be happy.
You follow me?'
'I'm not going to say anything.'
'And you'll get your key back. Don't worry about it.'
'That's the least of it,' he said.
I took the elevator to the fourth floor. The G apartment faced the street, and I sat at her window and watched the entrance of the coffee shop. I couldn't tell from that angle whether there was anyone in the phone booth or not, so she could have left already, could have ducked around the corner and into a cab, but I didn't think so. I sat there in a chair and I waited, and after about ten minutes she came out of the coffee shop and stood on the corner, long and tall and striking.
And evidently uncertain.She just stood there for a long moment, and I could read the indecision in her mind.
