'Sometimes you can be very slow,' she answered.
He looked at her quizzically as if to ask what she meant.
'Who do you think his superior was?' she asked.
'The second man on the airplane' There was a long pause and he felt a tumbling sensation in his stomach.
'Naturally,' he finally muttered.
'You've learned a lot today,' she said.
'Now I'll teach you one thing more. The defense of the rabbit. The fleet escape. Never go into a place which you can't get out of in at least three ways. Follow me in five seconds. You'll see what I mean She leaned forward and was no longer a teacher, but rather a woman and a lover. She kissed him on the lips and had him so starved for her physical affection that he tried to pull her closer by drawing her into his arms.
But she'd have none of that. It wasn't time. No sooner did he try to draw her closer than she resisted firmly and pulled back.
'I'll be back in touch,' she said.
'Remember. Follow in five seconds' ' He stood there completely mystified as she briskly went up the stairs beneath the sign of Madame Diane. Thomas watched from the sidewalk, then followed after a slow count to five.
He went quickly up the stairs, reached a dingy hallway at the top, and heard nothing. There were four alternatives. More steps leading up. A corridor to the right, a corridor to the left. Back stairs leading down. All four marked with exit signs.
She'd known this place, which thicket could best confuse the hounds.
She was gone. Had anyone been following them, she would have led the pursuer here and easily slipped away.
Her lesson had been well illustrated. He'd learned it.
For himself, he chose the corridor to the left, the one leading past Madame Diane's emporium of guidance. He passed down a side stairway into an alleyway between buildings.
He thought of sandhogs, alive and dead, on his way home, men whose lives and jobs orbited the three spheres of blood, sand, and oil.
McAdam and Whiteside. Men or mirages? And what about Leslie? A cooperative client in desperate need of help? Or a treacherous conniver?
Or both?
During the long walk through the icy wind, he wondered who was real, who was imagined, and who lay in the murky area somewhere in between.
He pulled his coat close to him. Each shadow he passed on that cold night, each stranger coming near him on the sidewalk, represented a multitude of fears. In the same way, the empty apartment he would return to represented a certain loneliness which, at this point in life, he no longer wished to face each night.
He wished that she were coming home with him. But he had no idea where she was, much less who she was.
Chapter 18
It had never escaped Shassad's thoughts that the slaying of Mark Ryder had been done with such surgical precision that it had the mark of professionals. Similarly, what Minnie Yankovich had described had sounded more akin to an elaborately disguised execution than a mugging.
Shassad looked at Mrs. Ryder in her moment of most acute grief.
He knew what his job was.
No, she said, she hadn't seen her husband since the morning he'd last left for work. No, he had no enemies that she could think of, nobody to whom he was in debt, and she knew of no one whom he might have been seeing whom she didn't approve of. Shassad gallantly, refrained from asking the next obvious questions: Did she have any idea where her husband might have planned to spend the night? Did she have any idea that he was seeing another woman?
The answers were obvious.
On the morning following Ryder's identification Detective Patrick Hearn had arrived at the offices of Bradford, Mehr amp; Company, where by five minutes past nine he had obtained a photocopy of Ryde's employment records. Subsequently, Hearn interviewed Ryde's co-workers, none of whom could suggest anyone harboring a grudge against the deceased. To those who seemed to have known Ryder best, Hearn posed one further question: 'Do you happen to know if there were any women in addition to his wife?'
Invariably the answer was no, clearly and simply, except in one instance. A young man of Ryder's age, an executive trainee named Durban Hayvis, balked perceptibly before also answering no.
On a hunch, Hearn spent an extra hour going over address lists of company employees, hoping one a female one might read 246 East 73rd Street. None did. The closest address was 316 East 94th Street, the address of Mr. Hayvis. No immediate significance.
However, Hearn did much better two hours later.
He had gone to the Seventy-third Street building itself, and sought to interview the remaining tenants. He finally managed to locate the most elusive, a single girl, early twenties, going by the name of Debbie Moran. Hearn had been seeking her since Daniels had first mentioned the nocturnal activity in her apartment.
Debbie lived in Apartment 3-C, on the floor below Thomas Daniels. She invited the detective in and sat demurely on a large white vinyl couch with large plush cushions, her legs folded under her in tight jeans.
The detective sat across the room and questioned her.
Debbie Moran puffed a cigarette carefully and spoke politely with a hint of a New York accent. She gave her profession as a part-time actress and part-time model. Her hometown, she said, was St. Paul, Minnesota.
'Actress, huh?' asked Hearn with interest.
'Maybe I've seen you in something. Broadway? Off Broadway?'
'No, probably not.'
'Movies?'
The 'no' was hesitant. Her eyes lowered to the ashtray. Hearn glanced around the room. The furniture was both modern and reasonably expensive, centered around a large comfortable sofa. The adjoining bedroom, which Hearn eyed when he asked if he could use the washroom, was dominated by an expensive waterbed. The apartment was designed, in its way, for comfort, for satisfaction, and as a den of voluntary seduction. Under further questioning Debbie Moran admitted that she just remembered what her last acting job had been.
'A series of TV commercials on the West coast she volunteered.
'It's not being shown no more Hearn reached to an inside jacket pocket and handed her a picture of Mark Ryder.
'Ever seen this man?' he asked.
She glanced at it.
'No ' He watched her for a moment, studying the facial features and expression.
She handed back the photograph.
'You're sure?' he asked.
'I'm sure.'
'That man was murdered in front of this building,' he said.
'How awful: ' 'He was visiting someone in this building.'
She shrugged.
'What we're interested in'' he said, 'is what time he left, not what he was doing here 'I live in the back of the building,' she said.
'I sleep soundly. I didn't see no one or hear no one. I go to bed early.'
And often, thought Hearn. All the way back to the precinct he cursed her.
Hearn found Shassad sitting at his cluttered desk on the cramped second floor. Behind Shassad was his
