Neither you nor I have much time.'
'Keep talking.
'Leave your apartment and make certain that no one sees you. Go somewhere for the day, places you've never been, places where no one who knows you would look for you. Then tonight you have to meet me '
'Where?'
'Anywhere,' she said.
'But it must be someplace deserted. What's the most deserted part of the city after midnight?'
'I suppose Central Park at four A.M.,' he said jokingly.
'Perfect.'
'What?'
'Perfect,'she reiterated.
'What part?'
'You can't be serious.'
'I haven't much time! What part?' Her voice was strident and agitated, as he'd never heard it before. He could hear the sound of traffic behind her, horns and automobile engines. She was indeed in a booth.
'Do you know where the Great Lawn is?'
'I can find it.'
'There's a rock formation off the Great Lawn to the east. Between Eighty-third and Eighty-fourth Streets' he said.
'I can be in that area ' 'I'll find you' she said intensely. A recorded operator's voice sounded on the telephone and he heard her drop another coin into the slot.
'Now do as I've asked. Get out of. your apartment. Prepare not to come back. Don't be seen by anyone you recognize until you see me tonight.'
'Can't you tell me what?'
'It's your life I'm talking about' she snapped.
'You can either believe me or you can risk getting killed The choice is yours, Thomas.
Trust me or not. That's all I can say.'
'But-' 'I have to ring off.'
He heard the sound of the receiver being quickly hung up. Then he was hearing a dial tone.
He sat there stunned with the telephone still in his hand. He set it down and looked around the apartment. Trust her or not, he thought to himself If all came down to that. Was she saving his life or luring him to an isolated section of Manhattan where he'd be as easy a murder victim as the unwitting Mark Ryder had been?
He glanced around his cluttered apartment and made his decision.
Shassad stood in the hallway looking down on the body. A photographer from the Medical Examiner's office aimed his camera, flashed a pair of shots, and moved into a different position.
Detective Jack Grimaldi looked at Shassad from the other end of jacobus's corpse.
'We blew it'' he said.
Shassad looked at him with genuine anger.
'I'd say you blew it, all right' he snapped.
'You've got this guy under surveillance and he gets killed under your fat noses. What the hell are you, cub scouts?'
Grimaldi, looking for a hole to crawl into, said nothing. Nor did his partner, Detective Ed Blocker.
Patrick Hearn approached the area where Shassad stood. Behind Hearn detectives from forensics dusted the room for fingerprints.
'They find anything back there?' asked Shassad.
'Some prints,' offered Hearn.
'But they're probably his.' He motioned to Jacobus.
'Christ,' muttered Shassad. He looked at Grimaldi with contempt.
'Okay,' he said, 'run through it again for me. From the top Grimaldi drew a breath and measured each word. He retraced the events of that day.
. Grimaldi and Blocker, working twelve-hour shifts, had replaced the previous team assigned to Jacobus. The assignment had begun at Six A.M. on Thirtieth and Park. Grimaldi and Blocker had then followed Jacobus home by car at eight dc lock that morning, watching their mark disappear in the front door of his second-story home.
Aside from jacobus's murderer, the two detectives had been the last to see the custodian alive. But they had perhaps seen the killer, too.
'We parked out front about a block away,' Grimaldi explained.
'We watched the house from there. Then about five minutes later Ed went around back.'
'Back where?' Shassad asked.
Detective Edward Blocker replied.
'There's a patio behind these row houses' he said.
'It's visible from the side street. I took a stroll down the side street and took a look. I saw a girl.'
'Girl?'
'Yes, sir,' said Blocker.
'I think it was the girl Shassad looked at him coldly. qaal girl' 'The one we chased out of the Garden that night,' he said.
'The one at the hockey game. The one we lost in the parking garage.'
'Where the hell was she?' demanded Shassad. Hearn leaned on the hallway wall and studiously looked into the vacant eyes of the corpse.
He listened intently and was completely expressionless.
'She was coming down the back staircase from jacobus's apartment' said Blocker.
'They have an outside back entrance.'
'And?'
'And she looked around when she got down. I was about a hundred feet from her. She turned and saw me standing there and quickly turned and started the other way.'
'Were you wearing a sign?' asked Shassad.
'One that said,
'I am a cop'?'
Blocker looked at his feet, as if waiting for permission to continue.
'Yeah? Then what?'
'I tried to follow her, but there was a fence in the way. She picked me up right away. Saw me trying to get past that fence immediately.
That's when she really started to move.'
'Yeah? So? Where'd she move to?'
'I don't know. She might have disappeared into a store and waited for me to disappear. For a second I thought she'd slipped into this blue car.'
'Get the plate number?'
'Out of state. That's all I know.'
'Marvelous,' sighed Shassad.
'Tell me, why do you come to work without your dog and your cane?'
'An expert,' offered Grimaldi.
'Had to have been an expert the way she got loose.'
'I ran to the end of that block and I looked in every direction.
Gone. Not a sign of her. No one had seen her. I circled back to the car where Jack was'' he nodded to Grimaldi, 'and she hadn't gone past him' it.' Shassad listened bitterly.
'You were right,' he uttered.
'You blew 'Must have been an expert,' Grimaldi suggested.
'Had different escapes all planned.'
'The trouble is'' retorted Shassad, 'you gentlemen are supposed to be experts, too.'
Shassad looked imploringly to Hearn, employing his best how did-they-let-them-get-out-of-the-police-
