stand that.'
They put their drinks aside. They embraced. It seemed to them they were huddling, giving comfort to each other in the face of catastrophe. As survivors might hold each other, in fear and in hope.
'We'll go away together this summer, darling,' she whispered. 'We'll spend every minute with each other. We'll swim and walk the beach and explore.'
'Oh yes,' he said dreamily. 'Just the two of us.'
'Against the world,' Zoe Kohler said, kissing him.
Something was happening. Zoe Kohler read it in the newspapers, heard it on radio, saw it on TV. The search for the Hotel Ripper had been widened, the investigating force enlarged, the leads being followed had multiplied.
More important, the police were now discussing publicly the possibility that the killer was a woman. The 'Daughter of Sam' headline was revived. Statements were issued warning visitors to midtown Manhattan of the dangers of striking up acquaintance with strangers, men or women, on the streets, in bars and cocktail lounges, in discos and restaurants.
The search for the slayer took on a new urgency. The summer tourist season was approaching; the number of canceled conventions and tours was increasing. Newspaper editorialists quoted the dollar loss that could be expected if the killer was not quickly caught.
Surprisingly, there was little of the public hysteria that had engulfed the city during the Son of Sam case. One columnist suggested this might be due to the fact that, so far, all the victims had been out-of-towners.
More likely, he added, familiarity with mass murder had dulled the public's reaction. The recent Chicago case, with more than a score of victims, made the Hotel Ripper of minor interest. There now seemed to be an intercity competition in existence, similar to the contest to build the highest skyscraper.
But despite the revived interest of the media in the Hotel Ripper case, Zoe could find no evidence that the police had any specific information about the killer's identity. She was convinced they were no closer to solving the case than they had been after her first adventure.
So what happened to her on the afternoon of May 28th came as a numbing shock.
Mr. Pinckney had originally obtained the Chemical Mace for her as a protection against muggers and rapists. She did not want to risk telling him it had been used, lying about the circumstances, and asking him to supply another container. So she said nothing. The Mace wasn't an absolute necessity; a knife was.
She had purchased her Swiss Army pocket knife at a cutlery shop, one of a chain, in Grand Central Station. This time she determined to buy a heavier knife at a different store of the same chain. During her lunch hour, she walked over to Fifth Avenue and 46th Street.
An enormous selection of pocket knives, jackknives, and hunting knives was offered. Zoe waited patiently at the counter while the customer ahead of her made his choice. She was bemused to see that he picked a Swiss Army Knife, but with more blades than the one she had owned.
While the clerk was writing up the sales check, he said, 'Could I have your name and address, sir? We'd like to send you our mail-order catalog. Absolutely no charge, of course.'
The customer left his name and address. Then it was Zoe's turn.
'I'd like a pocket knife as a gift for my nephew,' she told the clerk. 'Nothing too large or too heavy.'
He laid out several knives for her inspection. She selected a handsome instrument with four blades, a horn handle, and a metal loop at one end for clipping onto a belt or hanging from a hook.
She paid for her purchase in cash, deciding that if the clerk asked for her name and address, she would give him false identity. But he didn't ask.
'I heard you offer to send that other customer your mail-order catalog,' she said as the clerk was gift-wrapping her knife.
'Oh, we don't have a catalog,' he said. He looked around carefully, then leaned toward her. 'We're cooperating with the police,' he whispered. 'They want us to try and get the name and address of everyone who buys a Swiss Army Knife. And if we can't get their names, to jot down a description.'
Zoe Kohler was proud of her calmness.
'Whatever for?' she asked.
The clerk seemed uncomfortable. 'I think it has something to do with the Hotel Ripper. They didn't really tell us.'
Walking back to the Hotel Granger, the new knife in her purse, Zoe realized what must have happened: the police had identified the knife used from the tip of the broken blade found at the Cameron Arms Hotel.
But nothing had been published about it in the newspapers. Obviously the police were keeping the identification of the weapon a secret. That suggested there were other things they were keeping secret as well. Her fingerprints, perhaps, or something she had dropped at the scene, or some other clue that would lead them inevitably to her.
She should have felt dismayed, she knew, and frightened. But she didn't. If anything, she felt a sense of heightened excitement. The exhilaration of her adventures was sharpened by the risk, made more intense.
She imagined the police as a single malevolent intelligence with a single implacable resolve: to bring her down. To accomplish that, they would lie and deceive, work in underhanded and probably illegal ways, use all the powers at their command, including physical force and violence.
It seemed to her the police were fit representatives of a world that had cheated her, debased her, demolished her dreams and refused to concede her worth as a woman or her value as a human being.
The police and the world wanted nothing but her total extinction so that things might go along as if she had never been.
The evening of June 4th…
Zoe Kohler, alert, erect, strides into the crowded lobby of the Hotel Adler on Seventh Avenue and 50th Street. She pauses to scan the display board near the entrance. Under Current Events, it lists a convention of orthopedic surgeons, a banquet for a labor leader, and a three-day gathering of ballroom dancing teachers.
The hotel directory she had consulted listed the Adler's two restaurants, a 'pub-type tavern,' and a cocktail lounge. But Zoe is accosted before she can decide on her next move.
'See anything you like?' someone asks. A male voice, assured, amused.
She turns to look at him coolly. A tall man. Slender. A saturnine smile. Heavy, drooping eyelids. Olive skin. Black, gleaming hair slicked back from a widow's peak. The long fingers holding his cigarette look as if they have been squeezed from tubes.
'I don't believe we've met,' she says frostily.
'We have now,' he says. 'You could save my life if you wanted to.'
She cannot resist…
'How could I do that?'
'Have a drink with me. Keep me from going back into that meeting.'
'What are you?' she challenges. 'An orthopedic surgeon, a labor leader, or a ballroom dancing teacher?'
'A little of all three,' he says, the smile never flickering. 'But mostly I'm a magician.'
He takes a silver dollar from his pocket, makes it flip-flop across his knuckles. It disappears into his palm. It reappears, begins the knuckle dance again. Zoe Kohler watches, fascinated.
'Now you see it,' he says, 'now you don't. The hand is quicker than the eye.'
'Is that the only trick you know?' she asks archly.
'I know tricks you wouldn't believe. How about that drink?'
She doesn't think he is a police decoy. Too elegantly dressed. And a cop would not make the first approach-or would he?
'Where are you from?' she asks.
'Here, there, and everywhere,' he says. 'I've got a name you could never pronounce, but you can call me Nick. What's yours?'
'Irene,' she says. 'I'll have one drink with you. Only one.'
'Of course,' he says, plucking the silver dollar from her left ear. 'Let's go, Irene.'
But the cocktail lounge and the tavern are jammed. People wait on line. Nick takes her elbow in a tight grip.
'We'll go upstairs,' he says, 'to my room.'
