I left him lighting a cigar and studying my face as if to remember it. I felt a chill. He already had my name. On the avenue I hailed a taxi. It was safer.
In my five cold rooms I got the coffee ready for morning, and went to bed. I lay awake. Irving Kezar hadn’t believed I was a repo man for a second. Somehow, Kezar knew no repo man would be after Diana Wood’s car. He was sure. How?
CHAPTER 3
Brown and Dunlap, Investments, had offices on lower Madison Avenue. Their sixth-floor suite was impressive but reserved, as befitted a financial adviser. The Personnel Department was a one-man cubicle with files and a desk. The one man at the desk was a woman in her fifties. I showed my license, asked to see Diana Wood’s file. The woman was alarmed.
“Mrs. Wood? Is something wrong?”
So Diana Wood was married. Or had been.
“She’s been given as a reference,” I explained. “A man up for a position in a defense company. Government contracts, so we make a security investigation, cross-check references. Routine, ma’am, but confidential, you understand.”
She nodded, both impressed and relieved. It usually works. Alarm them first with a detective’s license and the hint of trouble, ease off and reassure them by saying it’s routine, then add a pinch of national security. Most people are still honest and unsuspicious. Once they see no harm for a friend, they’ll be helpful. It gets harder every year, people more and more suspicious, but it still works. The woman got the file, went out to give me privacy.
The file was brief: Diana Tucker Wood. Address: 145 St. Marks Place, Manhattan. Born: Jan. 22, 1943, Jackson Heights, Queens, N.Y. Married. Husband: Harold Walter Wood, commercial artist. Education: Bryant High School-1960; Hofstra University-B.A., 1964. Employment: Four secretarial jobs, 1964-69, all with national firms; public relations asst., Hardware Institute, 1969; Brown and Dunlap as public relations asst., 1971. Salary: $9,500/yr.
I lit a cigarette. The typical record of a young, educated New York girl. Routine. Lower- or middle-middle- class New York high school, local university, medium-rent East Village apartment, married, both working at small careers. One vague question: thirty, no children. But a lot of career girls didn’t even marry until twenty-eight-or- nine.
“You’re a detective?”
The man came into the cubicle, stared at me. His voice was sharp and stiff with an edge of annoyed authority.
“That’s right,” I said.
“I’m a partner in this firm, Lawrence Dunlap. Exactly what do you want with Mrs. Wood?”
Dunlap was the very model of a modern financial adviser. (Gilbert and Sullivan-knowing quotes like that is what makes me not quite regular in Chelsea.) About forty-five, Dunlap was trim, handsome, an inch under six feet, his gray-brown hair medium short and barbered at least weekly. Anglo-Saxon handsome, youthful, except for a pair of black-rimmed glasses. The kind of man who plays handball every afternoon at The Yale Club.
“Reference check,” I said, repeated what I’d told the personnel woman. I hadn’t lulled her completely. She’d gone to him.
“Private detective?” Dunlap said. I could see his shoulders relax, his breath let out. “I see. A job security check.”
He tried to cover his worry and relief, but he was a lousy actor. He wanted to believe me, didn’t even ask for my license. He looked at my duffel coat, at my missing arm, and smiled. I couldn’t be anyone to worry about. But Dunlap had been worried about someone. Police? The SEC? Someone else? Or was it only the normal concern of an investment firm that had to be above reproach, would worry about the hint of an employee in trouble?
“Confidential,” I said. I didn’t want Diana Wood alerted.
“Of course,” he nodded.
I thanked him and left. I was pretty sure he’d be discreet, that was habit in his business, unless he had more than an employer’s interest in Diana Wood. If he told her about me, that might tell me a lot. I wondered if Lawrence Dunlap wore a homburg, the man in the snapshot? It would explain his alarm. But so would a lot of other things.
I rode the elevator down, settled in a corner of the lobby. I held the snapshot to be sure I’d know Diana Wood, but I needn’t have bothered. She wasn’t easy to miss. About twelve-fifteen she came out of the elevator with two other pretty-enough girls, and stood out like Cinderella among her sisters.
Hatless, her thick blonde hair shone on her shoulders. She wore the same coat-bold black and green stripes. An expensive coat, too dressy for the office. As most young-married career girls, she probably had one good winter coat she wore everywhere. As she passed, I saw her soft, cover-girl skin and perfect face. Her large blue eyes looked happy as she chattered to the girls.
I followed them to a side-street luncheonette, had a burger at the counter while they ate cottage-cheese salads at a table and went on talking. They laughed a lot. There was something diffident about Diana Wood’s laugh, almost embarrassed, as if she didn’t like to draw attention to herself.
After lunch I tailed them window shopping, in and out of a bookstore and three dress shops, and back to their building. They went up, and I took my place in the corner of the lobby. Except for her face and body, Diana Wood seemed like any girl of her type in New York. A little shyer and reserved, maybe.
On the dot of five the elevators began emptying in hordes. Diana Wood appeared. Lawrence Dunlap was with her. Camera in hand, I tailed them out in the crowd. They stopped at the first corner, stood talking. I didn’t think they were discussing me, they smiled too much. I snapped my picture.
A blue Cadillac with New Jersey plates drove up. A garage man slid to the passenger side. Lawrence Dunlap took the wheel of the Cadillac, drove off west. Diana Wood walked on south. By the time I’d tailed her to Fourteenth Street and First Avenue, I realized she was going to walk home. She did-with stops at a butcher and an Italian grocery.
Number 145 St. Marks Place was a renovated tenement-two, three and four room apartments-on a low- income street, fire escapes in front. Mr. and Mrs. Harold W. Wood lived in apartment 4-B. There was a Ukrainian bar across the street, two steps down with a store window. I ordered a bottle of beer-fifty cents here-and watched number 145 through the store window.
At seven o’clock I had a ham sandwich, and at eight-ten Diana Wood came out of 145 with a man in bell- bottom corduroys and a duffel coat like mine. Under the street light at First Avenue, I saw the man clearly. About my height, five-ten, he had a lean body with good shoulders like a welterweight, an ordinary young-looking face, but gray in his long brown hair. Maybe thirty-five or so. His face was intense as he talked to the girl, ruddy and lively. Diana Wood wore slim hip-hugger pants and a jacket, both in black velvet, as if they were going to a party.
Before I could set my Leica for the light, they hailed a taxi, and I lost them. There was nothing to do but go back to the bar and wait. A long wait, and the Poles and Ukrainians in the bar were friendly. By midnight I was Fortunowski again, back with my Polish ancestors, singing songs from Krakow and Kiev. Diana Wood and the man returned at
1 A.M
At 2 A.M. the lights went out in 4-B. I went home. I watched a TV movie for a time, and thought about Diana Wood.
Except for her looks she seemed an ordinary girl. Her job was no more than a glorified secretary, par for women. The intense welterweight had to be Harold Wood, seemed just as ordinary. Two faces in the crowd. Yet people were concerned about her, even alarmed-Mia Morgan, Captain Levi Stern, John Albano, Irving Kezar, and maybe Lawrence Dunlap.
