Harold Wood went to work, and I retrieved my coat. Was Wood just a man brooding over his wife, or was there more on his mind?
At Brown and Dunlap, the desk where Diana Wood worked was clean. She hadn’t come to work. Neither had Lawrence Dunlap, his private door open, his mail untouched on his desk.
The snow clouds were blowing away against the tower of the gray building near City Hall. An old building, full of lawyers. On the tenth floor, Irving Kezar’s office was businesslike, with a businesslike secretary. Mr. Kezar was at his athletic club.
A block away, the club had pool, steam, sauna and massage in the basement; gym, handball, and squash on the second floor. The first floor had a restaurant, bar and lobby where I waited while they paged Irving Kezar-and a series of small card-and-conference rooms, the important rooms.
It was no university club, the men in it weren’t Ivy League. They weren’t executives or blue-chip stockholders. Middlemen. The lawyers, jobbers, sidewalk brokers and hustlers. Always in a hurry-the deal could slip away in an hour-they hustled in and out of the small rooms, dealing. Two poker games were going on, grim and not polite. A club where the sweat wasn’t all in the gym or sauna.
A page took me to the game room. Irving Kezar played ping-pong. He played very well, moving to the flashing ball despite his short legs and paunch. He won, collected the stakes.
“We had a Y club over in Brooklyn,” Kezar said as he sat down, mopped his acned face. “Keep the slum kids out of trouble. I got really good, hustled all my pocket money from suckers before I was fourteen.” He lit a cigar. “Ready to sell your client?”
“You don’t seem broken up about Sid Meyer,” I said.
“I should sit in temple, beat my prayer shawl?” But his beard-shadowed face wasn’t as hard as his words. “Sid was okay, we got along. Sometimes we were family, but he was a loser.”
Sad and uneasy under his shell. Maybe it was death. In the end, we were all losers. Even him.
“There was some reason, Kezar. What?”
He chewed his cigar. “If I knew who your client was?”
“A trade?”
“I got nothing to trade. I’ll buy, though, right?”
“Did Sid Meyer know Diana Wood?”
“You think she’s part of Sid’s killing?”
“What do you think?”
“Hell, all I know is I see her around Le Cerf Agile.”
“Who’s the man in the black car?”
“I’ve been wondering. You see him, Fortune?”
Smooth, he answered everything with another question.
“Lawrence Dunlap, maybe?” I said.
“Her boss? You think that’s it?” He appeared to think.
“You do any importing?” I asked. “Some ties with Israel?”
“Me? I’m an American. One hundred percent. You think Sid was maybe killed by Arabs?” He didn’t smile.
“Diana Wood had a box when she got in that black car,” I said. “A Captain Levi Stern tried to break my arm. He’s El Al, a pilot, and maybe something else. Sid Meyer tried to meet a friend of Stern’s who runs a shop that imports native crafts from all over Africa and the Far East. A woman-Mia Morgan.”
Kezar chewed his cigar, watched me.
“Maybe a smuggling setup?” I said. “Mia Morgan deals in Turkey, Asia. Drugs? Heroin?”
Kezar smoked. “Mia Morgan, you say? Heroin? Well, maybe there’s a connection.” He laughed. “Get it? A connection?”
He laughed harder. With the ping-pong games going on behind him, he laughed at me. A real laugh, tears in his eyes. Something very funny. A joke at my expense.
“Should I tell Captain Gazzo to check Sid Meyer out for a drug angle?” I said.
He went on laughing for a time, shook his head. His eyes no longer laughed with his mouth. Contemptuous eyes.
“You and Gazzo,” he said. “I saw. Looks to me like you’re the Captain’s pet. That’s good to know, I’ll file that. But don’t count on Gazzo, Fortune.”
Another warning?
“Why?” I said.
“You don’t know nothing.”
Shaking his head, he got up and walked out. I started after him, and stopped. In the lobby someone else got up and seemed to follow Kezar out of the club. A medium-sized young man in a neat brown suit and hat. I could be wrong, and the man looked like any young lawyer or accountant. But was there a faint bulge under his left arm?
After lunch, Diana Wood’s desk was still untouched. I complained that I’d had an appointment. The receptionist was sorry, Mrs. Wood had called in sick, and, no, Mr. Dunlap never came in on Tuesdays. On my way out I bumped a man coming in. He grabbed for my left arm, nearly fell when there wasn’t any left arm to grab. I caught him. It was Harold Wood, duffel coat and all.
“Sorry,” he said. He blinked at my empty sleeve, went on in.
I went down to the lobby. My watch read only 2 P.M. Too early for Wood to be off work. A late lunch hour? I got my answer soon. Harold Wood came down, looked around, then went out and across the street. He stood there among the passing people in the snow and cold for the next three hours.
Diana Wood didn’t show. At five-fifteen, Harold Wood walked south. I wasn’t far behind. The traffic was back to normal, the clean snow already slush out in the streets, but we walked the same route down to St. Marks Place. He went up, I went to the Ukrainian bar. I had a beer. The lights in 4-B didn’t go on. I drank, watched and waited. The apartment in 145 remained dark. A back way out? Spotted my tailing, and slipped away?
I crossed the street. The inside vestibule door was open. I stepped lightly up the bare tile stairs to 4-B. There was no sound inside the apartment, but there was behind me. Harold Wood had spotted me tailing all right, but he hadn’t slipped away. He stood and stared at my missing arm. It made me easy to remember.
“Who are you?” His voice was soft, but not weak. A direct voice not used to suspicion. More puzzled than wary. I was caught. It was as good a time as any to talk to him.
“Why don’t we talk inside?” I said.
He had serious eyes without much humor. The kind of eyes you see on kids who are going to write the great American novel not for fame or reward but for truth, for us all. Intense.
“Okay,” he said, unlocked his door.
We went into a kitchen. A cheap apartment, but not bohemian. Middle-class-a box partitioned into four boxes: kitchen, living room, two bedrooms. The living room and one bedroom were in front over the street, the second bedroom was an artist’s studio. In the studio he dropped his duffel coat on a cot. There were two easels, racks of canvases, and two battered tables piled with tubes of paint, rags, palettes, knives and cans.
“A commercial artist who paints,” I said. “The old story.”
“A painter who does commercial art,” he said. “An older story. Who the hell are you, mister?”
“Dan Fortune. You know where your wife is, Mr. Wood?”
“Fortune?” His voice and eyes were a question, as if he’d expected someone, but I wasn’t what he had expected. He lit a cigarette. “I know where my wife is. Why?”
“You’re sure?”
“You’re some kind of pervert? Following me? My wife-”
“I’m a private detective.” I showed him my license.
“Detective?” Alarmed or confused, which? “What for?”
“I was hired to investigate your wife.”
“Diana? You’re crazy! Who hired you to investigate Diana?”
“A girl named Mia Morgan.”
His blank stare was real. “I never heard of any Mia Morgan!”
“Levi Stern? An El Al pilot?”
