Daoud opened the door, slipped inside, and closed it after him.
The corridor grew silent. Shmeltzer waited for the Arab to do his work, standing watch five meters to the east of the door. Then footsteps sounded from the around the corner. A man appeared, a Westerner, walking quickly and purposefully.
Baldwin, the administrator-now there was an American. Real uncooperative bastard, according to Dani. And the shmuck had been out of America only for the last two murders in the FBI file, which were dismemberments anyway, no ID on the victims-far from clear that they belonged with the first ones.
A pencil-pushing bastard. Shmeltzer would have liked to see him as the killer. No doctor, but he'd hung around hospitals along enough to learn about drugs, surgical procedures.
Look at him, wearing a Great White Father safari suit and shiny black boots with hard leather heels that played a clackety drumbeat on the tile floor. Gestapo boots.
Shmuck was walking fast but his eyes were buried in a magazine-Time. A large ring of keys dangled from one hand as he approached.
Heading straight for the Records Room, realized Shmeltzer. Hell of a disaster if Daoud stepped out right now and came face to face with the bastard.
Shmeltzer backed up so that he stood in front of the door. Heard rustling inside and knocked a signal to the Arab, who locked the door and stopped moving.
Baldwin came closer, looked up from his magazine and saw him.
'Yes?' he said. 'Can I help you?' Heavily accented Arabic.
Shmeltzer leaned against the door, clutched his chest, and moaned.
'What's the matter?' said Baldwin, looking down on him.
'Hurts,' said Shmeltzer in a whisper, trying to look and sound feeble.
'What's that?'
'Hurts.'
'What hurts?'
'Chest.' A louder moan. Shmeltzer fluttered his eyelids, made as if his knees were giving way.
Baldwin grabbed his elbow, dropping his Time magazine in the process. Shmeltzer went semi-limp, let the bastard support his weight, smiling to himself and thinking: Probably the first real work he's done in years.
The American grunted, fumbled with his key ring until he'd attached it to his belt, freed his other hand to prop up Shmeltzer's steadily sagging body.
'Have you seen the doctor yet?'
Shmeltzer gave a miserable look and shook his head. 'Waiting. Waiting all day? oh!' Letting out a wheezing breath.
Baldwin's pale eyebrows rose in alarm.
'Your heart? Is it your heart?'
'Oh! Ohhh!'
'Do you have a heart problem, sir?'
'Oh! Hurts!'
'All right. Listen,' said Baldwin. 'I'm going to lower you down. Just wait here and I'll go get one of the doctors.'
He let Shmeltzer slide to the floor, propped him against the wall, and jogged off back toward the east wing. The moment he rounded the corner, Shmeltzer got to his feet, rapped on the Records Room door, and said, 'Get the hell out!'
The door opened, Daoud emerged, eyes alive with excitement. Success.
'This way,' said Shmeltzer, pointing west.
The two of them ran.
As they put space between them and the Records Room, Shmeltzer asked, 'Get anything?'
'Everything. Under my robes.'.
'Mazel tov.'
Daoud looked at the older man quizzically, kept running. They passed the examining rooms and the X-ray lab. The hallway terminated at a high wall of windowless plaster marked only by a bulletin board.
'Wait,' said Shmeltzer. He stopped, scanned the board, pulled off a clinic schedule, and stashed it in his pocket before resuining his run.
A right turn took them into a smaller corridor lined by a series of paneled wood doors. Recalling the Mandate-era blueprints they'd examined last night, Shmeltzer identified their former function: servants' quarters, storage rooms. The Brits had pampered themselves during their reign: The entire west wing had been devoted to keeping them well clothed and well fed-quarters for an army of butlers, maids, cooks, laundry room, linen closets, silver storage, auxiliary kitchen, auxiliary wine cellar.
Now those rooms had been turned into flats for the do-gooders, doctors' and nurses' names typed on cards affixed to each door. Al Biyadi's room was next to Cassidy's, Shmeltzer noticed. He took in the names on the other cards too. Committing all of it to memory-automatically-as he continued to run.
