She stared at the map for a second, as if she was taking it all in, then her finger shot out and touched a spot on the map. “There's Washington Square at the lower end of Fifth Avenue. Isn't that where we're going?”
I stared at her, wondering how she did that.
“And those little dots? Aren't those the subway stops around it? If we took this line here.” Her finger traced a thin green line across the map. “But we aren't really going to take the subway again, are we?” She wrinkled up her nose. “Yuk.”
“We can walk if you'd like,” I glanced at my watch and saw it was only 2:45. “Our meeting with Billingham isn't until 5:00,” I said.
“Good. My butt is tired of sitting.”
“It's probably raining out there, you know.”
“Talbott, when you're in love, you can walk right between the drops.” She wrapped herself around my arm and pulled me away. “Let's get out of here before I figure out a better use of that extra two hours.”
We took the escalator up to the street. Standing under the canopy at 34th and 7th Avenue, we looked out on a sea of umbrellas bobbing past in the misty summer rain. On the corner, I spotted one of the ubiquitous New York street vendors selling cheap umbrellas for $10.00. Yesterday they were probably $5.00 and he was mostly selling knock-off Oakley sunglasses, but yesterday the sun was shining.
“Love's great,” I told her as a raindrop dripped off my nose. “But even Gene Kelly used an umbrella.”
“Just buy one. If you buy two, you'll make me cry.”
As we walked down 7th Avenue, Washington Square lay ahead of us in the gray mist about three miles away, but it was an easy walk huddled under the umbrella. The rain was only a light drizzle and the extra time would give us a chance to check out the meeting site. Sandy was wrapped around my arm as we walked south and I realized how comfortable that felt now. I stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, turned, and pulled her to me. Our lips met and we stood, arms entwined, kissing, mouths open, tongues probing, for a good two minutes. In any other city, we would get comments, odd looks, or even a few loud grumbles, but not in New York. You can get away with anything for five minutes on a New York sidewalk.
“Not too shabby,” she said as I finally put her down. “Was there some particular reason for that?” she asked, smacking her lips to get the circulation back.
“None at all, I just felt like doing it.”
“Just like that, huh?”
“Just like that.”
“Then that's the best reason of all.” She beamed. “But if you do that again, I'm going to drag you into another hotel for a long, tawdry afternoon of debauchery.”
Arm in arm again, we turned south and resumed our stroll. We passed a corner newspaper stand. The latest editions of the
“Let's get out of here,” I whispered as I pulled her away.
“Peter,” she laughed. “This is New York City. King Kong could walk down Fifth Avenue and no one would notice. Even if they did, they wouldn't care so long as he didn't step on one of them.”
At 11th Street, we turned east to Fifth Avenue and walked south to Washington Square, where Fifth dead- ended at the big arch. Cuddled up under the umbrella, we walked south through the park, out the other side, and down to Bleeker Street, slowly checking it all out. Billingham knew we were coming around 5:00, but he didn't know where we'd be coming from. Walking down Fifth from the north would have been the obvious approach, but I intended to circle the park and come in from the south or east where we might blend in with the younger NYU crowd.
It was only 3:45, so we found a small, nearly empty Italian restaurant on Bleeker Street. Located four steps below the street, the restaurant was dark, with bushy plants and old Chianti bottles hanging in the windows. We ordered some pasta and the waiter gave me a look of utter scorn when I told him I would like a bottle of Joseph Phelps Cabernet from Napa, but what do Italians know about good wine?
“Thanks, but I think I'll pass,” Sandy said.
“I'm sorry, I forgot you've stopped,” I apologized and waved the waiter away.
“A glass of wine sounds good,' she said. “But I don't want to start, not now, not after all I've been through. I'll bet that Joseph Phelps stuff even comes with a cork, huh? When Eddie ordered, it always had a screw top.”
“When you date a guy from California, you get cork.”
“Date?” she giggled. “With all that sweating and moaning, is that what you call it?” She put her hand on mine. “You're going to take a lot of work, you know.”
After we ate, I drew a crude map on the paper tablecloth. “Here's the plan. Billingham will be coming in from the law school buildings on Sullivan on the south side of the square. I'm going over two streets, then north to the park. You go back to MacDougal and up to the park the way we came. Wait for me near the corner, while I talk to Billingham. When we're done, I'll meet you there and we'll take off to one of the subway stations to the west, okay?”
“No, I want to go with you.”
“Look, you're the only one who knows the truth. If they catch both of us, I'm finished, we're finished. That's why you're going to stay over on MacDougal and run like hell if it all blows up.” I put my hand on hers, caressing it lightly. “So you're going to go over to MacDougal, because you know I'm depending on you.”
She stared back across at me for a very long time. “You really are a sneaky, manipulating bastard, Peter Talbott, aren't you?”
She did what I asked, but she didn't like it. Since I looked more like my photo in the newspaper than she looked like hers, she insisted I take the umbrella. The three-block walk to Washington Square was one of the longest walks I'd ever taken. The street was narrow. The afternoon was dark and gloomy with rain dripping off the sycamores. I swore I saw government hit men hiding in every doorway and eyes following me from every parked car. In the 19th century, Washington Square was a green oasis and the best neighborhood in the city. A Sunday afternoon stroll there would have been all the rage, but times had changed. Now, on a rainy afternoon, I saw a totally empty playground in one corner and an equally large, fenced dog run in the other, where the X-ers took their golden retrievers and Russian wolfhounds to growl at each other. Most of the park benches had become homeless “shacks”, with cardboard and blankets draped over them.
It was all pretty depressing stuff. Across MacDougal, at the corner with West Washington, I saw Sandy hiding in a doorway. Her eyes never left me as I took a slow lap around the perimeter of the park. I used the wide diagonal sidewalks to criss-cross it several times, but I saw nothing. Other than Sandy's dark eyes following my every move, the only serious interest I got was from the hookers near the arch and a small army of crack dealers hanging around the fountain at the center of the park.
New York! Ya gotta love it! Where else does a city divide-up its recreational turf on such a non-judgmental basis?
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
Just a quiet walk in the park…
It was 4:50. I took a seat on a wet park bench facing south toward the NYU Law School buildings, where I had a good view of the entire park. If Tinkerton's men came at me out of the late afternoon gloom, they had better come in numbers and be wearing track shoes, because they would have a tough time cornering me in all that open ground. In the distance, I heard the chime of cathedral bells and knew it must be 5:00. Shaggy college kids with long hair, book bags, and that all-important second-hand grunge look poured out of the NYU class buildings to the east like a jailbreak. After the flood of the great unwashed had ebbed, I saw another group of older and more prosperous students emerge from a building down on Sullivan and scatter. Three men dressed in top coats and business suits followed them out the doors. They crossed 4th Street and marched straight north into the park.
