“If I can get her for under a buck, she’s yours.”
Jeffreys hitched up his trousers by the belt, slipped on his jacket, and patted it down for his cigarettes. Much as he hated to admit it, he did feel a
“There ought to be somebody name’a Katari showin’ up any minute,” he said, pointing to the note he’d jotted in the margins of the guest book. “African guy from Israel, can’t speak English.”
“Huh?”
“Don’t ask,” Jeffreys said. “He gets here, you need to page Avram Hoffman in the main room and show him along.”
Nodding, Collins took his place on the stool behind the guard podium.
A moment later Jeffreys turned and left the building.
Avram was back in the main hall, his morning worship concluded, the prayer shawl and phylacteries returned to their pouch in the cloakroom. Activity seemed to be picking up at the tables, though hardly by leaps and bounds.
Avram glanced at the row of wall clocks over the glass booth near the passage from which he’d emerged. They displayed the time in each of the world’s major trading centers, and served as reminders to check his cell phone, which he’d turned off before entering the chapel forty-five minutes earlier. There was a voice message from Katari, a courtesy call in jumbled English and Hebrew to say he was en route from his hotel on Madison Avenue. E-mail messages from business contacts in Antwerp, Tokyo, and Mumbai. Also a couple of missed calls in the past ten minutes, their numbers blocked to his caller ID display. Avram had a hunch about their source, and delayed checking the e-mail to wait for his unknown caller to try him again.
He heard the cell phone ring within minutes and thumbed the TALK button.
“Yes?”
“Good of you to answer.”
Avram recognized Lathrop’s voice in an instant.
“I was at morning services,” he said. “You understand.”
“Sure. A pause to cleanse your soul.”
“Improve it,” Avram said. “There are rabbis, Talmudic sages, who give the opinion that man is superior to the angels. In the sense that God made them as perfect as they can be, wholly spiritual beings, while we who possess dual spiritual and material natures have the ability to transcend what we are. To refine ourselves.”
“Gems in the rough.”
“Something like that, right.” Avram shrugged. “I’m always searching for betterment on all fronts.”
“Then you’ll be happy to take a look at the best.”
Avram’s pulse quickened.
“What have you got for me?”
“I said
Avram stepped to the side as several of the others who’d been in the synagogue moved past.
“I have an important appointment this morning,” he said.
“Cancel it.”
“I can’t, it’s too late to postpone. The buyer’s already on his way here, and I can’t reach him… ”
“Put him off. Or have him wait for you. There’s a limited window of opportunity, and you’ll have customers lined up to eat out of your hand in the long run.”
Silence. Avram could feel ripples of eagerness and excitement under his skin.
He found a vacant seat away from the other men sprinkled around the room, stared out at the rooftops uptown through its large glass wall.
“How and where do you want to meet?”
“You know the program, Avram,” Lathrop said. “Get going and keep your phone on, I’ll fill you in along the way.”
“Where’s the movie star babe I ordered up for breakfast?” Collins asked, watching Jeffreys approach the guard platform.
“Too expensive, plus I couldn’t fit her in here.” Jeffreys rattled the small white bag he’d brought from the vender’s cart. “Got you a bagel instead.”
“Buttered?”
“Like you wanted, my man.”
Collins reached for the bag with a mock frown. “Guess I’ll have to settle.”
Jeffreys unzipped his jacket, shook off the outer chill that still seemed to be clinging to him.
“Any happenings to report?” he said.
“No.” Collins rose from the stool. “Well, actually, that guy showed. Katari.”
“You see he got upstairs okay?”
“Yeah. He’s there now, but isn’t too happy, let me tell you.” Collins shrugged. “Came in right after the dealer he was supposed to meet left the building.”
Jeffreys looked at him.
“Not more than a minute or two after you did,” Collins said, and tapped a slip of paper that lay beside the guest book. “Must’ve had somewhere important to go… dropped this in front of me, hustled straight out the door in a big rush.”
His brow furrowing, Jeffreys reached for the paper and read what Avram Hoffman had written on it.
Goddamn, he thought.
Malisse had expected Plan A to be bungled, although not even he had thought the bungling would commence at this earliest introductory stage.
He stood on the corner of 47th and Fifth, pausing to catch his breath, feeling thwarted and foolish as he looked about the avenue. His eyes scanned the sidewalk, the intersection, the passing taxicabs and busses. According to Jeffreys, almost five minutes had elapsed since Avram Hoffman had exited the DDC building behind him, and trying to guess which direction he’d taken amid the streams of vehicular and foot traffic seemed futile, idiotic, a matter of going through the motions. Jeffreys’s reliever wasn’t even certain he’d noticed him turn toward Fifth, and why should he have? He knew nothing of the ongoing surveillance.
Frowning, Malisse turned right on his heels toward the IRT subway station three blocks uptown. It was an instinctive choice. Hoffman could have dropped a trail of bread-crumbs, and the filthy pigeons infesting these streets would have pecked it up by now. But he had left the DDC suddenly, unexpectedly, and with obvious haste. If he meant to get somewhere in a hurry, it stood to reason he would take the fastest available mode of transportation, and in this city that would be the train… assuming he hadn’t simply needed to walk some short distance. And why assume that or anything otherwise? It was all a toss-up.
Malisse’s frown deepened. Idiotic. Everything had been botched. Better he’d stayed in the warmth of the coffeehouse, with its pleasant wafts of the brewed and baked….
The thought broke off as he noticed a man in a charcoal overcoat and light gray snap-brimmed fedora in the crowd about halfway up the block, his back to him, walking at a brisk pace. Malisse gave him a moment’s look. His size matched Hoffman’s. His stride. And the outer clothes resembled what he’d seen Hoffman wear the past two days. His hat had been herringbone tan, though. His coat a brown tweed. But yesterday was yesterday. Nothing said a man couldn’t change his colors — and these were still well coordinated.
Malisse quickly turned to follow. Perhaps it was a stretch to hope he’d been fortunate enough to spot his quarry. But better to chase after hope than stand arrested with futility, he thought. If nothing else it would get his blood going, take some sting out of the cold.
