Koko (33 page)

The waiter set before them bowls of a creamy porridge-like substance very similar
to that Michael Poole had eaten for breakfast in Singapore. “Unless they found out
that Tim Underhill had left town.”

“And Harry Beevers went to Taipei?” Maggie smiled at this thought, which evidently
struck her as ridiculous.

Pumo nodded. “So they must have learned that Underhill was in one of those two places,
and split up to try to find him. But why didn’t they call me first? If they learned
that Underhill was out of Singapore after they read about Ortiz, they must know that
Underhill is innocent.”

“Well, you can fly from Singapore to Bangkok in about an hour,” Maggie said. “Eat
your soup and stop worrying.”

Pumo tried his soup. Like everything really funny-looking that Maggie urged on him,
it did not taste at all the way it looked. The soup was not at all creamy, but tasted
of wheat, pork essence, and something that tasted like cilantro but couldn’t be. He
wondered if he could put a variation of this soup on the new menu. He could give it
some name like Strength to Carry Two Oxen Soup, and serve it in little cups with lemon
grass. The Mayor would love it.

“Last fall, around Halloween, I saw the wonderful Harry Beevers,” Maggie said. “I
did this stupid thing, just to get him worked up. He was following me around a liquor
store, and he was so arrogant he thought I didn’t see him. I was with Perry and Jules,
you know, my downtown friends.”

“Roberto Ortiz,” Pumo said, having finally remembered the detail that had nagged him
since seven o’clock. “Oh, my God.”

“They’re nice, they’re just perpetually out of work, which is why you can’t stand
them. Anyhow, I saw Harry gloating around after me, and when I knew he was looking
I stole a bottle of champagne. I was feeling
nasty
.”

“Roberto Ortiz,” Pumo repeated. “I’m sure that was the name.”

“I’m almost afraid to ask what you’re talking about,” Maggie said.

“When I looked up the newspapers in the Microfilm Room, the librarian told me that
all those files had already been assembled for someone else who was researching a
book about Ia Thuc. I think the librarian said the man’s name was Roberto Ortiz.”
Tina looked virtually bug-eyed at Maggie. “Get it? Roberto Ortiz had already been
dead for something like a week. I have to call Judy Poole and see if she knows where
Michael is.”

“It still doesn’t exactly make sense, Tina.”

“I think Koko killed the last journalist, and then I think he got on a plane and came
to New York.”

“Maybe it was Roberto Gomez at the library, or Umberto Ortiz, or some other name like
that. Or maybe it was a reporter like Ernie Anastos. J.J. Gonzales. David Diaz. Fred
Noriega.” She tried to think of other Hispanic reporters on New York City television,
but couldn’t.

“Looking up articles on Ia Thuc?”

Pumo nervously finished his soup.

As soon as he had hung up his coat in the loft he switched on
the lights and went up to his desk. Still wearing her down coat, Maggie trailed into
the room after him.

This time Pumo asked Information in Westchester for Judith Poole’s listing in Westerholm,
and was given a number that did sound to him gloomily like the alternate number on
Michael’s recorded message. Pumo dialed it and Judy answered after a few rings. “This
is Mrs. Poole.”

“Judy? This is Tina Pumo.”

Pause. “Hello, Tina.” Another deliberate pause. “Please excuse my asking, but would
you mind my asking why you’re calling? It’s getting very late, and you could leave
a message on Michael’s machine if it’s for him.”

“I already left a message on Michael’s machine. I’m sorry it’s late, but I have some
important information for Mike.”

“Oh.”

“When I called him at the hotel in Singapore, I was told that they had checked out.”

“Yes.”

What the hell is going on here? Pumo wondered. “I was hoping that you could give a
number for where they are now. Michael’s been in Bangkok for two or three days now.”

“I know that, Tina. I’d give you his number in Bangkok, but I don’t have it. We didn’t
have that sort of conversation.”

Tina groaned silently. “Well, what’s the name of his hotel?”

“I don’t think he told me. I’m sure I didn’t ask.”

“Well, could I give you a message for him? He has to know some things I’ve discovered
in the past few days.” When Judy said nothing, Pumo went on. “I’d like you to tell
him that Koko’s victims, McKenna and Ortiz and the others, were the journalists at
Ia Thuc, and that I think Koko might be in New York, calling himself Roberto Ortiz.”

“I don’t have the faintest idea of what you’re talking about. What’s this about victims?
What do you mean,
victims?
What’s this
Koko
stuif?”

Michael looked over at Maggie, who rolled her eyes and stuck her tongue out.

“What the hell is going on here, Tina?”

“Judy, I’d like you to ask Michael to call me as soon as possible after he talks to
you. Or give me a call and tell me where he is.”

“You can’t say something like that to me and then just hang
up! I want to know a thing or two, Tina. Suppose you tell me who’s been calling me
up at all hours and not saying anything.”

“Judy, I don’t have any idea who that could be.”

“I suppose Michael didn’t ask you to do that now and then, just to check up on me?”

“Oh, Judy,” Pumo said. “If someone is bothering you, call the police.”

“I have a better idea,” she said, and hung up.

Pumo and Maggie went to bed early that night, and Maggie wound her arms around him,
hooked her feet around the back of his legs, and held him tight. “What can I do?”
he asked. “Call all the hotels in town and ask if Roberto Ortiz is registered?”

“Stop worrying,” Maggie said. “Nobody’s going to hurt you as long as I’m here.”

“I almost believe you,” Pumo laughed. “Maybe I
was
wrong about the name. Maybe it was Umberto Diaz, or whoever you said.”

“Umberto wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

“Tomorrow I’ll talk to that guy at the library,” Pumo said.

Maggie fell asleep after they made love, and for a long time Pumo tested his memory
without shaking his conviction that the name spoken by the librarian had been Roberto
Ortiz. He finally fell asleep.

And woke all at once, as if prodded by a sharp stick, hours later. He knew something
horrible, knew it absolutely and with the total unblinking certainty with which the
worst things are embraced in the dark of the night. Pumo understood that when daylight
came he would begin to doubt this certainty. The worst thing would no longer seem
rational or persuasive once the sun came up. He would be lulled, he would accept Maggie’s
comforting explanations. But Tina promised himself that he would remember how he felt
at this moment. He knew that it was not Dracula or any other criminal who had broken
into his apartment. Koko had come into his apartment. Koko had stolen his address
book. He needed their addresses in order to hunt them down, and now he had them.

Then another section of the puzzle slotted into place for Pumo. Koko had called Michael
Poole’s number, been given Judy’s number by the answering machine, and promptly dialed
it. And kept on dialing it.

Pumo did not get to sleep for a long time. Eventually a thought even he knew was paranoid
joined the others, that Koko
had murdered the investment banker, Clement W. Irwin, in the airport, and this thought,
for all its obvious irrationality, kept him awake even longer.

After breakfast, Maggie went off to Jungle Red to have her hair trimmed and Pumo went
downstairs to talk to Vinh. No, Vinh had not seen anyone hanging around outside the
building during the past few days. Of course with all the workmen he might have missed
something. No, he could not remember any unusual telephone calls.

“Were there any calls from people who hung up as soon as you answered?”

“Of course,” Vinh said, and looked at Pumo as if he had lost his mind. “We get those
calls all the time. Where do you think you are? This is New York!”

After he left Vinh, Pumo took a cab up to the 42nd Street library. He went up the
wide steps, through the doors, past the guards, and returned to the desk where he
had begun his research. The stocky bearded man was nowhere in sight, and a blond man
half a foot taller than Pumo stood behind the desk holding a telephone up to his ear.
He glanced at Pumo, then turned his back to continue his conversation. When he set
down the telephone he came slowly toward the desk. “May I help you?”

“I was doing some research here two days ago, and I’d like to check on something,”
Pumo said. “Do you know the man who was on duty then?”

“I was here two days ago,” the blond man said.

“Well, the man I spoke to was older, maybe sixty, about my height, with a beard.”

“That could be a million people in here.”

“Well, could you ask someone?”

The blond man raised his eyebrows. “Do you see anyone here besides me? I can’t leave
this desk, you know.”

“Okay,” Pumo said. “Then maybe you could give me the information I was looking for.”

“If you want a particular microfilm and you’ve been here before, then you know how
to fill out the forms.”

“It’s not that kind of information,” Pumo persisted. “When I requested some articles
on a certain subject, the man who was
working here told me that someone else had recently requested the same information.
I’d like the name of that man.”

“I can’t possibly give you that information.” The blond man arched his back and looked
down at Poole as if he were standing above him, on a ledge.

“The other man did, though. It was a Spanish name.”

The blond man was already shaking his head. “Not possible. It’s not like the old slip
in the back of the book business.”

“You don’t recognize the description of the other clerk?”

“I am not a clerk.” There was now a straight red line across each of the blond man’s
cheekbones. “If you do not wish to request microfilms, sir, you are wasting the time
of several people who do.”

He looked pointedly over Pumo’s shoulder, and Pumo, who for some time had experienced
the sensation that someone was staring at him, looked back too. Four people stood
behind him, none of them looking anywhere in particular.

“Sir?” the librarian said, and tilted the tip of his chin like a baton at the man
immediately behind Pumo.

Pumo wandered away toward the carrels to see if the bearded man would appear. For
twenty minutes, the blond man either attended to researchers, talked on the telephone,
or preened at the desk. He did not once look at Pumo. At twenty minutes past eleven
he consulted his watch, raised a flap in the desk, and strode out of the room. A young
woman in a black wool sweater took his place, and Pumo returned to the desk.

“Gee, I don’t really know anyone here,” she said to Pumo. “This is my first day—I
only passed my internship two weeks ago, and I spent most of the time since then in
Incunabula.” She lowered her voice. “I loved Incunabula.”

“You don’t know the names of any well-dressed sixty-year-old men with beards in this
library?”

“Well, there’s Mr. Vartanian,” she said with a smile. “But I don’t think you could
have seen
him
at this desk. There’s Mr. Harnoncourt. And Mr. Mayer-Hall. Maybe even Mr. Gardener.
But I don’t know if any of them ever had Microfilm, you see.”

Pumo thanked her and left the room. He thought he might see the bearded man if he
wandered through the library and poked his head into offices.

He set off down the corridor, looking at the people who filled the upper floors of
the great library. Men in cardigan sweaters, men in sports jackets, moved from the
elevators to office doors, women in sweaters and jeans or in dresses hurried down
the wide
corridor. A wonderful dandy in a resplendent suit, a bristling beard, and gleaming
eyeglasses swept through a door, and all the other staff members nodded or said hello.
He was taller than the librarian Pumo had spoken to, and his beard was glossy red-brown,
not salt-and-peppery black.

The visitors to the library carried their coats like Pumo and looked less certain
of their destinations. The dandy passed through them like a steamship pushing through
a crowd of row-boats and strode down the corridor and turned a corner.

Just as Pumo reached the corner he had the same sensation of being watched he’d had
in the Microfilm Room. He looked over his shoulder and saw the crowd of visitors dispersing,
some going into the Microfilm Room, others into other rooms. Still others boarded
the elevator. The library staff had all gone through office doors, except for two
women on their way to the ladies room. Pumo turned the corner and thought he had lost
the tall dandy before he had quite realized that he’d decided to follow him. Then
he saw a glossy black shoe flicking around another corner.

Pumo jogged down the hallway, hearing the soles of his shoes click against the brown
marble. When he came walking fast around the corner the dandy was nowhere in sight,
but a door marked
STAIRS
was just closing halfway down the otherwise empty hallway before him. Then from down
at the far end of this corridor came a pair of young Chinese women, each carrying
two or three books bristling with marker slips. As he watched them come gliding toward
him across the marble floor, one of the women glanced up at him and smiled.

Pumo opened the door to the stairs and stepped onto the landing. A large red numeral
3 was painted on the wall before him. As soon as the door closed behind him, he heard
footsteps, softer than his own, coming down the corridor from the same direction he
had taken. The dandy’s footsteps sounded on the cement stairs above. Pumo began to
go up the stairs. It seemed to him that the footsteps in the corridor paused at the
staircase door, but he could be certain only that he heard them no more. Footsteps
climbed the stairs toward the fifth floor.