Out of the Sun (22 page)

"Great."

"But Woodrow hasn't shown up."

"He hasn't? Oh, I don't suppose there's anything to worry about. He may have had to put in some time at work. He's coming down on the Metroliner. Probably already on his way."

"If you say so."

"Have you made an appointment with Lazenby?"

"Not yet. I thought I'd wait for Woodrow."

"OK. But we don't want him to think you're not interested."

"And we don't want him to think I'm over-eager either. I'll phone his secretary first thing in the morning and suggest some time tomorrow or Wednesday."

"OK. Keep me informed. The number here's 410-939-2745. It's a small hotel."

"Got it."

"Speak to you soon. And Harry '

"Yes?"

"Be careful, huh? Just for me."

But Harry did not want to be careful. What he required was more of the drunken confidence he already had. He ordered a bottle of wine to maintain the state as long as he could and to wash down a room-service dinner abandoned Makepeace's notes in favour of the television set and gazed blearily out of the window at the floodlit portico of the White House and the illuminated obelisk of the Washington Monument. Eight o'clock came. Then nine. Then ten. But word of Bill Cornford did not come.

Harry descended to the lobby, a flushed and rumpled travesty of the suave man-about-town who had booked in seven hours earlier. He quizzed the concierge about Metroliner services from New York and established that the last of the day arrived at eleven o'clock. He then walked out to a waiting clutch of taxis, climbed into the nearest and asked to be taken to Union Station.

Half an hour later, Harry stood forlornly beneath the cathedral-like roof of the station concourse, an empty polystyrene coffee-cup in one hand, a cigarette in the other as the straggling remnants of the eleven o'clock Metroliner's payload vanished from sight. Woodrow Hackensack was not among them.

His absence did not yet constitute a crisis. There were later stopping services. And something called the New England Express due in around two. But in Harry's mind a certainty had formed like concrete, cold and hard and heavy, that Woodrow was not coming. Then or later. That night or any other.

He could not properly have explained why. It had something to do with his last sighting of Woodrow, a lone figure in the car park at Albany-Rensselaer station a week before; something to do with the premonition of disaster Harry had felt as he watched him from the train window. First Torben. Now

Harry marched across to a deserted row of phone-booths, glanced back self-consciously over his shoulder, then put a call through to Woodrow's New York number. It rang. And it went on ringing. But there was no answer. Woodrow was not going to pick up the phone. That fact blared louder than any unheeded bell. He was not going to respond. Maybe because he was no longer able to.

THIRTY-THREE

"Globescope Incorporated. Martina speaking. How may I help you?"

"Ann Mather please."

"Who shall I say is calling?"

"Norman Page."

"Putting you through, Mr. Page."

A few seconds of synthesized Sibelius, then: "Ann Mather here, Mr. Page. Mr. Lazenby's very much looking forward to meeting you. When can you come in? Later today, perhaps?"

"Today's a little .. . difficult."

"Tomorrow, then?"

"Weller .. ."

"The end of the week's filling up awful fast for Mr. Lazenby."

"All right. Tomorrow."

Ten thirty?"

"Could we make it later? I .. . er .. ."

"Four o'clock?"

"Yes. OK. Four o'clock."

"I'll enter it in his diary. Mr. Lazenby will see you and your colleague at four tomorrow afternoon, Mr. Page. Thank you for calling."

"Right. Well, thank Harry stopped as soon as he realized he was talking to himself. He had never found it a profitable exercise. Besides, soliloquies came ruinously expensive at Amtrak's onboard call rates. He put the telephone down, extricated himself from the cramped cubicle and rocked and rolled to the rhythm of the Metroliner back to his seat.

The train was about halfway between Philadelphia and New York. It was just after ten o'clock the following morning. Harry glared out at an anonymous stretch of overcast New Jersey hinterland, as if holding it personally responsible for this journey he should not have had to undertake. But argue it out with himself however he pleased, there really was no alternative. He had to find out what had happened to Woodrow. Preferably, he had to find him. Before the appointment he had just made with Lazenby.

Perhaps he should not have made the appointment at all. But to have delayed any longer would have looked odd. And it is a short step from oddness to suspicion. Perhaps he should also have consulted Donna before leaving Washington. She could have boarded the train at Baltimore and shared whatever difficulties or dangers awaited him in New York. But she might have insisted on going instead of Harry. Probably would have, given how crucial his safety was to their plans. So maybe some old-fashioned concept of gallantry was actually the key to his behaviour.

The train slowed fractionally as it swept through a station. Peering out, Harry managed to catch its name. Princeton Junction. He was not far from the University, then, where Torben Hammel-gaard had worked. Nor from the Institute for Advanced Study, where Athene Tilson had swapped high-flown theories with Albert Einstein forty years ago. And maybe not far from the answer either, if only he could learn what the question was.

Harry paused long enough on arrival at Penn Station to lift Woodrow's address from a telephone directory. Then he jumped into a taxi. The driver had to spend several minutes studying a pocket atlas of the city before starting off and Harry soon lost his bearings in the skyscrapered grid. They headed east and south from Penn, crossing Broadway and finishing up in a narrow defile between steepling soot-smeared apartment blocks. Fifth Avenue it emphatically was not.

Woodrow's apartment was in a five-storey building most of the way along. Six bell-pushes and their respective wires clung to the doorpost courtesy of a few strips of rain-loosened insulation tape. Harry went through the motions of ringing Woodrow's. Then, after a response less few moments, he tried the bell next to it. The speaking grille, on which somebody had apparently been sick recently, spat out some static. Harry bellowed back an enquiry about Woodrow's whereabouts. More static was followed by silence. Then, almost as an afterthought, the door-lock buzzed open.

The hall was narrow and ill-lit. A pool of grey dusk descended from some lofty fanlight onto brown lino and the lower treads of seemingly endless stairs. Harry craned his neck to look up them as he entered. And met the gaze of a swarthy stubble-chinned fellow in a grubby T-shirt, who was staring down at him from the second-floor landing.

"You sure you're the Harley-Davidson type?" he asked, leaning out over the banisters. "I wanna sell it to a serious biker, y'know."

Harry grinned defensively. "I'm not here about a motorbike. I'm looking for Woodrow Hackensack."

The man in the T-shirt scowled. "That case, we're both outa luck. He ain't here."

"Do you know where I'd find him?"

"Bellevue, the paramedics said. But he could be in the morgue by now for all I know. Looked a candidate for it when he left here, that's a fact."

"What happened?"

"Fell down the stairs. Did himself quite a bit of damage. But what d'you expect, when a man that size starts high-diving without a pool to land in?" He sniggered. "An accident-prone escapologist. Ain't that something?"

"You're sure it was an accident?"

"What else, man?"

"You saw it happen?"

"No. I was out. Came back to find an ambulance out front and old Woodrow being hauled through the door on a stretcher."

"Who called the ambulance?"

"Martha Gravett. Door across the hall from where you're standing. She'll tell you all about it. Just so long as you don't mind her telling you all about her frigging family tree as well."

Martha Gravett, a frail but dignified old lady attended by an almost equally frail but dignified Cairn terrier, proved much more succinct than her neighbour had predicted.

"I heard an almighty thump about eleven o'clock yesterday morning and when I came out here there was poor Mr. Hackensack, all crumpled up on the floor at the foot of the stairs. He was out cold. And it looked to me like his leg was broke. I came straight back in here and dialled 911. Then I stayed with him until the ambulance arrived."

"Did he say anything?"

"He came round a bit and started mumbling. But nothing you could understand."

"He was definitely alone when it happened?"

"Of course. What can you be Her expression changed. "Well, now you ask, I suppose .. ."

"What is it?"

"It's just... When I came out here and found him, I thought I saw, out of the corner of my eye ... the door to the street swinging shut, as if... somebody had just left. But I guess I must have been mistaken. If there had been someone, they'd have stayed to help. Wouldn't they?"

THIRTY-FOUR

Woodrow Hackensack was not in the morgue. He was actually sitting up perkily in bed on a mound of fluffy white pillows in a modern air-conditioned wing of Bellevue Hospital, munching a bagel and surveying a view of the East River through an adjacent window. Had it not been for his bandaged forehead and the thigh-to-ankle plaster on his right leg, he would have looked like a man occupying a hospital bed under false pretences. As it was, his immobility should have worried Harry more than it did. For the moment, he was simply relieved to find him alive.

"Great to see you, Harry. I tried to call you earlier but you'd already left. I reckoned you might be on your way here. Sorry I wasn't in touch yesterday. Matter of fact, I wasn't in touch with much after that fall. Concussion, so they tell me. But I'm feeling fine now."

"What about the leg?"

"Broken tibia. Plus some wrenched knee ligaments. No big deal. I should be up and hopping around by the end of the week."

"I've arranged to meet Lazenby tomorrow afternoon."

Hackensack grimaced. "That's kinda soon for me. Can't you put it off?"

"Till when? Our fax said we'd only be in Washington for a few days. I don't think so, do you?"

"I could try and talk the doc into letting me out on crutches. Just for the day, maybe." He caught Harry's eye and nodded ruefully. "Well, maybe not."

"I'll have to go alone."

That's crazy. Deception works by distraction: the illusionist's big secret. With me along to distract Lazenby, you have a chance. Without me .. ."

"I don't see what else I can do."

"Donna won't let you take the risk."

"Donna needn't know. Have you spoken to her?"

"Nah." He glanced meaningfully around at the other occupants of the ward and lowered his voice to a whisper. Too many ears on stalks. Deafness sure ain't these people's problem. I only called you as a last resort."

There you are then."

"But I'll call Donna if I have to." Hackensack was suddenly serious. "Don't do it, Harry."

Harry shrugged. "All right."

"You mean that?"

Tell me about the fall. How did it happen?"

"Plain stupidity. I was leaving in a hurry. Aiming to catch the noon train. Taking the stairs two at a time. I guess I must have missed my footing. Simple as that."

"You guessT

"Well, it's all a mite hazy. Short-term memory loss is pretty common with concussion, they tell me. To be honest with you, I don't remember much between setting off down the stairs from my apartment and waking up in here. The rest is kinda like the Chinese flag: red with a lot of stars."

"Martha Gravett thinks there may have been somebody on the staircase with you."

"Does she? Well, Martha thinks her dead sister from Jersey City calls by for tea most afternoons. I wouldn't set much store by anything she says."

"She seemed sane enough to me."

"You don't live above her. There was nobody with me, Harry. Believe me."

"But you just said you couldn't remember."

"I'd remember being pushed, if that's what you're getting at."

"Would you?"

"You think the people who caught up with Torben caught up with me?"

"Maybe."

They must be losing their touch, then. As fatal accidents go, mine was pretty ineffective."

"Perhaps you just got lucky."

"You call this lucky?" Hackensack rolled his eyes. "I spent the entire weekend turning myself into a well-dressed financier. Only to finish up in here, with the pants of my Wall Street suit ripped from ass to ankle and my memory shot full of holes. Most people would reckon that was about as unlucky as a guy gets in an average day."

"OK, OK." Harry held up his hands appeasingly. "I'm on your side. Remember thatT

"Sure. And I remember the favour I agreed to do for you too. How could I forget? It's partly because of it that I slipped on the stairs."

"How do you make that out?"

"I went up to Columbia last week and asked around about your friend and mine, Carl Dobermann. Drew a blank. There's nobody on the manual staff who goes back that far. Nobody on the academic staff either, far as I could figure out. And Dobermann ain't the stuff of local legend. Like I told you, students go loco for a pastime. Memorable it is not. I trawled through the 1958 index for the Times and Post. No entry for Dobermann. He's a dog without a scent."

"What's this got to do with falling downstairs?"

"Jeez, sorry, I keep losing my drift." Hackensack bounced the heel of his hand off his bald patch in self-reproach. "I got the name and address of a lab technician who'd been at Columbia more than forty years. Retired about eighteen months ago. Isaac Rosenbaum. Lives with his daughter now, down in Philadelphia. That's the point. I knew you'd want to hear what I'd found out, so I planned to stop off in Philadelphia and look the old guy up. That's why I was in such an all-fired hurry to catch the noon train. So I'd have time for the stopover. And this' he tapped his plaster-cast 'is where hurrying got me."

"Which means I'm to blame?"