Diamond Solitaire pd-2 Page 18

  “They won’t get far,” Ken said in reassurance. “The lights will hold them up.”

  He wasn’t so confident. He’d already watched them go through on the red at the next intersection. “We’ve got to pass this clever dick.”

  She did, on the next block, in front of the Port Authority Bus Terminal, to a crescendo of car horns. They had lost position badly. A glimpse of white some way ahead might just have been the Buick. They had to assume it was. Diamond strained forward with his face to the windshield. “Keep going straight ahead. If they turn I’ll tell you.”

  She overtook cars at each opportunity and sometimes when the opportunity scarcely existed. He couldn’t fault her commitment to the chase. Occasionally he caught sight of the white car through the traffic about a block ahead and he just hoped to God it was still the Buick they were following. Central Park came up on their right.

  “We keep going far enough, we’ll get to the Bronx and I’ll be home,” Ken told him.

  But they didn’t get that far. They had almost reached the northern limit of the Park when the white car ahead moved into the left lane and turned.

  “Can you move over?”

  “Sure.”

  “That must be 109th.”

  She handled the Chevrolet with confidence, accelerating into a space and taking the turn at a speed that made the wheels screech. But there was no white car ahead of them on West 109th Street.

  “He could have doubled back down Manhattan Avenue,” Ken suggested.

  “Try it, then.”

  She turned left again. Mistakenly, for two blocks ahead there were only yellow taxis.

  “Sorry. I’m really sorry,” she said, and her voice was desolate. “Want me to turn?”

  “Where do you think they were heading before we lost Ihem?”

  “Hard to say. We’re not far from Columbia.”

  “You mean the University?”

  “Yes.”

  “Can you work your way back in that direction? If we’re lucky the car may be parked on the street somewhere.”

  They turned right, onto Amsterdam Avenue. No sign of a white car. A vast church loomed up on their right. “It’s really popular with the students,” Ken remarked.

  “The Cathedral of St. John the Divine?” Diamond read from the board in a disbelieving voice.

  “I mean the Hungarian Pastry Shop on this side.”

  “Ah.” Neither of them felt like smiling. The confusion was indicative of their helplessness. Nothing is so hard to accept as the knowledge that you have failed. They were floundering, trying to buoy each other up with words, but the words gave no real support.

  “The Columbia campus comes up on this side in a block or two,” she informed him.

  “We ought to be checking these. Can you turn up the next one?”

  It was 113th Street, and they drove as far as Broadway, then made two lefts onto 112th. Three white cars were parked there, not one a Buick. Almost ten minutes had passed since they had lost sight of the car, and ten grew to twenty while they continued to tour the streets without result

  “I can transfer to a taxi,” Diamond offered.

  “I won’t allow it,” Ken said. “I’m as eager to find the damned car as you are.”

  “It could have left the area by now.”

  “We owe it to that little girl to keep looking.”

  He didn’t need telling.

  It took them just under an hour to find the Buick. It was parked near the Broadway end of 114th Street. They would have found it sooner if they hadn’t chosen to start at 113th and work back as far as 108th, but the enormous relief at picking up the trail wiped out any regrets.

  “What now?” Ken asked.

  “I’m more grateful than I can say.”

  She frowned, not understanding his English avoidance of the direct statement.

  “I can manage,” he said.

  “Hey, you don’t think I’m quitting now? I want to see the kid for myself.” Her eyes dispelled any doubt that she meant what she said.

  “In that case, I’ll tell you what we do next. We go door-stepping.”

  This section of the street was lined with apartment blocks and small hotels. They tried the hotels first. “I’m hoping to find a couple with a small girl who may have registered here an hour ago,” was the disarming way he phrased his inquiry. “The lady is Japanese and so is the child.” He was trying to project himself as the caring English gent, as if friends of his had left behind some lost property that he was anxious to reclaim for them.

  After trying three hotels and getting suspicious looks and shakes of the head, but no verbal response, he changed his approach at the Firbank, a shabby brownstone with a sign in the window saying Vacancies. The window needed cleaning.

  The door stood open and a man in a black singlet and jeans was behind a hinged table that passed for a reception desk.

  “Is Mrs. Tanaka staying here?”

  “Who the fuck are you?”

  It was, by certain lights, an improvement on silence. Diamond said that he’d been sent by Immigration. “And who the fuck are you?” he added.

  “George De Wint.”

  “Manager?”

  “I have no illegals in my hotel,” De Wint said defensively. For a beefy, tattooed man with a Cagney profile, he suddenly sounded pathetic.

  “But you have Mrs. Tanaka, in this afternoon from England?” “From England?”

  “Japanese, with a male partner, and a small girl.”

  “So what exactly is the problem?”

  “Is she here, or not?”

  “Sure, she’s here. You want me to phone the room?”

  Mentally, Diamond turned a back flip of triumph. “Could I see the register?”

  George De Wint leaned to his left, placed a hand on a dog-eared exercise book, and slid it along the counter.

  Diamond opened it at the latest entry, which was M. Tanaka. “There’s only the one name here.”

  “So what? Kids don’t have to register.”

  “How about the man?”

  “The guy isn’t staying here. He carried the suitcase.”

  “Has he left yet?”

  “Not to my knowledge. What exactly is this about, mister? I don’t want trouble.”

  “Which room?”

  “Twelve.”

  “Upstairs?”

  “Third floor. She wanted a twin with bathroom, so I gave her my biggest”

  “Show us up.”

  The Firbank reeked of some cheap scented spray. It didn’t run to a lift and the stairs creaked so mere was no point in trying to approach the room by stealth.

  A “Do not disturb” notice was hanging from the handle of room twelve. Diamond knocked.

  No one responded.

  “Seems they went straight to bed,” De Wint suggested.

  “With a child in the room?” said Ken in disbelief.

  “To sleep. They could be jetlagged if they came from England.”

  Diamond called out, “Anyone there?”

  Still silence.

  He rattled the handle. The manager unhooked a bunch of keys from his belt.

  When the door was unlocked, there was still no word from inside. And the room was not in darkness.

  Diamond stepped in.

  A moderate-sized, cheaply furnished room. Twin beds, one with the bedding pulled back. On the other, an open suitcase.

  “They went out, then,” De Wint commented. “People are so dumb, leaving notices on the door like that. When are my staff supposed to make up the rooms?”

  “You said they were up here.”

  “So I made a mistake. Mister, this is a hotel, not the city jail.”

  Diamond crossed to the bathroom door, tapped once and opened it. The light was on. A saturated towel lay on the floor. There was water in the bath to the level of the overflow. He stepped closer.

  “Someone is in after all,” he said.

  The manager went closer. His reaction was less restrained. �
��Jesus-why in my hotel, of all places?”

  Lying along the base of the bath under several inches of water was a body, facedown and dressed in a white blouse, gray trousers and shoes. The hair was short and dark.

  Diamond warned Ken not to look.

  Discovering a death is disturbing in any circumstances. What made this the more shocking was that the wrists were fastened behind the woman’s back, bound with cord. Around the ankles a belt had been wound several times and fastened.

  Diamond took off his jacket and handed it to De Wint, who was still carrying on about his misfortune. He rolled up his shirtsleeves and stooped over the bath in an attempt to turn the body face upwards. The New York Police Department wouldn’t be too thrilled at having the corpse disturbed; however, he needed to confirm the victim’s identity at once. Taking a grip of the clothes, he tugged, but his figure wasn’t shaped for turning over bodies in baths and he had to ask for the manager’s assistance. “Come on, man. I’m not talking to myself.”

  De Wint was backing out of the bathroom. “I can’t touch it. No way.”

  Fortunately, Ken was less inhibited. She came forward and said, “Let me help. I’m not bothered.”

  Splashing themselves liberally in the process, they managed the maneuver at the second attempt

  Without any doubt the body was that of the Japanese woman they’d followed from John F. Kennedy Airport, the woman who had brought Naomi from England.

  He turned to De Wint, water dripping from his arms. “Is she the woman who occupied this room? Come forward, man. Now, do you recognize the lady, or don’t you?”

  “Oh my God, yes. She’s the one.”

  Now the head could be lowered under the water again.

  The question no one had spoken because it was so horrible to contemplate had to be faced, and quickly: where was Naomi?

  Diamond felt some unsteadiness in his legs. He was literally shaking at the knees, and it wasn’t brought on by what he had just discovered. He feared for what he might discover next. Without a word, he straightened, turned and moved back to the bedroom, leaving the manager bowed over the toilet bowl in the act of retching.

  There weren’t many places where a child’s body could have been concealed. He could tell without pulling back the bedding that nothing was trapped beneath it And the space under the divan beds was far too narrow. He opened the wardrobe. It contained only a woman’s jacket, gray, with the name Rohan embroidered on the front in yellow.

  There remained the window to check. In truth, he didn’t expect to find Naomi dead inside the room. Some combination of intuition and experience told him she wasn’t here. He felt less secure about looking out of the window.

  It faced the rear of the building in the next street, and overlooked a narrow yard bounded by grime-stained brick.

  He had to brace himself to look down.

  Plastic bins. Some tired-looking geraniums in pots. A few dead leaves and scraps of paper shifting fitfully with the breeze. Nothing resembling a small body. A pigeon eyed him from a window ledge opposite.

  He leaned out further. “This fire escape on the left,” he called to De Wint. “How do you reach it from inside?”

  “The door at the end of the corridor.”

  “And if I had to go down it, how would I get to the street?”

  “There’s a passage to 113th. You can’t see from up here.”

  “That’s the way he left with the child, I reckon.” He withdrew from the window.

  Time was precious. Faced with the dilemma of immediate pursuit, or trying to make sense of what was happening by going through the woman’s things, he chose the latter and started a rapid search of the bedroom. No doubt he’d be hammered for disturbing the scene of a murder. Sod that: Naomi’s safety came before anything else, and if there were clues here, they had to be found fast.

  He went through the suitcase first, a blue fabric case with no manufacturer’s name and no labels on the exterior.

  The dresses and underwear folded neatly in layers were of fine quality. There were also some clothes for the child, bearing the Marks and Spencer label. He ran his hand several times through the contents of the case in hope of locating documents or an address book. There was nothing more helpful than an A-Z Street Atlas of London and a copy of The Times, three days old. A toilet bag contained wash things, lipstick and other makeup and some Aspro Clear in tinfoil. A brush and comb. A portable hair dryer. It was all very predictable.

  He flicked over the pages of the A-Z and found a cross penciled in against the location of the school. That, finally, made a categorical connection with Naomi.

  With a face not markedly different from the pale green of the bathroom he was emerging from, the manager reappeared in time for more questions from Diamond.

  “This man who was with them, did he say anything when they registered?”

  “Do you figure he could have done this thing?”

  “Would you answer me? Did you hear him speak? Was he British?”

  “No, the woman was doing all the talking, trying to shut the kid up.”

  “The child was upset?”

  “She was giving them hell.”

  From across the room Ken’s tough front suddenly gave way to the realization of what that small girl must have been through. “Oh, my God.”

  Diamond, rigidly holding his imagination at bay, said to De Wint, “Let’s concentrate on the man for a minute. How was he behaving when they arrived?”

  “He was smiling plenty.”

  “While the child was giving them hell?”

  “Yes, as if it embarrassed him.”

  “Did he seem possessive towards the child?”

  De Wint shook his head. “He just grinned and left the woman to it. Don’t know if this is any help, but there was a gold tooth somewhere. I noticed it when he smiled.”

  “Somewhere,” Diamond repeated without gratitude. “The front? The sides? Upper jaw or lower? Come on.”

  “Upper. This side.”

  “The left.”

  The mention of the tooth must have brought the rest of the face into focus in the manager’s recall. “His eyes were brown and he had a nose you wouldn’t forget easy, kind of narrow and elegant, like some movie actor.”

  “Charlton Heston?”

  De Wint looked impressed. He didn’t know Diamond had been charged down with a luggage cart by the man with a Charlton Heston nose.

  Resuming the search, he found a handbag upended and left between the beds. The ejected contents-comb, another lipstick, pens, compact, some keys, two matches and a roll of peppermints-lay scattered over the carpet. A purse was left containing six hundred dollars and a handful of British coins. This was not a murder for money.

  He picked up the handbag. Every section had been unzipped and emptied.

  So what was missing?

  The passport.

  The photo of Naomi that the woman had shown to Mrs. Straw.

  Presumably a checkbook and credit cards.

  The United flight tickets and boarding pass. She may have discarded these at JFK, but it was unlikely. People tended to dispose of them later.

  In short, any documentary evidence that might have been used to identify the woman and child had gone.

  He moved the beds and looked under them. Lifted the pillows and bedding. Went through the pockets of the jacket in the wardrobe.

  Nothing.

  Leather-jacket had taken what he wanted as efficiently as he had killed. With a terrified child looking on, he must have behaved with exceptional single-mindedness. Or callousness.

  Diamond drew a hand across his bald crown, trying to decide if there was anything more to keep him here. The impulse to go in pursuit of the killer was almost irresistible. The man had Naomi. He might be taking her to some place to kill her too.

  Yet where? It had to be faced that the trail was cold. Leather-jacket could have gone in any direction, anywhere in New York. Finding them wasn’t a one-man assignment. It required the resou
rces of the police.

  He picked up the phone, got an outside line and dialed 911.

  A patrol would be on its way directly, they promised. He was to stay where he was and touch nothing.

  A bit bloody late for that, he thought.

  He was racked with the helplessness of the situation. What a cock-up. Those cops were going to throw the book at him for handling the body and the dead woman’s possessions, and so they should.

  He’d defied the rules for Naomi’s sake, and achieved precisely nothing.

  He was so wound up that when Ken spoke from across the room there was a delay before her words got through. If the police were about to take over, she was telling him, she figured she didn’t really want to stay, particularly as she couldn’t do anything else to help.

  He thanked her with as much warmth as he could muster, saying that she had come to his aid in a crisis and put up with him heroically. She said something about wishing the kid would be rescued real soon, and then she shook his hand and left.

  This was no time for self-pity, but he was sorry she was leaving.

  Alone in the room-De Wint having taken the opportunity to escort Ken downstairs-he found the wait unendurable. With nothing else to occupy him in the bedroom, he entered the bathroom again.

  The corpse of Mrs. Tanaka lay face upwards, submerged, the eyes closed, the mouth gaping. There was no point in turning her facedown again, even if he could have managed it. He’d tell the patrolmen exactly what he had done since entering the room.

  As he looked down at the body he recalled the rigidity of the thigh when he had gripped the clothes to turn her. He’d handled the dead as a matter of necessity in his work on murder squads; for some reason the rigor mortis-experienced through the sensation of touch-always affected him more profoundly than the sight of the corpse. The loss of flexibility in the muscles, transforming the body into something like a plaster cast, was such a contrast with living flesh.

  Then he thought, hold on, this is wrong. She was killed less than an hour ago. I know that. I saw her at the airport. I followed her here in the car. Rigor mortis takes effect after hours, not this short time.

  He bent over the bath and put a hand on the upper arm. The flesh was soft to the touch. He placed his hand on the thigh again, where he had gripped it before. It still felt rigid.