Diamond Solitaire pd-2 Page 22

  “No, get off! I handed her over. The deal was that I would hand her over.”

  “Who to?”

  “I can’t say-I don’t know.”

  “Do you care about the child?” Diamond asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Yes, I know it doesn’t make sense to a hired killer to care about a child, but let me put it to you this way. You’re going to stand trial for Mrs. Tanaka’s death. If the child is also killed, you’re an accessory to a second murder.”

  “She’s okay.”

  “You keep saying that, but how do you know? This person she’s now with may already have killed her.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “They hired you to kill the mother. Why should they draw the line at the child?”

  He hesitated and asked yet again, “Mister, who are you?”

  “My name is Diamond.”

  “You a cop?”

  “I am not” Sometimes candor is rewarded with the truth. It was worth trying. “I’m a private citizen. I came over from England because of the child. Naomi was taken illegally from a children’s home, and I care very much what is happening to her.”

  “You’re not a cop?”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “Are you taping this conversation?”

  “No.”

  After a pause, Lundin plucked up enough confidence to say, “There was a contract on the woman, not the kid.”

  “You were hired to kill the woman?”

  This was a matter Diamond should have sidestepped, he realized the moment he’d spoken. It added nothing to his knowledge and it pulled Lundin up with a jolt “Forget it-I don’t need to talk to you.”

  “Who hired you?”

  Silence.

  Diamond adroitly switched to another question. “You said you handed over the child. When was this?”

  Grudgingly, Lundin muttered, “Last evening.”

  “By arrangement?”

  Lundin started to say, “I don’t have to answer these damn fool-” and then interrupted himself when he noticed Diamond unfolding his arms. “They told me to bring the kid to the Trump Tower and leave her at the top of the escalator on the second floor at nine p.m.”

  “Hand her over to someone?”

  “No, just leave her.”

  “And you did?”

  “I figured somebody was going to be waiting for her.”

  “Did you see anyone?”

  “Mister, in this game, you don’t want to see anyone.”

  “How did you get the instructions, then?”

  “The phone.”

  “Man or woman?”

  “Man, I guess.”

  All of this was leading nowhere. Fredrik Lundin didn’t know where Naomi was, or who was holding her. He would be charged with Mrs. Tanaka’s murder, but the people who hired him had made damned sure he was incapable of putting the police onto them. The trail had gone cold.

  “Let’s go back to the first instructions you had. Who made the contact?”

  “I don’t know. I was phoned.”

  And so it went on. Lundin had met nobody. A voice had told him what to do, where to pick up the money that was his down payment for the elimination of Mrs. Tanaka. He made it sound as commonplace as selling a house, with ninety percent payable on completion, except that “completion” had a more sinister interpretation.

  Diamond didn’t need the six or seven minutes the journey took. In four minutes flat he’d learned all he was likely to learn from Fredrik Lundin. The police would take up the questioning at the hospital and no doubt they’d extract enough information to put him behind bars for a long term, but they would find out nothing Diamond wanted to know, nothing of immediate use in tracing Naomi.

  They got to the hospital and Lundin was wheeled away to have his wounds seen to. Diamond shared his disappointment with Lieutenant Eastland.

  Eastland was still sore from the earlier exchange. “What did you expect?” he commented when he’d heard how little had emerged about Lundin’s paymasters. “The guy is a functionary. Why keep a dog and bark yourself?”

  “I hope you’re not giving up on the child.”

  “Did I say that? Did you hear me say that?”

  “No, but-”

  “Okay. What are your plans, Diamond?”

  “Mine? I, em, I haven’t decided.”

  “Are you still staying at that two-bit hotel, the Firbank?”

  Diamond had to think for a moment “I suppose I am.”

  “You can ride back with me. I’m leaving soon. Stein will take over here.”

  He saw, of course, that mis wasn’t an olive branch. Eastland wanted him away from the hospital while the questioning took place, and for once it seemed sensible to comply.

  “Okay, I got a little above myself,” Diamond admitted when they were together in the back of the police car. “I need your help more man you need mine.” It was the nearest he would come to an apology.

  “I thought you would strangle the guy.”

  “Lundin, do you mean? No, I was wrong about him. I really believed this was part of a vice racket Now, I think the child was kidnapped for some other reason. Lundin happens to be a pimp, but mat’s not what he was involved in here.”

  “He runs mree or four girls in the street where he lives. He’s small potatoes,” said Eastland. “So what’s behind this?

  What’s the motive? Why would anyone pay to have a woman murdered and a kid handed over to them? What are we dealing with here-a custody dispute?”

  “The tug of love?” said Diamond. “Not the way I see it Nobody has shown much affection for Naomi. She was abandoned in London until Mrs. Tanaka came along-and she didn’t treat the child with noticeable kindness.”

  “She wasn’t the mother.”

  “Right Where are the parents? They’ve been conspicuously silent If they were in dispute for custody of the child, they’d have declared themselves by now. The people in these cases need publicity.”

  “Do you have a theory, then?”

  Diamond stifled a yawn. “Lieutenant I’m jetlagged. It’s all I can do to stay awake. I’ll say this much: whatever we’re dealing with, it’s high risk and mere’s big money behind it But why a small, handicapped girl should be mixed up in it is a mystery to me.”

  “For a ransom?”

  “The parents would have to be very rich.”

  “Japanese industrialists?”

  “Surely they’d have reported by now that their daughter is missing. You’ve been in touch with the Japanese police. Did they say anything about a tycoon whose child has been taken away?”

  “No,” said Eastland. “But you and I know that kidnappings don’t get reported every time. The parents could be dealing with the kidnappers directly.”

  “How does Mrs. Tanaka fit into this theory?” Diamond asked in a tone that betrayed how unimpressed he was “Why was she killed?”

  “She was caught in the middle somehow. Maybe she double-crossed the people who hired her.”

  “Do you really believe this?” Diamond asked.

  “Can you think of anything better?”

  He didn’t answer, and for a time all that was heard was the car’s suspension being tested by the uneven Manhattan street surfaces.

  Finally, Eastland said, “If we could positively identify the kid, we’d stand a better chance.”

  “We’ve been trying to do that ever since she was found, ” said Diamond.

  They pulled up outside the hotel and he got out and thanked Eastland for the ride, adding that he might drop bv in the morning.

  He was deeply dispirited, and the prospect of another night in the Firbank did nothing to lift him. It occurred to him when he caught sight of the pay phone in the front hall that he hadn’t spoken to Stephanie since leaving London. She wasn’t the sort to panic, but she must have wondered why he hadn’t been in touch before now. He felt in his pocket for some change, badly wanting to hear Steph’s voice, even if she
gave him some aggravation.

  Then he made a mental estimate of the time in London About four in the morning.

  Nothing was working for him.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  In the morning when he tried phoning Stephanie, his timing was still wrong. After listening to the dial tone until his ear ached, he worked out that it was noon in England and she would be at the Save the Children shop. He went out to breakfast convinced already that this would be another frustrating day.,��� u

  But when he returned to the Firbank and tried again, she answered, and still the timing was wrong. Even five thousand miles and a time zone away the disapproval in her tone was unmistakable. He was in the doghouse. He didn’t make much impression explaining that he’d tried phoning earlier. The legendary Diamond charm was put to the test, and he had to dredge deep. “The reason I’m calling you now-apart from wanting to hear your voice, my love-is to check something you mentioned just before I left, about shoe sizes. Am I right? Is an English seven equal to an eight and a half over here?”���, J

  There was time-out for thought during which he could sense the reproach evaporating. Then they had a normal conversation. He didn’t mention that Mrs. Tanaka had been murdered, but he told her Naomi was still missing, and she sounded genuinely concerned.

  He admitted, “I may be forced to abandon this.”

  “You wouldn’t give up,” she said, shocked. “Peter,

  “You wouldn’t give up,” she said, shocked. “Peter, you couldn’t leave the poor little soul a prisoner in New York. Besides, what would you tell that wrestler-the man who paid your fare?”

  “I haven’t even thought about that”

  “Listen, if it’s me you’re bothered about, I’ll be perfectly all right for a few more days. Don’t worry. Just do what you can for that child. There must be some way of tracing her.”

  “I hope you’re right.” And he added, meaning it, “Love you.”

  “Love you, too.”

  “Thanks, Steph. You’re very understanding.”

  There was a distinct pause before she said, “Sometimes I understand more than you give me credit for, pussycat”

  Outside, it had started to rain, so he borrowed an umbrella from the hotel before stepping out to the station house, where pandemonium reigned. He learned rapidly that Naomi’s abduction was yesterday’s news. Overnight, there had been a triple killing in a shooting gallery in West Harlem. It took him rather longer to work out that a shooting gallery was the slang for an abandoned house frequented by drug addicts and pushers. Some of them were having their prints taken while he waited to talk to anyone he knew.

  Sergeant Stein came in and nodded. He would have walked straight through to another office if Diamond hadn’t called across to him.

  “Did you get any more out of Lundin?”

  “Not much. He was sleepy.”

  “Any clues about what happened to the child?”

  “Zilch. Now, if you don’t mind, I have the arrest report to type.”

  “Nothing else has come through about her?”

  Stein shook his head. “Why don’t you go sightseeing, look at the Empire State or something?”

  “Is Lieutenant Eastland about?”

  ‘This afternoon. Maybe.”

  Biting back a sarcastic remark, Diamond walked out and hailed a cab, not to go sightseeing, but to drive out to Lundin’s apartment in Queens. An idea had surfaced; when he was feeling fractious, his brain sometimes went into overdrive.

  The van in the street indicated that a forensic team was at work in the house. Meeting one of them on the stairs, he explained who he was, which was received with a narrowing of the eyes, and then he mentioned Eastland’s name, which made more of an impression. “When we were here yesterday, we found some torn pieces of a photograph of the missing child.”

  “In the toilet. Yeah, we have them. We found a couple of extra pieces trapped on the inside.”

  “Could I examine them?”

  “You’d better talk to my boss.”

  The fragments of photograph were in a polythene bag in the van, and there was some reluctance to let Diamond see them until he explained his thinking to the senior man, giving it the sales pitch he’d noticed was obligatory when you wanted results in New York. “The style of picture, from what I remember of it, full face with a pale blue background, strikes me as typical of a school photo. These commercial photographers are smart. They persuade a school to let them take shots of all the kids, one by one. The style is pretty much the same the world over. You see beaming kids in their school uniforms on businessmen’s desks, the mantelpiece in the White House, everywhere. Are you a family man?”

  “Yeah, we’ve got a grandchild.”

  “So the photographer has to print dozens, maybe hundreds of photos to order, right? And he has to have some way of identifying them. He can’t get each kid to hold up a board with his name on it like a mugshot. So what does he do? He pencils some kind of serial number on the reverse. If we’re lucky, one of those torn scraps may have the number that identifies the child.”

  The senior man was sufficiently interested to send someone down to the van.

  Diamond, pink with the effort, said casually, “We may be unlucky, of course.”

  Presently the pieces of the photo were tipped onto a table. No number was visible at once, but they started turning pieces over.

  “How about that?”

  It was not unlike a conjuring trick, except that this was no illusion. Just as Diamond had predicted, the number 212 was penciled on a corner piece. His luck seemed to have changed at last.

  “That was just a hunch?”

  “Yes.”

  “Cool,” the senior man conceded.

  Thanks.”

  “Now you have a number.”

  “Yes.”

  “So next you have to find the photographer, out of all the school photographers in all the world.”

  “Right,” said Diamond without stopping to explain that there was a way of narrowing down the hunt. He was going to have inquiries made in Japan, and in particular, in Yokohama, where Mrs. Tanaka had lived and worked. Of course there were plenty of schools in Yokohama, but fewer junior schools and even fewer children given the number 212.

  Buoyant with his discovery, he returned to the station house and told Sergeant Stein. In a matter of minutes they typed and faxed a memorandum to police headquarters in Yokohama. Unfortunately, it was already past midnight in Japan. Policemen might be on duty; school photographers probably not

  London, he knew, was awake. He asked Stein if he could make an international call connected with the case.

  “You want to make a local call,” said Stein with a stage wink. “No problem. We can make local calls whenever we want” Evidently the NYPD, like the rest of the city, paid lip service to economy measures.

  Diamond tapped out the international code for Great Britain, took a card from his pocket and referred to the number handwritten on the reverse, realizing that he still didn’t know the woman’s name.

  “Yes?” It was a man’s voice.

  “Could I speak to the lady who works as a Japanese interpreter?”

  “One moment”

  She came on the line, still guarding her identity. “Yes?”

  “This is Peter Diamond, from New York.”

  “I remember.”

  “The sumo wrestler, Mr. Yamagata, kindly agreed to underwrite my expenses.”

  “That is so.”

  “I thought I should let him know what is happening. I’m working with the New York Police. The little girl is still, unfortunately-”

  She interrupted. “Mr. Diamond, before you say any more, I should tell you that I am no longer employed by Mr. Yamagata. The London Basho finished on Sunday. The entire party of wrestlers and officials has returned to Japan.”

  “Oh.”

  “If you remember, I handed you a card with his Tokyo address.”

  “Yes, I have it right here
in front of me.”

  “Then I suggest you make contact with him in Tokyo later tonight.”

  “With Yamagata himself?”

  “He lives in the heya, the stable of wrestlers. They have someone who will interpret.”

  “You think he’ll stand by his promise? I’m running up some hefty expenses.”

  “Of that there is no doubt.”

  Without inquiring whether she was referring to the promise or the expenses, he thanked her and hung up.

  The rest of the morning and afternoon were notable only for the fact that he moved out of the Firbank to a better class of hotel, on Broadway, a place with phones in the rooms and a bar downstairs. It was still only a short walk from the station house, where he returned at regular intervals, only to be told each time that no reports had come in of the missing child. Plenty of progress was being made on the shooting gallery murders.

  “Has Lundin been put through the grinder to find out who hired him?” he asked Stein.

  “Lundin knows nothing. The only thing he cared about was the money, and we think he was paid most of that in advance.”

  “How much?”

  “Probably twenty grand.”

  About five, a fax arrived from Yokohama stating formally that inquiries would be pursued as requested. Further information would be dispatched if and when it became available.

  “If and when. Doesn’t sound too positive,” Stein commented. “It sounds to me like computer-speak,” said Diamond, “but I’m willing to wait around until late.”

  “You can go back to your hotel. We’ll call you right away if anything comes through.”

  Diamond cast a glance around the office, still teeming with drug addicts, detectives, and patrolmen, and had more man a flicker of doubt “Thanks, but I’ll stick around.”

  Soon after nine P.M., he tried making a call to Yamagata in Tokyo. Over there it was eleven a.m. next day. Someone explained in English that the sekitori were at lunch, and could not be disturbed. He should call back in two hours. He was sympathetic. For these big fellows, lunch, he imagined, was more than a coffee and a quick sandwich.

  He got through later, and talked to the same person, whose English was impeccable. Apparently Yamagata was somewhere close to the phone this time, because the interpreting was fast and to the point Diamond reported on what had happened in the hunt for Naomi, ending by admitting that he was making some hefty use of the Gold Card number. This was not a problem, he was told. Yamagata wished to do everything in his power to assist the investigation. In fact he would immediately contact the Yokohama Police Department to see what progress there was in checking with the school photographers.