An elderly, well-dressed woman came forward and produced an ornate key. Without a word she unlocked the gate, and Burke slipped out quickly and pushed roughly through the crowd.
He approached a stately old town house across the street and knocked sharply on the door. A patrolman opened the door, and Burke held up his badge, brushing by him into the small lobby. A single plainclothesman sat in the only chair, and Burke introduced himself perfunctorily.
The man answered through a wide yawn, “Detective Lewis.” He stood as though with some effort.
Burke said, “Any word on Stillway?”
The detective shook his head.
“Get a court order yet?”
“Nope.”
Burke began climbing the stairs. When he was a rookie, an old cop once said to him, “Everybody lives on the top floor. Everybody gets robbed on the top floor. Everybody goes nuts on the top floor. Everybody dies on the top floor.” Burke reached the top floor, the fourth. Two apartments had been made out of what was once probably the servants’ quarters. He found Stillway’s door and pressed the buzzer.
The detective climbed the stairs behind him. “No one home.”
“No shit, Sherlock.” Burke looked at the three lock-cylinders in a vertical row, ranging in age from very old to very new, showing the progression of panic with each passing decade. He turned to the detective. “Want to put your shoulder to that?”
“Nope.”
“Me neither.” Burke moved to a narrow staircase behind a small door. “Stay here.” He went up the stairs and came out onto the roof, then went down the rear fire escape and stopped at Stillway’s window.
The apartment was dark except for the yellow glow of a clock radio. There was no grate on the window, and Burke drew his gun and brought it through the old brittle glass above the sash lock. He reached in, unlatched the catch, and threw the sash up, then dropped into the room and moved away from the window in a crouch, his gun held out in front of him with both hands.
He steadied his breathing and listened. His eyes became accustomed to the dark, and he began to make out shadows and shapes. Nothing moved, nothing breathed, nothing smelled; there was nothing that wanted to kill him, and, he sensed, nothing that had been killed there. He rose, found a lamp, and turned it on.
The large studio apartment was in stark modern contrast to the world around it. Bone-white walls, track lighting, chromium furniture. The secret modern world of an old architect who specialized in Gothic restorations. Shame, shame, Gordon Stillway.
He walked toward the hall door, gun still drawn, looking into the dark corners as he moved. Everything was perfectly ordinary; nothing was out of place—no crimson on the white rug, no gore on the shiny chromium. Burke holstered his revolver and opened the door. He motioned to the detective. “Back window broken. Cause to suspect a crime in progress. Fill out a report.”
The detective winked and moved toward the stairs.
Burke closed the door and looked around. He found a file cabinet beside a drafting table and opened the middle drawer alphabetized J to S. He was not too surprised to find that between St.-Mark’s-in-the-Bouwerie and St. Paul the Apostle there was nothing but a slightly larger space than there should have been.
Burke saw a telephone on the counter of the kitchenette and dialed the rectory, got a fast busy-signal on the trunk line, dialed the operator, got a recording telling him to dial again, and slammed down the receiver. He found Gordon Stillway’s bar in a shelf unit and chose a good bourbon.
The phone rang and Burke answered, “Hello.”
Langley’s voice came through the earpiece. “Figured you couldn’t get an open line. What’s the story? Body in the library?”
“No body. No Stillway. The Saint Patrick’s file is missing, too.”
Langley said, “Interesting …” He paused, then said, “We’re having no luck in our other inquiries either.”
Burke heard someone talking loudly in the background. “Is that Bellini?”
Langley said quietly, “Yeah. He’s going into his act. Pay no attention.”
Burke lit a cigarette. “I’m not having a good Saint Patrick’s Day, Inspector.”
“March eighteenth doesn’t look real promising either.” He drew a long breath. “There are blueprints in this city somewhere, and there are other architects, maybe engineers, who know this place. We could have them all by midmorning tomorrow—but we don’t have that long. Flynn has thought this all out. Right down to snatching Stillway and the blueprints.”
Burke said, “I wonder.”
“Wonder what?”
“Hasn’t it occurred to you that if Flynn had Stillway, then Stillway would be in the Cathedral where he’d do the most good?”
“Maybe he is in there.”
Burke thought a moment. “I don’t know. Flynn would tell us if he had the architect. He’d tell us he knows ways to blow the place by mining the hidden passages—if any. He’s an intelligent man who knows how to get maximum mileage from everything he does. Think about it.” Burke looked around the tidy room. A copy of the New York Post lay on the couch, and he pulled the telephone cord as he walked to it. A front-page picture showed a good fist-flying scene of the disturbance in front of the Cathedral at noon. The headline ran: DEMONSTRATION MARS PARADE. A subline said: BUT THE IRISH MARCH. The special evening editions would have better stuff than that.
Langley’s voice came into the earpiece. “Burke, you still there?”
Burke looked up. “Yeah. Look, Stillway was here. Brought home the evening paper and …”
“And?”
Burke walked around the room holding the phone and receiver. He opened a closet near the front door and spoke into the phone. “Wet topcoat. Wet hat. No raincoat. No umbrella. No briefcase. He came home in the sleet, changed, and went out again carrying his briefcase, which contained, I guess, the Saint Patrick’s file.”
“What color are his eyes? Okay, I’ll buy it. Where’d he go?”
“Probably went with somebody who had a good set of credentials and a plausible story. Somebody who talked his way into the apartment …”
Langley said, “A Fenian who got to him too late to get him into the Cathedral—”
“Maybe. But maybe somebody else doesn’t want us to have the blueprints or Stillway….”
“Strange business.”
“Think about it, Inspector. Meanwhile, get a Crime Scene Unit over here, then get me an open line so I can call Ferguson.”
“Okay. But hurry back. Schroeder’s getting nervous.”
Burke hung up and took his glass of bourbon on a tour around the apartment. Nothing else yielded any hard clues, but he was getting a sense of the old architect. Not the type of man to go out into the cold sleet, he thought, unless duty called. The phone rang. Burke picked it up and gave the operator Ferguson’s number, then said, “Call back in ten minutes. I’ll need to make another call.”
After six rings the phone was answered, and Jack Ferguson came on the line, his voice sounding hesitant. “Hello?”
“Burke. Thought I’d get the coroner.”
“You may well have. Where the hell have you been?”
“Busy. Well, it looks like you get the good-spy award this year.”
“Keep it. Why haven’t you called? I’ve been waiting for your call—”
“Didn’t my office call you?”
“Yes. Very decent of them. Said I was a marked man. Who’s on to me, then?”
“Well, Flynn for one. Probably the New York Irish Republican Army, Provisional Wing, for another. And I think you’ve outlived your usefulness to Major Martin— it was Martin you were playing around with, wasn’t it?”