"Monday," promised Cochrane, "we get some staff in here from another division. We check out every name." Then a second list was drawn, one comprising immigrants from the other unfriendly nations: Italy and Japan, just in case.
"That's three hundred wops and seventeen Japs," Bobby Charles Martin surmised with his usual egalitarian candor. "Guess those get checked out, too."
"You guess right," said Cochrane, reaching for a jacket and hat. "Let's go watch some horse races."
Mr. Hay was at Arlington Park for all nine races that afternoon. He seemed to wear his own saddle, with Bobby Martin and Bill Cochrane in it. Ditto, Sunday. And late afternoon, the archivist began to crack. But as the ninth race was finished, Adam Hay looked up and they were all gone. Every one of them. No one was breathing down his eleven- inch collar. It was Mr. Hay's custom on Sunday afternoons to relax in the grandstand after the final race. He would peruse the next week's racing card, enjoy the solitude of six thousand empty seats, then amble to his car-an old Ford that rattled in every gear including neutral-which he always parked in the far end of the parking lot.
He thought of many things as he handicapped his ponies that afternoon. Name, town, and state were among them. He studied furlongs, sires, and first quarters, late brushes, jockey changes, and trainers. Name. Town. And state. It was a litany.
He folded the racing form into his pocket a few minutes before six. He walked to his car and, his eyes barely to the height of the window, he unlocked it in the vast, deserted parking lot.
The car door flew open. A human body, strong and powerful, burst upward from low behind the front seat, pushed the seats apart, and rushed from concealment to confront the archivist. The tiny archivist yelped and his eyes went wide as demitasse saucers with two brown marbles at their center.
It was Cochrane! Glaring, menacing, scowling, looking downward with his twenty-four inches of superior height. Cochrane's eyes gleamed. He said nothing. By now the week's catechism spoke for him.
"Name… town… state…" Mr. Hay's heart fluttered somewhere ten feet above his head.
"Otto Mauer is now Henry Naismith," Mr. Hay confessed sullenly. "The town is Ringtown. The state is Pennsylvania. Now leave me alone."
TWENTY-THREE
It was raining in Manhattan the day Charlotte next saw her mysterious clock manufacturer. Her face still smarted when she thought of the way he had struck her last time. But that was in the past. Perhaps she had been too forward with him. He did seem like a very proper man. If only she knew more about him…
She saw him as she stepped out of a taxi on West Thirty-second Street, near Macy's. The man who so fascinated her was disappearing into a sporting-goods store. Charlotte was wearing a wide-brimmed rain hat and a heavy trench coat, so she arranged the hat slightly more over her eyes. Then she moved to the window of the store and peered in. What type of sports did her man like? she wondered. She watched him carefully. He was examining some diving equipment. Diving suits. Snorkels. Charlotte was surprised. Equally, she was surprised when he kept looking up and surveying the people around him. It was as if he thought someone might be spying on him.
Perhaps he was embarrassed, she concluded. Perhaps he was just learning about deep-sea diving. But no. He bought an elaborate combination of equipment. A complete wet suit. A diver's knife. A mask. Then he paid with cash and turned toward the door.
Charlotte crossed the street. The intrigue now excited her. She would follow him and find out what she could. But she would have to behave cleverly, she told herself. Otherwise he would see her.
He was an easy mark, a man wearing a tan trench coat and carrying a large shopping bag. He crossed Seventh Avenue at Thirty-fourth Street, then oddly reversed himself and walked south. If he was going to Pennsylvania Station, she wondered, why hadn't he walkedthere directly?
She followed from a distance of half a block. Sure enough, he went into the train station. She lost him. She darted through. the gates and looked in every direction. "Really, girl," she giggled to herself, "there's a war beginning and you make such a lousy spy!" But her spirits were high now. The game was on. For a change, Charlotte could stalk a man, rather than lie passively beneath one.
But her Mr. Bolton was gone. She scanned the huge lobby. Then she spotted him walking toward the Lackawanna Railroad Line. She pursued and saw him glance at his watch. The gate for his train was already open. He hurried through it, then stopped short. He turned and Charlotte stopped also. Much too obviously, she thought. Then she made a point of examining a billboard for the new movie, Gone With the Wind .
She looked back a moment later. Maybe he had noticed her, maybe not. He would have to have excellent vision to recognize her from that distance beneath her hat, she told herself. She saw him getting onto a train. Less than thirty seconds later, the conductor standing at the rear signaled up the track to the flagman. The train gave a slight lurch. Charlotte made a split-second decision. She bolted for the rear of the train.
"Hey, lady!" the conductor barked. "Make up your mind!" He almost had the doors closed when she hopped on.
"Oh, I…" She admitted breathlessly, "I wasn't sure whether this was my train."
"Where you going?" he asked.
She had no idea. "Um… end of the line," she decided.
"That's Liberty Circle."
"Can you sell me a ticket?"
The conductor was a white-haired man named Jeffrey, who looked at Charlotte very strangely. She was heavily perfumed and very overdone. Perhaps, he sensed what she was. He sold her a ticket, breaking a five-dollar bill. "You're very kind," she said.
Charlotte found a seat in the rear car. She knew Mr. Bolton was three cars up. The train was only five cars. She wondered what to do.
Mr. Bolton solved her problem for her. He did something strange again. Ten minutes into the trip she saw him slowly walking down the aisle of the next car. Then he entered her car. Charlotte borrowed a Newark Star from the man sitting next to her. She buried her face in it as Mr. Bolton walked to the rear and stared out over the tracks. Then he returned up the aisle. What was he doing? Looking to see if he knew anyone? Or just getting a walk?
He left the car. Then a few minutes later, he returned carrying his shopping bag. He sat a few rows in front of her on the opposite side of the aisle. Was he trying to tell her something? There would be no mystery at all where he got off.
The train stopped in Newark and East Orange. Then Madison, New Providence, and Far Hills. Only one stop left. There were only a handful of passengers left. Mr. Bolton was one of them. Charlotte was another.
At Liberty Circle, Mr. Bolton rose. He went to the exit and descended the steps onto the railroad platform. Charlotte followed. Mr. Bolton pulled his coat close to him against the rain, then quickly paced down a flight of steps that led to an underpass. Charlotte pulled her own hat and coat tightly to her body. It was teeming. She followed him.
And suddenly the idiocy of it all struck her. What in hell had propelled her so blindly onward? He had been right when he had slapped her. She was a whore! And he was, like most of her customers, a family man. How dare she follow him to his home! What on earth did she think she was doing?
Charlotte slowed her pace and a wave of desolation was upon her. The underpass was starting to flood and her shoes were being ruined. She knew, because she was looking downward and crying.
Mr. Bolton, any man like Mr. Bolton, was the unattainable for Charlotte. She could only be his whore. She could never be a wife or the mother of such a man's children. She ascended the steps on the other side of the tracks. She walked very slowly, the chase finished. All she wanted now was the next train back to the city.