“What’s Snuffy...?”
“People do call him Spence, you know.”
“I’m sure,” Geoffrey said. “But what’s he doing at your place at this hour of the night?”
“Late meeting,” she said.
A shrug in her voice.
“Alison?” he said.
“Yes, Geoffrey?”
Cool. Precise.
“Alison... what’s going on, would you mind telling me?”
“I assure you nothing’s going on.”
“Then what... I call your place at whatever the hell time it is there, and Snuffy answers the...”
“Geoffrey, I’m truly sorry, but this is an inconvenient time for me. As I told you...”
“Inconvenient? I’m calling all the way from...”
“Yes, but we’re in the midst of a meeting here.”
“Well, I’m awfully damn sorry about your meeting, but...”
“I’ll have to ring off now,” she said.
“Not before we...”
The phone went dead.
“Hello?” he said. “Alison?”
And looked at the receiver in his hand.
Snuffy? he thought.
He’s sixty-two years old!
One moment he was there, and the next he was not. He was carrying only a single suitcase, whereas she was carrying trunks and trunks full of clothes, which she probably should have shipped by UPS as her mother had suggested. But until these past several nights of ecstatic instruction, she’d been merely a rebellious teenager who’d objected automatically to any suggestion her mother made, and so the tons of trunks — well, actually one camp trunk and two oversized suitcases.
Plus a duffle full of dirty clothes.
And a traveling case with her cosmetics and perfumes in it.
And her tote, which contained — in addition to her wallet and Kleenex tissues and chewing gum and hairbrush and whatnot — a pair of jogging shoes which she would have put on if she’d been alone and not with Sonny. Sonny preferred heels. So she stood now with her luggage, wearing moderately high heels and a trim blue suit, no hose because of the suffocating heat, long blond hair pulled back in a cool, elegant and she hoped womanly bun, the tote slung over her shoulder, waiting for him to come back with a porter.
Penn Station looked worse each time she saw it.
When she’d been home for the spring break, she thought it couldn’t possibly get any worse, there was just no way on earth it could look more like New Delhi, she had to ask Sonny if he’d ever been to New Delhi and did Penn Station look worse? Although he’d already told her he’d been born in London and had spent most of his childhood and young manhood here in the United States, which didn’t come as much of a surprise since he didn’t sound British at all, despite his mother.
The big wall clock across the terminal read five to two.
It would probably take him a while to find a porter. She tried to remember the last time she’d seen a porter in Penn Station. Most of the people who came through the station day and night were commuters who didn’t need porters. In any case, there seemed to be a dearth of them here on the upper level where there was not a similar scarcity of homeless people. She hoped none of them came over to beg from her; she found them frightening. Then again, there were a lot of things that frightened her; she did not think of herself as a particularly strong or self-sufficient person. The fact that she hadn’t even been able to buy herself a drink on the train, the fact that she’d had to ask a strange man — well, he had been a stranger at the time — to intercede on her behalf...
At two o’clock, she wondered what was keeping him.
At two-thirty she realized he simply wasn’t coming back.
The Hilton on Sixth Avenue was the sort of hotel in which a person could lose himself entirely. Host to conventioneers from everywhere in the United States, popular as well with tourists from all over the world, the hotel was normally booked to capacity, a condition Sonny found entirely suited to his current needs.
He had kept a dozen credit cards active and in readiness for the past ten years, preparing for just the contingency that had brought him to New York today. The reservation here at the Hilton had been made under the name to which one of those alternate credit cards was issued. His original name, the name given to him at birth, was buried so deep in GID files he’d almost forgotten it himself. Here in America, he’d been Sonny Hemkar for what seemed forever. But his train reservations had been charged to an American Express card made out to one Albert Gomez. As he checked into the hotel now, he offered Albert Gomez’s Visa card. Gomez was leaving a clear trail that led to a post office box in Los Angeles. Dr. Krishnan Hemkar — Sonny Hemkar to his friends and associates — had disappeared from that city on the twenty-first of June. When and where he could safely surface again was anyone’s—
“Enjoy your stay, Mr. Gomez.”
“Thank you.”
The desk clerk tapped a bell. A uniformed bellhop appeared at Sonny’s side, took the proffered key and registration slip, and said, “Good afternoon, sir, is there just the one bag?”
“Just the one,” Sonny said.
“If you’ll follow me, please, sir,” the bellhop said, and lifted the bag and began walking through the crowded lobby toward the elevators, Sonny following him like a quarterback behind a blocker. In the elevator, the bellhop said, “Will you be with us long, sir?”
“Not very.”
“You’ve hit some nice weather. A little hot, but much better than the rain we had last week, don’t you think?”
Sonny nodded.
He hated idle elevator talk. It was like elevator music. Vapid and dull. Worse in New York than anywhere else in the United States. He supposed that all the service people here were instructed to bend over backward in an effort to dispel the city’s reputation for surly rudeness. Chattered on aimlessly where no conversation was necessary at all. A total waste of time in that the city’s reputation was well earned and no amount of empty servility could disguise it.
Sonny had known that when the call finally came it would most probably summon him to one of two places: New York or Washington. As a result, he had learned both those cities intimately, acquiring a working knowledge as well of Los Angeles and San Francisco, the two next likely candidates. But—
— I think I’ve found an apartment for you.
Where?
Here in New York.
Telling him where.
All things considered, he guessed he was glad they’d chosen New York. There were a great many ways to get out of New York. Washington was far easier to blockade. And once this was over—
“Here we are, sir, 2312.”
The bellhop unlocked the door, allowed Sonny to precede him into the room, and then came in to do his stand-up routine about the air-conditioning and the television set and the wake-up calls and the restaurants available here at the hotel, seamlessly performing his little tip-seeking dog-and-pony act, which Sonny rewarded with two dollars and a friendly smile he hoped was masking his impatience.
The bellhop left.
Sonny went immediately to the telephone.
He dialed the number from memory.
The phone rang once, twice, three times...
“Hello?”
A man’s voice.
Sonny hung up at once.
The ringing telephone scared hell out of Santorini.
Alone here in the apartment where the English lady had been killed, early afternoon sunshine streaming through the windows and slanting onto the bed where her blood had soaked into the covers and mattress, alone here with the evidence of sudden violent—