Engel didn’t think twice. He ran up, shoved the owner out of the way, climbed into the cab, remembered to shift it into first, and he and the truck went tearing down the street.
What a getaway! The glittering rainbow of a truck rocking and careening down the street, the children whooping and hollering as their twenty-five-cent ride suddenly began to exceed their wildest dreams, the little flying saucers swooping and circling on the back, the loudspeaker blaring... People along the right of way smiled and laughed, little children waved their hands and jumped up and down and in their excitement lost their grip on balloons, shopkeepers trotted out to the sidewalk in their aprons to wave and smile beneath straw hats, the drivers of cars and buses and trucks pulled over and, laughing, waved him through...
And then the loudspeaker began to talk. “BE ON THE LOOKOUT,” it told the world, “FOR ALOYSIOUS ENGEL, SIX FOOT ONE INCH TALL, WEIGHT—”
21
Engel was a nervous wreck. He sat in a bar at the end of no-where and shakily raised a glass of Scotch on the rocks to his lips, sipped, and put the glass down again.
He’d finally abandoned that damn truck and its load of delighted kids in the middle of 14th Street, near Eighth Avenue. With the instinct of a hunted animal, he’d then gone to ground, ducking into the first hole he saw, which happened to be the entrance to the subway. He went down flight after flight of concrete stairs flanked by yellow tile walls, and at the very bottom found the dingiest old subway train in the world, sitting down there as though time had stopped along about 1948. It had passengers to match, all sitting there silent and fat and kind of seedy, most of them reading newspapers which must surely have been predicting the election of Thomas E. Dewey. Engel had gotten aboard this train, and the doors had shut behind him, and the train had started off through the dark tunnel, stopping now and again, going under the East River to Brooklyn, eventually coming up for air and riding along as an elevated for a while, coming down to sit like a regular train at ground level by the time it reached the end of the line.
Engel had never ridden this line before. He got off the train when it came to its last stop, and he was still in 1948. Wooden platform. Low buildings all around, old unrich residential, two-family houses. Engel walked to the nearest bar, ordered Scotch on the rocks, and waited for his nerves to settle down.
The bar was named Rockaway Grill. Wasn’t there a section of Queens called Far Rockaway? Engel said to the barman, “What section is this?”
“Canarsie.”
Canarsie. Engel said, “In Brooklyn?”
“Sure in Brooklyn.”
“Good. You got a Manhattan phone book?”
“Yeah. Hold on.”
In the phone book Engel found Kane, Murray 198 E 68 ELdrdo 6-9970. “Thanks,” he said, and pushed the phone book back across the bar. “Fill the glass again.”
“Right.”
“A double.”
“Right.”
Three doubles later he was calm enough to leave the bar, go back to the subway station, and take the next train back to Manhattan. He got out at Union Square, and it was just five o’clock, and everybody had showed up for the rush hour. Since he hadn’t eaten since breakfast, and it’s impossible to go anywhere at rush hour in New York, and it would be better to wait till after dark before he did any more traveling anyway, he went into a little restaurant on University Place and had himself a meal.
Through all of this, as time continued to tick along, he kept trying to figure it out. It was possible, of course, that Margo Kane had done everything, had stolen Charlie and murdered Merriweather and aimed Rose. As for Rose, that was definite, proved, no question. As for Merriweather, there was no doubt she’d been there, but somehow Engel just couldn’t see her wielding the knife. Besides, her reaction on seeing the body had been too good to be false. And, for a further besides, what about her crazy you-murdered-my-husband line? He no longer believed the explanation she’d given him for that scene, but he couldn’t think of any other explanation to take its place. As for stealing Charlie, there was still the problem of what she could possibly have wanted him for.
Margo Kane. He thought and thought. Margo Kane was linked up one way or another with Kurt Brock. Maybe he was the one who’d asked her to use her contacts to frame Engel. Maybe Brock was the one who’d stolen Charlie’s body; he sure had more opportunity than anybody else. Maybe he’d loused up one of the things he was supposed to do, the embalming and all that, and so he hid the body instead of putting it in the casket, but then Merriweather found out about it and Brock had to kill him and—
Aside from being the most stupid idea he’d had all week, that was impossible. Brock had an airtight alibi.
All right. He still didn’t have enough information, that’s all it was. He’d have to wait till he saw Margo Kane, and when he saw her he’d be damn sure to get the truth out of her.
He was impatient, and finally decided he couldn’t wait till after dark. He paid for his meal, all of which he’d eaten but none of which he’d tasted, left the restaurant at five minutes to six, and at ten minutes after six he had a cab, mainly by bumping an old woman with a lot of packages from Klein’s out of contention.
“That got her,” said the cabby. He didn’t care who won, they all had money.
“Third Avenue and 67th Street,” Engel told him.
“Check.”
The cabby had paid no real attention to his face, and he didn’t have a portable radio, so Engel felt relatively safe for the moment. He sat far in the corner of the back seat, directly behind the cabby, and kept his face turned away from the pedestrians outside the window.
The trip uptown was nerve-racking, but it was the driver’s nerves that were being racked, not Engel’s. He got out at 67th Street, paid and left a tip average enough to assure that the cabby would have no special reason to remember him, and then walked up to 68th Street and headed west.
Number 198 was an old brownstone, with well-tended greenery in its tiny square of yard beside the front steps. The ground-floor windows were barred, and a barred gate closed off the ground-floor entrance beneath the steps. The first floor displayed two extremely tall windows to the left of the main entrance at the head of the steps, and the windows on the second and third floors sported green window boxes. Lights were on behind the first- and second-floor windows.
Engel walked past the house the first time, checking to see if either the cops or the organization people were watching here. So far as he could tell, it was clear. He turned around, walked back, and climbed the steps to the front door.
There were two doorbells, the upper one marked “Wright” and the lower marked “Kane.” Engel rang the Kane bell, and waited, and after a minute a grill beside the door said, in a tinny imitation of Margo Kane’s voice, “Who is it, please?”
Engel leaned close to the grill. “Engel,” he said. He had to play it boldly now. If she refused to let him in, he’d have to get in some other way.
But she said, “One minute, please, Mr. Engel,” and less than a minute later she was at the front door, opening it, smiling at him, saying, “You’ve become a very famous man since I saw you last. Come in, come in.”
She was wearing black stretch pants and a black and red striped sweater and red slippers. She seemed as innocent and charming and undangerous as ever.
Engel stepped in and shut the door. “Thanks for letting me in.”