This was not a dumb group. They had me thinking about tomorrow and while I was thinking about tomorrow they would ace me tonight. Not bad. But now what. Would they show up tomorrow? Yes. They would be there looking to see if I were there looking to see if they were there. I couldn’t know that tonight’s trouble was them. They didn’t know I had Identikit drawings. Even if I did, I wouldn’t know-hell, I didn’t know-that the people who wanted to see me were the same ones who tried to blow me away tonight. Maybe there really was an informant. Maybe tonight’s people were trying to stop me from getting to the informant. I’d have to go tomorrow.
I left a wake-up call for seven-thirty, took two painkillers, and in a little while I went to sleep on my stomach. It was a pill and pain sleep, fitful, and full of brief awakenings. Killing two kids didn’t help any. I was up before the wake-up call, relieved at the dawn, feeling like I’d backed into a stove. I had slept in my clothes and my pants were stiff with dried blood when I took them off: I showered and did my best to keep the bandage dry.
I brushed my teeth and shaved and put on clean clothes. Gray slacks, blue-and-white-striped shirt with a button-down collar, blue knit tie, black-tasseled loafers, shoulder holster with gun. Continuity in the midst of change. I pasted on my fake mustache, adjusted my wig, put on a pair of pink-tinted aviator glasses and slid into my blue blazer with the brass buttons and the full tattersall lining. You can trust a guy with a tattersall lining. I checked the mirror. The roll in my collar wasn’t quite right. I loosened the tie and redid it not quite as tight.
I stepped back for a look in the full-length mirror. I looked like the bouncer in a gay bar. But it might do. I looked a lot different than I had yesterday in sweat pants and track shoes in the lobby. I put six more bullets in my inside coat pocket and I was ready. I powdered the floor again, and went to the hotel coffee shop. I hadn’t eaten since the steak and kidney pudding and it was past time. I ate three eggs sunny side up and ham and coffee and toast. It was eight-ten when I got through. In front of the hotel I got a cab and rode up to the zoo in comfort.
Leaning a little to the right as I sat.
9
They were there.
The girl I’d spotted before was looking at the flamingos as I walked up from the south gate past the hawks and eagles in the birds of prey displays. I stopped with my back to her and looked at the parrots in the parrot house. She didn’t know I had spotted her before so she made no attempt to hide. She just looked casual as she strolled over to the crows’ cage. She didn’t take any note of me. Spenser, master illusionist.
For the next two hours we did something difficult and complex like the ritual mating dance of ring-necked pheasants. She looked for me without appearing to and I watched her without appearing to. There had to be some others around. People with guns. They didn’t know what I looked like, though they probably had a description. I didn’t really know what they looked like unless the Identikit drawings were very accurate and they were the same people who had wasted the Dixons. She strolled to the chimps’ lawn. I strolled to the cockatoos. She walked to the parrots, I moved to the north end of the gibbons’ cage. She looked at the budgies while keeping an eye out for me.
I had a cup of coffee at the garden kiosk while making sure I didn’t lose her. She was wondering if there were undercover cops around. I was looking for members of her group. We were both trying to look like ordinary zoo patrons who chose to stay around the east tunnel area of the zoo. My part was complicated by the fact that I felt like a horse’s ass with my wig and my mustache. I was having a little trouble with the coffee because of the mustache. If it fell off that might give the bad guys a hint that something was up. The strain of it was physical.
By eleven o’clock I was sweating and the back of my neck hurt. My wound was hurting all the time. And not limping was a matter of concentration all the time. It must have been hard for her too, though she hadn’t been shot in the back of the lap. As far as I knew.
She was a pretty good-looking person. Not as young as the people I’d met last night. Thirty maybe, with straight hair, very blond that reached her shoulders. Her eyes were very round and noticeable, and as close as I’d gotten they looked black. Her breasts were a little too large but her thighs were first quality. She had on black sandals and white slacks and a white open-necked blouse with a black scarf knotted at the neck. She had a big black leather shoulder bag, and I was betting a gun in it. Handgun probably. The bag wasn’t quite big enough for an antitank gun. At eleven-forty-five by the clock tower she gave up. I was nearly two hours late.
She shook her head twice, vigorously, at someone I couldn’t see and headed for the tunnel. I went after her. The tunnel was something I wanted to avoid, but I didn’t see how I could. I didn’t want to lose her. I’d gone to a lot of trouble for this contact and I wanted to get something out of it. But if they caught me in the tunnel I was dead. I had no choice. Disguise, do your duty. I went into the tunnel after her.
There was no one in it. I walked through slowly, whistling and unconcerned, with the trapezius muscles across my back in a state of tension. As I came out of the tunnel I ditched the pink-shaded glasses in a trash basket and put on my normal sunglasses. I took my tie off and stuck it in my pocket and opened the collar of my shirt three buttons. I read in a Dick Tracy Crime Stopper that a small change in appearance can be helpful when following someone surreptitiously.
She wasn’t hard to follow. She wasn’t looking for me. And she was walking. She walked east on Prince Albert Road and turned down Albany Street. We went south on Albany across Marylebone onto Great Portland Street. To the left the Post Office Tower stuck up above the city. She turned left ahead of me and started up Carburton Street. The area was getting more neighborhood and small grocery store. More middle class and student. I had a dim memory that east of the Post Office Tower was Bloomsbury and the University of London and the British Museum. She turned right onto Cleveland Street. She had a hell of a walk. I liked to watch it and I had been now for ten or fifteen minutes. It was a free, long-striding, hip-swing walk with a lot of spring to it. It was fast pace for walking wounded, and I felt the gunshot wound with every step.
At the corner of Tottenham Street, diagonally across from a hospital, she turned into one of the brick-faced buildings, up three steps and in the front door. I found a doorway with some sun and stood in it, and leaned against the wall where I could see the door she’d gone in, and waited. She didn’t come out until almost two-thirty in the afternoon. Then it was just to walk half a block to a grocery store and back with a bag of groceries.
I never had to leave my doorway. Okay, I thought, this is where she lives. So what? One of the things about my employment was the frequency with which I didn’t know what I was doing or what to do next. Always a fresh surprise. I have tracked the beast to its lair, I thought. Now what do I do with her? Beast wasn’t the right word, but it didn’t sound right to say I’ve tracked the beauty to her lair. As so often in dilemmas of this kind, I came upon the perfect thing to do. Nothing. I decided I’d better wait and watch and see what happened. If at first you don’t succeed put it off till tomorrow.
I looked at my watch. After four. I had been watching the girl and her doorway since before nine this morning. Every natural appetite and need pressed upon me. I was hungry and thirsty and nearly incontinent and the pain in my backside was both real and symbolic. If I was going to do this for very long I was going to need help. By six I had to pitch it in. It was less than two blocks from the Post Office Tower. They had most of what I needed and I headed for it.