“Yeah, right,” said the clown dismissively and flopped over in his yard-long shoes to a group of children. Paper streamers were raining down from the skyscrapers overlooking the parade and one wrapped itself around Joker’s neck. He pulled it off and dropped it into the street.
A float sponsored by an insurance company rolled by, decked out in green with a trio of fiddlers playing an Irish folk tune while half a dozen girls danced a jig. Joker picked up his suitcase and began walking through the crowds.
He’d been in New York a number of times before and knew that there were several small hotels off 37th Street, close to the East River. He made slow progress along Fifth Avenue because of all the sightseers. A marching band of young black girls in silver spandex outfits and tall braided helmets overtook him in a flurry of whirling sticks, followed by young boys in similar outfits blowing brass instruments and beating drums. He decided to get off Fifth Avenue and waited until there was a gap in the parade before dashing across. Once he’d left the route of the parade the streets were relatively quiet and after a twenty-minute walk he was outside the hotel he’d chosen: The White Horse. It had been formed by knocking together two brownstone houses and refurbished on the cheap with plasterboard partitions, plastic light fittings and thin carpets. There was a small reception desk beyond the main door where a Hispanic woman was talking on the phone. She raised her eyebrows when Joker walked in but carried on her conversation. Joker put his suitcase down and waited. Eventually she pushed over a registration card for him to fill in. The ballpoint pen she gave him leaked and there were blobs of ink all over the card by the time he’d finished. She picked up the card, read it, took an imprint from his credit card and handed him a key, all the time talking into the phone. She gestured at a staircase to her right as she cackled away in Spanish.
Joker’s room was on the third floor, at the back of the hotel, where it overlooked an alley which was dark and forbidding even in the afternoon. A rusting fire escape wound its way down the building and Joker pulled open the window to take a closer look. It provided a back way out in an emergency but he was also well aware that it offered a way in for any intruder. He checked the lock on the window but he knew that it wouldn’t deter an enthusiastic amateur, never mind a professional. An air-conditioner was set into the wall underneath the window but nothing happened when he switched it on. He kicked it halfheartedly.
A small bathroom led off the bedroom, containing a shower stall, a cracked yellow washbasin and a toilet. A piece of paper was wrapped across the seat along with a note telling him that it had been sanitised for his protection. He picked up a glass tumbler from the shelf under the bathroom mirror and went back into the bedroom where he sat on the single bed and opened his suitcase. He took out a bottle of Famous Grouse and poured himself a decent measure. He toasted his reflection in the window. “‘If I can make it here, I can make it anywhere’,” he said, his voice loaded with sarcasm.
Howard sat in Theodore Clayton’s outer office, his leather briefcase at his feet. His father-in-law’s secretary kept flashing him sympathetic looks but Howard didn’t show his annoyance. If Clayton wanted to play infantile power games, it was a small price to pay for the help the FBI was getting.
Clayton kept him waiting just ten minutes so Howard figured he’d got off lightly. Clayton also opened the office door himself and personally ushered Howard in.
“Sorry, Cole, I was on the phone to Tokyo.”
“Tokyo?” said Howard, puzzled. “I thought you were competing with the Japanese.”
“Product-wise, we are, but all the technology is the same and there are several firms over there who are interested in taking stakes in us. It’s the latest way of doing business with the Japs — they call it co-opetition — a combination of co-operation and competition.”
“Would the Government allow that?”
“What do you mean?” said Clayton, sitting behind his uncluttered desk. A photograph of Lisa beamed from a brass frame, next to a picture of Clayton’s second wife, Jennifer. The two women were surprisingly alike — blonde hair, fair skin, blue eyes — though Jennifer was the younger of the two by more than five years.
“Your defence work? Surely they wouldn’t want overseas investors to be involved.”
Clayton snorted and shook his head. “You think the Government gives a damn? There are no boundaries where business is concerned, Cole. Money is the universal language, the common philosophy. I tell you, the best thing that could happen to this country’s armed forces would be if we had Japanese-built jets flying off Japanese-built aircraft carriers, and we had our soldiers driving Japanese tanks and flying Japanese helicopters.”
“And using Japanese atomic weapons?” asked Howard, his voice loaded with irony.
“You mock, my boy, but it’ll come. I remember when the first Japanese motorcycles arrived in this country, and how we laughed at them. Sewing machines on wheels. You know what car I drive now? A Nissan, and there isn’t an American car can match it.”
Howard knew that Clayton was being economical with the truth — more often than not the industrialist was to be found behind the wheel of a Rolls-Royce.
Clayton opened one of his desk drawers and took out a cardboard folder. “Anyway, at the moment we’re just talking about a share stake. That’s confidential by the way. I’d hate to see you hauled in for insider trading.” He smiled to show Howard that he was joking and passed him the file. “This is what we’ve managed to do with your video.”
“I didn’t expect you to move so quickly,” said Howard, opening the file.
“I had a couple of PhDs who were dying to show me what they can do with the new $10 million computer I bought for them. I think you’ll be impressed.”
The top two photographs were of the cars, and Howard’s heart sank when he saw them because there wasn’t much more detail than in the ones Bonnie Kim had done for him. Clayton walked around behind him and put a hand on his shoulder. “Yeah, those were a disappointment, the angle was just too acute to be able to do anything with the tags. You’ll be more impressed with the faces.”
Howard put the car pictures on the desk. The next photograph was of the man who’d been holding the walkie-talkie. It was a close-up of his face, and it was a big improvement on the pictures Bonnie Kim had produced, though he doubted it was clear enough to make a positive identification.
“Pretty good, huh?” said Clayton.
The picture in Howard’s hands had little of the blurring that had made Bonnie’s prints so difficult to decipher. The man was middle-aged and balding, with a round, plump face and dark sunglasses, though his features were hard to define. “Much better,” admitted Howard. “But still not quite good enough, I’m afraid.” He handed the picture to Clayton. “It’s sharper than our versions, but there isn’t enough detail for us to get a match from file pictures. Is there anything else you can do?”
“Oh sure,” said Clayton confidently. “That’s just for starters. They did what your lab had already done, the median filtering thing, but they coupled that with a technique we use to remove the blur caused by motion. A large part of the blurring was caused by the movement of the camcorder, and isn’t a result of the distances involved. My boys ran the images through a program which compensates for the speed of the plane.”