Avram stepped to the side as several of the others who’d been in the synagogue moved past.
“I have an important appointment this morning,” he said.
“Cancel it.”
“I can’t, it’s too late to postpone. The buyer’s already on his way here, and I can’t reach him… ”
“Put him off. Or have him wait for you. There’s a limited window of opportunity, and you’ll have customers lined up to eat out of your hand in the long run.”
Silence. Avram could feel ripples of eagerness and excitement under his skin.
He found a vacant seat away from the other men sprinkled around the room, stared out at the rooftops uptown through its large glass wall.
“How and where do you want to meet?”
“You know the program, Avram,” Lathrop said. “Get going and keep your phone on, I’ll fill you in along the way.”
“Where’s the movie star babe I ordered up for breakfast?” Collins asked, watching Jeffreys approach the guard platform.
“Too expensive, plus I couldn’t fit her in here.” Jeffreys rattled the small white bag he’d brought from the vender’s cart. “Got you a bagel instead.”
“Buttered?”
“Like you wanted, my man.”
Collins reached for the bag with a mock frown. “Guess I’ll have to settle.”
Jeffreys unzipped his jacket, shook off the outer chill that still seemed to be clinging to him.
“Any happenings to report?” he said.
“No.” Collins rose from the stool. “Well, actually, that guy showed. Katari.”
“You see he got upstairs okay?”
“Yeah. He’s there now, but isn’t too happy, let me tell you.” Collins shrugged. “Came in right after the dealer he was supposed to meet left the building.”
Jeffreys looked at him.
“Left?” he said.
“Not more than a minute or two after you did,” Collins said, and tapped a slip of paper that lay beside the guest book. “Must’ve had somewhere important to go… dropped this in front of me, hustled straight out the door in a big rush.”
His brow furrowing, Jeffreys reached for the paper and read what Avram Hoffman had written on it.
Goddamn, he thought.
Malisse had expected Plan A to be bungled, although not even he had thought the bungling would commence at this earliest introductory stage.
He stood on the corner of 47th and Fifth, pausing to catch his breath, feeling thwarted and foolish as he looked about the avenue. His eyes scanned the sidewalk, the intersection, the passing taxicabs and busses. According to Jeffreys, almost five minutes had elapsed since Avram Hoffman had exited the DDC building behind him, and trying to guess which direction he’d taken amid the streams of vehicular and foot traffic seemed futile, idiotic, a matter of going through the motions. Jeffreys’s reliever wasn’t even certain he’d noticed him turn toward Fifth, and why should he have? He knew nothing of the ongoing surveillance.
Frowning, Malisse turned right on his heels toward the IRT subway station three blocks uptown. It was an instinctive choice. Hoffman could have dropped a trail of bread-crumbs, and the filthy pigeons infesting these streets would have pecked it up by now. But he had left the DDC suddenly, unexpectedly, and with obvious haste. If he meant to get somewhere in a hurry, it stood to reason he would take the fastest available mode of transportation, and in this city that would be the train… assuming he hadn’t simply needed to walk some short distance. And why assume that or anything otherwise? It was all a toss-up.
Malisse’s frown deepened. Idiotic. Everything had been botched. Better he’d stayed in the warmth of the coffeehouse, with its pleasant wafts of the brewed and baked….
The thought broke off as he noticed a man in a charcoal overcoat and light gray snap-brimmed fedora in the crowd about halfway up the block, his back to him, walking at a brisk pace. Malisse gave him a moment’s look. His size matched Hoffman’s. His stride. And the outer clothes resembled what he’d seen Hoffman wear the past two days. His hat had been herringbone tan, though. His coat a brown tweed. But yesterday was yesterday. Nothing said a man couldn’t change his colors — and these were still well coordinated.
Malisse quickly turned to follow. Perhaps it was a stretch to hope he’d been fortunate enough to spot his quarry. But better to chase after hope than stand arrested with futility, he thought. If nothing else it would get his blood going, take some sting out of the cold.
Malisse sleeved between clots of pedestrians, dodged a bicycle messenger, was almost struck by some cretin motoring past on a Segway at a higher speed than the cars in the avenue—here was a threat to human life exceeding any posed by tobacco.
Now he’d almost caught up with his man, who had stopped on the corner of 58th Street, waiting for a traffic light to change. As the red shifted to green and the man started across the street, Malisse hustled to outstrip him and get a look at his face, edging to his right amid the surrounding crush.
A glance over his left shoulder dashed Malisse’s short-lived flirtation with luck. The man was not Hoffman. Beardless, years older, wearing no glasses, he did not bear any resemblance to Hoffman. Well, there was the hurried walk, the style of dress. Malisse was disappointed, yes, but would not thrash himself for having made his bid.
He slowed to a halt as the man was absorbed by the ceaselessly kinetic crowd. Shoulders bumped his arms, elbows poked his side. On his immediate left near a bank entrance, a dark-haired fellow in an outback coat stood dropping coins in one of those ubiquitous public UpLink Internet terminals Malisse had seen springing up everywhere lately in cities throughout Europe, including the streets of his native Brussels. Malisse looked at him a second, thinking he was the only person in sight besides himself who wasn’t moving in step with the herd. Malisse wondered with droll humor whether he ought to tap him on the shoulder and suggest they form a brotherhood of some kind.
Then the man turned from the terminal’s screen and shot a glance back over at Malisse, appearing to sense his attention. His face was expressionless as their eyes momentarily touched. Malisse felt a little embarrassed — was he now to become both an intrusive nuisance to strangers and partner to muddlers?
Malisse turned back downtown without lingering another second, leaving the man to his private affairs. After a few steps he began to prop up his spirits by thinking positively, and soon had recovered his optimism, deciding he might yet salvage something of practical benefit from the otherwise wasted effort of having sped from his warm, comfortable booth in the café.
Here on the street, one could at least have a good smoke.
Malisse reached into his coat for a Gitanes, girding for whatever excuse Jeffreys meant to offer for his surprising incompetence.
Standing at the public-access Internet terminal, Lathrop waited as the guy who’d briefly looked his way on the sidewalk moved on uptown. He’d had the misplaced, distracted look on his face of someone that had taken a wrong turn and wasn’t quite sure of his bearings — probably nobody to worry about. Still, Lathrop kept a cautious eye on him, following his progress a bit before he turned back to the screen.
Lathrop fed the rest of his coins into the terminal’s pay slot, used its touchpad to access his fictitious Hotmail account, and then punched in a short message for Avram, who had stepped aboard the bus downtown on his instructions minutes earlier.
The message read: Get off 42nd Street stop, enter Grand Central Station at Vanderbilt entrance, wait on west balcony.
After sending it to Avram’s wireless e-mail address, Lathrop cleared the terminal’s screen, shoved his hands into his pockets, and walked briskly south toward the station.