A square-backed ambulance was parked at the southeast gate to the rink, and a crowd of the curious had gathered. The ambulance crew was wheeling someone toward the opened doors. It was her. She was unconscious on the stretcher.
Raymond froze in panic. Then he ran awkwardly toward the ambulance. He pushed the people aside. The other girl, tears in her eyes, climbed into the back of the ambulance with her friend. The doors were closed just as Ray got there.
“Wait!” he cried. “Where are you taking her?”
One of the men in white looked distastefully at Raymond.
“She’s—” Raymond said, and realized that anything else he might say would sound ridiculous. He panicked again and grabbed a white sleeve, smudging it. “I said where are you taking her?” He saw the approaching cop out of the corner of his eye. The ambulance driver shook him off and climbed in behind the wheel. Raymond tried to follow, but the cop got in his way.
“Alright, fella. Don’t make trouble for yourself.”
Raymond wept. “You don’t understand! I have to know who she is!”
The ambulance siren whooped. It was rolling, rolling away from him.
“I said move on.”
Raymond got a little push from the hickory, not much of a push but enough to set him down on his butt. By the time he got to his feet he could see it was hopeless. The ambulance was headed for the nearest park exit, that’s all he knew, and he’d lost her, and what was he going to say this time? He’d deceived them before when he was desperate, they would never give him another chance.
The cop was still watching him, so Raymond walked slowly away, brooding. High above the rink he sat on a graffiti-covered rock. There he finished his bottle of Annie Greensprings.
“Mr. Dunwoodie?”
Raymond turned, grinning, as he always did when startled or demoralized.
A man of medium height in a trashy-looking trench coat was walking uphill toward him. The man was in his late thirties. He had a face like an anvil with skin stretched over it, untidy and prematurely silvered hair, deep-set eyes the color of tarnished nickel. Raymond had never seen him before.
But the eyes told Raymond everything he cared to know about the man. He backed away, pointed west and started to babble.
“They took her a few minutes ago! In an ambulance! She had an accident or something! That’s the truth! Check the hospitals, you’ll find her.”
The man slowed down as he approached Raymond, but Raymond continued to back away from him. He had arthritic knees, which made any sort of movement other than a straight-ahead shuffle painfully hard to manage.
“You’re Raymond Dunwoodie, aren’t you?”
“Sure! Sure I am. I didn’t make it up, I swear! She was skating there on the rink ten minutes ago—”
A flicker of puzzlement in the secluded eyes.
“Who was?”
“The girl—the girl I called up about. The sensitive.” Raymond backed into a bench and stopped. The man stood a few feet away, hands in his pockets, just looking at him.
“Oh, yes,” he said softly.
Raymond breathed deeply, and it sounded like a sob of relief. He sat down involuntarily. He realized he had to go to the bathroom. He hoped that this wouldn’t take long, that the man would just give him twenty dollars and go away. But he began to have doubts.
“Why didn’t the Doc come himself? He said he would.”
The man shrugged. “You know how it is.”
“Well, I—” Raymond licked a fever blister. “He’s going to pay me, isn’t he? When you find the girl.”
“The truth is, Raymond—” He took a seat near Raymond on the bench. “It’s another sensitive we’re interested in. We need to locate this one fast.”
“You know better. You know I can’t work long-range any more. Why don’t you use Bruckner, or Helen Tavaglini?”
Raymond found the nickel eyes unreadable. But in the last sixteen seconds of his life Raymond’s powers focused accurately on the truth of the situation in which he found himself. His mind went blank from shock.
“I don’t have access to them, Raymond,” the man admitted. “You’re the only hope I’ve got. It’s worth at least a hundred dollars to me, more if I can get it. Tell me how much you want.”
“No. I don’t work anymore. The girl was an exception, she was so close and so powerful—”
Raymond stood up; the man stood with him, a strong hand on Raymond’s right arm, inches above the wrist. Raymond still weighed close to two hundred pounds, but his bones were light and he had no useful muscle. He sensed the man’s demon, and he knew that the man would not be averse to tearing his arm off at the shoulder if Raymond displeased him.
“I don’t know you!” Raymond squeaked. “I only talk to the Doc! Nobody else!”
He tried to jerk away from the man but only succeeded in giving his captive arm a painful wrench. So he moved the other way, throwing his weight against the man; Raymond half turned, losing his balance, and found himself looking at a gray sedan idling across a stone bridge fifty yards away.
Psychically he recognized the shape of death in the nondescript sedan and automatically he grinned, a split second before the silenced pistol fired.
The heavy slug hitting the ridge of bone above Raymond’s left eyebrow had the impact of a piece of reinforcing rod hurled end-first by a strong man from a distance of six feet; Peter felt a wet sting of macerated bone and tissue as the back of Raymond’s head exploded and the derelict sagged down hard and to the left, losing his grip on his shopping bag.
Instinctively Peter let him go, turned and plunged downhill, getting off that bare hump of rock as fast as he could, reaching into his left coat pocket for a Kleenex to wipe his bloody cheek. He headed for the biggest crowd he could find on short notice. Twice he changed course abruptly until he was on a path with a couple of chestnut and pretzel venders between himself and the road, between himself and Raymond. He didn’t look back until he was part of the larger crowd in front of the skating rink.
Then he saw, at a glance, Raymond lying on his back on the rock and a couple of kids standing a respectful distance away, staring in fascination at Raymond’s tap-dancing right foot.
He also saw the gray car.
It had traveled a hundred feet beyond the place where he’d been shot at and where Raymond undoubtedly had blundered the wrong way at just the right moment for Peter’s sake. The driver had turned onto an access road and was trying to get around two park maintenance vehicles.
Pressing question: how many cars did they have, and how many men on foot, and what were his chances of getting out of the park alive?
Somehow it looked hasty and ill-conceived to him, the shot from the moving car. Poor strategy; acknowledging the fact that they would go ahead and kill him if they had the chance, the method chosen indicated faulty logistics. So they had Raymond Dunwoodie under surveillance for some reason, but his appearance was unexpected. One car, then. Two men likely.
Peter put his hand through the right-side bottomless pocket of his trench coat and grasped the .38 Beretta automatic in his suit coat pocket, trying not to shove his way through the strolling mother’s with perambulators, teenagers with radios grafted to their ears, old folks with peaceful sun-warmed faces. The car was coming after him, of course, but slowly because of the people. The range was now about ninety yards, so discount the marksman trying another shot from what must be a silenced pistol. To lose the car Peter jogged down a long flight of steps and walked through an underpass, emerging near the zoo’s cafeteria. They had to know that if they left their car and tried to close in on foot they were in danger of being blown away. They must already have called for backup units, but that would take a few minutes. NYPD would not be a factor.
Peter surveyed his options quickly. He had to get out of the zoo: wide-open spaces and too few people. He passed up the new Sixty-third Street crosstown subway station in favor of a more distant BMT station on Sixtieth. He raced across Fifth Avenue against the
light; a taxi driver was still yelling at him when he reached the subway entrance. In less than sixty seconds he was on an EE train bound for Queens.
As the cab in which Dr. Irving Roth was riding entered the park it was overtaken by two police cars going north toward Wollman Rink with yelpers wide open. Up ahead two more police cars were pulled off beside the road, dome lights flashing. There seemed to be an awful lot of blue uniforms swarming over a ridge of rock that overlooked the rink. And something else. Roth had only a glimpse of the tattered man lying flung out on his back, but a glimpse was enough. Something very serious had happened to Raymond Dunwoodie.
He sat back in a corner of the seat and reached for a handkerchief; there were beads of perspiration on his balding head. The cabbie slowed the pile of junk he was driving.
“I can let you off here; can’t get no closer because of all the cops, mister. Mister? Hey! This is what you wanted, isn’t it? The skating rink?”
“Keep going,” Roth said.
On the subway train Peter changed cars twice to make certain he hadn’t been followed; then he got off at the second stop across the river.
Only then did he feel safe enough to go into the john, where he was sick for half an hour, so sick he could scarcely hold his head up, doubly shaken by the murderous way his hopes had died. His resistance to adversity had fallen very low. Part of the trouble was fatigue, he’d been on the run and on the skids too long. But it was weakness too; he knew he’d been both weak and stupid hoping for so much, for a miracle from another victim, a burnt-out case like the world-renowned Raymond Dunwoodie.
Stupid, he thought, nourishing his anger, the only vital spark he could find. Stupid to go walking right up to him without making a thorough sweep of that area of the park. In a chance encounter they’d come so damned close. Childermass would be alerted now; after futile weeks of looking he’d be encouraged and impatient. How much had they spent so far, in pursuit of one man? A million? Childermass would spend another million if he had to. And, given his money and his manpower, he would take advantage of Peter’s obsession and in the end he would win. It was just a matter of time.
Peter left the john and went upstairs to cleaner air. He waited on the elevated platform for the city-bound train to come. He ate the last of the date-nut cookies Mrs. Roberta P. Edge had provided him. The cookies had kept his stomach quiet all day. Would she blame him when she heard the news about Raymond? Of course. And that might bring the police into this, if Childermass wasn’t quick to silence her with a visit and a couple of thousand dollars on the table.
Despite the shooting, it was possible that his moments with Raymond Dunwoodie hadn’t been wasted. From the way Raymond had talked there was another one, somewhere. A girl, perhaps about the same age as his son.
If she was as gifted as Raymond seemed to think then he had to find her. But he was hot, dangerously hot, and to get to the girl who had been taken away to one of the city’s hospitals he’d need help.
The sun was setting; it would be dark in half an hour. His train came and Peter got on.
Peter had no watch but he knew he had plenty of time to reach lower Manhattan despite the rush-hour crowds. At precisely seven o’clock in the Canal Street IRT station a public telephone would ring. For three nights in a row he hadn’t been there; he’d thought seriously of never getting in touch with her again, but tonight he knew he had to answer.
And, very likely, just by lifting the receiver, he would condemn someone else to die.
Chapter Four
Larue telephoned the Bellaver house from the lobby of Roosevelt Hospital. The housekeeper, Mrs. Busk, switched her to Katharine Bellaver’s secretary. Miss Chowenhill came on and asked rapid-fire questions. Where and when did it happen? How had Gillian acted prior to collapsing? Did she hit her head when she fell? And what was the name of the intern in charge? Find out, please, and have him call me in ten minutes at this number.
In the interval Miss Chowenhill made several calls, the first to Gillian’s pediatrician for a fast medical history. No, she was not allergic to any of the common broad-spectrum antibiotics. The second call was to the senior partner of a very old law firm that devoted seventy percent of its time to Bellaver family business. Gillian’s godfather. He cut short a partner’s meeting and was driven uptown to the hospital. She called the director of Roosevelt and left a message. She called one of the half-dozen finest neurosurgeons in the world.
By then a chief medical resident at Roosevelt was on another line. Miss Chowenhill gently made him aware of the fact that he had a very important patient on his hands, and that Gillian soon would be under the scrutiny of a team of specialists, as much talent as you could pack into one room.
The resident was cooperative and candid. He didn’t know what the hell it was. They couldn’t rule out anything at this point, including meningitis. Her fever had spiked to nearly 106, and she was having difficulty breathing. She’d had a small convulsion. They had packed her in ice and placed her in an oxygen tent. Gillian was on fluids and Tylenol and phenobarbital to inhibit further convulsions, and he recommended 1.2 million units of ampicillin immediately, if it wouldn’t disagree with her. Miss Chowenhill okayed the ampicillin.
After the resident rang off she consulted Katharine’s calendar for the day, skillfully read between the lines and located Katharine at the Greenwich Village apartment of a playwright she’d been seeing a lot of lately.
Avery Bellaver was more difficult to run to ground. He had no secretary and no routine. On occasion he had departed for places like Honduras or the Kaoko Veld without telling anyone he might be gone for a month. Miss Chowenhill tried the family foundation. She tried societies, clubs and colleagues. It took her an hour and a half to ferret him out of a dim subcellar of the Museum of Natural History on Central Park West.
On Bank Street in the Village Katharine thought briefly about trying to coax Howard Wrightnour back into bed for some kind of fast windup, which she desperately needed. But one look at him, slump-shouldered and smoking a cigarette at her feet, discouraged her without turning her off.
Howard was a large man with snappish black eyes and a khan’s mustache; women commonly eyed him and thought rape, but in truth he was a gentle and sensitive lover, perhaps cursed with too much sensitivity, because any kind of disturbance was fatal to his concentration. If one of his goldfish hiccupped at the wrong time, that was the end of it. Howard thought Katharine had taken the receiver off the telephone, and Katharine thought Howard—. He was sulking now, a little ashamed of himself.
When she was dressed she hugged and tongued him like a mother cat, bringing him out of his mood.
“I really have to run.”
“I hope Gillian is okay.”
“She didn’t seem to be feeling well this morning. But a fever that high—”
“It’s not so serious in someone her age. I mean it’s not necessarily—”
“I’ll call you. Don’t you think Brent’s reaction in the second act would be impotent fury?”
Howard pondered the suggestion and nodded.
“I’ll try it that way.”
Katharine smiled tensely and left him.
There were men in her life who excited her much more than Howard Wrightnour, but no one who needed her half as much. Thanks to her he would finish his play, the Big One to follow his off-Broadway critical success, the drama that would put Howard up there with O’Neill. If her own writing suffered while she was nurturing Howard, well, there was satisfaction in being midwife to a significant artistic event. She would have money in the production, of course, not the whole shot but enough to ensure that his play would be done in style.
Katharine drove her car, an indigo-blue Porsche with DPL plates, uptown to Fifty-ninth. Chowenhill had been guarded on the phone. Obviously Gillian was quite ill, and the ferocity with which she had been struck down alarmed Katharine. She left her car where it was handy, in some strictly forbidden area of the hospital grounds, and went in.
Five m
inutes later she was at the bedside of the semiconscious Gillian, who seemed not to recognize her.
“Good God,” Katharine said fervently. “What is it, Wally?”
The lawyer, whose name was Wallace Mockreed, put a hand on her shoulder.
“Can’t tell. If it’s a virus, they’ll find it in her blood. And they need a spinal.”
“As soon as possible,” the resident in neurophysiology said. “Her fever is down now, but that may be temporary.”
Katharine looked at him with a wide vacant smile.
“Spinal tap? I’d prefer to have Dr. McKinstry do that. He’s a specialist. I don’t want anyone else to touch her. He’s coming, isn’t he, Wally?”
“Right away. Don’t worry.”
“And where is Avery?”
“Coming.”
Katharine looked again at Gillian, at the half-open uncomprehending eyes flushed by the fever of unknown origin. For the first time she felt the full impact of what might be a tragedy. She then felt a little faint, but she lingered over details that were inexpressibly precious to her. Faint smudge of Gillian’s eye shadow; the tiny gold ring in one earlobe; the clean white center part of Gillian’s hair. The artistic hands of her child, those fine long fingers and—nibbled nails. How often had she complained, nagged, blown her stack? “Habit portrays character. Bad habits attract bad opinions.” Gillian went right on shredding her fingernails. A lot of things went through Katharine’s mind in a matter of moments. That night shortly before Gillian’s twelfth birthday when Gillian crept up to her room, balled underpants in one hand. Rusty red spot the size of a half dollar on the pants. “Is this it?” she’d asked, anxious and hopeful. Katharine thought about how much trouble it was to get Gillian to dress up, and how there was always something amiss with even her most stylish clothes: a smudge or a streak or an inexplicable wrinkle, buttons gone or dangling, so that she looked set-upon, or burgled.
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