Scimitar

by Ed McBain

  “Mmm, yes,” he said, “but this is Monday, you know, and I’m very busy.”

  “I know I was abrupt.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t say you were abrupt,” he said. “I’d say you hung up on me.”

  “Yes, I suppose I did.”

  “Mmm,” he said.

  He was walking as though his shoes were on fire, long strides scorching the pavement. She was having trouble keeping up with him.

  “But I was in the middle of something,” she said.

  “Mmm.”

  “I’m sorry. I really am.”

  “That’s quite all right,” he said, sounding not the least bit mollified. “Why were you coming to see me today?”

  “Well … I’ve lost him again.”

  “I see. Your young man.”

  “I thought I’d found him, but then he … well, he went off without telling me where I could reach him and …” She shrugged. “He’s disappeared again.”

  “Something of a magician, eh?”

  “Well …”

  “Does his little disappearing act at irregularly spaced intervals.”

  “I guess he’s shy,” she said defensively.

  “I guess he must be.”

  They were walking through heat that seemed three-dimensional. Everywhere around them, people moved along the sidewalks as if in slow motion. The homeless lay in torpor against the walls of the buildings, dressed for the summer heat in shorts and tank-top shirts. They passed one man who was picking at scabs on his legs, passed a woman with rat’s-nest hair piled high on her head, wearing a voluminous skirt, a dirty, white, long-sleeved blouse, and black high-topped sneakers; she was sitting on a flattened cardboard carton, reading The New York Times. Elita saw the look of disgust on Geoffrey’s face, and suddenly wondered how this city must appear to foreigners.

  “But on the phone Saturday,” she said, “you told me …”

  “I scarcely had an opportunity to tell you anything,” he said.

  “I said I was sorry,” she reminded him.

  “Mmm,” he said.

  “I am.”

  “Mmm.”

  “You told me … you were starting to tell me … well, I had the impression you’d located him.”

  “Your impression was wrong.”

  They were approaching Alexander’s now. She had never particularly liked the sleazy stretch of pavement that ran past Alexander’s and Bloomingdale’s on the next corner, but now—in the presence of this somewhat stuffy representative of the Crown—it looked particularly sordid. Geoffrey seemed to be the only man on Third Avenue who was wearing a suit. The others were wearing shirts, long-sleeved or short, collared or T. She was suddenly glad she’d worn a dress. Cotton, to be sure. With sandals. But nonetheless a proper dress, rather than the shorts and halters on many of the women moving sluggishly along the avenue. Geoffrey moved along the sidewalk like a royal frigate steaming past tugboats in a crowded harbor. He was beginning to annoy her. The way he moved so goddamn fast, the slightly superior and supercilious look on his handsome face, as if he were smelling something particularly noisome and was merely too polite to hold his nose.

  “You said something about being happy to …”

  “Yes, I had some information about the fellow,” Geoffrey said. “But I did not indicate in any way whatever …”

  “What information?” she asked.

  They were on the corner of Fifty-ninth and Third now, waiting for the light to change. The moment it did, he sprinted for the opposite curb. She almost tripped trying to keep up with him. A cab driver blasted his horn at them even though the light was nowhere near turning against them.

  “Will you for Christ’s sake slow down!” she shouted.

  “I’m late,” he said, and glanced at his watch without really noting the time and without breaking stride.

  “Where are you going?” she asked. “The coronation?”

  “Close but no cigar,” he said.

  “What information do you have about him?” she asked.

  “Krishnan Hemkar,” he said. “Doctor of Medicine.”

  “Yes,” she said. She had already told him this. It was nothing new.

  “There was nothing on him in our computer, British mother or not,” Geoffrey said. “But you said you’d met on a train coming from Los Angeles, so I …”

  “Yes.”

  “… called our consulate there and asked them to conduct a routine paper chase …”

  “Oh good,” she said.

  He broke his pace for only an instant, giving her the look an exasperated older brother might have given a dumb kid sister who’d floated his stamp collection in the kitchen sink. Their eyes locked, blue on brown. He began walking again, even more swiftly, it seemed.

  “There is, in fact, a Dr. Hemkar in residence at a hospital in Los Angeles. A call there netted a home address and a telephone number. I can let you have those,” he said, “in case you’d like to make further inquiries yourself.”

  “That was very kind of you,” she said.

  “What was?”

  “Calling the hospital.”

  “My colleague in Los Angeles made the call, not me.”

  “Either way, it was very kind.”

  They were waiting for the light to change on the corner of Fifty-ninth and Park.

  “You have to go the moment it turns green,” he said. “If you expect to get past the median and all the way to the other side.”

  “I know,” she said.

  “I despise Park Avenue,” he said.

  “I live on Park Avenue,” she said.

  “Then you should make it narrower,” he said, and then, “There it goes,” and bolted off the sidewalk. She ran after him, past the median divider, onto the opposite curb.

  “If you’ll let me have the number,” she said, “I won’t bother you further.”

  She sounded very British. She guessed it was contagious.

  “It’s back at the office,” he said.

  “Couldn’t someone …?”

  “I was ready to give it to you on Saturday, but you hung up on me.”

  Still sulking, she thought. The stupid ass.

  “Well, isn’t there anyone who …?”

  “Lucy would never find it.” He saw her puzzled look. “My so-called secretary.”

  “I really would like to get started on this.”

  “Yes, I realize. But I do have this other business to attend to, you see.”

  “Maybe if you told me where it was …”

  “Quite out of the question. Besides, I don’t know where I put it, exactly. I’d have to look for it. You’re fortunate I didn’t just toss it in the wastebasket when you hung up on …”

  “Look, are you going to carry that to the grave?”

  “I beg your pardon.”

  “I mean, get off it, okay? I’ve apologized six times already, do you want me to slit my throat?”

  “We’re here,” he said.

  They were standing in front of the Plaza Hotel.

  The ASPCA had taken away all the cats, but the place still stunk of their piss. Santorini opened all the windows the minute he got in the apartment, leaving the door open—CRIME SCENE sign still tacked to it—so’s he could get a crosscurrent of air. But it was so fuckin’ hot today you prolly couldn’t even find a breeze at the beach, which is where he wished he was instead of sniffing around a dead lady’s whatnots. He’d had to go up the One-Nine to get the fuckin’ key to the padlock on the door, and a fat lot of good that done him. He’d been here for almost an hour now, going through every closet and drawer in the place, but so far he’d come up with nothing. Truth was, he didn’t know what the fuck he was looking for.

  If this really was some kind of spy shit here, where was the shortwave radio and the little book of codes? Where was the list of safe houses? Where were the dozen passports in different names? Where was the little vial of poison you had to swallow if you got captured by the enemy? So far, all he’d found were dres
ses and skirts and sweaters and socks and bras and panties and overcoats and shoes and checkbooks with the lady’s name, Angela Cartwright, printed on them, and some letters from somebody with the same last name in Liverpool, England, probably a relative, Jesus, it stunk in here.

  He decided to go through the lady’s garbage.

  Going through the garbage was something most cops hated doing, which is why he was guessing nobody from the One-Nine had yet gone through it. You could tell by just a casual glance at anybody’s garbage whether or not it had been sifted. This garbage did not look as if it had been touched by human hands since the time it was placed here in the pail under the sink, whenever the fuck that had been. The lady was already dead since Thursday, and here it was Saturday already, who knew how long the oldest of the garbage had been sitting here? Cop hands, neither, for that matter. Just one look at this shit under the sink and Santorini knew it was pristine, so to speak. Between the stink of the garbage and the stink of the cat piss, he wished he had a gas mask.

  He got down to work.

  Top layer first, because usually the top layer was the closest in time to the victim’s hour of departure from this earth, may she rest in peace, he thought. Peeling off all the shit layer by layer, studying it, placing it on the newspapers he’d spread on the kitchen floor, this was some terrific job here. If the pay wasn’t so good—gimmee a break, willya?—he’da left the job in a minute, become a spy himself, go to bed all over the world with exotic girls trying to pry secrets from him. All over the world. Istanbul, wherever that was. Lots of spies came from Istanbul.

  Going through the shit bit by bit, wanting to pinch his nose together, but his hands were all dirty already. Then going through it all over again, wondering how much money spies made, thinking if this limey lady here in this apartment was a spy, sword on her tit or not, he would eat all this garbage. Spies were supposed to be glamourous. The stuff in this lady’s closet and drawers reminded him of what his Aunt Christina used to wear. And the leftovers in this lady’s garbage pail were the kind somebody with no imagination at all would eat, weren’t spies supposed to be inventive? Creative even?

  Was plain yoghurt creative? Empty container of it, coffee grinds clinging to the inside of it, Jesus. Half a squeezed grapefruit, covered with mildew. A rancid stick of butter. Or margarine. Or whatever the hell it was. When was the last time anybody emptied this garbage pail? At least a dozen empty cans of cat food. Seafood Delight, and Beef and Cheese Mix, and Liver and Eggs, the cans stinking worse than all the other garbage and the cat piss combined. Crumpled restaurant menus, undoubtedly slid under her door and never making it past the kitchen. Unopened junk mail, did she used to take her mail into the kitchen and open it at the counter here? Empty bottle of cheap white wine. Was the lady a wino? Spies drank absinthe, didn’t they? And smoked cigarettes in long black holders. Crumpled piece of pink paper torn from the phone pad on the counter, under the wall phone there. He smoothed out the sheet of paper.

  A telephone number was written on it in pencil:

  And under that:

  Well, well, he thought.

  The Baroque Room was gorgeous.

  While Geoffrey talked to a tall gangly man from the Canadian Consulate, Elita wandered the room aimlessly, luxuriating in its grandeur. Geoffrey—who sometimes sounded as if he had a wad of marbles in his mouth—had introduced the man as Sully or Solly or Selly Colbert. She learned his full name only when he handed her his card: Selwyn Colbert, Jr. Selly sounded totally American. He was wearing a dark suit, shirt and tie.

  The floor was covered wall-to-wall with a thick carpet that featured an oval floral design in its center, surrounded by a royal blue field studded with a smaller flower pattern. The carpet’s border was ivory highlighted with blue and scattered with the same floral motif. At the far side of the room, windows hung with darker blue drapes admitted sunshine and showed glimpses of summer green in the park across the street. Ceiling chandeliers echoed themselves in wall mirrors, casting a glow as golden as the sun’s. A huge painting of a landscape hung on the wall right-angled to the windows. Even now—when uncovered tables showed only bare wood in sharp contrast to the chairs around them, upholstered and tufted in white—the room had an ambiance of serenity and dignity. She visualized herself in a long shimmering gown, dancing to the music of an orchestra with a violin section.

  They were going over some sort of seating plan.

  She overheard Selly saying he could see no problem about seating him—whoever that might be—to the left of Mrs. Thatcher; they were good friends. Besides, protocol definitely dictated that Mr. De Gortari should have the seat to the right of Mrs. Mulroney, and he was certain the U.S. people would have no objection to that. So, for all intents and purposes—and Geoffrey could report this to his people—Mrs. Thatcher would be seated exactly as had been originally planned, to the left of Mr. Mulroney, with her pal sitting right beside her—with his hand on her knee under the table, no doubt. Selly smiled to indicate he was making a little joke. Geoffrey did not return the smile. Selly sighed, rolled up the seating plan he’d been showing to Geoffrey, and then shook hands with him. Passing Elita on his way out, he told her how nice it was to have met her, and then loped out of the room.

  Geoffrey took an inordinately long time studying the landscape painting on the wall, seemingly lost in thought. At last, he walked to where Elita was impatiently waiting for him.

  “Care for some lunch?” he asked.

  “I was hoping we could go back to your office for the …”

  “The price one must pay,” he said, and grinned like a shark.

  When the telephone rang at a quarter past one that Monday afternoon, the Balinese girl picked up the receiver and said, “SeaCoast Limited, good afternoon.”

  “Good afternoon,” a man’s voice said, “this is Michael Rubin at Epsilon Chemical Supplies?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “In Meriden, Connecticut?”

  She had been prepped for a possible call.

  “Yes, Mr. Rubin,” she said, “how may I help you?”

  “May I speak to Mr. Pierce, please? Hamilton Pierce.”

  “Out of the office just now,” she said. “May I be of assistance, sir?”

  “I wanted someone in your Order Department,” Rubin said.

  “This is the Order Department,” she said.

  “Well … last Friday afternoon, a Mr. Pierce placed an order for five hundred milliliters of isopropylamine … with one of our sales-persons, Mrs. Carpenter.”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Can you tell me what sort of firm SeaCoast is?”

  “We do research, sir.”

  “What sort of research?”

  “I’m not really certain, sir, this is the Order Department.”

  “Does Mr. Pierce work in the Order Department?”

  “Yes, sir, he’s head of the department. Was there someone else you’d like to speak to?”

  “Do you have a Safety Director?”

  “No, sir, we’re just a small firm. But perhaps you’d like to speak to Mr. Hackett, sir. He’s our executive vice president in charge of research and development.”

  “Yes, put him on, please.”

  “Just one moment, sir.”

  She put him on hold, buzzed Arthur’s inner office and said, “It’s Epsilon Chemicals on five. A Mr. Rubin. Wants to know what sort of research we do.”

  “I’ll take it,” Arthur said, and pressed the five button on the base of his phone. “Martin Hackett here,” he said. “How may I help you?”

  “Mr. Hackett, good afternoon, this is Michael Rubin. We had an order last Friday from your Mr. Pierce …”

  “Yes, sir, Hamilton Pierce.”

  “Yes. For five hundred milliliters of isopropylamine. As you know, this is a highly flammable substance …”

  “Oh yes.”

  “And it’s our policy to …”

  “Of course.”

  “… check with the ordering entity to learn
how the substance will be used.”

  “SeaCoast is at present conducting experiments in toxicity.”

  Exactly what Sonny had advised him to say.

  “Of isopropylamine?” Rubin asked, sounding surprised.

  “Of a great many reagents,” Arthur said. “Isopropylamine is only one of them.”

  “What are some of the others?”

  “Aliphatic and aromatic amines, for the most part …”

  Listing the classes of compounds Sonny had supplied.

  “… and also some pyridines,” Arthur said. “That is, a wide variety of tests on nitrogen-containing organic compounds.”

  “I see,” Rubin said. “Well, thank you, sir, I appreciate your time. I notice there’s a one-day FedEx request on this …”

  “You mean it hasn’t gone out yet?” Arthur said.

  “Well, normally, sir …”

  “When will it go out?”

  “You’ll have it tomorrow morning before eleven.”

  “I hope so,” Arthur said, and hung up.

  He was flirting, and she was fidgeting.

  They were lunching in the Palm Court, downstairs in the Plaza’s lobby. Violinists were playing. Geoffrey was telling her how exciting he found his work in the foreign service. Every time he said the word foreign, she realized that to him America was a foreign country. He told her that only recently he’d been visited by a homicide detective looking into the murders of two supposed British subjects, and that …

  “That is exciting,” she said.

  She was thinking, Let’s finish this goddamn lunch and go get Sonny’s phone number.

  “… both of them were tattooed,” Geoffrey said, and rolled his eyes.

  “My,” Elita said.

  “Under their breasts,” Geoffrey said, and wondered if he was being too bold, raising the subject of tattooed breasts over turkey and tomato sandwiches on toast. With iced tea. He decided to abandon this possibly offensive conversational line and switched the topic instead to the impending visit of Mrs. Thatcher, which was another exciting aspect of work in the foreign service.

  “That’s why I came here today, in fact,” he explained. “To check on the seating arrangements. There’s a certain protocol that must be followed to the letter with heads of state.”