“Well,” he said, “we all do what we must for our families.”
“In the name of God, this is true.”
The gathering on the sidewalk grew in size as more guests evacuated. Most of them were young tourists. Teagarden assumed some were participants of the nighttime yodeling contest in room 411.
Some firefighters milled about, talking on two-way radios and looking up at the smoke that poured from the one window. The first police patrol car approached from a block away. Almost immediately, the second car appeared from the opposite direction.
Time for me to be going now.
“I think I’ll go get something to eat while this mess gets fixed,” Teagarden said. He turned to exit the gathering crowd. “Good luck.”
“Call me Svetlana,” she called out. “Talk to you later.”
He did not look back, but only turned his head over his shoulder.
“Okay, Svetlana. Later.”
Wow.
Chapter Twenty-Six
A shady part of Madison Square Park that lay catty-corner to the hotel seemed a reasonable spot to settle for the time being.
Only half-a-block wide but two blocks long, the park was teeming with humanity at that time of morning and offered a good opportunity for Teagarden to hide in plain sight. He could watch the front of Madison Park Euro Lodge from a park bench and still have plenty of escape points, including side streets and subway stations. On the way, he ditched his army green cap, and bought a blue hat with a short floppy brim from a sidewalk vendor.
Clean shaven and with his face concealed by no more than a hat and military style sunglasses, he felt exposed and vulnerable. He considered returning to the Midtown library on the off chance that the Hasidim outfit was still in the men’s room trash bin. He quickly rejected the idea.
That would be stupid. On the other hand, everything else also seems stupid at this point.
He considered calling Sheriff Klumm and turning himself in, but rejected that, too. He would do that as the final move if nothing beneficial came from his decryption. He knew he’d be better off with Klumm than Harry. It was like when the Nazis considered surrendering, they preferred the Americans to the Soviets. And for good reason. The Soviets would kill them because of Stalingrad.
Teagarden watched Madison Park Euro Lodge from a distance as the patrol cars remained at the scene after the firefighters departed. That meant the mattress fire was extinguished, but he feared another type of fire was igniting in the lobby.
He entered the park’s double-gated dog run and found a bench, hoping to look as mindless as the dog owners who were mostly on cellphones or had their noses tucked into tablets. There were three times as many dogs as people. Two elderly, overfed Alaskan Malamutes took to him immediately with slobbering affection.
He gave rubbies to the big Malamutes. He withdrew the thirty-four pages, picked up an abandoned newspaper and copied the numbers from a random entry onto the broadsheet. For simplicity, he picked a relatively short passage. The page heading read 10906010. The entry read:
24-21-11-15-36-76-26-64
76-64-84-26-31-41-66-76-94-21-66-99-24-11-99-31-64-36-15-64-21-99-76-15-14-21-34-11-64-5-21-6-5-15-31-84-41-21-64-84-16-76-5-76-96-21-5-11-84-31-76-64-76-94-21-5-21-11-41-99-31-66-66-21-34-11-66-11-41-14-11-84-26-84-15-14-34-31-64-15-41-21-24-88-76-14-21-31-66-76-94-21-99-76-15-6-11-84
60/20/6010
He watched the sidewalk in front of the lodge. The police cars were departing. From the dog run he could see them muscle their way into traffic. One made an illegal U-turn and sped away. A few more minutes passed as the lumbering Malamutes bound with happiness from him to their owners to a bouncing tennis ball and back to him. Each time they came back to him for more petting, he obliged.
“Hey, boys. Hey, you two. What a pair of big ol’ happy boys you are. You’re just like my giant happy dog, Coconut.”
After saying it, he realized it had been less than two full days since his dog was killed. It seemed more like two decades. He went back to his scribbled numbers. Above each one, he jotted the known letter code for the first eight:
D E A R J O H N
24 21 11 15 36 76 26 64
He eyed the front of Madison Park Euro Lodge. Everything was calm. He considered phoning Svetlana from a public phone, wondering if she might be more interested in him than in the $50,000 reward.
Yeah, right. What were the odds of that? With her situation, no way she’d prefer me over the money.
He turned back to his scribble on the newsprint and filled in all the numbers known to stand for the letters D-E-A-R-J-O-H-N where they repeated:
D-E-A-R-J-O-H-N
O-N-84-H-31-41-66-O-94-E-66-99-D-A-99-31-N-J-5-N-E-99-O-5-14-E-34-A-N-R-E-6-R-5-31-84-41-E-N-84-16-O-R-O-96-E-R-A-84-31-O-N-O-94-E-R-E-A-41-99-31-66-66-E-34-A-66-A-41-14-A-84-H-84-5-14-34-31-64-5-41-E-24-84-O-14-E-31-66-O-94-E-99-O-5-6-A-84
60/20/6010
No word separations jumped out, though he guessed the final set of numbers were a date. And it partially matched the numerical heading that governed all entries for that particular page, which meant the topline heading was also a date of some sort.
That works.
He should have seen it earlier. The final numerical entry was a date written as month, day, and year, each in two digits. That meant the page heading was the same year, but written only as four digits, which, in turn, meant that each page accounted for one full year. The thirty-four separate pages represented a total of thirty-four years.
Well, that’s some progress.
He needed to feed his partial translation into deepdecipher.com to achieve complete decryption for at least that one entry. He again looked for the two big Malamutes, but something had happened. Instead of idle joyous bouncing in the dog run, they were at the opposite end, fixed at the gate, frantically angling for a better view of something in the direction of Madison Park Euro Lodge.
Teagarden strained to see what grabbed their attention.
The truck!
It was parked at the curb in front of the lodge, the same boxy, meanly efficient looking vehicle with overly big tires.
But it was worse than that.
The dogs were not fixed on the truck. They had seen, heard, and smelled something else. Three uniformed New York City police officers had entered the park at three different points. Each of them walked a police dog consumed with manic energy, barking and straining at their leashes like bloodhounds. It was as though they were all on the trail of a powerful scent.
His scent.
Oh crap!
Teagarden did the only thing that came to mind. He departed the dog run, intentionally leaving the double gates wide open.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
What followed was canine bedlam.
Instead of the dogs of war, it was more like the dogs of wild abandon. The two large Malamutes ran straight into the park to intercept and befriend the approaching police dogs. They were followed by an army of yammering, tail-waggers ranging in size from rat to warthog.
Teagarden was viciously cursed by panicked dog owners who frantically chased their fleeing babies. Two animal owners, one man and one woman, actually chased him several paces, taking fist swings at his back before thinking better of it and turning to pursue their beloved pets. Having no time to apologize or explain how guilty he felt, he hurried to a side street where he quickly saw that he had not escaped.
The officers spotted him while straining to hold their K-9’s. One of them pointed, yelled an order, and all three released their dogs.
That’s when Teagarden ceased being a smart fox. In that moment he became a dumb fox. He could think of only one thing.
And that one thing was as dumb as they come.
Run!
He bolted as hard as his creaky knees could manage. The nearby presence of a subway entrance helped. Once underground, it was dumb luck that a train was entering the station at that moment.
Paying the far
e never occurred to him, but getting over the turnstile wasn’t pretty. There was no way he was going to jump it like an ordinary fare beater. His lousy knees forced him to pause, hoist his weight to sit on the turnstile edge, pull up his legs, spin his butt, and delicately slide over to stand down on the opposite side.
The police dogs had no such limitations. All three were in the station and plowing under the turnstiles as the train doors opened. Their momentary confusion amid the waiting crowd gave Teagarden enough time to move down the platform by one car-length.
As he entered the train, he saw the K-9 trio casually stepping aboard the adjacent car as though it were their daily commute. In the crush of passengers, the conductor must not have noticed because he closed the doors and the train pulled from the station before the pursuing cops caught up.
Unbelievable. If anyone ever makes a movie about this, no one will think this scene remotely possible.
It was a downtown N-train. N as in nuts. N as in nasty.
The next stop was Union Square at 14th Street, a large meandering station with dozens of tunnels and exits. Surviving until the next stop was his only hope. He hastened forward, away from the car with the dogs. Despite the deafening noise, he could hear muffled screams of startled passengers in the adjacent dog car. Teagarden pictured the animals trotting up and down the aisle, sniffing everyone, searching for a scent that matched his.
He yanked the heavy sliding door to cross into the next car to put two car lengths between him and the dogs.
So far, so good.
He kept going, elbowing his way past everyone, desperately trying to put one more subway car between him and the K-9s.
How is this going to work when I do exit? The fox never escapes.
The N-Train. N as in never.
He stepped on an elderly man’s foot.
“Hey, pal!”
He stiffly bumped the shoulder of a man blocking the aisle.
“Yo, watch ya ass, man.”
He snagged a woman’s purse, bumped a baby carriage, and swung wide around a beggar playing the accordion.
Keep them doggies movin’…
He crossed into the next car as the train pulled into Union Square station, putting him a total of three cars away from the K-9 team.
The steel wheels squealed as they ground to a halt. Behind the sliding doors, he stood directly opposite one of the many exit tunnels leading to more tunnels and other subway connections.
Okay, just cross the platform. Four simple strides. That’s all I have to do.
Before the doors opened, he realized the dogs were not his biggest problem. In anticipating the fugitive’s flight path, the N-platform at Union Square Station was swarming with police.
Keep it together.
When the doors swung open, he raced across the platform to the next tunnel, nearly brushing shoulders with two uniformed cops who failed to see him because their attention was diverted by the sudden clamor. Three cars away, the three dogs did a simultaneous bolt from the train. Once on the platform, they furiously sniffed the odor-filled air, checking billions of floating scent molecules. They had probably learned his scent from his pillow at Madison Park Euro Lodge. Now, their powerful nostrils needed only a single atom that belonged to forty-nine-year-old math professor Sam Teagarden, Ph.D., Columbia University, to let them know they detrained at the proper station.
But dogs do not belong on subway platforms.
As they inspected the crowd, the passengers noisily fled and cowered, giving each K-9 a wide berth. The chorus of passenger fear was predictable: “Oh my God,” “Dogs, there’s mad dogs here,” “Look out,” “Yo, who let the dogs out?” “Help, I’m afraid of dogs…”
It was a good diversion. He didn’t make it happen the way he had at the dog run, but it was just as useful.
As cops rushed to take control of the free-roving K-9 team, Teagarden made his getaway. He strode through the first exit tunnel, turned and strode through another, down a staircase, up another staircase, around the corner, and up to the surface. Guessing his blue floppy hat was key to his description of the moment, he ditched it in a trash bin.
At an exit on the west side of Union Square Park, he slowly ascended the steps to the shaded urban green. He pretended to be looking at his cellphone, which had been turned off since Sunday morning. With downward cast eyes, he peripherally scanned his immediate surroundings on the surface. Grass, benches, pedestrians, traffic. It all gradually came into view.
He almost sensed it before he saw it. The truck with big tires. It was cruising the eastern border of the park, not fifty feet from where he stood in his blue hat with the floppy rim. Teagarden gave a quick glance at the driver. It was the same man, about sixty years old, tall, receding hairline, thick surgery scar on his upper lip.
Teagarden knew it was micro-seconds before he’d be spotted. As casually as he could, he turned and descended back into Union Square Station where he caught an uptown train to 34th Street.
Thirty-fourth Street. That’s appropriate, because I really do need a miracle.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
He avoided Macy’s Department Store with its security staff and array of Big Brother cameras. Instead, he visited several smaller stores across 34th Street, with lurid neon signs and dirty windows.
In a discount cosmetics shop, he bought hair coloring and cotton balls. From the eyeglass vendor he purchased reading glasses that sat on the middle of his nose and hung by an idiot chain. His last stop was Galaxy Sport and Apparel World, so crammed with racks and jammed stacks of clothing that shoppers could barely maneuver. In such a store, he figured the owner wouldn’t care if he cut the tags off the clothes he purchased to wear them out. Nor would anyone care if he applied spray dye to his hair in the changing room. Wouldn’t care, that is, so long as he didn’t steal anything and paid in cash.
So that’s what he did.
He bought a pair of off-the-rack gray dress slacks, blue dress shirt, red tie, navy sports coat and black leather shoes. In the changing room he ditched everything except underwear and changed into his new clothes. He tinted his hair and eyebrows with gray-colored dye and stuffed cotton into his cheeks to make his face plump. The reading glasses rounded out the effect.
From 34th Street, he walked north to one of the best kept secrets in Times Square.
The Argonaut was the only hotel in the famed area to retain an air of old-world New York City cheesiness. The new hotels were overpriced, high-rise monstrosities. In the last forty years, the older ones that hadn’t been torn down had been remade bigger, and then bigger yet again. It was all done to maintain appeal for a new generation of tourist that injected millions of dollars each day into the New York economy while visiting the Disneyfied crossroads of the world. It had to be done. In the old days, Times Square had tilted so far in the wrong direction, that it violated everyone’s comfort zone except muggers and workers in the porn industry.
Yet some businesses still clung to the old ways. The Argonaut was one of them. Managed by a close-knit family that stubbornly resisted change, it was small, reasonably clean and rich with throwback character reaching well beyond the wild and wooly days of the 1970s. It was the same hotel lobby where a Sicilian mobster was shot dead by another mobster in the 1950s, where soldiers were bivouacked in the 1940s while awaiting the ship that would take them to European battlefields, and where Broadway glitterati gathered in the corner bar in the 1930s to celebrate or skewer the latest stage premiere. It was the same hotel where he had stayed the previous week during the math conference at the nearby Marriott Marquis and where he spent one wonderful evening with Cynthia.
The lobby smelled of mothballs. There were two musty old plush sofas and an ancient mirror so faded with age that it returned only fuzzy reflections. The men’s room had a lengthy trough-style urinal so stained and chipped it could have been a hand-me-down from ancient Greece. Next to the brown shellacked coat room was a bank of ancient landline payphone
s, each requiring four quarters before yielding a dial tone.
Confident of his new business-style appearance, Teagarden stepped to the last phone stall, picked up the receiver, and deposited the coins.
“Madison Park Euro Lodge,” the voice said. He let the pause speak for itself. “Madison Park Euro Lodge,” she said again.
“Hello, Svetlana. This is Sam Teagarden.” This time, the pause was hers, which told him she recognized his real name.
“Oh.”
“How are you, Svetlana?”
“Fine.”
“That’s good. Listen, I was wondering. May I swing by this evening for a glass of wine in your room?” Another pause. “Svetlana? Are you there?”
“Yes. I am here. Please do come by. I work only one shift today. How about six o’clock in room 413. Or if you prefer—”
“How long would it take, Svetlana?”
“What do you mean?”
“What do I mean? Well, I don’t mean how long would it take for me to arrive. I don’t mean how long would it take for us to get acquainted. I don’t mean how long would it take for us to copulate. What I mean is, how long would it take for you to collect the fifty thousand after I got arrested?”
Another pause.
“How long do you think, Svetlana?”
“Mr. Samuels…”
“It’s Teagarden. You know my real name. However, you should continue calling me Samuels on this phone call because it’s safer for both of us.”
Flight of the Fox Page 9