There was no point in trying to elude Snick. That would make her even more suspicious-if she suspected him. If she were not suspicious of him, she would be made so by his unroutine behavior. He would just go to his apartment and wait for Castor. Or perhaps wander around the neighborhood.
The cab turned east from Fifth Avenue onto Washington Square North. Tingle, sitting on the right side, looked out across Washington Square. He said loudly, "Stop!"
Startled, the driver said, "Huh!" She pulled over to the curb through the bicyclers. She turned around and said, "Changed your mind?"
"We'll get going in a minute."
Thirty feet south of the sidewalk was a large oak tree. Under its shade were some tables and chairs, all occupied by chessplayers. One of the intent garners was a stocky man in a black robe. His profile was aquiline, his eyebrows were enormously thick, and his red beard was long and uncut. On top of his red hair was a little black round cap called, if Tingle remembered correctly, a yarmulke.
"Gril!" Tingle said. Or was it Caird speaking?
For a minute, Tingle watched him. Gril seemed so unlike a fugitive from the law. If he was tensing for the inevitable hand on his shoulder, listening for the heavy footsteps, watching out of the corners of his eyes for the approaching shadows, he did not show it. Chess seemed to be his only concern. He watched the pieces as intently and motionlessly as a praying mantis who had just seen a caterpillar.
Tingle was surprised that Gril had escaped arrest. And then he realized why the man had been free so long. The organics would be looking for someone like Gril but not too much like him. They would assume that Gril had shaved his beard, abandoned his yarmulke, stained his face darker and put on contact lenses of a color other than green. But crafty Gril had remained an obvious Orthodox Hebrew. His disguise was himself.
"I'll just walk from here," Tingle said. He stuck the ID point into the hole so that he would have a record of the mileage to compare with that of the cab. If someone was tracking him, and that person questioned him later about his stopping there, Tingle would say that he had gotten out for exercise. That was the only excuse he could think of for leaving the cab. No, it was not. A chess enthusiast, he wanted to watch the players for a while. After all, he had played in Washington Square many times before. Some of Manhattan's best were there.
Tingle strolled up to a table near Gril's and watched for a while. After stopping at another table, he went to his real destination. He felt a little strange looking into Gril's small green eyes. He was not recognized, yet he knew Gril well. Fairly well, anyway.
He could not keep from glancing up through the branches. A sky-eye, if it was watching him, could not see him or Gril now.
After a minute, during which neither player moved his pieces Tingle walked away. He had no reason to speak to Gril. The impulse to warn him had sped away, as it should. What was Gril to him, today, at least?
He walked slowly through the shouting and screaming children at play, the mimes, the carts with nuts, fruit, and vegetables for sale, the vendors with their overhead cargo of brightly colored balloons, the blaring soapbox orators baring their singularly singed psyches, the tumblers and acrobats, the magicians plucking rabbits and roses from the air, the unkempt and foul-mouthed barbs (Wednesday's minnies), and the always-there plainclothes organics. The latter had the indefinable but obvious-to him-expression they wore when among civilians.
Seeing them made him suddenly aware of the weight of the weapon in his shoulderbag. If he were stopped for some reason and searched ... He shuddered. It was not wise to carry the gun with him. Yet he had to because he might find Castor.
Thinking of Castor seemed to conjure him.
Tingle faltered in his stride.
First, Gril. Now, yes, there was no doubt about it.
Castor was walking along fifty feet ahead of him on his right on a path that would meet his.
He renewed his former pace. And he faltered again.
To his left, about seventy feet ahead, also on a collision course, was a woman wearing a brown jockey cap and a brown robe decorated with green looped crosses. Her shoes were bright green.
Snick.
Chapter 13
All things throughout the universe are connected, but things similar are more closely connected than others.
Tingle, Gril, Castor, and Snick were more or less tightly bound together by the unlawful acts of three of them. And here they were, pulled together in Washington Square by what might be called the law of criminal gravity. They were like planets attracted by forces that, in this case, defied the statistics of probability. All, except Gril, falling toward a common center.
However, human beings were not unconscious forms of matter like planets. They could decide to leave their orbits.
Castor was the first to do so. Looking to his left, he saw Tingle. His eyes widened; his pace was checked. And then he ran. God does not run; He is all-powerful and fears nothing. Just now, however, He fled like a human, not like one who could float or fly or make Himself invisible or zap His enemy with lightning or a quick case of the creeping crud.
His flight was a break for Tingle. Snick had turned to watch the tall thin Castor, a bipedal gazelle running as if a cheetah were after him. Knowing that Snick would turn to see who was chasing Castor, Tingle stepped behind an oak tree. While pretending to be relaxed, a loafer leaning against the trunk, he watched the plainclothes organics. Some of them had seen Castor, but they apparently thought that he was a jogger. Gril was still at the table.
The expected shrilling from Snick's whistle did not come. The plainclothes kept their indifferent but subtly watchful attitudes. Unable to curb his curiosity any longer, Tingle peeked around the tree. Castor had vanished around one of the block buildings on West Fourth Street, south of the square. Snick had her back to Tingle, her hands on her hips, her head slightly cocked. He could visualize her look of puzzlement. Why in hell hadn't she had the conditioned reflex of all organics and pursued the man? Perhaps it was because she was on a mission and she was not going to deviate from it. The running man was no concern of hers.
He groaned. Wrong again. Snick had started trotting south on Thompson Street. Presently, she turned right on West Third Street and was hidden by the building there. She was fcdlowing Castor.
Tingle bit his lip, looked at Gril, who was still playing chess, and stepped out from the shade of the oak. The sun wrapped a smotheringly hot blanket around him, but he felt cold inside himself. What to do? He did not want to run into Snick because he did not want to be associated in her mind with Castor. In any event, he could account for his being here. His apartment building was only a few blocks away.
He did not run, though he walked swiftly. If the organics in the square saw three people, one after the other, start running, they might be curious enough to investigate. On reaching the corner of the building at which Snick had turned on Thompson Street and West Third, he went around it, too. Neither the chased nor the chaser was in sight. When he got to Sullivan Street, he saw Snick, her back to him, going around the building on Bleecker Street. Since there was no one else on the street, he ran after her.
Before getting to Bleecker Street, he slowed down. When he got to the corner building, he stopped and peered around it. Snick, now trotting, was just rounding the corner at MacDou gal Street. Evidently, Castor had gone north. Tingle ran west on Bleecker and stopped at MacDougal. He stuck his head around the corner until Snick had turned left onto Minetta Lane. Meanwhile, he was hoping that none of the neighbors would notice him and his curiosity-arousing behavior.
Reaching Minetta Lane, he paused long enough to make sure that Snick was not in sight. He went west until he came to the house at the end of the block. Tingle hid behind a tree, his head out far enough from the trunk for one eye to see Snick. She was still trotting, her robe sticking to her back with sweat, on the canal road. He waited until she had gone around Jeff Caird's house on Bleecker before he stepped out from the tree.