I avoided the elevator in case Abdel was monitoring it. I raced down the stairs in case the fat woman recovered quickly enough to get to her telephone and sound the alarm, then slowed my pace as I approached the street.
There was no Abdel, and no alarm.
I found a drug store and called Erikson. "My guess is that she's out of the picture now," I concluded after telling him about Talia's departure.
"If that really was her passport you saw, you're probably right. Would she head for Bayak's place?"
"Not likely. He wants her underground now. Out of the country, even. Our little bird has flown and I'll bet it's the Turk's intention that she keep right on flying."
"I'll put out word to every transportation terminal with emphasis on the airports," Erikson said. "Meantime you'd better get over here, Earl. It sounds like we're getting too damned close to the payoff, and we still don't know what the score is."
I left the drug store and headed for his office.
McLaren was waiting with Erikson when I arrived. He gave me a sardonic grin as he stared at the lump that still persisted behind my ear. Erikson wasted no time on levity. "We've located the girl at Kennedy," he said without preliminary. "She purchased a one-way ticket to Damascus on a flight that leaves in three hours."
"And I suppose you'll just stand around and let her take off?" I said. Neither man answered. "Why are you letting her leave the country?"
"Don't you read the papers?" McLaren inquired. "It's a free country."
"We're watching her," Erikson chimed in.
"Watching her? What the hell good is that? We know we're getting close to the time of this hijack, but what do we know about it? Not even the location. I don't think the girl knows everything about Bayak's business, but she damn sure knows more about it than we do. And she could tell us."
McLaren's eyes were upon my face. "Could?"
"Could be made to."
"Like?"
"Like pick her up, grab her hypodermic, sit her down in a corner until the skinful of dope she's carrying now evaporates, and in six or eight hours she'll tell you her sins back to her fifth birthday."
McLaren grimaced at Erikson. "You do come up with these direct-action types."
"Give me an alternative if we're going to get anywhere with this thing," I challenged them.
The office was quiet for a moment. "There's Doc Walsh's private clinic in Queens," McLaren suggested. "Ol' Doc owes us a favor or three." He was watching Erikson. "I could have the girl paged at the flight desk, asked to step into the airline-terminal office, and whisko- Long Island via very private car."
"It sounds like a winner to me," I said.
"Well, chief?" McLaren said. "Can do. Can do easily if you say the magic word."
"I don't like it," Erikson frowned. "If anything went wrong, the UN angle alone would splash us on every front page in the country. Let alone the mysterious disappearance of a damned attractive girl."
"You think Bayak's going to the police?" I argued. "No way. If you don't step in, Talia may never reach Damascus, anyway. She's expendable in the Turk's plan right now." I waited for that to sink in. "You might be the means of keeping her alive." I thought of Chryssie spread-eagled to the four corners of the bed in the tenement flat. I still hadn't raised a hand to the man who had authorized that.
"Thanks for appealing to my better nature," Erikson said. "What would your role be if we did this?"
"I'd borrow a.38 from you, hustle over to Bayak's penthouse, and ask him what the hell he thought he was doing when he had Abdel put the chop on me. It's what he'll expect to hear. Then business as usual."
There was another silence. "Somehow the thought of you running loose over there with a.38 does nothing for my blood pressure," Erikson said at last.
"Bayak knows he needs me," I said. "I'm the only one still wired into this operation. Sure, he's planning on stopping my clock, but not until I've pulled his marshmallows out of the fire."
"Wish to God we knew what the marshmallows were," McLaren grumbled.
"Give me the gun and I'll get going," I suggested. "One thing I should have mentioned before. Bayak must be paying off everyone in that building. His safe has been blown once, and I put two bullets into the air there the other day, yet he's never been asked to leave."
"We'd tip him off if we tried to shake anything out of the apartment-building people now," McLaren said. "Later, maybe."
Erikson gestured toward the hidden room. McLaren went toward it, activated the concealed latch, and disappeared through the revealed door in the wall. He was back at once and handed me a well-oiled.38 and two clips. I loaded one and dropped the other into my jacket pocket. "Like you're getting to be expensive to keep in armament," McLaren said to me. I ignored him.
"Have her picked up," Erikson said to McLaren. "But with discretion, damn it. Handle it yourself. I've no desire to have my hide nailed up on a barn wall."
"Nothing to it, chief," McLaren said confidently. "You coming out to the clinic when we get her settled?"
"I'll be there. I want to talk to you a minute, Earl." He waited until McLaren left the office. "What do you know about the magazine office next door to us?"
"Only that it's there," I said innocently. "Why?"
"Two detectives burst in here past Jock this afternoon with a woman who screeched hysterically in my face that I was raping her daughter. I can tell you it was damned embarrassing. When we got it straightened out that it wasn't me, the troupe went down the hall and played the same bill next door."
"Girls will be girls," I remarked. "Are you regretting a lost opportunity?" Erikson snorted. "How do I get in touch with you out in Queens if necessary?"
He unlocked a drawer in his desk, took out a metal box which he also unlocked, found an address book, and wrote down an address and telephone number. "Don't overreach yourself with these people," he cautioned me as he returned the metal box to his desk.
"I'm all right as long as they think they're dealing with the mobster you set me up to be," I said. "See you."
I left the office three minutes after McLaren and took a cab uptown. In the private elevator on the way up to the penthouse I had an unpleasant thought. If Abdel had been outside Talia's apartment, my mysterious disappearance could have made Bayak suspicious. I had to act more suspicious than he did.
When the elevator doors parted, it wasn't Abdel who stood there. It was a smaller man I'd never seen before. He had a gun in his hand, but I brushed past him as though I didn't even see it. Bayak was sitting at the far end of the sunken living room, his pudgy hands steepled in front of his face and his shrewd black eyes studying me from above his pressed-together fingertips.
"Where the hell is that big tub of lard, Abdel?" I yelled at him across the combined distance of the two rooms whose length resembled a train station.
"He will be here presently," the Turk said suavely. "Come and sit down."
"Sit down? I'll-"
"Calm yourself," Bayak interrupted me.
"Calm myself? I'll calm myself when I've cooled off that water buffalo. What did he think he was doing when he put the slug on me like that?"
"He was following orders. Sit here."
"Orders? Why, you fat creep, I ought to put the blast on you, too. I don't know what-"
"Exactly. You do not know," Bayak cut me off sharply. "Your little sex holiday is over, friend. It's time you went to work. I simply removed temptation from your path so you could concentrate on the job at hand. I assume you're still interested in money?"
"Certainly I'm interested in money," I grumbled, pretending to be slightly mollified.
"Then come sit down and look at this plan."