'Please,' she said, and indicated the chair in front of the desk.
Kling sat.
Karin went to the chair behind the desk.
'Your call surprised me,' she said. 'Did you know that Eileen was here this morning?'
'No.'
'I thought she may have . . .'
'No, she doesn't know I called. It was entirely my idea.'
'I see.'
She studied him. She looked like the kind of woman who should be wearing glasses. He wondered if she had contacts on. Her eyes looked so very blue. Sometimes contacts did that.
'What was it you wanted to discuss?' she said.
'Has Eileen told you that we've stopped seeing each other?'
'Yes.'
'And?'
'And what?'
'What do you think about it?'
'Mr Kling, before we go any further . . .'
'Confidentiality, I know. But this is different.'
'How?'
'I'm not asking you to divulge anything Eileen may have told you in confidence. I'm asking your opinion on . . .'
'Ah, I see. My opinion. But a very thin line, wouldn't you say?'
'No, I wouldn't. I want to know whether this . . . well, separation is the only thing I can call it ... whether you think it's a good idea.'
'And what if I told you that whatever is good for Eileen is a good idea?'
'Do you think this separation is good for Eileen?'
Karin smiled.
'Please,' she said.
'I'm not asking you to do anything behind Eileen's . . .'
'Oh? Aren't you?'
'Miss Lefkowitz ... I need your help.'
'Yes?'
'I ... I really want to be with Eileen. While she's going through this. I think that her wanting to ... to ... stay apart isn't natural. What I wish . . .'
'No.'
Kling looked at her.
'No, I will not advise her to resume your relationship unless that is what she herself wishes.'
'Miss Lefkowitz . . .'
'Period,' Karin said.
* * * *
Hamilton saw him coming down the steps of the old Headquarters Building, walking at a rapid clip like a man who was angry about something. Blond hair blowing in the sudden fierce wind. Hamilton hated this city. You never knew from one minute to the next in this city what was going to happen with the weather. The sun was shining very bright now, but the wind was too strong. Newspapers rattling along the curbs, people walking with their heads ducked, coattails flapping. He fell in behind Kling, no chance of a shot at him here in this crowded downtown area, courthouses everywhere around them, cops moving in and out of them like cockroaches, Christ, he was walking fast.
Hamilton hurried to keep up.
Where the hell was he going, anyway?
He'd already passed the entrance to the subway.
So where was he headed?
* * * *
The pocket park was an oasis of solitude and quiet here in the city that normally paid only lip service to such perquisites of civilization. Kling knew the park because on days when he'd had to testify in one case or another, he'd buy himself a sandwich in the deli on Jackson, and then come here on the lunch break. Sit on one of the benches, eat his sandwich in the sunshine, think about anything but a defense attorney wagging his finger and wanting to know if he'd really observed the letter of the law while making his arrest.
'The park was virtually deserted today.
Too windy for idlers, he guessed.
Set between two office buildings on Jackson, the space was a long rectangle with a brick wall at its far end. A thin fall of water cascaded over the top of this wall, washing down over the brick, even in the dead of winter; Kling guessed the water was heated. The park was dotted with trees, a dozen of them in all, with benches under them.
Only one of the benches was occupied as Kling came in off the street.
A woman reading a book.
The sounds of the streetside traffic suddenly vanished, to be replaced by the sound of the water gently running down the brick wall.
Kling took a seat on a bench facing the wall.
His back was to the park entrance.
In a little while, the woman looked at her watch, got up, and left.
* * * *
Hamilton couldn't believe it!
There he was, sitting alone in the park, his back to the entrance, no one in the place but Bertram A. Kling!
This was going to be too simple. He almost regretted the sheer simplicity of it. Walk up behind the man, put a bullet in the back of his head, gangland style. They might even think the Mafia had done it. This was delicious. He could not wait to tell Isaac about it.
He checked the street, eyes swinging right, then left.
And moved swiftly into the park.
The Magnum was in the right-hand pocket of his overcoat.
Patches of snow on the ground.
Water rolling down the brick wall at the far end.
The park silent otherwise.
Ten feet away from him now.
Careful, careful.
The gun came out of his pocket.
* * * *
Kling saw the shadow first.
Suddenly joining his own shadow on the ground in front of him.
He turned at once.
And saw the gun.
And threw himself headlong off the bench and onto the ground just as the first shot boomed onto the air, and rolled over, and reached in under his overcoat for the gun holstered on the left side of his belt, another shot, and sat upright with the gun in both hands and fired at once, three shots in succession at the tall black man in the long gray coat who was running out of the park.
Kling ran after him.
There were only three hundred and sixty-four black men on the street outside the park.
But none of them looked like the man who'd just tried to kill him.
* * * *
Martin Proctor had just come out of the shower and was drying himself when the knock sounded on his door.
He wrapped the towel around his waist, and went out into the living room.
'Who is it?' he asked.
'Police,' Meyer said. 'Want to open the door, please?'
Proctor did not want to open the door.
'Yeah, just a second,' he said. 'I just got out of the shower. Let me put on some clothes.'
He went into the bedroom, took a pair of undershorts from the top drawer, slipped them on, and then hastily put on a pair of blue corduroy trousers, a blue turtleneck sweater, a pair of blue woolen socks, and a pair of black, seventy-five-dollar French and Shriner shoes with some kind of synthetic soles that gripped like rubber.