Later, heart pounding and stomach twisted into a sour knot, Diener sat in the sheltering gloom of the newsreel theatre in Grand Central Station and wondered how he had ever managed to get there. He had flung himself down the subway stairs at Columbus Circle, not able to believe he was escaping, that Patterson was lost somewhere behind him. Then the Times Square Station and the shuttle to Grand Central, because it was the safest place he could think of.
Diener slumped in his seat and shut his eyes against the sickness and fear welling up from his viscera. He couldn’t think. He didn’t want to think. He didn’t want ever to think again. He wanted to die.
The theatre closed at midnight. Diener slunk out to the newsstand in the waiting room. His hand was sweaty on the gun as he read the Mirror’s headline:
Diener bought a copy and locked himself in a pay toilet in the men’s room.
“In a seemingly senseless attack, a mysterious gunman early yesterday evening shot and killed William F. Land, 56, president of the Land-Baumont Air Freight Service, Inc., 350 Fifth Avenue, at the entrance to the Rouge et Noir, chic eastside restaurant, before the horrified eyes of his beautiful wife, Linda, a twenty-year-old ex-model.
“Land’s murderer, a thin, shabbily — dressed middle — aged man made his escape by dashing through the restaurant to its Madison Avenue entrance, where he lost himself in the crowds of Thursday night shoppers. He had been closely pursued by Traffic Officer Timothy Patterson, 29, who arrived seconds after the shooting, but frightened patrons of the restaurant blocked the policeman long enough for the slayer to elude him. Patterson, who was able to fire only one shot at the fugitive, does not believe he wounded him.
“The shocked Linda was unable to supply any motive for her husband's slaying. Police theorized the gunman is a psychotic.
“Patrolman Patterson figured in the news two months ago, when he, along with more than forty other members of the Brooklyn plainclothes squad, suspected of involvement in the operations of king-pin bookmaker Harry Silver, was transferred back to uniform duty.”
The rest of the story was mainly biographical details of the dead man. Diener read automatically through it, understanding not a word.
Diener sat on the toilet seat an hour, aching for death. He understood it all, now. The trap Patterson had laid for him in the apartment the night before, the phony trip to the police station to instill the fear of prosecution in him. He realized now how Patterson had used him — Patterson and Linda. He wondered how long they’d been planning to kill Land, and how long they’d had to wait for a sucker like him to come along.
The big cop had maneuvered him into a hopeless spot. There were a hundred diners in the restaurant who would swear he killed Land. There was no money for him to run anywhere. He could not even go back to his room. Patterson would long since have made an anonymous phone call that would send the homicide men racing there to wait for him. And he couldn’t go to work. Patterson wanted him dead. And wanted it fast.
There were pictures in the Mirror fallen to the floor between his feet. White-coated men rolling Land on a stretcher. Linda, beautiful and tragic, being led away. Patterson, in his shiny slicker, talking to a deputy commissioner, the movie star face grim.
Diener thought of all he had read of Harry Silver’s hired cops and their lush pickings. That explained why Patterson, so handsome, so likeable, fore-ordained to success and beautiful women, had been only a policeman. And after that bonanza ended, he had stayed a cop — just long enough to find someone to frame for Land’s death. Because he wanted Land’s money and Land’s woman.
A strong, confused anger began to grow in Diener. Part of it was Patterson — Patterson, who was everything Diener was not, and still had to be a cheat. And another part of it was never having a woman he hadn’t bought first. Patterson said: “We all pay them for it, one way or another.” Well, he had payed Linda...
Diener left the toilet cubicle and went up the stairs to the rain of Lexington Avenue. He began the long walk up to the Eighties. It was worth it.
It was two-thirty when he stood across from Linda’s building, the angry picture of what he had coming to him still clear in his mind. But the doubts were beginning to gnaw at him. How could he get past the doorman? Could he make Linda open the apartment door? Maybe Patterson would be there — with a gun.
A low black Thunderbird turned into the silent street and stopped at the building’s canopy. Diener watched a bulky uniformed figure crawl out from beneath the wheel, and cursed his own hesitation. It was the doorman. A moment earlier, he could have walked through the empty lobby to the elevator, unchallenged.
The doorman crossed the sidewalk to the lobby entrance. Seconds later, a slender girl in a rain cape emerged from the building, her walk unsteady. Diener’s heart hammered as he recognized her. Linda! He crossed quickly over the glistening macadam, tore open the sports car’s right hand door and slid inside, just as she released the handbrake.
Linda’s scarlet mouth came open and she made a little choking sound. The dark pupils of her eyes grew glaringly large, and the drunkeness ebbed swiftly out of them.
Diener laughed. “Go ahead,” he told her. The eveness of his voice surprised him. “You’re going to meet him, aren’t you?”
Her jaw made its characteristic nervous chewing motions and she stared at Diener mutely. The terror was rising in her visibly. Diener struck her roughly on the shoulder with the heel of his hand. “Go ahead,” he ordered. The Thunderbird moved away from the curb, began to roll slowly down the deserted street.
A light caught her at the first corner. The hands on the wheel were white-knuckled with tension and she moved her head stiffly to watch him out of the coiners of her eyes. Her soft fluid body had grown rigid with fear. “Don’t hurt me,” she was praying. “It wasn’t my idea. I only told him about you calling me up all the time. He was the one who thought up the scheme.”
Diener scarcely heard her, wondering where he could take her. Not one of those grimy little hotels off Times Square. There was that motel he had seen on the way up to White Plains. Could he find it? Would they have an empty now?
A sudden thought pricked him. “Where are you going now? Are you going to meet him?” he asked her.
The girl nodded earnestly. “Uh-huh. Yes. At my old apartment.” The words came tumbling frantically out of her. “I always kept it, so we would have a place to meet when my husband was in town.” Linda licked her lips. “It’s him you want, Elroy. Not me. He’s coming there. I talked to him on the phone. They’re taking him up to the Bronx to look at a stick-up suspect. Of course he knows it isn’t you, but he had to go along...”
“Where is this place of yours?”
“Oh. Down in the Village. Nothing real nice, but discreet. A separate entrance on one of those little side streets.”
Diener leaned back with a lordly grin. “Take me there.”
The rain had ceased to fall when Linda turned the Thunderbird into Gay Street, a. crooked little lane off Waverly Place. She braked the car at the curb and sat motionless, staring straight out over the wheel. Watching her, Diener saw a thick tear run down the curve of her cheek. Her breath had filled the car with the heavy smell of whiskey.