I quit thinking about it as I stepped off the train at West Twenty-third Street and walked upstairs to the token booth. The Transit cop wasn’t around so I spoke to the change-maker behind the grill. I asked him about his clientele. He didn’t remember Eleanor Draftsman, but he sure had no trouble recalling Joan Chandler.
He had an eye for redheads, he told me, and Joan Chandler was both a redhead and a regular customer, a late customer. She always came rushing down at nine-thirty every morning, come rain or shine, and that included yesterday morning. She was some babe, he told me, and I agreed.
She was. Everyone agreed to that. Even the super in her building, a little guy with glasses who gave his name as Morris Greem, though he didn’t like the idea of giving anything away. He took my fin with a sneer. Little guy in his forties with a Caesar hairdo, whose left eye kept winking at me.
I didn’t like his looks, so I didn’t tell him who I was. I used one of Joe Benares’ business cards: Ajax Probes. Greem didn’t like Eleanor Draftsman but the worst he could tell me about her was that she worked for that “Pinko outfit” on Forty-second Street and the River, meaning of course the UN.
He started to elaborate, a real fanatic, but I cut him short. I asked him how long he’d been the super. He said, one year. I asked him if he was married and he balked. I told him I’d be back to spend the rest of that five.
He turned white and started to call me a lousy, no good — At the same time he reached behind his apartment door and grabbed for something he was in the process of transfering from one hand to the other when I kicked the door open.
It caught him on the side of the jaw — and a Colt Peacemaker dropped from his nerveless fingers. My God — a .45 caliber long-barreled Peacemaker! It must have weighed four pounds. No wonder he’d had trouble switching it from hand to hand. With its seven and one-half inch barrel it was something like one-handing a carbine.
I dropped it in the top unit of Greem’s oldfashioned toilet and on the way out picked up the duplicate key to Joan Chandler’s pad. Greem was snoozing peacefully: no sneer, no eyetick. On second thoughts I dragged him into the bathroom and locked him in. Then I hoofed it up to 3-G, fitted the key in the lock, turned it, pushed the door open and slipped in.
I sensed movement behind me, began to turn, but didn’t make it. Whoever chopped me down was an expert. I took the heel of a hand at the base of the skull and crumbled. I didn’t have a chance. Now I knew how Greem must have felt.
When I woke the karate expert was gone, which figured. Also the apartment was in a shambles, which also figured. It didn’t look like I’d crimped his style. He’d done a pretty thorough job. I looked around, though, straightening everything out as I moved along. I had to do that out of self protection. It wouldn’t have taken an overly perceptive cop to trace my movements that afternoon.
But there were no photographs of anyone in the apartment. No doubt the karate expert had seen to that. Just like he’d seen to my neck. It felt like it had been knocked permanently out of joint, and my right shoulder weighed in at maybe fifty pounds. My head ached and I had to rest several times during my housekeeping chores. I walked out of there feeling so mad I could have ripped up the sidewalk, only I couldn’t bring my head around to focus on it.
I made it uptown in time for tea with Akutagawa. He nodded with satisfaction as I explained the day’s happenings to him.
“Ah, so,” he said, “the fish bites.”
“Yeah,” I said, fingering my neck.
“Very good.” He was pouring the tea as he spoke. He handed me a cup. I sipped. It was jasmine.
“Now,” Akutagawa continued, “we offer a little more bait, prepare the net and then cast it at the appropriate time. With any luck we should have our catch by tonight.” He grinned at me. “Then the real business of fishing can begin, eh?”
I couldn’t believe it. I said, “You have a special time in mind?”
“Most certainly,” he said. “You understand, I can’t be absolutely precise, but I would say, between seven and ten. It all depends on Joan Chandler.” He added that he’d assigned one of our men to keep tabs on her.
I repeated her name and stared at him.
“It is all very simple,” he said. “Joan Chandler lied when she said she didn’t know Noel Draftsman. According to the FBI they served in the same intelligence unit during the Korean War. Both were stationed in Washington. Draftsman was Joan Chandler’s immediate superior.”
I grunted. Akutagawa refilled the teacups. We sipped. He withdrew a small photograph from the manila folder on his desk and slipped it to me. “They sent this over too.”
Noel Draftsman in uniform. First lieutenant, US Army. I turned the photograph over and read the FBI description: “six feet, one inch; one hundred and sixty pounds; brown blond hair, slightly longer than crew-cut; blue eyes; no distinguishing marks.” There following an FBI number and fingerprint classification. I handed it back to Akutagawa.
“He looks like a hungry fox,” I said. I wondered if he was the one who had bopped me. He looked capable enough.
Akutagawa said: “It might surprise you to learn that Morris Greem was in the same unit, at roughly the same time. The FBI are interested in him because they’ve received word that he’d involved in a radical right wing movement.
“Something called the Citizens’ Council for the Preservation of American Liberties.”
I wasn’t surprised. “Any connection between Joan Chandler and Greem?”
Akutagawa shook his head, “It’s too early to tell. They just put Greem under surveillance.”
I asked, “What about Joan Chandler, then?”
“Ah, yes, Joan Chandler.” Akutagawa brought his hands together in a prayerlike attitude and stared into the middle distance. He finally refocused on me. “You will call Narijian and ask him how he fared with Joan Chandler. I think we can use Mr. Narijian to good advantage.”
Akutagawa gave me a few other instructions and I called Narijian at the D.A.s office downtown. I held the phone away from my ear to minimize the impact of that tremendous voice.
“She’s a gorgeous hunk of woman,” Narijian was saying, “but she’s simple-minded as hell. A dumb redhead who’s so gullible she believes the United Nations is run from the Kremlin.”
Akutagawa, listening on the extension, raised an eyebrow and nodded slightly. I let him take over and he told Narijian we’d assigned a tail to Joan Chandler. He asked him if he’d made a date with her for seven that evening. He said he had. Akutagawa congratulated him, then explained the evening’s strategy to him.
Narijian sounded skeptical but agreed to hop uptown with a search warrant when we called him between six-thirty and seven. He also agreed to bring along one of the cops assigned to the D.A.s office. That completed that phase of the operation.
Akutagawa looked pleased with himself. His eyes gave him away, momentarily. Then he had everything under control once again.
Our man called at six. Joan Chandler had gone directly home from International Acoustics. Akutagawa told him to stay alert, particularly around six-thirty, when he expected all hell to break loose. That wasn’t the way he put it but that was the sense of it.
The Secretary-General called and Akutagawa explained the latest developments in the case to him. The hospital called. Eleanor Draftsman was now off the critical list and resting quietly, and we could talk to her provided we didn’t overtax her.
At six-twenty-five Akutagawa put the call through to Joan Chandler. The phone rang three times. A woman answered.