At half past five that afternoon, just as the rush to get home had begun and when everyone would be at their most tired and impatient, I presented myself at the main reception desk, wearing the overalls of an engineer from Bedford (Long Island) Electricity. I had visited the company earlier that afternoon – it was actually in Brooklyn – pretending that I was looking for a job and it had been simple enough to steal a uniform and an assortment of documents. I had then returned to my hotel, where I had manufactured an ID tag using a square cut out from a company newsletter and a picture of myself, which I had taken in a photo booth. The whole thing was contained in a plastic holder, which I had deliberately scratched and made dirty so that it would be difficult to see. Maintaining a false identity is mainly about mental attitude. You simply have to believe you are who you say you are. You can show someone a travel card and they will accept it as police ID if you do it with enough authority. Another lesson from Malagosto.
The receptionist was a very plump woman with her eye already fixed on the oversized clock that was built into the wall opposite her. There was a security man, in uniform, standing nearby.
“BLI Electrics,” I said. I spoke with a New York accent, which had taken me many hours, working with tapes, to acquire. “We’ve got a heating unit down…” I pretended to consult my worksheet. “Clarke Davenport.”
“I don’t think I’ve seen you before,” the woman said.
“That’s right, ma’am.” I showed her my pass, at the same time holding her eye so she wouldn’t look at it too closely. “It’s my first week in the job. And it’s my first job,” I added proudly. “I only graduated this summer.”
She smiled at me. I guessed that she had children of her own. “It’s the nineteenth floor,” she said.
The security man even called the lift for me.
I took it as far as the eighteenth floor, then got out and made my way to the stairwell. It was still too early and I had a feeling lawyers wouldn’t keep normal office hours. I waited an hour, listening to the sounds in the building… people saying goodbye to each other, the chimes of the lifts as the doors opened and shut. It was dark by now and with a bit of luck the building would be empty apart from the cleaners. I walked up one floor and found myself in the reception area of Clarke Davenport with two silver letters – C and D – on the wall. There was no one there. The lights were burning low. A pair of frosted glass doors opened onto a long corridor, a length of plush blue carpet leading clients past conference rooms with leather chairs and tables polished like mirrors. My feet made no sound as I made my way through an open-plan area filled with desks, computers and photocopying machines, but as I reached the far end I saw a movement out of the corner of my eye and suddenly I was being challenged.
“Can I help you?”
I hadn’t seen the young, tired-looking woman who had been bending down beside a filing cabinet. She was wearing a coat and scarf, about to leave, but she hadn’t gone yet and I had allowed her to see me. My heart sank at such carelessness. I could almost hear Sefton Nye shouting at me.
“The water cooler,” I muttered, pointing down the corridor.
“Oh. Sure.” She had found the file she was looking for and straightened up.
I continued walking. With a bit of luck, she wouldn’t even remember we’d met.
All the offices at Clarke Davenport had the names of their occupants printed next to the doors. That was helpful. Kathryn Davis was at the far end. She must have been important to the company as she had been given a corner office with views over Fifth Avenue and the cathedral. The door was locked but that was no longer a problem for me. Using a pick and a tension wrench I had it open in five seconds and let myself into a typical lawyer’s office with an antique desk, two chairs facing it, a shelf full of books, a leather sofa with a coffee table and various pictures of mountain scenery. I turned on her desk lamp. It might have been safer to use a torch but I didn’t intend to stay here long and having proper light would make everything easier.
I went straight to the desk. There was a framed photograph of the woman with her two children, a girl and a boy, aged about fourteen and twelve. They were all wearing hiking gear. There was nothing of any interest in her drawers. I opened her diary. She had client meetings all week, lunches booked in the following day and on Friday some sort of evening engagement. The entry read:
MET 7.00 p.m.
D home
I quickly checked out the rest of the room. All the books were about law except for two on the coffee table which contained reproductions of famous paintings. She also had a catalogue from an auction house… a sale of modern art. Briefly, I brushed my fingers over the sofa, trying to get a sense of the woman who might have sat on it. But the truth was that the office told me only so much about Kathryn Davis. It had been designed that way, to present a serious, professional image to the clients who came here but nothing more.
Even so, I had got what I had come for. I knew when and where the killing would take place.
I was back in my hotel room and at exactly ten o’clock there was a knock at the door. The man who called himself Marcus had returned. This time he came in.
“Well?” He waited for me to speak.
“Friday night,” I said. “Central Park.”
It hadn’t taken me long to work out the diary entry, even without a detailed knowledge of the city. The art books on the table had been the clue. MET obviously meant the Metropolitan Museum of Art, a New York landmark. I had already telephoned them and discovered that there was indeed a private function at the museum that night for the American Bar Association… Kathryn Davis would certainly be a member. The D in the diary was her husband, David. He was going to be home, babysitting. She would be there on her own.
I explained this to Marcus. His face gave nothing away but he seemed to approve of the idea. “You’re going to shoot her in the park?” he asked. “How do you know she won’t take a cab?”
“She likes walking,” I said. The hiking gear and the mountain photographs had told me that. “And look at the map. She lives in West 85th Street. That’s just a ten-minute stroll across the park.”
“What if it’s raining?”
“Then I’ll have to do it when she comes out. But I’ve looked at the forecast and it’s going to be unusually warm and dry.”
“You’re lucky. This time last year it was snowing.” Marcus nodded. “All right. It sounds as if you’ve got it all worked out. If things go according to plan, you won’t see me again. Throw the gun into the Hudson. Make sure you’re on that Saturday plane. Good luck.”
You should never rely on luck. Nine times out of ten it will be your enemy and if you need it, it means you’ve been careless with your planning.
I was back outside St Patrick’s Cathedral the next day and this time I did glimpse Kathryn Davis as she got out of a taxi and went into the building. She was shorter than I had guessed from her photographs. She was wearing a smart, beige-coloured overcoat and carried a leather briefcase so full of files that she wasn’t able to close it. Seeing her jolted me in a strange way. I wasn’t afraid. It seemed to me that Scorpia had deliberately chosen an easy target for my first assignment. But somehow the stakes had been raised. I began to think about what I was going to do, about taking the life of a person I had never met and who meant nothing to me. Today was Thursday. By the end of the week, my life would have changed and nothing would ever be the same again. I would be a killer. After that, there could be no going back.