"How many did the paper use?"
"About a third. They're stamped on the back with the dates."
"There's a common denominator there though, isn't there?"
Hy nodded. "Sure. We nailed that right away. All were taken in New York within the last year. Try to make something out of that."
I picked some of the photos from the pile on the end and scanned through them. Some I remembered having seen in the paper, others were parts of the general coverage given the occasions by one or more photographers. There were faces I knew, some I had just heard about and too many that were totally unknown.
Every so often somebody would spot a possible connection and it would be checked out with another index, but every time they'd draw a blank. There didn't seem to be any possibility of a connection between their activities and Mitch Temple's death. Nevertheless, the pictures made repeated rounds among all of us.
I grinned when I saw Dulcie McInnes at a charity function and another of her at a ball in a Park Avenue hotel dancing with an elderly foreign ambassador in a medal-decorated sash. Then I stopped looking at faces and concentrated on the names typed and pasted to the back of the sheets.
The only one whose name had come up before was Belar Ris. He was greeting a diplomatic representative from one of the iron curtain countries who was getting off an airplane and Belar Ris had the funny expression of a man who didn't particularly care about being photographed. He seemed to be tall and blocky, suggestive of physical power even tailor-made clothes couldn't conceal. His face didn't show any trace of national origin except that he was swarthy and his eyes had a shrewd cast to them. His out-stretched arm was bared to the cuff of his coat; his wrist and forearm thick. Belar Ris was a short-sleeved-shirt man, the kind who wanted no obstacles in the way of a power move.
Al saw me concentrating on the photo and asked, "Got something?"
I tossed the picture down. "Mitch had some column items on this one."
He looked at it carefully. "Who didn't? Belar Ris. He's a U.N. representative. There's another picture of him in tonight's paper raising hell at an Assembly meeting."
"Anything special on him?"
"No, but he's publicity-shy. There are a dozen like him at the U.N. now...the grabbers. He'll play both ends against the middle to keep things going back home. Anything to protect his interests. It's too bad the idiots appoint people like that to represent them."
"They have to." Al separated some of the shots in front of him and picked one out. "Here's another of Ris. It was right after that Middle East blow-up. The guy he's talking to was ousted the next week and killed in a coup."
One other person was in the picture, but the lighting didn't make his features too distinguishable. "Who's this?"
Al took the picture from me, scanned it and shook his head.
"Beats me. Probably in the background. He's not mentioned on the back."
"He looks familiar," I said.
"Could be. That's right outside the U.N. complex and he could be part of a diplomatic corps. It doesn't look like he's standing with Ris."
He was right. The guy wasn't with Ris or the other one, but it didn't look as if he were going anywhere either. He seemed to be in an attitude of waiting, but even then, with a stop-action shot, you couldn't tell. There was something vaguely familiar about him, a face you see once and couldn't forget because of the circumstances. I ran it through my mind quickly, trying to focus on possible areas of contact, but couldn't make a connection and put the picture back on the pile.
I spent another twenty minutes with them, then got up and wandered down the corridor to the morgue where old Biff was reading his paper. He waved and I said, "Mind if I take a look in your files?"
"Be my guest."
I went down the rows until I came to the "R's" and pulled out the drawer. There was a file on Belar Ris, with three indistinct photos that hadn't been used. There was the shadow of his hat, a hand apparently carelessly held in front of his face and a blur of motion that didn't quite make him recognizable. The ones he was with were identified, but I didn't make any of them. All of them seemed to have some prominence, to judge by their clothes, the attaché cases they carried or the general background. I closed the files and walked back to the desk.
Hy was standing there looking at me.
"Okay, Mike," he said, "you pulled something out."
"Belar Ris," I told him. "There's nothing in the files."
"Why him?"
"Nothing special. He was the only one I recognized that Mitch wrote about."
"Can it, Mike. There is something special. What?"
"The guy doesn't seem to like having his picture taken."
"A lot of them are that way."
"Attached to a diplomatic staff? They're all publicity hounds."
"What do you know about Ris, Mike?"
"Only what Mitch wrote."
"Maybe I can tell you a little more. He's got a hush-hush background. Black-market activities, arms dealing, tricky business dealings, but I know a lot of others on top of the political situation that were just as bad. Right now he's being treated mighty carefully because guys like that can sway the balance of power in the U.N. Now look...there's something else about Ris, so don't you tell me ."
"There isn't anything, buddy. I was swinging wild."
Biff shoved the paper across the desk before Hy could answer me and said, "This the one you're talking about?"
It was Belar Ris on the front page, all right He was talking to two of our people and a French representative during a break in the session and his face was hard and one finger pointed aggressively at our man who looked pretty damn disgusted. The caption said it was a continuation of the argument over having admitted the government represented by Naku Em Abor, who had just proposed some resolution inimical to the western powers.
Hy said, "Does that look like a guy who doesn't want his picture taken?"
I had to admit that it didn't.
Biff grinned and said, "Don't fool yourself, Hy. Charlie Forbes took that shot and he doesn't work with a Graflex. Ten to one it was a gimmick camera hidden under his shirt."
I tapped Hy on the shoulder. "See what I mean?"
He handed the paper back. "Okay, Mike. I'll buy a little piece of it. We'll poke around. Now how about the rest of it?"
"The boys on the police beat have big ears."
"When it concerns you, yeah."
I gave him the story on finding Greta Service without mentioning all the details, simply that Dulcie McInnes had suggested checking Teddy Gates' files and I had come up with another address. He knew he wasn't getting the whole picture, but figured I was protecting a client's interest and since the job was done as far as Harry was concerned, it ended there.
When I left the building it was pretty late, but for what I wanted to do, the night was just starting.
The stable of girls Lorenzo Jones ran was a tired string operating out of run-down hotels and shoddy apartments. They all had minor arrest records, and after each one, simply changed the locality of their activities, picked up a new name and went back into the business. Like most of the girls who were on the tail end of the prostitution racket, they had no choice. Jones ran things with an iron fist and they didn't dispute his decisions. The operation was pretty well confined to the section catering to the waterfront trade, the quickies and drunks who patronized the dives where he made the contacts for his broads.
None of the first three I found had seen him and they seemed to be wandering around in a vacuum, not knowing whether to hit the streets or wait for Jones to arrange their appointments. Two of them had turned repeat tricks for old customers out of habit and one had solicited a couple of customers on her own because she was broke.
For some reason they were anxious to see Jones show up again, probably because on their own they'd get sluffed off if they tried to hustle, while Jones got the money in advance and the customer took what he was offered whether he liked it or not.