Rand whitened in shock more than anger. “My God, Angelo, you can’t do that!
Don’t you realize how desperately important it is to find this-” He was about to say “bomb” when he caught himself.
“This what?” Angelo asked. There it was again, this thing they kept dropping in front of him, then pulling away.
“The barrel of gas we’re looking for.”
“Tell me, kid, what’s so secret about chlorine gas the government has to classify stuff on it? Or is it really chlorine gas they got in that barrel?”
“Of course it is.”
For a second Angelo gazed at him, his eyes as appraising as they had been twentyfour hours earlier scrutinizing the dip in the front seat of his car. Then he jerked his head toward the agent in charge. “Your friend over there wants somebody to run out for coffee and a Danish while I’m gone, tell him they got a diner just up the street. I got the very clear message that’s all he figures a New York cop is good for anyway.”
“Angelo.” Rand was almost begging. “Going away like that is like …” The young man paused, trying to think of the worst example he could cite. “Like a soldier deserting his post in wartime.”
The New Yorker snorted, squeezing the young agent’s shoulders as he did.
“Don’t worry about it, kid. I’ll see if she’s got a friend for you.”
Arthur Gelb paced his office in the third-floor newsroom of The New York Times. The deputy managing editor was a lanky, intense man, all kinetic energy and raw nerve ends, a man who kept his staff in a state of constant tension — some would have said terror-with a nonstop flow of ideas, suggestions and queries. Like the paper he so proudly represented, he was not so much a conservative as he was a man devoted to a certain notion of responsibility. Above all, he was dedicated to the proposition that if it hadn’t happened in the pages of The New York Times it hadn’t happened at all, and to his growing anger he sensed that something very important was happening in his city and the Times didn’t know about it.
Gelb suddenly stopped his pacing. Rushing through the maze of the newsroom was one of the dozen men he had sent to scour the precincts to find out what was going on after Grace’s whispered conversation. On his face Gelb could read that special sense of purpose always present on a young reporter’s visage when he knows he’s about to impress his editor.
“This is what’s going onl” he gasped, out of breath, dropping the photos of the Dajanis onto Gelb’s desk. “They’re Palestinians. Cop killers. Everyone in town’s out looking for them.”
Gelb picked up the photographs one by one, studying each of the three in turn. “Who did they kill?”
“Two patrolmen in Chicago two weeks ago.”
“Chicago?” Gelb frowned. Since when had New York’s police been so devoted to their brethren in the Windy City? “Get Grace Knowland for me, will you?
I want to make a phone call.”
Gelb passed the three pictures to her when she entered his office. “These are your needle in the haystack. Three Palestinians that are supposed to have killed two cops out in Chicago two weeks ago. Except there hasn’t been a cop killed in Chicago for three months. I just checked with the Tribune.”
As Grace studied the pictures, Gelb picked up his phone and dialed Patricia McGuire, the Deputy Police Commissioner for Public Information. She took his call immediately. New York City officials didn’t keep the Times’s deputy managing editor on hold.
“Patty, I want to know what the hell’s going on. There’s a fake snowremoval exercise up in the Seventh Regiment Armory that’s got nothing to do with getting the snow oft the streets. And half the cops in the city are out looking for three Palestinians who didn’t do what you told them they did. What’s going on, Patty? You’ve got something here, some kind of major Palestinian terrorist action, and I want to know what it is.”
There was a long, pained silence when he had finished speaking.
“I’m sorry, Arthur,” the woman answered. “I’m afraid I don’t have the authority to answer your question. Are you in your office?”
“I am.”
“I’ll ask the Commissioner to call you right back.”
The odor of salami, of garlic, of provolone, olive oil and fresh peppers swept over Angelo like a veil of incense as he stepped inside De Pasquale’s Hero Sandwich Shop on West Thirty-fifth Street. The detective took a deep, approving breath, then surveyed the place: a lunch counter with a dozen red moleskin stools, half of them occupied, a few booths in back, a counterman slapping heros together in readiness for the lunch-hour rush, the heavy mama in black hovering protectively near the cash register. Leave it to the drummers, he thought, they always find the best joint in the neighborhood.
He stepped over to the woman, nodded at the flasks of Chianti behind her and asked her in his best Sicilian-accented Italian for a glass of Ruffino.
“Bellissima signora,” he said as she gave him the wine with an approving smile, “you know Mr. McKinney, the Procter and Gamble salesman?”
“Sure,” the woman answered. “He’sa down there.” She indicated a middle-aged man in a gabardine overcoat, a coffee and Danish before him, reading The Wall Street Journal in one of the booths.
Angelo strolled over to the man and, as discreetly as possible, gave him the shield. “Mind if I join you?”
“Not at all.” The salesman wore horn-rimmed glasses, and his ash-blond hair was retreating back from his forehead with evident rapidity. He was neat and well dressed; almost too neat, it occurred to Angelo, for someone who had to spend his days wandering in and out of grocery stores.
McKinney relaxed when Angelo explained the reason he had looked him up.
Despite their seemingly innocent calling, men like the Procter and Gamble salesman were aware of a lot of things; such as which Italian wholesaler on the West Side was, in fact, a Mafia front running collections and payoffs in the numbers operations the Mob forced small storeowners to conduct as part of their businesses. “Oh yes,” he said, “well, really, I gave them everything I had on that in my accident report at the station house.”
“I understand.” Angelo nodded sympathetically, leaning closer to the salesman as he did, so that no one could eavesdrop on their conversation. “Look, we’ve got a very, very important investigation under way, and it’s possible, just possible, that your accident might provide us with some very important clues. The note they left under your windshield wiper did say a yellow truck, you’re absolutely sure of that?”
“Oh yes.” McKinney’s reply was quick and assured. “I even showed it to the officer at the station house.”
“Right.” Angelo sipped his wine. “Now, I want you to understand what I have here’s got nothing to do with you, but it’s very important I get the exact location of the accident and the exact time frame when it took place.”
“Yes. But it’s all there in the report.”
“Sure. But I just want to be absolutely certain. Now, you’re sure you parked it at one o’clock?”
“Positive. I picked up the one-o’clock news headlines on WCBS just before I got out of the car.”
“Okay. And how long were you gone?”
“Let’s see.” McKinney frowned, trying to recollect. He bent down and took a black order book from the briefcase at his side. “I made three calls,” he said, flipping through its long white sheets. “The last one was the supermarket up on the corner. I don’t sell them, they’re handled by the office, so all I do there is just say hello to the manager, check my shelf facings, see what the competition is doing. In all, I wouldn’t have been away from the car for more than half an hour, forty minutes.”
Angelo made a few hasty jottings on the notepad he had taken from his pocket. “And the place you parked, 149 West Thirty-seventh? You’re sure of that?”