And then at the last minute he’d been reminded that New York had other parts, like Brooklyn. Charles F. Wells might not be any one of these four, he might be somebody else entirely, in Brooklyn, or one of the other parts.
He stood on the sidewalk, and he didn’t know what to do next. He could go look up the four people he already had, or he could go to Grand Central and maybe make the list longer. He thought about it and decided it would be better to try these four people first, and only go to Grand Central if none of the four was the man he wanted. But then he was afraid he wouldn’t be able to find Grand Central once he’d left this spot, this spot was the only place he knew how to find Grand Central from. So while he still remembered where it was, he got down on his knees on the sidewalk and opened the map up and made a mark with his ballpoint pen where the druggist had said he could find Grand Central. A woman going by looked at him in surprise and then, seeing the map, she smiled.
After he made the mark, Stubbs got to his feet again, put the pen away, folded up the map, and walked back to where he’d parked the car. He sat in it and took out his list of four names, and with the help of the book he found out where each of them lived.
C. Wells lived on Grove Street. That was downtown, in a section called Greenwich Village, which was not separate like Brooklyn but was really a part of Manhattan. It bothered Stubbs that the city had parts, and even the parts had parts. He put the map away and started the car.
He went the wrong way at first, but then he asked directions of a cop giving out parking tickets, and after that he went the right way. When he got to Greenwich Village he had to stop at the curb almost every block and look at the map, but finally he found Grove Street, and even a parking space.
The building he wanted had a narrow foyer with mailboxes and doorbells, and next to one of the doorbells was the name C. Wells. It was kind of a rundown house for a man as rich as Charles F. Wells had seemed, but you never knew if a rich appearance was just front. Stubbs rang the bell, and a buzzer sounded, releasing the door lock.
It was a walk-up. A door was open on the second floor, and a sharp-featured girl in her twenties was standing in the doorway. She had long black hair hanging straight down her back, and she was wearing a flannel shirt and dungarees. Her face looked dirty the way a face looks when you eat too much fried foods. She watched Stubbs coming up the stairs.
Stubbs came up to the top step. “I’m looking for C. Wells.”
“I’m C. Wells,” she said.
“The C. Wells in the phone book?”
“What is this?” she asked. Her voice and face were both getting sharper.
Stubbs persisted. “Are you the C. Wells in the phone book?”
“Yes, I am,” she said, “and what the hell business is it of yours?”
“All right.” He turned around and started back down the stairs.
She came to the head of the stairs, frowning, and looked down. “What the hell do you want, anyway?”
“Nothing,” he said, not looking back. “It isn’t nothing.”
“Hey, just a goddamn second!”
Stubbs went on down the stairs.
“I’m calling the cops!” she shouted, and stormed back into her apartment.
Stubbs went out to the street and back to the car, and looked at his list and the map again. C. F. Wells lived on West 73rd Street, and when he looked at the map he saw that that was a long way uptown. He sighed and started the car. Once he got above 14th Street, the going was easy, because all the streets were numbered, and as long as the numbers kept getting higher he knew he was going the right way.
It was another apartment house, but a better one, bigger and cleaner and not converted from a brownstone dwelling. But it still wasn’t any place where a rich man would live. Stubbs pressed the button beside the name C. F. Wells, and when the buzzer sounded he went into a quiet foyer with a rug. There was an elevator, self-service, and he rode it up to the fourth floor and then knocked on the door of apartment 4-A.
A young man in khaki pans and an undershirt opened the door, and stood there scratching his head. Stubbs had obviously waked him up. “I’m looking for C. F. Wells,” Stubbs said.
“Clara? She’s at work.”
“That’s the C. F. Wells that’s in the phone book?”
“Yeah, it’s in her name, that’s right.” The young man stopped scratching, and yawned. “You from the phone company?”
“No,” said Stubbs. “I’m looking for a person.”
He turned away and went back to the elevator. The young man stood in the doorway, scratching himself here and there, and frowned at the disappearing Stubbs, but he didn’t say anything. Stubbs got into the elevator and went downstairs and back to the car. Both of them were women, so far. Why didn’t they put their whole names in the book?
He looked at his list. One Charles Wells lived on Central Park West, and the other Charles Wells lived on Fort Washington Avenue. Central Park West was closer, and sounded rich, so he tried that first.
There was a doorman at this building, but he didn’t stop Stubbs or ask him any questions. Stubbs got the apartment number from the mailbox and took the elevator up.
A middle-aged woman answered his knock. She looked severe, and when Stubbs asked her if Charles Wells was home she said, “My husband is at work.”
Stubbs thought about that for a minute, while the woman asked him if he was applying for the chauffeur’s job. “Does this Charles Wells have black hair except gray around the ears and real thick eyebrows?”
The woman looked surprised. “My husband is bald.”
“Been bald long?” Stubbs asked.
“For years. What in the world is this all about?”
“I’m looking for a Charles Wells. But he isn’t the right one.”
Fort Washington Avenue was way uptown, up by the George Washington Bridge. Stubbs found a parking space on 181st Street and walked back to the address. It was a walk-up again, and Charles Wells lived on the third floor.
When Stubbs knocked, the door was opened by a young man in his early twenties. He wore tight black slacks and an orange shirt with the tails tied in a knot over his ribcage, leaving his midriff bare. His hair was far too long, waved, and dyed a rich auburn. He struck a pose in the doorway. “Well, look at you!”
“I’m looking for Charles Wells,” Stubbs said.
“Well, you just come right in, dearie.”
“Are you Charles Wells?”
The boy made a kissing motion. “Come on in, dearie, and we’ll talk about it.”
Stubbs frowned. He remembered this kind of boy, there’d been some in the Party. Not many, but some, and Stubbs had never liked them, because he’d thought they’d given the Party a bad name. Not that it mattered in the long run. But he also remembered that there was only one way to get this flighty type to calm down and make sense, so he reached out and thumped the boy gently on the nose.
The boy’s eyes started to water, and his face squinched up, and made a sound like a mouse when the trap hits it, only smaller.
“Are you Charles Wells?”
“My nose,” said the boy.
Stubbs held up his fist. “Yes or no.”
“Yes! Yes! Don’t you dare—”
“All right,” Stubbs said.
He went back downstairs. Four possibilities, and none of them had been the man he wanted, and two and one half of them had been women. He went back to the car and drove to Grand Central Station.
It was impossible to park anywhere around the area, since it was now five-thirty Friday afternoon and the middle of the week’s worst rush hour. Stubbs pushed the Lincoln around in the traffic for a while until he saw a sign that said, “Park.” He turned in at the garage entrance, and got out of the car. A man came up and asked him how long he’d be and Stubbs said just a little while. When the attendant took the car away, Stubbs walked back to Grand Central.