“Something I can do for — ”
The man who’d come in turned his glittering face toward him. “Where’s your telephone books, please?” he asked quietly.
The druggist had no idea of what he might have done in another minute. But the matter-of-fact words gave him an easy response. “Back through there,” he said, pointing to a narrow opening between two counters.
“Thank you.” The man squeezed himself through, and the druggist heard him turning pages. There was a faint rustle as he pulled a sheet out of the telephone company’s notepaper dispenser. The druggist heard him take out a pencil with a faint click of its clip. Then the telephone book thudded back into its slot, and the man came out, folding the note and putting it in his breast pocket. “Thank you very much,” he said. “Good night.”
“Good night,” the druggist answered.
The man left the store. The druggist sat back on his chair, folding the paper on his knee.
It was a peculiar thing, the druggist thought, looking blankly down at his paper. But the man hadn’t seemed to be conscious of anything peculiar about himself. He hadn’t offered any explanations; he hadn’t done anything except ask a perfectly reasonable question. People came in here twenty times a day and asked the same thing.
So it couldn’t really be anything worth getting excited about. Well — yes, of course it was, but the metal-headed man hadn’t seemed to think so. And it would be his business, wouldn’t it?
The druggist decided that it was something to think about, and to mention to his wife when he got home. But it wasn’t anything to be panicked by.
In a very brief space of time, his eyes were automatically following print. Soon he was reading again. When Rogers’ man came in a minute later, that was the way he found him.
Rogers’ man was one of a team of two. His partner had stayed with their man, following him up the street.
He looked around the drugstore. “Anybody here?”
The druggist’s head and shoulders came into sight behind the counter. “Yes, mister?”
The Security man fished in his pocket. “Got a pack of Chesterfields?”
The druggist nodded and slipped the cigarettes out of the rack behind the counter. He picked up the dollar the Security man put down.
“Say,” the Security man said with a puzzled frown, “did I just see a guy wearing a tin mask walk out of here?”
The druggist nodded. “That’s right. It didn’t seem to be a mask, though.”
“I’ll be damned. I thought I saw this fellow, but it’s kind of a hard thing to believe.”
“That’s what happened.”
The Security man shook his head. “Well, I guess you see all kinds of people in this part of town. You figure he was dressed up to advertise a play or something?”
“Don’t ask me. He wasn’t carrying a sign or anything.”
“What’d he do — buy a can of metal polish?” The Security man grinned.
“Just looked in a phone book, that’s all. Didn’t even make a call.” The druggist scratched his head. “I guess he was just looking up an address.”
“Boy, I wonder who he’s visiting! Well” — and he shrugged — “you sure do run into funny people down here.”
“Oh, I don’t know,” the druggist said a little testily, “I’ve seen some crazy-looking things in other parts of town, too.”
“Yeah, sure. I guess so. Say — speakin’ of phones, I guess I might as well call this girl. Where’s it at?”
“Back there,” the druggist said, pointing.
“O.K., thanks.” The Security man pushed through the space between the two counters. He stood looking sourly down at the stand of phone books. He pulled the top sheet out of the note dispenser, looked at it for impressions, and saw none that made any sense. He slipped the paper into his pocket, looked at the books again — six of them, counting the Manhattan Classified-and shook his head. Then he stepped into the booth, dropped coins into the slot, and dialed Rogers’ office.
3
The clock on Rogers’ desk read a few minutes past nine. Rogers still sat behind his desk, and Finchley waited in the chair beside it.
Rogers felt tired. He’d been up some twenty-two hours, and the fact that Finchley and their man had done the same was no help.
It’s piled up on me, he thought. Day after day without enough sleep, and tension all the time. I should have been in bed hours ago.
But Finchley had gone through it all with him. And their man must feel infinitely worse. And what was a little lost sleep compared to what the man had lost? Still Rogers was feeling sick to his stomach. His eyes were burning. His scalp was numb with exhaustion, and he had a vile taste in his mouth. He wondered if his sticking to the job was made any the less because Finchley was younger and could take it, or because the metal-faced man was still following his ghost up and down the city streets. He decided it was.
“I hate to ask you to stay here so late, Finch,” he said.
Finchley shrugged. “That’s the job, isn’t it?” He picked up the piece of Danish pastry left over from supper, swirled his cold half-container of old coffee, and took a swallow. “I’ve got to admit I hope this doesn’t happen every night. But I can’t understand what he’s doing.”
Rogers toyed with the blotter on his desk, pushing it back and forth with his fingertips. “We ought to be getting another report fairly soon. Maybe he’s done something.”
“Maybe he’s going to sleep in the park.”
“The city police’ll pick him up if he tries to.”
“What about that? What’s the procedure if he’s arrested for a civil crime?”
“One more complication.” Rogers shook his head hopelessly, drugged by fatigue. “I briefed the Commissioner’s office and we’ve got cooperation on the administrative level. It’d be a poor move to issue a general order for all patrolmen to leave him alone. Somebody’d let it slip. The theory is that beat patrolmen will call in to their precinct houses if they spot a metal-headed man. The precinct captains have instructions that he’s to be left alone. But if a patrolman arrests him for vagrancy before he calls in, then all kinds of things could go wrong. It’ll be straightened out in a hurry, but it might get on record somewhere. Then, a few years from now, somebody doing a book or something might come across the record, and that’ll be that. We can’t keep the media bottled up forever.” Rogers sighed. “I only hope it’d be a few years from now.” He looked down at his desktop. “It’s a mess. This world was never organized to include a faceless man.”
It’s true, he thought. Just by being alive, he’s made me stumble from the very start. Look at us all — Security, the whole ANG-handcuffed because we couldn’t simply shoot him and get him out of the way. Going around in circles, trying to find an answer. And he hasn’t yet done anything.
For some reason, Rogers found himself thinking, “Commit a crime and the world is made of glass.” Emerson. Rogers grunted.
The telephone rang.
He picked it up and listened.
“All right,” he said finally, “get back to your partner. I’ll have somebody intercept and pick that paper up from you. Call in when your man gets to wherever he’s going.” He hung up. “He’s made a move,” he told Finchley. “He looked up an address in a phone book.”
“Any idea of whose?”
“I’m not sure…” Rogers flipped the Martino dossier open.
“The girl,” Finchley said. “The one he used to know.”
“Maybe. If he thinks they’re still close enough for her to do him any good. Why did he have to look up the address? It’s the same one as the one on the wedding announcement.”