“It’s been fifteen years, Shawn. He could have forgotten it.”
“He may never have known it.” And there was no guarantee the man was going to the address he’d copied. He might have looked it up for some future purpose. They couldn’t take chances. Everything had to be covered. The phone books had to be examined. There might be some mark — some oily fingerprint, wet with perspiration, some pencil mark; some trace -
Six New York City phone books. God knew how many pages, each to be checked.
“Finch, your people’ll have to furnish a current set of New York phone books. Worn ones. We’re going to switch ’em for a set I want to run through your labs. Got to have ’em right away.”
Finchley nodded and reached for the phone.
4
A travel-worn young man, lugging a scuffed cardboard suitcase, came into the drugstore on the corner of Sixth Avenue and West Seventh Street.
“Like to make a phone call,” he said to the druggist. “Where is it?”
The druggist told him, and the young man just managed to get his suitcase through the narrow gap between the counters. He bumped it about clumsily for a few moments, and shifted it back and forth, annoying the druggist at his cash register, while he made his call.
When he left, the druggist’s original books went to the FBI laboratory, where the top sheet of notepaper had already checked out useless.
The Manhattan book was run through first, on the assumption that it was the likeliest. The technicians did not work page by page. They had a book with all Manhattan phones listed by subscribers’ addresses, and they laid out a square search pattern centering on the drugstore. A machine arranged the nearest subscribers’ addresses in alphabetical order, and then the technicians began to work on the book taken from the store, using their new list to skip whole columns of numbers that had a low probability under this system.
Rogers hadn’t supplied the technicians with Edith Chester’s name. It would have done no good. By the time the results came through, the man would have reached there. If that was where he was going. Furthermore, there was no proof he’d only looked up one address. Eventually, all six books would be checked out, and probably show nothing. But the check would be made, and no one knew how many others afterward.
Commit a crime and the world is made of glass.
5
Edith Chester Hayes lived in the back apartment on the second floor of a house off Sullivan Street. The soot of eighty years had settled into every brick, and industrial fumes had gnawed the paint into flakes. A narrow doorway opened into the street, and a dim yellow bulb glowed in the foyer. Battered garbage cans stood in front of the ground floor windows.
Rogers looked out at it from his seat in an FBI special car. “You always expect them to have torn these places down,” he said.
“They do,” Finchley answered. “But other houses grow older faster than these get condemned.” His voice was distracted as though he were thinking of something else, and thinking of it so intently that he barely heard what he was saying. He hunched in his corner of the back seat, his hand slowly rubbing the side of his face. He paid no attention when one of the ANG team that had followed the man here came up to the car and leaned in Rogers’ window.
“He’s upstairs, on the second floor landing, Mr. Rogers,” the man said. “He’s been there for fifteen minutes, ever since we got here. He hasn’t knocked on any door. He’s just up there, leaning against a wall.”
“Didn’t he even ring a doorbell?” Rogers asked. “How’d he get into the building?”
“They never lock the front doors in these places, Mr. Rogers. Anybody can get into the halls any time they want to.”
“Well, how long can he stay up there? Some tenant’s bound to come along and see him. That’ll start a fuss. And what’s the point of his just staying in the hall?”
“I couldn’t say, Mr. Rogers. Nothing he’s done all day makes sense. But he’s got to make a move pretty soon, even if it’s just coming back down and starting this walking around business again.”
Rogers leaned over the front seat and tapped the shoulder of the FBI technician, wearing headphones, who was bent over a small receiving set. “What’s going on?”
The technician slipped one phone. “All I’m getting is breathing. And he’s shuffling his feet once in a while.”
“Will you be able to follow him if he moves?”
“If he stays in a narrow hall, or stands near a wall in a room, yes, sir. These induction microphones’re pretty sensitive, and I’ve got it flat against an outside wall of her apartment.”
“I see. Let me know if he does anyth — ”
“He’s moving.” The technician snapped a switch, and Rogers heard the sound of heavy footsteps on the sagging hall floorboards. Then the man knocked softly on a door, his knuckles barely rapping the wood before he stopped.
“I’m going to up the gain a little,” the technician said. Then the speaker was full of the man’s heavy breathing.
“What’s he upset about?” Rogers wondered.
They heard the man knock hesitantly again. His feet moved nervously.
Someone was coming toward the door. They heard it open, and then heard a gasp of indrawn breath. There was no way of telling whether their man had made the sound or not.
“Yes?” It was a woman, taken by surprise.
“Edith?” The man’s voice was low and abashed.
Finchley straightened out of his slump. “That’s it — that explains it. He spent all day working up his nerve.”
“Nerve for what? Proves nothing,” Rogers growled.
“I’m Edith Hayes,” the woman’s voice said cautiously.
“Edith — I’m Luke. Lucas Martino.”
“Luke!”
“I was in an accident, Edith. I just left the hospital a few weeks ago. I’ve been retired.”
Rogers grunted. “Got his story all straight, hasn’t he?”
“He’s had all day to think of how to put it,” Finchley said. “What do you expect him to do? Tell her the history of twenty years while he stands in her doorway?”
“Maybe.”
“For Pete’s sake, Shawn, if this isn’t Martino how’d he know about her?”
“I can think of lots of ways Azarin could get this kind of detail out of a man.”
“It’s not likely.”
“Nothing’s likely. It’s not likely any one particular germ cell would grow up to be Lucas Martino. I’ve got to remember Azarin’s a thorough man.”
“Edith — ” the man’s voice said, “may — may I come in for a moment?”
The woman hesitated for a second. Then she said, “Yes, of course.”
The man sighed. “Thank you.”
He stepped into the apartment and the door closed.
“Sit down, Luke.”
“Thank you.” They sat in silence for a few moments. “You have a very nice-looking apartment, Edith. It’s been fixed up very comfortably.”
“Sam — my husband — liked to work with his hands,” the woman said awkwardly. “He did it. He spent a long time over it. He’s dead now. He fell from a building he was working on.”
There was another pause. The man said, “I’m sorry I was never able to come down and see you after I left college.”
“I think you and Sam would have liked each other. He was a good deal like you; orderly.”
“I didn’t think I ever showed much of that with you.”
“I could see it.”
The man cleared his throat nervously. “You’re looking very well, Edith. Have you been getting along all right?”