While still at MIT, he had been sent Edith’s wedding announcement. He added the fact to the buried problem, and, with that one change, it lay carefully safeguarded by his perfect memory, waiting, through twenty years, for his first free time to think.
PART THREE
CHAPTER NINE
1
It was almost eight o’clock at night. Rogers put down his office phone and looked over toward Finchley. “He stopped for a hamburger and coffee at a Nedick’s on the corner of Eighth Street and Sixth Avenue. But he still hasn’t talked to anybody, been anywhere in particular, or looked for a place to stay. He’s still walking. Still wandering.”
Rogers thought to himself that at least the man had eaten. Rogers and Finchley hadn’t. On the other hand, the two of them were sitting down, while, with every step the man took on the concrete sidewalks, two hundred sixty- eight pounds fell on his already ruined feet. Then, why was he walking? Why didn’t he stop? He’d been up since before dawn in Europe, and yet he kept going.
Finchley shook his head. “I wonder why he’s doing that? What could he be after? Is he looking for somebody — hoping to run across someone?”
Rogers sighed. “Maybe he’s trying to wear us out.” He opened the Martino dossier in front of him, turned to the proper page, and ran his finger down the scant list of names. “Martino had exactly one relative in New York, and no close friends. There’s this woman who sent him the wedding announcement. He seems to have gone with her for a while, while he was at CCNY. Maybe that’s a possibility.”
“You’re saying this man might be Martino.”
“I’m saying no such thing. He hasn’t made a move toward her place, and it’s no more than five blocks outside the area he’s been covering. If anything, I’m saying he’s not Martino.”
“Would you want to visit an old girl friend that’s been married fifteen years?”
“Maybe.”
“It doesn’t prove anything one way or another.”
“I believe that’s what we’ve been saying right along.”
Finchley’s mouth quirked. His eyes were expressionless. “What about the relative?”
“His uncle? Martino used to work in his coffee house, right down in that area. The coffee house is a barbershop now. The uncle married a widow when he was sixty-three, moved to California with her, and died ten years ago. So that cleans it up. Martino didn’t make friends, and he had no relatives. He wasn’t a joiner, and he didn’t keep a diary. If there was ever anyone made for this kind of thing, Martino’s the one.” Rogers clawed at his scalp.
“And yet,” Finchley said, “he came straight to New York, and straight down into the Village. He must have had a reason. But, whatever it was, all he’s doing is walking. Around and around. In circles. It doesn’t tie in. It doesn’t make sense — not for a man of this caliber.” Finchley’s voice was troubled, and Rogers, remembering the episode between them earlier in the afternoon, gave him a sharp look. Rogers was still ashamed of his part in it, and didn’t care to have it revived.
He picked up his phone. “I’ll order some food sent up.”
2
The drugstore on the corner of Sixth Avenue and West Seventh Street was small, with one narrow, twisting space of clear floor between the crowded corners. Like all small druggists, the owner had been forced to nail uprights to the counters and put shelves between them. Even so, there was barely room to display everything he had to carry in competition with the chain store up the street.
Salesmen had piled their display racks on every inch of eye-level surface, and tacked their advertising cards wherever they could. There was only one overhead cluster of fluorescent tubes, and the tight space behind the counters was always dark. There was one break in the wall of merchandise on the counters. There, behind an opening walled by two stands of cosmetics and roofed by a razor-blade card, the druggist sat behind his cash register, reading a newspaper.
He looked up as he heard the door open and close. His eyes went automatically to the metal side of the display case across from him, which he used for a mirror. The case was scuffed, and a little dirty. The druggist saw the vague outlines of a man’s large silhouette, but the creaking of the floorboards had already told him as much. He peered for a look at the face, and brought one hand up to the temple bar of his glasses. He got out of his chair, still holding his paper in the other hand, and thrust his head and shoulders out over the counter.
“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.”