I slept on and off for most of the flight, woke varnished in sweat.
Kennedy was crowded and hostile. I lugged my carry-on past the hordes at the baggage carousels and picked up a cab at the curb. The car smelled of boiled cabbage and was plastered with no-smoking signs in English, Spanish, and Japanese. The driver had an unpronounceable name and he wore a blue tank top and a white ski hat. The hat was rolled triple so the edge created a brim. It resembled a soft bowler.
I said, “The Middleton Hotel, on West Fifty-second Street.”
He grunted something and drove off, very slowly. The little I saw of Queens from the highway was low-rise and old, bricks and chrome and graffiti. But when we got on the Queensboro Bridge, the water was calm and lovely and the skyline of Manhattan loomed with threat and promise.
The Middleton was twenty stories of black granite sandwiched between office buildings that dwarfed it. The doorman looked ready for retirement and the lobby was shabby, elegant, and empty.
My room was on the tenth floor, small as a death row cell, filled with colonial furniture and sealed by blackout drapes. Clean and well ordered, but it smelled of mildew and roach killer. A dead quail-hunt print hung over the bed. The air-conditioner was a heavy-metal instrument. Street noise made it up this far with little loss of volume.
No rose on my pillow.
Unpacking, I changed into shorts and a T-shirt, ordered a three-dollar English muffin and five-dollar eggs, then punched the operator’s 0 and asked for a wakeup call at one. The food came surprisingly quickly and, even more amazing, was tasty.
When I finished, I put the tray on a glass-topped bureau, pulled back the covers, and got into bed. The TV remote was bolted to the nightstand. A cardboard guide listed thirty or so cable stations. The last choice was an early morning public access show featuring a dull, pudgy nude man interviewing dull, nude women. He had narrow, womanish shoulders and a very hairy body.
“Okay, Velvet,” he said, leering. “So. . for, uh. .. fun?”
. what do you do A painfully thin blond with a beak nose and frizzy hair touched a nipple and said, “Macrame.” I switched off the set.
Lights out. The blackout drapes did their job well. My heart was as dark as the room.
I beat the wakeup call by more than an hour. After showering, shaving, and dressing, I drew open the drapes on a view of the red-brick building across the street. Men in white shirts and ties were framed in its windows, sitting at desks, talking into phones, and stabbing the air with pens. Down below, the streets were clogged with double-parked cars. Horns blatted. Someone was using a compression drill. Even through the sealed windows I could smell the city.
I phoned Robin at just past nine L.A. time. We told each other we were fine and chatted for a while before she put Milo on.
“Talk about bicoastal,” he said. “Expedition or escape?”
“Bit of both, I guess. Thanks for taking care of the lady and the tramp.”
“Pleasure. Got a little more info on Mr. Gritz. Traced him to a small town in Georgia and just got finished talking to the police chief. Seems Lyle was a weird kid. Acted goofy, walked funny, mumbled a lot, didn’t have any friends.
Out of school more than he was in, never learned to read properly or speak clearly. His home life was predictably bad, too. No father on the scene, and he and his mother lived in a trailer on the outskirts of town. He started drinking, slid straight into trouble. Shoplifting, theft, vandalism. Once in a while he’d get into a fight with someone bigger and stronger than himself and come out the loser. Chief said he locked him up plenty, but he didn’t seem to care, jail was as good as his home, or better. He used to sit in his cell and rock and talk to himself, as if he was in his own world.”
“Sounds more like the early signs of schizophrenia than a developing psychopath,” I said. “Onset during adolescence fits the schizophrenic pattern, too. What doesn’t fit is the kind of calculated thing we’re dealing with. Does this sound like a guy who could blend in at medical conferences? Delay gratification long enough to plot murders years in advance?”