Part 88 (1/2)

Well, yes. He'd do that, too.

Following her agitated telephone call, he quickly packed a small bag with a few changes of clothing. He set it by his door. Then, pondering his venture into Central Park eighteen hours hence, he considered his own safety. He was not trained in any form of self defense And unlike other attorneys he knew, he owned no handgun.

Foolishly perhaps, but-swept away somewhat by his predicament, he opened a kitchen drawer and pulled out a steak knife. Feeling over dramatic and even a bit silly, he wrapped the knife in a thin cloth and taped it to his left calf. Then he left his apartment.

Killing a day in Manhattan, when one is ill prepared for it, is not the easiest of tasks, particularly when cold bl.u.s.tery weather hampers any enjoyment of the outdoors.

He checked his valise at Grand Central Station. Then he considered his alternatives. Kill the day, but go nowhere near where anyone would expect to find him. Go nowhere where he'd ever been before.

It's your life I'm talking about, she'd said. Trust me.

He considered the reading room of the Public Library. Worth hours anytime. But he'd been there before, scores of times. A library. He went to a branch library on the Lower East Side. There he killed the morning. At lunch he ate in a nearby dairy bar.

In the afternoon, he considered a movie. But not necessarily one he'd wanted to see. He went to a second-run house on the Upper West Side, then, tiring from the vacant hours he was seeking to fill, went to another second-run house a few.plocks away. He nearly dozed off. He fought to stay awake.

Then evening. An hour walking around the city. Then dinner at a Broadway cafeteria. Another movie.

Tired, anxious, and beginning to question the necessity of what he was doing, Thomas found himself in the East Forties at nine thirty. What was he hiding from? Whom was he avoiding? He wondered. More than six more hours to kill. He was sleepy and getting sleepier.

He decided. He would go back uptown to his home block. He would cautiously try to reenter his apartment. He would then nap with the light off and go to the park at the prearranged time.

He took the subway to Seventy-seventh and Lexington. Then he walked on Seventy-seventh Street all the way to First Avenue. Then he approached his own block from the east, rather than from the west, the route he normally traveled. All this, he thought as he walked, as an outgrowth of his father's wartime business. He was marching around on a cold Manhattan night thanks to events of twenty to thirty-five years ago.

He stopped short before coming to Second Avenue. On the avenue, parked by a fire hydrant, was a car occupied by two men. They were sitting, waiting and watching. Staring toward the entrance to his building.

One of them began to turn his way. Thomas whirled quickly. He fought back his instinct to run. He resisted looking back.

Instead he walked briskly, turning again as soon as he reached First Avenue. But he knew that if he'd been spotted -by whoever it was he was avoiding -the area would be alive with people looking for him.

He hailed a taxi. He gave an address in the East Fifties. Andrea Parker's block. Why not? He had to be off the streets. He watched in the rear window of the taxi but was unable to recognize any specific car following. He had the strong sense of being pursued but his pursuers were faceless.

Arthur Sandler? How could anyone be afraid of a septuagenarian who was legally dead?

The taxi dropped him on the corner of Fifty-first and Second.

Andrea lived nearby, on the twelfth floor of a new white high rise.

Thomas hurried into a telephone booth and dialed her number. She answered.

”I have to come up,” he said.

”Tom?” she whispered.

”Yes, it's me” he said almost breathlessly.

”I'm on your block. I have to come up and see you. Now.”

She laughed coyly and calmly, as if to convey a message.

”Oh, no,”