'How old is Jo?'

  'Thirty-four.'

  'And you?'

  'Fifty-six.'

  'That's a big difference. Know him long?'

  'About eleven years,' George said.

  'You get along with him?'

  'Fine.'

  'How'd you meet?'

  'At the 52-20 Club. You were in the service, weren't you?'

  'Sure.'

  'Remember when you got out, they had this thing where the state gave you twenty bucks a week for a maximum of fifty-two weeks. A sort of a rehabilitation thing. Until you found work.'

  'I remember,' Hawes said. 'But you weren't in the service, were you?'

  'No, no, I was too old.'

  'Was Jo?'

  'He was 4-F during the war. Had a punctured eardrum or something.'

  'Then how'd you meet at the Fifty-two—'

  'We were both working there. For the Welfare Board, you know. Jo and me. That's how we met.'

  'What happened then?'

  'Well, you know, we got friendly. I'd trust him with my right arm. Straight from the beginning. It was just one of those friendships. You know, we hit it off right away. It started with us stopping for a few brews on the way home from work. We still do it. Whenever we work together, we stop for a few brews. Place down the street. Jo and me, the guzzlers.' George smiled. 'The guzzlers,' he repeated fondly.

  'Go ahead,' Hawes said. He looked at his wrist watch. He had the oddest feeling that he was wasting precious time listening to this fraternal account. 'Go ahead,' he said again, more impatiently this time.

  'Well, we got to discussing our dreams and ambitions. I had a little dough socked away, and so did Jo. We talked about opening a little business. First we thought we'd open a bar, but it costs a lot of money to equip one, you know, and then there's the liquor licence and all. We just didn't have that kind of dough.'

  'So you decided on a diner instead.'

  'Yeah. We got a loan from the bank, and together with what we had, that was enough to start the business. Partners. Me and Jo. Fifty-fifty split. And it works, believe me. You know why?'

  'Why?'

  'Because we've got ambition. Both of us. Ambition to get ahead, to make something of ourselves. In a few years we'll be opening another diner, and then later on another. Ambition. And trust.' George's voice dropped to a more confidential tone. 'Listen, I trust that kid… I trust him like he was my own son.' He began chuckling. 'Hell, you have to, in my position.'

  'What do you mean?'

  'I'm an orphan, all alone in the world. Jo's the only one I've got. And this is a partnership. That kid's as good as gold. I wouldn't trade him for the world.'

  'Where is he today?' Hawes asked.

  'Wednesday. His day off. We both work Saturdays and Sundays, and we each take a day during the week. We're building, you know. Toward the big string of diners.' George smiled.

  'You think Jo might have given your card to the man whose picture I showed you?'

  'He might have. Why don't you show him the picture?'

  'Where can I reach him?'

  'I'll give you his phone number. You can call him at home. If he's not there, he's probably with his girl-friend. A nice girl. Her name's Felicia. He'll probably marry her someday.'

  'Where does he live?' Hawes asked.

  'In a nice apartment downtown. One of these hotel apartments. Very nice. He likes to live nice. Me, any hole in the wall'll do. But not Jo. He's… You know, a smart kid. Likes nice things.'

  'Give me the number,' Hawes said.

  'You can make the call right here, in the kitchen. There's a phone on the wall. Listen, can we get out of here? Besides my customers, it's getting hot as hell in this cubby-hole.'

  He opened the door, and they started walking toward the kitchen.

  'It's like this every night,' George said. 'Jam-packed. We give them quality, and it pays off for us. But, boy, it's a lot of work. This won't begin slacking off until seven thirty, eight o'clock. Busy. Busy all the time. Knock wood,' he added, rapping on the counter.

  Hawes followed him back to the kitchen. The kitchen was very hot, hot with the heat of the day and the heat of the stoves, and hot with hurried, frantic speech.

  'Phone's over there,' George said. 'The number's Delville 2-4523.'

  'Thanks,' Hawes said.

  He walked to the phone, and deposited a dime. Then he began dialling. He waited.

  'Riverdix Hotel,' the voice said.

  'Jo Cort, please,' Hawes said.

  'I'll try his apartment, sir. One moment, please.'

  Hawes waited. The operator rang.

  'I'm sorry, sir. He doesn't seem to be answering.'

  'Try it again,' Hawes said.

  'Yes, sir.' She tried it again. And again. And again and again. 'I'm sorry, sir,' she told him. 'There's still no answer.'

  'Thank you,' Hawes said, and he hung up.

  He went out front and found George.

  'He's not home.'

  'Oh. Too bad. Try his girl-friend. Felicia Pannet. She's in Isola, too.'

  'Where?' Hawes asked.

  'I don't know the address. Midtown someplace. Or just above the Square, I think. Yeah, that's it. On the North side.' George turned to a customer. 'Yes, sir,' he said, 'would you care to see a menu?'

  'Just give me a bacon and tomato on toast,' the man said. 'And a cup of coffee.'

  George turned to the pass-through leading to the kitchen. 'BT down,' he shouted. 'Draw one!' He turned back to Hawes. 'Will I be glad when this day is over. Know what I'm going to do?'

  'What?' Hawes said.

  'As soon as this crowd thins out, half hour or so from now, I'm going for a brew. Right down the street. Maybe two brews. Maybe I'll sit there and drink all night. I'm so thirsty I could drink a keg of the stuff. I can't wait. Half hour or so, whizzz, I'm out of here.'

  He had mentioned time, the enemy, and so Hawes unconsciously looked at his wrist watch. It was three minutes to seven.

  An hour to go.

  'Thanks,' he said to George, and he left the diner.

  Outside, he wondered what to do. The girl lived in mid-town Isola, above the Square. Should he go there? Was it worth it? Suppose Jo wasn't there? Or suppose he was there and couldn't identify the picture? Or suppose he could identify the picture, would there be time to stop the killer? He looked at his watch again.

  Seven o'clock.

  Was there time?

  Could they stop him now? Could they stop him from killing the woman, whoever she was?

  Well, what else was there to do? Go back to the precinct squad-room and wait for the hour to pass? Sit there with the boys while a killer took aim at his target, while a Luger was brought to bear and then fired?

  What the hell else was there to do? If he hurried, if he put on the siren and cleared the streets, he could be there in ten minutes. Another ten to talk to Jo—if he was there—and then ten to get back to the precinct. He could be in the squad-room by 7.30, and maybe Jo would identify that picture. Maybe, maybe, maybe…

  Hawes walked into a drugstore and directly to the phone booths. He looked up Felicia Pannet's address, got it, and then decided to call her first. If Jo Cort wasn't there, she would tell him so and save him a trip.

  He repeated the number to himself, went into the booth, and dialled it.

  The busy signal clicked in his ear.

  He hung up and waited. Then he dialled again.

  Still busy.

  Damnit, he was wasting time. If the phone was busy, somebody was home! And he sure as hell couldn't spend the next precious hour in a phone booth. He left the drugstore and walked back to the police sedan.

  He gunned away from the curb, and turned on the siren.

  * * *

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  Nathan Hale Square divided the island of Isola almost exactly in two. Dominated by the huge statue of the patriot, it was the hub of a bigger square of city commerce. Swank shops, bookshops, drugstores, automobile showrooms, hotels, and the new giant sports arena surrounded the square with their bustling activity. The heat had in no way diminished the bustle, or the hustle accompanying it. The heat very rarely affects pursuit of the long green.

  And yet, seeming to typify a more gracious bygone time when the only thing people had to worry about was revolutions, Nathan Hale complacently looked out at the commercialism surrounding him, seemed in fact to look above and beyond it. And like dutiful subjects, a smattering of citizens sat on the benches circling the statue, feeding the pigeons, or reading newspapers, or just watching the girls in their thin summer frocks go by. Watching the girls in their summer frocks was a favourite city pastime, and another thing the heat could not affect.

  Stopped for a moment by the maze of traffic in the square, Hawes watched the girls in their thin dresses. The traffic broke, the siren erupted, the car gunned forward, the girls were behind him. He swung around the square, heard a motorist curse behind him, and then headed east, taking the corner into Felicia Pannet's block on two wheels. He pulled the sedan to the curb, yanked the keys from the ignition, slammed out of the car, and took the front-stoop steps two at a time to the entrance lobby.

  Felicia Pannet, the card in the bell panel read. Hawes pushed the button. He waited, his hand on the knob of the inner door. The door clicked, the lock sprang. Hawes pushed open the door and stepped into the ground-floor lobby. An elevator was at the rear of the lobby. He started for it, then remembered he hadn't looked at Felicia's apartment number. Cursing, muttering proverbs about haste making waste, he went back to the entrance door, opened it, braced it with one foot, and leaned into the lobby to read the apartment number in the bell panel. Sixty-three.

  He went back inside to the elevator, pushed the down button, and waited. The indicator told him the elevator was on the seventh floor. He waited. Either the indicator was broken, or the elevator was not moving. He pushed the button again. The elevator stayed on the seventh floor.

  He could visualize two fat matrons discussing their arthritis, one of them holding the elevator door open while the second fumbled for her apartment keys in her purse. Or perhaps a delivery boy shuttling a month's supply of groceries from the elevator to some apartment, having wedged the door open with the shopping cart. He pushed the button again. Adamantly the damned elevator refused to move. Hawes looked at his watch, and then took the steps.

  He was winded and dripping wet when he reached the sixth floor. He looked for Apartment Sixty-three, found it, and pushed the black buzzer button in the doorjamb. No one answered. He pushed it again. As he was pushing it, he heard the hum of the elevator, saw the lighted car pass on its way downward to the street.

  'Who is it?' a voice from within the apartment asked. The voice was low and cool, a woman's voice.

  'Police,' Hawes said.

  Footsteps padded toward the door. The peephole flap grated metal against metal when it swung back. The peephole presented only a mirrored surface to whoever was standing outside the doorway. The woman inside could see out, but Hawes could not see in.

  'I'm not dressed,' the voice said. 'You'll have to wait.'

  'Please hurry,' Hawes said.

  'I'll dress as quickly as I know how,' the voice said, and Hawes felt he had been reprimanded. The peephole flap grated shut again. Hawes leaned against the wall opposite the doorway, waiting. It was hot in the corridor. The collected smells of the day had merged with the cooking smells of the evening, and these in turn had merged with the heat to form an assault wave on the nostrils. He pulled out his handkerchief and blew his nose. It didn't help.

  He realized all at once that he was hungry. He had not eaten since noontime, and he'd done a lot of chasing around since then, and his stomach was beginning to growl.

  It'll soon be over, he thought, one way or the, other. Then you can go home and shave and put on a clean white shirt and a tie and the grey tropical, and you can pick up Christine Maxwell. You didn't promise her dinner, but you'll buy her dinner, anyway. You'll have some long, tall drinks rammed full with ice. You'll dance to the air-conditioned rhythms of Felix Iceberg and his Twelve Icicles, and then you'll escort Miss Maxwell home and discuss Antarctica over a nightcap.

  It sounded delightful.

  I wish I worked for an advertising agency, Hawes thought. I'd leave the office at five and by this time I'd be immersed in a tub of marti—

  Time.

  He looked at his watch.

  Good God, what the hell was taking her so long? Impatiently he reached for the buzzer again. He was about to press it when the door opened.

  Felicia Pannet was easily the coolest-looking person he had seen all day. All week. All year. There was no other word for her. She was cool. She was, as a few junkies he knew might put it, the coolest, man.

  She had straight black hair clipped in what he supposed the coiffure con men called a Spider Cut or a Bedbug Cut or some sort of an insect cut. Whatever they called it, it was extremely short except for the tendrils, which, insect-like, swept over her forehead.

  Her eyes were blue. They were not a warm blue. They were the blue you sometimes find on a very fair-skinned blonde or an Irish redhead. But fair hair softens the harshness of the blue in those cases; Felicia Pannet's hair had been poured from an inkwell, and it dropped the temperature of the blue eyes to somewhere far below zero.

  Her nose, like her hair, had been bobbed. The job was an excellent one, but Hawes could spot a nose bob at a hundred paces. Felicia's nose was a properly American, properly supper-club, properly martini-glass-in-hand-spouting-latest- best-seller-talk nose. A cool nose for a cool woman. And her mouth, without lipstick, was thin and bloodless. For a moment, Hawes thought of Charles Addams. The moment passed.

  'I'm sorry I kept you waiting,' Felicia said. Her voice expressed no regret whatever.

  'That's quite all right,' Hawes said. 'May I come in?'

  'Please.'

  She did not ask for identification. He followed her into the apartment. She was wearing an ice-blue sweater and a black skirt. The thongs of pale-blue sandals passed through the spaces alongside her big toes. Her toe-nails were painted a bright red, as were her long, carefully manicured finger-nails.

  The apartment was as cool as the woman. Hawes was not an expert on modern furniture, but he knew the stuff in this apartment had not been purchased on Crichton Avenue. This was nine-months-wait, special-order furniture. It had the look and the feel of luxury.

  Felicia sat.

  'What's your name?' she said.

  Her voice had the peculiarly aloof nasal twang Hawes had always identified with Harvard men. He had always assumed that the speech instructor at Harvard was a man who spoke through his nose and, emulated by his students, produced a generation of young men whose voices emerged through their nostrils rather than their mouths. He was surprised to hear the affected speech pattern and tone in a woman. He was half tempted to ask her if she was a Harvard graduate.

  'My name's Hawes,' he said. 'Detective Hawes.'

  'Do I call you Detective Hawes or Mr Hawes? Which?'

  'Whichever you like. Just don't—'

  'Just don't call me late for dinner,' she completed un-smilingly.

  'I was just going to say,' Hawes said flatly, annoyed that she thought he'd been about to use the old saw, 'just don't waste any more of my time.'

  The rebuff produced nothing more on the face of Felicia Pannet than a slight lifting of her left eyebrow. 'I had no idea your time was so valuable,' she said. 'What do you want here?'

  'I've just come from the Jo-George Diner,' Hawes said. 'Do you know George?'

  'I've met him, yes.'

  'He told me that you're his partner's girl-friend. Is that right?'

  'Are you referring to Jo?'

  'Yes.'

  'I suppose you might say I'm his girl-friend.'

  'Do you know where I can locate him, Miss Pannet?'

  'Yes. He's out of town.'

  'Where?'

  'He went upstate to do some fishing.'

  'When did he leave?'

  'Early this morning.'

  'What time this morning?'

  'About one o'clock.'

  'You mean this afternoon, then, don't you?'

  'No, I mean this morning. I rarely say anything I don't mean, Detective Hawes. I mean this morning. One o'clock this morning. He worked late at the diner last night. He stopped by here to have a nightcap, and then he left for upstate. It must have been about one o'clock.' She paused. Emphatically she added, 'In the morning.'

  'I see. Where did he go upstate?'

  'I don't know. He didn't say.'

  'When will he be back?'

  'Either late tonight or early tomorrow morning. He's due back at the diner tomorrow.'

  'Will he call you when he gets back?'

  'He said he would.'

  'Are you engaged to him, Miss Pannet?'

  'In a sense, yes.'

  'What does that mean?'

  'It means I don't date any other men. But I haven't got his ring. I don't want it yet.'

  'Why not?'

  'I'm not ready to marry him yet.'

  'Why not?'

  'When I get married, I want to stop working. But I want to live the way I live now. Jo makes a decent amount of money. The diner's a going business, and he splits everything fifty-fifty with George. But he still doesn't make as much money as I do.'

  'Where do you work, Miss Pannet?'

  'For a television packaging outfit. Trio Productions. Have you heard of it?'

  'No.'

  Felicia Pannet shrugged. 'Three people,' she said. 'A writer, a director, and a producer. They banded together and formed their own producing company. We package shows for a good deal of the industry. The "Pennsylvania Coal Hour" is one of our shows. Surely you've seen that.'

  'I don't own a television set,' Hawes said.

  'Don't you believe in art?' she asked. 'Or can't you afford one?'

  Hawes let the remark pass. 'And what do you do with Trio Productions?' he asked.

  'I'm one of the original three, one of the trio. I'm the producer.'

  'I see. And this pays well, does it?'

  'It pays extremely well.'

  'And Jo's cut of the business doesn't pay as well?'

 

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