The Drowned Man (31 page)

Alida had heard Jangler's knock but she was in room 404 at the time. Fifteen minutes after entering 402 in the predawn with her cup of coffee, a seizure had overtaken her. Her twitch had begun halfway into her call to the front desk to say that Jeff would not be in on time. She used her mobile to call the general number for the Gorman Hotel and reach the ancient clerk. Even in her distress, she managed to simulate the flattened inflection of an American Midwesterner. As soon as she hung up, she fell to the floor and began to shake. The dizziness hit her in disabling waves.

Her plan had always been to abandon 402, in part because Jeffie had registered it under Judy Jones that first day, and who knew what some snoop would deduce from a female name. Now she barely succeeded in crawling across the carpet through the passage that connected 402 to 404. But then she remembered that Jeff occupied the double bed behind her, and she crawled back. She struggled from the floor to the mattress, battling nausea. to reach her knees and meeting the slack face of the naked desk clerk; his breath was foul and his skin was clammy with sweat. She placed two pillows on the floor at the end of the bed and with a supreme effort dragged Jeff by the feet off the end, his face thumping into the pillows. Between spasms, she drew his leaden body through the connecting doorway. She got partway across the room and dumped him. In all, it took fifteen minutes and she had to halt every foot or two. Jeff's face was raw with rug burn when she finally left him by the bed in 404.

Alida staggered back to 402 and managed to locate her purse; her other clothes were already in the closet down in 406. When she closed up the connectors from 402 through 406 she left the crullers and the now-cold coffee on the desk in the end room. Several hours later, the tapping sound reached her in 404 and pulled her slowly out of her sweating, dreamless sleep; she thought she heard the word “manager” but wasn't sure.

Peter remained out of sight with Price Murdock at the back of the hotel. It was a good place to be, he thought, low-risk — let the
FBI
run this caper inside — and, even better, distant from Malloway, who was somewhere within the Gorman.

Their problem was Lembridge. At 9:30, Murdock had shepherded the professor to the Gorman without incident but he remained far too nervous. Peter and Price ordered him to wait in the lobby for Alida's call. He was to write the number of the rendezvous room on a piece of paper and leave it with the desk clerk. Murdock's people had wired Lembridge for sound. The professor wore a light blue summer suit and a black shirt, which appeared odd to Peter until he realized that Murdock had made him change to the darker shirt. The colour might better conceal the wire, as well as Lembridge's perspiration. Peter could see that the professor was fighting panic.

Murdock left Lembridge by the front desk to wait for Alida's call, and rejoined Peter outside. Peter began to worry that the meeting wouldn't happen. Alida could have been monitoring the streets and become suspicious.

“Where the hell is her phone call?” Murdock said. The detectives had moved closer to the hotel at Murdock's suggestion but Peter felt exposed in such proximity to the back entrance. He was about to suggest that they move a block away when Price's mobile chimed. It was the
FBI
agent assigned to watch the façade of the hotel. Peter waited as Murdock talked to her. Crerar had arrived. The agent had not only seen him take a call in the lobby, she also remarked that Lembridge picked up his own phone a minute or two later, after Crerar entered the elevator.

“Did Crerar acknowledge Lembridge?” Peter said to Price, who passed the query on to the agent.

Peter caught the woman's answer. “Don't think so. They studiously ignored each other.”

Alida got up fast, opened the connector and returned to the bathroom in 402. She was running late. She cleaned up her sweaty face and neck as best she could. Swiftly now, she dodged through the open interior doors to 406 and, for the dozenth time, inventoried her clothes and her blue gym bag, which held the two Booth letters; she suppressed the memory of her pink Jack-and-Rose rucksack. Almost as an afterthought, she checked the useless and discarded Jeffie in 404. She had lugged him onto the mattress; he was alive but he had thrown up over the side of the bed.

Alida peeked into the hallway and verified that nothing had changed along the corridor. Telling Lembridge about “Alice Parsons” had been a smart bit of deception, if not without risk. She had managed to get Jeff to delete the name but now the house computer showed 411 to be empty. The police officers might notice the change.

She called Crerar, verified his arrival in the lobby, and told him to take the lift to room 310. The door would be left unlocked and he should wait. Two minutes later she called Andrew Lembridge and gave him the same information, adding that she would arrive in 310 six minutes after he did.

“I will not have the letters with me. I will fetch them when and if Crerar shows the cash.”

Lembridge answered her cell phone call as the technician was testing Lembridge's wire. The technician clearly heard the professor's acknowledgement of Alida's instructions. He reported to Henry Pastern that Nahvi would be arriving in 310 without the original documents.

Finally, Alida went back to the bathroom in 402 and did a last check of her blouse, skirt, and jacket, and finished applying her makeup. She strutted through to 404 and on to 406 and began opening more doors.

Henry Pastern felt blinder than he had expected. After only two hours in the observation room — an inaccurate label, since they could
see
nothing, only listen to Crerar and Lembridge making uncomfortable chitchat in room 310 — the suite was dank with human sweat and rising tension. Although it was an illusion, the sound transmissions seemed to increase the heat in the cramped space.

Henry strained to hear the conversation in 310 and detected increasing irritation in Crerar's voice. Nahvi was two minutes late. Everyone in the observation room seemed to be on a cell phone and it was hard to concentrate. Dave Jangler, who had reluctantly stayed in the monitoring room, and who had the worst cabin fever of all, tried to reach Murdock outside.

Only Malloway, Henry Pastern, and the technician remained focused on the eavesdropping receiver. Henry felt little in common with these tough detectives, never having pulled his weapon on the job. As for Malloway, their initial connection over the Booth letters had soured as Henry came to understand that the Scotland Yard man's obsession was with Alida Nahvi and not the Booth letters. Malloway had inserted himself in the takedown operation as the designated liaison man with New Scotland Yard but Henry much preferred to work with Peter Cammon on all matters. Henry's thoughts buzzed. If the sting crashed and burned, he would earn the blame. He had argued for a cautious strategy, considering it fifty-fifty that the woman had the material hidden off the premises, to be retrieved and revealed at the last minute. Now he was willing to concede that the papers probably were somewhere within the hotel. They should have arrested her hours ago. He said nothing but listened with Malloway as her voice emerged, staticky as an old radio.

On the even-numbered side of the fourth floor, every connecting door stood open, creating an odd receding perspective from 402 to 412. The .380 pistol fit awkwardly in her jacket pocket. The echo of the knock on the door returned to her, and so did the single word “manager.” There had been no reason for the manager to visit. She worried that this room was being monitored somehow, perhaps through a spy hole drilled in from the stairwell, and so she played the part, just in case, and did nothing unexpected. Leaning back into the bathroom doorway, she could see all the way down to 412 through the doorways. She thought she could run the length of it in ten seconds, if she had to.

Jeff remained unconscious next door. With the drug she had injected in his thigh, he would sleep all day. The manager, according to Jeff, seldom arrived before noon and by then she would be on her way back to Rochester. That left only the elderly night clerk to worry about, but unless he bothered to check for credit cards for the imaginary tenants on the fourth, he would be content to respect their late-sleeping habits. Alida knew from Jeff that the hotel had one chambermaid assigned to floors one through three, another to clean four, five, and six; a third maid took care of the upper floors. Alida's maid would not arrive until eleven thirty and when she saw all the placards on the doorknobs on four she would move on to the fifth floor.

Just before locking up 402, Alida checked the back alley from her window. An overweight man in a suit stood with a cell phone to his ear while he smoked a cigarette.

Alida had no intention of sticking around to rob Crerar, or even withholding Lembridge's share of the payment, although he deserved to be cut out of the transaction. There were times when speed and decisiveness were crucial. She had learned that much from the Sword.

She entered room 310 without knocking. The two men stopped their argument, and Crerar managed a smile.

“We're discussing the fact that the professor has no equipment with him, no fluoroscope, for example, to authenticate the signature,” Crerar said.

The men in the observation room fell silent as they heard Alida speak, except for Jangler, eager to get to 310, who continued to call Murdock in the parking lot.

“Professor,” Alida Nahvi said in
BBC
newsreader tones, “haven't you told him about the tests we performed already?”

Lembridge managed a clumsy murmur. Alida threw him a suspicious look but he recovered and began a tepid affirmation of the authenticity of both letters. The Booth letter was the gem, the other thrown in as a bonus, he said. Alida did not alter her confident expression, although she was desperate to get moving. All this blather took less than five minutes. This had to be wrapped up super-fast, Alida reminded herself. She knew that the deal was a lock, everything before the exchange just banter, whatever the skittishness of Andrew Lembridge. Crerar knew too that the time had come to move to the next stage. He stood and went over to a boxy attaché case on the desk and opened it, revealing bundles of cash.

“Where are the letters?” he demanded.

“I'll go and retrieve them,” Alida stated. “They're in a safe on another floor. It will take me no more than
seven
minutes. When I bring them up, you can examine the material as long as you want — you have seen photocopies — and if Professor Lembridge pronounces that they are the same ones he saw before, we conclude the transfer.”

The common sense of both men may have been temporarily occluded by lust. In her tight skirt and with her efficacious manner, Alida beguiled them. They both thought they were clever in glimpsing the gun in her jacket pocket. That was a real aphrodisiac.

In the observation room every agent prepared for action. They all heard the word “up” — Alida would bring the letters
up
from floor one or two. For his part, Henry Pastern's excitement flared at the chance of reclaiming the precious documents, his yearning mixed with the thrill of finally becoming part of a successful field operation. Only Jangler, champing at the bit, saw that she was planting a diversion. Only he had seen Room 402, albeit from the outside, and instinct told him that Alida was keeping the letters there. Jangler drew his gun and opened the door to the second-floor hallway.

“I'm going up to monitor the fourth floor from the east stairs,” he said. “Nobody follow. I don't want the stairwell filled with officers.”

Malloway, to Jangler's clear annoyance, called him back and complained that they didn't know whether the girl would use the lift or the stairs, and there was a chance that she would run into Jangler. The American merely cursed at the Yard detective and moved into the hall. The remaining agents in the room rushed to make their phone calls to colleagues outside. Malloway disappeared into the corridor, as if to follow the Buffalo cop.

Alida was pleased with Crerar's firm response to her little speech. She gave the thumb-and-forefinger okay sign, went over to the briefcase full of cash, and swiftly closed it. It wasn't a necessary or logical manoeuvre but it sealed their understanding; she was trusting that the money would still be inside when she returned. As she rotated from the window back to the men, she glanced at the scene in the alley; she was one floor lower than the first time. She saw the fat businessman answer his phone again. The man hung up in a few seconds and began to jog, almost dangerously given his bulk, to the back end of the alleyway.
Why is he there?
She watched until he disappeared from view.

As she turned to the door, Lembridge said, “We'll wait here.” It was an innocuous, unnecessary assertion, even considering that the professor might be catching the mood, anticipating completion of the deal. Alida assessed the man she had seen from the window. This time he had been standing out in the alley for no good reason, no cigarette in sight. And now Lembridge appeared more nervous than the circumstances warranted. She remembered the knock on the door earlier. She thought she knew the voices of all the desk clerks and the hotel manager. The word “manager” had been spoken by a stranger.

She understood now. The man in the alley was a cop.

Alida said nothing more and closed the door to 310 behind her. She walked the short distance to the east stairwell. Taking off her clumsy knockoff Blahniks, she tiptoed up one level and into the hallway, at the same time taking out her room keycard. Jangler, who had crouched down on the sixth floor landing to ensure that he was well out of sight, heard the fire door onto the fourth open and close.

Alida walked to the end of the fourth floor and punched the button for the freight elevator. She was now in front of the room farthest from 402. Not pausing for the arrival of the lift, she turned about and opened 412 with the universal keycard she had stolen from Jeff. Had the corridor camera been installed, the “watchers” on the second would have seen her. As it was, the monitors heard only a light click as Alida gently shut the door.