to ask for nickels, and it wasn’t the sort of conversation where one welcomed the intrusion. I thought of setting the receiver down, walking a few dozen yards, tapping on the phone-booth door and hanging onto my nickels. I decided that would be pound foolish.
I hung up, finally, and the operator rang back almost immediately to ask for a final dime. I dropped it in, then stood there fingering my ring of picks and probes and having fantasies of opening the coin box and retrieving what I’d spent. I’d never tried to pick a telephone, the game clearly not being worth the candle, but how hard could it be? I studied the key slot for perhaps a full minute before coming sharply to my senses.
Carolyn would love that one, I thought, and hurried back to the table to fill her in. She wasn’t there. I sat for a moment. The ice had melted in my Perrier and the natural carbonation, while remarkably persistent, was clearly flagging. I gazed out the window. The phone booth on the corner was empty, and I couldn’t spot the Sikh in the doorway across the street.
Had she responded to a call of nature? If so, she’d toted the camera along with her. I gave her an extra minute to return from the ladies’ room, then laid a five-dollar bill atop the little table, weighted it down with my glass, and got out of there.
I took another look for the Sikh and still couldn’t find him. I crossed the street and walked north on Madison in the direction of the Carlyle. Bobby Short was back from his summer break, I seemed to recall reading, and Tommie Flanagan, Ella Fitzgerald’s accompanist for years, was doing a solo act in the Bemelmans Lounge. It struck me that I couldn’t think of a nicer way to spend a New York evening, and that I hadn’t been getting out much of late, and once this mess was cleared up I’d have to pay another visit to this glittering neighborhood.
Unless, of course, this mess didn’t get cleared up. In which case I wouldn’t be getting out much for years on end.
I was entertaining this grim thought when a voice came at me from a doorway on my left. “Pssssst,” I heard. “Hey, Mac, wanna buy a hot camera?”
And there she was, a cocky grin on her face. “You found me,” she said.
“I’m keen and resourceful.”
“And harder to shake than a summer cold.”
“That too. I figured you were in the john. When you failed to return, I took action.”
“So did I. I tried taking his picture while you were talking to him. From our table. All I got was reflections. You couldn’t even tell if there was anyone inside the telephone booth.”
“So you went out and waylaid him.”
“Yeah. I figured when he was done he’d probably go back where he came from, so I found this spot and waited for him. Either he made more calls or you were talking a long time.”
“We were talking a long time.”
“Then he showed up, finally, and he never even noticed me. He passed close by, too. Look at this.”
“A stunning likeness.”
“That’s nothing. The film popped out the way it does, and I watched it develop, and it’s really amazing the way it does that, and then I tore it off and put it in my pocket, and I popped out of the doorway, ready to go back and look for you, and who do you think I bumped into?”
“Rudyard Whelkin.”
“Is he around here? Did you see him?”
“No.”
“Then why did you say that?”
“Just a guess. Let’s see. Prescott Demarest?”
“No. What’s the matter with you, Bern? It was the Sikh.”
“That would have been my third guess.”
“Well, you would have been right. I popped out with my camera in my hot little hands and I almost smacked right into him. He looked down at me and I looked up at him, and I’ll tell you, Bernie, I could have used a stepstool.”
“What happened?”
“What happened is I was incredibly brilliant. A mind like quicksilver. I went all saucer-eyed and I said, ‘Oh, wow, a turban! Are you from India, sir? Are you with the United Nations? Gosh, will you pose for me so I can take your picture?’ ”
“How did this go over?”
“Smashingly. Look for yourself.”
“You’re getting pretty handy with that camera.”
“You’re no more impressed than he was. He’s going to buy himself a Polaroid first thing Monday morning. I had to take two pictures, incidentally, because he wanted