In the night room Page 0,54
blocks up lowers her arm out of weariness. Arm up, arm down, it makes no difference, because there are no empty cabs rolling down Central Park West. If Tom could summon a taxi for the midget, he’d do it in a nanosec, almost as much for her sake as for his, but mostly to eliminate his competition.
Now he’s afraid to look back and check out the policemen, but in a way he’s also afraid not to, in case they might be strolling toward him.
Would you mind opening that bag, sir?
Excuse me, sir, but we couldn’t help noticing that we seem to make you uncomfortable.
He can’t find a taxi and he’s afraid to look back—it’s time to move along, Sunny Jim. With only the smallest of glances at the cops and Giles Coverley, who seems to be wrapping things up and on the verge of rejoining the bouncer-type guy in the cast, Tom spins around, glances at his watch to suggest that he is a traveler looking for a ride to La Guardia or JFK, and marches down past the front of the hotel, crosses the street, walks straight past the much grander entrance to the Trump International Hotel, and turns right at the traffic-jammed edge of Columbus Circle. There he reverses direction and walks north on Broadway, backward, with his arm held up in the air. Flowing past him is a constant stream of private cars, interspersed with black Town Cars bearing wealthy gentlemen to their mysterious destinations, and many, many taxicabs charging uptown in search of handsome tips.
Sixty-second Street runs one-way in the wrong direction, west toward the Hudson River, not east toward Central Park. But halfway up the block a small miracle occurs, that of the arrival at the curb about ten feet south of his position of a new, SUV-like taxi, a Toyota Sienna with sliding doors, from one of which emerges a beautiful but stern young woman cradling the most bored-looking pussycat Tom Hartland has ever seen. The light goes on even before the door slides shut, and Tom trots forward, smiling. Both the beautiful young woman and the pussycat frown at him.
By now, he hopes, the cooks will have conducted Willy to the kitchen’s back entrance.
The young woman completes closing the door even while Tom approaches, but she does not retreat. Nor does she alter the expression on her face, which hovers between dismay and disdain. The cat hisses, and squirms in her arms.
“I’m sorry,” she says. “I’m in your way, aren’t I?”
“Just a bit,” Tom says. “Do you mind?”
The woman moves backward. As Tom opens the door, he is aware of her continuing scrutiny. She’s still looking at him through the window when he has pulled himself onto the seat and closed the door.
“Go down Central Park West and turn right on Sixty-first Street,” Tom says to the driver. The cab does not move. Tom waits, willing himself not to say, “Come on, come on.”
They finally get through the light at Sixty-second Street, only to become mired in a tangle of taxis, cars, and moving vans oozing up Broadway with the alacrity of a slug crawling down a garden path. Tom pounds his knees, knowing the driver is not to blame. The people on the sidewalk move faster than the traffic.
These people make him feel uneasy, too. Some of them may be part of the plot against Willy; they may have been hired by Mitchell Faber to act as scouts and lookouts; Faber could have saturated the neighborhood with people hired to capture his runaway fiancée. It’s too much, it’s dizzying. Suddenly, Tom feels far out of his depth: he should be back in his apartment, working away at his new book about Teddy Barton and the suspicious goings-on in and behind the Time & Motion building on Fremont Avenue, Haleyville’s commercial center. Teddy is getting close to understanding why Mr. Capstone was digging in his backyard at 11:00 P.M., and after he and Angel Morales sneak into the Time & Motion building and pick Mr. Capstone’s lock, everything is going to come together in a hurry, meaning that in about six weeks, Tom will be able to send the 300-odd pages of The Moon-Bird Menace to his editor. Yet he must do whatever he can for Willy; he has to snatch her out of that hotel before Coverley and the guy with the broken arm get their hands on her. He must pull her out like a tooth, in one swift, powerful movement.
He’ll