“What about George Ramiro?”

“A little. Not very much. He’s not a complicated sort. Too stupid to be devious.”

Roger said, “He got many friends?”

“Not many. Mostly he cares about showing off his new Cadillac and smoking Cuban cigars and driving his big power boat around Long Island Sound. A typical suburban citizen.”

“He and his wife live on the same premises with the Pastors?”

“Yes. Three sets of premises. In Manhattan they’re in the Park Avenue building, same floor. Next door apartment. In Brooklyn it’s a semidetached, one of those big old Victorian houses that go for a quarter of a million nowadays. The Ramiros have the top floor. Summers they all go out on Long Island. The Ramiros live in the gatehouse.”

“Well we’re not concerned with what they do in the summertime.”

Vasquez said, “Perhaps what we need to know is who his enemies are.”

“He’s rubbed a lot of people the wrong way. It might be a long list.”

“I’m talking about serious enemies,” Mathieson said.

“D’Alesio didn’t mention anything specific. Ramiro’s not too well liked—but mortal enemies? No, I pass.”

“We may have to do some excavating,” Vasquez said.

Mathieson shook his head. “Take too much time.”

Vasquez said, “We’ve got to find an opening, haven’t we. If it takes time then it takes time.”

“If we can’t find one we’ll make one.”

“How?”

Mathieson poured more ginger ale. “He’s a man who’s obviously done a few things that must make him nervous in the middle of the night.”

Roger said, “You’d spend half of forever rooting them out.”

“We don’t need to. All we need is the assumption that something exists that might cause trouble for him if word of it leaked out to other hoodlums. Something that might even turn Frank Pastor against him.”

Homer said, “He seems to be reasonably loyal. Anyway he’s married into the family. He wouldn’t pull anything that would make Pastor come down hard on him.”

“Somewhere along the line he’s probably slipped a little off the top for himself,” Mathieson said. “That’s all it needs—just the wedge of something that could make him feel guilty. Or nervous. Anyhow we’ll want an update on Ramiro’s movements. Find his patterns—then we’ll move.”

Mathieson swabbed his dry throat with ginger ale; he was trying not to think about Jan, the way she’d sounded on the phone when he’d called her. He tried to force her out of his mind. “Roger, how’d you get into the hotel without being recognized?”

“Fake beard and motorcycle shades.”

Homer said, “His own mother wouldn’t know him. He looks like a forty-year-old hippie.”

“As long as he doesn’t talk,” Vasquez said. “The voice is a dead giveaway.”

Mathieson said, “Anything you can do about that? Fake an English accent or anything?”

“I reckon not. It’s the only way I know how to talk.”

“I thought you were an actor.”

“Old horse, I never said I was.” But then Roger screwed up his outdoor eyes in concentration. “But oi suppews oi moight be able to troy. It’s me dewty, innit?”

“That’s the worst Cary Grant imitation I ever heard,” Homer said.

Mathieson said, “But it didn’t sound like Roger Gilfillan, did it. Can you sustain that accent?”

“If oi must, old chep, but I should think it could become bloody tiahsome.” Roger lapsed into prairie twang. “What you fixin’ to have me do?”

“We’re going to need some movie equipment. Sixteen millimeter, I’d think.”

“Silent or sound?”

“Sound. Preferably sound-on-film. We won’t want to have to monkey around with a separate tape-recording system.”

“What’s it for?”

“We’ll get to that,” Mathieson said. “What we need is a sound camera, a microphone, color film—the new fast kind that can be used indoors under ordinary artificial light. We’ll need a projector and a screen. Now we’ll want the most compact equipment that’s available. Oh, and a tripod camera mount.”

“What kind of lenses?”

“A normal zoom should do it. We don’t need telephoto.”

“How fast you want it?”

“No hurry. We’ve got other things to take care of first.”

“Old horse, that ain’t much of a chore. Anybody could do it.”

“I’ve watched you on the set, Roger. The other actors play poker and swap lies. You hang around the cameramen and the sound engineers every chance you get. You’re probably more of an expert than they are by now. This equipment has got to work well and it’s got to be manned by a professional. You’re in charge of it.”

Vasquez said, “What’s the next step?”

“Glenn Bradleigh,” Mathieson said.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

New York City: 7 October

1

ANNA WAS LATE GETTING BACK TO THE PARK AVENUE apartment. In her euphoria she nearly forgot to pay the taxi driver. The doorman’s surly face changed when he opened the door for her: She decided it must be the infectiousness of her radiance. It was the first time she’d ever seen a real smile on his face.

She stopped on the curb and looked up. It was one of those rare evenings: the sky autumn-clear, the Park Avenue glass towers sharply etched against the blue. Dry and cool and beautiful.

After a solitary elevator ride she arrived at the apartment and rang the bell; her key wouldn’t work—the police bar would be in place. She glanced up at the lens of the closed-circuit camera.

It wasn’t Frank who opened the door; it was Sandy, her hair in curlers, belted into a terrycloth robe. “Hi.”

“Hi yourself. How’s school?”

“You always ask me that.” Sandy closed the door and slammed the police bar across it and went toward the hallway that went back to the girls’ rooms. “And I always say the same thing. It was all right. It was school. What can you say about school?”

“Dad home?”

“In there.” Sandy pointed toward the study. The door was closed.

“Alone?”

“Ezio’s here.” She made a face. “I’m watching the Star Trek rerun and I’ve got to get back under the dryer, OK?”

“Get it combed out in time for dinner.”

“Sure, sure.” Sandy disappeared on the run.

She knocked. When she heard Frank’s voice she went in.

Ezio gave her a glance and a nod; he didn’t rise from his chair. Frank was at the desk. She went around it and kissed him.

Frank said, “You’re in a good mood.”

“I’m glad you noticed. You two look like the building just fell down around your ankles.”

“It did. Gillespie hasn’t turned up.”

She went toward the recliner chair, peeling off her gloves. “He’s scared. He’s hiding somewhere.”

“Scared for sure,” Ezio said. “He didn’t even go home for his toothbrush that night.”

The jammer’s light glowed red. The plastic cover was on the pool table and Ezio’s topcoat was thrown across it. She put her gloves neatly in her lap. Narrow bands of sunlight fell through the Venetian blinds of the south window.

Frank told her, “Ernie Guffin still hasn’t got a make on——”

“Ernie who?”

“The detective in Washington,” Ezio explained. “He still hasn’t got a make on Robert Zeck. Nobody meets the description. We told you all this before, Anna.”

“There’s been a lot going on,” she said.

Ezio turned toward Frank. “You listen to the tape again?”

“Three times.”

“So what do you think?”

“Anna thinks Zeck’s a federal.”

Ezio blinked. “And what do you think?”

“It’s as good a guess as any. If Zeck didn’t get that stuff off a computer like he said he did, then where’d he get it? He had to get it officially. And that makes him a fed.”

“Beats shit out of me,” Ezio said.

“Mind your language.” Frank said it gently. Anna covered a smile with her hand; Frank winked at her.

Frank said, “C.K. probably found the microphones, he found out the office was bugged. He figures you had him bugged, Ezio, he knows I must have heard the tape. That’s why he disappeared. He’s afraid maybe I’ll believe this Zeck stuff.”