Each morning the gray Mercedes arrived and discharged its two passengers. They would join the throng trooping into the school. Each afternoon promptly at half past three the Mercedes drew up and the two passengers came from the school and got in. Now it was 2:45 P.M. and raining.

The older girl was Sandra—fourteen, a bit on the plump side, ample of bosom: athletic and attractive but she would be matronly in ten years’ time. She had a round face, almost cherubic, surrounded by a frizzy explosion of dark hair. Her sister Nora, twelve years old, was slender, pubescent, tall for her age. She wore her dark hair long and straight and it framed a piquant triangular face with extraordinarily large eyes.

There were always two men in the Mercedes that delivered and collected them.

The driver was a chauffeur who went by the name of Lloyd Belmont.

The bodyguard was Gregory Cestone, a large hard man whose face reminded Mathieson of a lunar landscape. It was a disquietingly immobile face that had been badly burned.

Belmont and Cestone in the Mercedes were due to appear in forty-five minutes. Roger shot his cuff over his watch. “Reckon I’ll go over to Madison and use the little boy’s room while there’s time. You want to go first?”

“No, I’m all right. Pick up a pack of Life Savers or something, will you? I feel peckish.”

Roger walked away in the rain and disappeared around the corner.

It was stuffy in the car and Mathieson rolled the window down. A fine spray of rain drifted against his face. It came across the park off the Hudson estuary and carried the tang of sea salt.

Ifwe cart only bring this off. He had set Monday as the target date because if Gregory Cestone didn’t lead them to a connection by Friday evening it would still leave them the weekend to find another source. Right now Vasquez and Homer would be shadowing Cestone; they would drop the baton here at half past three; Mathieson and Roger would pick it up.

But the Mercedes was early.

In the side mirror he saw it come into the street from Madison. It drew up slightly behind him, stopping in front of the school; its horn tooted three times. In the intersection Mathieson saw Vasquez’s brown Cadillac slide slowly by—it couldn’t turn into the street because it would have had to squeeze past the double-parked Mercedes and that would have given Cestone and Belmont a close look at Vasquez.

Mathieson reached out as if to adjust the side mirror. It was the signal to Vasquez that he was picking up the relay. There was nothing else he could do. From that distance Vasquez would have no way of seeing there weren’t two men in the Plymouth but it couldn’t be helped.

He saw no sign of Roger on the sidewalk.

The two girls came down the steps. Cestone held the rear door open for them. Sandra carried an umbrella; she folded it as they got into the car. Cestone got back into the car and Belmont moved the Mercedes away.

It came past at a crawl and when it was dead abreast Cestone abruptly looked point-blank into Mathieson’s face.

Mathieson felt the stab of panic. He bluffed: looked at his watch, looked in the rearview mirror, made a face as if awaiting a date who hadn’t shown up on time. He was sure it wasn’t convincing.

The Mercedes rolled on. Inside it Cestone twisted his face close to the rain-mottled window, staring back at Mathieson.

It dwindled toward the far corner. Mathieson turned the key and started the engine. He began to back up. Then he saw Roger running forward along the curb. Roger dived into the car grinning.

Up ahead the Mercedes was at the end of the block waiting for the signal to change.

Mathieson could no longer see Cestone’s rigid face. Was he looking back past the girls through the rear window? The rain made it impossible to tell. Had he seen Roger get into the car or had he turned to face front by then?

“Maybe we blew it,” Mathieson said.

“Hell, old horse, take the chance. Reckon we got nothing to lose.”

When the signal changed the Mercedes made the left into Fifth Avenue and Mathieson let it go out of sight before he pulled away from the hydrant; the tires squealed and he turned left through the light just as it changed.

At the far end of the block the staggered signal went green and the cars began to surge away but he was only half a block behind the Mercedes.

“This could backfire.”

Roger said, “Supposin’ we just see what happens.”

“If there’s any talking I’ll do it. You hide behind your beard and keep your mouth shut.”

“Yes sir, General sir.”

“Don’t make a joke out of it, Roger.”

“Just hankering for a gun in my pocket about now.”

“Just as well you haven’t got one—you won’t be tempted to wave it around.” There was no point carrying guns around New York; if you were caught with one in your pocket it could cost you ten years.

The cars knotted up, crowding past the snag of buses in front of the Metropolitan Museum; afterward it was an easy run in light traffic down into the lower Sixties and Mathieson let the Mercedes stretch its lead to three blocks. A bus arrogantly shouldered in front of him; for a moment he lost sight of the quarry. He crowded a small car aside and went out past the bus in time to see the Mercedes swing east on Fifty-sixth.

“Taking the girls home early? Why?”

He squirted between taxis and looked for openings but the light went red at Fifty-seventh and he had to wait it out.

“Goddamn it.” Homer wouldn’t have got caught that way.

But he kept going when the traffic began to move; he pried through the pedestrians at the turn and had a glimpse of the Mercedes two blocks away, snarled in crosstown traffic, its right-hand light flashing for a turn into Park Avenue.

“Sure enough,” Roger said, “taking them home.”

By the time Mathieson inched through the intersection the Mercedes had pulled up, the doorman had it open and Cestone was out on the curb. A group of adolescent girls converged on the canopied doorway and Cestone produced a small gift-wrapped box from his pocket and handed it to Nora Pastor: The girl beamed up at Cestone and went running inside with her sister and the five or six friends. Mathieson thought back, printed the dossier on the screen of his mind: Nora Pastor, b. 23 Oct. 1963, NYC (Women’s Hosp), dtr. Frank & Carola Pastor.

It was her birthday—that explained it.

The traffic carried them abreast the Mercedes. In the rain they couldn’t see much; Cestone was getting back into the car. The flow pushed Mathieson on by.

Behind them the Mercedes pulled out into the avenue. “What now?” If he pulled over immediately and let it go by they’d certainly notice.

Obligingly the Mercedes went over to the far lane and its signal-flasher started up a block and a half short of the next available left turn at Fifty-second; Mathieson had time to get there first and swing into the pass between the islands. The light was with them and they got across into the side street while the Mercedes was still bottled in Park Avenue.

He went down half the length of the block and pulled up ahead of a heavy double-parked truck; he backed up until he was nearly against its front bumper. Then he waited, half hidden there. He switched off the wipers.

The Mercedes was the first car through and it went by at a good clip. Roger said, “Go.” Four cars followed it and Mathieson pulled out behind them. The Mercedes left him behind at the Lexington Avenue light but he made it up at Third. He kept the four cars between them. One of them turned south at Second Avenue; the others trailed the Mercedes east as far as First Avenue where everything turned left. Within a few blocks of here they had waylaid George Ramiro a few nights ago. Now he followed the Mercedes uptown and it coasted unhurriedly with the traffic and he had no difficulty keeping his position half concealed in the stop-and-go East Side tangle.