“Let’s go somewhere quiet and talk,” I suggested.
He was a pleasant-looking kid with freckles and a lot of teeth. Norman Rockwell would have liked him, or painted him anyway. I took him to a Cuban-Chinese place that was almost empty, and ordered coffees. I told him that Andrea might be in danger, but that I couldn’t tell him why. He swallowed that more readily than I’d expected.
“I’d like to help,” he said, in a gee-whiz voice that made me expect the next words out of his mouth to be something like “Holy hockey sticks, Batman!”
I wanted to tell him to just stay the hell out of the way, but thought it would be smarter to hold out a prospect of participation, however illusory.
“There’s nothing you can do at the moment,” I told him. “I’d like to keep you on hold for now, so that no one suspects your involvement. I may need your help later. I presume Andrea knows how to reach you?”
“Of course. I’ve got a room on Cornelia Street.”
My meaningless gesture seemed to have cleansed him of all suspicion about my intentions, and now he eagerly quizzed me about Andrea, and her feelings for him.
“She talked about you quite a bit,” I told him. “I don’t like to pry, but I got the impression you were her boyfriend. That was about it. I didn’t ask if you were good in bed.”
I meant that as a joke, but I could tell from Jonny’s expression that it didn’t go down that way. He was embarrassed to the point of being humiliated.
“I didn’t sleep with her yet,” he said, as if admitting to extreme dereliction of duty.
I apologized for speaking out of turn and, after a while, I got up to leave. I told Jonny to finish his coffee and wait at least ten minutes before he left the restaurant.
He nodded solemnly, as if to say, “You can count on me, chief.”
I headed uptown by another circuitous route that included a detour through an automat in the garment district, and another through the Hotel Pennsylvania, which was crowded with uniformed flight crew fresh in from JFK and LaGuardia. When I got back to the Henry Hudson, I called Andrea from the house phone in the lobby, and told her I was on my way up, but not to open the door till I got there. She answered my knock wearing a T-shirt and a pair of underpants.
“You didn’t bring anything for me to sleep in,” she said, apologetically.
There was no hug, this time, and she said she was beat. I gave her a quick rundown of my conversation with Otis at the Tea Bag, but decided not to mention anything about my visit to the secretarial school for the moment. I did, though, give an account of my encounter with Jonathon, telling her pretty much everything, but leaving out the bit about him admitting he hadn’t fucked her.
“Poor Jonny,” she said. “He’s a nice boy, but confused. He grew up somewhere near Indianapolis and went to a boys’ school that sounds like it was almost like a military academy. When he arrived here, he had short hair, like a soldier. I introduced him to Lydia back then, and she made some nasty remarks about him having a grunt cut. That’s one reason he doesn’t like her. But he’s been growing his hair ever since, and it looks cute, didn’t you think? Unfortunately, growing your hair is the easy bit. The rest doesn’t come that easily.”
“But why did you tell him you were meeting with me to buy dope that night?”
“Come on! Didn’t you ever hear of a cover story? You of all people. I didn’t want him to know it was something to do with Lydia. I did tell him afterward, but anything to do with Lydia gets him pissed.”
“He said he thought Lydia’s exploits turned you on?”
Andrea was angry.
“That’s because he’s a prude.”
“So do you tease him with Lydia’s sexual exploits?”
“What? You know, you ask too many questions. I don’t want to get into any of that now. I’m beat. I’m going to sleep.”
She climbed into bed and turned out the bedside lamp. I removed the ankle holster—glad to be free of it—turned out the rest of the lights, and lay down on the other bed, fully clothed. An hour later, I could tell from her breathing that Andrea was still awake. Across the gap between the two beds, I could smell the same fragrance that had clung to the sheets in my apartment after she was there, a fragrance that can’t be bought off the shelf. It was intoxicating and I needed to get away from it before it got me drunk. It also made me think of something else—the word aromatic. It was a word that Darleen at the secretarial school had decoded for me. I checked the time. 1:35. Just 10:35 in California. In a whisper, I asked Andrea if she was still awake. She said yes in a way that could have been taken, by a suitably deranged person, as anticipatory. I told her I was going downstairs for a few minutes, that I had something to check out.
She said, “Hurry back.”
I put my shoes on and went down to the lobby, which was still busy, found a phone booth, and placed a call to my childhood pal Bernie Kupchik, who was now a research chemist at the University of California, Berkeley. As I thumbed through my notebook, we exchanged pleasantries, then I said, “Okay, I’ve got a couple of words for you.”
He said, “Shoot.”
“The first is semtex.”
“That’s interesting,” he said. “And the next?”
“The next is cyclonite.”
“Well, that’s pretty interesting, and I’ll tell you for free those are not the names of patent sleep remedies. Semtex is a kind of plastic explosive. It’s manufactured in Czechoslovakia and I hear it’s popular with the Viet Cong for blowing up just about anything you can stick it to. The stuff is like putty. I don’t know if Semtex is available on this side of the Atlantic, but if it is, it would be popular here, too, for uses like commercial blasting and demolition work. Cyclonite, usually called RDX, is the actual explosive component in several different plastic explosives. It’s been around quite a while and is found in something called C4—Composition 4—which is a very common form of plastique. Our boys in Vietnam like C4 for a bunch of reasons. For example, if you borrow a bit from a Claymore mine—about the size of an M&M will do—and swallow it, it’ll make you very sick and with a bit of luck you’ll be pulled off the front line. C4 is also very common in the US for blasting and demolition gigs.”
“Anything aromatic about this stuff?”
“Well, it isn’t Chanel Number Five, but nitrated aromatics are used in manufacturing putty explosives, which is what the pros call them.”
This was pretty heavy. I thanked Bernie and headed back upstairs. Andrea was waiting for me.
“Everything okay?” she asked.
“Anything but,” I said.
“Are you going to tell me?”
“I’ll tell you in the morning. It’s going to be a big day, so get some sleep.”
I turned the lights off again, then had a thought.
“I know Lydia’s father is in the construction business, but does he have anything to do with demolition?”
“Oh, sure,” said Andrea. “Once Lydia and I went out to Coney Island to see a big old hotel knocked down. You know—just one little puff of smoke and the whole thing comes down in slow motion. It was on television, on the news. That was her dad’s company that did that. They do it all over America—in other countries, too.”
This was getting heavier by the minute.
FIFTEEN
There were days when I felt like I was playing at being a detective. It was fun, and I was pretty good at it—a utility infielder who hit for a decent average—but it was still just a game, and even though my work sometimes involved paintings worth millions of dollars, it was only pretend money, like the bills used to buy Marvin Gardens or a railroad company on the Monopoly board.
This was not one of those days.
I told Andrea everything that I knew. There didn’t seem to be any point in holding back anything at that stage of the game.
“Plastic explosives,” she said. “Those are dangerous, aren’t they?”
“If you don’t know what you’re doing with them.”
>
“And how would someone like Lydia know what she was doing?”
“You said her father has a company that does demolition work. Could that have given her the opportunity to learn something about explosives?”
Andrea shrugged.
I told her about my interrupted visit to the house on Ladies Lane.
“I only saw firearms, but who knows what might have been on the other floors—explosives, fuses, timing devices. It could have been a whole bomb factory.”
“Is that down near Canal?” Andrea asked. “I met Lydia somewhere near Canal when she was here about a month ago. We were going to Chinatown.”
“That place was probably their safe house.”
“Okay, but what would they want to blow up?”
“Who knows? Chances are it’s something to do with the war. They might want to hit a draft board office, or some military installation—anything to do with the military. Or maybe they just want to do something symbolic, like blow up a statue. There’s a few of those I’d like to blow up. I don’t know. Could be they’re just playing dangerous games, but I’m beginning to get the picture that Jerry Pedrosian is into some pretty heavy stuff. He’s always had a nose for the latest fad, and his career hasn’t been going too well, so he has time on his hands for mischief. What about Lydia?”
“Lydia likes to be provocative, whether she’s talking about sex or socialism. She always takes the contrary position. At school, she was the first one against the war. That’s just the way she is.”
“Yeah, I’m against the war, too, but in Lydia’s case it seems to have led her into some pretty scary territory.”
Andrea nodded.
“I guess that’s what I was afraid of,” she said.
I showed her the map.
“Do you know of anywhere that has a bell tower, an upper house and a lower house?”
“Well, yes,” said Andrea. “I know of at least two places. One is the Palace of Westminster—the British Houses of Parliament to you. Big Ben is in the clock tower, and the parliament consists of the House of Lords and the House of Commons. The other place is Crufts.”
“Crufts? The school that you and Lydia went to?”
“That’s right. Dr. Grimsby, the founder, was a big admirer of the British parliamentary system. He insisted on the school building having a clock tower, which is named—you guessed it—Little Ben. As the school got bigger, it expanded into the building next door. The original building houses the older kids, the other one the younger kids—the Upper House, and the Lower House. Apparently, that was Dr. Grimsby’s idea of humor. But if you’re thinking that Lydia would want to blow up Crufts, there’s no way. She had plenty of problems while she was there, but basically she had a great time. I mean, we were the in crowd.”
I agreed that the school seemed to be an unlikely target.
“So where do we go from here?” Andrea asked.
“I don’t know. It’s reached the point where probably I should pick up that phone and call the police.”
“No!” said Andrea, fiercely.
“Why not?”
“Because, if the police are involved, what are they going to do to Lydia?”
“If Lydia’s involved in something that is endangering people’s lives, the police will do what they have to do.”
I didn’t mention that I had my own reasons for being reluctant to call the police, since they would have plenty of questions about why I hadn’t come to them earlier. A missing persons investigation is one thing. Not reporting a cache of weapons is something else.
“She’s still my friend. I don’t want her to be shot or something.”
“Let me remind you,” I said, “that someone tried to run you down and maybe kill you yesterday afternoon. Not a friendly act.”
“She didn’t know about it.”
“How can you be sure of that?”
“Because I know her, that’s how. If Jerry Pedrosian, or someone else, tried to run me down yesterday it happened without Lydia knowing anything about it.”
I tried to convince myself she was right. There had been those visits by the blond girl to my apartment, and my office building. What were those about? And there had been that telephone call that led me to the building on Ladies Lane. That had sounded like a cry for help, but it could equally have been setting me up.
“We’ve been friends for twelve years,” said Andrea. “I can practically read Lydia’s mind.”
“Well, get started,” I said. “We could use a bit of psychic help.”
She was angry and so was I, and some of my doubts about her were returning. She stormed into the bathroom, and I heard the shower running.
I switched on the television and found a local news show. A gaggle of pundits was gabbing about Bobby Kennedy’s chances in the upcoming California primary when there was a newsflash. Reports were coming in of an explosion in a townhouse near Gramercy Park. Early footage showed that the top two floors of the building had been completely demolished. Several neighbors said they had seen people running from the building. There was disagreement as to the numbers, but at least two men and a woman had been spotted. Another told the on-scene reporter that the property had been empty since it was sold several months earlier, and was scheduled to undergo a major renovation. The present owner, he added, was rumored to be the wife of City Councilman Donald Baldridge.
I turned from the television to see Andrea standing in the doorway to the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, her hand held over her mouth, her eyes wide.
“Oh, my God!” she said.
A fire department spokesman was saying that the cause was unclear at that point, and that the department would be looking into all possibilities.
“Poor Lydia,” said Andrea.
I told her that this was no time for “poor Lydia.”
“Do you think she got away?” she asked.
I asked her what made her so sure that Lydia had been there. I did not recall mentioning Baldridge’s name when I told her about the Ladies Lane building, nor had I had any reason to tell her that Pedrosian was Baldridge’s brother-in-law.
“What makes you think she was there?” I said. “Are you holding out on me?”
Andrea was startled by my question.
“The house blew up,” she said. “Houses don’t just blow up by themselves. It must have been a bomb, and we know who has been playing with bombs, don’t we?”
“It could have been a gas explosion,” I said.
“It could have been, but you don’t believe that, do you?”
“I’m in no position to guess.”
“Three people seen running from the building,” said Andrea. “Two men and a young woman…”
“In any case,” I said, “now we have to go to the police. You’d better get some clothes on. I’ll be in the bathroom.”
I stepped into the bathroom and just seconds later I heard the door to the room slam. If I had run after her, I might have caught her, but if she had an ounce of sense in her head—and by now I was beginning to believe she did—she would have screamed bloody murder. Getting caught with a naked eighteen-year-old in a hotel corridor wasn’t going to help anybody.
I can’t exactly explain why, but I experienced an enormous sense of relief. The last vestige of game playing was over. It was time to get serious.
Then I saw that Andrea had taken the gun and the holster. I had left them in full view on a chair. That had been pretty dumb of me. I opened the door and looked out into the corridor. A room service waiter was telling a chambermaid that he’d just seen a girl—stark naked and clutching a bundle of clothes—headed for the emergency stairs. They turned to look at me, and the waiter grinned.
If Andrea was getting dressed on the stairs, which was likely, I might still catch her, but there was no point. I didn’t trust her, and that changed everything.
There was no point hanging around. Andrea had already drawn attention to herself, so it would be a matter of minutes, and not many of those, before th
e house detective paid a visit. I went back into the room, put on my shoes and grabbed my wallet, then headed downstairs and out into the street, just in time to see Andrea—more or less dressed—jump into a taxi that headed west on 57th Street. Did she have some idea of where she might find Lydia, or Pedrosian? No way of knowing.
I ducked into the lobby of an office building and found a booth with a set of phone books. I looked up the address of Crufts Academy for Young Ladies. It was just half a dozen blocks from the townhouse where the explosion had occurred. That was interesting. I took a taxi downtown toward Gramercy Park, but before I got that far, I could see that the streets up ahead were clogged with police vehicles, fire trucks, ambulances, and television news vans. So I got out and covered the last stretch to the school on foot. I spotted it as I turned east off 3rd Avenue—a vaguely Gothic structure with a clock tower that bore a remote resemblance to its sibling in the City of Westminster.
Things were quiet around there, except for the shouts and yells of a group of girls in plaid school uniforms playing volleyball beyond a chain-link fence. My quest was to find something nearby that might be singled out as a target by a group of fringe radical hotheads with a supply of guns and explosives. I didn’t have to look far. Directly across the street from the school was an elegant Greek Revival townhouse, with fancy ironwork and dark green marble columns. Attached to the railings outside was a brass plate that identified the building as the headquarters of the Barnes Institute for Military Strategy, a think tank notorious for the virulence of its anti-Communist dogma and its supposed influence inside the Pentagon. In particular, BIMS had become identified with promoting the search-and-destroy tactics that had seen American and South Vietnamese ground troops and air cavalry engaged in a brutal war of attrition against the Viet Cong. These tactics were responsible for untold numbers of civilians being killed, maimed, or dispossessed of their homes and livelihoods.
I could empathize with radicals who looked at this handsome Victorian edifice and contemplated the contrast with the burning bamboo huts in Binh Duong Province. That didn’t stop me from making an anonymous call to 911 from a callbox on the street, which was quickly forwarded to someone at Police Headquarters who was more interested in knowing my name than in what I had to pass along. I kept my name to myself and delivered my information as succinctly as possible. He finally got the picture.
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