Nightwork

One thing was sure, or almost sure - the police wouldn't be brought in, although an individual crooked policeman here or there might be in on it. So I wouldn't have that to worry about. There was no possibility that the man who had registered under the name of John Ferris and the two men who had come to meet him at the hotel were engaged in a legal business transaction. It had to be bribery of some sort, a payoff, blackmail. This was when the scandals of the second Nixon administration were just beginning to surface, when we all discovered that perfectly respectable people, pillars of the community, had developed the habit of secretly carrying huge sums of money around in attaché cases and stuffing hundreds of thousands of dollars in office desks, so it didn't occur to me, as it could have later, that I might have stumbled on an amateurish and comparatively undangerous political technique. What I had to deal with, I was sure, was grim professionalism, men who killed for money. Like spies in the movies, Drusack had said. I discounted that. I had seen the body.

Gangsters, I thought. The Mob. Despite the occasional movies and magazine pieces about the underworld I had seen and read, like most people, I had only the vaguest notion of what was meant by the Mob and a perhaps exaggerated respect for its omnipotence, its system of intelligence, its power to seek out and destroy, the lengths it was likely to go to exact vengeance.

One thing I was sure of. I was on its side of the fence now, whoever it might turn out to be, and I was playing by its rules. In one moment in the tag end of a cold winter night, I had become an outlaw who could look only to himself for safety.

Rule one was simple. I could not sit still. I would have to keep moving, disappear. New York was a big city and there were undoubtedly thousands of people hiding out in it successfully for years, but the men who even now were probably on my trail would have my name, my age, a description of my appearance, could, without too much trouble and with a minimum of cunning, discover where I had gone to college, where I had worked before, what my family connections were. Lucky me, I thought, I am not married, there are no children, neither my brothers nor my sister have the faintest notion of where I am. Still, in New York, there was always the chance of running into someone I knew, who would somehow be overheard saying the wrong thing to the wrong man.

And just this very morning there was the bellboy. I had made my first mistake there. He would remember me. And from the look of him, he would sell his sister for a twenty-dollar bill. And the bookie in the hotel. Mistake number two. I could easily imagine what sort of connections he had.

I didn't know what I was eventually going to do with the money now lying in the hush of the vault, but I certainly intended to enjoy it. And I wouldn't enjoy it in New York. I had always wanted to travel, and now traveling would be both a pleasure and a necessity.

Luxuriously, I lit a cigar and leaned back in my chair and thought of all the places I would like to see. Europe. The words London, Paris, Rome rang pleasantly in my mind.

But before I could cross the ocean I had things to do, people to see, closer to home. First I would have to get a| passport. I had never needed one before, but I was going to need one now. I knew I could get it at the State Department office in New York, but whoever might be looking for me could very well figure out that that would be the first place I would go to and could be there waiting for me. It was an outside chance but I was in no mood to take even that much of a chance.

Tomorrow, I decided, I would go to Washington. By bus. I looked at my watch. It was nearly three o'clock. The two men who had confronted Drusack that morning would be approaching the St Augustine, eager to ask questions and no doubt with the means to compel answers. I flicked the ashes off the end of my cigar and smiled gently. Why, this is the best day I've had in years, I thought.

* * *

I paid my bill and left the restaurant, found a small photographer's shop and sat for passport photos. The photographer told me that they would be ready at five-thirty, and I spent the time watching a French movie. I might as well start getting used to the sound of the language, I thought, as I settled comfortably in my seat, admiring the views of the bridges across the Seine.

When I got back to my hotel with the photographs in my pocket (I looked boyish), it was nearly six o'clock. I remembered the bookie and went into the bar to look for him. The bookie was in a corner, alone, sitting at a table, drinking a glass of milk.

'How'd I do? I asked.

'Are you kidding?' the bookie said.

'No. Honest.'

'You won,' the bookie said. The silver dollar had been a reliable omen. Speak again, Oracle. My debt to my man at the Hotel St Augustine was reduced by sixty dollars. All-in-all a useful afternoon's work.