John Abbott - Scimitar

The big wall clock across the terminal read five to two.

It would probably take him a while to find a porter. She tried to remember the last time she’d seen a porter in Penn Station. Most of the people who came through the station day and night were commuters who didn’t need porters. In any case, there seemed to be a dearth of them here on the upper level where there was not a similar scarcity of homeless people. She hoped none of them came over to beg from her; she found them frightening. Then again, there were a lot of things that frightened her; she did not think of herself as a particularly strong or self-sufficient person. The fact that she hadn’t even been able to buy herself a drink on the train, the fact that she’d had to ask a strange man — well, he had been a stranger at the time — to intercede on her behalf...

At two o’clock, she wondered what was keeping him.

At two-thirty she realized he simply wasn’t coming back.

The Hilton on Sixth Avenue was the sort of hotel in which a person could lose himself entirely. Host to conventioneers from everywhere in the United States, popular as well with tourists from all over the world, the hotel was normally booked to capacity, a condition Sonny found entirely suited to his current needs.

He had kept a dozen credit cards active and in readiness for the past ten years, preparing for just the contingency that had brought him to New York today. The reservation here at the Hilton had been made under the name to which one of those alternate credit cards was issued. His original name, the name given to him at birth, was buried so deep in GID files he’d almost forgotten it himself. Here in America, he’d been Sonny Hemkar for what seemed forever. But his train reservations had been charged to an American Express card made out to one Albert Gomez. As he checked into the hotel now, he offered Albert Gomez’s Visa card. Gomez was leaving a clear trail that led to a post office box in Los Angeles. Dr. Krishnan Hemkar — Sonny Hemkar to his friends and associates — had disappeared from that city on the twenty-first of June. When and where he could safely surface again was anyone’s—

“Enjoy your stay, Mr. Gomez.”

“Thank you.”

The desk clerk tapped a bell. A uniformed bellhop appeared at Sonny’s side, took the proffered key and registration slip, and said, “Good afternoon, sir, is there just the one bag?”

“Just the one,” Sonny said.

“If you’ll follow me, please, sir,” the bellhop said, and lifted the bag and began walking through the crowded lobby toward the elevators, Sonny following him like a quarterback behind a blocker. In the elevator, the bellhop said, “Will you be with us long, sir?”

“Not very.”

“You’ve hit some nice weather. A little hot, but much better than the rain we had last week, don’t you think?”

Sonny nodded.

He hated idle elevator talk. It was like elevator music. Vapid and dull. Worse in New York than anywhere else in the United States. He supposed that all the service people here were instructed to bend over backward in an effort to dispel the city’s reputation for surly rudeness. Chattered on aimlessly where no conversation was necessary at all. A total waste of time in that the city’s reputation was well earned and no amount of empty servility could disguise it.

Sonny had known that when the call finally came it would most probably summon him to one of two places: New York or Washington. As a result, he had learned both those cities intimately, acquiring a working knowledge as well of Los Angeles and San Francisco, the two next likely candidates. But—

— I think I’ve found an apartment for you .

Where ?

Here in New York .

Telling him where.

All things considered, he guessed he was glad they’d chosen New York. There were a great many ways to get out of New York. Washington was far easier to blockade. And once this was over—

“Here we are, sir, 2312.”

The bellhop unlocked the door, allowed Sonny to precede him into the room, and then came in to do his stand-up routine about the air-conditioning and the television set and the wake-up calls and the restaurants available here at the hotel, seamlessly performing his little tip-seeking dog-and-pony act, which Sonny rewarded with two dollars and a friendly smile he hoped was masking his impatience.

The bellhop left.

Sonny went immediately to the telephone.

He dialed the number from memory.

The phone rang once, twice, three times...

“Hello?”

A man’s voice.

Sonny hung up at once.

The ringing telephone scared hell out of Santorini.

Alone here in the apartment where the English lady had been killed, early afternoon sunshine streaming through the windows and slanting onto the bed where her blood had soaked into the covers and mattress, alone here with the evidence of sudden violent—

And the goddamn phone rings!

He yanked the receiver from the cradle.

“Hello?”

A sharp intake of breath on the other end.

And then silence.

And a click indicating the caller had hung up.

Santorini wondered why.

He knew he could not go to the apartment.

And will you let me know when you get here ?

Her words on the telephone.

He had just tried to let her know he was here, but a man had answered the phone, and he knew that no one but Mother would ever have answered the private line in her apartment, no one but she herself was permitted to answer that phone, this was the simple hardfast rule.

But a man had indeed answered it.

If Mother had answered Sonny would have used her code name at once. Priscilla. The name premised on the s-c sequence, Priscilla Jennings, the s-c buried in her given name. He had no idea what her everyday cover name might be; he knew that whatever name she’d been given at birth was as deeply buried in the archives as was his own. But she’d been expecting a trade call today, and she’d have asked for his code name...

Who’s this, please?

Scott Hamilton.

... and only then would she have proceeded with, “Go ahead, Scott. This is Mother.”

He could not go to the apartment. If she’d been discovered, then going there might put the entire operation in jeopardy.

How did you find it ?

In The New York Times .

His fallback position.

He picked up the phone again, dialed the bell captain’s extension, and asked him to send up a copy of today’s Times . The paper came up some ten minutes later. It was already a quarter to four. He opened the newspaper to the Classified ads, and began searching through the Help Wanted columns. The heading fairly leaped off the page.

His eye skipped to the number at the bottom of the ad. He dialed it, and a woman answered the phone.

“Hello?”

“I’m calling about your ad in the Times ,” Sonny said.

“Which ad is that, please?”

“For a landscape gardener.”

The s-c sequence.

“Have you had experience in the San Francisco area?”

Repeating the sequence.

“Yes, I have.”

“Do you have references?”

“I worked for Priscilla Jennings.”

“Can you tell me your name, please?”

“Scott Hamilton,” he said.

“I’m Annette Fleischer,” the woman said. “Go ahead, Scott.”

Repeating the name immediately after confirmation of it. The essential double-check. Had she not said the name again, he would have ended the conversation at once.