John Conegli arrived home too late for dinner, ducked Marie’s plaints, changed his shirt, slipped into his overcoat and was about to leave the house when the phone rang. He heard his wife ask who was calling, then her irritated: “It’s for you, your highness, some guy calling from New York. Hal.”
Conegli took the phone, and cupped the mouthpiece with his hand. “Hal, what’s up?”
Standing in a phone booth on the corner of Forty-Ninth Street and Third Avenue, collar up against the cold, Hal said, “Damndest thing happened—”
“You got the package from her?”
“No. I’ve been tailing her ever since I picked her up at Port Authority, like you told me. I never seen her with any package like you described. Every time she came out of that apartment she wasn’t carrying any package, and I figured her purse wasn’t big enough… anyway, tonight she comes out of the apartment carrying her purse and a suitcase, the same one she had with her from the bus station. So I follow her. She gets on an uptown bus. She comes up to Forty-Ninth Street, gets out of the bus and looks in a store window. Then she starts walking east on Forty-Ninth. I followed her, too. How do I know? That’s my job… right?… to know these things. She gets halfway down the street, stops and looks through a fence into a parking lot. Before I know it this other guy comes up behind her and starts to mug her.”
“Mug her? I don’t believe it—”
“In New York, you don’t believe it? This guy, he’s tall, a headful of sort of gray hair, pins her up against the fence. I thought about just grabbing her suitcase and taking off… but what the hell, I’m a lover, right? So I decide to pull the guy off. Which I did. I saved the broad—”
Johnny looked at his watch. He had to leave. “Look, what about the suitcase?”
“Well, while this character and I are mixing it up, she picks up the suitcase and takes off.”
“Where did she go?”
“Beats me.”
Conegli hung up and left. He drove quickly to the Caldwell Performing Arts Center… he knew Lydia and Clarence had planned to go to some concert there and had decided to follow them after it was over on the off chance that Lydia James might lead him to the package. He found Clarence’s car, parked near it in a space that gave him an unrestricted view of the center’s front entrance.
He settled back to wait.
To wait. The story of his life. Well, at least it gave him a chance to let his fantasies take over. Right now the lady was coming out of the water… like the one in the TV commercial. Dripping wet and all for him. And she didn’t look anything like Marie. What self-respecting fantasy would…?