Memoirs Of An Invisible Man (42 page)

“Hello, Nick. How are you this morning?”

“Good morning, Colonel. I’m a little off today, as a matter of fact. I didn’t sleep very well last night.”

“I’m sorry to hear that, Nick. Is anything the matter?”

If he would only stop being so solicitous.

“I’ll tell you what the matter is. It came to my attention last night that you were trying to poison me. Or drug me. Isn’t that right?” For some reason I wanted him to acknowledge it, although it made no difference whatever. I realized suddenly that I was uncontrollably angry.

“What happened to make you think we were doing that?” he asked thoughtfully.

I shouldn’t be making this call.

“I came into the Arcadia Club kitchen last night and found a large, ugly rat in very poor condition next to a piece of cake that looked as if it had been set out just for me.”

“I see,” he said slowly. “That must have been very unpleasant for you.”

A cab pulled up half a block north. It picked up a passenger and continued south.

“Nick, I hope you understand that everything we do is entirely—”

“I know. It’s for my own good that you do these things. I wish you’d take your kindness elsewhere.”

“It must be absolutely horrible for you out there, Nick. I’m sorry. I wish there were something I could say to get through to you right now, because it’s only going to get worse. But I know you, Nick. You’re not ready to give up yet.”

“Jenkins, I’m never going to be ready to give up.”

“You know, Nick, we spend a lot of time thinking this through from your point of view. You’ve surprised us occasionally, and you’ve shown more determination than we expected, but fundamentally I think we do understand you. Do you know what I personally think you’ll try to do next?”

“Go ahead and tell me. I have no one else to discuss my plans with.”

“I think you’ll try leaving New York in order to get away from us. Boston, of course, is the city you know best after New York, and that would seem to be the most likely place for you to try. Philadelphia would be another possibility.”

Damn. Why was he telling me this? To get me to go? Not to go?

“Suppose I do go to Boston? That makes things difficult for you, doesn’t it? What do you do then?”

“I think probably you’ll find you want to return to New York almost immediately. But you might be able to manage for a while in Boston. We’re prepared for that. And for other courses of action you might take.”

“How will
you
know where I’ve gone? Suppose I go to Cincinnati? To Grand Rapids? You can’t be everywhere.”

“Well, you could do that, Nick. But we’d know very quickly if you turned up in a place like that. I don’t think you’d try it anyway. You’ve never been to Grand Rapids; you’ve been to Cincinnati only twice.”

“Twice?” I asked involuntarily.

“Once last October and once in… April of 1959. That was a trip you took with your father. You may not remember. The point is, where would you sleep in Grand Rapids? Where would you eat? There aren’t many big private clubs in these places. There aren’t even that many in Boston. In most cities people use automobiles to get around. You can’t do that. There’s nothing to walk to and everything is closed up most of the time. Even if you found a place to sleep, what would you do all day? Wait for us? Who would you talk to? Here you can call your office every now and then. Or even me. You at least see people you know in the streets. That must be some comfort. I would imagine the loneliness must be—”

“I see why you want to make all my plans for me. You think everything out so much more clearly.” Tell him something. Doesn’t matter what. “But I’ll tell you something. I
am
going. Today. Right now. I hope you stay in New York looking for me forever. But even if you don’t, it would be an extraordinary fluke if you happened to find me.”

“All right, Nick.” A beat-up van came to a stop and waited, double-parked, a block and a half north of me. Santini Roofing Co. “You have this number. Just remember, Nick, if you ever need—”

“Tell me, Jenkins, do you trace these calls?”

“Why do you… I see. Would it help, Nick, if I gave you my personal assurance that no one will come after you now while we’re talking?”

“No.”

“I understand, Nick.” But he sounded aggrieved.

“Goodbye, Jenkins.”

“Nick, wait. Just one thing before you go. We’ve been extremely patient with you and there’s something I’d like to ask in return, as a personal favor. Nick, I’m asking you to stop and honestly consider whether, in all of this, you’re not behaving selfishly.”

“Selfishly?” What in the world is he talking about?

“That’s right, Nick—”

A truck moved up Central Park West into the intersection and without any turn signal wheeled around into the street next to me. The van was starting forward again. As I jumped clear of the phone, there was a little crash within the booth, and a dent appeared on the face of the telephone.

I turned and saw that the side door of the double-parked van was open and a thick gun barrel — probably the same sort of gun I had seen Gomez with before — was pointed at me. I scrambled back from the telephone, toward the building. Cars were stopping everywhere on both sides of Central Park West, and there were people all over the street. The truck filled the side street, its side swinging down as if it were a troop carrier, disgorging men and equipment. It all happened so quickly I could barely take it in. First the nearly empty streets and then suddenly everything opening up, revealing dozens of men all around me.

They were unrolling what looked like snow fencing. Two men seemed to be stapling one end of a roll directly onto the building wall several feet away from me, while two more men unrolled it across the sidewalk and out between two cars into the street. Another section — several sections — were being unrolled out in the middle of the street. There must be more around the corner. I was being enclosed. It was all happening in a matter of seconds. Beyond the fencing, in the middle of Central Park West, I could see other men spreading out what appeared to be an enormous fishing net. Gomez was out of the van, holding his gun, watching warily.

By the time I had collected my wits enough to start moving, twenty, perhaps thirty seconds had passed and the fencing had already been completely joined up so that it ran from one side of the building out into the street, encircling several parked cars and most of the intersection, and then back into the building again around the corner. No time to think what to do. On the half-formed assumption that doing anything — even something foolish — would be better than doing nothing, I started running. I ran straight at Gomez. At the last moment he must have heard me or seen something, because he tried to raise the gun as if to shield himself, but it was too late. I hit him as hard as I could in the neck with my closed fist, grabbed the gun, and heaved it over the fence into the street.

Without pausing, I jumped onto the hood of the parked car behind him, then up onto the roof. Each step caused a loud metallic boom and a sudden, violent deformation of the car body. But for some reason none of the men nearby were coming after me. But why would they? No one would have told them what they were after. So, of course, their attention was focused on Gomez, who seemed to have inexplicably hurled his gun over his head and then collapsed on the pavement. The commotion I made climbing over the car, if they noticed it at all, would be incomprehensible to them. I climbed up onto the roof of the van.

I saw Clellan now on the other side of the fence, running up Central Park West toward me. He was shouting at Morrissey, who was clambering out of the end of the van with his face turned up toward me. I jumped off the edge of the van roof toward the fencing several feet away and a foot higher. I meant to land on it lightly with one foot and push myself up on over it, so that I would come down onto the street on the other side. But the wooden slats buckled under my weight and caught my shoe, and I came crashing down onto the partly unfolded net lying on the street below.

Clellan was screaming. “Stretch out that net! Pull on that net, goddamn it!” The men, with no idea what was going on, moved around the net and began to take hold of it uncertainly. As Clellan tugged violently at one edge and the others began dubiously to spread it out, I felt the net pulling taut under me. I climbed frantically to my feet and then tumbled over again, as the net was yanked under me. Frantically, I half stumbled, half rolled across the spreading net, until I felt myself pitch off the edge onto the asphalt.

I scrambled away between two parked cars and over the wall into the park. I looked back at Clellan. He had let go of the net and was peering toward the park for some sign of me. I climbed up onto an outcropping of rock that loomed above the wall and sat down to catch my breath and observe the commotion in the street below. The nets were already being packed away again and the fences rolled up. The normal traffic was beginning to flow again up and down Central Park West.

As I sat there, a nondescript white sedan pulled up across the street and Jenkins climbed out of the back. He walked several steps down the street towards Clellan, who came up to meet him. Clellan, speaking rapidly, indicated the telephone with a gesture of his hand, and Jenkins turned his head toward it. Clellan’s forefinger made little jabs in the air, sketching out the location of the fence, the nets, the men, and then, with an abrupt sweep, tracing out my escape. Jenkins listened to him in silence, his face motionless. Clellan pointed at the wall roughly where I had climbed over it, and both men turned to face it. Clellan made a little shrug and pointed up at the rocks where I was sitting. His face contorted momentarily into a grimace of disgust and he stopped speaking. Jenkins’s gaze shifted slowly up the rock and settled there. He made a slight nod. It seemed to me that he was staring directly at me. His face was impassive. Expressionless as a reptile.

I had my gun. I always had my gun. I could climb down, walk right up to him, and blast his brains out. Easy. But he stood there unconcerned, knowing I wouldn’t do it. He had everything worked out.

I
had nothing worked out. I no longer had any idea whether I should stay in New York or leave it. I had no idea what Jenkins expected me to do — or even what he wanted me to do. He had had something in mind during that conversation. I was sure of that. He had been trying to push me one way or the other, and if only I could work it out, I would do the opposite. Impossible to know. The main thing in these situations is not so much
what
you decide as
that
you decide. I had not eaten or slept for over twenty-four hours, and for the hundredth time I looked across the park at the tantalizing New York skyline, composed of thousands upon thousands of inaccessible rooms and apartments. All those secure little ratholes. Keep moving.

I walked east to Second Avenue and spent the rest of the morning inspecting buildings until I had one picked out to assault. It was one of those massive white brick buildings which everyone in New York professes to hate but in which almost everyone not very rich or very poor has to live. The one I chose had a particularly lax doorman, whose attention seemed mainly focused on a miniature radio, one earphone of which he surreptitiously kept pressed against his ear until someone approached. He had the main entrance door propped open, which made things easier for both him and me.

Just to the left of the entrance there was a marble counter, and jumbled onto the shelves beneath it and the floor behind it were packages, stacks of mail, uncollected deliveries, a schedule for the exterminator, doorman’s caps. And out of sight under the far end of the counter, there were also two metal boxes with keys hanging from arrays of hooks. Most of the keys had little tags tied to them with apartment numbers written on them. I spent half the afternoon crouched behind the counter sorting through everything. Whenever the doorman would amble indifferently over to accept a package or give a key to someone, I would retreat into a corner.

I began with the bundles of mail. Most of them seemed to be from that day and were there only because they contained periodicals or packages which had been too large for the mailboxes at the other end of the lobby. But there were also some stacks which had obviously been accumulating for many days, and from the postmarks and the way the mail was bundled together, I was able to identify several apartments that had been empty more than a week. I turned to the metal boxes full of keys. As far as I could make out, there were keys there for only about half the apartments, and although the rows and columns of hooks were labeled by floor and apartment line, many of the keys were on the wrong hooks, so that I had to search through them one by one, making what seemed to me to be an excruciatingly loud jangling noise. When I had got through both boxes, I had several matches.

I settled on 4C. Mr. and Mrs. Matthew B. Logan. They had both been gone for nearly ten days, which meant that they were almost surely on vacation. Furthermore, there would be only three flights of stairs to hike up, whereas my second choice would have meant seven flights.

Although there was nothing more I could do until that night, I did not want to go outside and risk being unable to get back in through the door. I had to do everything to make this first attempt succeed. I could not go another day without food. I went into a fire stair and dozed fitfully on a concrete landing for the next nine hours.

When I reemerged in the lobby, groggy and dizzy with hunger, it was after midnight and there was another doorman. I watched him for a quarter of an hour. He sat motionless on a chair between the inner and outer doors, looking perfectly catatonic but with his eyes always open and with a good view of the lobby through which I would have to transport the keys.

I went back behind the marble counter and carefully extracted the keys to 4C. Getting down on all fours, I crawled out from behind the counter and rapidly slipped the keys under the edge of the carpet that ran the length of the lobby. The doorman’s head turned and then turned back. I waited several minutes and then began to crawl along the carpet, sliding the keys ahead of me, keeping them concealed just under the border. If anyone had been looking, he would have seen an odd, jerky little ripple running very slowly down the edge of the carpet.