Gone Tomorrow

THIRTY-THREE

It has been a long time since you could sleep well in New York for five dollars a night, but you can still do it for fifty, if you know how. The key is starting late. I walked down to a hotel I had used before, near Madison Square Garden. It was a big place, once grand, now just a faded old pile, perpetually close to renovation or demolition but never actually getting there. After midnight the front-of-house staff shrinks down to a lone night porter responsible for everything including the desk. I walked up to him and asked if he had a room available. He made a show of tapping on a keyboard and looking at a screen and then he said yes, he did have a room available. He quoted a price of a hundred and eighty-five dollars, plus tax. I asked if I could see the room before I committed. It was the kind of hotel where that kind of request seemed reasonable. And sensible. Mandatory, even. The guy came out from behind the desk and took me up in the elevator and along a corridor. He opened a door with a pass card attached to his belt by a curly plastic cord and stood back to let me enter.

The room was OK. It had a bed in it, and a bathroom. Everything I needed, and nothing I didn’t. I took two twenties out of my pocket and said, ‘Suppose I don’t worry about that whole registration process downstairs?’

The guy said nothing. They never do, at that point. I took out another ten and said, ‘For the maid, tomorrow.’

The guy shuffled a little like I was putting him on the spot, but then his hand came out and he took the money. He said, ‘Be out by eight,’ and he walked away. The door closed behind him. Maybe a central computer would show that his pass card had unlocked the room, and when, but he would claim that he had shown me the accommodations, and that I had been unmoved by their attractions, and that I had left again immediately. It was probably a claim he made on a regular basis. I was probably the fourth guy he had stowed away that week. Maybe the fifth, or the sixth. All kinds of things happen in city hotels, after the day staff has quit.

I slept well and woke up feeling good and I was out five minutes before eight. I forced my way through the crowds heading in and out of Penn Station and got breakfast in the back booth of a place on 33rd. Coffee, eggs, bacon, pancakes, and more coffee, all for six bucks, plus tax, plus tip. More expensive than North Carolina, but only slightly. The battery of Leonid’s cell was still about half charged. An icon was showing some bars blank and some bars lit. I figured I had enough juice for a few calls. I dialled 600 and then aimed to dial 82219 but before I got halfway through the sequence the earpiece started up with a fast little triplet trill pitched somewhere between a siren and a xylophone. A voice came on and told me my call could not be completed as dialled. It asked me to check and try again. I tried 1-600 and got exactly the same result. I tried 011 for an international line, and then 1 for North America, and then 600. A circuitous route, but the outcome was no better. I tried 001 as the international code in case the phone thought it was still in London. No result. I tried 8**101, which was the Eastern European international code for America, in case the phone had been hauled all the way from Moscow a year earlier. No result. I looked at the phone’s keypad and thought about using a 3 in place of the D, but the system was already beeping at me well before I got there.

So, 600-82219-D was not a phone number, Canadian or otherwise. Which the FBI must have known. Maybe they had considered the possibility for about a minute, and then dismissed it out of hand. The FBI is a lot of things, but dumb isn’t one of them. So back on 35th Street they had buried their real questions for me behind a smokescreen.

What else had they asked me?

They had gauged my level of interest, they had asked yet again if Susan had given me anything, and they had confirmed that I was leaving town. They had wanted me incurious, and empty-handed, and gone.

Why?

I had no idea.

And what exactly was 600-82219-D, if it wasn’t a phone number?

I sat another ten minutes with a final cup of coffee, sipping slowly, eyes open but not seeing much, trying to sneak up on the answer from below. Like Susan Mark had planned to sneak up out of the subway. I visualized the numbers in my mind, strung out, separately, together, different combinations, spaces, hyphens, groups.

The 600 part rang a faint bell.

Susan Mark.

600.

But I couldn’t get it.

I finished my coffee and put Leonid’s cell back in my pocket and headed north towards the Sheraton.

The hotel was a huge glass pillar with a plasma screen in the lobby that listed all the day’s events. The main ballroom was booked for lunch by a group calling itself FT, Fair Tax, or Free Trade, or maybe even the Financial Times itself. Plausible cover for a bunch of Wall Street fat cats looking to buy yet more influence. Their affair was due to start at noon. I figured Sansom would try to arrive by eleven. He would want some time and space and calm beforehand, to prepare. This was a big meeting for him. These were his people, and they had deep pockets. He would need sixty minutes, minimum. Which gave me two more hours to kill. I walked over to Broadway and found a clothing store two blocks north. I wanted another new shirt. I didn’t like the one I was in. It was a symbol of defeat. Don’t come dressed like that, or you won’t get in. If I was going to see Elspeth Sansom again I didn’t want to be wearing a badge of my failure and her success.

I chose an insubstantial thing made from thin khaki poplin and paid eleven bucks for it. Cheap, and it should have been. It had no pockets and the sleeves ended halfway down my forearms. With the cuffs folded back they hit my elbows. But I liked it well enough. It was a satisfactory garment. And it was purchased voluntarily, at least.

By ten thirty I was back in the Sheraton’s lobby. I sat in a chair with people all around me. They had suitcases. Half of them were heading out, waiting for cars. Half of them were heading in, waiting for rooms.

By ten forty I had figured out what 600-82219-D meant.