Iron Orchid

FIFTY-THREE

TEDDY WAS BACK in his shop with a spray bottle of Windex and a cloth, wiping everything down. He was going to have to move, soon; he was seeing way too many people on the streets who were looking for him. He had been very lucky to get out of the Rockefeller Center imbroglio without getting collared.

He went carefully over every doorjamb, every work surface, every piece of equipment, erasing any trace of himself. It took him more than two hours, and when he had finished he got into latex gloves. He would wear them whenever he was in the shop from now on. His apartment was next. He left the shop and walked back toward his building on Park, looking forward to a good dinner from Restaurant Daniel, served in his suite, and maybe a movie on TV.

As he approached the building he was stopped in his tracks by the sight of a woman in the lobby, talking to the doorman and the super. He turned and walked back toward Lexington. The woman was the one with the baby carriage outside Saks earlier in the day. Had they traced him to the building, or were they just canvassing?

He went back to his workshop, donned his latex gloves, looked up the number for the doorman and dialed it. “Hello, William? It’s Mr. Foreman.”

“Good evening, Mr. Foreman.”

“Have I had a package delivered in the last hour or so, or anybody looking for me?”

“No, sir, but we had a lady from some government agency in here looking for somebody, she wasn’t sure who.”

“What was it about?”

“She wouldn’t say. She showed me a sketch of some guy that didn’t look like anybody I know. The super, neither. Is there anything I can do for you?”

Teddy thought quickly. Was there anything in the apartment he needed? Fingerprints-he needed to wipe the place down. “No, William. See you later.” He hung up and walked back to the building, holding his breath as he walked in, waiting for somebody to shout “That’s him!” He made it to the elevator and went upstairs.

He ordered dinner from downstairs, then put on his gloves and began wiping down the suite. He stopped for dinner, then went back to work. When he was satisfied, he began packing his clothes; he certainly wasn’t going to give them DNA from the sweat on a hatband or from his dirty underwear.

When he was nearly done, he called the doorman. “William, the building has a car service, doesn’t it?”

“Yessir. Can I get you a car?”

“Yes, going to Kennedy Airport.” He looked at his watch. “I have a flight for London at ten o’clock.”

“I’ll have a car for you in twenty minutes, sir,” William said. “I’ll buzz you when it’s here.”

Teddy changed into a business suit and packed the remainder of his clothes. He set his two suitcases and briefcase by the front door and sat down to wait for the car to arrive, increasingly nervous.

They must be canvassing every building in the neighborhood, he thought. It’s what he would have done, if he were Lance Cabot. From what the doorman had said, though, he and the super had given the agent nothing. The phone buzzed.

“Yes?”

“Your car is here, Mr. Foreman. Do you need any help with your luggage?”

“No, just meet me at the elevator.” Teddy collected his two bags and briefcase and went down in the elevator, where William met him. A black Lincoln was idling at the curb.

“How long will you be away, sir?” William asked as he put Teddy’s bags into the trunk.

“A week or so. Please hold my mail.”

“You never get any mail, Mr. Foreman. You’re the only one in the building that doesn’t.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Teddy said, chuckling. “It goes to my office. Would you let the people at Daniel know that they can pick up my room service dishes?”

The doorman held the car door open, and Teddy got in. “Have a good trip, Mr. Foreman.”

“Thank you, William,” Teddy said, slipping him a fifty.

“Thank you, sir!”

The car drove away. “Which airline?” the driver asked.

“British Airways,” Teddy replied and settled in for the ride.

AS THE DOORMAN WALKED back into the building, the super emerged from his ground-floor apartment. “Willie,” he said, “I just thought of something.”

“What’s that, Rich?”

“That agent who was here earlier this evening. The sketch didn’t look familiar, but you know, the description she gave sounded kind of like Mr. Foreman.”

William shrugged. “I hadn’t thought of that, but I guess it could describe a lot of guys.”

“Only one in this building, though,” the super said. “Have you still got her card?”

William rummaged in a drawer and came up with it. “Here it is,” he said, handing it over.

The super went back into his apartment, looking at the card.

Twenty minutes later the woman agent, accompanied by a dozen other men and women, flooded into the lobby of the building.

“Can I help you, ma’am?” William asked.

“What’s the apartment number for Albert Foreman?” she asked.

“Fourteen B,” William replied, “but Mr. Foreman left about twenty, twenty-five minutes ago.”

“Do you know where he was going?”

“Yes, ma’am, I got him a car from our service; he was going to Kennedy Airport to catch a ten o’clock flight for London.” He looked at his watch. “That means he’ll be taking off in about an hour and a half.”

The super emerged from his apartment. “Please take these people up to Mr. Foreman’s apartment,” she said to him.

The super handed her the key, and she handed it to another agent. “You take the group up there and go over the place with a fine-toothed comb. I’m calling this in.” She turned to William. “How was Mr. Foreman dressed?”

“He was wearing a dark business suit, a topcoat and a gray hat, a fedora,” William replied.

The agents headed for the elevator, and Martin called Lance.

“Cabot”

“Lance. It’s Martin. We’re at the building, and Foreman left twenty-five minutes ago for Kennedy Airport. Said he was taking a ten o’clock flight to London.”

“Then he’ll be arriving there in ten or fifteen minutes, with decent traffic,” Lance said. “I’m on it. You and your people do the apartment”

“We’ve already started.” She gave Lance Foreman’s description.

LANCE TURNED to Kerry Smith. “This guy, Foreman, who sounds like Teddy, is going to be at Kennedy airport shortly. How many people do you have there?”

“Half a dozen agents,” Kerry replied, “but we can mobilize the NYPD unit out there, plus airport security.”

“Good. Have them go directly to the departing-passenger set-down and the departure lounge for every airline with a London flight tonight. He’s traveling as Albert Foreman, and he’s wearing a dark suit, a topcoat and a fedora. Go!”

AT KENNEDY, Teddy got out of the car, paid the driver and carried his own luggage into the terminal. He took the escalator down one floor and emerged at the curb where passengers from arriving flights waited for taxis. Upstairs, unknown to him, FBI, the police and airport security were flooding the departure areas, looking for him.

Teddy waited in line patiently for a cab, and ten minutes later, he was headed back to the city. He gave the driver the address of his Lexington Avenue shop. He didn’t feel like carrying his luggage anymore.

“Where you in from?” the driver asked.

“London,” Teddy said without thinking.

“London flights don’t arrive this time of night,” the man said. “They get in during the afternoon.”

“We had the mother of all flight delays,” Teddy said.

FIFTY-FOUR

LANCE AND HOLLY WALKED into the Foreman apartment on Park Avenue and looked around. “Looks like nobody lives here,” Holly said. An agent came up to them.

“Clean as a whistle,” he said. “Not so much as a partial on any surface.”

“Then Foreman is Teddy,” Lance said. “Get a sketch artist up here and put him with the doorman and the super. Maybe well at least get a better sketch.”

“You know,” the agent said. “When we were canvassing realtors last week I interviewed the woman whose office is the rental agent for this building, and she denied having rented anything in any building to a single man during the past couple of months.” He handed Lance a rental agreement. “We found this in the desk drawer, wiped clean, of course. Her signature is on it. The woman lied to me.”

“Find out why,” Lance said. “Maybe she’s an old acquaintance of Teddy; maybe she knows something else that could help. Pick her up, scare the shit out of her and milk her dry. Print her and do a background check, too. See if her path has crossed Teddy’s at some time in the past.”

The man left.

“He’s not going to be at Kennedy,” Holly said.

“Maybe not,” Lance replied.

“Certainly not,” Holly said. “Teddy’s not going to tell a doorman where he’s going, then go there.”

“We checked the car service; it dropped Teddy at Kennedy fifteen minutes ago.”

“Then he’s not there anymore. My guess is, he’s on the way to LaGuardia-if he’s running-and he’s on the way back into the city, if he’s not.”

Lance called Kerry. “He may be headed to LaGuardia or back into the city,” he said. “Turn out as many people as you can at the other airport; I’ll deal with the rest.” He closed his phone and shouted, “Everybody listen up!”

Everybody stopped talking and moving around the apartment.

“Teddy may be headed back into the city,” Lance said. “I want you to divide into three groups and cover the Triborough Bridge, the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge and the Midtown Tunnel. Call the bridge and tunnel authority and have them squeeze traffic down to as many lanes as you can manage. Check the occupants of every cab that goes through.”

“Lance,” Holly said. “I know it’s a stretch, but shouldn’t we check the Brooklyn and Manhattan bridges, too?”

“Oh, all right,” Lance said, and gave the instructions.

TEDDY’S CAB WAS on the Van Wyck Expressway now. “Tell you what,” he said to the driver. “Let’s go to Brooklyn on the way. I’ve never been over the Brooklyn Bridge.”

“Whatever you say, Mister,” the driver said. “It’s your meter. I’ll take you over the Verrazano Bridge, if you feel the urge to visit Staten Island.”

“Why not?” Teddy said. “We’ll take the ferry back. It’ll be fun.”

“Tourists,” the driver chuckled to himself, shaking his head.

BACK AT THE BARN, Lance, Holly and Kerry took the phone reports from the teams on the bridges and tunnel.

“Zip,” Kerry said. “We didn’t move fast enough.”

“Yes, we did,” Lance said.

“Maybe he did a costume change, and he’s still at Kennedy or LaGuardia, waiting for a plane.”

“Every gate agent was alerted,” Lance said. “Anyway, we have a confirmation from the cab starter at Kennedy; Teddy definitely got into a cab. He must have left his car and gone directly to the arrivals area.”

“Then where the hell is he?” Holly asked plaintively.

“I think you were right, Holly,” Lance said. “I think he’s back in the city. He’s not done yet; he’s going to kill somebody else.”

“But where is he?”

“He’s got another place, a workshop; has to have. There was no sign that he’d done any work in the Park Avenue apartment. He didn’t move any equipment out when he left.”

“Then that workshop has got to be near the apartment,” Holly said. “You can’t have a workshop on Park, Madison or Fifth Avenues; that kind of industrial space just isn’t available.”

“Lexington Avenue would be the nearest place,” Kerry said. “There’s all sorts of shops there, and semi-industrial places like dry cleaners and shoe repair shops. He could rent a room on Lex.”

“All right,” Lance said, “we’ll canvas every building on Lexington from, say, Seventy-second to Fifty-seventh Streets, and if we don’t come up with anything there, we’ll start on Third Avenue, but we’re going to need manpower.” He picked up the phone. “Get me Lieutenant Dino Bacchetti at the One-Nine,” he said. “That part of town is on Dino’s patch; let’s let him earn his consulting fee. He’s going to have to work without warrants, so tell him to tell his men to tread lightly and get permission from supers.”

TEDDY ARRIVED back at his Lexington Avenue workshop at midnight. He had bought the cab driver dinner on Staten Island, paid a two-hundred-dollar cab fare and tipped the driver a hundred, making his day.

He had just gotten his luggage up the stairs when his cell phone rang.

“Yes?”

“It’s Irene.”

“Hi, there. You okay?”

“Well, you scared the shit out of me this morning.”

“What did I do this morning?”

“When I got to work, Hugh English was poring over a memo from Payroll about the absence of time sheets for one Charles Lockwood. Sound familiar?”

“Uh-oh.”

“Don’t worry, I squared it. I told Payroll that Lockwood was out of town on assignment for another month or six weeks and couldn’t be reached.”

“What did you tell English?”

“That Lockwood works in Intelligence, and Payroll had sent the memo in error. You need to do some more work on Lockwood’s background; there was no transcript from Groton. I also told Hugh I’m retiring, and he recommended St. Barts. So did Lance Cabot, for that matter.”

“So nobody will think it odd when you start looking there.”

“Nope, I’ve put them on notice. Hugh says maybe he’ll retire there, too, and be my neighbor.”

Teddy laughed. “Fat chance.”

“Right. He won’t go until they shoot him.”

“I see you’re having Lockwood’s pay sent to a Cayman bank. Is that going to give them a trail to follow?”

“Nah, it’s being sent from there to a bank in Singapore. They can look for me in Singapore, if they like.”

“How long before you can meet me in St. Barts?”

“I’ll probably get there first,” Teddy said.

“You’re winding it up?”

“Just one more little job to do.”

“Ben Saud?”

“It’s better if I don’t tell you who or when. Or how I’m going to get to St. Barts.”

“Fine by me. Will you let me know when you’re there?”

“I’ll call you on this phone and say that I’m somewhere in the Middle East.”

“Okay.”

“If I’m blown and shouldn’t go to St. Barts, say, ”I hear Iraq is nice this time of year.“”

“Got it. Teddy, is this really going to work? Are we really going to make it?”

“Yes, it is, and yes, we are. All I need is a few more days, and I’ll be lying on that beach. Shortly after that, I’ll be lying on it with you.”

“I’m looking forward to that. I figure I’ll be able to get out of Langley in a couple of weeks. Tom Bergin is replacing me, and he already knows eighty percent of what he’ll need to know before I go. I’ll put in my papers in the morning, and I’ll put my townhouse on the market, too. There’s always a line of people waiting to buy in my development, so I’ll be out of there pretty quick. I’m going to try to sell it furnished, so all I’ll want to send south is a few books and pictures. I’m going to give my clothes to Goodwill and start over.”

“They were looking for me in my building today,” he said. “I’m out of the apartment for good, now.”

“How did they find the building?”

“I think they canvassed every building in the neighborhood. The doorman and super didn’t tell them anything, but I’m operating on the premise that the apartment is burnt.”

“Where are you now? Oh, sorry, I don’t want to know, do I?”

“No, but I’m safe enough. I’ll call you in a few days, if I can.”

“I miss you.”

“I miss you, too. Bye-bye.” He hung up, and it surprised him to realize that he really did miss her.