Extreme Shock by V. A. Levine

A man who lived in his private hell... a girl who had spent her life keeping him there... Somehow I had to get past certain death to bring them together for the, last time — before I walked into the waiting bullets...

It was a cool November wind that blew me into the United Nations Secretariat early that Tuesday morning.

I took the escalator to the second floor of the conference building and strode down the corridor to the security office. I unlocked the door to my glass cubicle, the one reading CASIMIRO LOWRY, Assistant Chief, U.N. Security, removed my coat and sat behind the desk. I lit a cigarette and watched a tug pulling a string of barges downriver. I checked my watch. Eight-forty-five. The phone rang.

“Miro-san.” It was the boss, Inspector Ryonosuke Akutagawa. “Konnichi-wa. Good morning. Come and have some tea. We have things to discuss.”

I came, slowly. He had a case. I needed a vacation. I had one scheduled for Friday. It looked like I was out of luck.

“Ah.” Akutagawa half rose and bowed as I entered. “Please sit. You are well?” He poured the tea as he spoke. He handed me a miniature ceremonial cup.

“For the moment I am well.”

“Excellent,” We sipped. He said, “I have not forgotten your fishing holiday.” He grinned — many wrinkles in a square shaped face with deepset black eyes. “However, this is rather serious and the secretary-general has ordered an investigation.”

I sighed.

Akutagawa said, “Eleanor Draftsman was lifted off the IRT subway tracks at West Twenty-third Street at eight this morning.”

Eleanor Draftsman was the personal secretary to the Chef de Cabinet, one of the chief executive officers of the UN next to the secretary-general. I said: “Dead, I suppose.”

He shook his head. “Alive. She had the presence of mind to hug the center well of the trackbed, so the train ran over her without touching her. Also, she avoided the live rail. Naturally, she’s in shock. They took her to St. Vincent’s.”

I didn’t like the way he’d put it. “You’re not thinking she was pushed?”

“It is impossible to say at the moment.” He made a slight negative motion. “It happened during the rush hour. Such accidents are not unknown.”

I said, “She could have jumped, of course.”

“If so, why seek the center well?”

“Changed her mind at the last minute. It’s a hell of a way to go.”

Akutagawa shook his head. “She either fell or she was pushed. Either way, I want a full report, Miro-san. We cannot afford to take a chance on its being a simple accident. She is too close to the S-G.”

I asked about motive. He had a nine appointment with the secretary-general and the Chef de Cabinet. He felt he’d have a better idea once, he talked to them. After he left I called Angus Narijian at the Manhattan D.A.s office. Narijian, an assistant D.A., was our official contact on all confidential cases. We got along all right, though he had a habit of going off half-cocked.

“No leads,” he said, “no witnesses.” His big basso came rumbling through the earpiece of the phone like an IRT express. “Just confusion, packed sweating bodies and minimal visibility.”

“Sounds like she slipped and fell.”

“Yeah, that’s what I think. You know how it is, Lowry; the train comes in and the crowd pushes forward, just like they always do. Then, pow, she slips, loses her balance, teeters on the edge, someone reaches out to grab her, misses. She falls, just as the local comes thundering in. I wouldn’t have given a dime for her chances. My opinion, she’s lucky she didn’t end up in the morgue.”

I thanked him for his opinion and hung up. After talking to Angus Narijian I began to see that Akutagawa was just possibly right. It was looking like less of an accident. Like something more deliberate. Subway crowds don’t usually surge forward when a train comes in. They step back. Also, it seemed just too pat that Mrs. Draftsman should slip at the precise moment the train arrived.

Still, I thought Akutagawa had unfairly dismissed my theory, that Mrs. Draftsman had changed her mind at the last minute. Why not? Women change their minds all the time. Besides, I didn’t like to think of her having been pushed. A probe of that type could take months. I had three days. And those Canadian bass were dancing in dazzling arcs before my eyes.

Akutagawa returned from his appointment on the 38th floor looking neither happy nor sad. He looked — well so help me — he looked inscrutable, all five feet five inches of him, and he was treading warily, like a dancer or judo player. He was no dancer but he was a judo player in the fourth rank, which meant the black belt and a whole lot of very discreet recognition.

He said, talking about Mrs. Draftsman, “She’s in poor shape but they think she’ll pull through.” He handed me a manila folder with the word Confidential stamped across its face. The Draftsman dossier. He sat behind his desk and brought his hands together.

“At the cost of disappointing you, Miro-san,” he said, “I must say, there’s no evidence to support your contention that she jumped. The Chef de Cabinet feels strongly about this. He has nothing concrete, mind you.”

I made an impolite noise.

“But, after all, he knows the woman rather well. She’s been his personal secretary since nineteen sixty-two.” He stared at me for a moment, then continued: “He reports nothing abnormal in her behavior. She is, as he put it, ‘a remarkably well put together person.’ He feels it’s inconceivable that she would jump. Well, that’s it. You’re going to have to do some digging.”

I told him I’d look the record over, talk to some people, then report back.

With all respect to the opinions of the Chef de Cabinet, I figured I might get closer to the truth about Mrs. Draftsman if I talked to some of the lower echelon people who knew her.

I started with the thirty-eighth floor. That’s where the Secretary-General and Chef de Cabinet have their offices. Maybe Akutagawa was right, but I still wanted to test my theory. I could be right, and in any case both theories would get aired.

I spent most of my time on the thirty-eighth floor, though I hopped around on some of the lower floors, chatting with people who knew Mrs. Draftsman or had worked with her. That killed most of the day. And left little to show for it. Nothing in any case to shore up my theory of attempted suicide.

By four-thirty I’d collected the following, drawn from both Mrs. Draftsman’s dossier and my interviews: She was a woman of thirty-six, a US national, dedicated to the United Nations and performing her role at the Secretariat in an intelligent and efficient manner.

She was an attractive brunette with large black eyes and a good figure. She was trusted by her boss, the Chef de Cabinet, as well as by the Secretary-General, and the executives and staff with whom she worked found her trustworthy and tactful. Her position was a responsible one. She was privy to most of the top level business conducted by the Executive Office of the Secretary-General. The same for General Assembly business, for the Chef de Cabinet was also Under Secretary for General Assembly affairs.

Mrs. Draftsman had been married. She wasn’t divorced, though, only separated. She shared a Chelsea apartment with a female roommate named Joan Chandler. She was a quiet one about her personal life, but someone knew she’d been separated from her husband, whose name was Noel Draftsman, for about a year. No romances during that period that anyone knew about.

She was involved in some extracurricular activities. She played violin for the UN Chamber Group; she worked afterhours for UN Amici, a private organization dedicated to furthering and explaining the work of the International Organization. That was about it. She looked very clean. I wasn’t giving up though.

I wanted to get a look at Mrs. Draftsman’s apartment and her roommate. Maybe they confided in one another. And maybe I could get enough information to wrap things up tonight. Akutagawa gave me a rare smile when I told him that. He told me to get a photograph of Noel Draftsman while I was at it, which I promised to do as I exited.

I traced Mrs. Draftsman’s steps back and got involved in the rush hour. Which gave me a chance to verify my suspicions about the way the subway mob acted. I was right. Angus Narijian was wrong. It tended to lean away from incoming trains. Then it surged forward after the doors of the train opened.

I got carried in by it, without effort on my part, but had a hell of a time fighting my way out at West 23rd Street. I finally did, though, crossed over and picked up a Transit cop on the way. He showed me where Mrs. Draftsman had landed on the uptown tracks.

He’d been on duty that morning and arrived moments after the train screeched to a halt. The first four cars ran over her. Subway trains don’t stop on dimes — ever. They only seem to when you’re riding in them and maybe don’t have a strap to hang onto.

Getting her out had been a process. They didn’t dare run the rest of the train over her. They didn’t dare back up. So they uncoupled the cars closest to her and split the train, the front and rear portions moving in opposite directions. It held up traffic for more than twenty minutes, which threw the timetable off for the entire day.

Rough shake for the Transit Authority, I told the cop, and he looked at me funny, not quite sure how to take it. I told him thanks anyway and invited him to the United Nations to take a tour of the buildings and maybe buy some UNICEF cards in the General Assembly concourse.

I got to Mrs. Draftsman’s apartment at five thirty-five. She lived in an old high rise apartment house on Twenty-fourth Street, just off Ninth Avenue. I rang the 3-G bell several times and got no reply. My luck. I began to curse slowly and methodically.

“That’s no way to talk about a lady,” the lady said, and I spun around to face her. I hadn’t heard her approach because the corridor was heavily carpeted, also because I’d been making too much noise with the mouth organ. She was something else again — six feet tall with flaming red hair, a pale skinned angelic face and a figure whose curves literally drew your eyes out. She was carrying a paper sack filled with groceries.

I cleared my throat, gave her the crooked smile and said: “Joan Chandler?”

She was. I told her who I was and she invited me in. I then told her I was doing a background investigation on Mrs. Draftsman and that she could help further her friend’s UN career by answering my questions. She didn’t mind. No raised eyebrows. Nothing to indicate surprise or foreknowledge.

She said, “I usually have a drink around this time every night. A double daquiri.” She looked at me with those liquid green eyes. “I hate to drink alone,” she said, pouting just enough so it showed.

I came back with a snappy answer: “Tonight you can drink with Casimiro Lowry. Okay, baby?”

She gave me a dazzling smile and proceeded to shake up the rum and lime and ice mixture. It was quite a show. She had taken her coat off and was dressed in a miniskirt, pumps and snug sweater. I’m no lecher, ordinarily, but like I say, it was some show. She knew it and I knew it and she knew — well, you get the picture. Naturally, I was hoping the evening would prove helpful to our investigation.

One thing was bugging me. I asked her, “How did you and Mrs. Draftsman ever hook up?”

She laughed. She liked to show her teeth. They were white and very even.

“You won’t believe this,” she said, “but we were roommates in college.” She mentioned an out-of-town institution. “We didn’t have too much in common in those days. Now we’ve got even less.”

“Then why—?”

“Economics, nostalgia, a smidgeon of inertia. I don’t know.” She raised one shoulder slightly. “Another drink?” I refused. She started on another. She said, “What do you care anyway? Eleanor’s out of the running.”

“How’s that?” I said it easily.

“I mean—” She sat on the couch beside me. She brought her glass and the shaker with her. I allowed her to refill her own glass. She looked up at me. “You sure you want to talk about Eleanor?”

She was pretty close and the rum-lime smell was overpowering. I stuck a cigarette in her mouth and lit it. She blinked, twice. “I guess you do,” she said.

“For awhile.” I gave her another crooked smile. “You said she was out of the running.”

“She is.” She drained her glass, refilled it. “She hasn’t looked at a man since she started living here and that was a year ago. You want to know why?”

“Sure.”

“Because she’s married to the UN. To an inanimate, faceless world organization. She’s in early and she works late almost all the time. When she isn’t working for the UN she’s doing something for one of those outfits who call themselves friends of the UN.”

I asked: “What about Noel Draftsman?”

“What about him? He probably got so he couldn’t stand the competition any longer.” She took an unsteady trip to the liquor cabinet and mixed another round.

“What’s he doing?”

“Who?”

I repeated the name slowly, patiently.

“M-m-m.” She poured herself another drink and sat in an armchair opposite me. She looked like she was having trouble focusing.

“How about laying off that stuff for awhile?” I said, and she emptied the glass. I sighed. “Where’s Noel Draftsman?”

“How the hell should I know, buster?” — It came out ‘busshder’. “I don’t even know the guy. Never met him. Didn’t even know Eleanor was in New York until a year ago.”

She emptied another glass, got up, grinned idiotically, and collapsed. She must have drunk three-fifths of the quart herself. I went over and felt her pulse. It was slow and strong. Nothing wrong with her that a good night’s sleep and maybe two years of intensive psychotherapy wouldn’t cure. I laid her out on the couch and looked around the apartment, figuring this was a good time to try and locate a photo of Noel Draftsman.

The phone rang as I turned toward the bedroom. I let it ring a couple of times while I checked the tops of the dressers. Which was maybe silly, considering the state of the Draftsman’s relationship, but you can never tell. Then I answered the phone. That is, I picked up the receiver.

It was still eight inches from my ear when this joker started talking. He might have been primed at that.

He said, “Hello, baby, I’m around the corner in a phone booth. Just wanted to let you know I’m on my way. Hello, hello—”

I hung up. And lit out. Fast. I didn’t want any trouble. I had enough as it was. I brooded on it all the way uptown. I’d spent twelve hours on the case — a day and a half counted in hours — and what did I have to show for it? A big fat zero. I went back to the office to do some planning for the following day. I also wanted to take another look in the Draftsman dossier.

The following morning I gave all of it to Akutagawa verbatim. The way he likes it — dialogue, facial expressions, the whole bit. Always He would listen intently, eyes turned inward, unmoving except to nod once in awhile or ask me to clarify a point.

He said, talking about Joan Chandler, “She was a rather striking redhead?”

“Just as I described her. And a lush, to boot.”

“So.” He nodded. “Pour some tea, please.”

I obliged. I said: “We’re out of luck on the photograph. I didn’t get a chance to look around much, because this joker called.”

“A pity,” was all he said, which meant he was extremely dissatisfied with our progress.

I added, “I wouldn’t mind betting that Noel Draftsman could tell us a thing or two.”

“That, I think, will be our first line of attack,” he finally said. “Someone remembered that he’d worked for the Cranford Endowment for Peace. Called late yesterday afternoon. One of the secretaries on the thirty-eighth floor. Also, see what you can find on Joan Chandler. I suspect there’s more there than meets the eye, I’ve already put through a request for clearance, on both Chandler and Draftsman.”

Meaning the usual: New York Police Department, FBI and Interpol. I nodded, finished my tea and headed back to my cubicle. I had a feeling this was going to be a tougher case than we’d figured. Regardless of how it finally turned out.

Though I had to admit it was looking more and more like Mrs. Draftsman would not have jumped. Joan Chandler, maybe. But Eleanor Draftsman was something else again. The UN had quite a few staffers like that — totally dedicated to the idea and the organization. They had plenty to live for.

I put through a call to Cranford Endowment. Personnel there tried to be helpful but all they could tell me was that Noel Draftsman had left them three years earlier.

They didn’t know where he’d gone. No one had called for references on him. This was all memory work because the personnel record had been destroyed a year after Draftsman’s exit. Company policy, because of space limitations.

He’d been with them maybe five years. They had no recollection of where he’d come from, but seemed to remember that he’d been in the military sometime after World War II. They promised to call if they came up with anything else. I thanked them and rang off.

Next I called Joe Benares of Ajax Probes, a company which specializes in credit investigation. Joe was an old buddy of mine from the days when we ran divisional security in Korea. I told him what I wanted and he promised to run a fast check.

In the meantime I called UN Amici, the outfit Mrs. Draftsman worked for after hours.

I played this one off the top of my head when a gushing society type answered the phone and asked if she could help me. She had a curiously split voice: one half contralto, the other half soprano, as though her voice had just broken, though it was hard to tell in which direction it was heading. She introduced herself as Mrs. Brownell.

I said, “We’d like to get hold of Eleanor Draftsman—”

“Who is this?” Her voice dropped several octaves. It was now cautious, hedging.

“This is Mr. Random,” I said.

“Yes?”

“From the Wayfarers—”

“I don’t believe I am familiar—”

“Excuse me. I thought everyone was familiar with the Wayfarers, Mrs. Brownell.”

“It does sound vaguely familiar—” Her voice trailed off.

“Yes, we’re a club devoted to world travel. A private dub, yon understand.” I waited for her to say yes, then continued: “We understand that your Mrs. Draftman provides informative talks on the UN—”

“Yes, indeed she does.” Now she was gushing again. “She’s one of our most talented speakers. Always in such constant demand. I only wish she were able to give more than two talks a month.”

I said: “Is she available?”

“I shall have to find that out for you, Mr. Random. If you’ll just hold the phone for a moment.”

“Thank you.” I heard her riffling through some papers.

She came back on: “I’m afraid she’s already given two talks for this month. I don’t believe—”

“Well,” I interrupted, “maybe next month.”

“Yes, well, we do have other speakers...”

“We want Mrs. Draftsman,” I said, then added, “unless of course you’re available, Mrs. Brownell.”

“Oh.” Her voice had risen. “No, I’m afraid I don’t accept speaking engagements. I—”

I told her that was a pity because she had such a fine voice. I promised to call next month, then cut the connection.

Joe Benares of Ajax Probes called back soon afterwards. Mrs. Draftsman, it seemed, had a lousy credit record. She owed around three thousand dollars to three major stores in the metropolitan area and a thousand more to assorted smaller concerns. At least one company was considering legal action. Her bank balance was in the upper three digits.

As for Joan Chandler, she was a big spender but met all her bills on time. She was presently working for International Acoustics on Forty-second and Lexington. Secretary to the president, George King. She’d been with them since nineteen fifty-eight, following her graduation from college and separation from the U.S. Army.

I asked Joe about International Acoustics. He said they made hi-fi components and bugging devices. They’d been in business since the early fifties.

He had very little on George King, the president: sole owner, AA Dun and Bradstreet rating, widower, lived at three hundred fifty East Thirty-sixth Street, a cooperative deal.

I asked Joe to find out more about King. He wasn’t happy about it because it would mean digging. Digging meant spending time. Time was money. I told him to bill us and he said he’d think about it.

I reminded him that the UN was the world’s best hope for the peaceful settlement of disputes, hung up before he could think up a smart answer, and hotfooted it into Akutagawa’s office.

It was teatime. Lapsang Souchong. The tea with the smoky flavor. Akutagawa poured me a cup as I walked in. I reported.

He said, “I do not believe the credit record is significant. There is, as you might know, a modus operandi of sorts pertaining to the sexes...”

I listened respectfully. Akutagawa more than earned that respect — twenty years with the Tokyo Metropolitan Police, Superintendent for twelve, UN Security Chief for the past ten years. The upshot of it was that women do not commit suicide because of debt. Men do, for a variety of complicated reason which Akutagawa sounded like he understood perfectly.

Me, I was just listening and sipping Lapsang Souchong. I let him wind it up, then told him about my conversation with Assistant D.A. Angus Narijian. That brought a smile and a thousand wrinkles to his kindly face.

Then the phone rang. It was Narijian himself, on the other end of the wire. He wanted to meet me for lunch. He doesn’t usually invite me out to lunch. So I very cautiously asked if he was footing the bill. He said he was, which meant he had an ulterior motive. I asked him what the occasion was but he refused to elaborate. Said he’d talk about it when he saw me.

I arranged to meet him at the Bamberry Fair on Lexington and Forty-first. Akutagawa, who had been listening on the extension, raised an eyebrow at me as I broke the connection.

He said, “It sounds as though he’s uncovered something. Probably on the Draftsmans. It would be nice to have more news on Noel. However” — he wiggled his forefinger at me — “under no circumstances is Narijian, or any of his colleagues, including the police, to see Mrs. Draftsman. Try to talk him out of it if he mentions the possibility.”

“Leave Narijian to me,” I said as I picked up the phone and asked to be connected with Joan Chandler at International Acoustics.

She sounded in better shape this morning. She said she’d just love to lunch with me at the Bamberry Fair. I didn’t mention Narijian. I thought I’d surprise her. I had a hunch I wanted to play out. That was how I put it to Akutagawa, though I phrased it more elegantly.

“I was working intuitively,” I told him, “like an artist taking imaginative leaps across the void.”

Akutagawa didn’t say anything, though he stared thoughtfully at me for a moment. Finally he said, “It would be helpful, you know, to have even a snapshot of Noel Draftsman. Perhaps Miss Chandler can oblige.”

I said I’d do what I could.

Narijian was pacing the plush lounge of the Bamberry Fair when I arrived. He was a big man, a former end for Columbia, whose hair and gut were just beginning to show serious signs of wear, though his tremendous bass voice was not.

“Lowry,” he roared, “you’re late!” He grasped my arm with a meaty hand. “Come on. I’ve got a table reserved.”

I told him how and where to get off. Politely. He’s the kind of guy who doesn’t know his own strength. Not that I couldn’t have taken him, except that it would have created an unnecessary disturbance and ended up with both of us being forcibly ejected. Besides, I had other plans for him. Joan Chandler should be arriving any minute. I steered him to one side of the lounge and told him roughly what I had in mind. I then asked him what he had on his mind.

It really wasn’t much. He could have told it over the phone, only he figured we could help him out. Akutagawa had been right. It was about the Draftsmans. The police wanted to talk to Noel Draftsman in connection with some fraudulent dealings in certain department stores.

Narijian wanted me to put the finger on Noel. He had started beating his gums about Eleanor Draftsman when Joan Chandler arrived. She had already parked her coat and as she walked across the lounge toward us every male head swung around to match her progress. She was something to see. Long red hair cascading down to her shoulders, fluid hips, a lively treasure chest and long, spectacular legs. I’d seen them all before so I didn’t spend too much time ogling, at least not as much as Narijian.

I introduced them. Narijian had a little trouble with his voice at first but after a moment he was okay. I told her he was a pal of mine who’d made the big time as a lawyer and she looked interested. She hung on every mellifluous word and he strung them out like glistening pearls.

My strategy worked perfectly, though I couldn’t get two consecutive words in sideways. Amor vincit omnia, as they say, and once Narijian got started there was no stopping him. The roast beef was excellent. Ditto for the flaming dessert and dry martinis.

I wondered how Narijian was going to explain this on his expense voucher. It didn’t seem to bother him when he picked up the tab. I went through the motions of splitting it with him but he waved me away with a magnificent gesture. All told it came to $31.50. He left a dollar-fifty tip, to which I added a trio because I figured I’d like to come back sometime and still get waited on.

Narijian excused himself to make a call, no doubt to tell them down at Leonard Street that he had a hot one and was following it up. We arranged to meet him in the lounge in a few minutes time.

I took the time to shoot a couple of questions at Joan Chandler. She still insisted she didn’t know Noel Draftsman. She’d never seen a picture of him and didn’t know if Eleanor had one. So far as she knew, Eleanor was careful with money. Then Narijian came running in and I let him take Joan back to International Acoustics and her boss, George King.

I called Akutagawa to check in. I didn’t want him to think I was holding anything back. Also it was possible he might have solved the case while I was out. He did that occasionally, though most of the time he preferred to have me on hand to help wind things up. Not that I would have minded this time. I was still hoping to get away Friday.

But all he said was that he was still trying for a line on Noel Draftsman. He promised to talk to the conductor of the chamber music group Mrs. Draftsman played with, though he didn’t think anything would come of it. Also he was hoping that a witness to her subway fall might step forward.

I reminded him this was New York. He didn’t comment on that but suggested that I do some more probing into Joan Chandler’s background. I said okay, hung up and walked west on Forty-second Street to Seventh Avenue where I took the subway down to Twenty-third Street.

Nothing was falling into place, so far as I could see. We still didn’t have a motive, though the business with the money was puzzling. As for opportunity, it looked like anyone’s. I’d feel a lot better when we knew more about Nod Draftsman. But then maybe it wasn’t a personal thing and we were hitting the wrong angle.

I thought back over the current UN scene. Maybe there was a clue to be found in the proceedings of the major organs, like the security council, general assembly, economic and social council, etc. Trouble was, almost everything under discussion was highly controversial and offered grounds for Outside reaction. Like, the Security Council was debating the Jordanian charge of aggression against Israel, the General Assembly was discussing nuclear test suspension and halting the spread of nuclear weapons. So it went. There might be something to that angle, but the approach was fruitless.

I quit thinking about it as I stepped off the train at West Twenty-third Street and walked upstairs to the token booth. The Transit cop wasn’t around so I spoke to the change-maker behind the grill. I asked him about his clientele. He didn’t remember Eleanor Draftsman, but he sure had no trouble recalling Joan Chandler.

He had an eye for redheads, he told me, and Joan Chandler was both a redhead and a regular customer, a late customer. She always came rushing down at nine-thirty every morning, come rain or shine, and that included yesterday morning. She was some babe, he told me, and I agreed.

She was. Everyone agreed to that. Even the super in her building, a little guy with glasses who gave his name as Morris Greem, though he didn’t like the idea of giving anything away. He took my fin with a sneer. Little guy in his forties with a Caesar hairdo, whose left eye kept winking at me.

I didn’t like his looks, so I didn’t tell him who I was. I used one of Joe Benares’ business cards: Ajax Probes. Greem didn’t like Eleanor Draftsman but the worst he could tell me about her was that she worked for that “Pinko outfit” on Forty-second Street and the River, meaning of course the UN.

He started to elaborate, a real fanatic, but I cut him short. I asked him how long he’d been the super. He said, one year. I asked him if he was married and he balked. I told him I’d be back to spend the rest of that five.

He turned white and started to call me a lousy, no good — At the same time he reached behind his apartment door and grabbed for something he was in the process of transfering from one hand to the other when I kicked the door open.

It caught him on the side of the jaw — and a Colt Peacemaker dropped from his nerveless fingers. My God — a .45 caliber long-barreled Peacemaker! It must have weighed four pounds. No wonder he’d had trouble switching it from hand to hand. With its seven and one-half inch barrel it was something like one-handing a carbine.

I dropped it in the top unit of Greem’s oldfashioned toilet and on the way out picked up the duplicate key to Joan Chandler’s pad. Greem was snoozing peacefully: no sneer, no eyetick. On second thoughts I dragged him into the bathroom and locked him in. Then I hoofed it up to 3-G, fitted the key in the lock, turned it, pushed the door open and slipped in.

I sensed movement behind me, began to turn, but didn’t make it. Whoever chopped me down was an expert. I took the heel of a hand at the base of the skull and crumbled. I didn’t have a chance. Now I knew how Greem must have felt.

When I woke the karate expert was gone, which figured. Also the apartment was in a shambles, which also figured. It didn’t look like I’d crimped his style. He’d done a pretty thorough job. I looked around, though, straightening everything out as I moved along. I had to do that out of self protection. It wouldn’t have taken an overly perceptive cop to trace my movements that afternoon.

But there were no photographs of anyone in the apartment. No doubt the karate expert had seen to that. Just like he’d seen to my neck. It felt like it had been knocked permanently out of joint, and my right shoulder weighed in at maybe fifty pounds. My head ached and I had to rest several times during my housekeeping chores. I walked out of there feeling so mad I could have ripped up the sidewalk, only I couldn’t bring my head around to focus on it.

I made it uptown in time for tea with Akutagawa. He nodded with satisfaction as I explained the day’s happenings to him.

“Ah, so,” he said, “the fish bites.”

“Yeah,” I said, fingering my neck.

“Very good.” He was pouring the tea as he spoke. He handed me a cup. I sipped. It was jasmine.

“Now,” Akutagawa continued, “we offer a little more bait, prepare the net and then cast it at the appropriate time. With any luck we should have our catch by tonight.” He grinned at me. “Then the real business of fishing can begin, eh?”

I couldn’t believe it. I said, “You have a special time in mind?”

“Most certainly,” he said. “You understand, I can’t be absolutely precise, but I would say, between seven and ten. It all depends on Joan Chandler.” He added that he’d assigned one of our men to keep tabs on her.

I repeated her name and stared at him.

“It is all very simple,” he said. “Joan Chandler lied when she said she didn’t know Noel Draftsman. According to the FBI they served in the same intelligence unit during the Korean War. Both were stationed in Washington. Draftsman was Joan Chandler’s immediate superior.”

I grunted. Akutagawa refilled the teacups. We sipped. He withdrew a small photograph from the manila folder on his desk and slipped it to me. “They sent this over too.”

Noel Draftsman in uniform. First lieutenant, US Army. I turned the photograph over and read the FBI description: “six feet, one inch; one hundred and sixty pounds; brown blond hair, slightly longer than crew-cut; blue eyes; no distinguishing marks.” There following an FBI number and fingerprint classification. I handed it back to Akutagawa.

“He looks like a hungry fox,” I said. I wondered if he was the one who had bopped me. He looked capable enough.

Akutagawa said: “It might surprise you to learn that Morris Greem was in the same unit, at roughly the same time. The FBI are interested in him because they’ve received word that he’d involved in a radical right wing movement.

“Something called the Citizens’ Council for the Preservation of American Liberties.”

I wasn’t surprised. “Any connection between Joan Chandler and Greem?”

Akutagawa shook his head, “It’s too early to tell. They just put Greem under surveillance.”

I asked, “What about Joan Chandler, then?”

“Ah, yes, Joan Chandler.” Akutagawa brought his hands together in a prayerlike attitude and stared into the middle distance. He finally refocused on me. “You will call Narijian and ask him how he fared with Joan Chandler. I think we can use Mr. Narijian to good advantage.”

Akutagawa gave me a few other instructions and I called Narijian at the D.A.s office downtown. I held the phone away from my ear to minimize the impact of that tremendous voice.

“She’s a gorgeous hunk of woman,” Narijian was saying, “but she’s simple-minded as hell. A dumb redhead who’s so gullible she believes the United Nations is run from the Kremlin.”

Akutagawa, listening on the extension, raised an eyebrow and nodded slightly. I let him take over and he told Narijian we’d assigned a tail to Joan Chandler. He asked him if he’d made a date with her for seven that evening. He said he had. Akutagawa congratulated him, then explained the evening’s strategy to him.

Narijian sounded skeptical but agreed to hop uptown with a search warrant when we called him between six-thirty and seven. He also agreed to bring along one of the cops assigned to the D.A.s office. That completed that phase of the operation.

Akutagawa looked pleased with himself. His eyes gave him away, momentarily. Then he had everything under control once again.

Our man called at six. Joan Chandler had gone directly home from International Acoustics. Akutagawa told him to stay alert, particularly around six-thirty, when he expected all hell to break loose. That wasn’t the way he put it but that was the sense of it.

The Secretary-General called and Akutagawa explained the latest developments in the case to him. The hospital called. Eleanor Draftsman was now off the critical list and resting quietly, and we could talk to her provided we didn’t overtax her.

At six-twenty-five Akutagawa put the call through to Joan Chandler. The phone rang three times. A woman answered.

“Hello.” It sounded like Joan Chandler.

“Hello,” Akutagawa said. “What number is this, please?”

“Who is this? Hello.” It was Joan Chandler. I gave Akutagawa the nod.

“Yes, hello. This is the office of the district attorney.”

“What? Who? Say is this some kind of joke?”

“No, madam, this is not any kind of joke. I understand that Assistant District Attorney Angus Narijian is at this number. I would like to speak with him, if you please.”

There was a gasp, then silence at the other end of the wire. Then Joan Chandler came back to us and her voice was noticeably thicker than it had been: “I’m sorry, you’ve got the wrong number. There’s no one here by that name.” She hung up fast.

Akutagawa grinned at me. “Get the car out front, Miro-san. I’ll join you as soon as I hear from Portman.” Portman was the man assigned to tail Joan Chandler.

I hustled down to the garage to get the Volkswagen. Within three minutes I had it waiting outside the glass doors of the Secretariat. Akutagawa emerged ten minutes later, black homburg set at a jaunty angle on head and the rest of him well protected against the elements.

“That was good work,” he said, as he slid in beside me and slammed the door. “I must remember to commend Portman.”

I got the car rolling.

“Let me guess where we’re heading,” I said.

“You are serious?”

“Yes, sir. Sixteen hundred Pennsylvania Avenue, northwest.”

“But that’s— Ah, so, you are joking. I apologize. Turn left here and take Second Avenue downtown to Thirty-sixth Street — three hundred and fifty East Thirty-sixth Street is our destination.”

“But that’s George King’s address. International Acoustics. How—”

“That is a question I cannot answer with certainty. Except that he is the first one Joan Chandler flees to upon hearing the news that Narijian is on the D.A.s staff. Also seen arriving shortly afterwards was Morris Green and another man fitting Noel Draftsman’s description.”

I said: “But—”

“Plus one final point kindly supplied by the regional FBI office — that George King was operations officer in the same intelligence unit that Draftsman and Joan Chandler served in between nineteen fifty and nineteen fifty-three. The interesting thing about King is that he received a medical discharge — paranoid-schizophrenia was the diagnosis, which roughly adds up to a persecution mania. The Army had to get rid of him because he kept seeing Communist spies in all the Federal agencies, and they were naturally out to get him.”

“In other words, he’s crazy. Is he dangerous?”

“He could be. We will have to be careful. Narijian’s man will of course be armed.”

I made a left turn on East Thirty-sixth Street. It was the last building on the right hand side, a ten-story modem complex which was about ten years old. Lots of glass and brushed steel siding.

We parked a little ways up the street. Portman came over and gave us the lowdown. They were all still up there. Each had taken the elevator to the fifth floor. George King’s apartment was 5-A. Portman had scouted the outside of King’s place. It had a front and rear door.

There were five wooden crates outside the back door, irregular in size and very heavy. They were unmarked but resembled ammocrates.

Akutagawa assigned Portman to the lobby of three-fifty just as Narijian came barreling around the corner in an unmarked police car. I could tell it was Narijian driving. He always drove that way, all out and mostly on two wheels. He too had delusions of grandeur, though maybe he wasn’t quite as dangerous as George King.

He double-parked and came striding over, waving this legal looking document under our noses.

Akutagawa gave him a slight bow: “Ah, Mr. Narijian, you made excellent time.”

They shook hands.

Narijian nodded stiffly at me.

“You’re tires are still smoking,” I said. His passenger was ashen-faced.

“Twelve minutes from City Hall,” he roared.

Akutagawa said: “I see you have brought the warrant. Excellent, Mr. Narijian. Come, let us serve it. I will explain how things have developed up to this point.” He took him by the arm and I brought up the rear.

I left Akutagawa and Narijian outside 5-A and cut around to the rear door. I could see what Portman meant. They didn’t look like crates of canned goods. The wood was new and unmarked, which probably meant that King and his crew had gotten rid of the original crates. I eased the .38 in its shoulder holster and stood to one side of the door.

I didn’t have to wait long. This joker came soft-footing out, with a small suitcase gripped in one hand. It was Noel Draftsman. I recognized him from the photo.

“Hello, Noel,” I said softly, and he swung around on me, suitcase first I let him come, then at the last moment side-stepped and jarred him off-balance. His momentum carried him into the wall and I chopped him down with a backhand to the base of the trapezius. Which made us even, if he was the one who’d bopped me. If not, then I was one up on him.

I opened the suitcase. It was filled with carefully arranged packages of thermoplastique. I set it down gingerly and hauled Draftsman into the apartment. I must have made more noise than I thought, because everyone’s eyes were turned my way.

“What’s this?” roared Narijian.

Greem let out a little sob when he saw me. King knocked Narijian to one side and broke for the window. Greem lunged for Akutagawa. Joan Chandler sat frozen. I made for Greem, but Akutagawa was there first, reacting with stunning ease. Straight finger blow to the solar plexus. Short chop to the side of the head. And that was all for Greem.

Narijian hadn’t done so well. He made a flying tackle at King and got kicked in the head for, his ingenuity. Proof positive that you can’t carry college football techniques over into the real world. Now King was on the fire escape, descending rapidly.

I was about to take a shot at him when Narijian roared, “Hold it.” He came rushing to the window. “Craven will take him.” He yelled down. It sounded like a full-throated bullhorn and I’ll swear the street reverberated.

King shot at Narijian and splintered the wood frame by his head. It sounded like he was using a .38. Then the deeper sound of a .45 cut in. Craven. Two shots, a scream from the third story of the fire escape, then a soft thud, and silence.

That about wrapped it up. King was dead when he hit the sidewalk. Which was a pity, because it would have been nice to know where he got the thermoplastique, also the crates of .30 caliber ammunition and the automatic rifles outside his back door.

As it turned out Draftsman and Greem wouldn’t talk. Joan Chandler would, only she didn’t know quite as much as they presumably did. She knew enough, though, to deeply implicate them. Violation of the Sullivan weapons act was only part of it.

As Akutagawa put it the following morning: “The group — The Citizens’ Council for the Preservation of American Liberties — had planned a wave of terror against the United Nations by planting thermoplastique in the cars of prominent UN officials. The object was to disrupt the daily operations of the Organization, to the extent that no business could be transacted.

After several months of this, interspersed with 3.5 mm rifle shots at the buildings and maybe a few long range rifle assassinations, the American people would see how ineffectual the UN was, besides being a drain on the economy, and they would demand that it pack up and go to where it should have gone in the first place — namely, Moscow. That at least was the plan George King thought up.

International Acoustics, which was quite prosperous, existed solely to finance the plan. More than ten years of effort went into perfecting the plan. King was a meticulous man. He kept voluminous notes on the plan’s progress, as you know. At the bottom of it all was his sickness, which caused him to believe the UN was part of an international communist conspiracy, aimed at his and his country’s destruction.”

I said: “So King was crazy, a nut, like I said.”

“Of course he was. But you see the plan might never have been threatened if Draftsman hadn’t panicked and tried to kill his wife.”

“You mean, she stumbled onto it?”

Akutagawa shook his head. “Not at all. She stumbled onto quite something else again. They were only separated, you see, not divorced; and she discovered that he was making rather extensive use of her charge accounts. She confronted him with this and threatened to expose him. He thought he was a desperate man. Hence the extreme reaction.”

Akutagawa checked his watch, reached over for the teapot and poured. The scent of jasmine filled the air. “A small celebration,” he said. “Imported Pouchong Aromatic.”

We sipped and were silent for a moment. Finally he said: “It was doubly ironic, don’t you see. Draftsman gave the game away for the wrong reason. But there’s no indication that King was ready to implement the plan.”

“He convinced Draftsman.”

“Yes. Draftsman entered into his madness. But this was a desperate scheme which had been maturing for ten years. King could easily have spent another ten years perfecting it. My feeling is that after awhile the means took precedence over the ends.”

“You mean,” I said, “he got hung up on the details.”

“Certainly. Just look at his journals. All of it represents planning. Not a word about operations. That, incidentally, was another reason why the Army could no longer use him. He was supposed to be an operations officer. Instead, he spent all his time planning. Incredible.”

I started to get up when the phone rang. Akutagawa got it, listened for a moment, grinned, then handed it to me. It was Joe Benares of Ajax Probes. He sounded excited. “Listen, Lowry, I’m calling about George King. He—”

“Who?” I took a sip of jasmine tea. It was heady stuff.

“George King. International Acoustics. For Pete’s Sake, the guy you asked me to investigate.”

“Oh, George King. Yeah, Joe, What about him?”

There was a- slight pause, then: “Hey, Lowry, you ain’t tippling this early in the morning?”

“You know me, Joe.”

“Yeah. Well, listen, you got to watch out for this King. He’s a nut. Maybe he ain’t certifiable, but he’s playing footsie with a bunch of kooks who’d like to see the UN sink into the East River, maybe help it along.”

“Yeah? No kidding, Joe!” I took another sip of tea. I felt pretty smug about things.

There was a second pause, longer than the first. “Lowry, you sure you’re okay? That ain’t the latest football scores I just read you. I mean, this guy could be dangerous. In my humble opinion, Kimosabe, you ought to do something about him.”

I said: “You read the morning papers yet, Joe?”

“No.”

“Okay, read them, then write me if you have any questions — care of Rasmussen, Thousand Islands!”

“You gone daft, Lowry?”

“Nope,” I said, “just gone fishing, Kimosabe.”