Taming a Sea Horse

4

I strolled across the park toward Lincoln Center. To my left the row of high-rise hotels on 59th Street gleamed in benign elegance over the burgeoning green swales of Olmsted's grand design. Roller skaters and Walkmen and joggers and Frisbees and dogs and kerchiefs. Lunch in brown bags and park rangers on horseback and outcroppings of dark rock on which people sat and got the early yellow splash of spring sun in their faces. Birds sang. Maybe ten years ago a group of young men raped a young woman in the park and left her naked, gagged, and bound hand and foot. Another group of young men came along and found her and raped her too.

Ah wilderness.

Lincoln Center looked like an expensive complex of Turkish bathhouses, a compendium of neo-Arabic-Spanish and silly. It did for the West Side what the Trump Tower did for the East, offering the chance for a giggle on even the drabbest day.

A large-eyed woman wearing a full skirt and silver New Balance running shoes opened a file folder and told me that in fact Robert Rambeaux was registered at Juilliard. He was taking a course in composition with a practicum in woodwinds.

"What's his address?" I said. "He still living on First Street?"

"I'm sorry, sir, it's against our policy to give out that sort of information."

"Quite right," I said. "People drive you crazy if they know where you live. A person has a right to privacy."

She smiled at me and nodded. Her hair was pulled back behind her ears and fell to her shoulders. She didn't look very old, but there were gray streaks in her hair. Premature. Probably from worrying about the rights of privacy.

She had a cup of coffee in a white mug with Beethoven's picture on it. As I stood I brushed it with my elbow and spilled it across her desk and onto her lap.

She jumped up, trying to keep the coffee from soaking through, brushing her skirt with both hands.

"Oh, my God," I said. "I am sorry."

While I said that I shuffled the stuff on top of her desk frantically out of the way, and in doing so I copped the top sheet out of Rambeaux's folder and folded it inside my jacket.

"It's all right," she said, her graying head still bent over, smoothing at her skirt. "Really, it's all right. The skirt is washable."

I closed Rambeaux's folder and put it and two other folders and a long pad of yellow paper in a pile on the corner of the desk. She left her skirt and turned her attention to the calculator on her desk, wiping it off with Kleenex she took from a drawer.

"Really," she said, "it's my fault. I shouldn't have left the coffee there. It'll be fine. I'll just get a wet paper towel from the ladies' room and wipe off the desk."

"Well," I said, "thanks for being so decent about it."

"No, really," she said.

I smiled my earnest smile at her and thanked her again and she put her file folders away in the file and locked it and went to the ladies' room to get a paper towel. I left.

Walking through Columbus Circle, I read Rambeaux's transcript. He'd done well in his courses. And he lived on East 77th Street. I put the transcript in a trash bin attached to a lamppost. Incriminating evidence. Probably could have looked Rambeaux up in the phone book. How many Robert Rambeauxs could there be? But it's good to keep in practice. And the risk factor at Juilliard was low.

I walked back across the park and crossed Fifth Avenue and turned uptown. There was a plate glass window on the Hotel Pierre and I checked my reflection as I went by. I was wearing a leather jacket and a blue-toned Allen Solly tattersall shirt and jeans, and Nike running shoes with a charcoal swoosh. I paused and turned the collar up on my leather jacket. Perfect. Did the traffic slow on Fifth Avenue to look at me? Maybe.

It was nearly four in the afternoon and getting less sprf nglike when I turned east on 77th Street. I crossed Madison Avenue, the Hotel Carlyle on the southeast corner. Rambeaux's building was five and a half blocks east. Between Second and First avenues, a five-story gray brick building with black iron fire escapes zigzagging the front. The bell directory listed Rambeaux in SD. I settled into the entryway of a brownstone church across the street and waited.

Rambeaux knew me, so it would be harder following him. But not so hard it couldn't be done. I zipped my jacket up. It pulled a little tight over my shoulder holster, and it lost the nice contrast with my Allen Solly shirt. But the alternative was coldness. It's almost never perfect. After five, people began coming home. Students with school bags and musical instruments in cases, young women in tailored suits with blouses and bows at the neck, young men in tailored suits and white shirts and ties at the neck. A lot of briefcases. Nothing happened across the street. It was a quarter to six, it was chilly, I was missing the cocktail hour. Soon I would be missing the supper hour.

At six-twenty Rambeaux came out of the house wearing a tweed coat with a velvet collar. There was a young woman with him. It wasn't April. They walked to Second Avenue and caught a cab downtown. I drifted along behind them and caught the next one.

"I can't think of a slick way to put this," I said to the cabbie, "but follow that cab." The driver turned toward me and said, "Where you go?"

"Follow that cab," I said.

"La Guardia?" he said. "Grann Central? Waldorf?"

"Allez-vous apres ce taxi?" I said.

He shook his head. Rambeaux's cab took a right turn on 75th Street.

"Never mind," I said and got out of the cab and started across Second.

"Som a beetch," the cabbie yelled after me, out the passenger window.

"Sonova," I said. "Son… of… a… bitch. Short i."

The cabbie pulled away, spinning a little rubber as he went. I walked back to the St. Regis. Follow that cab. It seemed simple enough. Used to work perfect for Richard Arlen.