The Manhattan Hunt Club

CHAPTER 27

Jinx glared up at the closed door, willing it to open. Curtailing her urge to give it an angry kick, she turned away and retreated back to the steps where she'd been sitting off and on for the last two hours. She would have been sitting on them the whole time if Paul Hagen hadn't kept running her off.

That was pissing her off, too. The first time the cop had come by, she'd tried to explain to him that she was just waiting for the library to open.

"Yeah, right, Jinx," Hagen had said, rolling his eyes. "So what's the game now? Gonna start lifting from the old geezers in the reading room? Give me a break!"

Jinx had kept her temper in check. The last thing she needed right now was for Paulie Hagen to start hassling her. If he really got pissed off, he could keep her at the precinct for most of the day, filling out a bunch of forms and making her talk to the welfare people. So she just shrugged his sarcasm off and walked away, heading over toward Madison Avenue. She knew Paulie couldn't follow her that far, and since she hardly ever went to the East Side, most of the cops over there didn't know her. She was mad enough at Paulie that she'd picked a mark, bumped into him, and lifted his wallet so smoothly that all the sucker had done was mouth an apology to her while he kept on talking on his cell phone. Probably wouldn't notice his wallet was gone until he tried to pay for his lunch, and by then he wouldn't even remember that someone had bumped into him. That was the great thing about cell phones-they distracted people enough so that most of the time they thought they'd bumped into her instead of the other way around.

She kept drifting back to the library at the corner of Fifth and Forty-second, hoping they might open it early this morning, but knowing it wouldn't happen. She killed some of the time watching tourists taking pictures of each other with the lions that crouched in front of the building. Then she glanced through a Daily News that someone tossed into the trash can on the corner. Twice she had to cut across the street when she saw Hagen coming down the block from Bryant Park. Why couldn't he stay over in Times Square where he belonged?

At least now she wasn't the only one waiting-half a dozen people were standing around. A white-haired guy in a suit that looked even more ancient than he did kept checking his watch, and a nerdy guy was pacing back and forth, looking nervously down the street toward Bryant Park.

Flasher, Jinx thought.

When the man bolted like a jackrabbit just as Paulie Hagen reappeared, Jinx was sure she was right.

Just as Hagen spotted her and headed over to run her off the steps again, she heard the lock behind her click and the heavy metal door finally swing open. Giving in to what she knew was a childish impulse, Jinx stuck her tongue out at Hagen, then turned and dashed into the vast lobby of the library. Off to the left two women stood behind an information desk. As Jinx started toward them, one of the women looked up. Her smile faltered as she took in the shabbiness of Jinx's clothes, and for a second Jinx wondered if she was going to get kicked out of the public library. "Where would I go if I wanted to look something up in an old copy of the New York Times‘?" she asked.

"How old?" the woman countered. "We have them back to 1897."

"Just last fall," Jinx replied. "Maybe October?"

"Room 100," the woman said. She pointed to Jinx's right. "Down there, take the first left, and it's the last room on the right. They'll be in the microfiche filing cabinets."

Not exactly certain what the woman meant, Jinx made her way down the corridor, found the room, and went in. Several large blocks of filing cabinets occupied most of the space just inside the door, and beyond them Jinx could see a lot of tables supporting machines with large screens. The white-haired man in the moldy suit was sitting down in front of one of the machines, and Jinx watched carefully as he took a roll of film out of a box, put the reel on a spindle, then fed the film under some kind of roller.

If he could do it, so could she.

She headed for the filing drawers and saw they were labeled with dates. She found the ones for the previous fall in Cabinet 41, pulled it open, and stared at the row of film boxes, each one marked with a precise span of dates. Picking up three of the boxes, she closed the drawer and headed for one of the machines.

Taking the first reel out of its box, she put it on the spindle, fumbled with the leader for a few seconds, then managed to poke it under the roller and glass. When the end came out on the right side, she threaded it into what looked like some kind of take-up reel, then started fiddling with the controls. There was a knob on the right side, and when Jinx twisted it, the reel instantly rewound, leaving the leader flapping. She swore under her breath, rethreaded the leader, then carefully twisted the knob the other way. The film spun forward and stopped, and Jinx began fiddling with a focus wheel until the print cleared enough for her to read easily. But the print was displayed on the screen sideways, so she had to twist her neck painfully to read it. Just as her neck was starting to ache really badly, a hand appeared over her left shoulder, twisted a wheel she hadn't seen, and the page on the screen flipped ninety degrees.

"Thanks!" Jinx said, turning to see the old man in the worn suit smiling at her. "I figured there had to be an easier way, but…" Her voice trailed off as she glanced toward a man behind the counter who was making no effort to hide his resentment that someone like her would even dare to come into his precious microfiche room.

"Don't worry about him," the old man said. "He doesn't like anybody." His eyes shifted to the screen in front of Jinx. "What are you looking for? Maybe I can help you find it."

Half an hour later, after the old man had shuffled back to his own reader, Jinx reread the report of the attack on Cynthia Allen and the arrest of Jeff Converse one last time. She'd recognized the photograph of the victim at first glance-it was the woman she'd seen in the subway station the night Bobby Gomez had almost killed her, and then again at Columbia.

And there was no question that the Jeff Converse who'd been arrested was the man she'd met in the co-op.

Which meant that every word she'd just read-and then reread three times-was wrong.

Jeff Converse hadn't attacked Cynthia Allen.

And he wasn't dead.

At least not yet. Leaving the last of the articles still glowing on the screen, Jinx got up and quickly left the library.