Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine Annual, No. 3, 1973

“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.