Small Town

Buckram had figured it would be. The Carpenter would use darkness. He was, from all accounts, a man who shrank from the limelight and sought out the shadows. He’d almost certainly board the ship after the sun had set, when there was less light to be seen by and fewer eyes to see him. If he was going to take the boat out, he’d do so then. Or he’d keep his hands off the tiller and catch a few hours of sleep, leaving well before daybreak.

What was the best way to do this?

He could board the boat now. He’d had a glance at the lock on the cabin door earlier, and it hadn’t looked terribly challenging. And why should it be? Out on the water you worried about pirates, not burglars. He’d added a handcuff key to his key ring before he left the apartment, and while he was at it he included the flat strip of flexible steel that had opened more than a few doors for him over the years. He’d be inside the Nancy Dee’s cabin almost as quickly as if he had the key.

And then he’d be waiting there when the Carpenter showed up. He’d hear the man coming, feel the boat shift when he came on board, and have a gun in his hand when the man came through the cabin door. With the advantage of surprise, he’d have the son of a bitch collared and cuffed before he knew what was happening.

And if it was Shevlin?

Well, hell. He’d tell him he was under arrest for making everybody crazy, and then he’d relent and send him home to Helen Mazarin, which would be punishment enough.

But it wouldn’t be Shevlin. Shevlin was dead, he was sure of it, and the man who came into the cabin would be the man who’d killed him.

There were other approaches he could make. He could stake out the Boat Basin and grab the Carpenter as soon as he showed up. He might be hard to spot in a crowd, but he wouldn’t be in a crowd, he’d be by himself, heading for the pier.

Mr. Harbinger? No, don’t move, and keep your hands in plain sight. Down on the ground, hands behind your back...

Easier with two people, easier still with three or four. Hard to corner a man when you were by yourself. You could run at him full speed, tackle him without warning, but you ran the risk of bystanders misreading the situation and interfering — plus a whole lot of egg on your face if you tackled some visiting fireman from Waukegan.

And if the tackle wasn’t perfect, and if the Carpenter made a break for it, then where were you? Even if you were willing to shoot at him, against regulations for cops, flat-out illegal for a private citizen, you risked missing him and hitting somebody else.

No, the best thing was to lay in wait and take him by surprise.

Now?

Now the sun was still high in the sky, and hot enough to make him question the wisdom of the Kevlar vest. Riverside Park was a human beehive, swarming with joggers and skaters and parents pushing strollers and people walking dogs. Everybody on the Upper West Side who hadn’t escaped for the holiday weekend had apparently decided to come to the park for a breath of fresh air. There wasn’t any, not at the moment, but if some happened to blow down from Ontario, they were ready to grab their share of it.

Hard to spot anybody in that sea of people. He looked for a place to sit, passed up a bench he could have shared with a woman who was feeding pigeons, shared another with an Asian man who was reading a copy of El Diario.

He sat back, relaxed. But kept his eyes open.

The movies were better during the week.

The films, of course, were essentially the same, irrespective of the day or time they were shown. But the theaters served better as refuge and dormitory on weekday afternoons, when even the most popular films drew tiny audiences. Saturdays and Sundays attendance increased dramatically, which was good for the theater owners and the film studios, but not as good for the Carpenter.

Still, he’d learned how to manage. You showed up when the box office opened, bought a ticket for a film. If there was a foreign-language feature with subtitles, you chose that, knowing that it would remain relatively deserted no matter what day it was. Failing that, you avoided any picture designed to appeal to the young. Anything animated, anything with children or animals on the poster.

If the featured performers were ones he recognized, the audience was likely to be sparse. Because that meant the actors were older than average, and so were the people who came to see them. Such films were among the more popular on weekday afternoons, when the elderly made up the greater portion of the audience. On weekends, however, when senior rates were not available, the old folks stayed home, and the young watched Brad Pitt or Scooby-Doo.