He stuck a huge brown hand through the slot in the plastic partition. “How about the first installment?”

Jack gave him a five dollar bill. Arnold turned off the engine and slouched down in the seat.

“You from around here?” he asked without turning around.

“Sort of.”

“You look like you’re from Cleveland.”

“I’m in disguise.”

“You a detective?”

That seemed like a reasonable explanation for following cabs around Manhattan, so Jack said, “Sort of.”

“You on an expense account?”

“Sort of.” Not true: He was on his own time and using his own money, but it sounded better to agree.

“Well, sort of let me know when you sort of want to get moving again.”

Jack laughed and got himself comfortable. His only worry was that there might be a back way out of the building.

People began drifting out of the building at 5:00. Kusum wasn’t among them. Jack waited another hour and still no sign of Kusum. By 6:30 Arnold was sound asleep in the front seat and Jack feared that Kusum had somehow slipped out of the building unseen. He decided to give it another half hour. If Kusum didn’t show by then, Jack would either go inside or find a phone and call the Consulate.

It was nearly seven o’clock when two Indians in business suits stepped through the door and onto the sidewalk. Jack nudged Arnold.

“Start your engine. We may be rolling soon.”

Arnold grunted and reached for the ignition. The Green Machine grumbled to life.

Another pair of Indians came out. Neither was Kusum. Jack was edgy. There was still plenty of light, no chance for Kusum to slip past him, yet he had a feeling that Kusum could be a pretty slippery character if he wanted to be.

Come out, come out, wherever you are.

He watched the two Indians walk up toward Fifth Avenue. They were walking west! With a flash of dismay, Jack realized that he was parked on a one-way street going east. If Kusum followed the same path as these last two, Jack would have to leave this cab and find another on Fifth Avenue. And the next cabbie might not be so easy-going as Arnold.

“We’ve got to get onto Fifth!” he told Arnold.

“Okay.”

Arnold put his cab in forward and started to pull out into the crosstown traffic.

“No, wait! It’ll take too long to go around the block. I’ll miss him.”

Arnold gave him a baleful stare through the partition. “You’re not telling me to go the wrong way on a one-way street, are you?”

“Of course not,” Jack said. Something in the cabbie’s voice told him to play along. “That would be against the law.”

Arnold smiled. “Just wanted to make sure you wasn’t telling.”

Without warning he threw the Green Machine into reverse and floored it. The tires screeched, terrified pedestrians leaped for the curb, cars coming out of the Central Park traverse swerved and honked angrily while Jack hung on to the passenger straps as the car lunged the hundred feet or so back to the corner, skewed to a halt across the mouth of the street, then nosed along the curb on Fifth Avenue.