"You saw those knife wounds. A surgeon couldn't make better incisions."

"Then what's wrong?" asked an exasperated Hearn, heavy circles forming beneath his eyes.

Then finding no method to the crime, Hearn sarcastically answered his own question.

"Maybe they got the wrong man."

Sha.s.sad, in thought, said nothing. But his eyes were wide.

"Jumping Jesus I " Sha.s.sad then said softly

"Of course. The wrong man."

"What?"

"Debbie Moran and her rent-a-m.u.f.f had nothing to do with it.

Try this: Her customer-Ryder-had the luck to walk out the building at the wrong second. Two professionals were there waiting for a hit. But not Ryder. No one cared about him. No, sir. They were waiting for someone more important who was supposed to step out precisely the same time. And who nearly did."

Hearn twisted his face, half in enlightenment, half in skepticism.

"Daniels?" he asked.

-Yeah" said Sha.s.sad, opening his hands expansively.

"Yeah, why the h.e.l.l not?" They paused and considered it.

"He said himself that he was coming out right at that same time '

Sha.s.sad paused a few seconds between sentences, stopping to think as he spoke.

"How big is Daniels? Five ten? Five eleven?"

"Approximately."

"Same as Ryder, right?"

Hearn nodded.

"Coloring? Hair? Build? All similar, right? Similar enough to be mistaken by people who were waiting for a man they'd never met before?

Waiting on a rainy 'night in January when they knew their victim would be coming out of that building."

"But they'd have to know right down to the minute in order to jump to a conclusion like that?"

"Of course. They did know. Don't you see?"

"Sorry. No."

"The janitor wanted to know almost to the minute how soon Daniels would be leaving. Remember?"

Hearn's face was a.s.suming a slow glow.

"And sure," said Sha.s.sad, getting to his feet excitedly and slapping the back of an open palm into his other hand, "one of the men on the street was back and forth to the telephone. That's how they knew when to look for Daniels. They were tipped from Thirty-first Street.

Huh? What do you think?" Sha.s.sad folded his arms against his chest, as if in summation of his case.

"I like it," answered Hearn slowly. He was thoughtful.

"Ryder goes out the front door while Daniels steps out the back. Poof Ryder gets carved in Daniels's place. Now," he added with an almost imperceptible pause, 'who wants Daniels dead?"

"Only one possibility in the world so far," said Sha.s.sad.

"Jacobus!"

'(Why?"

Sha.s.sad poked at the air with a forefinger.

"That's what we find out next."

Chapter 19 Jacobus was the thin thread which st.i.tched Sha.s.sa(Ts theory together. Like the slaying of Ryder, Jacobus also made little sense.

Sha.s.sad had rea.s.signed two support teams of detectives. No longer did they shadow Thomas Daniels in hopes that the young attorney would lead them to the missin woman. Instead, Jacobus was now under twenty-four-hour surveillance by three different two-man detective teams. After three days, the acc.u.mulation of information on Jacobus had been a genuine team effort. No one had discovered anything.

Sha.s.sad and Hearn were plainly worried. jacobus's house in Astoria had been watched; no one unusual had come or gone. The night custodian had been followed to work as he drove his dented aging Ford from Queens to Manhattan and left it in a metered parking place on Thirtieth Street off Park Avenue South, a similar location each night. He'd been under intense scrutiny for several days and Sha.s.sad's theory of his link to the Ryder murder was fading quickly.

"Just another stiff in another crummy job," had been Sha.s.sad's recurrent thought after observing the man.

"Just like the rest of us' ' jacobus's thumbprint had been taken from his home mailbox and had been sent down to the crime laboratory for a fingerprint a.n.a.lysis. A police photographer, concealed in the office building across the street at 460 Park Avenue South, had taken thirty-some telephoto snapshots of the man. And Sha.s.sad had made arrangements to visitiacobus's bank to peer into his financial status.

But as the two detectives sat in Hearn's car on lower Park Avenue, surveying the entrance of 457 Park Avenue South for the third consecutive night, the possible involvement of Jacobus, as a homicide conspirator seemed less and less likely. By night, no one came or went from the building in which Jacobus worked. And the only occasional company the detective had in the nocturnally quiet section of Manhattan was that of the large white sanitation trucks which prowled the streets picking up refuse.

On the third night of their stakeout, three A.M. pa.s.sed quietly.

Then three thirty.

Hearn nudged Sha.s.sad sharply, taken by surprise himself.

"Hey,"

he said excitedly

"What's this?" He motioned with his head and indicated an activity halfway down Thirtieth Street. He raised the binoculars to his eyes.

The two detectives had been ignoring the side street. They'd become sleepy and their attention had lagged. They didn't even know where the dark green Chevy Nova on Thirtieth Street had come from. Nor did they know how long it had been there. What they could see was that the car had double-parked next to jacobus's battered old Ford. And the driver of the Nova was a busy man.

The man stood behind his own car aAd unlocked the trunk. He opened it slightly, but didn't raise the rear hood. He moved directly behind jacobus's car and seemed to fumble with something small.

"What is it? What is it?" asked Sha.s.sad.