"I want you to get out of your apartment immediately," she said.

"This minute. Close it and prepare not to return for several days."

"What are ?"

"Just listen to me" she said steadily.

"I'm in a telephone booth.

Neither you nor I have much time."

"Keep talking.

"Leave your apartment and make certain that no one sees you. Go somewhere for the day, places you've never been, places where no one who knows you would look for you. Then tonight you have to meet me "

"Where?"

"Anywhere," she said.

"But it must be someplace deserted. What's the most deserted part of the city after midnight?"

"I suppose Central Park at four A.M.," he said jokingly.

"Perfect."

"What?"

"Perfect,"she reiterated.

"What part?"

"You can't be serious."

"I haven't much time! What part?" Her voice was strident and agitated, as he'd never heard it before. He could hear the sound of traffic behind her, horns and automobile engines. She was indeed in a booth.

"Do you know where the Great Lawn is?"

"I can find it."

"There's a rock formation off the Great Lawn to the east. Between Eighty-third and Eighty-fourth " he said.

"I can be in that area " "I'll find you" she said intensely. A recorded operator's voice sounded on the telephone and he heard her drop another coin into the slot.

"Now do as I've asked. Get out of. your apartment. Prepare not to come back. Don't be seen by anyone you recognize until you see me tonight."

"Can't you tell me what ?"

"It's your life I'm talking about" she snapped.

"You can either believe me or you can risk getting killed The choice is yours, Thomas.

Trust me or not. That's all I can say."

"But-' "I have to ring off."

He heard the sound of the receiver being quickly hung up. Then he was hearing a dial tone.

He sat there stunned with the telephone still in his hand. He set it down and looked around the apartment. Trust her or not, he thought to himself If all came down to that. Was she saving his life or luring him to an isolated section of Manhattan where he'd be as easy a murder victim as the unwitting Mark Ryder had been?

He glanced around his cluttered apartment and made his decision.

Sha.s.sad stood in the hallway looking down on the body. A photographer from the Medical Examiner's office aimed his camera, flashed a pair of shots, and moved into a different position.

Detective Jack Grimaldi looked at Sha.s.sad from the other end of jacobus's corpse.

"We blew it'" he said.

Sha.s.sad looked at him with genuine anger.

"I'D say you blew it, all right" he snapped.

"You've got this guy under surveillance and he gets killed under your fat noses. What the h.e.l.l are you, cub scouts?"

Grimaldi, looking for a hole to crawl into, said nothing. Nor did his partner, Detective Ed Blocker.

Patrick Hearn approached the area where Sha.s.sad stood. Behind Hearn detectives from forensics dusted the room for fingerprints.

"They find anything back there?" asked Sha.s.sad.

"Some prints," offered Hearn.

"But they're probably his." He motioned to Jacobus.

"Christ," muttered Sha.s.sad. He looked at Grimaldi with contempt.

"Okay," he said, 'run through it again for me. From the top Grimaldi drew a breath and measured each word. He retraced the events of that day.

. Grimaldi and Blocker, working twelve-hour shifts, had replaced the previous team a.s.signed to Jacobus. The a.s.signment had begun at Six A.M. on Thirtieth and Park. Grimaldi and Blocker had then followed Jacobus home by car at eight dc lock that morning, watching their mark disappear in the front door of his second-story home.

Aside from jacobus's murderer, the two detectives had been the last to see the custodian alive. But they had perhaps seen the killer, too.

"We parked out front about a block away," Grimaldi explained.

"We watched the house from there. Then about five minutes later Ed went around back."

"Back where?" Sha.s.sad asked.

Detective Edward Blocker replied.

"There's a patio behind these row houses" he said.