“Should I go about armed?” Felicity asked.

“It couldn’t hurt,” Stone said. “I’ll loan you something, if you like.”

“Oh, I can manage,” Felicity said.

9

Stone sat in Bob Cantor’s van, parked right outside the Turtle Bay house, and looked at the surveillance tapes from the Seagram Building.

“I’ve copied them and done some editing and enhancing,” Cantor said, “so what you’re seeing is the most likely candidates.”

Stone watched a videotape of men entering the building and the elevators. An hour later he said, “Stop.”

“Which one?” Cantor said.

“The one with the hat, the beefy one.”

“Why him?”

“It’s his walk, it’s not completely natural. Do you see what I mean?”

Cantor rewound and watched the man. “Yeah, I see what you mean about the walk. It’s like one leg is stiffer than the other. Maybe he has an artificial leg?”

“I don’t think so, but I was told he walks funny.”

“Who wears a hat these days?” Cantor asked. “Nobody.”

“Maybe an English gentleman,” Stone said.

“Are his clothes custom-made?”

“Freeze the shot,” Stone said, then looked carefully at the man’s back. “I think so.”

“How can you tell?”

“For a start, his suit jacket has double pleats; ready-made suits more commonly have a center pleat. Then look at his shoulders: there’s no wrinkle near the collar, and there’s no puckering on the center seam. The sleeve has four buttons, too, and it looks like they have buttonholes. A man could get that from an expensive shop, but it all adds up to bespoke.”

“Bespoke?”

“What the Brits call custom-made. He’s showing more shirt collar than usual, too. His shirts are probably custom as well, so make a note to check out shirtmakers, starting with Turnbull and Asser. And the hat is a Trilby, taupe in color. That’s very British. See if you can find a shot of him in the elevator.”

“Why?”

“Because a gentleman removes his hat in an elevator.”

Cantor ran through some more shots at high speed. “Here we go,” he said.

“Maybe we can see what floor button he pushes,” Stone said, but the man didn’t push a button. He removed his hat, though, revealing a head full of dark hair, gray at the temples. The camera was set high, in a corner, and they could see only the back of his head.

“He’s not balding,” Cantor said.

“Maybe. He didn’t push any buttons; he was apparently going to a floor somebody else had already pushed.” Sure enough, the man followed another passenger off the elevator.

“That’s an express elevator,” Cantor said. “It goes only to the higher floors.”

“Yeah,” Stone said. “The trouble is, none of what we see here actually makes him as our guy. Okay, his clothes look English, and he wears a hat; that’s about it. We don’t know if our guy has gained a lot of weight over the years or gone bald. I can’t tell if he’s wearing a toupee. We can’t really see his nose, either.”

“Well there’s one thing about him I like,” Cantor said.

Tags: Stuart Woods Stone Barrington Mystery
Source: readsnovelonline.net