Part 10 (1/2)

”No fee, Hank. I'd hate to pay the tax on it. When are we going to have lunch?”

”I'll have to call you. My boss is flying in tonight, and I've got a lot of things to do today, but I'll call you soon.”

”Please do, Hank. You've put on a few pounds, haven't you?”

”A few, but I still do my fifty push-ups every morning, and I'm on a diet again. I can take off ten pounds in a week. The next time you see me, I'll be back down.”

I got up and put on my jacket. It was cool in his office, and there were several things I wanted to talk about with Thead, but I had taken enough of his time already. Besides, I didn't want to confide in him. It was too embarra.s.sing.

”Hank?”

”Sir?”

”Perhaps you'd better tell me your friend's name?”

”Why?”

He shrugged, and then he grinned. ”In case the police find his body, I can tell them what his name was.”

I shook my head and smiled. ”No use you getting involved, Dr. Thead. If something happens to him, I'll tell them his name.”

”All right--but call me soon.”

Outside in the hot sun again, I felt as if I were walking under water as I crossed the courtyard toward the narrow strip of lawn where I had parked my Galaxie. Except for two Cuban refugees, looking for goodies in a Dempsey Dumpster, there were no suspicious looking people around. I lit a cigarette, and climbed into my car.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

The explosion, when I turned on the ignition, was instantaneous, but the engine caught. My foot jammed down involuntarily on the gas pedal, and the engine roared. The engine fan, turning at high speed, forced thin wings of black smoke from under the hood on both sides of the car. For a moment, there had been a high shrill whistle before the explosion. I was startled, and my mind was benumbed by the sudden, unexpected noise. Conscious now of the racing engine, I turned off the ignition, unfastened my seat belt and climbed stiffly out of the car.

I wasn't hurt and, looking at the hood, I couldn't see any damage to the car. There was only a faint remnant of smoke wisping out from under the closed hood. I was joined by a half-dozen curious, bearded students. One of them grinned.

”Looks like somebody pulled a trick on you,” he said.

”Did any of your guys see anyone around my car?” I said, looking at them. They shuffled back a pace or two. There was some silent head-shaking.

I opened the driver's door, reached under the dash, and pulled the k.n.o.b to unlock the hood. There was a scattering of gray flecks of paper littering the engine. A student leaned over to look at the engine, picked up a thin red-and-white wire, and traced it to the battery. The wire was split, and sc.r.a.ped to the copper at the ends, and two thin strands were wound around the terminals. There were some short lengths of the red-and-white wire mixed with the shredded bits of gray paper.

”A Whiz-Bang,” the student said. ”It can't hurt your car any. It just whistles and makes a loud firecracker bang when you turn on the ignition.”

I nodded. ”But my car was locked. How'd he get inside to open the hood?”

”Maybe you didn't lock the car.”

”I always lock it.”

”In that case,” he said, ”he must've unlocked it.”

All of the students were grinning now. I grinned, too, trying to make a joke of it. ”I'm parked illegally,” I said, ”so maybe one of your campus cops played the trick on me--as a warning.”

One of the students stopped grinning, and frowned. ”It isn't really funny, you know,” he said. ”A man could have a heart attack being shook up like that.”

”It scared me all right,” I admitted, dropping the hood and checking to see that it was locked, ”but I can take a joke. So if one of you guys did the wiring, there's no hard feelings.”

”No one here did it,” the first student said. ”You can buy those Whiz-Bang devices over at Meadows', but that's not the kind of trick anyone would play on a stranger.”

”It was probably someone who knew me, who recognized my car.” I shrugged and got into the car again and closed the door.

The students, bored now, drifted away. I turned on the ignition, and switched on the airconditioning. I lit a cigarette, and then stubbed it out. My mouth was too dry to smoke. Then I noticed the small three by five inch card half-hidden beneath the seatbelt on the pa.s.senger's side. Printed, in neat block letters, with a ballpoint pen, it read: ”IT'S YOU I WANT, LUCKY, NOT AN INNOCENT STUDENT. NEXT TIME YOU WON1 BE SO LUCKY, LUCKY. BETTER SAY YOUR f.u.c.kING PRAYERS.”

I put the card into my s.h.i.+rt pocket, swiveled my neck and looked out the back window. The courtyard and the first twostory building of the Law School were behind me. Straight ahead, through the front window, was the vast student union parking lot, with cars as thickly cl.u.s.tered as fruitflies on an overripe mango. Students, some going toward the Ring Theater, shuffled along in sandals. Others were leaving the student union to attend cla.s.ses, but I didn't see a middle-aged man wearing a seersucker jacket. Apparently Mr. Wright had followed me and rigged the gag explosive device on my car, but how had he got into the car without a key? I was positive that I had locked the car. It's the kind of thing a man does automatically, but being positive wasn't enough. From now on I would have to be absolutely sure.

I left the university, and circled about through the quiet back streets of Coral Gables, checking the rearview mirror to see if I were being followed. These were all placid neighborhood blocks, with very little traffic, and there were no cars behind or in front of me when I finally reached Red Road and turned toward Eighth Street--the Tamiami Trail--or, as the Cubans call it, -Calle Ocho-.

My stomach burned, partly with hunger but mostly with fury--an indignant kind of fury caused by the pointlessness of the trick bomb. A real bomb would have killed me, and I could understand Wright's reluctance to place a real bomb in the car when he might have inadvertently killed a pa.s.sing student as I triggered it, but there was still no point in using a firecracker bomb--just to prove that he could have blown me up with a real bomb as easily. He was making a game, or a joke out of my life-- or death-- or, more logically, he was giving me a second warning, when the shot was warning enough, to make me more alert, or perhaps, a more worthy opponent for him. Perhaps he was trying to make certain that I would try to protect myself against him? Was he giving me a sporting chance because he didn't want to shoot a ”sitting duck?”

Whatever his intentions were, I did not intend to let the joke throw me off. I was trying to outguess Mr. Wright, and there was a possibility that he had had a cooling off period, and that he had placed the trick bomb under the hood to show me that he was no longer angry enough to kill me, to carry out his original threat. But if that were true, why would he leave such a threatening note?

I shrugged away these speculations, knowing how useless they were. I knew nothing about Wright the man, the husband, or the killer. To stay alive, I would have to a.s.sume--without forgetting it for a second--that Wright meant to kill me, and the best way to prevent him from doing so would be to kill him first.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

After Twenty-Seventh Avenue, driving east, Eighth Street is a one-way, four-laned street. The neighborhoods on both sides, as well as the stores, are almost entirely Spanish-speaking-- Cuban, and Puerto Rican, with a scattering of Colombians. There are always two or more people in a car in Little Havana, usually several, and as they-- the occupants--drive along, they all talk at once, using both hands, including the driver. Sometimes, a Cuban driver, to make a point to someone in the back seat, will take his hands off the wheel altogether, turn around, and with many gestures, talk animatedly to his pa.s.sengers in the back while he is still traveling at forty miles per hour. One drives cautiously on Eighth Street, and even more so after it becomes a one-way street. I was looking for the Target Gun Shop, a parking place, and out for other drivers.

I parked on the south side of Eighth, locked my car, and waited for a chance to jaywalk to the other side. The Target Gun Shop had been easy to find. The front of the building was a huge target, with wide, alternating black and white stripes narrowing down to a big circular black bullseye that included the top half of the front door. Running across the street, when my chance came, and heading for that black bullseye door, gave me a queasy feeling.

The store inside, dark and delightfully airconditioned, was much larger than it had appeared from the street. One half of the building was devoted to guns and ammunition, with a half-dozen long gla.s.s display cases filled with pistols. There were tables loaded with hunting equipment, holsters, ammo belts, and other war surplus camping equipment. The other half of the building, with a separate entrance inside the store, was an indoor shooting range.

I looked into the display cases at the wide selection of weapons, bewildered by the variety of choices. A middle-aged Cuban, with fluffy gray sideburns, waited on me. His English was excellent, with hardly any accent.

”Look as long as you like,” he said, smiling, ”and if you want to examine one of the pistols, just tap on the gla.s.s and I'll take it out for you.”

”I think I'll need some help,” I said. ”I need a pistol, but they all look about the same to me.”

”No, sir. They are not the same. Do you need a weapon for target practice, or merely for protection?”

”Protection?” I looked at him sharply.

He shrugged. ”A man must protect his home.”