Part 7 (1/2)
”That's for me,” I said.
”Purchase or rental?”
”Rent. I won't need it after tomorrow night . . .” I paused, thinking. ”But I'll leave a deposit to cover the complete cost.”
”Oh, that won't be necessary - ”
”It might. It just might.”
She went off into what was apparently the stockroom and came back with a cardboard box. While she wrote out my receipt we talked about extra items I might need, and I wound up with a kit of theatrical makeup. And that appeared to do it. All I needed now was a dozen Marines, a tank, and a flame-thrower.
The little gal handed me my receipt and I began writing a check for the required rental plus deposit, then she said, looking past me, ”I'll be with you in a minute, sir.”
I looked over my shoulder. A big ape about my size was eyeballing us strenuously. Or maybe he was just looking at the gal, which seemed likely, since a lot of the little gal was showing here and there among the filmy bits of her costume. But when I looked around he mumbled, ”No hurry, no hurry,” and turned aside. I'd seen all of him I wanted to see, anyway; he had a face like a barracuda, a face that seemed to come to a point in front, studded with too many teeth.
”There you are, sir.”
I pulled my head around again. The little tomato was holding my package toward me, smiling over it the way gals smile over champagne gla.s.ses just before they say, ”Oo, it tickles.”
”Don't call me sir, please. Call me Sh.e.l.l.”
”Sh.e.l.l?”
”Uh-huh. In case I call up sometime and say 'This is Sh.e.l.l' and then make all sorts of shameless remarks.”
”Oh, that sounds like fun.”
”Who knows? We might even have our own little costume party.”
”And you a man who goes for Marie Antoinette. I can imagine the costumes.” She raised her shoulders, tilted her head to one side and stirred up the air with those eyelashes again. Then she said, ”'Bye, Sh.e.l.l,” and turned her back on me, and walked straight ahead to the stockroom again.
It was about twenty feet to the stockroom's door, and I watched her every inch of the way. Not only the forward inches, but the side-to-side inches. She had a walk that was one of the friendliest things I'd ever seen. Her well-rounded hips swung provocatively back and forth as if they were waving goodbye, and as they went out of sight I murmured under my breath, ”Not goodbye, my dears . . . but only au revoir.”
Perhaps I was being untrue, in my fas.h.i.+on, to Lolita and Doris Miller - but how many days in the week do you meet a harem girl? That thought reminded me I was supposed to drop by and see Doris this afternoon, and bring her up to date on the progress of the case. Carrying my clown outfit, I headed for the Cad. I didn't see the Barracuda. And so soon after that walk to the stockroom, it was understandable that I didn't even think about him again, not then.
When I walked into the Royal Photo shop, where I'd dropped off my roll of exposed infrared film last night, Timothy, the technician, leered at me.
”I should of called the cops,” he said.
”Knock it off. Believe it or not, those shots const.i.tute a lever. It was Archimedes or somebody, maybe even Einstein, who said give me a lever long enough, and a place to put it, and I'll move the world.”
”Probably Einstein. No matter what you say, them pictures - ”
”They are a lever, Timothy, with which I hope to move a man. I hope to move him so vigorously that it will keep two people alive.”
”Two people?”
”Yeah - and one of them is me.”
”Well, in that case . . . But, man, them pictures - ”
He went off to get them. While waiting for him to come back I glanced out the front window of the shop. A long black car, looking a little bit like a hea.r.s.e, went by. I felt a small, slow tightening of my spine. Not because the buggy looked somewhat like a hea.r.s.e. But because, earlier this afternoon, I'd seen it before. A couple of times before.
Ever since the moment on the Freeway when that machine gun had been swinging toward my head, I had spent almost as much time looking in all compa.s.s directions as driving. And, as a matter of course, I'd managed to be the last car through several stop lights, utilized the standard tricks for shaking a possible tail. Consequently, when I'd noticed the hea.r.s.elike sedan for the second time I'd taken even more care; but here was that same buggy - or one immensely like it - again. While the coincidence didn't snap credulity, it sure stretched it.
Timothy brought back the five-by-seven enlargements in a manila envelope. I'd snapped an entire roll and Timothy had made a pair of enlargements from each of the twenty negatives. Twelve were too blurred to be of any value. Of the remaining eight, I chose two which were perfectly exposed and sharp, and in which the faces of both Jay and Mrs. Frank Quinn were easily recognizable. I kept both copies of those two, then destroyed the rest, negatives and all.
Timothy was still making mild sounds of shock and protest when I went out.
I was nearly to Doris Miller's, looking forward to a bright spot in the day, when it happened again. It was a little before six p.m. I'd stopped at an intersection and was watching my rearview mirror when the black car appeared in it - not, however, behind me, but a block back, traveling from left to right on the street at right angles to this one. I shook my head. Either there was a mortician's convention in town, all of the fellows driving hea.r.s.es, or . . .
Then, of course, I had it.
I found the item within thirty seconds. It was under the Cad's front b.u.mper, held by one small metal clamp and a strand of wire. With a crescent wrench from the Cad's trunk I loosened the bolt holding the clamp, then yanked the small box free. I got back into the Cad, put the box on the seat beside me.
The item was, familiarly speaking, a ”squawk box,” more accurately a small self-contained radio transmitter. Ever since being attached to my car, it would have been sending out a constant signal on one of the many available radio frequencies; the lad in that black buggy would have with him a radio receiver tuned to that same frequency. An adjunct to the receiver would be a loop antenna. When the loop was at right angles to the beam issuing from the squawk box on my Cad the incoming signal would be strong; as it deviated from right angles the signal would weaken or fade out completely. Thus, even with only one following car containing one receiver, a man could keep rough track of me, and easily locate my Cad whenever I parked. With one or more additional receivers in other cars, and using simple triangulation procedures, my pals could pinpoint my location at any time.
I swore. That guy could have been on my tail all day. I thought back over where I'd been, the stops I'd made. Calls on Semmelwein and Porter, the Costume Center, Timothy's photo shop, and others. There was nothing I could do about it now, except hope there'd been no real damage - at least I hadn't been shot yet. Something else, a vague uneasiness, teetered on the edge of thought, but I couldn't push it over, couldn't grab it.
At least I wouldn't have any trouble shaking the tail now, and that was the important thing at the moment. I started the car again.
It was six-thirty on the nose, already dark, when I started walking to Doris Miller's apartment. I'd parked three blocks away, merely so my Cadillac wouldn't by chance be seen at her place - I wasn't worried about a tail now. I had stopped at a bus terminal and left there, in a locker to which I now had the key, my clown costume, the engraved invitation to Quinn's party, and the extra pair of enlargements of Jay and Mrs. Quinn. Moreover, while there I had not only gotten rid of that squawk box but had high hopes I'd given back to the hea.r.s.e-driver a portion of the annoyance he'd given me.
Because I had transferred that little transmitter to a Greyhound Bus - just leaving for Dallas, Texas.
Eight.
Doris had on another of her getups, or maybe it was a getout, because she did appear to be trying to get out of it. This was my day of days, but I was already occupied for the night. Life is sometimes cruel.
My client smiled half-heartedly at me, but even without all the nerve and bounce in the world she was one of the most delectable creatures I'd seen. Seen this year at least. I could imagine how bright and s.h.i.+ning and beautiful she would be with her brother safe again and out of the clink.
She mixed highb.a.l.l.s for us and we sat on the living room couch while I told her what had been happening, just hitting the high spots. I summed it up, ”So, I know very well what the truth is - that Ross is innocent, that Quinn shot Flagg, that Quinn put pressure on at least three witnesses to make them give false testimony at the trial.”
”We've - we've really known that all along, haven't we, Sh.e.l.l?” She sighed. ”Nothing much has changed, has it?”
”It's changed more than it appears on the surface, Doris. For example, I know that Flagg was Quinn's payoff man, and that Quinn had one of his hoods kill Heigman, drown him. I've got some names - ”
She interrupted. Not angrily, or with irritability. Just with a dullness I didn't like to hear in her voice. ”But there's nothing you can prove, Sh.e.l.l. You've told me that. Nothing the police will accept, nothing the governor would even listen to, nothing that can possibly help Ross - ”
At the end her voice was gradually going up the scale in the direction of hysteria, so this time I interrupted her. ”Wait a minute.” I held up both hands, smiling ”It's not quite that bad. There's more.”
”More?” Her face brightened so, and her eyes filled with such sudden sparkle and hope that I almost wished I hadn't spoken. Because there wasn't really a lot more.