Called by a Panther Read online

  He nodded and ran through a double doorway at the back and right of the house.

  I stepped inside.

  From out of sight I heard, “Mom. Mom. There's a man and he called me sick!”

  After a few moments a woman appeared in the doorway where Sick had disappeared. She didn't look up as she moved my way because Sick was swinging on a fistful of her sweat-suit pants and pulling them down. At the same time the woman was wiping her hands on a paper towel. She was five feet tall, had curly dark blond hair and she moved with even, balanced steps. She wore an apron covered in tiny hearts. Each hand had two rings.

  When finally she raised her eyes to me, she stopped as if shot.

  I had never seen her face. But it was the Frog.

  No doubt.

  She was only shot for a moment. She said, “Can I help you?”

  “I think you can,” I said.

  “Are . . . are you selling something? Or what?”

  “You know perfectly well who I am,” I said.

  “I'm sorry. I think you may have confused the address with. . .Well, I don't know.”

  “Mom,” Sick said. “Are you done with the bowl yet?”

  She shushed him and he burrowed poutily between her legs.

  I smiled and said, “I guess maybe he isn't that sick after all.”

  “Yes, I am,” he said without appearing. “I am too sick.”

  I said, “I'm not here to cause trouble. But I need to see you people.”

  “What people. Mom?”

  “I don't know what you mean,” the Frog said.

  To help her avoid Sick's interventions I spoke in a foreign language: big words. I said, “Number one. I have not, repeat not, communicated anything substantive to members of local law enforcement agencies. Not yet. Number two. I have located a witness who confirms that someone followed you in the downtown building we have spoken of. My witness helped an artist make a likeness. I need members of your special interest group to look at that likeness so that I—we—can progress. But suddenly nobody answers my hanky.”

  The little pitcher stepped out and pointed a finger at me. He said, “You're silly. Nobody answers a hanky. Hankies don't talk!”

  I nodded. “Sick,” I said, “you are absolutely right.”

  “I know,” he said.

  “I am silly. Very, very silly,” I said. “That's because I have this trusting nature that makes me believe people when they say their social responsibilities are important to them. I even believe people when they say they want to correct their mistakes. My trusting nature gets me into trouble. But there comes a time when even I learn better. And then I take the straightest line to get myself out of the deep doodoo that other people have put me in.”

  “Mom, he said 'doodoo'!”

  “It's all right,” she said.

  I said, “I'm at my limit, Mom. Somebody better give me a telecommunication later on today. And I don't mean an I Spy call.

  Somebody better be ready to talk English and make arrangements. We need to coalesce to examine my artist's impression. We need to engage in a little verbal interaction. Capisce?#dp

  Chapter Thirty Eight

  IT WAS A QUARTER TO FIVE when I got back to my office. I felt exhausted. I'd been in too many intense situations in too few days.

  Don't get me wrong. I can do emotion. I'm not a frozen cabbage. But it costs me and after a while even an emotional high roller is going to bottom out.

  I went up the stairs slowly and with some trepidation. Too often of late coming home meant Quentin Quayle or the cops or Norman or. . .

  This time, however, the surprise was on the answering machine. In my absence there had been seven calls. But that wasn't it. The surprise was that not a single message was from anybody I knew. They were all from people who wanted to talk about possible work. Five different people. They sought appointments. One had called three times.

  I replayed the messages and listed names and numbers in my notebook. It was hard to believe.

  Maybe I shouldn't believe it. Maybe it was somebody's idea of a joke.

  But maybe it wasn't. And any excuse to hope for an orderly future and a life without dress-up bombers and moody British poets was positively welcome.

  So I made a positive move. I left my door unlocked, stuck a note to Bobbie Lee on it and took a very hot shower.

  It was wonderful. It ranked in my top ten lifetime physical feelings, an all-singeing, all-drenching, all-body experience. I came out pink and young again. As I dried myself I hummed.

  I dressed in crisp clean clothes. That felt good too.

  It was five twenty-five when I came back into my office.

  Bobbie Lee was not only there, she was sitting at my desk with her feet up. She was thumbing through my notebook. She said “So this is what it's like to be a hotshot detective.”

  “You like the sensation?”

  “I think I'd get a better chair. One of those lean-back jobs that support your head.”

  “I'll try to remember that when I'm choosing a present for your agency opening.”

  In a voice that reminded me immediately of Graham Parkis she said, “Do sit down, young man. Now let's hear all about this sexual perversion you think your wife is getting up to with the Cub Scout who mows your grass.”

  I said, “I can see you have the gift of a deskside manner.”

  “I am a gold mine waiting to be discovered,” she said. Then, “Would you like your life back?”

  Without waiting for an answer she shifted her feet to the floor, rose and dropped my notebook with a plop.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “I've got a picture for you and I've got a report. Which do you want first?”

  “Let's have the picture.”

  Her folder was on the desk. She opened it and turned a color drawing of a woman toward me.

  “It's in chalks but I've sprayed them so it won't smudge.”

  The drawing of Wool Glove Woman was much more vivid than the sketch in pencils had been. “I'm impressed,” I said.

  “If you find her, maybe you could ask if she wants a formal portrait. I'm very reasonable.”

  I smiled.

  She said, “The clothes are right. The face is less reliable. As you know, the witness didn't have an eye for people.”

  “I've got some clients coming to take a look at it later tonight.”

  “You seem to have a lot of clients,” she said. She gestured toward the notebook. “If you need some help . . .”

  “Whatever I can put your way, Ms Leonard, I will.”

  “My report,” she announced. She pulled out a notebook of her own. “I engaged the target as she left her residence at nineteen forty-nine hours.”

  “We speak English here.”

  “Then I lost the target at twenty thirty-one.”

  “Lost her? After forty-two minutes?”

  “Correct.”

  “How?”

  “I think 'Why?' would be a better question.”

  “O.K. Why?”

  “Because the other guy following her doesn't know shit about how to do it.”

  “Someone else followed her?”

  Bobbie Lee nodded. “A popular gal, your Mrs. Vivien.” I didn't know what to make of it.

  She said, “As soon as she spotted the other guy we did one-way streets and a couple of alleys and burned some rubber. It was all very exciting for at least four minutes.”

  “Did you get a look at him?”

  “I did better than that. I took his picture. But I didn't know whether I was supposed to keep with the target and let the guy know I was there or whether it was better for me to be discreet, but lose her. My inclination was to run him off the road. But since I was working for you, and since my own inclinations tend to get me into trouble, and since I figured if she was looking for tails, that was going to make it almost impossible for me by myself anyway . . . I decided not to take chances without further instructions. There wasn't time to call in. Besides, pal, you told
me it was going to be easy.”

  “I thought it would be,” I said. “I wouldn't lie to you, Bobbie

  Lee.”

  She laughed.

  “You've heard that before, huh?”

  “A hundred times before I decided to give up men.”

  “A hundred!” I said.

  She laughed again. It was easy, appealing laughter. I said, “Let's see the picture of the guy.”

  From beneath her drawing she pulled out a photograph. She laid it on the desk in front of me.

  It was shadowy and grainy. It was also George Quentin Crispian Quayle.

  “Oh shit,” I said.

  “Who is it? CIA? KGB? IRS?”

  “It is,” I said, “our client.”

  “Oh,” she said.

  “He's a real jerk,” I said.

  And then the doorbell rang.

  Chapter Thirty Nine

  QUAYLE LOOKED UNHAPPY. “I've come by four times today,” he said.

  “A detective's work is never done. Believe me, running a twenty-four-hour car wash single-handed would be a rest cure.”

  “What?”

  “Come in, Poet,” I said. “There's someone I want you to meet.”

  Quayle sulked in.

  But he transformed himself when he saw a young woman in the room.

  Bobbie Lee extended a hand. “I'm Bobbie Lee Leonard,” she said.

  Quayle took the hand in both of his and lifted it to his mouth. He not only kissed it but he lingered in the process. He said, “It is an enchanting pleasure to meet you. I am Quentin C. Quayle.”

  “I've never had my hand kissed before,” she said.

  “I am a connoisseur of hands and since I arrived on your shores I have not grasped a more exquisite one.”

  “You're English, huh?”

  “I have that good fortune. And do I presume too much if I surmise that you, Ms Leonard, are Hoosier?”

  “Born and bred.”

  “You have the quality of carriage and bearing that I have come to associate with the genuine Hoosier woman. In fact I venture to suggest that Hoosier womanhood can stand up against the womanhood of any other persuasion.”

  “Probably knock them down again too,” Bobbie Lee said.

  “But with style and verve.”

  “Yeah. We go in a lot for verve. But if the verve ain't gettin' the job done, then we break off a high hard one.”

  I said, “I hate to pour disinfectant on this exchange of cow patter, but Ms Leonard has some work to do.”

  “She works?” Quayle said. “This creature works?”

  Bobbie Lee could not suppress a chuckle.

  “She works for you, Poet.”

  He caused his jaw to drop and his eyebrows to lift.

  “She's following Charlotte Vivien.”

  “Oh,” he said. He looked at her again.

  “Want to start over? Hi. I'm Bobbie Lee Leonard.” She extended her hand.

  Quayle said, “She's a detective?”

  “Right first time.”

  “Gee,” Bobbie Lee said, “I hoped you were going to slobber on it again. A little more and I could throw my moisturizer away.”

  “However,” I said, “her work last night was not helped by your getting in the way.”

  “What do you mean?” Quayle asked.

  Bobbie Lee went to my desk and picked up the photograph she'd taken of him. “I followed the target last night but this man was following her too. She spotted him and shook him and that meant that I couldn't stay with her.”

  “Oh,” Quentin Quayle said.

  “The point, Poet, is that you either leave the job to us or you do it yourself. They are mutually exclusive options. It is time for Ms Leonard to leave. Do you want Mrs. Vivien followed or not?”

  “I do. I do,” he said. But he had hardly taken his eyes off Bobbie Lee since they were introduced.

  “Then whatever else you get up to tonight, do not follow Mrs. Vivien again yourself.”

  Quentin Quayle looked from Bobbie Lee to me and back. “Couldn't I go along with her?”

  “Don't be ridiculous.”

  “I don't mind,” Bobbie Lee said.

  “You must be joking.”

  “At least that way I know where he is.”

  “It's unprofessional,” I said.

  And then I wondered if that was really what I was responding to.

  “It is my money,” Quayle said.

  I said to Bobbie Lee, “Are you seriously suggesting that he rides with you?”

  “If he weighs the car down too much in a high-speed chase I can always dump him. In fact I know a block where all the transvestite hookers hang out. It'd take him hours to kiss his way through all the beautiful hands down there.”

  Poet's pupils dilated further.

  I shrugged. The Go-for-It Detective was dead; long live the Laid-back Go-for-It Detective.

  Quayle reached for the photograph of himself. “May I keep that?”

  “Sure,” Bobbie Lee said.

  Then Quayle pointed to the desk. “Can I have that too?”

  “My desk? Certainly not.”

  “The other picture. Can I have it?”

  He meant the color chalk drawing of Wool Glove Woman. “No,” I said. “That's nothing to do with you.”

  “What do you mean it's nothing to do with me?” he said. “That's one of Charlotte's dresses.”

  I looked at him. I was so surprised I couldn't speak.

  Chapter Fourty

  BOBBIE LEE SAW MY reaction. She said, “Are you saying it's like a dress you are familiar with, Mr. Quayle?”

  “It's not like it. It is it. Charlotte wore that dress when we went to a party in January. I'd recognize it anywhere.”

  His intensity of feeling grew and Bobbie Lee and I exchanged glances.

  Quayle began to wave his hands and said, “I am a poet. An artist. My eyes are tools. People burn themselves into my brain and bring their garments with them. I know clothes, Ms Leonard. You, for instance, are a perfect ten. The dress in that drawing was designer-made as an approximate twelve but taken in at the waist. Charlotte has exceptionally slender hips for a woman of her height.”

  Bobbie Lee did not respond and Quayle turned to me. “You know her, Samson. Do you think that a woman like Charlotte Vivien buys her dresses from a Sears Roebuck catalog? Each of her garments is unique. That dress is one of Charlotte's. And I want to know what you are doing with a drawing of it on your desk.”

  “You're not my only client,” I said.

  “What is that supposed to mean?”

  “This happens to be one of a series of drawings for a fashion company.”

  “What fashion company? In Indianapolis?”

  “That is not your business.”

  “What do you do for a fashion company?”

  “I get them drawings of garments that they might not see otherwise.”

  “You steal designs? Oh, Albert, I am disappointed.”

  “I'm not admitting to anything illegal. But look at the picture. There's almost no face at all.”

  “Yes,” he said slowly.

  “Which proves it's a fashion drawing,” I said. “It is the clothes that are important.” He considered this.

  “I don't mean to interrupt,” Bobbie Lee said, saving me further inanities, “but I have to leave.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  “Are you coming with me, Mr. Quayle? If you are, we've got to roll.”

  Quayle looked at me and then at gap-toothed Bobbie Lee. Poet was confused and less than satisfied with my explanations. But it was no contest. They left together.

  Still, Poet's agitation was nothing to my own.

  Suddenly, if the dress was Charlotte Vivien's I had a direct line to the woman who had picked up the missing bomb.

  Did people like Charlotte Vivien lend their clothes?

  At least, surely, she would know what had happened to the dress.

  I went to the telephone.

 
; But as I reached to pick it up, it rang.

  The sound startled me. After the third ring I answered it. “Albert Samson.”

  An artificially high voice said, “Mr. Samson, it's about that meeting you wanted.”

  The Frog. Jesus!

  I said, “What about it?”

  “I can only provide two of the people concerned this evening. The others have commitments that it will be impossible for them to break. Do you want to see the two?”

  I said, “Can you arrange our meeting for tomorrow morning instead?”

  After two sharp breaths she said, “I will try. I think I can.”

  “O.K. Eleven o'clock. But I may need to get back in touch with you later tonight, so give me your number.”

  “I don't really want to do that,” she said. Her voice was so laden with distress that I wondered if she was in physical pain.

  But I said, “Don't give me a hard time. I know where you live. If I was going to turn you in, the place would be crawling with little blue men already.”

  She gave me the number.

  “And who do I ask for?” I said.

  “You don't know my name?”

  “No. But it would be easy to find out.”

  There was a long pause. With an unsteady voice she said, “Kathryn Morgason.”

  “Morgason?”

  “Yes.”

  “As in Cab-Co Morgason?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does he know that—”

  “He hasn't got the slightest idea, Mr. Samson.” And then she said, “I knew there were big risks. But when the danger is so close, it seems much more awful than I ever imagined it was going to be.”

  I would have asked how Sick was, but that just seemed like rubbing the risks in.

  Chapter Fourty One

  “MRS. VIVIEN,” THE BUTLER said, “is about to go out.”

  In the background I heard a woman's voice ask, “Who is it Loring?”

  I said, “My name is Albert Samson. I was the detective at her murder dinner last week. And it is very important that I speak to her.”

  “An Albert Samson, madam,” Loring said.

  “Tell her it's important,” I said.

  But he didn't.

  And then there was nothing. And it seemed to go on forever.

  “Hello?” I said eventually. “Is anybody out there?”

  Nobody answered but neither was there a dial tone. I stayed with it.