Called by a Panther Page 4

  Maybe in the whole world money is only a problem for me.

  I said, “But before you say anything, let me try to give you a better idea about the sort of situation in which I would have to go to the police.”

  She said nothing and paid close attention.

  I said, “If you told me that you had just murdered somebody, or had committed some other major crime—”

  “I haven't murdered anybody,” she said quickly.

  “On the other hand, suppose you were worried that your boyfriend was a heroin addict. That wouldn't send me to the police, but if you told me that he had committed a murder, then it would. Does that help?”

  “Not a lot.”

  “I am trying,” I said.

  “Yeah,” she said. “I can see that,” and the tone was for the first time, like the content, more personal.

  “Well, maybe you can ask me something else that would help you decide.”

  “Suppose I was on the run for something.”

  “It would depend what the details were.”

  She sighed.

  “I'm sorry if it's not getting clearer for you.”

  “Me too.”

  “You could begin to tell me what's wrong. I could stop you if you were getting into things I couldn't keep to myself.”

  But she had decided to leave. She stood up and said, “Maybe later.”

  “I hope you get some joy somewhere,” I said.

  She didn't indicate if she had heard. She marched to the door and left.

  I sat for a few seconds, trying to hear her go down the stairs. But there was nothing. Maybe the wind blotted out what little sound she was making. Maybe tired twenty-year-old girls in sneakers just don't make much noise in this world.

  I went to the window and saw my visitor get into the light green car down the street. She entered on the passenger side.

  I waited, but it didn't drive away. I watched for three or four minutes.

  Then I went back to my desk.

  I put my book away.

  I got out my invoices and began to work on them.

  After a while I stopped. I was irritated that I hadn't maintained my observation post longer. I got up and looked out the window again.

  The green wagon was no longer there.

  Chapter Nine

  KATE KING RETURNED AT seven-thirty. I was washing at my sink, getting ready to go out, when I heard the bell. It was Saturday night. I had a date and didn't want to be late. I answered the door shirtless, drying myself with a towel.

  I said, “Oh, it's you.”

  She seemed struck dumb for a moment. The story of my life: a body that leaves women speechless.

  Finally she said, sounding surprised, “You live here too?”

  “Did you ring the bell thinking I wouldn't be here?”

  “Uh, no. The light was on. I thought you were working.”

  “Did you want to come in?” I asked. “Or did you just stop back to tell me that I can't help you after all?”

  It was out of hours. I was fabulously successful. I could afford to be just that tiny bit snotty.

  Or was such a relaxation of mental attitude the first step along the path back to failure? Oh my God!

  She said, “There's something I want you to do.”

  “Do? I thought you were deciding whether to tell me about a problem.”

  “Now there's something I want you to do.”

  “Come in and sit down. But give me a sec. Let me get dressed.”

  “O.K.”

  She came in.

  I put on a shirt and fluffed my hairs and returned to the office. “So what do you want me to do, then?”

  “Uh, deliver a package.”

  “What kind of package?”

  “This kind.” From a large pocket somewhere low inside her coat she produced a brick-shaped object, wrapped in brown paper and sealed with tape.

  “What is in it?”

  “Nothing dangerous.”

  A funny word to pick. I would have said, “Nothing illegal,” if I had been trying to get me to do what she was trying to get me to do.

  So I asked, “Something illegal?”

  “Oh no. Nothing like that.”

  And for some reason—that person-to-person thing we all think we're so good at—I believed her.

  “Where do you want me to take it?”

  “To Garfield Park. Do you know where that is?”

  On the south side of town. Not all that far away.

  “Yes. And when I get there do I take ten steps northeast from the third willow tree on the left and whistle `The Star-Spangled Banner' in the key of D-sharp major until a woman in a polka-dot bikini taps me on the shoulder and asks me what time it is in Tokyo?”

  “What?”

  “Ms King, this all sounds like spies and secret agents.”

  “No no. Nothing like that.”

  “How long is it going to take me to find something that it is like?”

  “Just put it on one of the children's swings. The blue plastic ones near the main entrance. They're easy to find.”

  “And when do you want it done?”

  “Now.”

  “Oh, now. Of course. Silly me.”

  “You'll do it?”

  If she was aware that she was asking me to do something odd, she gave no hint of it.

  Yet . . . I was getting curious.

  Does a Go-for-It Detective get to be curious?

  “I'm not sure,” I said.

  “We'll pay.”

  “We?”

  “I mean I. I'll pay.”

  “How much?”

  “How much do you charge?”

  “For delivering packages to children's swings? The standard rate is a thousand dollars.”

  “Really?” She looked at me.

  “No, not really,” I said.

  We were finally off her agenda, but she didn't know where we were.

  I said, “I'll give you a choice of charges.”

  “Yeah . . .?”

  “If you tell me what this is all about, I'll do it for free. But if you don't tell me, it will cost you a hundred dollars.”

  “I'll take the hundred dollars,” she said. Her free hand dived back inside the coat. It was there for a moment and then it came out with two small wads of bills. She didn't count them. How did she know I was going to ask for a multiple of fifty? Maybe she was a mind reader.

  But she didn't push the money across the desk. She said, “There are conditions.”

  “Oh. Conditions. Right. And what might those be?”

  “Under no circumstances are you to open the package, number one.”

  “Don't open package,” I said. “Right.”

  “You are to leave within ten minutes after I go.”

  “Leave within ten minutes, right.”

  “And you are to follow the specific route I tell you. South on Shelby Street till you pick up 431. Leave 431 on Southern. The park is on the left.”

  “Predetermined route.” I waited. “Is that all?”

  “Yes.”

  “Now I'll tell you my conditions.”

  “Your conditions?” The idea hadn't crossed her mind. “What do you mean?”

  “Number one, you and I will go downstairs where you will meet my mother and her boarder, Norman.”

  “What?”

  “In front of my mother and Norman you will state that nothing in or about the package is illegal in any way whatever.”

  She narrowed her eyes. “Yeah?”

  “Then you will give me the hundred dollars. And I will give you a receipt. Those are my conditions. I'm sure you will agree that they are no more than simple protection for me.”

  She was silent while she wrapped her mind around what I had said.

  “Do you agree to my conditions?”

  “Uh . . . uh, I don't know.”

  “Maybe you'd like some time to think. Maybe you'd like to step outside while you do it.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I think
I'd like to go outside and think about it.”

  “That's fine.”

  I let her out.

  This time I stood by the closed door as she descended and I did hear a few footfalls. Just a quiet kid, I guess.

  I moved to the window and from it I watched her cross the street to a station wagon parked on the other side. This time she got into the back seat. The car was parked well away from lights and I couldn't tell what color it was. But I was willing to make a modest wager that the light of day would have revealed it to be pale green.

  Or is gambling the way successful people became unsuccessful again? This damn life is so full of traps.

  When the car my would-be client got into did not immediately drive away, I left my lookout and phoned my woman to tell her I was probably going to be late.

  “You have a client?” she said. “Oh, don't give me that! If you're going to make excuses, make it something believable.”

  Quite a wag, my woman.

  Chapter Ten

  KATE KING REAPPEARED at the door after twenty-five minutes.

  “Long time no see,” I said.

  “I accept your conditions,” she said.

  “O.K.”

  She came in and without further niceties, I led her through my quarters to the inside stairs. We went down to the living room where Mom and Norman were playing Scrabble.

  “Mom. Norman. May I introduce Ms Kate King. Kate King, this is my mother, Posie Samson, and Norman Tubbs.”

  Mom said, “How do you do?”

  Norman looked up as if we were q’s without u's.

  Kate King shifted her weight as she stood but said, “How do you do?” So I knew she was well brought up.

  “What can we do for you?” Mom asked.

  I said, “Ms King is hiring me to deliver a package for her. Show them the package, if you would, Ms King.”

  She pulled out the brick.

  “Ms King has declined to tell me what is in the package but assures me that nothing whatever about it is illegal. I would like you to witness her telling me that. O.K.?”

  Mom said, “Good heavens. What are you playing at, child?”

  Norman played a four-letter word.

  Kate King turned to me. “What do I say?”

  “Tell me that nothing about the package is illegal.”

  “Nothing about the package is illegal.”

  “Hand on heart?”

  “Hand on heart.”

  “Got that?”

  “Yes,” Mom said. Norman concentrated on feeling the letters in the bag before he drew any.

  “Ms King is now going to give me an amount of money and I am going to give her a receipt. The money is for delivering the package and for nothing else. Right, Ms King?”

  “Right.”

  “The money, please.”

  She produced the money again. After a count, I wrote the receipt. We returned to my office.

  “I will set off within ten minutes after you leave,” I said.

  But she didn't head straight for the door. She was silent for a moment and then she said, “I never thought about you with a mother.”

  I smiled, the smile I smile when young people say things that are young. But inside I was sad because whatever trouble this young woman was in, I was ready to bet my success that it was deep and unfragrant.

  “I like her,” Kate King said.

  “I like her too,” I said. “Why don't you come back and see her sometime?”

  “I don't know about that,” she said.

  “She cooks a mean hamburger down there. Got meat in it even,” I said, trying to find a contact point.

  But I missed by a generation. “Oooh, dead animals!” Kate King wrinkled her nose.

  She left.

  Either my mother's hearing is more acute than mine or she'd been watching the bottom of my stairs because within seconds of Kate King's departure Mom was in my office. I was putting on my coat.

  “I'm glad you came up,” I said. “I was about to come down to you.”

  “Who was that girl, Albert?” Mom asked.

  “You know more or less all that I know.”

  “Why was she wearing that funny wig?”

  “Wig?”

  “Oh, you must have noticed she was wearing a wig. And a cheap one at that.”

  “I just thought it was one of those things that kids do to their hair these days.”

  “For heaven's sake, Albert!”

  “I may need to hire an observant assistant soon. You ever thought about coming into the business with me?”

  “Delivering funny packages? What kind of business is that?”

  “Give it some thought, Mom. Let's do lunch.”

  She despaired.

  I said, “Can you do something for me?”

  “What?”

  I took out the packaged brick. “Cut the paper on the end and have a look what's in there.”

  She squinted at me. “Why don't you do it?”

  “I promised I wouldn't open it.”

  “Oh, honestly!” she said. But she took the package and I got her a sharp knife.

  She slit the brown paper cleanly along the top of one end of the brick, then down one side to make a triangular flap. She folded the flap back and took the brick over to a light.

  “What's the verdict?” I said as I found clear tape to stick the brown paper back together with. The tape would be hard to see in the dark.

  “There might be something else inside,” she said, “but all I can see is cut-up pieces of newspaper.”

  Chapter Eleven

  DIPLOMATS FROM “UNFRIENDLY” countries are followed routinely when they leave their embassies. They know they are being followed. And the people following them know they know.

  Sometimes a “diplomat” wishing to show bravado rather than diplomacy goes to a follower waiting in a car and taps on the window and tells the follower where he's going next: “In case traffic gets heavy and you lose me.”

  As I drove off to Garfield Park and passed the parked presumably-pale-green car, I was tempted to stop. “Just in case your battery's flat and you need a jump start.” It was even more tempting because the car seemed to be empty.

  I had a vision of two, three, four? people piled on the floor. But much as I would have enjoyed looking down at my clients in their distress, I drove on.

  Temptation: another trap for the Go-for-It Detective. If I stopped for a peek I might kill my chances for repeat work. There were literally thousands of children's swings in Indianapolis. At a hundred bucks a time I could retire on delivering newspaper bricks alone.

  I drove to the park. I dropped the package into one of the swings and looped back to my car without breaking stride. I got in and drove away. Job done, conditions met.

  Work finished: let play begin!

  “We'll stay in,” my woman had said. “We'll try something we've never done before.”

  I drove methodically to my woman's house. I spent as much time looking in the mirror as through the windshield. I made squealing television-type turns without signaling. I timed some lights so that I was the last car through on the yellow.

  I am not a surveillance specialist, but unless the Kate King Gang's driver was, I had not been followed.

  Once I was sure of that, I considered contacting the police. Well, not the police exactly, but my friend—now a captain—Jerry Miller. But what would I tell him? A funny-looking girl hired me to do deliver some waste paper. She had a friend with a station wagon. She paid cash.

  In the plastic society, the cash was maybe the most suspicious part.

  It was not the stuff of interrupting a friend's Saturday night.

  And it wasn't as if I was really worried.

  I should have been.

  Waiting at my woman's were a battery of lights, a big video camera on a spidery base and boxes of sound equipment.

  Also Frank. “Sorry I didn't get back to you directly, Albert,” he said. “But I've got this big project in the air.” H
e winked. “Can't talk about it now.”

  A small mercy and the only one I got all evening. We filmed my bits for a series of commercials.

  If I'd known! I could have had my hair done. I could have bought a new frock.

  “Please don't be angry at me,” my woman said later. “They came to dinner on Wednesday and Frank talked ceaselessly about the plans he had for you and your commercials and how wonderful you would be on them if only you were relaxed and yourself. I said I'd like to see you do them and one thing led to another and tonight seemed about the only time we were all going to be free.”

  “Oh.”

  “And we felt that you would be more spontaneous if you hadn't spent a lot of time worrying.”

  “We did, did we?”

  “Honestly, you did do well, Al. I was tremendously impressed. You came across beautifully. I can see you might resent the way it was done, but the result was really very, very good. A lot will depend on what material Frank superimposes you onto, but your bit will bring you love letters and indecent proposals. Honest.”

  “Promise?” I said.

  “You like that idea?”

  “You know how it goes,” I said. “Life moves on. One becomes successful. The friends who served so well just don't seem to understand one's new problems.”

  “Ah. I see. You don't like my collusion.”

  “I admit to being not real happy. I was in a good enough mood when I got here, but these carryings-on have not been dignified. No, I'm not real happy now.”

  “I don't believe you,” she said.

  “You don't?”

  “I think you're pleased with how it went and that nothing would please you more than if this advertising makes your business boom. I think you're just affecting a bad mood.”

  “So, under this sensitive world-weary exterior there beats a heart that wants to become private detecting's Jello?”

  “Yes.”

  “You're right. I am affecting a bad mood. I am affecting it very well.”

  “Is there anything I can do about it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You going to tell me?”

  I raised one eyebrow, like I had on one of the commercials. It's what I do when I try to elicit love letters and indecent proposals.

  But then I said, “Hey, what's this about dinner on Wednesday? You sat at the table with Frank? Do I gather that you are more resigned to having it as a son-in-law?”

  “Over my dead body.”