by Ross Thomas
“Day before yesterday,” Fastnaught said.
“They used the carrot and the stick on us. They told about all the nice things that were going to happen to us if we got the shield back and then they told us about all the not-so-nice things that were going to happen if we didn’t. They weren’t bothered that some people were dead because of a hunk of brass. That didn’t worry them one bit. All they want is the shield back and they gave us carte blanche—that’s the right expression, isn’t it? So Fastnaught here speaks up and says, ‘What happens if the go-between gets cold feet and wants to back out?’ Well, they just looked at us for a long time and then one of them said, ‘I trust you’ve heard of harassment, Lieutenant Demeter?’ So I said yes, I’d heard of it. And then they just looked at us some more.”
“Being harassed is better than being dead,” I said.
Demeter turned from the window and shook his head, a little sadly, I thought. “You’re not going to be dead, St. Ives. Not if Fastnaught and I can help it. Let me tell you something. My whole future’s riding on you. Fastnaught’s younger; he could do something else, but I’m past forty-five and that’s too old to start all over again. Now when they say harassment, they mean it. They’ll drag you through courts on income tax. You’ll spend every dime you’ve got on lawyers. And if you go on living in New York—or anyplace else—they’ll send some buttons after you at three o’clock in the morning with a warrant for your arrest for jaywalking or spitting on the sidewalk. Your life won’t be worth living. I don’t say I like the idea, but there’s lots of things in this country I don’t like.”
“It’s just your job,” I said.
“That’s right, St. Ives, it’s just my job and some days I don’t have to like that either.”
It was still raining and for what seemed to be a long time the rain on the window was the only sound in the room. Demeter went back to his chair; Fastnaught maintained his vigilance at the door, and I crossed to the window and stared down at Fifteenth Street and the shiny tops of wet cars. The pressure could have come, as Demeter said, from the White House, from one of those faceless aides who’d been chivvied by someone at State. Or it could have come from a senator or a matched pair of congressmen who owed their re-election to someone, someone who wanted the shield back and not too many questions asked. But the pressure was there all right, strong enough to bend a couple of tough cops and leave a sour taste in their mouths. And the threat of harassment was real, too. I’d seen harassment before, a couple of times, and one had wound up in a sanitarium and the other had fled to Italy, which he didn’t much like but which he liked better than what he’d gone through in New York for eighteen months before his nerves shattered.
I turned from the window and looked at Demeter, who was staring at the floor. “You win,” I said.
“Some prize,” Demeter said to the rug on the floor. “I win a go-between. A brass go-between.”
The phone finally rang at three-thirty. Fastnaught was stretched out on one of the twin beds. Demeter was still in his chair reading a newspaper that I’d sent down for. The voice on the phone was the man again and he still had a mouthful of wet cotton.
“Do you know Washington?” the voice asked.
“No.”
“There’s a golf driving range in the northwest section.” He gave me the address. “Do you have that?”
“Yes.”
“Be there at exactly ten-fifteen tonight. Have the money in a suitcase in the back seat of a four-door sedan. Park your car, but don’t get out of it. At exactly ten-twenty the back door will be opened. Don’t look around. I mean it. Don’t look around. The shield will be put in your back seat. Wait five minutes and then you can do whatever you want to do. Have you got all that?”
“I’ve got it.”
The phone went dead and I hung up. Fastnaught was sitting up on the bed; Demeter had put his paper on the floor. Both of them were looking at me.
“Tonight at ten-fifteen,” I said. Then I told them what the cottony voice had told me.
“Sort of a public place, isn’t it?” Demeter said.
“Not if it’s still raining,” I said.
Fastnaught went to the window and peered out. “It’s stopped,” he said. “Looks like it might clear up.”
Demeter rose and stretched. “Ten-fifteen tonight, huh?” he said. “How’s your golf game, Fastnaught?”
“Lousy.”
“Maybe you’ll get a chance to improve it tonight, but right now we’ve got some work to do.”
“You’re not leaving?” I said.
“Sorry to rush off like this, St. Ives, but we’ve got things to do, people to see, and plans to plot.”
“You’ll be around tonight, I suppose.”
“Just look for the car with the flashing lights and the extra-loud siren,” Fastnaught said.
They moved to the door. “St. Ives hasn’t got a thing to worry about now, has he, Fastnaught?” Demeter said.
“He should be worry-proof,” the Sergeant said.
“Just one item, Lieutenant,” I said.
“What?” Demeter said as he opened the door.
“Try not to screw it up.”
He turned from the door and let his bright black beanlike eyes run from the tips of my cordovan shoes to the top of my head where my hair lay in a neatly trimmed pile that could have been a little thicker, but was nicely touched with gray at the temples. From the expression on Demeter’s face, he could have been measuring me for a casket. A cheap one. “We’ll try not to screw it up, Mr. St. Ives,” he said with something that almost resembled a smile. “We’ll try not to very hard.”
When they had gone I picked up the green telephone book and looked up a number. I dialed and when it answered, I said, “What time do you close?”
“At ten o’clock,” a woman’s voice said. “The stacks close at seven forty-five.”
I said thank you and hung up and went to the window to see if Fastnaught had told the truth about the rain. He had so I left my raincoat hanging in the closet, took the elevator down to the lobby, and flagged a cab from the sidewalk. After I was in, the driver turned and gave me a questioning look. He wanted to know where I was headed so I said, “Library of Congress, please.”
If you had enough time and enough patience, I suppose you could find out all about everything at the Library of Congress. I spent two hours in its periodical section, guided in my search by an elderly gentleman with a hearing aid who didn’t mind scurrying back and forth bearing back issues of some rather esoteric and extremely dull publications. When the periodical room closed at 5:45 I went to the main reading room and spent another hour with the bound back issues of some more tedious publications which looked as if no one had leafed through them in 20 years. When I finished at 7:30 I had acquired a sizable chunk of information and some of it might even prove useful.
I caught a cab to the Hertz place, rented a four-door Ford Galaxie, and parked it in the Madison’s garage. In my room I tried to call Frances Wingo at home, but there was no answer. I poured a mild Scotch and water and then telephoned down for a steak sandwich and a tall glass of milk. I chewed the sandwich and drank the milk and tasted neither. Afterwards, I stretched out on the bed and studied the ceiling and watched some thoughts go galloping through my mind, stumbling a little now and again, but galloping around and around and winding up at the same place because they had nowhere else to go.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
THE GOLF DRIVING RANGE was called Puckett’s and it took up several acres of gradually sloping land on Wisconsin Avenue just this side of the District line. A dozen or so golfers were trying to straighten out their hooks and slices with big tin buckets full of balls that they drove with varying success at markers which told whether they were hitting 100, 150, 200, or 300 yards. There was also a single marker that read 500 yards but nobody seemed to pay it much attention. Giant banks of floodlights provided almost day-bright illumination, and out in the middle of the driving range a gasoline-powered cart
covered with a steel-mesh cage shuffled back and forth gobbling up the spent balls like an oversized vacuum cleaner. There were more cars than there were golfers. Some of them probably contained people whose television sets had broken down for the night and who would watch anything, even 45-year-old duffers, as long as it was for free. Some of the cars were empty and some contained lone women who seemed resigned to a fate which had married them off to men who thought that breaking 100 at Chevy Chase ranked in historical significance with the signing of a nuclear-test-ban treaty or dinner for four at the White House.
I parked the Ford five cars down from the white wooden hut that rented the balls and clubs. I sat there, exactly on time at 10:15, with $250,000 worth of neatly wrapped, well-used tens and twenties on the back seat, and watched a man in his sixties top his ball three times in a row, and waited for someone to open the rear door and hand in a brass shield that some thought could save the lives of thousands and which had already cost the lives of four.
At ten-seventeen the lights went out. One moment the big banks of floodlights on top of the tall wooden poles bathed the driving range in a glaring yellowish white. The next moment there was nothing but blackness, made even more impenetrable by the eyes’ inability to adjust. Reaction was slow. It took at least five seconds before the first horn blew. Then another. Somebody on the tee, a man, yelled, “What the hell—” and the rear door of the Ford opened. I forgot the warning and started to twist around and it may have saved my life. Something quite hard landed on the side of my head, just above the vulnerable temple, and I didn’t get to see who delivered the blow in what, I later decided, was a most competent and professional manner. Nor did I have the opportunity to see who made off with a man’s suitcase stuffed with a quarter of a million dollars in neatly wrapped, very negotiable currency.
When I came out of it I was lying on my back on the front seat and the first thing I saw was Demeter’s face upside down above me. I twisted my head quickly and threw up on the floorboards. While I was doing that Demeter kept saying, “Are you all right, are you all right?” and I kept wanting to say, “No, I’m not all right, my head hurts like hell,” but I had to throw up some more instead. Finally I was through and managed to sit up. I felt the sore place on my head and the knot seemed to be not less than an inch high and two inches wide. It wasn’t really that large; it only seemed so to my carefully sensitive touch. It hurt enough to be twice that large.
I leaned back in the seat and looked at Demeter, bending half crouched in the open right-hand door as if he couldn’t make up his mind whether to get in.
“Are you all right?” he said again. I noticed that the lights were back on.
“No,” I said. I started to turn around and look in the back seat, but I didn’t because I knew it wouldn’t be any use. “No shield,” I said.
“No,” Demeter said.
“No money either.”
“No. No money.”
“One of them got to the main switch.”
“Probably the woman,” he said.
“And the man slugged me and took the suitcase.”
“That’s right.”
“How long were the lights off?”
“Two minutes, maybe three,” he said.
“And they just drove off.”
“No.”
“Don’t tell me you caught them?”
“If they’d left from here, we would’ve. We had both ends of the street sealed off.”
I touched the bump on my head again. It seemed to have grown another inch. “But they didn’t leave from here.”
“Not exactly,” he said. “From down there,” and he pointed across the driving range to its far edge where the shielded cart that sucked up the golf balls rested a few feet away from the lone sign that read five hundred yards.
“How long was I out?” I said.
“Maybe ten, eleven minutes.”
“How’d they do it?”
“They probably cased the place earlier today and found out where the main switch is. It’s in a metal box outside the shack. Don’t ask me why. Puckett says he locks it when he leaves at night, but he doesn’t lock it while he’s operating. They parked their car over there beyond those trees that are behind the five-hundred-yard marker. Walked over here and sat around watching the golf balls or even hit a few themselves until you arrived. Then she doused the lights, he slugged you, grabbed the money, and ran for the cart. That’s how I figure it anyhow.”
“How’d they find it in the dark?”
“The cart? They had a flashlight. I saw it out there, but I thought it was the guy in the cart. Anyway they slugged him and then drove to the edge of the range, jumped out, and now they’re probably home free counting the money.”
I started to shake my head but decided not to because it might hurt too much. “Clever,” I said. “Where were you and the good Sergeant Fastnaught when the lights went out, if the phrase be permitted?”
“Just four cars down from you,” Demeter said in a glum voice. “Just four lousy cars away.”
“That’ll look good in your report.”
Demeter glared at me. “Don’t ride me, St. Ives.”
“Have you told the museum or Mrs. Wingo?” I think he almost blushed. At least he looked embarrassed.
“No. Not yet.”
I slid over the seat, under the wheel, and started the engine. “Good luck,” I said.
“Where you going?”
“Well, I don’t think I can lose another quarter of a million here tonight so I thought I’d go back to the hotel and order up some ice. Some of it I’ll wrap in a towel and apply to my head. The rest I’ll use to chill what probably will prove to be a large amount of strong drink. I’ll also call Frances Wingo for you and tell her how I managed to spend the museum’s two hundred and fifty thousand bucks.”
“Uh,” Demeter said.
“Any message for her? Something reassuring like several new leads have turned up in the course of the investigation and arrests are momentarily expected? She might like that.”
Demeter slammed the right door. “Go back to the hotel, St. Ives. Go back and get drunk. Roll in the gutter. But just get out of my sight.”
I left.
Back in the hotel’s garage I gave the attendant five dollars to clean up the mess on the front floorboards and then checked the desk for messages. There were two from Frances Wingo. I went up to my room and called her number. She answered on the second ring, as if she’d been waiting for it.
“This is St. Ives,” I said.
“Yes, Mr. St. Ives,” she said, “I’ve been in touch with Mr. Spencer and he would very much like a progress report tomorrow. Would you be free at eleven o’clock?”
“Yes, I’ll be free but I don’t believe I’ll have much progress to report.”
“Nevertheless, Mr. Spencer would like a full accounting of recent developments. You needn’t mention that the police suspect that my husband engineered the theft. I’ve already told Mr. Spencer about that.”
“What did he say?”
“I scarcely think that’s any concern of yours, Mr. St. Ives. I’ll expect you in my office at eleven tomorrow. Good night.”
She hung up before I could tell her that I’d misplaced a quarter of a million dollars’ worth of the museum’s money. It was something I should have mentioned, but then I’ve always been one to postpone unpleasantness whenever possible. Tomorrow at eleven would be soon enough when Mr. Winfield Spencer came to town with his barber-college haircut and his billion-dollar checkbook. I could tell both of them then and I could almost feel Spencer’s cold green eyes boring a new hole in my head.
I called down for some ice and after it came I wrapped some of it in a towel and gently applied it to the swelling which throbbed in sharp staccato bursts of pain. I wondered if I had a concussion and tried to remember some of the symptoms. Double vision; for one. I also tried to remember whether liquor was good for a concussion and quickly convinced myself that it was. I poured a large
portion into a bathroom glass, added some ice, took a reassuring swallow, and was quite set to take another when the phone rang. I picked it up and said hello.
“Mbwato, here,” the familiar deep voice said. “How are you this evening, Mr. St. Ives?”
“Not too well,” I said.
“Really. What’s wrong?”
“Just a headache.”
“Possibly brought about by nervous tension resulting from the unexpected loss of a rather large sum of money, hmmm?” And then he laughed for what seemed to be a very long time while I stood there and clutched the phone, somehow afraid that he might hang up in my ear.
When he was through laughing I said, “How did you—”
“How did I know?” he interrupted, chuckling a little, far down in his stomach. “Forgive me if I seem happy, but I think I am very close to regaining the shield for my country and when a Komporeenean is happy and successful, he likes to laugh.”
“About the money,” I said.
“Of course, of course. Its loss must be your immediate concern.”
“It does bother me a little.”
“Be bothered no more, Mr. St. Ives. Your money is safe and—uh—uh—”
“Sound,” I said.
“That’s it, sound. Strange how some clichés seem to evade one for the moment.”
“Where is it safe and sound, Mr. Mbwato?” I said as my grip on the phone threatened to crack it.
“Why with me, of course,” he said, and sounded a trifle surprised, even miffed, as if I’d questioned his legitimacy. “Would you like it back?” And the way he said it there was real candor, even wonder, in his tone.
“Yes, now that you mention it,” I said. “I would.”
“Then you shall have it. Can you come to this address?” And he gave me an address on Corcoran Place, between Q and R Streets.
