Called by a Panther

by Michael Z. Lewin

  I gave Dancing Girl more of the Scum Front's money than I had promised. She was pleased. As she left she said, “If I can help any more, you just ask, hear?”

  When we were alone, Bobbie Lee asked, “What kind of case did you tell her you were working on?”

  “I didn't. She didn't ask.”

  We looked at each other. She said, “Are you telling me I shouldn't ask?”

  “Yup.”

  She shrugged, passed me a drawing and stood up. She said, “Why can't I ever fall in love with a simple man?” She headed for Charlotte Vivien.

  I headed home.

  Chapter Twenty Nine

  WHEN I PARKED IN FRONT of my office I noticed a police car across the street. I couldn't see anything happening that required the police but there's an alley off Virginia heading east and I thought maybe that's what the cops were interested in. I didn't think it could be anything to do with me.

  I took the drawing and the envelope from the Scum Front and got out of my car.

  When I was halfway up my stairs I saw two people get out of the patrol car.

  Since in Indianapolis patrolmen cruise solo, it seemed a little strange that two should be riding.

  It seemed even stranger when they came my way.

  But I went on up and into the office like the ordinary citizen I was.

  Once inside, however, I allowed paranoia to trigger a frenzied gathering of the pieces of paper the Scum Front had given me. I took everything, including Bobbie Lee's drawing, and put them in the first spare room in Mom's part of the house. It was the safest instantly available place I could think of. On the way back I locked the connecting door.

  I was breathing hard.

  And my office bell was ringing.

  I opened the door and two men stood there. One was in uniform.

  Yes?”

  “Mr. Albert Samson?” The guy in plain clothes did the talking. He was about my height but heavier and he had a squashed kind of nose that hung down on his face, but with the nostrils turned up. It looked like a double-barreled ring pull.

  “That's right.”

  “May we come in?”

  “What about?”

  Ring Pull practically snarled. “I got some questions to ask you. We can do it in the comfort of your own home or we can all go downtown. What's it going to be?”

  “Please excuse me for insisting,” I said, “but what is it about?”

  “We're part of the team investigating the Scum Front, all right? We have reason to believe that you can help us with our investigation.”

  There was no way to keep them at bay when they invoked magic words like Scum and Front.

  Ring Pull knew that. He pushed past. I shrugged in what I hoped was a convincingly casual way and said to the uniformed officer, “Well, come in.”

  I followed Ring Pull. The patrolman followed me.

  They looked around. They didn't smile.

  Ring Pull said, “I am Sergeant Ryder. This is Officer Hollenbaugh.” Ryder held up some ID. But only for a moment.

  I didn't ask to see it again. An excessively polite and circumspect and innocent citizen wouldn't, would he? “How can I help you?” I asked.

  “You live here alone?” Ryder said.

  “My office and living quarters are separate from the rest of the house. Yes, alone.”

  “Who lives in the other part?”

  “My mother, and she has a lodger. My mother runs the luncheonette downstairs and the lodger is her griddle man.”

  “Uh-huh. And what do you do alone in your office, Samson?”

  “I am a private detective.”

  “Uh-huh,” Ryder said. “And what kind of work are you doing at the moment?”

  “I have a few routine cases, but am also trying to increase the volume of my business.”

  “And how are you doing that?”

  “By advertising. In fact, my first television commercial is being broadcast tonight.”

  “Oh yeah? When's that?”

  “I don't know the exact time. The guy who made the commercial for me only got it scheduled today. He left a message on my machine. I tried to get back to him, but I couldn't.”

  “You sponsoring basketball games or what?”

  “Uh, no. Well, I don't know. But I wouldn't think so.”

  I knew what was coming. It came.

  “What station they on?”

  “The new cable system.”

  “Cab-Co, huh?” He looked at me for more than a second. And he moved a step closer.

  “That's it,” he said.

  He moved another step closer. Astonishingly, he patted my cheek with the flat of his hand. I guess he was warning me that he wasn't above making other contact.

  I couldn't help myself. I took a step back.

  He closed the distance between us again and had the effect of shouting by whispering in my ear, “And how did a nice guy like you get mixed up with shit bags like the Scum Front, Samson?”

  My heart nearly pounded out through my eardrums. I said, “Excuse me? Mixed up with the Scum Front? Me?”

  “Oh, come on. We know all about it.”

  And for a moment, just a moment, I felt the white-hot cut of the fear that he did.

  “I am afraid,” I said haltingly, “that I don't know what you are talking about.”

  “Book him, Hollenbaugh,” Ryder said.

  The patrolman moved toward me too. He said, “You know your rights, or you want me to read them to you?”

  “I want to know what you're arresting me for,” I said. Then, pathetically, I added, “Please.”

  Ryder said, “I want to know all about your connections with the Scum Front. I want to know all about your making telephone calls to Cab-Co for them.” I could feel his breath and I could hardly bear it. I wanted to tell him all about it.

  But I shook my head. “I don't understand what you're talking about.”

  “Oh yeah!” Ryder said with an unamused laugh.

  I said, “If you ask me a clear question, I'll try to answer it.”

  “Last night you used a telephone.”

  “I use the telephone a lot.” I looked to the phone on my desk. And then I remembered the tape recording I'd made of the Animals. It was still there. Oh shit!

  “Not that phone,” Ryder Ring Pull said. “A public phone. “Now, why would a creepy private eye want to go and use a public phone when he's got a phone of his own?”

  “That, frankly, is a ridiculous question,” I said.

  “Ridiculous, huh?” he said. “So it's ridiculous?” He slapped me.

  I just backed away again.

  And I could have said, “Thanks, I needed that,” because it helped me regain my backbone. “When I'm in my office I use my phone. When I'm out of the office I use pay phones.”

  “Last night you used a telephone at Eaglegate Shopping Center.”

  “That's right.” Then I frowned and said, “How did you know

  that?”

  “Because your fingerprints were all over the telephone there, that's how.”

  I thought about the clamor of police cars roaring into the shopping center. They took prints off the phone there. Of course. How could I have made a call like that and not worn gloves!

  “I leave my fingerprints on a lot of things,” I said. “I don't get

  it.”

  “What were you doing at the shopping center?”

  “I pulled in to get something to eat. They've got a steak house there, only when I got inside, I didn't feel like eating a steak. I came out and I called my girlfriend's house. Only she was out. Then I went into the drugstore and looked around and finally I bought a candy, bar. Then I sat in the car and ate the candy bar and watched . . . Hey,” I said, “there were a lot of your guys came in then. I watched all the patrol cars and, yeah, they were around the phone. Is that what this is about?”

  “That's what this is about,” Ryder said. “You want to get out of trouble, Samson, you think back. You want us to think i
t wasn't you that made the Scum Front call, how about you remember somebody else you saw that used the telephone. How about you think real hard because if you don't, then it's going to be you.”

  I tried to think. The only person I could think of was the woman with the sepia satin jacket in the drugstore. I nearly mentioned her, but that would have been deliberately obstructive. I shook my head. “I can't remember anybody,” I said. “Sorry.”

  “I think you did remember somebody,” Ryder said. “I seen it in your eyes.”

  “I remember a woman I passed a couple of words with in the drugstore. But she wasn't near the phone.”

  “That the kind of guy you are, Samson? Girlfriend's out and right away you're trying to pick up a replacement?”

  I said nothing.

  “I better have the girlfriend's name and address.”

  I gave them to him.

  And phone number.”

  I gave him that. Hollenbaugh wrote it all down in his notebook.

  “Right,” Ryder said. “Now tell me, Samson, you been in this private detective game long?”

  “Yeah. Long time.”

  “You haven't worked for anybody else in between? Haven't had a regular job and maybe been fired from it, something like that?”

  “Nope. No regular jobs.”

  He took a breath. “And you didn't see anybody around the phone? Nobody at all?”

  “Nobody. I wasn't near the phone long at all.”

  “O.K.,” Ryder said. “You mind if we look around?”

  I shrugged. It felt like an uncontrollable nervous tic, but maybe it didn't look that way.

  Ryder went from the office into my bedroom-kitchenette. But he was gone only a few seconds. When he came back he took out a card. He said to me, “If you remember anybody or anything, give me a call.”

  I took the card. “Sure,” I said.

  “O.K.,” he said. “Good.” He took his first steps toward the door.

  Then he stopped as if he'd thought of something. “Hey,” he said. “Sorry about pushing you around a little. It's been a long day, and these people have to be found.”

  “I understand,” I said. “No problem. All part of the job.”

  “Maybe if I know somebody wants a divorce I'll put him your way. You do that stuff?”

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “Takes all kinds,” he said, like he was the knight storming the citadel and I was a pile of horsecastle. “I wouldn't ever get married again myself, but Hollenbaugh here, he's going down the aisle next week, ain't that right?”

  The patrolman said, “Yup.”

  “Unless somebody blows the church up before he gets there,” Ryder said.

  Chapter Thirty

  I SAT, SHAKY, FOR FIVE MINUTES.

  It was all very well to tell myself, “The worst that can happen is that you go to jail,” and “Worse things happen at sea,” and “You've got your health.” They had no therapeutic effect. Sometimes I don't listen to myself even when I shout.

  But then the telephone rang. I heard that, But I looked at it in horror.

  It kept ringing and finally the tinkle stirred me to movement.

  “Hello?”

  There was a hesitation. “Albert?”

  It was my woman, my long-suffering and much-missed woman.

  “Yeah,” I said.

  “What's wrong? You sound awful. It wasn't that bad. A tiny bit tacky, maybe, but effective, I thought.”

  “What?”

  “What what?”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Your commercial.”

  “It was on?”

  “Of course it was on. What do you think, I imagined it?”

  “So you saw it?”

  “And heard it. And felt it. One of the people at work, Tina, has Cab-Co. I went over to her place, ready to sit through hours of drivel, but it came up just before seven.”

  “Oh, great,” I said. “How was it?”

  “Albert, what is the matter with you? You're talking like a zombie.”

  “The police were here and it's discombobulated me. Don't pay any attention.”

  “What did the police want?”

  “They've been taking fingerprints off pay phones they think the Scum Front people might have used. I called you last night while I was out and apparently I used a phone one of them used.”

  “I told you I wasn't going to be home.”

  “I know. I forgot.”

  “Oh.”

  “Just one of those things.”

  “And the police came around about that?”

  “Jerry says they are shitting bricks to get these people. Apparently when I used the phone I just missed one of them.”

  “Oh, how exciting,” my woman said.

  I felt bad about telling lies. But if there was a chance I was going to be interrogated about my movements by the police, I had to believe my lies. And if I was going to believe them I had to tell them.

  “Does that mean they've left another bomb?” she asked. “I don't know. The cops who came here didn't say.”

  “Anyone you know?”

  “A sergeant called Ryder and a kid patrolman called Hollenbaugh who didn't say anything. I'd never seen them before.”

  “I don't know the names,” she said. Then, “You all right otherwise?”

  “I was. I am. I don't know what was wrong with me. Sorry I sounded so grim.”

  “Are you busy?”

  “Yeah. Hey, this strange woman told me she loved me today.”

  “That's nice for you.”

  “A private eye about thirty with a missing tooth. And she knows how to fix cars.”

  “Sounds perfect.”

  “She said she loved me. But I don't know what she means by that. Hey, you know about girls. What's it mean?”

  “I suppose it means she's girlish. But I only really know about women,” my woman said.

  There was nothing I would have liked better than to be reminded of the difference, but I needed to get in touch with an Animal. There was the minor detail of saving lives to be considered. Go-for-It Detectives have to be socially responsible.

  Don't they? Didn't I read that someplace?

  So it was hanky-in-the-window time. For a moment I couldn't remember where the handkerchief was. But all the Scum Front memorabilia was in Mom's part of the house.

  I went through my living quarters and unlocked the door. I went into the spare bedroom.

  Where I found Norman.

  He was holding the drawing of Wool Glove Woman.

  He was reading my messages from the Scum Front.

  “What the hell do you think you're doing?” I shouted at him.

  He looked up, then returned to his reading. The page on top was the list of telephone locations.

  I grabbed at the papers in his hand and got the picture, which smudged a little. I snatched at the letters.

  He did not resist. Instead he turned to face me, and said, “All you had to do was ask.”

  “What are you doing in here?”

  He said, “Just who are you planning to give those to?”

  “What?”

  He waited, watching me with clear disdain. He thought I had prepared the cut-out messages! Hang on. What did they say? About phone numbers and stuff. I said, “That's my business.”

  “You're on some chickenshit case, aren't you?” He scratched himself. “Let me see. You've stolen this fashion drawing and now you're trying to sell it off without getting caught. Oh, big stuff, private eye. Looks like you're going to make your fortune this time.” He shook his head slowly. “Your mother deserves better. She really does.”

  Which was hard for me to argue with, just at the moment. So I left it at that. I walked back to my room. I locked the door that links me to the rest of the house.

  I sat and again struggled to calm myself. I contemplated the implications of my longest-ever conversation with Mom's griddle man and pistol instructor.

  A few minutes later the
re was a knock at my door. It went through me like a fingernail on a blackboard.

  I jumped out of my chair. Then I realized that the knocking was from inside the house, not outside.

  I went to the door and unlocked it.

  My mother stood there. She held a white handkerchief.

  “Hi, Mom.”

  “Norman said you dropped this, son.”

  “Oh,” I said.

  “He said he thought you'd be needing it.”

  “Uh, yeah. I may well.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “Fine.”

  “Have you got a cold, boy?”

  “No.”

  “Flu?”

  “No, Mom. I'm fine.”

  She held the handkerchief up, asking the silent question. “I like to be prepared,” I said. Feeble, feeble, feeble. “Where did you get it?”

  “Can't I have a handkerchief? What's the problem?” She said slowly, “It's nice. Expensive.”

  “I'm not making much sense, I know. Maybe I am coming down with something.”

  She was not convinced. Fair enough. I was not convincing.

  But before I could add to the unsatisfactoriness of the situation she said, “Have you heard from Sam lately?”

  My daughter.

  “No. Not for a while.”

  “Maybe you haven't written lately.”

  “Things have been busy.”

  “I know.”

  We stood for a moment.

  Then she said, “If there's anything I can do for you, I will. You do know that, don't you?”

  “Yes, Mom. Thanks.”

  “Norman's a good boy, Albert. He would help you too.”

  “I don't need any help. Mom.”

  “He would do it just because I asked him to. Whatever it was,” she said. She turned and walked back down the hall to the top of the stairs.

  Chapter Thirty One

  I PUT THE HANDKERCHIEF in my window and tipped my gooseneck light to shine through it. I felt silly. What if a friend dropped in? How do you explain a spotlit handkerchief in your office window?

  Oh well, I could say I had found religion.

  I went to my desk and prepared to destroy the documents the Animals had given me.

  I entered the Cab-Co number in my notebook, but with the last four digits reversed. That would fool police cryptologists.

  I visualized the nine telephone locations in order. I thought I had them, but to make sure I marked them with Roman numerals on a city map.