"Norm, you're scaring me."
"Eh? Why?"
"Because you're getting so involved in this. Almost obsessed."
"Hey. Not to worry, Hon. We're just getting close. Smelling the kill. Anyway, it's a lot more challenging than your usual family murder or gang killing."
"You're making excuses."
He knew it, and had begun worrying a little himself.
He said good-bye with a smile. She seemed to be having a good day. That was encouraging. She had so few anymore.
"Norm! Hey!"
He was stalking back to the courts building when John hailed him. He waited as Harald and the woman slipped through traffic, jay-walking.
"Hi. You're looking good, Teri." She was. She had turned into a damned sexy woman. He envied John. "I appreciate what you're doing for us. How have you been?"
Trying to cover what he suddenly perceived as a tactical error, John interposed himself and began flashing papers. "Mrs. Caldwell's stuff."
"Jesus."
The woman had done a hell of a job, typing everything up and inserting it into an Accopress binder. It ran more than fifty pages.
"She really must be lonely."
It didn't take much sensitivity to feel the scream for notice implicit in so much hard, unnecessary work. He would have to show his appreciation somehow.
"She is. You got to feel sorry for her. But she comes on in a way that makes you look for excuses to get out."
"I know the type. Lot of old people get that way. You know, we're piling up some debts on this one."
"You are. I haven't been making any friends. In fact, I've about run out of angles."
"Yeah?" Cash grinned. "I'm just getting started. Got so much going today that I won't have time for it all. Been driving Beth crazy."
He glanced at his watch. "Fifteen minutes. And I've still got a call to make." He had come near forgetting O'Lochlain again.
"I'll catch you in the courtroom, then. It's twelve, in Kiel."
"Right. Nice to see you again, Teri." He chuckled as John hurried her away before she could strike up a conversation. She began giving him hell before they were out of earshot.
The Fates were conspiring to make him late today. After finally getting change from the blind couple who ran the courts building canteen, he found the phones tied up. He got through to O'Lochlain barely in time.
"Hey, Rookie. I'd given up on you. I'm on my way to the club now."
Couldn't be too bad, being retired, Cash thought. Phone in his car yet. "I won't tie you up long, Tommy. Remember what we talked about last time?"
"O'Brien?"
"Right. I wanted to go over some things again. Especially the twenty thousand. That ever turn up?"
"No."
"Not even one bill?"
"Not a one."
"How much looking did they do?"
"Plenty. They covered every step he took from the train to the girl friend's house. It disappeared when he did."
It seemed to Cash that, for twenty-thousand 1921 dollars, rough riders like Egan's Rats would not have balked at manhandling Miss Groloch. "Anybody talk to the woman?"
There was a long silence.
"I take it they did. Come on, Tommy. What's to worry now?"
"I wasn't in town, so I don't know the details. The bet was that they got the cash and decided to vacation."
"Who?"
"The two guys they finally sent in a couple weeks later. Only, when they never turned up, they sent a couple more to make sure."
"Four men? You mean a whole gang disappeared there?"
"Five-guys if you count O'Brien. It was so spooky that after that they couldn't get nobody to go ask the questions."
"Four more. Jesus. How come you didn't tell me before?"
"You didn't ask. You got to ask, Rookie. Anyway, you was just interested in O'Brien. Look, we're coming to the club. I got to go."
"Do me a favor. Just one more. Drop me a postcard. Just four names on it. Okay?"
"I'll think about it. Watch yourself, Rookie." He hung up before Cash could respond.
Norman first ascribed the disturbance to the chili. Then he remembered a time when his stomach had felt the same with nothing in it at all.
He was sitting in a peasant shack in eastern France on December 17, 1944, supposedly safely behind the lines. He had been in France just two weeks. Somehow, during the night, he had lost his first patrol and himself. Exhausted, he had decided to hole up till morning before trying to find his unit.
The only evidences of war were an abandoned German field telephone and a tiny wood stove the Krauts had made from a fuel can.
A nagging sound from afar wakened him, a growling, metallic cling with overtones of squeak. Twice he tore himself away from the stove to look out across winter at nothing but skeletal, distant woods. The sky was so heavily overcast that nothing was in the air, and few shadows stalked the earth below. The third time he looked he saw the vague shapes of the winter-camouflaged Tigers and Panthers. The Fifth Panzer Army was on the move.
The feeling was terror. Stark, unreasoning terror.
Five men had vanished without a trace. He and John could have gone the same way…
"Hey, buddy, you going to fart around all day?"
He realized he had been staring into nothing for several minutes, reliving the past. He glanced at his watch. "Shit." He was late already and still had two blocks to walk. "I'm really sorry."
"Yeah. Sure."
The assistant prosecuting attorney scowled as Cash slipped into the pewlike courtroom bench next to John. The man was one of the young firebreathers, bound for political glory. The judge, defense attorney, and court staff barely glanced his way. The jury and other witnesses paid him no heed either.
"Anything happened?" he whispered.
"Still making speeches." John handed him a manila envelope. It contained two-dozen Xeroxes of classified pages, Personals. The key item on each had been circled in red magic marker.