He nodded abruptly, looked around the room to see if anyone felt like disagreeing with him, and then marched through the door. Gentry started to follow and then remembered his exhibits. He reached across the desk, retrieved them, and muttered a hurried good-bye as he trotted from the room. Captain Tower had been silent throughout the meeting; now he came to his feet, stretched, and looked at Reardon.
“Better go home and get some sleep, Jim.”
Reardon yawned. “I’ll catch a couple hours in the gym,” he said, “as soon as I check Communications.” He drew the telephone closer and pressed the button. Silvestre answered.
“Communications, Sergeant Silvestre.”
“Silvestre, this is Lieutenant Reardon. What about that tracer?”
“No dice, sir. With the new equipment the phone company’s installing, about the only way you can trace a call these days is by having a bug on the line.”
“Great!” Reardon muttered, and hung up. “The phone company’s getting too damn mechanical for its own good,” he said half to himself, and remembered something else. He looked up. “Captain, about that board meeting tomorrow—”
“I know,” Tower said quietly. “I know. And so do the rest of the department heads. Don’t worry, Jim. We’ll speak our piece.”
Chapter 8
Sunday — 12:10 P.M.
The night was a huge black box with no bottom, top, nor sides, and Reardon was surprised that he was no longer frightened to be back aboard the mysterious liner. He looked around for Mike Holland, but the deck was deserted. Beneath his feet he could feel the steady pulsing of the ship’s engines. There was something faintly familiar about the even, rhythmic bumping, like a background soundtrack to something he was acquainted with; but he did not dwell on the thought. Far more important exploration lay before him. This was a new life, totally separated from the small bridge over the narrow channel, and the party and the band and his friends there. This was adventure!
He turned from a view of the endless ocean, stretching to the same neutral sky hung like a drape in the background, and found himself looking with pleased excitement into the depths of the ship’s hold, and was surprised and pleased at hearing voices and seeing men and knowing he was not alone on the ship. He leaned over the hatch coaming, peering down. On the deck far below, wreathed in vapors and spotlighted with huge klieg lights, barebacked sweating figures were working swiftly over a large form hidden in the steam and the shadows, and Reardon suddenly realized he was on a whaler, watching the long sharp pole knives stabbing away, expertly slicing the wide strips of blubber from the inert shape.
He suddenly wanted to be with the others, all those fine men, friends, fellow crewmen, brother whalers! — and then he was down in the hold, bare-chested, sweating in the steam, reaching out eagerly like the others with his long pole knife at the shapeless form on the floor, but then he saw with shock that it was Mike Holland spread-eagled there, and the men were jabbing at his outstretched hand while Mike tried to avoid them by turning and twisting his wrist. Reardon found himself struggling to get through the crowd of men to reach Mike’s side, but the harder he fought, the farther back in the crowd he found himself, until he wasn’t in the ship at all but in a subway train, one of the Bart cars, plunging through a black tunnel, full of people, and he was trying to break his way through to the car ahead, where he knew he’d find Mike, and then just as he managed to get the door between the cars open, he saw that there were no cars ahead, just the endless tunnel, and there on the tracks he thought he saw a man up ahead, tied across the rails, and he could see, as if with zoom vision, one hand spread on the rail the same way Gentry had demonstrated, one finger along the edge, the others at right angles, and he turned to the motorman to make him stop the car, but hands pulled him back from the small door until he tore himself loose with a final wrench and was rolling across a varnished floor, bumping his elbow painfully.
“Man!” Lundahl said admiringly. “When you sleep, you really sleep, don’t you, Lieutenant!”
“Ghaaa!” Reardon sat up groggily, rubbing his elbow, aware of the bare floor beneath him and the pile of gym mats he had been sleeping on, off to one side. If I keep up like this, he thought sourly, I’m going to have to sleep in a crib, with railings all around. He yawned deeply and shook his head violently, trying to work off the horror of the dream enough to enable him to look at Lundahl with a modicum of intelligence.
“What time is it?”
Lundahl checked his watch, then verified it with the big gym clock on one wall. “A little after noon.”
Reardon sat more erect. “What!” He looked around. “Where the hell was that recruit class that works out here at eight o’clock? I figured they’d wake me.”
“It’s Sunday, Lieutenant,” Lundahl said gently. “September fifth.” He smiled faintly. “I’m scared to tell you the year, because you’ll accuse me of swiping your beard and your bowling ball and maybe even your little dog...”
Reardon grunted, unamused, and came to his feet stiffly. He rubbed his face, trying to bring some life to the rubbery, inert skin, and then looked around the deserted gymnasium while he stretched. If there was anything in the world more deserted-looking than a gymnasium with only the smell of old socks for company, he couldn’t imagine what it was. He put the pointless thought away and tried to bring his mind back to business.
“What about the board meeting on Mike Holland?”
“They’re still at it, hot and heavy,” Lundahl said. “They’ve been at it since a little after nine this morning. They just sent out for some sandwiches, so maybe Mike has a chance, at that.”
“Let’s hope.” Reardon yawned. He still felt groggy, still felt the edge of his dream. What he needed was a hot cup of coffee, or a cold glass of beer, or both. He started to dust himself off, and then paused, frowning. “So if nothing’s new, why the rush to wake me up?” Not, he had to admit, that he was unhappy to be rid of his dream; he was sure he didn’t want to be riding on that subway car when it ran over that hand!
“Oh, yeah,” Lundahl said, suddenly remembering. “I didn’t want to wake you up at all, at first, not just for some nut call, but then I figured, what the hell, if it happened to be important, which I’m sure it isn’t, then I’m in the doghouse for not telling you.”
“Whenever you get through with the self-analysis...”
“Yeah. Like I said, it was a nut call for you. Some character calls up on the phone and wants to tell you he was Mo House, the First.”
Reardon stared. “What?”
“That’s it, Lieutenant. Like I said, a nut. He even spelled it. M. O. House, the First. He wanted us to pass it on to you as soon as possible. And that was the entire message.” He frowned as a sudden thought struck him. “Hey! That M.O. — could that be, like, modus operandi?”
Reardon suddenly laughed. Mo House, the First, eh? The message was clear enough, now; Porky Frank wanted to meet him at Marty’s Oyster House at one o’clock. The wild code he and Porky employed from time to time may have had something to do with security at one time, but that time had long passed. Now the code was reinvented constantly, used as a form of one-upmanship on the part of the two, and Reardon had to give Porky credit for brevity with this one, if nothing else.
Lundahl was watching him closely. “It didn’t mean modus operandi, huh, Lieutenant? And it wasn’t a nut call, either, was it?”