“We didn’t resist arrest.”
Sergeant Padd leaned over his raised desk and casually bounced his billy club off my noggin. “Necessary force had to be used to subdue the prisoner,” he added at the bottom of the form.
The entire procedure was repeated with Liberty. She was also charged with “using racial epithets.” “You’re entitled to make one phone call apiece,” Sergeant Padd informed us when he was finished.
Liberty called the local branch of the Legal Defense Fund of the NAACP. I called Charles Putnam’s private number.
“Mr. Victor! Where have you been?” Putnam sounded annoyed.
“It’s a long story. But right now I’m being held at a police station in Seattle. I need some clothes for myself and a girl, and—”
“Clothes? For yourself? And a girl?” Putnam’s voice skidded up the scale. “Mr. Victor! I well know your proclivity for sexual adventures, but with the future of the world at stake, this is hardly the time to--”
“Skip the lecture! I’ve got a lead which may point to Tom Swift! But I can’t follow it unless you get me out of here. And fast!”
“What are the charges?”
I told him.
“Mr. Victor! What is it you wish to be when you grow up? A one-man crime wave?”
I resisted the impulse to swap sarcasms. “Are you going to get me out of here, or aren’t you?” I demanded.
There was a threateningly long pause. “All right,” Putnam said finally. “I’ll arrange it.”
“Good. And don’t forget the clothes.”
“I’ll see to that, too.” Putnam sighed loudly and hung up.
He was as good as his word. An hour later various apparel was delivered to the jail. We dressed and were brought before Sergeant Padd again.
“We’re going to let you go,” he said, his voice filled with amazement, as if he didn’t quite believe it himself. “The commissioner called and got the boys to drop all the charges. You must really have pull!”
“Justice always prevails,” I assured him.
“It damn near didn’t this time,” Sergeant Padd told me. “Chief Chicken gave the commissioner a very rough time. He insisted you phoned in a false bomb threat, and he had witnesses to prove it.”
“Dammit! There really is a bomb there!” It made me angry.
“The commissioner thought there might be. But Chief Chicken very logically pointed out that there hadn’t been any explosion. Finally the commissioner had to pull rank on him.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Liberty interrupted nervously. “Before they change their minds.”
We bid Sergeant Padd good-bye and left. We took a cab to the airport. (Along with the clothes, Putnam had thoughtfully provided some cash.) I bought a ticket on the next flight to El Paso, Texas, the nearest airport to where Phoebe Phreeby, according to Liberty, was work- ing as a librarian.
Liberty walked with me to the ramp where my flight was boarding. I kissed her good-bye. “When this is all over,” I promised, “we’ll get together. I’ll give you a ring. Okay?”
“No. Don’t do that.”
“Why not?” I was hurt.
“Don’t call me.” There was a crooked grin on Liberty’s black face. “I never want to hear another telephone again. Drop me a card instead.”
“I dig.” I grinned back. “I’ll get in touch by tom-tom.”
“No way. Not with your sense of rhythm, white boy. You’re liable to drum up an angry rhino instead.”
“What can I do? I was born washed-out.”
“You’re beginning to look just a little bit blacker. Give it time, okay. Who knows?”
I mounted the ramp. At the top I turned for a last look at Liberty Dix. She blew me a kiss. Yeah! Black is beautiful!
With that thought, I boarded the plane. The “No Smoking” sign was lit. Immediately I had a fierce desire for a cigarette. Funny. I hadn’t thought about smoking all through the ordeal. That’s how it is when you give up a vice. You want it most when you’re somehow reminded you can’t have it.
The jetliner rose over the city. Suddenly there was the sound of a loud explosion. The aircraft shook from nose to tail. I peered out the window.
Either Gino Goldberg had finally managed to get through, or the pizza customer had decided against the anchovies. One square block of downtown Seattle was erupting into rubble. I thumbed my nose at Chief Chicken.
'The bomb had gone off!
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
At the El Paso airport, I rented a car. After consulting a road map, I started for the town of Dry Gulch, on the Mexican border. It was about twenty miles of winding road climbing sun-bleached yellow-red cliffs, bare of vegetation, and then descending into a valley which was dusty, dry, and equally barren. The downward section of the road trailed the sandy riverbed—little more than a waterless ditch-—which had given the place its name.
It was dusk when I reached the library in the center of town. The building was low and sprawling, dirty white and yellow stucco and red adobe brick, styled like a Mexican hacienda, in keeping with its surroundings. The sign over the low archway entrance was missing one of its raised stone letters. It read “DRY GULCH PUB IC LIBRARY.” Remembering the erotic scene Liberty had described, it seemed like a fitting commentary for Phoebe Phreeby.
The announcement Scotch-taped to the glass front door said it was about a half-hour to closing time. Entering, I spotted the librarian’s desk behind a low railing to my right. Seated there was a redheaded girl who fit Liberty’s description of Phoebe Phreeby.
She was wearing a white, low-cut Mexican peasant blouse. A lanyard strung loosely at the base of her throat dipped between the widely separated, high, pointy mounds thrusting against the material of the blouse. It secured a cowboy hat slung between her shoulders in back. The open space under the desk revealed that she was wearing cowboy boots and very tight leather hot pants. Her legs were long, slender, nicely tapered.
Looking up, she caught my under-the-desk appraisal and flushed slightly. Her skin was very fair, and the reddening pointed up the light sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her pert nose. Her eyes seemed to change from an embarrassed green to a questioning blue as they met mine.
I approached her. “Excuse me-—” That was as far as I got.
“Shh!” She held a finger to her lips and then used it to point to a sign on the opposite walclass="underline" “No Talking Allowed.”
“I’m a friend of Liberty Dix,” I whispered.
“Shh!” This time the hushing sound came from a small, withered old lady seated at one of the reading tables. She glared at us from behind the book she was reading. The title of the volume was Lady Chatterley’s Lover.
Phoebe Phreeby beckoned to me to bend my head. Then she placed the soft pout of her lips against my ear and whispered directly into it. Her breath was very warm. “Are you Steve Victor?” she asked. I nodded.
“Liberty called me about you. She said I could trust you. I hope so.” There was urgency in the quavering hiss of her voice. “I have to trust somebody. Things are getting beyond—”
Phoebe abruptly stopped talking as a short, bulky man dressed in a too-tight brown tweed suit appeared from between the bookshelves. His glance at us was both sharp and suspicious. He edged closer.
“Watch what you say!” Phoebe warned. “He’s a foreign agent. Russian, I think.”
I looked at her skeptically.
“SHH!” He’d overheard her. He pointed at the sign, clucked disapprovingly, and vanished back into the stacks.
“What makes you think that?” I asked Phoebe.
“He offered me a lot of money if I’d give him certain information.”
“Information relating to Tom Swift,” I guessed.