“I suppose so.”
Homer jabbed his fork toward Mathieson’s plate again. “Come on, you’re stalling.”
“They always told me it was healthy to eat slowly.”
“Sure it is.” Homer’s smile was belligerent. “Eat.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
New York: 8 September
1
EZIO BLEW CUBAN SMOKE TOWARD THE CEILING AND BEAMED expansively when Frank walked into the office. “Man you were right, Frank, son of a bitch paid off.”
“You were mysterious as hell on the phone.”
“You want me to spell anything out on a Goddamned telephone?”
“Of course not. But you’re getting a little fancy with that million-seller hit record nonsense. What’s it supposed to mean? Since when am I in the record business?”
Ezio opened the drawer and pushed the rewind switch on the tape deck. “We’ve got Merle’s wife on tape. Is that a hit record, or isn’t it?”
Frank walked around the desk and looked down at the recorder. “You don’t say.”
“Here.” Ezio handed him the typescript from the desk. “I typed up a transcript while I was waiting for you.”
Frank glanced down the first page. “Who are these people?”
“The first voice is Merle’s wife. The one they call Jan. The second woman is Roger Gilfillan’s wife, name of Amy—”
“Roger Gilfillan the movie star?”
“You remember, he’s on that list of Merle’s friends.”
“Right, OK. So the ‘Roger’ here, that’s Gilfillan.”
“Just the three of them. There’s some damn interesting stuff. So anyhow I just identified the speakers with initials—J for Merle’s wife, A for Gilfillan’s wife, R for Gilfillan.”
“The tap is on Gilfillan’s phone, right?”
“We’ve had two shifts watching him come and go. He’s shooting a TV special on one of the lots in Burbank; he goes to work every morning at seven. The phone call came in two days ago, Saturday morning; he was home.”
He watched Frank page through the transcript. Frank said, “We’ll listen to it in a minute. What’s the bottom line here?”
“She tells them she’s with her husband and kid hiding out someplace down around San Diego. She’s not supposed to tell them where—she’s calling from a pay phone. You get the operator coming in a couple of times there, telling her to deposit more change. From the phone rates we worked it out it’s somewhere in San Diego county all right but we couldn’t pin it down too close, except its north or northeast of San Diego because the charges are a dime less than they’d be all the way to the city.”
“So?”
“At least we know they’re in Southern California, Frank. That’s a lot more than we knew before.”
“Only a few million people in that part of the country, Ezio. What’s this here about ‘turning Fred into Tarzan’?”
“I don’t know, I admit there’s some of it that didn’t make much sense to me. I figured you could listen to it, maybe you’d come up with something.”
“Fred—that’s Edward Merle?”
“The name he went under the last eight years in Los Angeles. Fred Mathieson.” Something sour leaked out of the cigar onto his tongue and Ezio picked it off with his fingers. “You maybe haven’t noticed the part where she talks about the kid and all the horses he gets to ride from the stables. Not that many places down there with private stables full of quarterhorses, Frank. I’ve already got people looking.”
2
After they listened to the tape Ezio pushed the “off” button. “You want to hear it again?”
“No. Everything’s on paper here. I didn’t know you could type that fast.”
“I just didn’t want anybody else to hear this tape until you decided how you want to handle it.”
“The riding-stable angle’s a good one. You keep on that. And there’s another thing we could try.”
“Name it.”
Frank said, “She said she’d call them back again next Saturday.”
“Yeah, I caught that part.”
“See if you can get to somebody on the cops out there. Use Ordway if you have to. See if they can set up a trace next time she phones.”
“It’s a pay phone, Frank. Maybe she won’t use the same one twice.”
“At least it would tell us what town to look in.”
“Sure, I get you. I’ll give it a try. It might not work—you can’t do a phone trace without a bunch of people knowing about it. Some of those people would have to be straights.”
Frank nodded. Ezio glanced at him again. He was getting used to seeing the toupee but there was something else different about Frank. He looked a lot healthier; he’d turned brown and smooth.
“I’ve got another idea,” Frank said. “She’s going to call them Saturday. All right. Friday you have a couple of our people crowd them a little.”
“Crowd Gilfillan?”
“Nothing big. Don’t rough them up. But tell them to put a clumsy tail on them.”
“I don’t get it.”
Frank smiled. “Who’s running it out there?”
“Still Deffeldorf. Fritz Deffeldorf.”
“Using what, a bunch of Ordway’s people?”
“A few. Some free lances.”
Frank’s mind was working. “Ezio, you didn’t tell me, is the FBI still looking for Merle?”
“No. They canceled the bulletin.”
“They didn’t just let it dry up—they made a point of canceling it?”
“Yes. Why?”
“I wonder why they did that.”
“At the time I figured it meant they must have found Merle. But they didn’t. At least Ordway says they didn’t. It was canceled on orders from Washington.”
“He’s all by himself out there and the FBI isn’t interested anymore. That makes things easier.”
“What’s this idea you had? Crowding Gilfillan, I mean.”
“Put three or four guys on him. Say they tail him home from the TV studio Friday night. Say they crowd him so tight he can’t help but notice he’s being shadowed.”
“So?”
“So Saturday morning Merle’s wife phones and Gilfillan tells her he’s being followed around by this bunch of tough-looking guys.”
“I still don’t get it, Frank.”
Frank got out of the chair. He folded the transcript and put it in his pocket. “Sometimes when you’re up against a stone wall the best thing is to do something unexpected. Random, whatever, doesn’t matter what it is, just so it stirs things up, gets things moving again. We’ve been stalled on this thing long enough. I want to prod Merle, that’s all. Maybe this riding-stable idea works, maybe not. But we get his buddy Gilfillan all nervous and jittery, he’s going to tell Merle’s wife about it, and then maybe something will bust loose.”
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
California: 12–13 September
1
NOW IT FELT GOOD TO RUN. HE STRETCHED HIS LONG LEGS out and left Homer behind and went up the last stretch of driveway feeling winged. When he stopped at the porte cochere his breathing was deep but without urgency and he gave Homer an arch look when he came up.
Homer dragged the back of his hand across his mouth. “Your legs are a foot longer than mine, wiseass. You want to prove something I’ll take you on for a ten-mile run, we’ll see who comes in first.”
“No bet.”
“I hate cocky bastards.” But Homer’s tight quick smile showed pleasure: He was proud of his handiwork.
“Tell me something. Were you in on the Stedman rescue?”
“I was there.”
“Not talking about it, is that it?”
“It’s not classified. I’m not crazy about the way that one worked out.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know if I can exactly explain it. Why are you asking?”
“I’m trying to sort a few things out. Humor me.” He was still trying to get a handle on Diego Vasquez, that was what it came down to; he didn’t want to put it to Homer that way.