I drove back to the motel and parked the car in its original slot, right over the oscillator, put the gimmick back in its place under the gas tank, hooked the charge up under the hood and went into the office.
The manager gave me a big smile, waiting.
“Any calls?”
“None, sir.”
“Anyone looking for me?”
“No, sir, not a soul. Have a good day?”
“Profitable,” I said.
“Care to keep the other room for tonight too?”
I threw a bill down on the counter top. “Yeah, I might as well.”
He took the bill, stored it away and handed me my change and a receipt. “Just call me if you want anything.”
“I’ll do that.”
I went back outside and stood in the fading light and looked over at the car. They’d have to start wondering sometime, I thought. The bastards! I grinned to myself, thinking through their minds. That oscillator had been put in place with masking tape and it could have fallen off. There was always the chance that a wired charge wasn’t hooked up correctly too. I eased the oscillator down and let it lay in the sandy loam under the car, then rewired the charge myself from a different viewpoint. Up front, a convertible drove in with a young couple in the front and Just Married slogans chalked on the sides of their car. I checked the room on the other side of the car, went back to the office and registered that one in under my name too and paid for it. I was getting to be the best customer the guy had. The newlyweds took a room at the far end, giggling all the way, and the manager gave me a knowing wink and a laugh as I went out.
Maybe they’d have a night to remember, I thought. At least nobody could be in the area where they could get hurt. Only the world was reserved for destruction.
The phone was ringing when I got in my room. I recognized the voice but went through the coded check anyway and Dave Elroy gave me the right answers. “Got in an hour ago, Tiger. I’m at the Sea Cliff in room ten. Anything for me to do?”
“Yeah, probe this town and see if you can find any source of narcotics. Look for H primarily and try to find out if Agrounsky was a user.”
“Any indications?”
“All of them,” I told him. “Got hooked in a hospital, thought cured, but was under a severe mental strain and might have reverted. He took off periodically and it might have been to see his supplier. All I want to do is be sure. And see if he made any big buys.”
“Before he left?”
“Right. Try to date it.”
“Okay, will do.”
“You have an informant in this area?” I asked him.
“Not yet, but I know who can give me a lead. Tiger...”
“What?”
“Things are getting touchy. Hal Randolph is raising hell in New York. They want you on the scene up there.”
“Screw them.”
“They have technicians breaking down all the circuitry of the control system and they haven’t come up with anything yet. Some of the wheels are insisting that it couldn’t have been done and are yammering to call off the search.”
“The idiots.”
“They won’t do it, though,” he said. “They can’t take the chance.”
“How about Niger Hoppes?”
“Not a thing. Grady has called in everybody and is pulling all the plugs. He’s an unknown face. Johnson called from London again with another bit... There’s a possibility that he might have a slight limp now, but it wasn’t confirmed. It could have been faked to throw off anybody looking for him in the future. You got the angle about him being a sniffer, didn’t you?”
“Check.”
“Then you got the latest. Johnson said he used the Bolatrine variety but that isn’t sold in the U.S. at all. There are derivatives almost the same, so it wouldn’t make any difference at all. I checked with Ernie Bentley and he told me all the inhalers conformed to the Pure Food and Drug Act... no bennies sold over the counters... but the only similarity was the containers. One firm makes them all in different shapes and sizes.”
“Good enough. Call me back if you dig up anything.”
“Roger. Off now. Behave.”
I put the phone back and snapped on the television. I lay on the bed in the dark and watched the last segment of a western before the news came on, caught the news broadcast that mentioned that the sniper outside Claude Boster’s shop hadn’t been apprehended yet, then closed my eyes for a little while waiting for time to pass. Nobody was going to come near me until the night had quieted into that death-like quality that comes after a small town goes to sleep and the traffic has diminished to an occasional truck going up the highway.
But I was wrong.
Somebody had waited too long and couldn’t understand why the expected hadn’t happened. He didn’t want to have to make excuses and be responsible for a bungled job and he checked to make sure. He must have found the oscillator and taped it back thinking it had fallen off from the heat and the vibration, then looked again to make sure the dynamite sticks were in place where they should be and when he wiggled the wires he had so carefully installed the night before they all seemed secure until the final wiggle touched off the cross wiring I had rigged and he blew up into a gory mess of parts and liquid slop and was plastered all over the remnants of the rooms I had rented on either side of the car.
The noise of the explosion was a terrible, flat, roaring sound that spread light and heat into the compound like the midday sun for one instant, then died away without leaving a trace of an echo. Only little noises came then — things falling back to earth... other things slowly giving way to fall from the impact of the blast. The silence was a stunned hush, then a woman’s voice screamed incoherently, gaining in intensity until it was quieted from a lack of breath.
I was out of the door and on the scene before anyone else, standing there looking at the twisted wreckage when the manager came up, the expression on his face one of complete disbelief. “What... what happened?”
“Go call the cops. Shake it. Then come back and keep everybody away from here.”
He gaped at me absently, swallowed hard and shuffled off, glancing back nervously over his shoulder. But somebody had beaten him to it. The wail of a siren tickled the air, coming from the east side of town, then another joined it from another direction. Already, the curious had started forward at a half-run, converging on the scene while the dust and fumes still hung overhead like a small cloud.
There was little left of the car at all and practically nothing of the buildings that had squeezed it in and softened the blast from tearing up the rest of the place. Blood-wet fragments of flesh glistened on metallic parts and larger pieces of the body were scattered in the rubble to the left.
One piece was intact... a hand. It lay there palm upward, expressing a peculiar bewilderment as if it still had life and could think and wonder. A section of plate glass lay on the ground and I picked it up, polished it with a handkerchief, pressed it against the fingertips, slipped it into my pocket. Then I flipped the hand as far as I could into the bushes.
The manager was still incoherent, still fumbling with the phone when I got in the office. He never even saw me poke around behind the desk until I found a heavy packet of fold-out cards that gave a picturesque view of the Cape Kennedy area, slip the glass into the middle where I held it in place with tape, then address it to Ernie Bentley and stamp it to go out in the morning airmail.
He’d know what it meant.
I only had a minute to do what I had to do, but it was enough time. I got back to my original room, stripped off the .45 and the speed rig, got the extra box of shells and the two clips out of my suitcase and stuck them behind the air-conditioner grill vent at the top of the room. No matter what happened, I didn’t want anybody impounding my equipment for any reason.