The Anders Farm isn’t a farm at all; it’s a roadhouse and it’s about fifteen miles out of town. Coming on from there, you take Highway 15, which turns into Clayton Boulevard in town.
“I left the others there around four o’clock,” Barranya said. “We’d been there since midnight and I was getting bored, and—well, feeling queer—as often happens when I am on the verge of a communication from the astral—”
“Wait,” I said, “were you there with someone? A woman?”
“No, Sergeant. It was a mixed party, but there were three couples and two stags and I was one of the stags. I drove slowly coming in, because I’d been drinking and because of that feeling of expectancy. I was on Clayton, out around Fiftieth, when I heard the voice. It said, ‘Sergeant Murray will be killed to—’ ”
“Yeah, yeah” I interrupted. For some reason, it made my tooth ache worse when he said that. I looked at him a minute trying to figure out how much truth he was telling me. I couldn’t swallow that spirit message stuff.
But the rest of it? It would be easy to get and check the names of the people he’d been with. But that was routine, up to whoever was handling the case…
Say Barranya left the Anders Farm near four o’clock. He came to my office at five, or a few minutes before. That gave him an hour. Not too long a time if he’d driven as slowly as he said. But it was possible.
I said, “Now about Charlie Randall. What were your relations with him?”
“Very pleasant, Sergeant. I advised him in a business way.”
I studied him. “Meaning when he had to bump off a competitor you’d cast a horoscope to see if the stars were favorable?”
That veil business was over his eyes again, and I knew he didn’t like the way I’d put that. It was probably a close guess. We knew that Randall, like most crooks, was superstitious and that he was Sibi Barranya’s best hocus-pocus sucker.
Barranya said, “Mr. Randall conducted a legitimate business, Sergeant. My advice concerned purely legal transactions.”
“No doubt,” I said. “Since it would be hard to prove otherwise now, we’ll let it ride. But look—you’re probably pretty familiar with Randall’s business. Who would benefit by his death?”
Barranya thought a moment before he answered. “His wife, of course. That is, I presume she’ll inherit his money; he never consulted me about a will. And there is Pete Burd; but you know about that.”
I knew about Pete Burd, all right. He was the only rival Randall had had, and not too much competition at that. He put his machines in the smaller places that Randall didn’t want, and that was maybe why Randall hadn’t done to him what he’d done to more enterprising competitors. But now that Randall was out of the way, it would mean room for expansion for Burd.
I let that cook for the moment. “Know where Charlie’s wife is?”
“Yes. Out of town. That is, unless she has returned unexpectedly and I haven’t heard.”
I snorted lightly. “Don’t your spirits tell you things?…Let’s get back to the warning about me. Did the what’s-it suggest any reason why I might be killed?”
“No,” he told me, “and I can see you’re incredulous about that, Sergeant. Frankly, I don’t care whether you take it seriously or not. I had a message and it was my duty to relay it. Any more questions? If not, I’d like to get on home.”
I stood up. “We’re both going to the same building. Come on.”
“Fine!” Barranya said. “Want to go in my car? I presume there’ll be plenty of squad cars rallying around over there to give you a lift back.”
Well, there would be; and these days a chance to save rubber is a chance to save rubber. So I got into his car. And when I saw how smoothly it ran I wondered—as all cops wonder once in a while, but not too seriously—whether I’d picked the right side of the law. It was a sweet chariot, that convertible of his.
“Can you get short-wave broadcasts?” I asked, assuming that a boat like his would have a radio, and ready not to be surprised if it turned out to be a radio-phono combination. I was curious to see if anything new was going out to the squad cars.
“Out of order,” he said. “Worked early this evening, but I tried it after I left the Anders Farm and it wouldn’t work.”
We drove a few blocks without either of us saying anything, and it was then that I heard the voice:
“Sibi Barranya killed Randall. He wanted Randall’s wife.”
I blinked and looked around at Barranya. He wasn’t talking, unless he was a good ventriloquist. Not that it would have surprised me if he was, because these fake mystics dabble in all forms of trickery.
But Barranya looked scared as hell. The car swerved a little, but righted itself as he swung the wheel back. We slowed up and he said, “Did you hear—”
“Shut up,” I barked. As soon as I’d seen his lips weren’t moving, I looked around the rest of the car. Maybe it was the comparative quiet because we were slowing down, but I recognized and placed a faint sound I’d been hearing ever since we’d started; a sound I’d wondered about in a car that ran as sweet and smooth as that one did.
It was a faint crackling, like static on a radio, and it seemed to come from the loud-speaker that was up where the windshield met the car top, on Barranya’s side.
“Cut in to the curb and stop a minute,” I said. As we coasted in, he said, “Sergeant, there are good spirits and evil ones. The evil ones lie, and you mustn’t—”
“Shut up,” I said. “There are good radios and bad radios, too. Where’s a screwdriver?”
He opened the glove compartment and found one. “Do you mean you think—”
I said, “I’m sure as hell going to see. When it comes to spooks, Barranya, I don’t think anything. I look for where they come from. That radio’s on!”
I got it out from behind the instrument panel with the screwdriver. The faint crackling noise stopped when I disconnected the battery wire.
The set showed what I had a hunch I’d find. It had been tampered with, all right. There was a wire shorted across both the short-wave band switch and the turn-on switch, so that it was permanently on, and permanently adjusted to the short-wave band. The condenser shaft had been loosened so the rotor plates didn’t turn with the shaft. In other words, it was permanently set to receive anything broadcast on a certain short wavelength. Barranya was peering curiously at it. “Could someone with an amateur broadcasting set have?…”
“They could,” I told him, “and did. How’s your battery?”
“How’s— Oh, I see what you mean.” Without putting the car in gear he stepped on the starter and the engine turned over merrily. The battery wasn’t run down.
“This thing’s been on,” I said, “since it was monkeyed with. If your battery’s still got that much oomph, it means it was done recently. If your radio worked early this evening, this was done since then. Maybe while you were at the roadhouse.”
“Then that other message, the one that warned about you—”
“Yeah,” I said, “my apologies—maybe. I thought you were talking a lot of hot air.”
Unless he was honestly bewildered, he was putting on a marvelous act. He said, “But I have heard such voices elsewhere.”
I smiled. “Maybe your radio here was in tune with the infinite and it was a spirit, once removed. I got my doubts. Let’s get going. I want to show this little gadget to the boys.”
He slid the car into gear and away from the curb. He asked thoughtfully, “Is there any way they could trace from that set where the messages came from?”
“Nope,” I told him. “But they can tell exactly what wavelength it was set for. That might help, but the F.C.C. has suspended all amateur licenses since the war started. It would have to be an illegal set.”