I didn’t want to accept the fact that a professional had gone through my place. Unfortunately, there was no other reasonable explanation. I speculated on why nothing had been taken. Then a thought hit me. The box. Whoever had been in cahoots with the phoney Black Arrow Killer knew about the box and hadn’t located it. Logically, they’d figure that the police or I had ended up with it.
The vid-phone chimed.
“Hello.”
“Murphy? This is Malden.”
I flipped on my video relay. Mac looked worried and rushed. “We’ve gotta meet. Right now.”
“Uh…”
“No questions. Meet me at the usual place as soon as you can get there. Bring that woman and your cigarettes. And make sure no one follows you.” he switched off the feed.
I had no idea what that was talking about. He and I had never met anywhere outside of the crime scene or the precinct. He was the woman he preferred to? This medicine? He couldn’t possibly think that I’d never had to find her. I couldn’t come up with any other woman that Mac would have in mind. And why the reference to my cigarettes? I thought it over. Maybe menu that someone was listening in an couldn’t actually name the place where you want to me. The woman and the cigarettes must be clues.
I punched up the city directory on a computer. First, I checked for any place called the Lucky Strike. There wasn’t one. But there were several places with the word “Lucky” in the name. As I scrolled through the list, a name jumped out at me. The Lucky Lady Cafe. My cigarettes, a woman. I jotted down the address and hurried out my speeder.
Ten minutes later, I walked into a greasy spoon on the other end of town. Remembering what Mac had said, I’d been careful not be followed. Mac was sitting in a booth away from the windows, eating a frosted cake doughnut and sipping coffee.
“I hope this is important. Perry Mason was on, and I’d just made some espresso.”
Mac’s face was as serious as a face can be with sprinkles and frosting on it. “The NSA is probably at your office right now. They were coming to get you.”
It took a moment to sink in. “What does the NSA want with me?
Mac washed down the last bite of doughnut with a slug of foul-smelling coffee. “Remember the guy you tossed off the roof?”
“I didn’t toss him off the roof,” I said indignantly.
“Whatever. Turns out he was an agent. An NSA Special Agent.”
Oh, God.
Mac took a bite out of another doughnut. Glazed.
“His name was Dag Horton. The information came about half-an-hour ago. Five minutes later, word came through the office that they were gonna nail you. That’s when I called.”
“So here we are.”
Mac nodded, his mouth packed. I leaned against the backrest and pulled out my pack of smokes. What was I going to do? I didn’t have a lot of options. They’d catch me eventually, and… then what? Kill me? I’d obviously gotten in the way of something, as well as contributed to the death of an agent. Sure, this Horton guy was as crooked as Lombard Street, but was he murdering women for his own sport, or on behalf of the agency? Maybe they just wanted to question me. A voice in my head said don’t bet on it. I needed leverage… a bargaining chip. The box.
Mac was watching me, mouthing half a doughnut like a cow chewing its cud. I drew in on my cigarette, then slowly exhaled the smoke in one long breath. “The cops who picked me up last night, did they bring a box in from the crime scene?”
“What you mean?”
“You know, a box. A metal box that holds 3-by-5 cards. Like the kind your Mom kept recipes in.”
An anguished look passed over Mac’s puffy face. “My mother didn’t keep recipes. When I was eight, she took me and my brothers and sisters to the circus. A couple of days later, she disappeared. She ran off with one of the circus clowns. Beppo. Left my Dad to raise all nine of us on his own. I’ve hated clowns ever since.”
It was a sad story, but we all had sad stories. I even had my own reason for hating clowns, but that was a long time ago and I tried not to think about it any more. “Sorry to bring it up. But you know what I for am talking about, right?”
Mac picked up a sticky bun. The prospect of a third pastry seemed to ease him out of his bitter memories. “Sure. There was no box. Our boys didn’t bring in anything except a gun and what was on the body. Took everything to the coroner.”
I thought back to the events leading up to Horton taking his last dive. In my mind’s eye, I could see him running across the street and scrambling over the fence into the alley. Suddenly, I realised — he wasn’t carrying the box! His hands were free when he climbed the fence. Horton must have dumped the box somewhere behind the Electronics Shop and the Brew & Stew. And since someone had searched my office earlier today, it was clear that the box hadn’t been found. If I could find it first and put it somewhere safe, it might just give me the leverage I needed to keep breathing.
I got up to leave.
“Where you going?”
I was feeling a lot better now that I had a plan. “I’ve gotta go find something. Something the agency wants even more than me.”
Mac pulled out a cigarette. “I wouldn’t go back to your office for awhile. Knowing the agency, they’ll have lookouts crawling all around your place.”
“I appreciate the warnings, Mac. I guess I owe you on this one.”
Mac waved his Merit at me. “Let’s just say we’re all squared up. And, by the way, we didn’t have this little talk.”
Chapter Nine
I flew my speeder in low over Chandler Avenue, hoping, or rather not hoping, to see something that would confirm what Mac had told me. There were three people loitering near the Ritz — a clearly marked “no loitering” area. Even though the rule was never enforced, the Ritz just wasn’t the kind of place people hung around. I had to assume that the loiterers were the Fed’s Malden had warned about.
I nosed up and headed aimlessly toward the new city. I needed time to think. My first priority was to find the box Horton had ditched last night. Secondly, I have to get back into my office and recover the wrapping paper I’d dug out of the dumpster. Last, and least, I was eventually going to need a place to sleep and maybe take a shower, though I had a first rate deodorant and tried to sweat as little as possible.
I spent the afternoon in a booth at the twenty-four-hour pool hall. A barmaid with six new stitches to her forehead had been very attentive and only charged me for half my drinks. She said her name was Candy, the nickname her boyfriend had given her for good reason. I couldn’t help but speculate that she was looking for a man to tide her over until her true love got paroled. It didn’t look like she was going to let me go until I finally told her that my boyfriend called me Dumpling.
Outside, it was just getting dark. I felt a little more comfortable looking for the box under the cover of night. Home field advantage was my only edge on the G-men, and I intended to use it. On second thought, there was one more thing in my favour. The men waiting for me at the Ritz had no reason to think that I knew about them. Mac hadn’t just saved my skin, he also give me a head start.
I landed my speeder in the parking lot to the left of the Brew & Stew, in a dead end of the Chandler cul-de-sac. A few people were up and about, starting the business day. I waited in a speeder until it appeared that no one seemed move. Removing a flashlight from the glove compartment, I slipped out and hurried to the alley that ran behind the Brew & Stew.
The alley was empty. At least a hundred metres separated me from the back of the Ritz. I was standing where Horton had been last night when I doubled back to the newsstand. The box had to be somewhere close. I paused and tried to put myself into Horton’s shoes. The best thing would be to retrace his steps. I walked toward the Ritz, just until I passed the back of the Electronics Shop. Turning around, I began to examine everything in the alley.