She stared at me. I couldn't see her lower face since it was hidden by her surgical mask. The eyebrows went up; the forehead wrinkled in a frown. "Swell, Doctor Adams."
She dipped her siphon tube into the patient's open mouth to draw off the blood that was fast collecting there. Fortunately the patient was asleep, having been given a shot of sodium pentothal. Mrs. Habersham couldn't hear us. I withdrew the bent and buried tooth, which I had twisted up with the cowhorn forceps.
There was a deep, sucking, squishing noise as the molar came out, then we sutured and packed the wound, injected Mrs. Habersham with a hefty slug of penicillin, and watched her carefully while she came to. You must be really careful with a general anesthetic so that your patient doesn't choke or drown. This is especially true if you've worked in the mouth. She woke up without a hitch and we sent her on her way. On foot.
At the earliest opportunity I returned home to the darkroom (which I was painstakingly rebuilding) and got an eight-inch strip of 35mm film. I headed out to the Concord Rod and Gun Club and the outdoor range. I heard those big Magnums blasting off long before I reached it. Then another sound: the thump of iron silhouettes being hit by slugs and slamming against the ground. Silhouette shooting, imported from Europe in the sixties, is all the rage now at gun clubs. It consists of shooting at thick metal plates cut out in the shape of animal profiles, at long range, using big-bore Magnum handguns. No rifles. It's a silly sport, I guess. But then so is chasing a little white ball around on grass and whacking at it until it falls into a cup.
I was out at the silhouette range because I needed a big-bore revolver to experiment with. I found Chuck Norgaard at one of the stations, poised at the line with a revolver held out in front of him with both hands. There was a blast I felt in my chest, and the gun and his arms went up. He stepped back and flipped out the cylinder, pushed the ejection rod, and dumped out the spent shells.
"Hiya Doc. What brings you here?"
"I want to borrow that thing when you're finished."
He nodded, and I saw him drop six more silver rockets into the cylinder. I was sick of looking at big handguns.
"Got any idea what those things do when they hit people instead of steel plate?" I asked.
"I can imagine."
"No you can't," I said, and waited for him over at the bench. I should have brought earmuffs.
Half an hour later I left the club, went home, and got hold of Joe.
"What do you mean, not there?"
"All Johnny Robinson's personal effects went to Sam, except for the stuff his sister took. It's all at Dependable, or Sam's apartment."
"Okay; I'll get in touch with Sam. Meet me at Brian's office at six tonight. I think I know where the hot item is."
"Okay, sport, strut your stuff," said Brian Hannon, leaning back in his armchair. He glanced over at Joe, who was lighting a Benson 8c Hedges 100 with the new gold-and-blue lighter. A look of confusion crossed Brian's face.
"Hey, that lighter looks different, Joe. Not as fruity. What happened?"
"This is a new one. Classier."
"Where'd you get it?"
"I got it, if you must know, from a Mafia chieftain."
"No, really."
"Let's talk about something else. C'mon, Doc, I'm getting starved. Sam's late, but tell us anyway. Where the hell's this filmstrip?"
I laid Inspector James Bell's Smith 8: Wesson on the desk, and next to it a new, unsharpened pencil. I explained that I'd gotten the idea while fitting the barrel of my tooth extractor around an old lady's molar. They weren't impressed. I handed Brian the revolver and asked him to check it out. This he did in standard fashion by swinging out the cylinder, which was empty, and looking down the chambers as he spun it on its crane arm. Then, the cylinder still out, he looked down the muzzle of the barrel and handed it to Joe, who repeated the procedure, then stuck his thumbnail under the barrel throat so the light would reflect off it up through the tube.
"Empty," he said, handing it back. "I don't have a screwdriver to take off the grips or sideplate. I assume that's what you're going to do."
"No," I said, taking the pencil and inserting it into the barrel. I pushed it down carefully. The coiled celluloid sprang out of the barrel throat like a jack-in-the-box, and there was the film-strip on the desk.
"Sure looked clean to me," said Joe.
"That's because the film was rolled emulsion side out, leaving the inside of the roll shiny-slick. When you roll up the film this way and stick it in the muzzle end, which is nearest the viewer's eye, he's got to be looking very closely to see it. In regular room light, like this, it's just about invisible."
"Hmmm. And Johnny put Santuccio's film there? You sure?"
"Just about positive. He was carrying it the day he was killed. From his phone message to me it's clear he knew he was being tailed. .. and he knew why, too. He didn't leave it at the office, or in his car. Those places were searched thoroughly by DeLucca and you guys. It wasn't in his apartment. Not only was the place searched several times, but the killers nailed him as soon as he o walked in. I thought for a while it was tucked away somewhere on his apartment's porch, or in the stairway hall going up to his place. But I was wrong. All I got out of that expedition was two broken heads: mine and Brian's."
"Tell me about it," the chief growled. "Although I admit this is kinda clever, Doc. Now it'll be even better if you're right."
"Where else can it be? He didn't put it in his shoe. Joe, your men checked his clothes. He didn't mail it to himself; we've watched his mail. He wanted it ready to deliver. But I'll tell you something else: this is my second experimental filmstrip. The first one disintegrated. When you put a roll of film inside the business end of a thirty-eight, there's nothing left of it after you touch the gun off'. It shreds and burns into vapor."
"When we found Johnny's body up in Lowell, Mary noticed that the carrying strap of his sidearm was unfastened."
"Uh-huh. Which meant that if indeed the film was in there, Johnny knew he could both conceal the evidence and destroy it immediately if he had to."
"Sounds too good to be true," said Brian as he swiveled in his chair and watched a red Buick Regal swerve into the CPD lot I beneath his window.
Well, it was. Too good to be true, that is. As for the film negatives which should have been tucked neatly, invisibly, into the barrel of Johnny Robinson's S amp;W model ten, they weren? They weren't hidden in his little leg pistol either. They also weren't in any of the clothes and shoes that were in the cardboard carton that Sam hauled into the office with him.
"Well close, but no cigar," said Brian, drumming his fingers on the desk. "Sorry to have brought you all the way out here, Sam."
I cussed. Sam folded up his dead partner's clothes and placed all the belongings neatly back into the carton.
"My guess is Johnny ditched the stuff somewhere on his way home, at some drop, intending to return to the drop later Friday night or Saturday morning when the heat was off and retrieve it. Of course he never got the chance."
Following this bit of deduction, which seemed plausible, we called the Lucky Seven tavern again, just to make sure nobody there had seen Johnny that day, or whether indeed a letter, package, or message had arrived there with his name on it. The answer was no.
"I'm back to first base," I said.
"Wrong, Doc. You're back in the dugout," said Joe. "Now Brian and I have some paperwork to do for the DeLucca thing. It's just routine and will take about an hour. Let's meet afterwards in case there are some last-minute questions."
"Yeah," said Brian, "minor things like dumdum bullets and breaking and entering?
"Mary and I are going to buy Sam a big dinner at Yangtze River. Brian, seeing's how I accidentally banged up your head, I think I owe you one too. Why don't the three of us wait for you two at our place?"