‘So you’ve told her you are planning to steal the stamps?’
Vin took out his handkerchief and wiped his face. He saw Joey and Cindy were staring at him and there was suspicion in their eyes.
‘So what? Look... this babe hates her old man. She couldn’t care less what happens to his stamps.’
‘But she knows you are planning to steal the stamps?’
‘What if she does?’
‘You ask yourself that one, Vin.’ Elliot got to his feet. ‘I’ll get that letter drafted, Cindy.’ Turning to Joey, he went on, ‘Will you take care of the stamp album?’
The three left the room.
Vin hacked a slice of bread from the loaf and cut himself another piece of cheese.
‘I’ll have to watch this sonofabitch,’ he told himself. ‘He’s going to be tricky.’
Jack Lessing returned to his office. Holtz had given him an ultimatum: find Elliot or lose the Radnitz account and since the account was worth many thousands a year to Lessing and since his ten men had still found no trace of Elliot, he was more than worried.
‘Try everything,’ Holtz had said. ‘He’s got to be found and found fast! We know he is in the City. We know he might try to contact Paul Larrimore, the philatelist. As he owes money everywhere you won’t find him in his usual haunts. He must have holed up somewhere. Check every small hotel, even the rooming houses. Look out for his Alfa: you’ve got the licence number. He’s got to be found.’
Lessing put another twenty men, drawn in from Miami and Jacksonville with instructions to check the hotels and fast, then he sent for Harry Orson and Fay Macklin, two of his top investigators. He told them the problem.
Orson, a powerfully built man in his late thirties, was noted for his patience and bulldog determination. Nondescript to look at, shrewd and an easy mixer, he was the ideal man hunter.
Fay Macklin, mousey looking, small, around thirty-five years of age, had a talent for being in a place and never being noticed.
‘Elliot is thought to be trying to contact Paul Larrimore... just why, Holtz didn’t say,’ Lessing said. He pushed a folder across his desk. ‘That will give you all the dope about Larrimore. He seems our best bet. Quite close to his house is an empty villa. I’ve fixed it for you two to get in there and watch his place. I want the dope on everyone who visits Larrimore. Elliot, being a movie star, may try to play it smart. He might arrive in disguise. So check out everyone who calls on Larrimore. You will have two operators to help you. I want you to watch and alert them when someone calls.’
An hour later, Orson and Macklin were installed in an empty upper room of the villa which offered an uninterrupted view of the gates, the garden and the front door of Larrimore’s house. They settled down to an alternate watch, equipped with powerful field glasses, a transceiver, camp stools and a hamper of food. Their wait was long and uneventful, but they were used to long, uneventful waits and that was why Lessing had picked them to watch Larrimore’s house. At the end of the road, in a parking lot, two investigators in their cars sat waiting. Twice during the long day they were alerted to check trucks that had arrived at Larrimore’s house but the report was negative: just a delivery of food. Then around midday, Orson saw Judy come out of the house, get into her beat-up Austin Cooper and drive down to the gates. He immediately alerted one of the waiting investigators who caught up with Judy as she waited for a change of traffic lights.
‘The girl’s Larrimore’s daughter,’ Orson told the investigator over the transceiver. ‘Stick with her, Fred. I’ll get Alec to replace you later.’
‘Okay and out,’ Fred Nisson said.
Half an hour later, Nisson radioed in that Judy was at the Plaza Beach surrounded by long haired freaks. What was he to do?
‘Stick with her,’ Orson said. ‘Keep reporting in.’
At 15.00 Orson called Lessing. So far the operation was negative. No sign of Elliot. Every caller — and there had only been three of them — had been checked out. Nisson was watching the daughter who seemed settled to spend the day at the Plaza Beach.
Lessing cursed, told Orson he would send a relief for Nisson and then reported to Holtz.
Barney paused here to marshal his thoughts. He reached for the last sausage on the plate, regarded it thoughtfully before conveying it to his mouth.
‘These sausages are enough to wake up a dead man,’ he said. ‘You don’t know what you’re missing,’
I said I believed in letting the dead lie in peace.
‘Yeah.’ Barney took a swig of beer, pushed away the empty plate, heaved a sigh and settled down to talk again.
‘Joey picked up a battered looking stamp album full of junk but he got four good stamps from a dealer that cost four hundred dollars. These Elliot put in the album.
‘Elliot got Cindy to rewrite the letter to Larrimore he had drafted and that was sent off. There was nothing else for them to do but wait.
‘But Vin had things to do. He had a date with Judy the following evening. He had a lot of thinking to do and as thinking wasn’t his strong point, he worried.
‘Until he was sure that Cindy’s part of the operation succeeded, he couldn’t make plans. But if Cindy did manage to find out in which drawer the stamps were then he would have to think fast and thinking fast always bothered Vin.
‘He had a suspicion that Elliot was on to him. He also had a suspicion that unless he watched Judy closely, she could double cross him. Vin wasn’t geared for this kind of set-up and he knew it, but he was determined to get his hands on a million dollars.
‘Elliot told them they couldn’t expect an answer — if they were going to get an answer — from Larrimore for at least a week. They must try to relax and be patient.
‘This was something Vin couldn’t do in his present mood and he drove off in the Jaguar to explore the country, look in at a bar or two and take a swim.
‘Cindy and he had had a talk. This was something he was expecting. Her no wedding bells and I’m sorry Vin line left him cold. He grinned at her and shrugged. “Okay, baby, if that’s the way you want it,” he said. “Maybe you’re right. You stick to your old man. That way you won’t get pregnant.” That was the way Vin talked: no consideration for women.’ Barney grimaced. ‘I always say a woman should be shown consideration, Mr. Campbell... right?’
I said it was an accepted thing but there were women and women.
Barney let that one go with the breeze.
‘So in the evening, Cindy found herself alone with Elliot. Joey was a TV addict and he was indoors, glued to the goggle box. Cindy and Elliot were sitting in the back garden with a big yellow moon looking down on them, the smell of jasmine in the air and the distant sound of an owl to make the set-up pretty romantic.
‘Elliot had discovered something about Cindy he hadn’t found in any of the girls he had previously known. There was a restfulness about her that made her company easy. He felt he didn’t have to keep talking to keep her interest. She didn’t have to keep talking to keep his interest: just to sit with her in silence pleased him. This hadn’t happened to him before.
‘ “Cindy... about Vin,” he said suddenly. “You told me you two were planning to get married.”
‘ “Yes.” Cindy looked up at the moon. “But not now. I’ve changed my mind. I’ve told Vin... I think he’s glad.”
‘ “And you?”
‘ “Yes, I’m glad.” She shrugged. “He seemed so glamorous and so confident... I had never met anyone quite like him. But now...”
‘ “Do you trust him, Cindy?”
‘She stiffened and looked quickly at him.
‘ “What do you mean?”
‘ “You see, Cindy, all this is something new to me... this four handed partnership. I feel I can trust your father and you, but not Vin. I may be wrong, but that’s the way I feel right now.”