He couldn't find an answer. He turned the page, hoping for some more
facts that might make some sense out of what he had been seeing, but
there was nothing more. All the rest of the pages in the notebook were
blank.
He looked up at the cop and the doctor with a bland, blank face.
"Thanks a lot," he told Bill. "I thought I'd lost this book. I
appreciate it."
"Oh, that's okay, Mr. Malone," Bill said. "Glad to do it."
"You don't know what this means to me," Malone said truthfully.
"No trouble at all," Bill said. "Any time." He gave Malone a big smile
and turned back to the door. "But I got to get back to my beat," he
said. "Listen, I'll see you. And if I can be any help--"
"Sure," Malone said. "I'll let you know. And thanks again."
"Welcome," Bill said, and opened the door. He strode out with the air
of a man who has just been decorated with the Silver Star, the Purple
Heart and the Congressional Medal of Honor.
Malone tried a few more steps and discovered that he could walk
without falling down. He thanked the doctor again.
"Perfectly all right," the doctor said. "Nothing to it. Why, you ought
to see some of the cases we get here. There was a guy here the other
night with both his legs all mashed up by a--"
"I'll bet," Malone said hurriedly. "Well, I've got to be on my way.
Just send the bill to FBI headquarters on 69th Street." He closed the
door on the doctor's enthusiastic "Yes, _sir!_" and went on down the
hallway and out into the street. At Seventh Avenue and Greenwich
Avenue he flagged a cab.
It was a hell of a place to be, Malone thought as the cab drove away.
Where but in Greenwich Village did avenues intersect each other
without so much as a by-your-leave?
"Hotel New Yorker," he said, giving the whole thing up as a bad job.
He put his hat on his head and adjusted it painfully to the proper
angle.
And that, he thought, made another little problem. The car had not
only hit him on the head, it had removed his hat before doing so, and
then replaced it. It had only fallen off when he'd started to get up
against the lamp post.
_A nice quiet vacation_, Malone thought bitterly.
He fumed in silence all the way to the hotel, through the lobby, up in
the elevator, and to the door of his room. Then he remembered the
notebook.
That was important evidence. He decided to tell Boyd about it right
away.
He went into the bathroom and tapped gently on the door to Boyd's
connecting room. The door swung open.
Boyd, apparently, was still out painting the town--Malone considered
the word _red_ and dropped the whole phrase with a sigh. At any rate,
his partner was nowhere in the room.
"The hell with it," Malone announced loudly to no one in particular.
He went back into his own room, closed the door, and got wearily ready
for bed.
* * * * *
Dawn came, and then daylight, and then a lot more daylight. It was
streaming in through the windows with careless abandon, filling the
room with a lot of bright sunshine and the muggy heat of the city.
From the street below, the cheerful noises of traffic and pedestrians
floated up and filled Malone's ears.
He got up, turned over in bed, and tried to go back to sleep.
But sleep wouldn't come. After a long time he gave up, and swung
himself over the edge of the bed. Standing up was a delicate job, but
he managed it, feeling rather proud of himself in a dim, semiconscious
sort of way.
He went into the bathroom, brushed his teeth, and then opened the
connecting door to Boyd's room softly.
Boyd was home. He lay in a great tangle of bedclothes, snoring
hideously and making little motions with his hands and arms like a
beached whale. Malone padded over to him and dug him fiercely in the
ribs.
"Come on," he said. "Wake up, Tommy-boy."
Boyd's eyes did not open. In a voice as hollow as a zombie's, he said,
"My head hurts."
"Can't feel any worse than mine," Malone said cheerily. This, he
reflected, was not quite true. Considering everything it had been
through recently, his head felt remarkably like its old carefree self.
"You'll feel better once you're awake."
"No, I won't," Boyd said simply. He jammed his head under a pillow and
began to snore again. It was an awesome sound, like a man strangling
to death in chicken fat. Malone sighed and poked at random among the
bedclothes.
Boyd swore distantly, and Malone poked him again.
"The sun is up," Malone said, "and all the little pedestrians are
chirping. It is time to rise."
Boyd said, "Gah," and withdrew his head from the pillow. Gently, as if
he were afraid he were going to fall apart, he rose to a sitting
position. When he had arrived at it, he opened his eyes.
"Now," Malone said. "Isn't that better?"
Boyd closed his eyes again. "No," he said.
"Come on," Malone said. "We've got to be up and moving."
"I'm up," Boyd said. His eyes flickered open. "But I can't move," he
added. "We had quite a time last night."
"We?" Malone said.
"Me, and a couple of girls, and another guy. Just people I met." Boyd
started to stand up and thought better of it. "Just having a good
time, that's, all."
Malone thought of reading his partner a lecture on the Evils of Drink,
and decided against it. Boyd might remember it, and use it against him
sometime. Then he realized what had to be done. He went back into his
own room, dialed for room service, and ordered a couple of pots of
strong black coffee.
By the time a good deal of that was awash in Boyd's intestinal system,
he was almost capable of rational, connected conversation. He filled
himself to the eyebrows with aspirins and other remedies, and actually
succeeded in getting dressed. He seemed quite proud of this feat.
"Okay," Malone said. "Now we have to go downstairs."
"You mean outside?" Boyd said. "Into all that noise?" He winced.
"Bite the bullet," Malone said cheerfully. "Keep a stiff upper lip."
"Nonsense," Boyd said, hunting for his coat with a doleful air. "Have
you ever seen anybody with a loose upper lip?"
Malone, busy with his own coat, didn't bother with a reply. He managed
somehow to get Boyd downstairs and bundled into a cab. They headed for
69th Street. There he made several phone calls. The first, of course,
was to Burris in Washington. After that he got the New York Police
Commissioner on the wire and, finding that he needed still more
authority, he called the mayor and then, by long-distance to Albany,
the governor.
But by noon he had everything straightened out. He had a plan fully
worked out in his mind, and he had the authority to go ahead with it.
Now, he could make his final call.
"They're completely trustworthy," Burris had told him. "Not only that,
but they have a clearance for this kind of special work--we've needed
them before."
"Good," Malone said.
"Not only that," Burris told him. "They're damned good men. Maybe
among the best in their field."
So Malone made his last call, to the firm of Leibowitz and Hardin,
Electronic Engineers.
Then he beckoned to Boyd.
"I don't see what I've been sitting around here for, all this time,"
his partner complained. "I could have been home sleeping until you
needed me."
"I need you now," Malone said. "I want you to take over part of this
plan."
Boyd nodded sourly. "Oh, all right," he said.
"Here's what I want," Malone said. "Every red 1972 Cadillac in the
area is to be picked up for inspection. I don't care why--make up a
reason. A general traffic check. Anything you please. You can work
that end of it out with the commissioner; he knows about it and he's
willing to go along."
"Great," Boyd said. "Do you have any idea how many cars there are in a
city this size?"
"Well, we don't want all of them," Malone said. "Only red 1972
Cadillacs."
"It's still a lot," Boyd said.
"If there were only three," Malone said, "we wouldn't have any
problems."
"And wouldn't that be nice?" Boyd said.
"Sure," Malone said, "but it isn't true. Anyhow, I want every one of
those cars checked for any oddity, no matter how small. If there's an
inch-long scratch on one fender, I want to know about it. If you've
got to take the cars apart, then do that."
"Me?" Boyd said. "All by myself?"
"My God, no," Malone said. "Use your head. There'll be a team working
with you. Let me explain it. Every nut, every bolt, every inch of
those cars has to be examined thoroughly--got it?"
"I've got it," Boyd said, "but I'm damned if I like it. After all,
Malone--"
Malone ignored him. "The governor of New York's promised his
cooperation," he said, "and he said he'd get in touch with the
governors of New Jersey and Connecticut and get cooperation from that
angle. So we'll have both state and local police working with us."
"That's a help," Boyd said. "We'll make such a happy team of workmen.
Singing as we pull the cars apart through the long day and night
and--listen, Malone, when do you want reports on this?"
"Yesterday," Malone said.
Boyd's eyebrows raised, then lowered. "Great," he said dully.
"I don't care how you get the cars," Malone said. "If you've got to,
condemn 'em. But get every last one of them. And bring them over to
Leibowitz and Hardin for a complete checkup. I'll give you the
address."
"Thanks," Boyd said.
"Not at all," Malone said. "Glad to be of help. And don't worry; I'll
have other work to do." He paused, and then went on, "I talked to Dr.
Isaac Leibowitz--he's the head of the firm out there--and he says--"
"Wait a minute," Boyd said. "What?"
"You mean I don't have to take the cars apart myself? You mean this
Leibowitz and Hardin, or whatever it is, will do it for me?"
"Of course," Malone said wearily. "You're not an auto technician or an
electronics man. You're an agent of the FBI."
"I was beginning to wonder," Boyd said. "After all."
"Anyhow," Malone said doggedly, "I talked to Leibowitz, and he says he
can give a car a complete check in about six hours, normally."
"Six hours?" Boyd stared. "That's going to take forever," he said.
"Well, he can set up a kind of assembly-line process and turn out a
car every fifteen minutes. Any better?"
Boyd nodded.
"Good," Malone said. "There can't be so many 1972 red Cadillacs in the
area that we can't get through them all at that speed." He thought a
minute and then added, "By the way, you might check with the Cadillac
dealers around town, and find out just how many have been sold to
people living in the area."
"And while I'm doing all that," Boyd said, "what are you going to be
doing?"
Malone looked at him and sighed. "I'll worry about that," he said.
"Just get started."
"Suppose Leibowitz can't find anything?" Boyd said.
"If Leibowitz can't find it, it's not there," Malone said. "He can
find electronic devices anywhere in any car made, he says--even if
they're printed circuits hidden under the paint job."
"Pretty good," Boyd said. "But suppose he doesn't?"
"Then they aren't there," Malone said, "and we'll have to think of
something else." He considered that. It sounded fine. Only he wished
he knew what else there was to think of.
Well, that was just pessimism. Leibowitz would find something, and the
case would be over, and he could go back to Washington and rest. In
August he was going to have his vacation anyway, and August wasn't
very far away.
Malone put a smile carefully on his face and told Boyd, "Get going."
He slammed his hat on his head.
Wincing, he took it off and replaced it gently. The bottle of pills
was still in his pocket, but he wasn't due for another one just yet.
He had time to go over to the precinct station in the West Eighties
first. He headed outside to get another taxi.
4
The door didn't say anything at all except _Lt. P. Lynch_. Malone
looked at it for a couple of seconds. He'd asked the desk sergeant for
Lynch, shown his credentials and been directed up a set of stairs and
around a hall. But he still didn't know what Lynch did, who he was, or
what his name was doing in the little black notebook.
Well, he told himself, there was only one way to find out.
He opened the door.
The room was small and dark. It had a single desk in it, and three
chairs, and a hatrack. There wasn't any coat or hat on the hatrack,
and there was nobody in the chairs. In a fourth chair, behind the
desk, sat a huskily built man. He had steel-gray hair, a hard jaw and,
Malone noticed with surprise, a faint twinkle in his eye.
"Lieutenant Lynch?" Malone said.
"Right," Lynch said. "What's the trouble?"
"I'm Kenneth J. Malone, FBI." He reached for his wallet and found it.
He flipped it open for Lynch, who stared at it for what seemed a long,
long time, and then burst into laughter.
"What's so funny?" Malone asked. Lynch laughed some more.
"Oh, come on," Malone said bitterly. "After all, there's no reason to
treat an FBI agent like some kind of a--"
"FBI agent?" Lynch said. "Listen, buster, this is the funniest gag
I've seen since I came on the force. Really a hell of a funny thing.
Who told you to pull it? Jablonski downstairs? Or one of the boys on
the beat? I know those beat patrolmen, always on the lookout for a new
joke.. But this tops 'em all. This is the--"
"You're a disgrace to the Irish," Malone said tartly.
"A what?" Lynch said. "I'm not Irish."
"You talk like an Irishman," Malone said.
"I know it," Lynch said, and shrugged. "Around some precincts, you
sort of pick it up. When all the other cops are--hey, listen. How'd we
get to talking about me?"
"I said you were a disgrace to the Irish," Malone said.
"I was a--_what_?"
"Disgrace." Malone looked carefully at Lynch. In a fight, he
considered, he might get in a lucky punch that would kill Malone.
Otherwise, Malone didn't have a thing to worry about except a few
months of hospitalization.
Lynch looked as if he were about to get mad, and then he looked down
at Malone's wallet again and started to laugh.
"For God's sake," Malone said. "What's so damned funny?"
He grabbed the wallet and turned it toward him. At once, of course, he
realized what had happened. He hadn't flipped it open to his badge at
all. He'd flipped it open, instead, to a card in the card case:
KNOW ALL MEN BY THESE PRESENTS THAT
Sir Kenneth Malone, Knight, is hereby formally installed
with the title of
KNIGHT OF THE BATH
and this card shall signify his right to that title
and his high and respected position as officer in and of
THE QUEEN'S OWN FBI