It may be best to keep an open mind, but I have found in practice that
you have to have some kind of working theory which you must proceed to
prove is either right or wrong.
Tentatively, I decided that for generations the citizens of
Granite City had been in an organized conspiracy to defraud
Manhattan-Universal and its predecessors of hundreds upon hundreds of
thousands of dollars in false accident claims.
Maybe they made their whole livelihood off us before the quarry opened
up.
I used my pocket innercom and had my secretary get me a plane
reservation and a gun.
After so many profitable decades, Granite City wasn't going to take
kindly to my spoil-sport interference.
* * * * *
The Absinthe Flight to Springfield was jolly and relatively fast.
Despite headwinds we managed Mach 1.6 most of the way. My particular
stewardess was a blonde, majoring in Video Psychotherapy in her night
courses. I didn't have much time to get acquainted or more than hear
the outline of her thesis on the guilt purgings effected by The Life
and Legend of Gary Cooper. The paunchy businessman in the next lounge
was already nibbling the ear of his red-haired hostess. He was the
type of razorback who took the girls for granted and aimed to get his
money's worth. I gave Helen, the blonde, a kiss on the cheek and began
flipping through the facsimiles in my briefcase as we chute-braked for
a landing at the Greater Ozarks.
It took me a full five minutes to find out that I couldn't take a
copter to Granite City. Something about downdrafts in the mountains.
Since that put me back in the days of horsepower, I trotted over to the
automobile rental and hired a few hundred of them under the hood of a
Rolls. That was about the only brand of car that fit me. I hadn't been
able to get my legs into any other foreign car since I was fifteen,
and I have steadfastly refused to enter an American model since they
all sold out their birthrights as passenger cars and went over to the
tractor-trailer combinations they used only for cargo trucks when I was
a boy. Dragging around thirty feet of car is sheer nonsense, even for
prestige.
It was a tiresome fifty-mile drive, on manual all the way after I left
the radar-channel area of the city. Up and down, slowing for curves,
flipping into second for the hills.
The whole trip hardly seemed worth it when I saw the cluster of
painted frame buildings that was Granite City. They looked like a
tumble of dingy building blocks tossed in front of a rolled-up indigo
sports shirt. That was Granite Mountain in the near foreground. But I
remembered that over the course of some forty years the people in these
few little stacks of lumber had taken Manhattan-Universal for three
quarters of a megabuck.
I turned off onto the gravel road, spraying my fenders with a hail of
a racket. Then I stepped down hard on my brakes, bracing myself to keep
from going through the windscreen. I had almost sideswiped an old man
sitting at the side of the road, huddled in his dusty rags.
"Are you okay?" I yelled, thumbing down the window.
"I've suffered no harm at your hands--or your wheels, sir. But I could
use some help," the old man said. "Could I trouble you for a lift when
you leave town?"
I wasn't too sure about that. Most of these guys who are on the hobo
circuit talking like they owned some letters to their names besides
their initials belonged to some cult or other. I try to be as tolerant
as I can, and some of my best friends are thugs, but I don't want to
drive with them down lonely mountain roads.
"We'll see what we can work out," I said. "Right now can you tell me
where I can find Marshal Thompson?"
"I can," he said. "But you will have to walk there."
"Okay. It shouldn't be much of a walk in Granite City."
"It's the house at the end of the street."
"It is," I said. "Why shouldn't I drive up there? The street's open."
The old man stared at me with red-shot eyes. "Marshal Thompson doesn't
like people to run automobiles on the streets of Granite City."
"So I'll just _lock_ the car up and walk over there. I couldn't go
getting tire tracks all over your clean streets."
The old man watched as I climbed down and locked up the Rolls.
"You would probably get killed if you did run the car here, you know,"
he said conversationally.
"Well," I said, "I'll be getting along." I tried to walk sideways so I
could keep an eye on him.
"Come back," he said, as if he had doubts.
* * * * *
The signs of a menacing conspiracy were growing stronger, I felt. I
had my automatic inside my shirt, but I decided I might need a less
lethal means of expression. Without breaking stride, I scooped up a
baseball-size hunk of bluish rock from the road and slipped it into my
small change pocket.