The Labyrinth Of Dreams Page 8

  We caught a cab over to an airport motel that was next to a rental-car place. The firm was closed, at close to ten o’clock, for walk-in rentals, but I was in no condition to drive all over a strange town that night, anyway. They had twenty-four hours plus on us; either we knew where they were going or we didn’t, and only a lot of time on the phone would tell that. I checked us in and we went up to the room.

  Brandy flopped down on the bed with a sigh and then started undressing. It really was a hell of a tight girdle; it made impressions in her that looked more like what you’d do in modeling clay than in human skin, and I wasn’t sure if she’d ever be able to get that thing on again. She was quickly my old Brandy again, except for that haircut. She got up and walked into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror, then sighed. “Maybe I should just shave it. It’s gonna take a year before it’s lookin’ decent again.” She came back out and looked at me. I’d gotten out of those lousy clothes and tossed the false moustache in the ashtray. “What do you think?” she asked me.

  “Might make you fit in real well around here,” I responded grumpily.

  “What’s with you? Awww . . . Don’t worry. We’ll buy some black hair dye for you first thing tomorrow.”

  “It’s not that. It’s just . . . Aw, skip it.”

  She seemed more amused than upset, and sat there and started a back and neck massage on me. It’s one of my few real weaknesses, and one I can’t deny. I’d let Norman Bates’s mother massage there, if she was any good at it, and I wouldn’t even check for knives.

  “Yesssss . . . ?”

  “Well, you seem to have had a pretty good time flying out here.”

  She laughed. “Not bad, for my first long plane trip. Oh, you mean the boys! Hell, honey, after all this time I kinda needed that just for my own sake. It’s hard to explain—but I’m here, with you, not shacked up with one of them. I seem to remember that this was the place where coed showers were invented. Want to memorialize the occasion?”

  “Maybe, but they sure weren’t invented here. I think they were probably invented about ten minutes after they invented the shower.”

  Okay, okay, so I should have been down at a pay phone calling around, and I knew it, but there are some things a man needs more at a given time than duty. Besides, I never believed we’d get anywhere with all this, anyway.

  Bright and early the next morning, though, I did make the calls, first finding out the recommended way to get to this nowhere in Oregon, and then being told that Bend was it. After that, you drove or took a local bus. There were more ways to fly to Bend from here than I figured, though—I never knew it was that big a place, although for me anything under a two-million metro is a small town. Still, using standard P.I. phone gimmicks, I had ’em in about two hours in spite of a real officious clerk at one of the airlines. I’d been afraid that they might have used general aviation, which would have been really tricky, but fortunately they took the quick route. In fact, they flew up there only that very morning, about the time I started my calls. I cursed myself for letting lust get ahead of business. If I hadn’t needed cheering up and lots of romantic reassurances, I could have been there at the ticket counter when they showed up.

  The fact is, nobody flies to Bend, Oregon, while on the run, so the million-to-one shot had been right. They were going to visit G.O.D.’s mountain, no question about that. I wondered why they’d delayed in San Francisco, but then it hit me. They needed time to set this up—this was a run, not a planned escape, after all—and maybe they wanted to see San Francisco. At any rate, they wouldn’t risk any calls from Philly to McInerney, simply because it would stand out, and because if Whitlock handled that account it would be monitored by the feds. They’d wait until they were here, with no way in hell to monitor their calls.

  Brandy was watching TV when I got back up to the room—I didn’t want those calls recorded by any motel operator, after all—and she turned and pointed. “Look!” I looked.

  “ . . . This miracle space-age device remembers up to a hundred phone numbers, including area codes, up to thirty-two digits. You just put it to the mouth of any touch-tone phone and press the coded buttons like this!”

  “What?” I managed, but she held up a hand. Soon the Superdialer number card was on the screen, with toll-free number and all the credit cards it took, so you could rush to your phone and buy one for only $39.95 plus $3 shipping and handling.

  “There. Right at the bottom. See?”

  Sure enough, in real tiny print right at the bottom it said, general ordering and development, inc., davenport, iowa. That was the home office.

  I had always meant to ask Brandy about Pet-er-cize, but now I didn’t think I wanted to know.

  “So, what’s the story?” she asked me.

  “The story is that we were within a mile of ’em two hours ago, and they are probably still somewhere in the Bend airport this minute,” I told her. “We sure blew it last night.”

  “You mean I did. But who’d have thought they’d still be around? They sure ain’t movin’ fast for folks with all creation after ’em. I guess we get dressed as we are and grab a bite at the airport, huh?”

  “You know we don’t have to,” I pointed out. “We did the job. We actually completed the commission. All I have to do is call Little Jimmy, and tell him that Whitlock’s in McInerney and has contacts or confederates in this company, and that’s it. That’s all he asked us to do.”

  “You know—you’re right. I hadn’t really thought about it.” She gave a big grin. “So the super-detectives did the job and proved it all! We beat the feds, the mob, everybody!” She paused a moment, thinking. “Still, can you really give it up now? I mean, never know who the hell she was, or what all this was about?”

  I didn’t have to think much about it. “For a percentage of two and a quarter million, most likely ninety percent recoverable by Little Jimmy’s friends; yeah, I could forget about it. It might drive me nuts, but I’d be rich and nuts, which beats poor and knowing any day of the week.”

  “Sheeitt,” she responded. “Let’s call him from the Bend airport. It won’t take much risk to us. I mean, where the hell could they go in a few hours from Nowheres, Oregon? How long you figure it’d take to drive up there from Bend, anyway?”

  “Three hours, maybe. Depends on the roads.”

  “So they’ll just be gettin’ into town when we get to Bend. What they gonna do—run off to Mars in a Handy Dandy Super Flying Saucer, only One Million Dollars from our toll-free-number line, MasterCard and Visa accepted?”

  She had a point, and I had to admit I was not only curious, but also a little mad at myself. The fact was, I’d like to see these bastards, more her than him. Okay, doll, now let’s see why you don’t leave no fingerprints . . .

  There weren’t exactly flights to Bend every hour; in fact, you couldn’t fly there directly at all, but with a change in Portland, as the pair had done, it wasn’t that much of a problem. Once we decided to keep going, though, I couldn’t resist a double check. I placed a call to the airline they were using in Bend and tried to have them paged. It was a long shot, but you figure they might be figuring on getting picked up by somebody with the company, and it wouldn’t be that unnatural. The plane, in fact, had been late getting in, and had only been in for a few minutes, but nobody answered the page and I finally gave up and called the airline people to see if they were still at baggage claim. “A man and a woman who almost look like twins,” I told the baggage office.

  “Oh, yeah, they just left,” said the guy. “Hold on and I’ll see if I can spot ’em.” He kept me hanging for about five minutes, then came back. “Sorry. I think they rented a car at Hertz, though. You might check them.”

  I did and they had, but they were gone now. The best I could get, even with my phony-cop approach, was that they were driving a new Oldsmobile, and she remembered them particularly, not only because they looked so much alike, but because they’d requested a Cadillac. Still, having the make, model, an
d license number wasn’t bad, particularly since I knew damned well where they were going. What was most interesting was that they had rented the car for a week.

  Now, that might not seem like much, but nobody rents a car for a week when they’re only going to need it for a couple of days—unless it’s fantastically cheaper to do so, and it certainly wasn’t—and they particularly wouldn’t if somebody else, say their friend in the company, was going to return it. That certainly implied that they expected to be around the place for a while and needed wheels for the whole period. They were pretty confident, I had to say that, still using the Curry name, which had to be in the federal files by now, and still using a credit card in that name. Given a couple of more days for the bureaucracy and procedures, even Kennedy or Little Jimmy could have tracked them here, at least to Bend. Without that business card, though, they might not figure on McInerney, not unless it was in fact a big Whitlock account.

  I called Little Jimmy from the airport in Bend, while Brandy was filling out the car-rental form. It was four in the afternoon, but I’d almost forgotten the time difference and it was seven back at that phone booth.

  “I got him,” I told the contact. “Ready to deliver.”

  “Call the number I’m gonna give ya,” the punk replied, sounding not at all impressed. “The man said to tell you to call it no matter when you called or why. Do it now.”

  I took down the number, puzzled, and called it, and was very surprised to hear Little Jimmy’s voice on the other end of the line. He listened while I told him everything to date.

  “Well, drop it,” he responded. “Keep the dough, keep the cards until the end of the month if you want, but that’s it.”

  “Uh uh. No welching. We did this for a percentage.”

  “Horowitz—I’m telling you to back off. Let it go. Let him go.”

  “You telling me there never was any money?”

  “The son of a bitch stole every dime I said. He can keep it. There’s no way I want anything more to do with him, ever. Even this distance is too close. If you know what’s good for you, you’ll go back to San Francisco, have a nice vacation, maybe find a job there if you like it. You want some references? You’re good. Damned good. I think I could get both of you a nice position with some solid firm out there.”

  “Listen, Nkrumah, what in hell is this?” I growled. The fact was, Little Jimmy wasn’t sounding like himself at all. He was sounding very, very scared. “The feds nail you?”

  “No, no.” He sighed. “All right, if you must know—I was set up all along. It was a scam. They busted Big Tony Guliano this morning, and at almost the same time they hit almost every cog in the smuggling game through which the merchandise passed. Every one! They have tied me to both Tri-State and Guliano, and I am about to visit the Cayman Islands for a while. Perhaps a long while.”

  “On what?” I asked him, not quite believing all this. If this pair was part of a federal scam, why this crazy scene with the transvestism and the rest of it? I was sure Kennedy hadn’t known about that apartment until I told him. I’d still bet what I had left of Little Jimmy’s money on it. “They stole your poke.”

  “That is none of your affair. My loans are being bought out if I am outside the country by tomorrow night. I still have a future, but not for a little while. Now it is time to take a much overdue vacation. I will make certain your references are on file in the right places, and will send you a list care of the main post office general-delivery window in San Francisco. This is it, Horowitz. I’m sorry, but it is over. I truly am impressed with your work, though. Truly impressed.”

  “Thanks for very little,” I grumbled. This was smelling as bad as Marty Whitlock’s girlfriend. “Don’t write if you set up again.”

  “Horowitz—I want to emphasize only one thing, and then I am gone. Don’t take it upon yourselves to follow them any further, and do not get near that town or that company. You are ignorant of what you are dealing with, as I was. I know more than I wish now, but I want nothing more to do with them. Be smart. Take that lovely lady of yours and enjoy. Forget that couple and that company. If you don’t, you will either be dead or you will pray to God that you die. That is all I will say. None of my numbers will work from now on. Farewell.”

  And, before I could say another word, the weasel hung up on me, leaving me standing there, stunned, with the phone still in my hand.

  Now what the hell was this? There was no way around it but to find Brandy, brief her, and then call Agent Kennedy.

  Brandy was even more intrigued by this than I was. While up to now I had been willing to rest on my laurels, and take the money and run, now there was no more money, only a ton of questions.

  I figured I might have some trouble getting through to Kennedy if all this was going down, but he was right there.

  “Yeah, it’s true, they busted a bunch of them today including Big Tony, but it wasn’t us,” he told me, sounding more than a little irritated at that fact. “Turns out the FBI was running a parallel operation and we almost queered it with this Whitlock business. Seems they found out about him and his kinky double life, and used him to go up and down the chain. A few of the middle fish haven’t been rounded up yet, but the organization’s broken but good. This one, anyway. There’s always ten more to replace it, unfortunately.”

  “What about Little Jimmy Nkrumah? He on the list? He was the guy who hired us—and just fired us.”

  “Huh? Nkrumah? Nope. Don’t see that name here anywhere. You’re sure this guy was involved?”

  “Positive. He was the middleman in the money tree, and it was his money that Whitlock skipped out with.”

  “Hmph! That’s funny. Maybe they’re just leaving him out to dry or something, since they say they traced the money all the way, or maybe they’ve turned him as one of their boys. I don’t know, Horowitz. We’re all one big happy federal family, right? Only we don’t tell each other anything at all. Well, what’s the difference? You did as good as could be expected, so there’s nothing more between us, and you’ve lost a client and our quarry turns out to be the Bureau’s man, so it’s over.”

  “Uh—Kennedy? If it’s over, what’s Whitlock doing in Oregon with a woman who looks enough like him to be him in drag? Who is she, and what the hell are they doing out here leaving his wife and kids hanging.”

  “Who knows? Witness protection, maybe. We got an order to lay off him, and you do, too, if you don’t want to get back in trouble with us again. I admit there’s a lot of funny, unexplained stuff with this, but I don’t know it all; it’s not my case anymore. I got a thousand more in the active file, so that’s it. By next week some rival mob will move in and cover Big Tony’s whole network, and nobody using stuff on the streets will even notice the difference. Just let it go, Horowitz—for your own good.”

  That was almost as unsatisfying as the call to Little Jimmy. All of a sudden everybody from the mob to the DEA was telling me that Whitlock was an untouchable, all the questions were better left unanswered, and all we needed to do to find the land of milk and honey was take the next plane out to anywhere at all but here. It stunk.

  “So what do you want to do?” Brandy asked me.

  “What can we do? I mean, right now our boy’s gone from being the most wanted by everybody to being a total untouchable for all sides. For all we know, he’s up in Hicksburg negotiating a new bank loan.”

  “But you don’t believe that, and neither do I.”

  “No, but Little Jimmy wasn’t scared of the feds; and one good reason was that the feds didn’t know about Little Jimmy. They also think Whitlock passed the whole two and a quarter million down the line as per plan, but we know he skipped, and Little Jimmy did the passing of his own money and wanted Whitlock tracked down without his own boss, Big Tony, knowing he got skimmed. Little Jimmy would rather risk prison than write off almost his whole fortune, so either whatever scared him is worse than prison or somebody covered his losses. Who the hell would spend that kind of bread to buy out and pro
tect a shark like Nkrumah?”

  “Maybe it’s the hand of G.O.D., Inc. Wanna go find out?”

  “No, but I won’t be able to sleep nights ever again if I don’t anyway. Not when we’re only three hours away from the answer. I just hate being my own client, that’s all. The client’s a cheapskate who’ll stiff us.”

  “Maybe, but I’m game. I want to see these whackos, anyway. Move out of the booth. I got to call San Francisco.”

  “Huh? Who do you have to call there?”

  “Overnite Courier. They got a box of mine I got to get forwarded up here somehow.”

  “A box? What? Clothes?”

  “Nope. If these cards are still good, we’ll take care of that next, and in style. But I ain’t goin’ up in those redneck mountains without Daddy’s magnum.”

  “You sent your gun by overnight parcel?”

  She shrugged. “Couldn’t take it on the plane, you know.”

  4

  Shots in the Dark

  I was getting used to this charge-and-never-pay business; I would be sorry to see the gravy train end in a couple of weeks. I wondered just who was now paying the bills that came in. Still, we had something of a wardrobe now, including a couple of suitcases, plus toiletries and the like, and we were both feeling a little more human. Brandy had reverted to her jeans-and-tee-shirt routine for now, although they were new, and some sandals, although she kept that professional-looking wig. She also had even found a couple of other wigs of varying colors and styles, and she’d picked up some better clothes in case the occasion warranted. Me, I’d gotten another off-the-rack suit, although right now I was in jeans and a plaid sport shirt, and I just hadn’t been able to resist a pair of ranch-style boots and a black felt cowboy hat.