The Hammer of Eden

“Sure.”

“I’ll call you.”

“Okay.”

“May I kiss you good night?”

“Yes.” She grinned. “Yes, please.”

He bent his face to hers. It was a soft, tentative kiss. His lips moved gently against hers, but he did not open his mouth. She kissed him back the same way. Her breasts felt sensitive. Without thinking, she pressed her body against his. He squeezed her briefly, then broke away.

“Good night,” he said.

He watched her get into her car and waved as she drew away from the curb.

She turned a corner and pulled up at a stoplight.

“Wow,” she said.

* * *

On Monday morning Judy was assigned to a team investigating a militant Muslim group at Stanford University. Her first job was to comb computer records of gun licenses, looking for Arab names to check out. She found it hard to concentrate on a relatively harmless bunch of religious fanatics when she knew the Hammer of Eden were planning their next earthquake.

Michael called at five past nine. He said: “How are you, Agent Judy?”

The sound of his voice made her feel happy. “I’m fine, real good.”

“I enjoyed our date.”

She thought of that kiss, and the corners of her mouth twitched in a private smile. I’ll take another of those, anytime. “Me, too.”

“Are you free tomorrow night?”

“I guess.” That sounded too cool. “I mean, yes — unless something happens with this case.”

“Do you know Morton’s?”

“Sure.”

“Let’s meet in the bar at six. Then we can pick a movie together.”

“I’ll be there.”

But that was the only bright spot in her morning. By lunchtime she could no longer contain herself, and she called Bo, but he still had nothing. She called the seismic vibrator manufacturers, who said they had almost completed the list and it would be on her fax machine by the end of the business day. That’s another damn day gone! Now we’ve only got four days to catch these people.

She was too worried to eat. She went to Simon Sparrow’s office. He was wearing a natty English-style shirt, blue with pink stripes. He ignored the unofficial FBI dress code and got away with it, probably because he was so good at his job.

He was talking on the phone and watching the screen of a wave analyzer at the same time. “This may seem like an odd question, Mrs. Gorky, but would you tell me what you can see from your front window?” As he listened to the reply, he watched the spectrum of Mrs. Gorky’s voice, comparing it with a printout he had taped to the side of the monitor. After a few moments he drew a line through a name on a list. “Thank you for your cooperation, Mrs. Gorky. I don’t need to trouble you any further. Good-bye.”

Judy said: “This may seem like an odd question, Mr. Sparrow, but why do you need to know what Mrs. Gorky sees when she looks out the window?”

“I don’t,” Simon said. “That question generally elicits a response of about the length I need to analyze the voice. By the time she’s finished, I know whether she’s the woman I’m looking for.”

“And who’s that?”

“The one who called the John Truth show, of course.” He tapped the ring binder on his desk. “The Bureau, the police, and the radio stations that syndicate the show have so far received a total of one thousand two hundred and twenty-nine calls telling us who she is.”

Judy picked up the file and leafed through it. Could the vital clue be in here somewhere? Simon had got his secretary to collate the tip-off calls. In most cases there was a name, address, and phone number for the tipster and the same for the suspect. In some cases there was a quote from the caller:

I’ve always suspected she had Mob connections.

She’s one of those subversive types. I’m not surprised she’s involved in something like this.

She seems like a regular mom, but it’s her voice — I’d swear on the Bible.

One particularly useless tip gave no name but said:

I know I’ve heard her voice on the radio or something. It was so sexy, I remembered it. But it was a long time ago. Maybe I heard it on a record album.

It was a sexy voice, Judy recalled. She had noticed that at the time. The woman could make a fortune as a telephone salesperson, getting male executives to buy advertising space they did not need.

Simon said: “So far today I’ve eliminated one hundred of them. I think I’m going to need some assistance.”

Judy continued leafing through the file. “I’d help you if I could, but I’ve been warned off the case.”

“Gee, thanks, that sure makes me feel better.”

“Do you hear how it’s going?”

“Marvin’s team are calling everyone on the mailing list of the Green California Campaign. He and Brian just left for Sacramento, but I can’t imagine what they’re going to tell the famous Mr. Honeymoon.”

“It’s not the goddamn Greens, we all know that.”

“He doesn’t have any other ideas, though.”

Judy frowned, looking at the file. She had come across another call that mentioned a record. As before, there was no name for the suspect, but the caller had said:

I’ve heard the voice on an album, I’m darn sure. Something from way back, like the sixties.

Judy asked Simon: “Did you notice that two of the tip-offs mention a record album?”

“They do? I missed that!”

“They think they’ve heard her voice on an old record.”

“Is that right?” Simon was instantly animated. “It must be a speech album — bedtime stories, or Shakespeare, or something. A person’s speaking voice is quite different from their singing voice.”

Raja Khan passed the door and caught her eye. “Oh, Judy, your father called, I thought you were at lunch.”

Suddenly Judy felt breathless. She left Simon without a word and rushed back to her desk. Without sitting down, she picked up the phone and dialed Bo’s number.

He picked up right away. “Lieutenant Maddox here.”

“What have you got?”

“A suspect.”

“Jesus — that’s great!”

“Get this. A seismic vibrator went missing two weeks ago somewhere between Shiloh, Texas, and Clovis, New Mexico. The regular driver disappeared at the same time, and his burned-out car was found at the local dump, containing what appear to be his ashes.”

“He was murdered for his damn truck? These people don’t take prisoners, do they?”

“The prime suspect is one Richard Granger, aged forty-eight. They called him Ricky, and they thought he was Hispanic, but with a name like that he could be a Caucasian with a tan. And — wait for it — he has a record.”

“You’re a genius, Bo!”

“A copy should be coming out of your fax machine about now. He was a big-time hoodlum in L.A. around the late sixties, early seventies, in there. Convictions for assault, burglary, grand theft auto. Questioned about three murders, also drug dealing. But he disappeared from the scene in 1972. The LAPD thought he must have been