“Your math’s good enough. Want to know who bought those one million shares?”
“That’s childish. I don’t enjoy riddles. Get on with it.”
“It’s one riddle I haven’t found the answer to. You can follow those purchases just so far, and then a door slams in your face. Canadian front men. So-called mutual funds that turn out to be nothing more than dummies for unspecified stockholders. Anonymous numbered Swiss bank accounts. Corporations in Liechtenstein that won’t divulge the names of their officers and principal stockholders. I’ve traced a quarter of a million dollars’ worth to a call girl and another quarter of a million to a gangster. The other day you wanted to know if I had anything more than a hunch. Well?”
Quint grunted. He leaned on the leather arm of the chair and dipped his finger into the abalone-shell ashtray to stir candy wrappers as if they were tea leaves in which he expected to find an oracular message. Presently he looked up. “You are not making me a very happy man. I was looking forward to a quiet, untroubled weekend in the country.”
“A thousand pardons if I’ve disturbed your royal slumbers.”
“Oh, shut up, Russ.”
Hastings grinned at him.
The fat man stirred and made a face. “You haven’t finished, have you?”
“No. There are more curious coincidences. Herb Capps, the NCI floor specialist at the Big Board. That’s number one. He promised me a list of buyers, but somehow he’s managed to delay it from day to day, and I still haven’t seen it. Is that coincidence? My secretary’s trying to find out right now. Number two, Elliot Judd. I tried to reach him in Arizona. I intended to make it a personal call, just sound him out, see if he had anything on his mind. It would help to know if he’s got suspicions of his own.”
“Has he?”
“I didn’t get a chance to find out. It seems he’s not taking phone calls.”
“That’s hardly surprising. Does J. Paul Getty answer his phone every time it rings?”
“Judd and I are pretty close. He’d be happy to talk to me-unless he had a specific reason not to.”
“Are you suggesting he knows something he’d rather not have us know?”
“It could be. Or it could be he isn’t well enough to come to the phone. You see what that could lead to, don’t you?”
Quint scowled at him. He was about to make a remark, but his interphone announced a call for Hastings; Quint handed him the phone and Miss Sprague said in Hastings’ ear, “About Mr. Capps’s secretary, she’s been out of the office since Tuesday. One of the girls in the adjoining office overheard Mr. Capps calling a florist to send flowers to her at home. She’s expected back at work Monday or Tuesday.”
“Thank you,” he said.
“Not at all.”
He had to get up to cradle the phone; he stayed on his feet, restless and irritable. “The NCI floor specialist appears to be ruled out for now, but I’m not scratching anybody off the list just yet. I wouldn’t be surprised to find all kinds of people in this right up to their hairlines.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s big.”
“Granted. But we still need to know whether Elliot Judd has an active part in it. Without that piece of information, we’ve got nothing.”
“I know.” Hastings put his hand on the back of the chair he had vacated and squeezed it until the knuckles whitened. “I want to fly out there.”
“To Arizona?”
“Yes.”
“If he won’t come to the telephone, what makes you think he’ll see you?”
“It would be awkward for him if he didn’t-it would tell me something. Assume he’s doing something illegal- would he risk confirming my suspicions by turning me away?”
“And you honestly think if he’s concealing something you’ll be able to sniff it out just by seeing him?”
“That’s possible, isn’t it?”
“It’s also possible you’ll put him on the alert and make it ten times as difficult for us to catch him.”
“I think we have to take that chance,” Hastings said.
“Why?”
“Because I don’t really believe he’s got anything to do with it. And if that’s true, he’s got to be warned. Right now. You see that, don’t you?”
Quint hesitated. Finally he said, “When do you plan going?”
Hastings moved his grip from the chair, “The first flight I can get tomorrow morning.”
“Very well,” Quint said.
17. Carol McCloud
Carol McCloud had two telephones, both in the living room of the suite. One was her listed number; the bell was disconnected, she never knew if it was ringing. An answering service took her calls on that line.
The unlisted telephone rang. She was lounging on the divan with a book; in her occupation, with most of the day to herself, she had a good deal of time for reading.
“Hello?”
“Carol?”
A man’s voice, calling her by her first name. She had the brief wild thought that there was only such a tiny handful of people in the whole world who would think of her when they spoke the name “Carol.”
She said, “Hello, Mason,” absenting all feeling from her tone.
“Have you got a date tonight?”
“How delicately you put it,” she said. “It’s Friday. What do you think?”
“Break it.”
“My clients don’t like that sort of thing.”
“Break it,” he said again. “Find somebody else to take your place.”
“If I could be replaced that easily at the last minute,” she said, “I wouldn’t be in my tax bracket.”
He laughed. Over the phone it was a hard, metallic sound. He said, “That’s my own line you’re using against me. Do you think that’s fair?”
“Since when have you ever worried about whether anything was fair?”
“Break your date,” he said. “I’ll be there at seven.”
Click.
She put the receiver down slowly and glanced at the Seth Thomas clock on the mantel-ten past five.
She had to make nine phone calls before she was able to find a suitable girl to cover for her. Afterward she went around the apartment doing meaningless busy things-adjusting ashtrays, moving a chair six inches, fiddling with air-conditioners. She was too angry to go back to her book.
In the bathroom mirror she inspected the fresh bruise on her right cheek and applied a new coat of makeup to cover it; the bruise had come on top of an old one that hadn’t quite healed, and her cheek stung with throbbing agony.
An East Side hotel manager had called yesterday-he had four tycoons from the Coast looking to have a party. She had rounded up three girls and shepherded them to the appointed suite. The four tycoons were in real estate, and there was an hour’s bragging about the millions they had made from Southern California land, after which they began to complain that the hotel manager had made them shell out the price of a small aircraft carrier and you girls God damn better be worth it.
The girls gave the johns a full-scale stag act. Three of the tycoons were high enough to loosen up and enjoy it. The fourth was beyond that stage into drunken surliness. He babbled something about his wife, something about Good Christian Women, something about Sin and Communists, and he belted her across the face. She laid his face open with her fingernails and kneed him in the groin and left him to his three companions, who shut him up.
