to Mike Mulligan's booth.
'Mind if I join you?' he said in a voice he hoped was suitably drunken.
'Yes, I would,' Mulligan said. 'I prefer to enjoy my drink alone.'
'What're you, a goddamn hermit or something?' Harker said boozily. 'Wassamatter, I'm not good enough for you?'
'Please,' Mulligan said, staring straight ahead. 'I just want to be left alone. All right?'
'Well, screw you, buster,' Harker said in a loud voice. 'I could buy and sell you any day of the week.'
Now the bar had quieted, and all the customers were looking in their direction.
'I have to go now,' Mulligan said, and tried to get out of the booth. But Harker blocked his way.
'I don't like your looks,' he said. 'You look like a real wimp to me.'
The barmaid was heading toward the booth, hefting
an aluminum baseball bat. But Henry Ullman got there first. He put a meaty hand on Tony's shoulder, spun him around.
'Okay, buddy,' he said, facing Harker toward the door. 'Out!'
'What?' Tony said, wavering on his feet. 'Who're you to-'
'You heard what I said. Out!'
Tony hesitated, then looked up at the big man. 'Lis-sen,' he said. 'I was only-'
Ullman pushed him toward the door. 'On your way,' he said. 'Go sober up.'
Harker stumbled toward the street, mumbling to himself, not looking at the people he passed. The joint didn't relax until he was gone.
'Thank you, sir,' Mike Mulligan said to Ullman. 'What a nasty fellow that was.'
'He's drunk,' Hank said. 'But there's no excuse for acting like that.'
'You're absolutely right,' Mulligan said, 'and I appreciate your assistance. May I buy you a drink?'
'Only if you let me buy the next round.'
'Why not?' said Mike Mulligan.
19
The best thing about this job, Roger Fortescue decided, was that his boss, Tony Harker, was letting him run free. None of this 'Call me every hour on the hour' bullshit. Harker seemed to feel Roger was capable of figuring out what had to be done and then doing it. The investigator appreciated that. Maybe he moved slowly, but sooner or later he got there.
The worst thing about the job was that Estelle kept busting his balls about the hours he was keeping.
'I never know when you're coming home for dinner,' she complained. 'Or if you're coming home at all.'
'It's my job, hon,' he explained patiently. 'It's what puts bacon on the table.'
He looked up Frank Little's home address. It was way out in the boondocks, in Parkland north of Sample Road. Roger drove by slowly, but when he saw a sign on the fence, unleashed pit bulls, he decided not to stop. It was flatland with no cover or concealment, and Fortescue knew a stakeout would be impossible.
Little's home was really a ranch with a separate garage, outbuildings, and what looked big enough to be a three-horse stable. Roger figured the spread for maybe five acres. There was a guy on a sitdown power mower working one of the fields, and another guy with a long-handled net fishing dead palm fronds from the surface of a big swimming pool.
'Two million,' Fortescue said aloud. 'Sheet, three million!'
He drove back to Copans Road and cruised by the FL Sports Equipment layout. No activity. Just a car parked outside the office. And what a yacht that was! A 1959 white Cadillac convertible that appeared to be in mint condition. That grille! Those tailfins! Roger's Volvo seemed like a pushcart.
He noted again the boarded-up fast-food joint next to Little's place. That would be it, he suddenly decided; his home away from home.
He was right on time for dinner that night, bringing a five-pound boneless pork loin as a peace offering to Estelle. They put the pork in the fridge for the next day because she had already baked up a mess of chicken wings with hot barbecue sauce. They had that with home fries and pole beans. Beer for the adults, Cokes for the kids.
After dinner, Roger went upstairs, kicked off his loafers, and crashed for almost two hours, sleeping as if he had been sandbagged. Then he rose, changed to dungarees, checked his armament, and began assembling his Breaking amp; Entering kit: small crowbar, set of lockpicks, penlight, bull's-eye lantern, a shot-filled leather sap, binoculars, small transistor radio, and a cold six-pack of beer.
At about nine p.m. he drove back to Copans Road, past FL Sports Equipment, looking for a place to park. He finally located a likely spot, alongside a darkened garage that did muffler and shock replacements. He loaded up with his gear and trudged back to the deserted fast-food joint.
Traffic on the road was light, but he tried to stick to the shadows during his amble. In the rear of the derelict restaurant he found a weather-beaten door secured with a rusty hasp and cheap padlock. He could easily have wrenched it away with his crowbar but didn't want to leave evidence of an illegal entry. So he spent five minutes picking the lock, holding the penlight between his teeth. Then he pushed the creaking door open.
It was unexpectedly warm inside, and smelly. He heard the rustle of wildlife which he hoped was just rats and not snakes. He made a lantern-lighted tour through what had been the dining area, kitchen, lavatory, and a small chamber that had probably served as an office.
It was this last room he selected for his stakeout because it had a boarded-up window facing FL Sports Equipment, Inc. Prying two of the boards farther apart gave him a good view of the blockhouse, driveway, and warehouse. He dragged a rickety crate in from the kitchen to use as a chair, turned on his radio with the volume low, and popped a beer. Then he settled down to wait.
He was still waiting at four in the morning, peering out the window every few minutes and walking up and down occasionally to stay awake. The beer was finished, and his favorite radio station had gone off the air. He packed it in then, and lugged all his gear back to the Volvo. He left the padlock in the hasp, seemingly closed but actually open. He drove home, and when he went up to the bedroom, Estelle roused and said sleepily, 'When do you want to get up?'
'Never,' he answered, undressed, and rolled into bed.
But he was back at his hideout the following night, and for three more nights after that. Estelle stopped complaining about his crazy hours, and his sons seemed to like the idea of Daddy being home during the day.
By the time he decided to end his vigil, he had compiled four pages of notes on ruled paper he swiped from one of the kids' notebooks. He read over his jottings on what he had observed and tried to make some sense out of it all.
1. Deliveries were made to FL Sports Equipment, usually well before midnight, by trucks and vans with familiar names lettered on the sides. They were carriers working out of Port Everglades and the Fort Lauder-dale- Hollywood Airport.
2. These deliveries were packed in wooden crates, some secured with steel bands. The boxes were long enough to hold smuggled AK-47s or other weapons, Roger reckoned, but he doubted if they did; each crate was handled easily by two men.
3. Pickups were made after midnight by an assortment of trucks, flatbeds, and vans, all with out-of-state license plates. Most of them were unmarked, although once the big Siena Moving amp; Storage semi showed up.
4. The pickups were cardboard cartons, and there was little doubt what they contained; one of them broke open and white baseballs went rolling all over the place. The loaders carefully collected every ball, and Frank Little, standing nearby with his clipboard, seemed to be verifying the count.
Fortescue, reading over his notes, concluded that for some reason the big wooden crates of baseballs were unpacked in the warehouse and their contents repacked into the smaller cardboard cartons.
One thing he couldn't understand was why the pickups, presumably by those wholesalers Frank Little had mentioned, were always made at godawful hours like two, three, and four o'clock in the morning. And why weren't
