Jacoby said: 'The home number on the card belongs to a cleaning woman named Howlanda Moore.'
McEachern flicked him another fast glance.
'Black, from the sound, delta Mississippi at a guess. Kids yelling and fighting in the background. She didn't quite say I'se gwine whup you if you don't quit!, but it was close. She's had the number three years. I re-dialed twice.
'Jesus,' McEachern, said. 'Try the office number?'
'Yeah,' Jacoby replied. 'Got a recording. You think ConTel's a good buy, Loot?'
McEachern flicked his gray eyes in Jacoby's direction again.
'The number on the front of the card is that of a fairly large stock brokerage,' Jacoby said quietly. 'I looked under lawyers in the Yellow Pages. Found no Albert K. Dellums. Closest is an Albert Dillon, no middle initial. No law firm like the one on the card.'
'Jesus please us,' McEachern said, and then the door banged open and a little man with the face of a monkey barged in. The mayor had apparently won the race to Burbank.
'What's going on here?' he said to McEachern.
''I don't know,' McEachern said.
'All right,' Paladin said wearily. 'Let's talk about it. I feel, Detective Cheyney, like a man who had just spent two hours or so on some disorienting amusement park ride. Or like someone slipped some LSD into my drink. Since we're not on the record, what was your one interrogatory? Let's start with that.'
'All right,' Cheyney said. 'How did you get into the broadcast complex, and how did you get into Studio C?'
'Those are two questions.'
'I apologize.'
Paladin smiled faintly.
'I got on the property and into the studio,' he said, 'the same way I've been getting on the property and into the studio for over twenty years. My pass. Plus the fact that I know every security guard in the place. Shit, I've been there longer than most of them.'
'May I see that pass?' Cheyney asked. His voice was quiet, but a large pulse beat in his throat.
Paladin looked at him warily for a moment, then pulled out the lizard-skin wallet again. After a moment of rifling, he tossed a perfectly correct NBC Performer's Pass onto the coffee table.
Correct, that was, in every way but one.
Cheyney crushed out his smoke, picked it up, and looked at it. The pass was laminated. In the corner was the NBC peacock, something only long-timers had on their cards. The face in the photo was the face of Edward Paladin. Height and weight were correct. No space for eye-color, hair-color, or age, of course; when you were dealing with ego. Walk softly, stranger, for here there be tygers.
The only problem with the pass was that it was salmon pink.
NBC Performer's Passes were bright red.
Cheyney had seen something else while Paladin was looking for his pass. 'Could you put a one-dollar bill from your wallet on the coffee table there?' he asked softly.
'Why?'
'I'll show you in a moment,' Cheyney said. 'A five or a ten would do as well.'
Paladin studied him, then opened his wallet again. He took back his pass, replaced it, and carefully took out a one-dollar bill. He turned it so it faced Cheyney. Cheyney took his own wallet (a scuffed old Lord Buxton with its seams unravelling; he should replace it but found it easier to think of than to do) from his jacket pocket, and removed a dollar bill of his own. He put it next to Paladin's, and then turned them both around so Paladin could see them right-side-up-so Paladin could study them.
Which Paladin did, silently, for almost a full minute. His face slowly flushed dark red ... and then the color slipped from it a little at a time. He'd probably meant to bellow WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON HERE? Cheyney thought later, but what came out was a breathless little gasp: -what-'
'I don't know,' Cheyney said.
On the right was Cheyney's one, gray-green, not brand-new by any means, but new enough so that it did not yet have that rumpled, limp, shopworn look of a bill which has changed hands many times. Big number 1's at the top corners, smaller 1's at the bottom corners. FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE in small caps between the top 1's and THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA in larger ones. The letter A in a seal to the left of Washington, along with the assurance that THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER, FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE. It was a series 1985 bill, the signature that of James A. Baker III.
Paladin's one was not the same at all.
The 1's in the four corners were the same; THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA was the same; the assurance that the bill could be used to pay all public and private debts was the same.
But Paladin's one was a bright blue.
Instead of FEDERAL RESERVE NOTE it said CURRENCY OF GOVERNMENT.
Instead of the letter A was the letter F.
But most of all it was the picture of the man on the bill that drew Cheyney's attention, just as the picture of the man on Cheyney's bill drew Paladin's.
Cheyney's gray-green one showed George Washington.
