I dug through my dirty clothes, and in the pocket of the shirt I’d worn that first day, I found the scrap of paper I had used to jot down his license number.
I called Denver.
A sleepy voice answered the phone. “ ‘Lo?”
“Neal?”
“Yeah…who’s this?”
“Cliff Janeway.”
“Cliff…Jesus, what time is it?”
I looked at my watch. It was exactly 11:18. My plane for Albuquerque was taking off even as we spoke.
“It’s after midnight back there. Listen, I’m sorry, I know how hard you sleep. But I’m lost in Seattle and I need one helluva big favor from an old pal.”
I heard him stirring on the bed thirteen hundred miles away. His wife asked who it was and he told her. She gave a long-suffering sigh and I told him to give her my regrets.
“Lemme move to the other phone,” he said.
I waited, hoping that loyalty between old partners was still alive and well in Denver.
“Yeah, Cliff?…What the hell’s goin‘ on?”
“I need a big one, Neal.” I slipped into the lie with a little dig from my conscience. Hennessey was too straitlaced to hear the truth, and I’d make sure that none of it ever came back to bite him. “I’m supposed to meet a guy and we missed each other in the night. All I’ve got is his plate number and I need an address.”
There was silence on the line.
“This is important, Neal…I can’t tell you how badly I need this. I thought there might be something on NCIC… you could tap into that in twenty seconds.”
“You got reason to suspect the guy’s car is hot?”
“No, but those goddamn computers tell you everything. If the guy’s even been late paying his traffic tickets…”
“Cliff,” Hennessey said in that measured tone I knew so well, “sometimes you’re a hard guy to be friends with.”
“I’ll be singing your praises with my dying breath.”
“Dammit, this information is not intended for this kind of use.”
We both knew that. As always, I waited him out.
“I’ll make a call, but I’m promising you nothing.
Call me back in half an hour, forty minutes.”
I knew it wouldn’t take that long: Hennessey would have the information almost instantly, such was the power of a cop in the age of computers. He would get the dope through the DPD dispatcher, who would tap into the national system, and then he’d brood for half an hour before he decided to let me have it.
Meanwhile, I had some time on my hands.
I was walking again, on through the rain into the night. I needed wheels, so I went to the gas station where Rigby had had Eleanor’s car towed. It was still there, in a fenced yard behind the rest rooms. I told the attendant I was her brother and they had sent me over to fetch it for her. He didn’t worry much: we weren’t exactly dealing with a Lexus here, and he was anxious to get it off his lot. “I rustled up four pretty fair used tires with another eight, ten thousand in ‘em. Tab comes to eighty-six dollars and ten cents. You wanna pay that now?”
I said sure: I was well past the point of brooding over money, so I handed him my sagging MasterCard. “She’s all yours,” he said, slotting my card through his machine. “Keys’re over the visor.” I went back to the yard and opened the car door. It squeaked on rusty hinges. The seats had worn through, the windshield was cracked and a cold draft wafted up from below. The odometer was playing it for laughs—it showed 34,512, which could only be serious if the meter was on its third trip around. I opened the glove compartment. A small light came on, a pleasant surprise. I saw some papers—registration, proof of insurance, and a sheath of notes that looked to be tables of current book valuations, handwritten on ledger paper in ink. They were all Grayson Press books.
There were separate pages for each title. They were fully described, with many variants noted, with prices and the names of dealers who had sold them. These had been taken from
