LITMIR.BIZ

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      Before I could tell him, the PBX buzzed again. Pushing down the button, I started to say, “I don’t want to be dis–”

      Miss Rains broke in excitedly, “Remember when you came back from the Courts Building yesterday morning and said if a Miss Gloria Townsend got in touch with this office I was to drop whatever I was doing and—”

      “Gloria Townsend!” I shouted.

      Harry Allerup stiffened in his chair as though it were a trial run for the hot seat. Sunshine looked like Sunshine will look when he’s dismayed.

      “On the telephone, Mike,” Miss Rains said.

      I pushed the switch over to one of the outside lines before she could tell me which number. I got a dial tone for my trouble. I pushed the switch again, and this time there was the faint sound of music. Otherwise silence.

      “Macauley,” I said.

      I didn’t recognize her voice over the telephone. She sounded somehow more sure of herself, as though she could do what had to be done as long as she didn’t have to look the world squarely in the eye. “This is Gloria Townsend, Mr. Macauley. I—I did a lot of thinking last night and I—”

      Her voice trailed off and the background music seemed to rise in volume. I shouted, “Are you still there? Where are you?”

      “It’s hot in this phone booth,” Gloria Townsend said. “They ought to have a fan. I want to see you, Mr. Macauley.”

      “Right now,” I said. “Wherever you are. Don’t go away.”

      “I won’t, Mr. Macauley. It’s a roadhouse on Rivershore Drive. The Lagoon. You know the place?”

      “I can find it,” I said. “I’m on my way.”

      I cut the connection and got my Panama and told Sunshine, “She’s in a place called the Lagoon on Rivershore. I’m going out there.”

      “Rivershore is outside our jurisdiction, Mike.”

      “I’m just going to talk to the dame,” I said hotly. “What do I need, a volunteer deputy sheriff’s badge?”

      “Take it easy, Mike.”

      Instead of answering him, I asked Allerup, “Want to come along for the ride?”

      “No thanks, Mike. I’d rather not.”

      “Don’t want to see her, huh?”

      “What’s that supposed to mean?” Allerup demanded, flushing.

      I looked at him. “You tell me, Harry. I’ll listen all the way out to Rivershore.”

      “No. You saw what she thought of me.”

      “What do you care? You’re a cop, aren’t you?”

      “Aw, go to hell,” he said, and stormed out of the office.

      I tried to swap glances with Sunshine, but he wasn’t trading. I went outside and Miss Rains pointed to the door.

      “He went thataway,” she said.

      There wasn’t any other way to go. I said, “I thought maybe he jumped out the window.”

      When I reached the corridor, the elevator doors were already sliding shut. I shrugged and took the steps down the five flights to the basement garage and drew an official black Merc from the City Hall car pool. The dispatcher asked if I wanted a driver, and I said I did not. I felt an urgency tugging at my muscles, constricting my throat and making it dry. I didn’t know why, but I knew I was going to hurry.

      I took City Hall Street to Mark Twain Boulevard, running two traffic lights before I decided to switch on the siren. After that it was smooth sailing out Mark Twain to the Hawkins Creek Bridge and across the Bridge to Rivershore Drive. Suburban housing developments slipped by and a billboard told me what kind of gasoline was best for my car. I looked at the speedometer. I was doing seventy-five and the needle was climbing.

      The suburbs gave way to farmland and more billboards. At a crossroad a state cop in gray uniform kicked over his motorcycle and came after me. I had cut the siren after crossing the Hawkins Creek Bridge, but I switched it back on and the state cop pulled back and out of sight. He didn’t have to; I guess it was professional courtesy.

      I was just congratulating myself on the good time I was making when the left rear tire blew with a sound like a .45 fired in a small room without any windows.

       chapter three

      THE MERC SWERVED WILDLY out of control. I kept my foot on the gas pedal, as they tell you to in the auto-club safety booklets, and began to fight the wheel for my life.

      The Merc went into a long, smooth skid toward the wrong side of the road as a big semi-trailer barrelled up toward it. I threw the wheel in the direction of the skid and we kept on going across Rivershore Drive to the opposite shoulder, where the Merc shuddered and spun in a full circle before it skidded back on the asphalt half a dozen feet behind the semi-trailer, went up on two wheels and almost over on its side, then came down hard with a jolt that probably ruined both the springs and my digestion.

      After that I guided her over to the right-hand shoulder and got out, running around to the back and opening the trunk. In another minute I had the car up on its jack and looked at the damage. There was a hole in the tire Nashua could have run through. The tube was completely gone. I got out the spare and the lug wrench and went to work.

      When I finished I was sweating. The whole thing hadn’t taken fifteen minutes, but it was a hot day, the second really hot one of the summer. Besides, I was still anxious about Gloria Townsend.

      Motorists went by, showing me their dust. The sky was blue and absolutely clear. It would have been a fine day for a dip in the Missouri, along which Rivershore Drive runs.

      I climbed back into the Merc, lighted a cigarette with the dash lighter and wished I’d brought my pipe along after the first acrid puff. When the paper stuck to my fingers wetly, I got rid of the cigarette and pressed the starter button.

      It ground and ground, but the motor didn’t catch. I glanced at the temperature gauge. It was way over in the red. The hot day, the fast drive out here and fifteen minutes of standing under the hot sun had overheated the car.

      I cursed and went around front and lifted the hood. I looked at my wristwatch. Gloria Townsend had called me over forty minutes ago. I wondered if she would still be waiting, then went back behind the wheel and tried the starter button once more. No soap.

      I went out on the road and lifted my thumb. The motorists showed me more dust. Lots more dust. The official shield was on the wrong side of the Merc. I glared at the sun, and it glared back down at me. I was strictly an amateur. I got back inside the car and waited.

      Ten minutes dragged by, showing their rear ends reluctantly, or maybe provocatively, like can-can dancers, before I was able to kick the overheated engine over. My rear tires threw gravel like a dog pawing dirt as I spun the car back on the asphalt and pushed the gas pedal to the floorboards.

      A motor court flashed by on the left, and an army of billboards on the right. There was a drive-in theater and then two roadhouses, each with a handful of cars parked outside. It was mid-morning, after the breakfast rush and before the early lunchers would arrive. The two roadhouses looked lonely.

      The third one did not. The third one, coming up swiftly on my left, was the Lagoon.

      A dozen or more cars were in the small parking lot as I swung across the road. Two of them were blue Fords with the county sheriff’s shield on them. A sheriff’s deputy trying to look tough under his low-crowned Stetson, but managing only to look nasty, kept a growing mob of people away from the Lagoon’s double door.

      I hit the gravel of the parking lot on the run and elbowed my way into the crowd. “What’s going on?” I asked the deputy.

      “Nothing

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