The By-Pass Control

Chapter 7

The police bought an easy story. On three occasions in the past few months attempts had been made to burglarize Claude Boster’s premises after a news story about his exploits had been published in a technical magazine. Now it was supposed that whoever was after his material was taking more drastic measures. The slugs they recovered were .38’s and were to be sent to Washington for a ballistic check, and a uniformed police officer was assigned to cover Boster until they had the situation cleared up. I was simply a visiting friend caught in the middle and Boster went along with it, suddenly aware of the implications.

When they left I got back in the car, made no attempt to try anything fancy and deliberately left myself open for a tail. If those shots were meant for me the killer knew damn well he missed and would be making another try. I just wanted to make it easy for him.

Eau Gallie wasn’t that big to hide in. But it wasn’t that big to lay on a tail that couldn’t be spotted, either. If those slugs were meant for Boster, nobody was interested in me. If they had my name on them, then the assassin was waiting for another time and another place.

I wanted to be sure, so I made my call to Newark Control from a well lit booth adjoining a service station. I parked the car to cover me from the dark area behind the building, so if anybody took me on it would have to be where I could see them and the .45 in my hand was ready to talk.

Virgil Adams taped our conversation completely, then told me he was sending Dave Elroy down by Martin Grady’s orders to back me up. Dave was to register at an assigned motel and to stay on tap for any emergency.

“It isn’t necessary,” I told him. “I can handle it alone. Too many of our people around might cause trouble. Dave was on that narcotics bit in Hong Kong and the Soviets know him by sight.”

“Just the same,” Virgil said, “Grady wants you covered.”

“So let him come then. Anything new on Niger Hoppes from London?”

“A curious bit of ID material, not that it will do much good. Johnson has been picking up bits and pieces about the guy and the latest is that he’s a sniffer.”

“A what?”

“Those nose inhalers to clear up the sinuses. Benzedrine compounds. Excitement clogs him up so he sniffs the stuff.”

“Great, old buddy. So what do I do — check every drugstore and supermarket in the States to see who buys them? You know how many they sell every day?”

“I already checked,” he laughed back. “About fifty thousand.”

“Thanks,” I said sarcastically.

“No trouble,” he told me and hung up.

When I stepped outside I lit a cigarette, deliberately making a target of myself, but ready to move if anything showed. Aside from a few cars heading in either direction and two couples going by hand-in-hand the area was empty. The shift workers from Cape Kennedy had already made their swing and it wasn’t the season for the biannual north-south flow of traffic. I took my time about getting in the car, then started up, cut out into the street and found an open diner where I grabbed a coffee while watching the windows, and when I was certain nobody was tailing me, I paid the bill and angled back to the motel.

I parked in front of the office, went in and hit the bell on the desk. The same man who had rented me my room said, “Yes, sir, what can I do for you?”

“I’d like a room, please.”

“But...”

“No, I’ll keep the other one... I want a different one.”

“Oh, I see... you’re expecting company?”

“Not exactly. I may want to use it for a conference room later and I don’t want one all cluttered up with my personal gear.”

“Yes, yes, of course,” he agreed quickly. “We don’t usually get the salesmen trade here and I almost forgot their habits.” He swung the card holder around to me. “Mind signing?”

I registered in the way I did before and paid for a day in advance. When I stuck the pen back I said, “Put any calls through to my own room, but if anybody asks where I’m staying, give them this number. I’ll leave my car parked outside it, okay?”

“Certainly, sir. Glad to be of service.”

“Fine. Good night.”

“Good night, sir.”

I put the car in the driveway beside the room, went in, kept the lights on about five minutes, cut them off, then eased back into the night and followed the shadows down to my original room, went in and undressed in the dark and lay back on the bed with the .45 beside my hand.

The shooters were everywhere and it was no coincidence. I went over every detail of leaving New York and convinced myself there had been no leak in security. No one but our own group had known of my leaving and no one but me knew where I was staying. Ergo... whoever shot into the door at Claude Boster’s shop was hoping to get him. But why? What did he know? Or what did they think he knew? Could it have been a warning? I took a drag on the butt, then snubbed it out in the tray on the nightstand beside the bed.

In this case you had to go on suppositions. Louis Agrounsky’s whereabouts weren’t known to the Soviets... yet. They were processing it from all angles too. His incredible defection from principles had started right here and they, like us, were working it from both ends.

My eyes started to close and I was staring blankly at the darkened wall across the room through narrow slits. Then suddenly my eyes were wide open again and I said “Damn!” softly and shook my head at my own stupidity.

How would anyone know of Agrounsky’s by-pass control?

Either he told them or they worked on it with him. Or... they could have suspected what he was up to and investigated his research enough to justify their suspicions. It was no secret that all our top priority projects were saturated with enemy agents skilled in the art of putting money to work. We used the device all the time ourselves. You could always find a price for almost anything. There was a probability that Boster or Vincent Small could unknowingly have leaked a little information on Agrounsky’s activities to someone concerned who smelled the possibility and passed it on. Damn again!

I went to sleep trying to sort the mess out in my mind, but it was still a mess when I awoke at seven, showered, dressed and went back outside to check my other room.

Nothing had been touched. The strand of fine wire I had left in the door was still in position. I shrugged, figuring I went to a lot of trouble for nothing, then unlocked the car and got in.

It’s all so automatic. You handle the everyday things until they become commonplace and you never give them a thought. You pick up a knife or fork with an unconscious gesture, flush a toilet without thinking beforehand... and those are the things they kill you with.

As I went to put the key in the ignition I remembered Caswell getting his in Trenton for not checking, and feeling a little foolish, got out and lifted the hood on the car. And I was lucky. I had gotten sloppy in my habits, but luck was there for one of the few times, nudging me with its tiny golden fingers, and made me look.

The package was a small one, but big enough to disintegrate the car and its occupants into a fine spray of metal and flesh the second the key was turned on, a taped grouping of six inch dynamite sticks artfully hidden under the transmission housing where a cursory inspection would miss them. But I saw the lead wires, followed them and cut the charge loose.

Cute, you bastards, you did a neat job. But why? Somebody was a lot more clever than I thought. Nobody tailed me so there had to be only one other way and it didn’t take me longer than five minutes to find it. The tiny oscillator that could transmit a homing signal was fastened under the gas tank and whoever wanted me could take his time until I was where I was at, feeling perfectly safe, then move in and booby trap my car.

Now the next question. Was it a double precaution? If they wanted to knock off Boster they had to take a chance on a miss. But anyone interested in Boster, they’d be interested in too, and no matter who he was, they’d want him out of the way. So... who was the primary target?

I grinned a little, knowing that someplace an ear was glued to a receiver listening to the hum the oscillator was giving off, realizing that the second it stopped it meant the dynamite charge had done its work. I dropped the gimmick on the ground where it stayed activated, sending out its signal, and backed the car out of the drive, then turned and headed toward Dr. George Carlson’s clinic a mile away.

The building was a one story affair, sprawled out like a T, of white brick with a red ceramic tile roof. The receptionist at the desk was a young girl with a tired smile who was just finishing stamping a pile of papers when I walked in.

“Yes?”

“Dr. Carlson, please.”

“Are you a patient?”

“No, this is personal business. I’m not a salesman either.”

“May I have your name?”

“Mann. I’m from New York. Am I interrupting anything?”

“No, I’m sure the doctor can see you.” She smiled, dialed the phone and made a call that came over an intercom system from the closed doors behind her. There was a moment’s conversation before she put the phone back and said, “Dr. Carlson will be right here.”

“Thanks.”

Dr. George Carlson was a tall, slim man in his early thirties, dressed in typical hospital garb, his eyes reflecting the things all doctors have seen and hope to achieve. He came through the doors, nodded to me and pointed to a door on my left marked Private.

Inside, he sat behind his desk and wiped his face with his hands in a tired gesture and said, “Long night. Two emergencies. Damn speeders.” He looked up at me and leaned forward on his elbows, hands clasped together. “Now...”

“Doctor,” I said, “I’m going to omit details unless you want them just to save time. I’m looking for Louis Agrounsky, who was formerly employed at the space project...”

“I know him,” he interrupted.

“He’s disappeared. It’s imperative that he be found.”

Carlson made a wry face. “He was a patient of mine. That’s all I can offer.”

“Then let’s put it this way. You can forget the doctor-patient relationship.”

“No I can’t, Mr. Mann.”

“Then check on me.” I gave him the same details I did Claude Boster and waited while he did the same thing and watched him while he hung up and nodded slowly.

“All right,” he told me. “Shoot.”

“First... his accident.”

“Nothing serious... for most people, that is. The normal recovery period would have been much shorter, but with Agrounsky it was different.”

“How?”

“Know what a pain level is?”

“Too well,” I said.

“He was very low. This man could take any type of mental pressure... up to a point like any of us, but his physical pain tolerance was lower than most.”

“Was he hurt?”

“Not too badly. You or I could have taken it and been ambulatory in a matter of days, but his acceptance of pain wasn’t like ours.”

“That’s why he stayed here so long?”

“It wasn’t the curing. It was the un-curing. His physical condition was fine, but in treating him we used morphine to ease the pain he undoubtedly felt and he turned out to be one of those rare specimens who become addicted almost immediately. Most of his stay here was devoted to taking him off the narcotic addiction.”

I had it then. It was starting to fall into place.

“Did he ever talk to you?”

“Never about his work, if that’s what you mean. He wouldn’t speak about the space project at all.”

“I didn’t mean that.”

Carlson waved his hands absently. “Oh, occasionally he’d go off into some vague ramblings. It wasn’t the first I had heard. Look at how many scientists engaged in the original Manhattan Project suddenly became total humanitarians after they saw the damage inflicted at Nagasaki and Hiroshima. You can’t engage in destructive enterprises without developing a guilt complex somewhere along the line.”

“And what was his?”

“Worry about the world. He was afraid it would destroy itself and he was the one who gave it the means. Baloney. I tried to talk him out of it and I think I succeeded.”

“You didn’t,” I told him.

His lips turned into a tight, thin line.

“Agrounsky’s ready to do the job himself,” I said.

For ten seconds he looked at me, then muttered, “Son of a bitch!”

“He was capable of it, you know.”

Carlson nodded again. “Yes, I know. He was one of the great ones. What happened?”

“I don’t know, but you might have a plausible lead. This addiction of his... how serious was it?”

“We caught it in time. It was all controlled and his treatment was the usual one prescribed in such cases.”

“And when he left here... was he cured?”

Carlson licked his lips, chose his words and said, “I was sure of it.”

“No recurrence?”

“There’s always that possibility. It’s like having an alcoholic teetotaler taste whiskey without realizing he’s an incipient alcoholic. There’s always that taste to remember. I never thought...”

“It isn’t your fault.”

“It is. I should have insisted on further checks.”

“Look... you’re a doctor... you know things and hear things. What’s the situation on narcotic sales in this area?”

“Oh, hell, you have that disease in every damn city in the world.”

“I’m talking about here.”

“I’ve treated several,” he said.

“Children... teen-agers?”

“No. Always adults. They came through the police courts.”

“What’s the source?”

Carlson made a negative gesture with his head.

“Guess.”

“Imported,” he said. “No reported incidents of break-ins that I know of. I’ve asked around several times and I’ve never heard of any. Listen... you get where money is big and you find vice...”

“I know all that.”

“And do you know that for some reason professional people seem attracted to addiction? They take a jolt now and then to keep going, to make up for the lack of sleep, the missed meals, the mental distress they undergo. Do you know...?”

I said, “I know all that too.” Then added, “You aren’t one, are you?”

“No, I’m not.”

“And what do you think Agrounsky’s chances of remaining an addict are?”

“Too big,” he told me. “If he stays away from the stuff he’ll be all right, but if he found a taste for it he will wind up total. I gave him credit for having more sense than that.”

“It’s a disease, Doctor,” I said sympathetically. “They haven’t found a cure for the common cold yet, so don’t blame yourself. It wasn’t something you did. He had it in him all the time without knowing it.”

“Nuts.”

“I can give you some big names who are hooked right now if you’d like to hear them. It would surprise you.”

“Don’t bother.”

“Thanks for the information,” I said.

He didn’t answer me.

The police had a report on the .38 used last night. Ballistics had come up negative and nothing useful had been found in the grounds outside the shop. It was supposed the gun had been a revolver since no ejected shells had been located, and it made a front page story for the local paper with the intimation that it was another robbery attempt, interrupted this time, by Boster and a friend appearing in the doorway and startling the heister. There were squibs in the Miami sheets and a brief recap on the TV news broadcast, but that was as far as it went.

I drove back to the motel and parked the car in its original slot, right over the oscillator, put the gimmick back in its place under the gas tank, hooked the charge up under the hood and went into the office.

The manager gave me a big smile, waiting.

“Any calls?”

“None, sir.”

“Anyone looking for me?”

“No, sir, not a soul. Have a good day?”

“Profitable,” I said.

“Care to keep the other room for tonight too?”

I threw a bill down on the counter top. “Yeah, I might as well.”

He took the bill, stored it away and handed me my change and a receipt. “Just call me if you want anything.”

“I’ll do that.”

I went back outside and stood in the fading light and looked over at the car. They’d have to start wondering sometime, I thought. The bastards! I grinned to myself, thinking through their minds. That oscillator had been put in place with masking tape and it could have fallen off. There was always the chance that a wired charge wasn’t hooked up correctly too. I eased the oscillator down and let it lay in the sandy loam under the car, then rewired the charge myself from a different viewpoint. Up front, a convertible drove in with a young couple in the front and Just Married slogans chalked on the sides of their car. I checked the room on the other side of the car, went back to the office and registered that one in under my name too and paid for it. I was getting to be the best customer the guy had. The newlyweds took a room at the far end, giggling all the way, and the manager gave me a knowing wink and a laugh as I went out.

Maybe they’d have a night to remember, I thought. At least nobody could be in the area where they could get hurt. Only the world was reserved for destruction.

The phone was ringing when I got in my room. I recognized the voice but went through the coded check anyway and Dave Elroy gave me the right answers. “Got in an hour ago, Tiger. I’m at the Sea Cliff in room ten. Anything for me to do?”

“Yeah, probe this town and see if you can find any source of narcotics. Look for H primarily and try to find out if Agrounsky was a user.”

“Any indications?”

“All of them,” I told him. “Got hooked in a hospital, thought cured, but was under a severe mental strain and might have reverted. He took off periodically and it might have been to see his supplier. All I want to do is be sure. And see if he made any big buys.”

“Before he left?”

“Right. Try to date it.”

“Okay, will do.”

“You have an informant in this area?” I asked him.

“Not yet, but I know who can give me a lead. Tiger...”

“What?”

“Things are getting touchy. Hal Randolph is raising hell in New York. They want you on the scene up there.”

“Screw them.”

“They have technicians breaking down all the circuitry of the control system and they haven’t come up with anything yet. Some of the wheels are insisting that it couldn’t have been done and are yammering to call off the search.”

“The idiots.”

“They won’t do it, though,” he said. “They can’t take the chance.”

“How about Niger Hoppes?”

“Not a thing. Grady has called in everybody and is pulling all the plugs. He’s an unknown face. Johnson called from London again with another bit... There’s a possibility that he might have a slight limp now, but it wasn’t confirmed. It could have been faked to throw off anybody looking for him in the future. You got the angle about him being a sniffer, didn’t you?”

“Check.”

“Then you got the latest. Johnson said he used the Bolatrine variety but that isn’t sold in the U.S. at all. There are derivatives almost the same, so it wouldn’t make any difference at all. I checked with Ernie Bentley and he told me all the inhalers conformed to the Pure Food and Drug Act... no bennies sold over the counters... but the only similarity was the containers. One firm makes them all in different shapes and sizes.”

“Good enough. Call me back if you dig up anything.”

“Roger. Off now. Behave.”

I put the phone back and snapped on the television. I lay on the bed in the dark and watched the last segment of a western before the news came on, caught the news broadcast that mentioned that the sniper outside Claude Boster’s shop hadn’t been apprehended yet, then closed my eyes for a little while waiting for time to pass. Nobody was going to come near me until the night had quieted into that death-like quality that comes after a small town goes to sleep and the traffic has diminished to an occasional truck going up the highway.

But I was wrong.

Somebody had waited too long and couldn’t understand why the expected hadn’t happened. He didn’t want to have to make excuses and be responsible for a bungled job and he checked to make sure. He must have found the oscillator and taped it back thinking it had fallen off from the heat and the vibration, then looked again to make sure the dynamite sticks were in place where they should be and when he wiggled the wires he had so carefully installed the night before they all seemed secure until the final wiggle touched off the cross wiring I had rigged and he blew up into a gory mess of parts and liquid slop and was plastered all over the remnants of the rooms I had rented on either side of the car.

The noise of the explosion was a terrible, flat, roaring sound that spread light and heat into the compound like the midday sun for one instant, then died away without leaving a trace of an echo. Only little noises came then — things falling back to earth... other things slowly giving way to fall from the impact of the blast. The silence was a stunned hush, then a woman’s voice screamed incoherently, gaining in intensity until it was quieted from a lack of breath.

I was out of the door and on the scene before anyone else, standing there looking at the twisted wreckage when the manager came up, the expression on his face one of complete disbelief. “What... what happened?”

“Go call the cops. Shake it. Then come back and keep everybody away from here.”

He gaped at me absently, swallowed hard and shuffled off, glancing back nervously over his shoulder. But somebody had beaten him to it. The wail of a siren tickled the air, coming from the east side of town, then another joined it from another direction. Already, the curious had started forward at a half-run, converging on the scene while the dust and fumes still hung overhead like a small cloud.

There was little left of the car at all and practically nothing of the buildings that had squeezed it in and softened the blast from tearing up the rest of the place. Blood-wet fragments of flesh glistened on metallic parts and larger pieces of the body were scattered in the rubble to the left.

One piece was intact... a hand. It lay there palm upward, expressing a peculiar bewilderment as if it still had life and could think and wonder. A section of plate glass lay on the ground and I picked it up, polished it with a handkerchief, pressed it against the fingertips, slipped it into my pocket. Then I flipped the hand as far as I could into the bushes.

The manager was still incoherent, still fumbling with the phone when I got in the office. He never even saw me poke around behind the desk until I found a heavy packet of fold-out cards that gave a picturesque view of the Cape Kennedy area, slip the glass into the middle where I held it in place with tape, then address it to Ernie Bentley and stamp it to go out in the morning airmail.

He’d know what it meant.

I only had a minute to do what I had to do, but it was enough time. I got back to my original room, stripped off the .45 and the speed rig, got the extra box of shells and the two clips out of my suitcase and stuck them behind the air-conditioner grill vent at the top of the room. No matter what happened, I didn’t want anybody impounding my equipment for any reason.

Captain Hardecker got there in his own car, skidding into the drive ahead of the police cruiser and the two fire trucks that followed them. There weren’t enough people around to give him trouble with crowd control and he cleared out all those who didn’t belong in the motel area. The fire crew was quick and efficient, sizing up the situation immediately and checking for any unexploded dynamite sticks, standing by with the equipment to douse any flame that might occur. But like so many blasts of this intensity, combustible materials were disintegrated and the concussion blew out anything ignited before it could catch hold. Nevertheless, they dampened down the bedding remains and wooden splinters still showing, raking through the debris trying to separate the parts of the thing that had once been human.

We held the conference in the motel office, the manager out of it for the time being, trying to settle his nerves with a strong bourbon on the rocks. Hardecker sat back easily in a wicker rocker, scanning me through the blue smoke of a cigar while I told him I had rented both rooms and the car and couldn’t explain why anybody would want to get rid of me.

When I finished he said, “Now that sounds like a reasonable story, all right, but between you and me, it doesn’t make sense. You know what it sounds like from my direction?”

“Tell me.”

“Like you deliberately parked that car there and took the rooms on both sides so nobody would get hurt if the car did get blown.”

I agreed with a deliberate nod. “Except for one thing.”

“Oh?” he said. “Now what could that be?”

“When somebody rigs a car to blow up they wire it so that they nail the occupant when he turns the key. I didn’t turn the key, so either one of two things happened. The car was rigged and somebody tried to steal it or the guy rigging it blew himself up in the process.”

“I can think of something else,” Hardecker said.

This time I said, “Oh?”

“You rigged the car and waited for somebody to get in it.”

“That wouldn’t be very smart, would it? I’m still here.”

“All these stunts aren’t pulled by smart people. Nope, I don’t like your story. Besides, there’s something else.”

“Now what?”

“You aren’t scared enough, mister. You should be all shook and you’re not even sweating. You act like it happens every day around you.”

“I’m not the nervous type.”

He grinned slowly, then looked up as the mailman came in, dropped a few letters on the desk and picked up what was in the receptacle. I watched my card folder go into his bag and felt better. “Fun this morning?” the mailman asked Hardecker without looking up from his work.

“Every day,” the Captain told him. “If it isn’t one thing it’s another.”

When he went out the uniformed cop outside the door spoke to one of the firemen holding a small basket in his hand, stuck his head inside and said, “Captain, they may have some identifiable parts here... a denture anyway. No clothes or labels yet.”

Hardecker nodded solemnly and puffed on the cigar again. “Get the teeth to the lab and process it. We’ll find out who he was.” He looked at me deliberately and tapped his cigar out and dropped the stub in his pocket. “And now for you. I think we’ll print you up and find out all about you, mister. Mind?”

“Not at all.”

“Unless you’d like to talk about it.”

“I’ve said it all, Captain.”

“Let’s go then,” he said and got up with a sigh to move to the door and wait on me.

It was the driver of the other squad car who recognized me. Before I could get in beside Hardecker, he came over and leaned on the window and tapped my shoulder. “You were with Mr. Boster when somebody shot at him, weren’t you?”

There wasn’t any sense denying it. “That’s right.”

“I think you got a live one, Captain.”

Hardecker looked at me slowly, his mouth twisting into a small smile. “That true, mister?”

“I was there.”

“Maybe we got plenty to talk about after all, wouldn’t you say?”

“Not especially.”

The Captain looked across me and said, “Follow us, Pete, then go pick up Boster. Maybe together they’ll have something to say. You find anything in this guy’s room?”

“Nope. Just clothes. He’s clean.”

Hardecker gave me another one of those funny smiles. “You don’t happen to have a weapon on you, do you?”

“It’s a hell of a time to ask, but I don’t.”

His voice rumbled in a deep chuckle. “Don’t worry, I could have told if you had. I can smell ’em.”

Just so he wouldn’t feel too sure of himself I chuckled back and said, “I don’t really need them.”

“Uh-huh,” he said, but he gave me a peculiar look as though he were seeing me for the first time and his smile faded completely away. He switched the key on, pulled the lever into gear and dug out into the street.

I let them put me through the entire procedure, mugging me for their files, printing me, taking me into the office that served as an interrogation room, then being offered a chair and cigarettes across the table from Hardecker. The patrolman he had called Pete came in to report that Claude Boster was not at home, nor did he say where he was going. Hardecker told him to make periodic checks until he found him and get him down as soon as possible.

Only then did he sit back comfortably, his hands resting in his lap. After a minute of steady watching he said, “Now I know something is screwy here, Mr. er...”

“Mann is my right name.” I grinned at him.

“By now,” he told me, “most people would be screaming for a lawyer or wanting to make a phone call or yelling that we were violating their rights. That sort of thing, you know?”

“I know.”

“Then why don’t you?”

“What for?”

“You might have something to hide.”

“Maybe I don’t.”

“It’s more than that, isn’t it?”

“Possibly.”

“You know,” he said, “you could have squawked and we never would’ve been able to print you.” He leaned on his elbows and cupped his chin in his hands. “That isn’t natural, is it?”

“I’ve been printed before.”

“No doubt. So you’re playing for time. I’d like to know why.”

“It’s easier this way than explaining,” I said.

“Would it be easier if I locked you up until I found out what this was all about?”

“It wouldn’t matter,” I said easily. “Do what you like.”

“Let’s give it a try,” he said.

The jail was clean and modern, the cell he gave me freshly scrubbed with a window facing the south that let in a fat rectangle of striped sunlight. “Any time you want to talk,” Hardecker reminded me, “I’ll be upstairs. I’m looking forward to some interesting conversation, Mr. Mann. The reporters are too. There hasn’t been this much excitement around here in a long time. All kinds of speculation going on.”

“I’ll let you know,” I said and sat down on the cot and lit up a butt. The door clanged shut and they left.

I had to wait it out. It was all I could do. One thing going for me was that they couldn’t locate Claude Boster. If he got picked up before I got to him and brought Louis Agrounsky’s name into the deal, then everything could go to hell all at once. I looked at my watch. It was about two o’clock and I was hungry.

Maybe Agrounsky was hungry too. Not for food. For something more potent. For something he had to shoot into his veins to give him that thing he needed so badly. The pattern was beginning to make sense now. Dr. Carlson had nailed it down without knowing it, putting the lid on the kind of temperament Louis Agrounsky really had. Agrounsky was an addict. He couldn’t stay away from the stuff, even after he was thought to be cured, and found himself a source of supply to take care of his needs.

That was as much as it took. Under the influence of the big H all his fears and frustrations came out of the shadows and he thought he was big enough to wipe them out by himself. But somewhere along the line he talked to somebody, or was recognized, and his addiction was stored away in the memory bank of a Soviet dossier until it was needed. To satisfy his need for the stuff he wiped himself out financially, selling everything, until he had nothing left to sell... except one thing.

And the Soviets had the payoff means. One kilo of H properly cut could serve an addict for a long, long time. It was a very tempting arrangement. Now the big question — was it planned or did it happen accidentally?

They brought the evening paper with my supper and I had a chance to see pictures of the devastation at the motel and my name in the papers as T. Marvin, the one I had registered with. I grinned at that, because whatever Hardecker thought, he was too wary to play with something that didn’t smell right. There was always time later to correct a mistake like that... unless some reporter didn’t take it at face value and checked the police blotter. The story was descriptive rather than informative and gave out few pertinent details. The identity of the dead man hadn’t been established yet, nor his motive, and I was mentioned as simply being held for questioning.

At ten P.M. the guard came down the hall, turned the key in the lock and opened the door. “You got a visitor, Mann.”

“Who?”

“Says he’s a friend of yours. Dave Elroy.”

“Sure.” I got up and followed him down the corridor and up into the main building where I was waved into a room where Dave was sitting, a fat grin on his face. The guard left the door open and stood there unconcernedly, but taking it all in.

“Hi, Dave.”

“Wait till the boys at the plant hear about this. How you doing?”

“Great. Nice suite facing the water.” I looked around the room and spotted the two bugs without any trouble, letting my eyes deliberately point out the microphones. Dave nodded, having already seen them himself, and offered me a cigarette. I said, “What’re you doing here?”

“What’s a friend for? Want out?”

“Nope. I could have put up bail myself.”

“Only you’re the stubborn type. Who blew the car?”

“Beats me. Some nut.”

“World’s full of ’em. Anything you need?”

“Not a thing.”

“No sense sticking around then.”

“How you making out, Dave?” I asked casually.

“Fine. My old customers came through with some new contacts and it’s paid off. This is virgin territory for a good salesman. Half the time you don’t even have to sell... they look for you to buy from you. One guy was such a good customer he wiped out a stockpile in no time at all. Had to move on because he couldn’t get goods any more. Business squeeze that was... one of the big companies put the pressure on the little guys so he was cut off and had to deal with them, only they cut their own throats because he skipped and got his material from someplace else. Business is rough, sometimes. Even with the anti-trust and monopoly laws they still pull that stuff.”

I nodded. “Well, it doesn’t pay to grow too big,” I said.

Dave got up and stretched. “I’ll stop around again if you need anything. Give me a call sometime. I’ll speak to the Captain on the way out. He doesn’t seem too unfriendly.”

“Nice guy. Very patient.”

“He can afford to be,” Dave told me.

“So can I.”

When Dave left, the guard took me back to the cell, locked me in and ten minutes later the lights went out automatically. An hour later a couple of boisterous drunks were brought in, locked up several cells down, and before dawn a pair of bearded teenagers staging some kind of a demonstration outside the project area were hustled in and tossed half crying into the can. What those guys needed was a tour of duty in some damn jungle.

Breakfast came at six and Hardecker at eight. He came down alone, opened the cell himself and nodded me out. I picked up my coat and hat, automatically went to the desk to collect my belongings that were held in a brown manila envelope and signed the receipt for them.

Hardecker let me put everything back in my pocket before saying, “Let’s go into the office a minute.”

“Sure.”

He closed the door and sat down, his face tight and a wariness in his eyes. “You could have told me, Mann.”

“Told you what?”

“Just who you were. I could have checked instead of sticking my neck into a goddamn noose.”

“So?”

“There was a delay in getting a report back on your prints. Then the teletype started and I had to get on the phone to Washington. I had people crawling up my back wanting to know what the hell was going on and all I could give them was the details and that was enough. I got orders to lay off you and keep my big mouth shut and to play this your way no matter how you wanted it played.” He paused and pursed his lips. “Who the hell are you, buddy?”

“Just a citizen, Captain.”

“How big?”

“Big.”

“Why?” he asked me seriously.

“If I told you you’d never believe it.”

“And supposing I did?”

“Then you’d wish I had never told you so you could sleep at night without wondering when it was all going to end.”

“What end?”

I looked at the sunshine coming in the window. “That,” I said.

He waited a few seconds, tight lines drawing in around his eyes, before he said, “Crazy!” almost under his breath. “What do you want me to do?”

“Kill that story. As far as the press is concerned, the guy who pulled it was a mental case who had done the same thing before. He didn’t need a motive... something like a firebug.”

Hardecker looked down into his hands and nodded. “Okay, that’s easy as long as a real ID doesn’t show and the reporters don’t get it if it does. Do you know who he was?”

“No.”

“What else?”

“Forget Claude Boster. Don’t tie us together. They were not related affairs.”

“For my own information, were they?”

“I don’t know. My guess is that they were but I’m not sure.”

“Damn it,” he said, “what kind of a lash-up is this anyway?”

“An international one, Captain. Nothing’s being taken out of your hands. We’re just requesting your help. That’s why I preferred to spend the night in the cooler rather than spread the news around. Like I said, it’s easier that way.”

“Not on my nerves, Mann. Where will you be staying?... as long as you’re here... and not that I expect you to be around long the way people are going after your skin.”

“The same place,” I told him. “It’s as good as any now.”