The Fugitive Pigeon

Chapter 25

Phew!

Let me tell you, that was close. Down among the driftwood there, I thought it was all up, all over but the shooting. I talked like Broderick Crawford in a hurry, I said everything five or six times fast, and I kept jumping up and down and waving my arms to try to attract their attention, and for a while it looked as though I might as well have been talking French. But I just kept at it, telling them who had killed Agricola, and why he’d done it, and how come he had to be the one who’d really been giving the syndicate information to Tough Tony Touhy, and pointing out how I’d guessed he was the guy Slade had taken with him to see Agricola, and then going over the whole thing all over again, and after a while it finally did begin to seep into their skulls a little, like rain through concrete.

It was Trask who finally said, “What can it hurt? Let him talk to Gross. If Gross says he’s on, he’s on.”

Slade said, “I don’t want to take a lot of time.”

“This won’t take long,” Trask told him.

So that was how it was. We walked on back to the car, and I figured at first it meant we’d be taking another long ride together, back across the Island and south to Hewlett Bay Park, but it turned out the car had a telephone in it. I’d heard about that before, telephones in automobiles, but this was the first time I’d ever seen one.

You’d think, with my reading in science fiction and all, I would have thought about the wonders of science and like that when I saw the telephone in the black car, but that wasn’t what came into my mind at all. The black car on the sand dunes, the deserted area, the tough type calling his boss on a telephone in the car — it was all exactly like a scene from one of those movie serials I used to watch on Saturday afternoons when I was a kid. I looked up into the sky for Superman or Spy Smasher, but nobody showed.

Except Mr. Gross, of course, on the other end of the telephone. Trask had made the call, while Slade stood next to me with his hand suggestively in his pocket. After a minute or two of fiddling with the phone company, Trask finally reached Mr. Gross and told him the situation. He and Gross talked back and forth a minute, and then he handed me the phone and said, “He wants to hear it. Tell him the story.”

So I went through the whole thing again, in as orderly a manner as I could manage under the circumstances. Mr. Gross asked a few questions, and I answered them as best I could, and then he said, “It sounds possible. Not necessarily true, you understand, but possible. An alternative explanation. We will have to learn which explanation is accurate. Put Trask back on.”

“Yes, sir.”

I handed the phone to Trask, there was another brief conversation, and then the call was over. Trask said to Slade, “We’re supposed to bring him to see Mr. Gross.”

I exhaled. It was, I believe, the first time I’d exhaled in about three minutes.

Salde shrugged. “So we’ll never get done with this job,” he said. But he didn’t seem irritated, just fatalistic about it all.

Trask motioned a thumb at me. “Come on, nephew,” he said. “Back in the car.”

“Under the afghan again?”

They looked at each other. Slade shrugged and Trask said, “No. Climb in front.”

I was happy to. Not only did I anticipate a much more enjoyable ride sitting on the seat in the open air than lying on the floor under an afghan, but letting me sit up there was kind of letting me know they pretty much believed me.

Slade drove again, and Trask sat on my right. Slade steered the car around in a wide U in the sand and headed back for the highway. As we reached it and turned west, toward the late afternoon sun, Slade put the visor down and said, “I hope you’re telling the goods, nephew. I never did like that bastard anyway.”

“Neither did I,” said Trask.

I agreed with them both.