Stray Shot, page 14
part #13 of Keith Calder Series
‘Doubt it,’ Daniel said. He lowered himself carefully on to his knees and began to wire what seemed to be a small cassette player into the phone while speaking over his shoulder. ‘He’ll have done that already and he won’t bother again unless we set him worrying. And if he only gets around to doing it now, I read somewhere that around one in three hotel rooms already has one of these in the phone, left over from some previous surveillance. They’re cheap, so when the job’s over the private dick decides it’s safer to leave it in place than to go back for it.’
‘Sounds like the best bet,’ Earl said.
I practised fitting the bug into my phone. I am not good with my fingers and my clumsy efforts sent Daniel up the wall. ‘You drive my car,’ he said at last. ‘I’ll go in.’
‘You wouldn’t hear a jet-plane outside, let alone a car,’ Earl said. ‘And what if Reece finds Simon farting round the car park like a drunken idiot? Let him keep trying.’
I kept trying. I was becoming almost proficient at a task which any small boy could have done in his sleep when John arrived. He brought a master key and a hilarious but unrepeatable story about Harry’s reaction to the blackmail. This effectively ended our conference by triggering another round of anecdotes.
The wind had dropped and there was warmth without heat in the late afternoon sun. To the disgust of the Texans, I took a chair out onto the balcony and set it where, despite the passing traffic, I could still catch the conversation as well as the sun. Many of the stories could find a place in my novels at some later date.
‘Hell, no Texan goes looking for the sun,’ Earl said. ‘He looks for shade. Only northerners go out in the sun.’
‘Then I’ll just have to pass for a yankee,’ I said. The chance of a little sunshine in November was too good to miss.
‘You don’t want to be taken for one of them,’ Earl said.
*
Reece’s car pulled out at seven thirty and we went into action. Our four cars scattered and I saw Daniel reverse into position near the motel office. It was dark and the floodlighting of the car park left lakes of shadow which came and went, chased around by the lights of the passing traffic. Heart in mouth, I took the master key and let myself into Reece’s unit.
The sight, the feel, the very smell of the place took me back to a Scottish roadside where I had looked down the barrels of a very expensive gun . . . and where I had lost my nerve and babbled, giving Reece the very hints which he most needed. The imprint of a powerful personality was there. I could not have put my finger on any specifics, yet something in the room’s atmosphere made me feel inadequate, emasculated and stupid. I pushed emotion aside and hoped that reason and logic would be enough.
I started with the phone. The infinity bug dropped into place without difficulty. I slipped the original microphone into my pocket and looked around.
Beside the phone, a small telephone notebook had been left open at the Cs. This, I assumed, was deliberate because the book was held open at that page by the corner of a small cassette player. The writing was square, forceful and uncompromising. There were only three numbers on the page, with no names or addresses against them. I copied the numbers onto an envelope from my pocket and then used the miniature camera to photograph every page.
The room itself was very tidy. There was no clutter, no scatter of odds and ends, no photographs or letters. Indeed, as I searched I realised that there were no personal oddments at all. As a man on the move and often outside the law, Reece confined his possessions as far as possible to the essentials for living. There was a neat box containing tools and some electronic components which looked similar to the ones from my case. I took some more photographs. Beyond that, nothing. One razor, one toothbrush. Changes of clothes all clean and very little worn. Apart from his dimensions and his taste in clothing, nobody but a forensic scientist could have learned anything about the man. The waste-basket was empty. I was reminded of Cathcart’s description of Donald Lucas’s cottage and wondered whether some common quirk of character had drawn them together.
Keeping my ears open for the sound of Daniel’s car, I began to delve deeper; but by the time I had removed – and carefully replaced – the lid from the w.c. cistern, the panel from the bath, the back from the vanitory unit, the front from the air conditioner, the floor from the wardrobe, the shades from the light fittings and the drawers from the chest I was as sure as anybody could be that Keith’s treasures were not in the place.
I went round once more. Shot could be poured into some hollow object. I shook the little cassette player, his aerosol of shaving cream and any other container however unlikely, but nothing rattled or felt unduly heavy.
For the last time, I examined the room. I had been there for a full hour, yet I was sure that unless Reece had been up to tricks – and I had been unable to spot any hairs or fibres in unlikely places – my intrusion would remain undetected. The cigarette ends in the ashtray and the lingering smell of smoke suggested that Reece would not be sensitive to any change in the air. I switched the lights off, on and off again and as I left I saw Daniel’s headlamps flash once. All clear.
Back in my unit I followed Daniel’s instructions, picked up the phone, dialled the internal code and the number of Reece’s unit and allowed his phone to ring half a dozen times in the deserted room. According to Daniel, that was all that was necessary.
John and Daniel and Pete came in one at a time, and each time I had to repeat the one word. ‘Nothing.’
‘But the bug’s in place?’ Daniel asked.
I said that it was.
He listened to the silent monitor and frowned. He had the restlessness of a man whose new television arrives while all the channels are dead. ‘Go down and knock on his door,’ he suggested. ‘That should come over, loud and clear.’ But even as he spoke, the monitor in Pete’s pocket began to buzz. Daniel took it from him and switched it off. ‘He’s on the way back.’
The grey car swept into the courtyard and pulled up with a yelp of tyres. A car door slammed. Clearly over the monitor on the telephone we heard Reece enter his room in a rush and slam the door. Daniel raised a wrinkled thumb. At every sound in Reece’s room a little light flickered and the two reels of a cassette turned. We heard him moving around, performing activities which we could not identify.
‘Big deal,’ Pete said.
Earl’s car cruised gently into its slot and a minute later the big man came in. ‘Nothing,’ I said yet again.
‘Nothing?’
‘Nothing,’ I repeated. I was getting tired of the word. ‘Rien. Nefas. Niente.’
‘Hereabouts we say “Nada”, the Spanish. He went to dinner,’ Earl said. ‘Alone. Straight there and straight back. Only the waiter spoke to him. Then he looked at his watch and left in a hurry.’
‘Doesn’t sound like much to hurry for,’ Pete said. The loudspeaker was emitting small clicks and grunts.
‘Expecting a phone call,’ said Earl. ‘Well, at least I got fed. Now you-all can go and feed your faces in turns.’
‘Hold on!’ Daniel said. ‘He’s picked up the phone.’
We heard the motel operator come on the line. ‘I want an overseas call,’ Reece said. The well-remembered voice could still send a shiver up my back. ‘The number’s oh double one double four—’
‘That’s the UK,’ Earl whispered.
‘He could have another client there, please God!’ I said.
We had missed the rest of the digits. We heard the signals as the operator touched the keys. There was a delay before a ringing tone sounded at the far end. Then it stopped and a woman’s voice, or a boy’s, said, ‘Good morning.’
If it said any more, it was drowned by a shrill crackle on the line. The connection must have been broken, because I heard Reece grunt and replace his receiver.
‘What the hell was all that?’ Earl asked.
‘I can guess,’ I said. ‘Wait and we’ll see if I’m right.’
Reece called the operator again. ‘Ma’am,’ he said, ‘that was not the right number. I’ll check back and make another call tomorrow. Would you call the overseas operator and get me a credit for the call?’
‘I’ll do that right away,’ the operator said.
‘There we are,’ I said. ‘He’d made a date to phone somebody at nine p.m. He didn’t know that he’d have money from the gun, so he was doing it the cheap way. She – I suppose it was a woman? – answered and said “Good morning,” which was a signal that all was well and no message to pass. So he hung up. A complete exchange of status reports in about one second. Then he claims the number was wrong and asks for a credit. The overseas operator checks the computer and sees that the call was short enough to confirm his story. So she wipes the information off the computer and there’s no charge to go on his bill.’
‘There’s no record of the call whatever,’ Pete said. ‘That’s some trick! What about that noise?’
‘You get noises on the line sometimes,’ I pointed out.
‘Not like that,’ said Daniel. He wound the tape back and played it again. I jotted down the rest of the number on my envelope. ‘High-speed Morse, you think? Maybe with a voice on top of it?’
‘You got a slower speed on that thing?’ Earl asked.
We studied the instructions. The cassette recorder had three speeds and we had been using the fastest. We wound the tape back again and played it slowly. A confusion of booming noises was Reece’s movement around the room. We heard the phone lifted and then Reece spoke to the operator in a rumbling groan. The ringing tone was deep and hollow like a distant gong. Then the woman’s voice, low and rasping, followed by the noise.
‘That’s not Morse,’ Daniel said. ‘That’s pure, electronic noise. Either a fault on the line or he sent something coded. The person at the other end plays it into a computer.’
The digits which I had noted down looked familiar. On the other side of the envelope were the numbers which I had copied out of Reece’s book and Reece had just dialled one of them. ‘The careful sod didn’t put down any names,’ I added. ‘Just the numbers. But this was on a page of Cs. I’ll pass it on to Keith when I phone him.’
‘Let me see.’ Ed took the envelope out of my hand. He consulted the telephone directory. ‘Thought so. The third number belongs to James J. Cullingpepper. He’s the boss at Hyperload but he’s into a dozen other deals, some of them mighty near the knuckle. He’s a Bostonian, could pass for English if you didn’t know better.’
Chapter Ten
I telephoned to Keith’s house in the morning. It was already almost lunchtime in Scotland but, the day being Sunday, Keith was at home. While Molly was fetching him down from his workroom I had a few words with Alice, words which only increased my homesickness. The weather, she said, was cold and wet. I was already tired of the unnatural warmth and wanted no more than to get back to the pleasant rigours of a British winter with all the joys of being indoors while the weather was doing its worst outside; open fires, a hot bath after a walk on the rainswept hill and perhaps a roll on the hearthrug with Alice. I tried to tell her some of this in the few precious seconds available to us.
Keith came on the line. He took the news of the recovery of Sir Philip Dunne’s Purdey quietly. I guessed for the first time that Keith would never have offered me the reward if he had thought that I had a hope in hell of claiming it. I heard the strain in his voice give way to relief when I told him that we were in close touch with Reece, had searched his unit and bugged his room.
‘I wish I could give you a lead as to what to do next,’ he said. ‘But you’re the man on the spot. I have to depend on you. How long’s it going to take?’
‘That’s out of our hands,’ I said. ‘It depends how long it takes him to set up a deal. When he gets your samples back from wherever he’s got them stowed away, we should know it. Then we pounce. Is Cathcart chivvying you?’
‘Not a word, and I wish I knew why. Most likely, he’ll suddenly arrive and say, “Time’s up.” If that happens, I might buy one more extension if I can promise a result in short time.’
‘Promise it anyway,’ I suggested. ‘If I can’t deliver, you’re no worse off. If you want to put Reece into Cathcart’s hands, now might be the time to get one of your pals in the British ammunition industry to phone him and say that the firm’s prepared to outbid all comers.’
‘Nice thought. But no. Not unless you can cook up a story to explain how we knew where he was. A phone call might start him wondering who else knew his movements. I think we’ll just have to put our trust in you and God, in that order.’
I played him the tape of Reece’s phone call. He recorded it and confirmed that he had it safely on cassette. I suggested that he ask Cathcart to trace the number. Keith said that he was avoiding having words with the Superintendent but that he might approach him through Charlie.
When we had finished, Molly came on the line. ‘Are they looking after you all right out there?’ she asked.
I was surprised at her concern. ‘Lap of luxury,’ I said. ‘I’m getting coffee-logged and their tea tastes like garden refuse, but otherwise I’m fine.’
‘Well look after yourself. I don’t know how that husband of mine always manages to persuade people to dash around doing his bidding, but he does. Alice is worried, but she won’t let on. She doesn’t want to let you down. Are you sure you’re not going to get yourself into any danger? I’d like to reassure her if I can.’
I explained that I was accompanied by four Texans, all armed to the teeth. I omitted to mention that the Texans were past the first flush of youth, far from fit and, to my jaundiced eye, not wholly sane. I only said that they seemed to get results, which was true.
When the call was finished, I settled down to the boredom of listening to Reece switching from channel to channel in the faint hope of finding some television worth watching on a Sunday morning not far from the Bible Belt.
*
For those of us in Dallas, the waiting extended to two more nights and a day, during which Dave Reece hardly left his room. We ate and slept in shifts, took turns listening to the sound of his movements or following him when he went to eat in nearby restaurants. Pete went out to get my photographs printed and we puzzled over the telephone numbers without being able to determine more than the exchanges in America or in the UK. Between times, we bickered over which channel to watch on the Pay TV. I spent a lot of time on the balcony, to avoid the cigarette smoke.
Earl whiled away an idle hour by getting out Sir Philip’s Purdey for a loving clean and oil with the other Texans advising, supervising and commenting. When Earl repeated his earlier remark about giving up sex for a stated period in exchange for owning a similar gun, Daniel humphed loudly. Daniel, I had heard, owned more than a dozen shotguns, all over-unders and virtually identical.
‘I’d trade that hunk of metal for one good hard-on,’ he said.
‘Only one?’ Earl said. ‘That’s a poor trade.’
‘At my age,’ said Daniel sadly, ‘that’s all I’m likely to get. Scatterguns I can raise any time.’
Late on Sunday evening, Reece received a phone call which had us guessing.
‘Honey?’ said a woman’s voice. ‘I just got your message. It’s all happening the way you said?’
‘That’s right,’ Reece said. ‘Just that way. You still going to Florida?’
‘Got to. I’d like to be here when you may need me, but you know how it is.’
‘I know.’ In his voice was none of the old arrogance. Reece sounded almost sympathetic.
‘Will it be over when I get back?’
‘That I can’t say. Depends how soon the other side moves. I guess that depends on how quick they can put together the cash. When you get back, if it’s over and it’s gone bad, if I’ve been crossed up, there’s one person could have set me up and that person knows too much to go on walking around. You’ll know what to do about that?’
‘It’ll be a pleasure,’ she said. ‘The thing I’ve got here?’
‘That very thing.’ The line was silent long enough for the tape to stop. ‘Listen,’ Reece said suddenly, with what seemed to be real warmth, ‘you know you’re the one for real? Don’t you?’
The woman sighed. ‘With you, who can tell? All I can do is trust you. Maybe I’m stupid, but that’s the way it is. I’ll be back later in the week. See you then.’
‘Yeah.’
On the Monday, in the late afternoon, we had a brief excitement. Pete, whose turn it was to watch the great outdoors from the window of a darkened unit, rang through to say that a man was sitting in a silver Cadillac outside the coffee shop. We each took a look.
‘He may be waiting for his wife,’ Earl said.
‘Pete says he’s been there for an hour,’ Daniel said. ‘Nobody waits that long. Not for a wife. Whose turn to follow if Reece goes out?’
‘Mine,’ said Earl. ‘I’ll watch it. If that guy follows him I’ll stay well back.’
After another half hour, Reece went out. The Cadillac seemed to be in no hurry to move so, after a discreet interval, Earl followed Reece. The Cadillac drove off, returning a minute later along the nearer carriageway to pull up in front of Reece’s unit. A large man in a pale raincoat got out. We heard clicking and scratching as he picked the lock. Then he was moving around inside. Remembering my own visit, I could follow almost every move he was making. At last, with a grunt of annoyance, he let himself out and the Cadillac drove away.
Reece took his time. Earl arrived back about ten minutes after him. ‘I found him again by using the bleeper,’ Earl said. ‘That’s a great gadget. I’ll have to put one on Jeanne’s car. He had catfish along at the Finer Diner. What went down here?’
‘He searched the place,’ I said. ‘He didn’t seem to find anything. And he left our bug alone.’
‘Reece’s buyer,’ John decided. ‘Trying to get himself a better deal.’
Despite the sign that the deal was progressing, Pete, in particular, was losing morale. Pheasants were calling to him, or the whitetail deer in New Mexico, while he was stuck in a motel unit, waiting for something which would never come. The others suggested patience, but I could see that Daniel also was beginning to fidget.
