I turned and looked at the building across the street. It was a much older building, an office building four stories high. All the windows were dark. I moved the edge of a crate that pinned the paper down. I gently moved her legs onto the paper. I brought a corner of it up and around her and tucked it under the flattened waist at the far side of her. I moved between her and the building and hesitated, then put my hands against the body and rolled it. That single piece was not big enough. I found another, bigger piece, big as a bed sheet, and swiftly straightened it out, put a corner under her and rolled her halfway up in it, then folded the top and bottom corners in, and rolled her up the rest of the way.
In the pile of crates I found some tangles of heavy hairy twine. I cut three pieces with my pocketknife and then I tied the long cylindrical bundle once around the middle and at points midway between the middle and each end.
I started to lose myself as I was doing the knots. I found myself making them too neat and making little throat-sounds of satisfaction at how neat and nice they were, and at what a splendid job I was doing. So I hauled myself back from that dark brink and made a quick search of the area and came upon a place a little better than I had hoped to find. It was a service hatch set into the side of the building, perhaps three feet square. Four big wing nuts held the metal plate in place. I took it off. The space was only about two feet deep behind it, ending at the grilled cover for some kind of big foam airfilters.
I went to her and looked up, looked at the windows across the street, and then picked her up. She was a stubborn, clumsy burden, improbably heavy. I had to stand it on end, lock my arms around it, and carry it in a straining, spread-legged waddle, across sixty feet of roof to the open service hatch. The paper was cracklingly heavy, the body somberly resistant. I forced it into a sitting position, pushed it back-first into the space, then bent the legs at the knee and pushed them in. The body lay tilted against the grillwork.
Parcel. All tied and stowed. Girl in a plain brown wrapper. Suddenly I realized that though I knew from the weight distribution which end was head and which feet, I had lost track of back and front. So either I had forced her into a sitting position or she was...
It was a sick horror, a viscid something that wells into the brain and stops all thought and motion. I shuddered and slammed the metal plate back on and turned the wing nuts down solidly. Only when I straightened did I realize I was soaked. I had sweated through my shirt, jacket, and the waistband of my slacks.
I went swiftly across the roof, made certain I would not be observed, then dropped to the plywood roof of the walkway and swung down and dropped to the sidewalk. As I started in, a car horn gave a warning beep and I moved aside. More guests for the party. I took my time and let them go up in the elevator first.
18
I STEPPED OUT of the elevator into party time. Gold rug, deep and resilient. Air conditioning laboring against too much smoke and too much body heat. Jabble and roar of dozens of simultaneous conversations. Two men in red coats at the bar set up in the impressive reception room of Development Unlimited. Waitresses edging and balancing their careful way through the crush with trays of cocktails, trays of cocktail food with toothpicks stuck in each exotic little chunk. Girl in a cloth of gold mini-something and a gold cowboy hat and a golden guitar, wandering about with a fixed smile she had learned to wear while singing.
As I had come up alone in the elevator I had stared at myself in the mirror in the elevator. My face looked grainy and did not seem to fit. I had prodded at it with my fingers to make it fit. And I wondered if one eye had always looked bigger and starier than the other, and I had just never noticed. My lightweight jacket was dark enough so that it was not too evident how I had sweated it out. But it had been nervous sweat. It had turned ice cold. Not only did I feel as if I smelled somewhat like a horse, I felt that the exercise boy should trot me back and forth in front of the stalls for a tune and rub me down or I'd catch the grobbles.
The guests were the business and investment community, the successful men of Fort Courtney and their women. Professional men, growers, bankers, merchants, contractors, realtors, brokers. Forties and fifties and sixties. Booming voices that spoke of confidence, optimism, low handicaps, capital gains. Many of their women had brittle questing eyes, appraising the hair, dress, and manner of their friends and acquaintances, checking to see who had come with whom.
It was easy to pick out the office staff. They were younger, and they seemed tense with the effort to be sociable and agreeable. I picked up a drink at the bar as protective coloration and moved along into what was apparently the largest area of the office suite, the bullpen, soon to be filled with girls, files, desks, duplicators, and electronic accounting equipment.
I saw Biddy Pearson in a small group at the far side of the room, talking animatedly. I worked my way over toward her, circling other conversation groups. She wore a little turquoise suit with a small jacket and short skirt. The jacket and the skirt fastened down the left side from shoulder to hip with five big brass old-fashioned galoshes-clamps, three on the jacket and two on the skirt. Her
stockings were an ornate weave of heavy white thread with a mesh big enough for the standard seining net for bait.
She spotted me and looked flatteringly pleased and beckoned me over, introduced me to Jack and Helen Something, Ward and Ellie Somethingelse, and I moved in such a way as to block her out of the group just enough so that it dispersed. I did not trust my voice. I was afraid it would make a quacking sound. But it came tout with reasonable fidelity as I asked her, "How are things going?"
"Beautifully! Tom is so pleased. Don't you think the decorator did a fabulous job?"
"Very nice."
"And Maurie is being an absolute dear! She seems to understand how important this is, really. And she's really being quite gracious." She went to tiptoe and lifted her chin to look about for Maureen.
So you take the gamble as you find it, and you make it up as you go along. "She certainly looks very, very lovely. That's a good color on her."
"Oh! You saw her already."
"Yes. Down in the lobby."
She was still looking for her, so it was a slow take. She turned toward me. "What? Where?"
"Down in the lobby."
"When?"
"I don't know. I've been here just long enough to get a drink. Five minutes ago? She got off the elevator when I got on."
She clamped her fingers around my wrist. "Was she alone?"
"Yes."
"My God, Travis, why didn't you stop her and bring her back up here?"
"Look, Biddy. She looked fine. She told me to go right on up and join the party. She said she had to get something out of the car. She said she'd be right back. Was I supposed to grab her and bring her back up here, kicking and screaming?"
"Oh, she's so sly! Oh damn her, anyway. Just when everything was going so well. Tom was dubious about bringing her. But she seemed so... kind of better organized. Excuse me. I'd better find Tom. I thought she was still with him." She made a wry mouth. "And he probably thinks she's with me. He'll be sick, absolutely sick."
I found windows and oriented myself and went to a wide corridor that led past small offices to the big offices at the end. People were roaming up and down the corridor, being given the tour by some of the Development Unlimited staff. I turned a corner and went into an office and looked out and down and estimated I was not more than fifteen feet too close to the street side. I moved back toward the corner of the corridor and realized it had to be a room with a closed door. Almost all the others were open for inspection.
A pretty little redheaded woman came trotting along and stopped and stared up at me. She wore green and a pint of diamonds and a wide martini smile. "Well, hello there, darling! Are you one of his darling new engineers? Christ, you're a towering beast, aren't you? I'm Joanie Mace way down here."
"Hello, Joanie Mace. I'm not an engineer. I'm a mysterious guest."
"With a lousy empty glass? Horrors! Wait right here, mysterious guest. Don't move. Don't breathe. I'm a handmaiden."
She trotted away. My side of the corridor was empty. I heard voices approaching. I opened the door and stepped into a small office, unlighted. As I closed the door I saw that it was stacked with cartons of office forms and supplies. I made my way to the windows and found that the center window was fixed glass but that the narrower ones on either side cranked inward. A sliding brace stopped them when they were open perhaps eighteen inches. They were five feet tall, and the sill was a foot from the floor. The one on the left was open. I leaned and looked down. It was the right one. I closed it, then pulled my jacket sleeve down across the heel of my hand and pressed the turn latch until it clicked into the fully latched position. As I turned, my toe came down on something soft. I could tell by the feel of it that it was a small leather evening bag. I shoved it into the front of my shirt and tightened my belt another notch.
I opened the door a careful fraction of an inch. A chattering group was approaching. When they had passed, I took the chance and walked out, perhaps too exaggeratedly casual, but there was no one there to fault the performance. I leaned against the corridor wall. Mrs. Mace brought me my drink, scuttling, holding it high, proud of her accomplishment. It was an extraordinarily nasty martini. I gave extravagant thanks. She said I should come by Sunday and swim in her pool. She would round up a swinging group. We'd all drink gallons of black velvets. Delighted. Yes, indeed.
We drifted along behind a group and ended up in the big room. Biddy came quickly to me and drew me aside. She looked determined and angry.
"Trav, I haven't told Tom and I don't intend to. Sooner or later he's going to find out she's missing and that will be time enough. I'm just not going to let my sister spoil the best part of it for him. She's done enough spoiling already. Would you please do me a very special favor?"
"Sure."
"Go down and start checking every bar you can find, and there are quite a few within three or four blocks of here. If you find her and if she isn't in bad shape yet, bring her back, please. But if she's had it, stay with her and put her in the station wagon down below. The tag
"I know the car."
"Thanks so much! Poor Trav. Always doing stupid favors for the dreary Pearson family. And look, dear, do not ever let Tom know that I knew she was missing. He'd kill me. He would think I should have told him at once. But, darn it all... and... thanks again."
I started the slow journey through the crush of guests. I had to pass a group standing in respectful attention, listening to Tom Pike. He stood, tall, vital, dark, handsome, a little bit slouched, a little bit rustic and cowlicky and subtly aw-shucks about everything, his voice deep, rich, resonant as he said, "... job-creating opportunities in urban core areas, that's the answer if we're going to continue to have a viable center-city economic base here in Fort Courtney. The companion piece to this fine building should be-if we all have the guts and the vision-an enclosed shopping mall taking up that short block on Princess Street. Urban renewal to help tear down the obsolete warehouses and get the city to vacate the street, and I don't see why we couldn't have..."
I was by him, and a pack of ladies whooping at something that had just about tickled them to death drowned out the rest of the visionary address to the potential investors.
I rode down with a silent couple in the elevator. She stared with prim mouth and lofty eyebrows at the ceiling of the small machine. With clamped jaw and moody brow he stared at the blue carpeting underfoot. As we walked down into the parking area she did not realize I was as close behind them as I was. In a thin, deadly, indifferent tone she said, "Sweetheart, why don't you let me drive home alone while you go right on back up there and stroke Gloria's vulgar little ass all you want. She may be missing the attention."
He did not reply. I walked to my car and unlocked it and got in and clenched the wheel so tightly my knuckles made crackling sounds. I shut my eyes so tightly I could see rockets and wheels of fire. Little improvements come along, because the luck can go either way, and when you play the longer odds you open up the chance of the good luck and the bad. Her reaction helped. I had not expected it. I had wanted her to tell him that McGee had seen Maureen leaving by a route other than the one he knew she had taken, and so that would target him in on me, bring him in close enough for me to see what he was. But it was better the way she was doing it. And I had to find Stanger, and find him fast.
I didn't get to Stanger until nine fifteen. I told him that it might save a lot of time and a lot of questions later if it went down on tape on the very first go-round.
"You look funny," he said. "You look spooked."
"It's been one of those days, Al."
"What's this all about?"
"When the tape is running."
"All right, all right!"