John MacDonald - The Girl in the Plain Brown Wrapper

“I think the thing he would respond to best, the attitude he’d most quickly comprehend, would be your offer to sell him the body for a hundred thousand dollars. But I don’t want to move, to set it up, until we have a good line on Broon. I’d like him in custody first. Additional pressure. So we’ll get you back to your motel, and I want you to accept no calls and have your meals sent in until I instruct you further. Can you... ah... suppress your natural talent for unilateral action?”

“I bow to the more devious mind in this instance, Mr. Gaffner.”

There was no trace of humor in him. “Thank you,” he said.

I slept undisturbed until past noon. The door was chained, the DO-NOT-DISTURB sign hanging on the outside knob.

The first thing I remembered when I awoke was how, about an hour before first light, I had driven by the new building, with Gaffner beside me and Lozier following in the car they had arrived in.

I drove by knowing she was still up there, behind the metal plate of the service hatch, waiting out the first hours of forever, leaning against the interior grill, firmly wrapped, neatly tied.

Helena, I didn’t do very well. I gave it a try, but it was moving too fast. Dear Tom sidled her into the little office past the boxes, perhaps kissed her on the forehead in gentle farewell, opened the window as wide as it would go, and told her to look down, darling, and see where the lovely restaurant will be. She would turn her shoulders through the opening and peer down. Then a quick boost of knee in the girdled rump, hand in the small of the back. Her hand released the purse to clutch at something, clutch only at the empty air of evening, then she would cat-squall down, slowly turning.

I showered, shaved. I felt sagging and listless. I had the feeling that it was all over. Odd feeling. No big savage heat to avenge the nurse, avenge the big blond childish delicious wife. Perhaps because nothing anyone could do to Pike would ever mean anything to him in the same sense that we would react to disaster.

He was a thing. Heart empty as a paper bag, eyes of clever glass.

As I was reaching for the phone, there was a determined knocking at my door. I called through it. Stanger. I let him in. He seemed strange. He drifted, in a floating way, as if happily drunk. But he wasn’t. His smile was small and thoughtful.

He looked at his watch and sat down. “We’ve got a little time to spare.”

“We have? That’s nice.”

“I did a better job of bugging Mr. Tom Pike than I did on you. Was it that wad of paper on the floor?”

“Lieutenant, I’m disappointed in you. Bugging people on your own team. Shame!”

“My only team is me. I had a lot of thoughts about you. One of them was you were smoke screening the fact maybe Tom Pike brought you in here for some reason or other. Was it something about that paper on the floor?”

I said it was and told him how it worked, then said, “So why didn’t you let me know last night?”

“Wanted you to have all the window trimming there was. The more you could come up with, the better chance you had of selling Gaffner. You did good with that man.”

“That was an expensive piece of equipment you planted on me, Al. City property?”

“Personal. It wasn’t like planting it on a stranger. I knew I’d get it back. You might as well think it was Broon did it. But he didn’t because the very last time anybody saw him at all was a little before noon, Monday. He went to the Courtney Bank and Trust and opened his deposit box, and it gave me the ugly feeling he was gone for good. So it was mighty comforting to hear I’m going to meet up with him.”

“You keep looking at your watch.”

“So I do. But there’s still plenty of time. Don’t you want to know how I bugged old Tom?”

“You’re going to tell me anyway.”

“Why, so I am! Who else can I tell? I went right to a fellow who happens to be the second oldest of those six brothers of Penny Woertz and who happens to work for Central Florida Bell, and I told him I was in need of a little illegal help, and first thing you know, we had a nice tap on both Pike’s private unlisted lines. Nothing I can ever take to court, naturally.”

“Naturally.”

“Lord God, that man has had trouble this morning! Between keeping people busy hunting all over for his missing wife and trying to calm down the people who want to take their money out of his little syndicates and corporations, I bet you ol’ Dave Broon had to try a lot of times before he got through. About ten of eleven when he did. Had to put in thirty-five cents for three minutes.”

“So?”

“So thank God when Tom said they could meet at the usual place, Dave didn’t want any part of it. Saves a lot of trouble. Dave Broon picked the place. Six miles southwest of town. I just got back from there, checking it over, getting something set up. Pretty good place to meet. Big piece of pastureland. Used to be the old Glover place. Pike and some people bought it up a while ago to turn it into something called ranchettes. Two-acre country estates. There’s a gate with a cattle guard near the west side and a lot of open land and just one big old live oak shade tree smack in the middle, maybe a quarter mile from the nearest fence line.”

“When do they meet?”

“Two thirty. But I left Nudenbarger staked out. We can swing around and go in the back way and cut across to where I left him. Less chance of running into either of them.”

“You seem very contented, Mr. Stanger.”

“Sure. Broon told him to bring a big piece of money. They haggled some. Pike said thirty thousand was absolute tops. Broon said it would have to be an installment. Broon told him not to get cute. It’s sure empty out there. Bugs, buzzards, and meadowlarks. They’ll meet by the tree and have a nice talk.”

“And you bugged the tree.”

His face sagged and his mouth turned down. “You take the pure joy out of things, McGee. I’m sorry I decided to bring you along for the fun.”

“I’m sorry I spoiled your fun. I haven’t had anything to eat yet. Is there time?”

“Fifteen minutes.”

Stanger drove the city’s sedan hard. He took a confusing route through the backcountry, along small dirt roads. At last he stopped and got out at a place that looked like any other. He extended the aerial of a walkie-talkie and said, “Lew? You read me?”

“I read you, Al. No action yet. Nothing. Hey, bring that bug dope out of the glove compartment.”

“Okay. We’ll be coming along now. Let me know if either one shows up before we get there.”

He told me that he’d left Nudenbarger staked out with binoculars, a carbine, and the receiver-recorder end of the mike-transmitter unit he’d tied in the oak tree. He said we had a mile to go. He hadn’t wanted to put the car on any directly connecting road for fear Broon or Tom Pike would drive a circuit around the whole ranch to see if everything was clear before driving in.

We had to crawl under one fence and climb over another. The air was hot and still, but there was a hint of coolness whenever the breeze stirred. Stanger seemed to be plodding along listlessly, but he covered ground faster than one would think.

We came out onto a dirt road, crossed it, leaped a watery ditch on the other side. I followed Stanger into a clump of small pines, thick ones, eight to ten feet tall. He motioned me down, and we crawled the last dozen feet to where Nudenbarger lay on his belly close to the fence, staring through the binoculars. He turned and looked with a certain distaste at me and said, “Nothing yet, Al. Maybe they called it off, huh?”

Stanger ignored him. He said to me, “Ringside. Like it?”

We were sheltered on three sides by the pines. We could look under the bottom strand of wire and see the big oak tree about five hundred yards away. Stanger pointed out the gate they’d drive through. “Five after two,” he said. “Ought to get some action along about now.”