Sidney Sheldon - The Naked Face

Eddie was not on duty yet, and the elevator was on self-service. Judd rode down to the basement garage. He looked around for Wilt, the attendant, but he was nowhere around. The garage was deserted.

Judd spotted his car parked in a corner against the cement wall. He walked over to it, put his suitcase in the back seat, opened the front door, and eased in behind the wheel. As he reached for the ignition key, a man loomed up at his side from nowhere. Judd’s heart skipped a beat.

“You’re right on schedule.” It was Moody.

“I didn’t know you were going to see me off,” Judd said.

Moody beamed at him, his cherubic face breaking into a huge smile. “I had nothin’ better to do and I couldn’t sleep.”

Judd was suddenly grateful for the tactful way Moody had handled the situation. No reference to the fact that Judd was a mental case, just an ingenuous suggestion that he drive up to the country and take a rest. Well, the least Judd could do was to keep up the pretense that everything was normal.

“I decided you were right. I’m going to drive up and see if I can find a scorecard to the ballgame.”

“Oh, you don’t have to go anywhere for that,” Moody said. “That’s all taken care of.”

Judd looked at him blankly. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s simple. I always say when you want to get to the bottom of anything, you gotta start diggin’”

“Mr. Moody…”

Moody leaned against the door of the car. “You know what I found intriguin’ about your little problem, Doc? Seemed like every five minutes somebody was tryin’ to kill you—maybe. Now that ‘maybe’ fascinated me. There was nothin’ for us to bite into ‘til we found out whether you were crackin’ up, or whether someone was really tryin’ to turn you into a corpse.”

Judd looked at him. “But the Catskills…” he said weakly.

“Oh, you wasn’t never goin’ to the Catskills, Doc.” He opened the door of the car. “Step out here.”

Bewildered, Judd stepped out of the car.

“You see, that was just advertising. I always say if you wanta catch a shark, you’ve gotta bloody up the water first.”

Judd was watching his face.

“I’m afraid you never would have got to the Catskills,” Moody said gently. He walked around to the hood of the car, fumbled with the catch, and raised the hood. Judd walked over to his side. Taped to the distributor head were three sticks of dynamite. Two thin wires were dangling loose from the ignition.

“Booby-trapped,” Moody said.

Judd looked at him, baffled. “But how did you…”

Moody grinned. “I told you, I’m a bad sleeper. I got here around midnight. I paid the night man to go out and have some fun, an’ I just kinda waited in the shadows. The night-man’ll cost another twenty dollars,” he added. “I didn’t want you to look cheap.”

Judd felt a sudden wave of affection toward the little fat man. “Did you see who did it?”

“Nope. It was done before I got here. At six o’clock this mornin’ I figured no one was gonna show up any more, so I took a look.” He pointed to the dangling wires. “Your friends are real cute. They rigged a second booby trap so if you lifted the hood all the way, this wire would detonate the dynamite. The same thing would happen if you turned on your ignition. There’s enough stuff here to wipe out half the garage.”

Judd felt suddenly sick to his stomach. Moody looked at him sympathetically. “Cheer up,” he said. “Look at the progress we’ve made. We know two things. First of all, we know you’re not nuts. And secondly”—the smile left his face—”we know that somebody is God Almighty anxious to murder you, Dr. Stevens.”

Chapter Ten

THEY WERE SITTING in the living room of Judd’s apartment, talking, Moody’s enormous body spilling over the large couch. Moody had carefully put the pieces of the already defused bomb in the trunk of his own car.

“Shouldn’t you have left it there so the police could have examined it?” Judd asked.

“I always say that the most confusin’ thing in the world is too much information.”

“But it would have proved to Lieutenant McGreavy that I’ve been telling the truth.”

“Would it?”

Judd saw his point. As far as McGreavy was concerned, Judd could have placed it there himself. Still, it seemed odd to him that a private detective would withhold evidence from the police. He had a feeling that Moody was like an enormous iceberg. Most of the man was concealed under the surface, under that facade of gentle, small-town bumbler. But now, as he listened to Moody talking, he was filled with elation. He was not insane and the world had not suddenly become filled with wild coincidences. There was an assassin on the loose. A flesh-and-blood assassin. And for some reason he had chosen Judd as his target. My God, thought Judd, how easily our egos can be destroyed. A few minutes ago he had been ready to believe that he was paranoiac. He owed Moody an incalculable debt.

“…You’re the doctor,” Moody was saying. “I’m just an old gumshoe. I always say when you want honey, go to a beehive.”

Judd was beginning to understand Moody’s jargon. “You want my opinion about the kind of man, or men, we’re looking for.”

“That’s it,” beamed Moody. “Are we dealin’ with some homicidal maniac who broke out of a loony bin”—

Mental institution, Judd thought automatically.

—“or have we got somethin’ deeper goin’ here?”

“Something deeper,” said Judd instantly.

“What makes you think so, Doc?”

“First of all, two men broke into my office last night. I might swallow the theory of one lunatic, but two lunatics working together is too much.”

Moody nodded approvingly. “Gotcha. Go on.”

“Secondly, a deranged mind may have an obsession, but it works in a definite pattern. I don’t know why John Hanson and Carol Roberts were killed, but unless I’m wrong, I’m scheduled to be the third and last victim.”

“What makes you think you’re the last?” asked Moody curiously.

“Because,” replied Judd, “if there were going to be other murders, then the first time they failed to kill me, they would have gone on to get whoever else was on their list. But instead of that, they’ve been concentrating on trying to kill me.”

“You know,” said Moody approvingly, “you have the natural born makin’s of a detective.”

Judd was frowning. “There are several things that make no sense.”

“Such as?”

“First, the motive,” said Judd. “I don’t know anyone who—”

“We’ll come back to that. What else?”

“If someone really was that anxious to kill me, when the car knocked me down, all the driver had to do was to back up and run over me. I was unconscious.”

“Ah! That’s where Mr. Benson comes in.”

Judd looked at him blankly.

“Mr. Benson is the witness to your accident,” explained Moody benevolently. “I got his name from the police report and went to see him after you left my office. That’ll be three-fifty for taxicabs. OK?”

Judd nodded, speechless.

“Mr. Benson—he’s a furrier, by the way. Beautiful stuff. If you ever want to buy anything for your sweetheart, I can get you a discount. Anyway, Tuesday, the night of the accident, he was comin’ out of an office building where his sister-in-law works. He dropped some pills off because his brother Matthew, who’s a Bible salesman, had the flu an’ she was goin’ to take the pills home to him.”

Judd controlled his impatience. If Norman Z. Moody had felt like sitting there and reciting the entire Bill of Rights, he was going to listen.

“So Mr. Benson dropped off these pills an’ was comin’ out of the building when he saw this limousine headin’ toward you. Of course, he didn’t know it was you at the time.”