Shark Infested Custard Part 10

"No fee, Hank. I'd hate to pay the tax on it. When are we going to have lunch?"

"I'll have to call you. My boss is flying in tonight, and I've got a lot of things to do today, but I'll call you soon."

"Please do, Hank. You've put on a few pounds, haven't you?"

"A few, but I still do my fifty push-ups every morning, and I'm on a diet again. I can take off ten pounds in a week. The next time you see me, I'll be back down."

I got up and put on my jacket. It was cool in his office, and there were several things I wanted to talk about with Thead, but I had taken enough of his time already. Besides, I didn't want to confide in him. It was too embarra.s.sing.

"Hank?"

"Sir?"

"Perhaps you'd better tell me your friend's name?"

"Why?"

He shrugged, and then he grinned. "In case the police find his body, I can tell them what his name was."

I shook my head and smiled. "No use you getting involved, Dr. Thead. If something happens to him, I'll tell them his name."

"All right--but call me soon."

Outside in the hot sun again, I felt as if I were walking under water as I crossed the courtyard toward the narrow strip of lawn where I had parked my Galaxie. Except for two Cuban refugees, looking for goodies in a Dempsey Dumpster, there were no suspicious looking people around. I lit a cigarette, and climbed into my car.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN.

The explosion, when I turned on the ignition, was instantaneous, but the engine caught. My foot jammed down involuntarily on the gas pedal, and the engine roared. The engine fan, turning at high speed, forced thin wings of black smoke from under the hood on both sides of the car. For a moment, there had been a high shrill whistle before the explosion. I was startled, and my mind was benumbed by the sudden, unexpected noise. Conscious now of the racing engine, I turned off the ignition, unfastened my seat belt and climbed stiffly out of the car.

I wasn't hurt and, looking at the hood, I couldn't see any damage to the car. There was only a faint remnant of smoke wisping out from under the closed hood. I was joined by a half-dozen curious, bearded students. One of them grinned.

"Looks like somebody pulled a trick on you," he said.

"Did any of your guys see anyone around my car?" I said, looking at them. They shuffled back a pace or two. There was some silent head-shaking.

I opened the driver's door, reached under the dash, and pulled the k.n.o.b to unlock the hood. There was a scattering of gray flecks of paper littering the engine. A student leaned over to look at the engine, picked up a thin red-and-white wire, and traced it to the battery. The wire was split, and sc.r.a.ped to the copper at the ends, and two thin strands were wound around the terminals. There were some short lengths of the red-and-white wire mixed with the shredded bits of gray paper.

"A Whiz-Bang," the student said. "It can't hurt your car any. It just whistles and makes a loud firecracker bang when you turn on the ignition."

I nodded. "But my car was locked. How'd he get inside to open the hood?"

"Maybe you didn't lock the car."

"I always lock it."

"In that case," he said, "he must've unlocked it."

All of the students were grinning now. I grinned, too, trying to make a joke of it. "I'm parked illegally," I said, "so maybe one of your campus cops played the trick on me--as a warning."

One of the students stopped grinning, and frowned. "It isn't really funny, you know," he said. "A man could have a heart attack being shook up like that."

"It scared me all right," I admitted, dropping the hood and checking to see that it was locked, "but I can take a joke. So if one of you guys did the wiring, there's no hard feelings."

"No one here did it," the first student said. "You can buy those Whiz-Bang devices over at Meadows', but that's not the kind of trick anyone would play on a stranger."

"It was probably someone who knew me, who recognized my car." I shrugged and got into the car again and closed the door.

The students, bored now, drifted away. I turned on the ignition, and switched on the airconditioning. I lit a cigarette, and then stubbed it out. My mouth was too dry to smoke. Then I noticed the small three by five inch card half-hidden beneath the seatbelt on the pa.s.senger's side. Printed, in neat block letters, with a ballpoint pen, it read: "IT'S YOU I WANT, LUCKY, NOT AN INNOCENT STUDENT. NEXT TIME YOU WON1 BE SO LUCKY, LUCKY. BETTER SAY YOUR f.u.c.kING PRAYERS."

I put the card into my s.h.i.+rt pocket, swiveled my neck and looked out the back window. The courtyard and the first twostory building of the Law School were behind me. Straight ahead, through the front window, was the vast student union parking lot, with cars as thickly cl.u.s.tered as fruitflies on an overripe mango. Students, some going toward the Ring Theater, shuffled along in sandals. Others were leaving the student union to attend cla.s.ses, but I didn't see a middle-aged man wearing a seersucker jacket. Apparently Mr. Wright had followed me and rigged the gag explosive device on my car, but how had he got into the car without a key? I was positive that I had locked the car. It's the kind of thing a man does automatically, but being positive wasn't enough. From now on I would have to be absolutely sure.

I left the university, and circled about through the quiet back streets of Coral Gables, checking the rearview mirror to see if I were being followed. These were all placid neighborhood blocks, with very little traffic, and there were no cars behind or in front of me when I finally reached Red Road and turned toward Eighth Street--the Tamiami Trail--or, as the Cubans call it, -Calle Ocho-.

My stomach burned, partly with hunger but mostly with fury--an indignant kind of fury caused by the pointlessness of the trick bomb. A real bomb would have killed me, and I could understand Wright's reluctance to place a real bomb in the car when he might have inadvertently killed a pa.s.sing student as I triggered it, but there was still no point in using a firecracker bomb--just to prove that he could have blown me up with a real bomb as easily. He was making a game, or a joke out of my life-- or death-- or, more logically, he was giving me a second warning, when the shot was warning enough, to make me more alert, or perhaps, a more worthy opponent for him. Perhaps he was trying to make certain that I would try to protect myself against him? Was he giving me a sporting chance because he didn't want to shoot a "sitting duck?"

Whatever his intentions were, I did not intend to let the joke throw me off. I was trying to outguess Mr. Wright, and there was a possibility that he had had a cooling off period, and that he had placed the trick bomb under the hood to show me that he was no longer angry enough to kill me, to carry out his original threat. But if that were true, why would he leave such a threatening note?

I shrugged away these speculations, knowing how useless they were. I knew nothing about Wright the man, the husband, or the killer. To stay alive, I would have to a.s.sume--without forgetting it for a second--that Wright meant to kill me, and the best way to prevent him from doing so would be to kill him first.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

After Twenty-Seventh Avenue, driving east, Eighth Street is a one-way, four-laned street. The neighborhoods on both sides, as well as the stores, are almost entirely Spanish-speaking-- Cuban, and Puerto Rican, with a scattering of Colombians. There are always two or more people in a car in Little Havana, usually several, and as they-- the occupants--drive along, they all talk at once, using both hands, including the driver. Sometimes, a Cuban driver, to make a point to someone in the back seat, will take his hands off the wheel altogether, turn around, and with many gestures, talk animatedly to his pa.s.sengers in the back while he is still traveling at forty miles per hour. One drives cautiously on Eighth Street, and even more so after it becomes a one-way street. I was looking for the Target Gun Shop, a parking place, and out for other drivers.

I parked on the south side of Eighth, locked my car, and waited for a chance to jaywalk to the other side. The Target Gun Shop had been easy to find. The front of the building was a huge target, with wide, alternating black and white stripes narrowing down to a big circular black bullseye that included the top half of the front door. Running across the street, when my chance came, and heading for that black bullseye door, gave me a queasy feeling.

The store inside, dark and delightfully airconditioned, was much larger than it had appeared from the street. One half of the building was devoted to guns and ammunition, with a half-dozen long gla.s.s display cases filled with pistols. There were tables loaded with hunting equipment, holsters, ammo belts, and other war surplus camping equipment. The other half of the building, with a separate entrance inside the store, was an indoor shooting range.

I looked into the display cases at the wide selection of weapons, bewildered by the variety of choices. A middle-aged Cuban, with fluffy gray sideburns, waited on me. His English was excellent, with hardly any accent.

"Look as long as you like," he said, smiling, "and if you want to examine one of the pistols, just tap on the gla.s.s and I'll take it out for you."

"I think I'll need some help," I said. "I need a pistol, but they all look about the same to me."

"No, sir. They are not the same. Do you need a weapon for target practice, or merely for protection?"

"Protection?" I looked at him sharply.

He shrugged. "A man must protect his home."

"Yes," I said, "I need a pistol for protection."

"What do you know about guns?"

"Not much, except what I learned in the Army. One thing-- when you look at the riflings inside the barrel, it means you've got a muzzle velocity of one hundred yards per second for each complete twist. Eight complete turns in the barrel means eight hundred yards per second."

He laughed, and shook his head. "Not exactly. It would also depend on the bore size, the load, and the barrel length, but these things are not important with small arms. For short range protection, muzzle velocity doesn't mean so much. A nice short-barrelled thirty-eight, is a good buy for protection. If you're a very good shot you might prefer a forty-five. But if you are not a marksman, I suggest a thirty-eight, and the ammo's a lot cheaper."

He showed me several.38s and I selected a Police Special with a three-inch barrel. It was a delight to hold it in my hand. The price was $280.00, which was more than I had expected to pay for a used pistol, but I handed him my MasterCard.

He filled out the bill of sale and registration papers and asked me to sign them. I slipped the pistol into my hip pocket, and he laughed.

"Hold on, Mr. Norton. I have to have the gun registered. You'll be able to get it in seventy-two hours--three days from now."

"Three days? I need it for protection now"

"That's the time it takes. We do the paperwork for you, you see, but I can't let you take a weapon out that hasn't been registered downtown with Metro. It's the law"

"Okay. Can you rent me a pistol for three days, until mine is registered?"

"That's--just a minute, Mr. Norton. You'd better talk to Mr. Dugan." He went down the counter, and came back with an older, red-haired man who looked as if he had rinsed his face with tomato soup.

"We aren't in business to rent pistols, Mr. Norton," Mr. Dugan said.

"I understand that, but I carry pharmaceutical supplies in my car, and they need protection until I get the pistol registered."

"Who did you vote for in the last election?"

"That's a personal matter, Mr. Dugan," I said.

"Yes, it is, if you want to keep it personal. Do you mind showing me your voter's registration card?"

"Of course not."

The moment he saw my registration card his stiff att.i.tude changed. He smiled, shook my hand, winked, and returned the card. "For a fellow Republican," he said, "we're willing to bend a little, but we have to be careful, you know. Some of these knee-jerk liberals and independents that come in here--well, I don't have to tell you, Mr. Norton." He turned to the Cuban salesman. "Take care of him, Jos."

I left the Target Gun Shop with a newly-blued, short-barrelled.38; two boxes of ammunition (100 rounds); a soft, plasticene holster, with a chrome clip to hold the holster and gun inside my trousers; a Hoppe's gun cleaning kit and a free b.u.mper sticker, reading: "WHEN GUNS ARE OUTLAWED, ONLY OUTLAWS WILL HAVE GUNS."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN.

When I got back to my apartment I cleaned and oiled the.38 and got used to handling it. I aimed at various things in the living room and squeezed off some dry-run shots, trying to become familiar with the trigger pull. But I was a little afraid of the pistol. The concept of buying a pistol is one thing; to actually buy and own one and have it in your hand is something else-- a step across a dividing line that changes you into a different kind of man. A pistol is often referred to as "the difference," because a man five feet tall with a pistol has made up the difference between himself and an opponent six feet tall. But what I was feeling, as I fooled around with the pistol in my living room, was a psychological difference. I felt a combination of elation and dreadful excitement, together with an eagerness to use the d.a.m.ned pistol--to use it on Mr. Wright.

But I was not a good shot. My Army experience with weapons, as a member of the Adjutant General's Corps, was primarily familiarization firing. During an R.O.T.C. summer camp I had had to qualify with a rifle on the range, but we had only fired five rounds apiece with a.45 on the pistol range, just to give us an idea of what it was like to shoot one.

I boiled four frankfurters and ate them with a bowl of cottage cheese. Every few minutes, I would to the window, and peak out to check my car. Until this business with Wright was resolved, I would be unable to work. I couldn't park in strange parking lots, nor beside doctors' offices--not if Wright had access to my car. Nor was my car safe on Santana, even though I could look Out the window once in awhile to check on it. I couldn't watch it all night--not when I slept.

I had to do something now.

It was two p.m., and much too early to go to the airport, but I would be safer there if I could lose or elude Wright beforehand. I was too restless and jittery to stay in the apartment.

I loaded the pistol, slipped it into the holster, and left the building. I had debated putting the b.u.mper sticker on my car, but decided against it. If Wright saw the b.u.mper strip, he might jump to the correct conclusion that I had armed myself, and it seemed to me that I would have a slightly better advantage if he didn't know that I had a weapon.

I had lost Wright, I was certain, when I circled about through the Coral Gables residential sections before going to the gun shop. But the chances were good that he was following me again. To pick up again all he had to do was to return to my apartment house and wait for me. So although I didn't see him, I made some elaborate maneuvers to lose him in case he was somewhere around.

No one knows Miami any better than I do. I've explored most of Dade County by car. I drove downtown on 1-95, left the freeway at Biscayne, and then took the MacArthur Causeway to Miami Beach. I drove up Collins, then came back to Miami via the Venetian Causeway, and picked up I-95 South. Then, by a dangerous maneuver and quite unexpectedly, I cut from the far right lane over to the left lane on a tire-screeching four-lane diagonal cross and made the downtown First Street exit ramp. Anyone following me would have had to know I was going to make this suicidal lane switch to stay with me.

I parked at the Miamarina, had a cup of coffee, and then took the Airport Expressway at a leisurely forty miles per hour to the International Airport. I drove up the departure ramp, turned into the terminal parking building across from the Eastern gate, and parked on the top floor. I locked the.38 in the glove compartment (it is not good to be caught with a loaded pistol in an airport). I locked the Galaxie and rode the elevator down to the departing pa.s.senger entrance.

It was four-fifteen p.m. I spent the next hour and a half slowly sipping two tallJohn Collinses at the Airport Lounge, well pleased with myself at the clever way I had lost Mr. Wright, while I waited to see Tom Davies, the Vice-President for Sales.

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN.

The two drinks, together with the illusion of security I felt at having given Wright the slip, had steadied me, and it was simple to gauge Tom Davies' role when I joined him in his hotel room. Madras is back, and Tom was wearing a new madras suit-- predominantly yellow, green, and black--with sixteen-inch cuffed bell-bottoms, a salmon-colored s.h.i.+rt, and a black-and-gold tie. When he met me at the door and didn't take off his jacket when he invited me to fix myself a drink (Jack Daniels Black, water), I perceived that Tom was playing vice-president.

The last time I had been with Tom, about ten minutes before I had pa.s.sed out, he had been drunk, giggling helplessly, and the two Amazon showgirls we had picked up in Atlanta had been rubbing his naked body with Johnson's Baby Oil. But during this current meeting in the silent soundproof room in the Airport Hotel, mentioning that particular incident would have been undiplomatic. Taking my cue from Tom, I did not remove my jacket. The drink I mixed was very light indeed-- a "social" drink, taken genially by the hard-working star salesman in the field.

Tom was wearing his sincere smile, and his manners were muted. Dale Carnegie. I had taken the Dale Carnegie course, and so had Tom; in fact every man in the company had been forced to take it, and the company, of course, had paid the tab. The problem with two men who have both taken and absorbed the Carnegie techniques is to conceal the fact that they are using them on each other. In this respect, Tom was much better at it than I was because, as a Vice-President, with a $70,000 annual salary, plus stock options, he had to be. But I was perceptive enough to realize, or recognize, his superiority in this regard, and all I had to do to maintain my deferential employee role without appearing to be deferential (the company would not tolerate Uriah Heeps) was to talk and act with Tom as if I, too, were making seventy thousand a year. What I had to be very careful about was to never show that I was superior to Tom in knowledge in any area of discussion, and, at the same time, never to reveal abysmal ignorance on any topic discussed. It was quite simple to maintain my role with Tom because he made it easy for me, and I admired his skill.

Besides, you can't s.h.i.+t an old s.h.i.+tter.

Tom had been a detail man in the field, and the district manager for Southern California before he had been promoted to Vice-President for Sales. He was only thirty-five, goal-oriented, and his chances of succeeding old Ned Lee as president of the company some day were better than those of the other vice-presidents I had met in New Jersey.

Tom sat on the edge of the double bed, placed his pale drink on the bedside table, and waved me to the chair by the desk The chair was more than twelve feet away from the bed, and he was establis.h.i.+ng-- in case I had failed to notice it already-- the distance between us as befitted our roles. He would begin with an apology, and I waited for it silently, wearing my concerned expression.

"I know that six o'clock is an awkward time, Hank, and I'm sorry if you had to break off an engagement of some kind to meet me."

I shook my head. "Not when it's company business, Tom," I said. "Besides, how often do I get a chance to see you?"

I had handled that one neatly, by implying that I had broken an engagement of some kind, and by hinting that I liked him as a person, and not because he was merely a generous boss.

"How well do you know Julie Westphal, Hank?"

"Very well. He's a friend of mine, and I don't say that just because he's the man who hired me. I like him as my district manager and I think he likes me. Julie was d.a.m.ned helpful to me in the beginning, and I learned a great deal from him."

"He likes you, too, Hank," Tom said, nodding his head approvingly. "In fact, he wanted to come down here from Atlanta with me. Do you know why?"