white of you,” he said. “You’re not going to fire me, huh?”
Before I could answer this bit of sarcasm, the office PBX buzzed and I flicked the little button with my thumb.
Miss Rains’ voice said, “Detective Allerup to see you, Mike.”
I looked at Sunshine. “I’ll stay,” Sunshine said.
“Send him in,” I told Miss Rains, and a moment later Detective Harry Allerup entered my sanctum sanctorum.
Harry Allerup was a tall, good-looking guy on the right side of thirty by three or four years. He wore tweeds, and a plain clothes man in tweeds is about as common as a D.A. in tights. He smiled at Sunshine and I introduced them and watched them shake hands. The District Attorney has a grip like a wood vise, but Allerup didn’t wince. He said, “You wanted to see me, Mr. Macauley?”
The Mr. Macauley got me. I’d known Harry Allerup ever since he’d made the Morals Division, and it had been Harry and Mike ever since, for more than a year.
“Yeah,” I said. “I wanted to see you—Detective Allerup.”
We looked at each other. I smiled first, then Harry Allerup grinned at me. He still looked uneasy, though. “Aw, Mike,” he said.
“Sit down, Harry,” I said.
He took a seat. “Lieutenant Spooner says I’m to cooperate in every way possible,” he said stiffly.
“There, you see?” Sunshine boomed at me.
“That’s what Lieutenant Spooner said, Harry. What do you say?”
“I don’t even know what you wanted to see me about, Mike.”
Before I could tell him, the PBX buzzed again. Pushing down the button, I started to say, “I don’t want to be dis–”
Miss Rains broke in excitedly, “Remember when you came back from the Courts Building yesterday morning and said if a Miss Gloria Townsend got in touch with this office I was to drop whatever I was doing and—”
“Gloria Townsend!” I shouted.
Harry Allerup stiffened in his chair as though it were a trial run for the hot seat. Sunshine looked like Sunshine will look when he’s dismayed.
“On the telephone, Mike,” Miss Rains said.
I pushed the switch over to one of the outside lines before she could tell me which number. I got a dial tone for my trouble. I pushed the switch again, and this time there was the faint sound of music. Otherwise silence.
“Macauley,” I said.
I didn’t recognize her voice over the telephone. She sounded somehow more sure of herself, as though she could do what had to be done as long as she didn’t have to look the world squarely in the eye. “This is Gloria Townsend, Mr. Macauley. I—I did a lot of thinking last night and I—”
Her voice trailed off and the background music seemed to rise in volume. I shouted, “Are you still there? Where are you?”
“It’s hot in this phone booth,” Gloria Townsend said. “They ought to have a fan. I want to see you, Mr. Macauley.”
“Right now,” I said. “Wherever you are. Don’t go away.”
“I won’t, Mr. Macauley. It’s a roadhouse on Rivershore Drive. The Lagoon. You know the place?”
“I can find it,” I said. “I’m on my way.”
I cut the connection and got my Panama and told Sunshine, “She’s in a place called the Lagoon on Rivershore. I’m going out there.”
“Rivershore is outside our jurisdiction, Mike.”
“I’m just going to talk to the dame,” I said hotly. “What do I need, a volunteer deputy sheriff’s badge?”
“Take it easy, Mike.”
Instead of answering him, I asked Allerup, “Want to come along for the ride?”
“No thanks, Mike. I’d rather not.”
“Don’t want to see her, huh?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Allerup demanded, flushing.
I looked at him. “You tell me, Harry. I’ll listen all the way out to Rivershore.”
“No. You saw what she thought of me.”
“What do you care? You’re a cop, aren’t you?”
“Aw, go to hell,” he said, and stormed out of the office.
I tried to swap glances with Sunshine, but he wasn’t trading. I went outside and Miss Rains pointed to the door.
“He went thataway,” she said.
There wasn’t any other way to go. I said, “I thought maybe he jumped out the window.”
When I reached the corridor, the elevator doors were already sliding shut. I shrugged and took the steps down the five flights to the basement garage and drew an official black Merc from the City Hall car pool. The dispatcher asked if I wanted a driver, and I said I did not. I felt an urgency tugging at my muscles, constricting my throat and making it dry. I didn’t know why, but I knew I was going to hurry.
I took City Hall Street to Mark Twain Boulevard, running two traffic lights before I decided to switch on the siren. After that it was smooth sailing out Mark Twain to the Hawkins Creek Bridge and across the Bridge to Rivershore Drive. Suburban housing developments slipped by and a billboard told me what kind of gasoline was best for my car. I looked at the speedometer. I was doing seventy-five and the needle was climbing.
The suburbs gave way to farmland and more billboards. At a crossroad a state cop in gray uniform kicked over his motorcycle and came after me. I had cut the siren after crossing the Hawkins Creek Bridge, but I switched it back on and the state cop pulled back and out of sight. He didn’t have to; I guess it was professional courtesy.
I was just congratulating myself on the good time I was making when the left rear tire blew with a sound like a .45 fired in a small room without any windows.
chapter three
THE MERC SWERVED WILDLY out of control. I kept my foot on the gas pedal, as they tell you to in the auto-club safety booklets, and began to fight the wheel for my life.
The Merc went into a long, smooth skid toward the wrong side of the road as a big semi-trailer barrelled up toward it. I threw the wheel in the direction of the skid and we kept on going across Rivershore Drive to the opposite shoulder, where the Merc shuddered and spun in a full circle before it skidded back on the asphalt half a dozen feet behind the semi-trailer, went up on two wheels and almost over on its side, then came down hard with a jolt that probably ruined both the springs and my digestion.
After that I guided her
