Chapter 3-1
1999 Words
Chapter 3
The telephone rang.
Malone rolled over on the couch and muttered four words under
his breath. Was it absolutely necessary for someone to call him at
seven in the morning?
He grabbed at the receiver with one hand, and picked up his
cigar from the ashtray with the other. It was bad enough to be
awakened from a sound sleep—but when a man hadn't been sleeping at
all, it was even worse.
He'd been sitting up since before five that morning, worrying
about the telepathic spy, and at the moment he wanted sleep more
than he wanted phone calls.
"Gur?" he said, sleepily and angrily, thankful that he'd never
had a visiphone installed in his apartment. A taste for blondes was
apparently hereditary. At any rate, Malone felt he had inherited it
from his father, and he didn't want any visible strangers calling
him at odd hours to interfere with his process of collection and
research.
He blinked at the audio circuit, and a feminine voice said: "Mr.
Kenneth J. Malone?"
"Who's this?" Malone said peevishly, beginning to discover
himself capable of semirational English speech.
"Long distance from San Francisco," the voice said.
"It certainly is," Malone said. "Who's calling?"
"San Francisco is calling," the voice said primly.
Malone repressed a desire to tell the voice that he didn't want
to talk to St. Francis, not even in Spanish, and said instead:
"Who in San Francisco?"
There was a momentary hiatus, and then the voice said: "Mr.
Thomas Boyd is calling, sir. He says this is a scramble call."
Malone took a drag from his cigar and closed his eyes. Obviously
the call was a scramble. If it had been clear, the man would have
dialed direct, instead of going through what Malone now recognized
as an operator.
"Mr. Boyd says he is the Agent-in-Charge of the San Francisco
office of the FBI," the voice offered.
"And quite right, too," Malone told her. "All right. Put him
on."
"One moment," There was a pause, a click, another pause and then
another click. At last the operator said: "Your party is ready,
sir."
Then there was still another pause.
Malone stared at the audio receiver. He began to whistle
When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.
… And the sound of Irish laughter… . "Hello?
Malone?"
"I'm here, Tom," Malone said guiltily. "This is me. What's the
trouble?"
"Trouble?" Boyd said. "There isn't any trouble. Well, not
really. Or maybe it is. I don't know."
Malone scowled at the audio receiver, and for the first time
wished he had gone ahead and had a video circuit put in, so that
Boyd could see the horrendous expression on his face.
"Look," he said. "It's seven here and that's too early. Out
there, it's four, and that's practically ridiculous. What's so
important?"
He knew perfectly well that Boyd wasn't calling him just for the
fun of it. The man was a damned good agent. But why a call at this
hour?
Malone muttered under his breath. Then, self-consciously, he
squashed out his cigar and lit a cigarette while Boyd was saying:
"Ken, I think we may have found what you've been looking for."
It wasn't safe to say too much, even over a scrambled circuit.
But Malone got the message without difficulty.
"Yeah?" he said, sitting up on the edge of the couch. "You
sure?"
"Well," Boyd said, "no. Not absolutely sure. Not absolutely. But
it is worth your taking a personal look, I think."
"Ah," Malone said cautiously. "An imbecile?"
"No," Boyd said flatly. "Not an imbecile. Definitely not an
imbecile. As a matter of fact, a hell of a fat long way from an
imbecile."
Malone glanced at his watch and skimmed over the airline
timetables in his mind. "I'll be there nine o'clock, your time," he
said. "Have a car waiting for me at the field."
As usual, Malone managed to sleep better on the plane than he'd
been able to do at home. He slept so well, in fact, that he was
still groggy when he stepped into the waiting car.
"Good to see you, Ken," Boyd said briskly, as he shook Malone's
hand.
"You, too, Tom," Malone said sleepily. "Now what's all this
about?" He looked around apprehensively. "No bugs in this car, I
hope?" he said.
Boyd gunned the motor and headed toward the San Francisco
Freeway. "Better not be," he said, "or I'll fire me a technician or
two."
"Well, then," Malone said, relaxing against the upholstery,
"where is this guy, and who is he? And how did you find him?"
Boyd looked uncomfortable. It was, somehow, both an
awe-inspiring and a slightly risible sight. Six feet one and
one-half inches tall in his flat feet, Boyd posted around over two
hundred and twenty pounds of bone, flesh and muscle. He swung a
pot-belly of startling proportions under the silk shirting he wore,
and his face, with its wide nose, small eyes and high forehead, was
half highly mature, half startlingly childlike. In an apparent
effort to erase those childlike qualities, Boyd sported a fringe of
beard and a moustache which reminded Malone of somebody he couldn't
quite place.
But whoever the somebody was, his hair hadn't been black, as
Boyd's was…
He decided it didn't make any difference. Anyhow, Boyd was
speaking.
"In the first place," he said, "it isn't a guy. In the second,
I'm not exactly sure who it is. And in the third, Ken, I didn't
find it."
There was a little silence.
"Don't tell me," Malone said. "It's a telepathic horse, isn't
it? Tom, I just don't think I could stand a telepathic horse…
."
"No," Boyd said hastily. "No. Not at all. No horse. It's a dame.
I mean a lady." He looked away from the road and flashed a glance
at Malone. His eyes seemed to be pleading for
something—understanding, possibly, Malone thought. "Frankly," Boyd
said, "I'd rather not tell you anything about her just yet. I'd
rather you met her first. Then you could make up your own mind. All
right?"
"All right," Malone said wearily. "Do it your own way. How far
do we have to go?"
"Just about an hour's drive," Boyd said. "That's all."
Malone slumped back in the seat and pushed his hat over his
eyes. "Fine," he said. "Suppose you wake me up when we get
there."
But, groggy as he was, he couldn't sleep. He wished he'd had
some coffee on the plane. Maybe it would have made him feel
better.
Then again, coffee was only coffee. True, he had never acquired
his father's taste for gin (and imagined, therefore, that it wasn't
hereditary, like a taste for blondes), but there was always
bourbon.
He thought about bourbon for a few minutes. It was a nice
thought. It warmed him and made him feel a lot better. After a
while, he even felt awake enough to do some talking.
He pushed his hat back and struggled to a reasonable sitting
position. "I don't suppose you have a drink hidden away in the car
somewhere?" he said tentatively. "Or would the technicians have
found that, too?"
"Better not have," Boyd said in the same tone as before, "or
I'll fire a couple of technicians." He grinned without turning.
"It's in the door compartment, next to the forty-five cartridges
and the Tommy- gun."
Malone opened the compartment in the thick door of the car and
extracted a bottle. It was Christian Brothers Brandy instead of the
bourbon he had been thinking about, but he discovered that he
didn't mind at all. It went down as smoothly as milk.
Boyd glanced at it momentarily as Malone screwed the top back
on.
"No," Malone said in answer to the unspoken question. "You're
driving." Then he settled back again and tipped his hat
forward.
He didn't sleep a wink. He was perfectly sure of that. But it
wasn't over two seconds later that Boyd said: "We're here, Ken.
Wake up."
"Whadyamean, wakeup," Malone said. "I wasn't asleep." He thumbed
his hat back and sat up rapidly. "Where's 'here?'"
"Bayview Neuropsychiatric Hospital," Boyd said. "This is where
Dr. Harman works, you know."
"No," Malone said. "As a matter of fact, I don't know. You
didn't tell me—remember? And who is Dr. Harman, anyhow?"
The car was moving up a long, curving driveway toward a large,
lawn- surrounded building. Boyd spoke without looking away from the
road.
"Well," he said, "this Dr. Wilson Harman is the man who phoned
us yesterday. One of my field agents was out here asking around
about imbeciles and so on. Found nothing, by the way. And then this
Dr. Harman called, later. Said he had someone here I might be
interested in. So I came on out myself for a look, yesterday
afternoon—after all, we had instructions to follow up every
possible lead."
"I know," Malone said. "I wrote them."
"Oh," Boyd said. "Sure. Well, anyhow, I talked to this dame.
Lady."
"And?"
"And I talked to her," Boyd said. "I'm not entirely sure of
anything myself. But—well, hell. You take a look at her."
He pulled the car up to a parking space, slid nonchalantly into
a slot marked Reserved—Executive Director Sutton,
and slid out from under the wheel while Malone got out the other
side.
They marched up the broad steps, through the doorway and into
the glass-fronted office of the receptionist.
Boyd showed her his little golden badge, and got an appropriate
gasp. "FBI," he said. "Dr. Harman's expecting us."
The wait wasn't over fifteen seconds. Boyd and Malone marched
down the hall and around a couple of corners, and came to the
doctor's office. The door was opaqued glass with nothing but a room
number stenciled on it. Without ceremony, Boyd pushed the door
open. Malone followed him inside.
The office was small but sunny. Dr. Wilson Harman sat behind a
blond- wood desk, a little man with crew-cut blond hair and rimless
eyeglasses, who looked about thirty-two and couldn't possibly,
Malone thought, have been anywhere near that young. On a second
look, Malone noticed a better age indication in the eyes and
forehead, and revised his first guess upward between ten and
fifteen years.
"Come in, gentlemen," Dr. Harman called. His voice was that
rarity, a really loud high tenor.
"Dr. Harman," Boyd said, "this is my superior, Mr. Malone. We'd
like to have a talk with Miss Thompson, if we might."
"I anticipated that, sir," Dr. Harman said. "Miss Thompson is in
the next room. Have you explained to Mr. Malone that—"
"I haven't explained a thing," Boyd said quickly, and added in
what was obviously intended to be a casual tone: "Mr. Malone wants
to get a picture of Miss Thompson directly—without any
preconceptions."
"I see," Dr. Harman said. "Very well, gentlemen. Through this
door."
He opened the door in the right-hand wall of the room, and
Malone took one look. It was a long, long look. Standing framed in
the doorway, dressed in the starched white of a nurse's uniform,
was the most beautiful blonde he had ever seen.
She had curves. She definitely had curves. As a matter of fact,
Malone didn't really think he had ever seen curves before. These
were something new and different and truly three-dimensional. But
it wasn't the curves, or the long straight lines of her legs, or
the quiet beauty of her face, that made her so special. After all,
Malone had seen legs and bodies and faces before.
At least, he thought he had. Offhand, he couldn't remember
where. Looking at the girl, Malone was ready to write brand-new
definitions for every anatomical term. Even a term like "hands."
Malone had never seen anything especially arousing in the human
hand before—anyway, not when the hand was just lying around, so to
speak, attached to its wrist but not doing anything in particular.
But these hands, long, slender and tapering, white and
cool-looking… .
And yet, it wasn't just the sheer physical beauty of the girl.
She had something else, something more and something different.
(Something borrowed, Malone thought in a semidelirious
haze, and something blue.) Personality? Character?
Soul?
Whatever it was, Malone decided, this girl had it. She had
enough of it to supply the entire human race, and any others that
might exist in the Universe. Malone smiled at the girl and she
smiled back.
- Writer
