IT WAS NEARLY DARK OUT when Alfred Hendriks left the building, moving in that executive’s stride I had seen in Marianne’s office, unlocked the Porsche, and got in behind the wheel. The taillights sprang on, one of them white where the bulb was exposed, and the car shot backward out of the space and swung around and pounced forward, passing the Renault where I sat slumped below the headrest. I had to hustle to start the engine and get out behind him; I’d been expecting some noise when he started the Porsche. He was halfway to Jefferson by the time I rounded the building, but I needn’t have worried. That white taillight stuck out like a cauliflower ear.
The shift had changed half an hour earlier, but traffic was still heavy. I kept him in sight easily until Detroit, where it cleared a little and he picked up the pace. The Renault had to think about it before kicking in when I punched the accelerator. I almost lost him when he turned onto Woodward, but I spotted the taillight at the last second and cut somebody off taking the turn, getting a chirp of brakes and an angry horn in my right ear. I closed to within half a block of him on Woodward. There the lights were against him.
The rules of detection are pretty specific on what to do when the bird won’t flush. Following him until he does is long and boring and pays off about a third of the time, but up to a point it beats giving up. Just where that point is depends on the detective. Any way you play it you have hemorrhoids in your future.
For forty-five minutes we toured the city and its northern suburbs — it was full dark now and the lamps were lit — and then we skinned off into the side streets of Birmingham, a place where the alleys shine and the muggers are well above average. Cars were scarce. I gave him several blocks. At the top of a hill on a street lined with trees and low brick walls, the taillight winked and his headlamp beams raked a concrete post at the end of a driveway. I glided past, turned off my lamps, and coasted to a stop against the curb two houses down.
The moon was standing on edge. I got out with the flash from the glove compartment and walked back and checked the number on the concrete post, inserting my body between the light and the house. It occupied two levels, flat-roofed, horizontal, looking like a deck of cards with the top half cocked to the side. Low hedges bordered both levels at windowsill height.
The front door opened, spilling light onto the driveway at the far end. I trotted back to the Renault and climbed in. Two doors slammed, then the Porsche backed down the driveway and into the street. Light from a gaslamp on the lawn splashed on a woman in the passenger’s seat and then the car slid out from under it, powering back the way it had come. I didn’t get a long enough look to see if I could recognize her. I U-turned and followed.
He lost me at the second light. When he slowed for the yellow I did too, and then he hit the gas and shot across the intersection. I stopped on the red to avoid broadsiding a delivery van. By the time I got across, cheating by a couple of seconds, the white taillight had vanished.
I drove around a couple of blocks, then headed back to Woodward and took it down to my office. I called Lee Horst, an information broker who never goes home. We haggled a while, then I gave him the address in Birmingham and asked him for a name. After a minute or so of computer time he came back on.
“You need new clothes if you’re going to move in this company,” he said in his high soft voice. “Dressing the way you do you could be picked up for prowling in Timothy Marianne’s neighborhood.”
I thanked him and said I’d send him a check in the morning. I sat there chewing my lip for a while, then closed the office and went home. I’m not Lee Horst.
It was none of my business. Hendriks probably had a perfectly legitimate reason for driving off with the boss’s wife. You get thoughts in this work that make you ashamed of your calling.
It had been a long day. I was too hungry to skip supper and too tired to talk to a waitress. I tracked down two minute steaks that were starting to curl in the refrigerator and grilled them for fifteen seconds on each side, apprehended some okra that had been hiding in a can in the cupboard, and released the works into my custody. Detecting is a hard habit to break, even at home. I interrogated a bottle of beer and turned on the TV to watch a pair of cops in unstructured jackets mow down some crooks and an innocent bystander or two with automatic weapons, in stereo yet; but not on my set. The telephone rang while I was changing channels.
“Anything?” It was my client.
“Where’d you get this number?” I asked.
“They’s three more books than when I went in. I thought you was exaggerating about the telephone companies. I axed you did you get anything.”
“I had a talk with the cop who arrested you. Also Hendriks, in person this time. Marianne was there too.”
“So?”
“So nothing. Hendriks still says he was in England. The difference now is I’m sure he’s lying.”
“I knew that.”
“You’re not conducting this investigation.”
“So what now?”
“Now I go to bed. You should too. You aren’t used to staying up this late.”
He paused. “How come you never answer a question the first time I axe it?”
“What?”
“Hey, I thought you at least was friendly.”
“Sorry. It hasn’t been one of my more productive days. I may have an angle on Hendriks. Maybe not, but it’s worth looking at. Meanwhile you might want to stay close to your room this weekend. I don’t want you spooking him. Besides, whoever made that try up north might be looking for you here.”
“That don’t scare me.”
“Your brains in your lap wouldn’t scare you. It’s your parole I’m worried about. The board doesn’t take to ex-cons with high profiles even if the attention isn’t their fault.”
“What’s your problem? You been paid.”
I said, “That wasn’t friendly at all.”
“Yeah. Okay. Call a guy, okay? This waiting shit’s worse than slam.”
“You try shooting baskets like I said?”
“I started to, but I didn’t get that far. Listen, what you said about checking their teeth?”
“Yeah.”
“It ain’t true.”
I said I’d call. He said okay again and broke the connection.
My neck was almost back to normal, but now my head ached. I washed down two aspirins with Scotch straight from the bottle and went to bed. Lying there I thought about prison.
Time is the real punishment, not any of the several things that can happen to you inside. Sadistic guards aren’t the problem they are in movies. They exist, but given shift rotation and the high burnout factor, the hell they represent is short-term. Shower-room rapes aren’t any more common than the alley kind, and anyone who went to public school knows how to conduct himself during the bullying in the yard. The longer you’re in the less frightening the prospect of sharing another inmate’s bunk, all things being relative. The storied Hole is extinct. Modern administrators know it’s unnecessary. They’ve got isolation, and the old dark-cell with nothing but an unsanitary hole in a bare floor is no worse and maybe even a little better than being left alone in medium-gray light for an indefinite period with nothing to do, no books to read and nobody to talk to. Outside isolation, the routine doesn’t change: up at six, twenty minutes to shave, shower, dress, and eat breakfast, work till eleven, thirty minutes in the yard, work till four, twenty minutes for supper, an hour in the TV room if you haven’t killed an inmate or sassed a guard lately, lights out at nine. It keeps you from thinking, so that’s not punishment. The worst of it is day on day in an institution and time passing outside. Darkness is abolished. There is always light coming in from somewhere, and like a space traveler marooned on a planet with two suns you close your eyes and pretend you’re surrounded by night. Then you open them to that bland light and you know you’ll never make it. Or you’re afraid you will. It’s the one thing in life that’s worse than you picture. I didn’t even want to think about how it was when you were innocent.
I wondered what was taking place between Alfred Hendriks and Timothy Marianne’s wife and if it had anything to do with anything.
It seems I slept. At some point I stopped thinking about prison and was in it. I had on starched denims and shoes corrugated inside from the rubbing of many feet. Someone big and hairy laid an arm across my shoulders in the library — a library whose books carried no mention of crime or violence or sex, rows of North American Birds, anglers’ guides, and Laura Ingalls Wilder — and told me I was his girlfriend tonight. I ducked the arm and then was glad to find myself suddenly in my own bed in darkness. Only something was wrong with that, because my bedroom is never dark. There’s a streetlamp outside the window. Then I smelled cigar smoke.
He was sitting in front of the window, the solid dark bulk of him standing out a little from the night. The orange eye of his cigar hovered around his thighs, then came up, etching a glowing trail, and brightened as he pulled at it, highlighting a city block of face and light hair and beard. Then it subsided. Gray smoke caught its light, turning in the still air.
“You sleep hard.” He sounded cheerful.
“You work quiet.” I sat up, not too quickly. “My wallet’s there on the bureau. You don’t want the watch. Not worth the trip to the pawnshop.”
“I’m not a burglar.”
“I was afraid you wouldn’t be. Okay if I turn on the light? When I get the hell beat out of me I like to see it.” I keep the Smith & Wesson on the lamp table at night.
“I’m not muscle either.”
“Listen, it’s okay, so long as you don’t find me attractive. I just went through that.”
“Not hardly. You must lead an interesting life.”
“More all the time.” I waited.
“I knocked. No one answered, so I came in.”
“The guy that sold me the lock said it was burglarproof.”
“No such thing. I was a locksmith’s apprentice. There are just so many kinds and I’ve knocked them all down and put them back together. Combination’s the best, but who wants to live in a bank vault?” He puffed. His eyes were set back under a round brow. “Get dressed. We’re going somewhere.”
“Casual, or shirt and shoes?”
“Doesn’t matter. The Commodore isn’t picky.”