DIPLOMATS FROM “UNFRIENDLY” countries are followed routinely when they leave their embassies. They know they are being followed. And the people following them know they know.
Sometimes a “diplomat” wishing to show bravado rather than diplomacy goes to a follower waiting in a car and taps on the window and tells the follower where he's going next: “In case traffic gets heavy and you lose me.”
As I drove off to Garfield Park and passed the parked presumably-pale-green car, I was tempted to stop. “Just in case your battery's flat and you need a jump start.” It was even more tempting because the car seemed to be empty.
I had a vision of two, three, four? people piled on the floor. But much as I would have enjoyed looking down at my clients in their distress, I drove on.
Temptation: another trap for the Go-for-It Detective. If I stopped for a peek I might kill my chances for repeat work. There were literally thousands of children's swings in Indianapolis. At a hundred bucks a time I could retire on delivering newspaper bricks alone.
I drove to the park. I dropped the package into one of the swings and looped back to my car without breaking stride. I got in and drove away. Job done, conditions met.
Work finished: let play begin!
“We'll stay in,” my woman had said. “We'll try something we've never done before.”
I drove methodically to my woman's house. I spent as much time looking in the mirror as through the windshield. I made squealing television-type turns without signaling. I timed some lights so that I was the last car through on the yellow.
I am not a surveillance specialist, but unless the Kate King Gang's driver was, I had not been followed.
Once I was sure of that, I considered contacting the police. Well, not the police exactly, but my friend—now a captain—Jerry Miller. But what would I tell him? A funny-looking girl hired me to do deliver some waste paper. She had a friend with a station wagon. She paid cash.
In the plastic society, the cash was maybe the most suspicious part.
It was not the stuff of interrupting a friend's Saturday night.
And it wasn't as if I was really worried.
I should have been.
Waiting at my woman's were a battery of lights, a big video camera on a spidery base and boxes of sound equipment.
Also Frank. “Sorry I didn't get back to you directly, Albert,” he said. “But I've got this big project in the air.” He winked. “Can't talk about it now.”
A small mercy and the only one I got all evening. We filmed my bits for a series of commercials.
If I'd known! I could have had my hair done. I could have bought a new frock.
“Please don't be angry at me,” my woman said later. “They came to dinner on Wednesday and Frank talked ceaselessly about the plans he had for you and your commercials and how wonderful you would be on them if only you were relaxed and yourself. I said I'd like to see you do them and one thing led to another and tonight seemed about the only time we were all going to be free.”
“Oh.”
“And we felt that you would be more spontaneous if you hadn't spent a lot of time worrying.”
“We did, did we?”
“Honestly, you did do well, Al. I was tremendously impressed. You came across beautifully. I can see you might resent the way it was done, but the result was really very, very good. A lot will depend on what material Frank superimposes you onto, but your bit will bring you love letters and indecent proposals. Honest.”
“Promise?” I said.
“You like that idea?”
“You know how it goes,” I said. “Life moves on. One becomes successful. The friends who served so well just don't seem to understand one's new problems.”
“Ah. I see. You don't like my collusion.”
“I admit to being not real happy. I was in a good enough mood when I got here, but these carryings-on have not been dignified. No, I'm not real happy now.”
“I don't believe you,” she said.
“You don't?”
“I think you're pleased with how it went and that nothing would please you more than if this advertising makes your business boom. I think you're just affecting a bad mood.”
“So, under this sensitive world-weary exterior there beats a heart that wants to become private detecting's Jello?”
“Yes.”
“You're right. I am affecting a bad mood. I am affecting it very well.”
“Is there anything I can do about it?”
“Yeah.”
“You going to tell me?”
I raised one eyebrow, like I had on one of the commercials. It's what I do when I try to elicit love letters and indecent proposals.
But then I said, “Hey, what's this about dinner on Wednesday? You sat at the table with Frank? Do I gather that you are more resigned to having it as a son-in-law?”
“Over my dead body.”
“I see,” I said. “You're softening.”