Puteney had done even better. He’d managed to catch Ruth Somerset, though she’d done most of the netting. She’d found him mildly attractive. Her primary interest, of course, had been in acquiring a potentially valuable contact. Now she’d put that contact to use.
“Sooner, if I can manage it, Don. But first I need a little favor.”
“Uh-oh, here it comes.”
“Take it easy,” she said, pouting over the phone. “You haven’t even heard what it is, yet. And no favor, no date.”
“You haven’t given me a date yet.”
“That’s right, I haven’t, have I?” She paused, letting him stew in his own smart remark.
“Okay, I’ll try, Ruth. It depends on the favor.”
“Jake Pickett.” She spelled both names. “Two ‘T’s. Seventy-one years old, lives at”—she punched a key on one of the several terminals that lined her desk—“three thousand Hermosa Lane. That’s just outside the city of Riverside’s east limits.”
“What about him?” Puteney wanted to know.
“I need a description of his car and I need to know where it is right now. He’ll be with it.”
“You want me to put out an APB on this guy?” Puteney asked her curiously. “What’s your interest in him?”
“Private. Company business.”
“I sure as hell didn’t think it was personal. Seventy-one.”
“We have to locate him,” she continued, adding thoughtfully, “it’s for his own good. We have reason to believe he may be in some danger from exposure to dangerous chemicals. Company wants it kept quiet. You understand.”
“Sure I do. Exposure to dangerous chemicals, yeah, that’ll cover me if there’s any trouble. I shouldn’t have any problems with this. You want me to have him picked up?”
“No,” she said quickly, “that won’t be necessary. He’s no danger to anyone else.” She gave him her office number. “As soon as you run him down let me know where he’s gone to, will you? I can handle the rest from here.”
“What makes you so sure this old guy will be with his car?” Puteney asked her.
“He will be. He seems like a fairly conservative type, not the sort to go around abandoning cars.”
“If you could give me a better description of him we could look for him as well as the car.”
“That’s alright. Just find the car for me and he’ll be around. Can you get right on it?”
“Can I?” She could see him leering over the phone, resolved to put off the meeting as long as possible. “I’ll put the request through to Sacramento right now. I can’t say how long it’ll take. Depends on how fast the information gets out and where he’s gone to.”
“I know it won’t take you very long, Don.” She was practically cooing into the receiver. “You can move fast when you want to.”
“Any speed you like,” he assured her confidently. “How about a place and time, now?”
“As soon as you find the car. See you, Don.” She hung up. Always nice to have friends, she thought. At least this one wasn’t a sicko, like some she’d made use of in the past. If she’d had access to the Highway Patrol registry and computer she could have located Pickett’s car herself. Access to official records like auto registration was usually not granted to strangers, however, so she’d have to be content to let acquaintances like Puteney do the legwork.
She’d never doubted that he’d help her. If the prospect of another meeting with her hadn’t been sufficient to induce him, the mention of a little chat with Mrs. Puteney would have done the job. She was glad it had worked out this way, though. She disliked a mess.
Besides, she might have need of Lieutenant Puteney’s services again some day. Catch more flies with honey. She eyed the wall clock. There was still plenty of CCM work to be done. She had no more idea when Benjamin would return to the office than she did when the lieutenant might call her back.
At least today was a weekday, she mused. Not that the police department shut down on weekends, but it would be easier to deal with Puteney through office channels, where she had the advantage of on-call computer information as well as built-in excuses for not talking to him at length.
She’d always enjoyed working with computers and had gravitated naturally to the profession. They were always so responsive, she thought. Predictable, never emotional or dangerous. Not like men. Of that more mobile and exasperating group she’d found Benjamin Huddy by far the most interesting and reliable. Some day, of course, it might be necessary to discard him. She hoped it wouldn’t come to that. She genuinely liked Benjamin and he obviously felt the same way about her. There was a definite affinity between them. Nothing as ennervating as love, but rather a mutual admiration and willingness to work together to obtain mutually desirable ends.
She was examining a long train of statistics as it unscrolled on one green screen. Part of an upcoming report she would be putting together on CCM’s African operations. She reached for a file and extracted a single disk, which she inserted into the empty drive. Men were like software, come to think of it. She enjoyed being able to plug them in and out of her life.
Benjamin, Benjamin, she sang to herself, whatever have you stumbled onto? His enthusiasm had almost won her over, though the whole business she still found too absurd to believe. Telekinesis, indeed! The stuff of bad horror films, for all the scientific gobbledygook he’d quoted in support of it. Rationalizations and nothing more.
Of course, he’d been the only one to witness the old man’s miraculous demonstration. That was a pity. Bottle caps popping off beer bottles, dirt vanishing from the underside of a car; hardly the raw material from which great careers were fashioned. She’d gone along with the whole silly business this far because Benjamin always seemed to see opportunities where others saw nothing. If he felt this matter worth pursuing, she was bound to help him follow it through to the end. She wasn’t sanguine as to what that end would be.
But why had the old man disappeared?
It wouldn’t hurt her to stick with the project to find out. She wasn’t directly involved the way Benjamin was. Her machines provided her with distance and protective space. For example, she didn’t have to deal with people like those two horrible men Benjamin was compelled to employ. Drew was one name; she couldn’t recall the other.
Much better to let Benjamin deal with such types. It was a disturbing side of the business. Large, brutal, uncouth individuals, long on brawn and short on brain. Beneath the smart yellow dress her legs moved against one another.
“This won’t do,” she murmured to herself, concentrating harder on the central computer screen. “There’s work to be done.”
VIII
She spent the rest of the morning and a large part of the afternoon alternating work with replies to Huddy’s anxious inquiries. He called every fifteen minutes.
“No, Benjy,” she’d tell him repeatedly, “there’s nothing yet.” She could visualize him fuming away in his office upstairs, unable to work. He didn’t have the inner discipline she possessed.
At last, a call, not from him this time, but via her secretary’s outside line.
“Ms. Somerset? I have a Lieutenant Donald Puteney of the LAPD on the line for you.”
