“Thank you, Sandy. Go ahead and put him through.”
A brief pause, then, “Hi, gorgeous.”
“Hi, yourself. You have something for me?”
He allowed himself a single sinister ha-ha before getting down to business. “Your man Pickett drives a 1961 blue and white Ford Galaxie, license number ay-dee-six, four-two-eff.” Her right hand worked with a pencil as he relayed the information. “Bought’it new in October sixty-one from—”
“Never mind that,” she interrupted impatiently. “Where is he now?”
“Highway Patrol finally located him heading east out of Blythe. The ID was made at the border station and since my office was the one that put out the request, I was notified. You said that you didn’t want him stopped so they let him through.”
“That’s what I wanted.” She was trying to picture a map of Southern California. She rarely drove anywhere outside L.A. “Going east from Blythe, you said?”
“That’s right. On Interstate Ten.”
“Thanks, Don. That’s what I needed to know.”
“Hey, wait a minute! What about…?”
“Call you back.” She hung up on the disappointed officer and hastily buzzed Benjamin’s office. He made it downstairs in record time. Meanwhile she took a quick geography lesson.
“Blythe,” he muttered as he strode through the doorway. “Going east out of Blythe.” He sat down opposite her. “That’s way south of the Sierras. Even for someone who might like to take the long way around.” He shook his head. “No, he’s running, Ruth, and not into the Sierras, either.”
“What’s east of Blythe?” she asked him.
“Nothing. Not a damn thing. Not until you get to Phoenix. After that on I-10 there’s Tucson and then nothing until….” His eyes widened slightly. “Texas. You remember?” He leaned over her desk. “The only relatives he has, the niece and grandniece, down by Houston?”
“That’s a hell of a drive,” she observed, “for an old man with a heart condition to attempt solo in an old car.”
“But why else would he be going that way?”
“Maybe he knows somebody in Phoenix who’s not in our records,” she murmured. “Maybe he’s headed someplace we haven’t imagined.”
“Well, I’m not going to wait to find out. I wish to hell I knew what I’d done to make him suspicious of me.”
“Too late for that now,” she pointed out. “What are you going to do?”
“Have him picked up, of course. Who do we have in the vicinity of Blythe?”
“Company, you mean?” She raised her eyebrows, swiveled in the chair. Her fingers danced over a keyboard. A moment later she was shaking her head discouragingly.
“The nearest company facilities are in Perris. That’s practically around the corner from Riverside. Nowhere near the border.”
“Nothing in Blythe itself?”
She shook her head again. “Not even a drugstore.”
“I know people in Vegas,” he said softly, “but even that’s too far. And the roads in that part of the country stink.”
“What about the Phoenix-Tucson area?” Her fingers moved again. “Here we go. Southwest Phoenix Division, Eutheria Plant and Products.”
“What do we have there?”
“Potash, mostly. Some borates. The General Manager’s name is Frank Lasenby.”
“Right. Get ahold of this Lasenby.”
“Get ahold of him yourself,” she told him. “I’m not your secretary, Benjamin.”
“Come on, Ruth,” he said tiredly, “not now, huh?”
“Just reminding you.” She instructed her own secretary to make the connection.
“What have we got on this guy Lasenby?”
“Twenty-one years with the company,” she said, reading off the screen. “Family man. No evidence of misconduct, no history of bribe-taking. Seems pretty straight.” She touched a couple of keys, activating a code and releasing a lock within the system. Information appeared on the screen that wasn’t contained in the general personnel files.
“Here we go.” She shifted in her chair. “Suspected homosexual activity. At least two incidents. One dating back to his college days.”
“That’ll be enough,” said Huddy, sounding satisfied. “Hopefully we won’t have to use that.”
“Hopefully,” she agreed. “Still, it’s always nice when you need something from somebody to be able to carry a knife in the hand you’re not shaking his with.”
“Yeah. Lasenby will help us pick Pickett up before he gets into Phoenix. I don’t want to have to fool with him there. It’s not our territory and we don’t know the ground.”
“Not only that,” she said, “but I don’t know anyone in Phoenix. This information on Pickett comes through my California source. He’s out of that range now. We might be able to work something with his Arizona contacts, but I wouldn’t want to have to depend on that. Besides, I don’t know if I’d try working this source any further.” She thought of the disappointed lieutenant. “From here on we’re going to have to track Pickett with our own resources.”
“That’s no problem. We’ll have him in custody in a few hours. There’s only the one interstate running from Blythe through to Phoenix.”
