Read Online The Rackham Files by Dean Ing - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Dean Ing
Tags: Science-Fiction
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could cruise through the lot or hot-wire a heap and cruise out with it. Or dump a stolen car there.
Several long blocks later I lucked out, not in a car lot but at the end of a row of cars outside a body-and-fender shop. I hadn't remembered the license; it was that inside rearview of Quent's that stretched halfway across the windshield just like mine did, one of those after-market gimmicks every P.I. needs during a stakeout or traffic surveillance.
Pulling on gloves, I parked the pickup out of sight and flicked my pocket flash against the Volvo's steering column. The keys were in the ignition. Knowing Quent as I did, I avoided touching the door plate. In fact, though the racket should have brought every cop in town, I didn't touch the car until, on my fourth try, the old bent wheel rim I'd scrounged managed to cave in the driver's side window, scattering little cubes of glass everywhere.
By that time the alarm's threep, threep, whooeeeet, wheeeoot parodied a mockingbird from hell and for about thirty seconds I expected to see gentlemen of the public safety persuasion descending on the scene. Only after I got the keys out and unlocked the driver's side door did the alarm run out of birdseed and blessed silence overtook the place once more.
Fed forensics are better than most folks think, so while I intended to tell Dana what I'd done, I wanted it to be at a time of my choosing. That's why I didn't climb inside the car. I just opened the driver's door and checked the spring-loaded door panel.
And good old Quent, following his procedures as always, had squirreled away the Feds' tricky little LOC-8 right where it would be handy, and whoever had left the Volvo there hadn't suspected the breakaway panel. I pocketed the gadget, left the keys in the ignition again, and drove like a sober citizen back to the freeway and home. I could hardly wait to check out the LOC-8's memory. Every centimeter of its movements through the whole evening would have been recorded—unless Quent or someone else had erased it.
The normal functions of the LOC-8's little screen hadn't been compromised, so I was able to scroll through its travels beginning with Quent's departure from the Sunnyvale lab early in the evening. I brewed strong Java and sipped as I made longhand notes with pen on paper at my kitchen table. Say what you will about old-fashioned methods, nothing helps me assemble thoughts like notes on paper.
Quent had driven back via the Bay Bridge to Richmond at his ordinary sedate pace, and the Volvo had stopped for two minutes or so halfway down a block in the neighborhood where he had spoken earlier in the day with the so-called machinist. If he hadn't found a parking slot, I guessed he had double-parked.
Next he had driven half a mile, and here the LOC-8 had stayed for over an hour. At max magnification it showed he must have used a parking lot because the Volvo had been well off the street. I noted the location so I could interview the parking attendant, if any. From the locale, I figured Quent had been cruising the ethnic bars and game palaces, maybe looking for our missing engineer or, still more likely, the machinist's roomie. Then the car had left its spot, found the freeway, and headed south through Oakland to the Alameda, not in any special hurry.
But when the Volvo's trail traversed a long block for the second time, I checked the intersections. There was no mistake: Quent had circled the Sonmiani offices a couple of times, then parked in an adjacent alleyway, the same one Norm used for his Porsche as access to the garage entrance of the first-floor offices. As well as I could recall, I hadn't been gone from there long when Quent arrived to do his usual careful survey of the whole layout before committing himself. That would fit if he'd intended to meet someone like Mike Kaplan or the other guy I hadn't met—Meltzer. Someone whose phone number he didn't have. Maybe he had been confident I was still there.
But if he had been
Several long blocks later I lucked out, not in a car lot but at the end of a row of cars outside a body-and-fender shop. I hadn't remembered the license; it was that inside rearview of Quent's that stretched halfway across the windshield just like mine did, one of those after-market gimmicks every P.I. needs during a stakeout or traffic surveillance.
Pulling on gloves, I parked the pickup out of sight and flicked my pocket flash against the Volvo's steering column. The keys were in the ignition. Knowing Quent as I did, I avoided touching the door plate. In fact, though the racket should have brought every cop in town, I didn't touch the car until, on my fourth try, the old bent wheel rim I'd scrounged managed to cave in the driver's side window, scattering little cubes of glass everywhere.
By that time the alarm's threep, threep, whooeeeet, wheeeoot parodied a mockingbird from hell and for about thirty seconds I expected to see gentlemen of the public safety persuasion descending on the scene. Only after I got the keys out and unlocked the driver's side door did the alarm run out of birdseed and blessed silence overtook the place once more.
Fed forensics are better than most folks think, so while I intended to tell Dana what I'd done, I wanted it to be at a time of my choosing. That's why I didn't climb inside the car. I just opened the driver's door and checked the spring-loaded door panel.
And good old Quent, following his procedures as always, had squirreled away the Feds' tricky little LOC-8 right where it would be handy, and whoever had left the Volvo there hadn't suspected the breakaway panel. I pocketed the gadget, left the keys in the ignition again, and drove like a sober citizen back to the freeway and home. I could hardly wait to check out the LOC-8's memory. Every centimeter of its movements through the whole evening would have been recorded—unless Quent or someone else had erased it.
The normal functions of the LOC-8's little screen hadn't been compromised, so I was able to scroll through its travels beginning with Quent's departure from the Sunnyvale lab early in the evening. I brewed strong Java and sipped as I made longhand notes with pen on paper at my kitchen table. Say what you will about old-fashioned methods, nothing helps me assemble thoughts like notes on paper.
Quent had driven back via the Bay Bridge to Richmond at his ordinary sedate pace, and the Volvo had stopped for two minutes or so halfway down a block in the neighborhood where he had spoken earlier in the day with the so-called machinist. If he hadn't found a parking slot, I guessed he had double-parked.
Next he had driven half a mile, and here the LOC-8 had stayed for over an hour. At max magnification it showed he must have used a parking lot because the Volvo had been well off the street. I noted the location so I could interview the parking attendant, if any. From the locale, I figured Quent had been cruising the ethnic bars and game palaces, maybe looking for our missing engineer or, still more likely, the machinist's roomie. Then the car had left its spot, found the freeway, and headed south through Oakland to the Alameda, not in any special hurry.
But when the Volvo's trail traversed a long block for the second time, I checked the intersections. There was no mistake: Quent had circled the Sonmiani offices a couple of times, then parked in an adjacent alleyway, the same one Norm used for his Porsche as access to the garage entrance of the first-floor offices. As well as I could recall, I hadn't been gone from there long when Quent arrived to do his usual careful survey of the whole layout before committing himself. That would fit if he'd intended to meet someone like Mike Kaplan or the other guy I hadn't met—Meltzer. Someone whose phone number he didn't have. Maybe he had been confident I was still there.
But if he had been
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