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Great Writing - Home > Extended > The Case of the Missing Husband ch8
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Extended Work
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| The Case of the Missing Husband ch8 | |
| By Snodlander | ||
| 28 April 2007 | ||
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In which a joint is cased and Malone pouts. Again We travelled down Jefferson towards Twenty-Third. This was a well-to-do area. Not rich, like Oakhills, but where the professionals lived. Apartment blocks above various restaurants, bars, bijou shops and the like. “Don’t stop,” I told her. “Just drive straight across and on a block.” “Why?” she asked. “Because I know what I’m doing and I said so.” There was a grocery store on one corner, a newsagent, a church and a florist. The lights were red and we stopped in traffic. I looked up at the corners of the buildings. No Homeland cameras. Down Twenty-Third I could see three bars within a hundred metres. The same in the other direction. “Oh, I get it. We’re casing the joint, yeah?” “Yeah. We’re ‘casing the joint’. That’s exactly what we’re doing.” I shook my head. She was just so damn keen. She peered under the sun visor, an expression of fierce concentration on her face. A few seconds later she leaned towards me, eyes glued on the street. “What are we looking for exactly?” she murmured out of the corner of her mouth. “We’re looking for the green light. Drive on a block.” She looked sulky, but put the car into drive. A block down the road we pulled over. “Well, Mr high and mighty detective, care to share your wisdom with me?” I smiled. Finally annoying her after she had annoyed me all afternoon gave me a perverse pleasure. Did that make me a bad person? “Debray wasn’t kidnapped. He wanted to drop off the radar so that no-one could find him.” I looked smug and waited. She knew I wouldn’t go any further without being asked, and she really didn’t want to ask. But she wanted to know more. She sighed. “OK. How do you know?” “He took a cab. He has a car, and a guy like that probably has a driver too. But he took a cab. Now, the trouble with ordering a cab on the phone is that they record where you are getting picked up and dropped off. So Debray took a cab to a junction that isn’t covered by police cameras. There are a few bars along there. At that time of night there would be a dozen cabs passing a minute. Bar patrons often need cabs. So he jumped into a second cab, paid cash the other end. Untraceable.” I sat back and folded my arms. She shook her head. “How do you know he wasn’t having a secret meeting in one of the bars? Or an assignation in someone’s apartment?” “Assignation?” I feigned ignorance. Who used words like that? “Yes. You know. Maybe he was meeting a woman, or something.” “Oh. You mean was he banging some naïve journalist? Let’s hope not. There must be five hundred apartments within five minutes walk. And bars aren’t where you hold secret meetings. Too many of them have cameras now, so they know who to sue when some drunk smashes up the place. Besides, if I wanted to disappear, that’s what I’d do. Nope, this is a dead end.” “You’re giving up?” “Giving up on eight hundred a day? You’re kidding, right? I’m just giving up on this lead, is all.” “Well, I think that you are being a little premature. We could stake out the place.” I shook my head in wonder. “You want to tell me how to do my job? Maybe I should tell you how to write your fantasies, how’d you like them apples, sister?” “There’s no need to be offensive, Mr Littlejohn!” She pouted again. “If we staked the place out, what would we be looking for? You think Debray would go to all this bother to hide, then just stroll along the sidewalk?” “Well, OK, what do you suggest we do then?” “We find out why he’s gone into hiding. If we find out who he’s running from, then maybe we’ll be able to get him to come out of hiding.” “How do we do that?” “Let’s start with his office. We should just have time before close of business. Mrs Debray doesn’t want our investigation to be common knowledge, so you’re going to have to help me get into his office.”
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