“Why don’t you use the telephone here?”
“It goes through the motel switchboard,” he said. “I just don’t want to take any chances of being traced or tapped.”
He walked several blocks to a drug store where he got change. He stood for a moment, considering using the drug store phones and then decided to go back to the booth near the motel. That way, he could watch the motel front while making his calls.
He stopped for a moment by the paperback rack. It had been so long since he’d read a book. Well, he had read the Tishquetmoac books, but they didn’t publish anything but science and history and theology. The people of the tier called Atlantis had published fiction, but he had spent very little time among them, although he had planned to do so someday. There had been some books in the Semitic civilization of Khamshem and the Germanic civilization of Dracheland, but the number of novels was very small and the variety was limited. Wolff’s palace had contained a library of twenty million books-or recordings of books- but Kickaha had not spent enough tune there to read very many.
He looked over the selection, aware that he shouldn’t be taking the time to do so, and finally picked three. One was a Tom Wolfe book (but not the Thomas Wolfe he had known), which looked as if it would give him information about the Zeitgeist of modern times. One was a factual book by Asimov (who was, it seemed, the same man as the science-fiction writer he remembered), and a book on the black revolution. He went to the magazine counter and purchased Look, Life, The Saturday Review, The New Yorker, the Los Angeles magazine, and a number of science-fiction magazines.
With his books, magazines, and an evening Times, he walked back to the telephone booth. He called Anana first to make sure that she was all right. Then he took pencil and paper and dialed each of the numbers on the slip of paper he had found in Mazarin’s wallet.
Three of them were women who disclaimed any knowledge of Mazarin. Three of the numbers did not reply. Kickaha marked these for later calls. One might have been a bookie joint, judging from the talking in the background. The man who answered was as noncommittal as the women. The eighth call got a bartender. Kickaha said he was looking for Mazarin.
The bartender said, “Ain’t you heard, friend? Mazarin was killed today!”
“Somebody killed him?” Kickaha said, as if he were shocked. “Who done it?”
“Nobody knows. The guy was riding with Fred and some of the boys, and all of a sudden the guy pulls Charley’s gun out of his pocket, shoots Fred in the chest with it, and takes off, but only after he knocks out Charley, Ramos, and Ziggy.”
“Yeah?” Kickaha said. “Them guys was pros, too. They must’ve got careless or something. Say, ain’t that gonna makes their boss mad? He must be jumping up and down!”
“You kiddin’, friend? Nothin’ makes Cambring jump up and down. Look, I gotta go, a customer. Drop around, buy me a drink, I’ll fill you in on the gory details.”
Kickaha wrote the name Cambring down and then looked through the phone book. There was no Cambring in the Los Angeles directory or any of the surrounding cities.
The ninth phone number was that of a Culver City garage. The man who answered said he’d never heard of Mazarin. Kickaha doubted that that was true, but there was nothing he could do about it.
The last number was opposite the letters R.C. Kickaha hoped that these stood for R. Cambring. But the woman who answered was Roma Chalmers. She was as guarded as the others in her replies to his questions.
He called Anana again to make doubly sure that she was all right. Then he returned to the room, where he ordered a meal from the Chicken Delight. He ate everything in the box, but the food had that taste of something disagreeable and of something missing. Anana also ate all of hers but complained.
“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” he said. “If we haven’t found any promising leads, we’ll go out and get some clothes.”