determined. He waited in line at the next window and asked for the records he wanted. He sent back the wrong folder they gave him first; he pointed out that half the papers were missing from the right folder when he got it. He sat in the County Clerk’s waiting room for two hours, until the secretary wandered in and said, with aggrieved hostility, “Mr. Cochrane has gone to lunch. He won’t be back today.” He wrote out a formal complaint on the sheet of paper she grudgingly gave him, alleging that he was being illegally and improperly hampered hi his attempt to examine the corporate public-records files of G.M.L. Homes, Inc., and he doggedly left it with her, knowing what would happen to the paper as soon as he got out of the door. It fluttered into the wastebasket before he got out of the door, and he turned angrily to object.
The duty cop was standing right beside him, looking eager. Mundin went back to his office to think things over.
Fourteen billion dollars. …
But how the devil did they know so fast? Not from Dworcas, Mundin told himself; he could swear that Dworcas didn’t know the heat was on until Jimmy Lyons had called him out of the room. And Dworcas had sent him there in the first place. Because—Mundin flushed angrily at the thought, almost certain that it was right—because Dworcas was pretty sure that a two-bit ambulance chaser like himself wouldn’t do them any good anyhow? And what had changed his mind if so?
Mundin kicked the Sleepless Secretary and went on pacing. In bell-like toaea the Secretary told him that Mrs. Mundin would remit the full balance due by Friday.
He sat down at the desk. All right, so the going was going to be tough. That figured. What else would you expect? And the harder G.M.L. Homes made it, the more scared they were —didn’t that figure? And the more scared they were, the more chance that’this whole impossible thing was on the level, that Charles Mundin LL.B. stood on the threshold of corporate law.
He took out a piece of paper and began to figure. They could make it rough, but they couldn’t stop him. He could get court orders to see the records, that was the obvious starting place, if only to make sure for himself that the Lavins were on the level; and as long as Norma Lavin was willing to call him
her attorney-in-fact they couldn’t keep him out. There would be a slowdown at the court, naturally. But it couldn’t take more than a couple of days, and meanwhile he could get started on some of the other angles. Don’s conditioning— might be a criminal charge in that somewhere, if he could get some names, dates, and places.
He reached for his model-forms book and began drafting a power of attorney for Norma Lavin to sign. She’d sign it, of course; she was an independent and, no doubt, a difficult person, but she didn’t have much choice. Besides, he thought absently, a lot of that mannishness was undoubtedly protective coloration. In circumstances like hers, what could you
expect?
The phone rang; he cut out the Sleepless Secretary hastily and picked up the receiver. “Mundin,” he said.
The voice was ancient and utterly lost. “This is Harry Ryan,” it quavered. “Norma—she isn’t here. Better come out here, Mundin. I think they’ve picked her up.”
Chapter Eleven
norvell was lying on a cake of ice. He kept trying to explain to someone enormous that he was sorry for everything and he’d be a good and dutiful son or husband or friend or whatever he was supposed to be if only the someone would leave him alone. But the enormous someone, who couldn’t have been Norvell’s father because Norvell didn’t even remember a father, only put his hand before hi& mouth and tittered and looked down from a long flight of stairs, and then when Norvell was least expecting ft, areached out and swatted him across the ear and sent him skidding across the enormous cake of ice into the tittering face of Alexandra and the jagged, giant teeth of Virginia. . . . ,,