John D MacDonald – Travis McGee 10 The Girl In The Plain Brown Wrapper

“So how do you want me to handle it?”

“I think the thing he would respond to best, the attitude he’d most quickly comprehend, would be your offer to sell him the body for a hundred thousand dollars. But I don’t want to move, to set it up, until we have a good line on Broon. I’d like him in custody first. Additional pressure. So we’ll get you back to your motel, and I want you to accept no calls and have your meals sent in until I instruct you further. Can you… ah… suppress your natural talent for unilateral action?”

“I bow to the more devious mind in this instance, Mr. Gaffner.”

There was no trace of humor in him. “Thank you,” he said.

20

I SLEPT UNDISTURBED until past noon. The door was chained, the do-not-disturb sign hanging on the outside knob.

The first thing I remembered when I awoke was how, about an hour before first light, I had driven by the new building, with Gaffner beside me and Lozier following in the car they had arrived in.

I drove by knowing she was still up there, behind the metal plate of the service hatch, waiting out the first hours of forever, leaning against the interior grill, firmly wrapped, neatly tied.

Helena, I didn’t do very well. I gave it a try, but it was moving too fast. Dear Tom sidled her into the little office past the boxes, perhaps kissed her on the forehead in gentle farewell, opened the window as wide as it would go, and told her to look down, darling, and see where the lovely restaurant will be. She would turn her shoulders through the opening and peer down. Then a quick boost of knee in the girdled rump, hand in the small of the back. Her hand released the purse to clutch at something, clutch only at the empty air of evening, then she would cat-squall down, slowly turning.

I showered, shaved. I felt sagging and listless. I had the feeling that it was all over. Odd feeling. No big savage heat to avenge the nurse, avenge the big blond childish delicious wife. Perhaps because nothing anyone could do to Pike would ever mean anything to him in the same sense that we would react to disaster.

He was a thing. Heart empty as a paper bag, eyes of clever glass. As I was reaching for the phone, there was a determined knocking at my door. I called through it. Stanger. I let him in. He seemed strange. He drifted, in a floating way, as if happily drunk. But he wasn’t. His smile was small and thoughtful.

He looked at his watch and sat down. “We’ve got a little time to spare.”

“We have? That’s nice.”

“I did a better job of bugging Mr. Tom Pike than I did on you. Was it that wad of paper on the floor?”

“Lieutenant, I’m disappointed in you. Bugging people on your own team. Shame!”

“My only team is me. I had a lot of thoughts about you. One of them was you were smokescreening the fact maybe Tom Pike brought you in here for some reason or other. Was it something about that paper on the floor?”

I said it was and told him how it worked, then said, “So why didn’t you let me know last night?”

“Wanted you to have all the window trimming there was. The more you could come up with, the better chance you had of selling Gaffner. You did good with that man.”

“That was an expensive piece of equipment you planted on me, Al. City property?”

“Personal. It wasn’t like planting it on a stranger. I knew I’d get it back. You might as well think it was Broon did it. But he didn’t because the very last time anybody saw him at all was a little before noon, Monday. He went to the Courtney Bank and Trust and opened his deposit box, and it gave me the ugly feeling he was gone for good. So it was mighty comforting to hear I’m going to meet up with him.”

“You keep looking at your watch.”

“So I do. But there’s still plenty of tune. Don’t you want to know how I bugged old Tom?”