We went over to look for tire tracks. They would be about three weeks old. There was a faint pattern in the heavy grass, a mark of rugged tread in dried mud, and some grease stains on the tallest grass.
“So she stood here, I’d guess,” Meyer said.
“Out in the early morning, looking for her pin,” I said. “Yes. And so what?”
Meyer shrugged. “I don’t know what. Every action we take, every thought we have, they are all based upon some form of information. We know more now than we did before. It is difficult, I think, and erroneous, to try to decide in advance whether additional facts will be useful.”
“So if she stood here, and heard the motor and stepped out in this direction, okay, the car would pass close, and the passenger would be three feet away, as she said. And we could backtrack the vehicle to old Herm’s house. Incidentally, coming around to the airstrip overland instead of on the road doesn’t mean much. The people who own those four-wheel-drive brutes like to take them bouncing through the fields and woods. It does something for their glands. It could be preference instead of secretiveness. On the other hand, he did avoid meeting Mrs. Ladwigg, and the two men ate in the guest wing. Anyway, Meyer, where the hell are we going with all this?”
Roaring at Meyer seldom does any good. He
The Green Ripper gave me the mild smile, the bland nod. ‘let’s see where we’ve been. On the thirteenth of December, two days before Toomey and Kline paid a visit to you, a Mr. Ryan visited Bonnie Brae. I do not think the Federal Aviation gets into the business of tracking down small planes which endanger scheduled airline flights. I think that is the Civil Aeronautics Board’s chore. And, whoever was looking into it, surely if there was danger of a collision, somebody would have picked up the idenffficaffon numbers of the small airplane. They are required to catty the numbers in very large con- trasting colors. Additionally, the customs people are monitoring all small planes in flight along this coast. And, finally, there seems to be a telltale monotony about the names of the three alleged offlcials Howard C., Robert A., and Richard EL. If any more turn up, we can expect William B. and Thomas D.”
Meyer will never cease to astonish me. That heavy skull is loaded with microprocessors. Informaffon is subject to constant analysis, synthesis, storage and retrieval. But when this makes him seem too intellectual, too somber, I have but to recall him at Bailey’s, our neighborhood disco, cavorting like a dancing bear with three blond chiclets who adore him, and who listen to him when he sits like a hairy Buddha, declaiming instant legends and inventing instant folk-song lyrics. The dancing Meyer, pelt gleaming under the disco lights, little blue eyes shining, is the antidote to the data-processing machine under the skull bones.
We moved over into the semishade of a young live oak. The shadows had no edges under that white fluorescent sky.
He leaned against the tree. I sat on my heels and poked at the hard dirt with a piece of branch.
“It’s too much!” he said irritably.
“How do you mean?”
“Pretend for one moment that Gretel never told us about Brother Titus. She might not have said anything, you know. Then where would we be? You would have accepted their story that they were looking into something that might be going on at Bonnie Brae. Let’s hope they accepted your state ment that Gretel had told you nothing. The Ryan person convinced them out at Bonnie Brae that he was what he said he was. Toomey, Kline, and Ryan were mopping up. There is no other answer. Ladwigg and Gretel were both lolled.”
‘Lao!”
“Yes, Travis. Both deaths were made to look routine. An accident and an illness. They would not make waves. It was somehow terribly important that no one be left alive who could talk about Brother Titus. The secrecy of the whole business indicates that there might be people who might possibly recognize him. It was a remote chance, but one that X could not accept. Remember, I am using X to indicate an individual or an organiza