“Sit right down aver there, in the straight chair by that countertop, Mr. McGee,” the voice said. Large room. I\vo double beds. Pile carpeting. Small refrigerator. Recently redecorated. Between the half-open draperies I could see beach chairs and a table on the tiny ground-level terrace outside sliding doors, and I could look out toward the marina parking lot.
When I sat down I got my first look at the voice. Like Swimmer, he seemed to be in his late twenties. Mid-height, with the shoulder meat of one who works out with weights. Glossy dark hair, square jaw, neck as broad as the jaw. Metal-rimmed glasses with a slight amber tint. A pleasant smile.
“My name is McGee,” I said.
‘I think well try to get along without names.”
He took the toy off the bed, inspected it, pulled the sectional aerial to full length, and went over and opened the sliding door. “Dr. Meyer? Every~ing is in order here. Why don’t you come on in?”
When there was no answer, he tossed the unit to me. I pushed the little piano key and said, ‘Jo rea- son why you shouldn’t, Meyer.”
“Okay.” The voice was tinny and remote. “ShaU I bring your hat?”
“No. Leave it in the car and lock up. Room One-two-one.”
When Meyer arrived, Swimmer frisked him, declared him clean, and then winked at me and said, ‘I was looking for your hat.”
“Was it all that obvious?” I asked.
‘~Don’t worry about it,” Weightlifter said. Yt’s good procedure. Simple and useful. Keep it. Because it doesn’t work with us doesn’t mean it isn’t any good. But, Dr. Meyer, I’m CUfiOUS.”
“Just Meyer, please.”
“Fine. What if he’d asked you to bring his hat?.
“There are several ways he could have asked me to bring it. Each one is an option. If he felt the two of us could handle things, I would have been ready when I came through the door, and so would he.”
‘~ice. Very nice,” Swimmer said.
“You seem to know a hell of a lot,” I said.
Weightlifter shrugged and sat on the edge of a bed, and motioned Meyer over to a wing chair by the sliding doors. “Not as much as we tried to find out. I’ll give you credit. You have some very solid friends around that marina, McGee. We didn’t have much time to work on it. We put a lot of people on it. We pulled your military record. We put some tourists into that Bahia Mar Marina We had somebody at Timber Bay. We sent somebody to Petaluma. We know or at least we feel able to assume that you are not wanted anywhere, that
The Green Ripper your identity is correct, that you are not into the coke or grass trade, and that you are not political.”
“Who is we?” Meyer asked.
‘Eve won’t go into that. Just as I told Mr. McGee, we won’t go into names either. And we won’t show identification. And if you check the register later, it won’t do you a bit of good. And, 111 be frank with you, the names and the connections wouldn’t mean much to you. We are going to ask questions. Lots of them. This might take a long time. But we start with evidence of good faith.”
Swimmer went to the closet and came bac} with a nine-by-twelve manila envelope and handed it to Weightlifter.
“Before I show you these,” Weightlifter said, Y must explain how we happened to luck out. Dr. Tower reported the symptoms to the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta They have had standing orders for over a year to report any case which has those same symptoms to a certain branch of the Federal Government. An expert in forensic medicine flew down to Atlanta from New York, starting about an hour after word came to Washington. When it became obvious to Dr. Tower that Mrs. Howard was going to die, he phoned Atlanta. The expert came down here in time to participate in the autopsy. He found what we had instructed him to look for. Take a look at these prints.”
I had been watching him covertly. He was lefthadded. He wore a sport shirt that hung outside his trousers, and once when he moved I had identified the bulge on his right side, halfway between the belly button and the point of the hip bone.