Out Like a Light

  III.

  Of course, there were written reports, too. Burris had handed Malone asheaf of them--copies of the New York police reports to Burrishimself--and Malone, wanting some time to look through them, had taken atrain to New York instead of a plane. Besides, the new planes still madehim slightly nervous, though he could ride one when he had to. If jetengines had been good enough for the last generation, he thought, theywere certainly good enough for him.

  But avoidance of the new planes was all the good the train trip did him.The reports contained thousands of words, none of which was either newor, apparently, significant to Malone. Burris, he considered, had givenhim everything necessary for the job.

  Except, of course, a way to make sense out of the whole thing. Heconsidered robot-controlled Cadillacs. What good were they? They mightmake it easier for the average driver, of course but that was no reasonto cover up for them, hitting policemen over the head and smashing carsand driving a hundred and ten miles an hour on the West Side Highway.

  All the same, it was the only explanation Malone had, and he cherishedit deeply. He put the papers back in his brief case when the trainpulled into Penn Station, handed his suitcases to a redcap and punchedthe 'cap's buttons for the waiting room. Now, he thought as he strolledslowly along behind the robot, there was an invention that made sense.And nobody had to get killed for it, or hit over the head or smashed up,had they?

  So what was all this nonsense about red robot-controlled Cadillacs?

  Driving these unwelcome reflections from his mind, he paused to light acigarette. He had barely taken the first puff when a familiar voicesaid: "Hey, buddy--hold the light, will you?"

  Malone looked up, blinked and grinned happily. "Boyd!" he said. "Whatare you doing here? I haven't seen you since--"

  "Sure haven't," Boyd said. "I've been out west on a couple of cases.Must be a year since we worked together."

  "Just about," Malone said. "But what are you doing in New York?Vacationing?"

  "Not exactly," Boyd said. "The chief called it sort of a vacation,but--"

  "Oh," Malone said. "You're working with me."

  Boyd nodded. "The chief sent me up. When I got back from the west, hesuddenly decided you might need a good assistant, so I took the planedown, and got here ahead of you."

  "Great," Malone said. "But I want to warn you about the vacation--"

  "Never mind," Boyd said, just a shade sadly. "I know. It isn't." Heseemed deep in thought, as if he were deciding whether or not to get ridof Anne Boleyn. It was, Malone thought, an unusually apt simile. Boyd,six feet tall and weighing about two hundred and twenty-five pounds, hada large square face and a broad-beamed figure that might have made him adead ringer for Henry VIII of England even without his Henry-like fringeof beard and his mustache. With them--thanks to the recent FBI rule thatagents could wear "facial hair, at the discretion of the director orsuch board as he may appoint"--the resemblance to the Tudor monarch wasuncanny.

  But--like his famous double--Boyd didn't stay sad for long. "I thoughtI'd meet you at the station," he said, cheering up, "and maybe talk overold times for a while, on the way to the hotel, anyhow. So long as therewasn't anything else to do."

  "Sure," Malone said. "It's good to see you again. And when did you getpulled out of the Frisco office?"

  Boyd grimaced. "You know," he said, "I had a good thing going for me outthere. Agent-in-Charge of the entire office. But right after that job wedid together--the Queen Elizabeth affair--Burris decided I was too gooda man to waste my fragrance on the desert air. Or whatever it is. So herecalled me, assigned me from the home office, and I've been on one caseafter another ever since."

  "You're a home office agent now?" Malone said.

  "I'm a Roving Reporter," Boyd said, and struck a pose. "I'm a GeneralTrouble-shooter and a Mr. Fix-It. Just like you, Hero."

  "Thanks," Malone said. "How about the local office here? Seen the boysyet?"

  Boyd shook his head. "Not yet," he said. "I was waiting for you to showup. But I did manage hotel rooms with a connecting bath over at theStatler-Hilton Hotel. Nice place. You'll like it, Ken."

  "I'll love it," Malone said. "Especially that connecting bath. It wouldhave been terrible to have an unconnecting bath. Sort of distracting."

  "O.K.," Boyd said. "O.K. You know what I mean." He stared down atMalone's hand. "You know you've still got your lighter on?" he added.

  Malone looked down at it and shut it off. "You asked me to hold it," hesaid.

  "I didn't mean indefinitely," Boyd said. "Anyhow, how about grabbing acab and heading on down to the hotel to get your stuff away, before wecheck in at Sixty-ninth Street?"

  "Good idea," Malone said. "And besides, I could do with a clean shirt.Not to mention a bath."

  "Trains get worse and worse," Boyd said, absently.

  * * * * *

  Malone punched the redcap's buttons again, and he and Boyd followed itthrough the crowded station to the taxi stand. The robot piled thesuitcases into the cab, and somehow Malone and Boyd found room forthemselves.

  "Statler-Hilton Hotel," Boyd said grandly.

  The driver swung around to stare at them, blinked, and finally said:"O.K., Mac. You said it." He started with a terrific grinding of gears,drove out of the Penn Station arch and went two blocks.

  "Here you are, Mac," he said, stopping the cab.

  Malone stared at Boyd with a reproachful expression.

  "So how was I to know?" Boyd said. "I didn't know. If I'd known it wasso close, we could've walked."

  "And saved half a buck," Malone said. "But don't let it bother you--thisis expense account money."

  "That's right," Boyd said. He beamed and tipped the driver heavily. Thecab drove off and Malone hailed the doorman, who equipped them with arobot bellhop and sent them upstairs to their rooms.

  Three-quarters of an hour later, Boyd and Malone were in the offices ofthe Federal Bureau of Investigation, on East Sixty-ninth Street. There,they picked up a lot of nice, new, shiny facts. It was unfortunate, ifnot particularly surprising, that the facts did not seem to make anysense.

  In the first place, only red 1972 Cadillacs seemed to be involved.Anybody who owned such a car was likely to find it missing at any time;there had been a lot of thefts reported, including some that hadn't hadtime to get into Burris' reports. New Jersey now claimed two victims,and New York had three of its own.

  And all the cars weren't turning up in New York, by any means. Some ofthe New York cars had turned up in New Jersey. Some had turned up inConnecticut--including one of the New Jersey cars. So far, there hadbeen neither thefts nor discoveries from Pennsylvania, but Malonecouldn't see why.

  There was absolutely no pattern that he, Boyd, or anyone else couldfind. The list of thefts and recoveries had been fed into an electroniccalculator, which had neatly regurgitated them without being in theleast helpful. It had remarked that the square of seven was forty-nine,but this was traced to a defect in the mechanism.

  Whoever was borrowing the red Caddies exhibited a peculiar combinationof burglarious genius and what looked to Malone like outright idiocy.This was plainly impossible.

  Unfortunately, it had happened.

  Locking the car doors didn't do a bit of good. The thief or thieves gotin without so much as scratching the lock. This, obviously, proved thatthe criminal was either an extremely good lock-pick or knew where to getduplicate keys.

  However, the ignition was invariably shorted across.

  This proved neatly that the criminal was not a very good lock-pick, anddid not know where to get duplicate keys.

  Query: why work so hard on the doors, and not work at all on theignition?

  That was the first place. The second place was just what had beenbothering Malone all along. There didn't seem to be any purpose to thecar thefts. They hadn't been sold, or used as getaway cars. True,teenage delinquents sometimes stole cars just to use them joyriding, oras some sort of prank.

  But a car or tw
o every night? How many joyrides can one gang take?Malone thought. And how long does it take to get tired of the sameprank?

  And why, Malone asked himself wearily for what was beginning to feellike the ten thousandth time, why only red Cadillacs?

  Burris, he told himself, must have been right all along. The redCadillacs were only a smoke screen for something else. Perhaps it wasthe robot car, perhaps not--but whatever it was, Burris' general answerwas the only one that made any sense at all.

  That should have been a comforting thought, Malone reflected. Somehow,though it wasn't.

  After they'd finished with the files and personnel at Sixty-ninthStreet, Malone and Boyd started downtown on what turned out to be a sortof unguided tour of the New York Police Department. They spoke to someof the eyewitnesses, and ended up in Centre Street asking a lot ofreasonably useless questions in the Motor Vehicle Bureau. In general,they spent nearly six hours on the Affair of the Self-PropelledCadillac, picking up a whole bundle of facts. Some of the facts they hadalready known. Some were new, but unhelpful.

  Somehow, nobody felt much like going out for a night on the town.Instead, both agents climbed wearily into bed thinking morose anddisillusioned thoughts.

  And, after that, a week passed. It was filled with ennui.

  Only one thing became clear. In spite of the almost identical _modusoperandi_, used in all the car thefts, they were obviously the work of agang rather than a single person. This required the assumption thatthere was not one insane man at work, but a crew of them, allidentically unbalanced.

  "But the jobs are just too scattered to be the work of one man," Malonesaid. "To steal a car in Connecticut and drive it to the Bronx, and thensteal another car in Westfield, New Jersey fifteen minutes later takesmore than talent. It takes an outright for-sure magician."

  This conclusion, while interesting, was not really helpful. The fact wasthat Malone needed more clues--or, anyhow, more facts--before he coulddo anything at all. And there just weren't any new facts around. Hespent the week wandering morosely from one place to another, sometimesaccompanied by Thomas Boyd and sometimes all alone. Time, he knew, wasticking by at its usual rate. But there wasn't a thing he could do aboutit.

  He did try to relax and have some fun, as Burris had suggested. But hedidn't seem to be able to get his mind off the case.

  Boyd, after the first little while, had no such trouble. He entered thesocial life of the city with a whoop of joy and disappeared from sight.That was fine for Boyd, Malone reflected, but it did leave Malonehimself just a little bit at loose ends.

  Not that he begrudged Boyd his fun. It was nice that one of them wasenjoying himself, anyway.

  It was just that Malone was beginning to get fidgety. He needed to bedoing something--even if it were only taking a walk.

  So he took a walk, and ended up, to his own surprise, downtown nearGreenwich Village.

  And then he'd been bopped on the head.