Double Jeopardy, page 12
Howard made a note. "And he's missing. Anybody got any ideas on turning him up?"
Jones rubbed his chin. "If we're right, and it's an arranged disappearance, it's going to be hard," he said. "I think there's one possibility, though. This whole thing shows long and careful planning; it was a year and a half ago that the business at the Institute took place, and there must have been a planning stage even before that. To my mind, this means that Warburton must have been arranging a duplicate identity he could slip into, after the robbery, at least that long ago. Right?"
There was a nodding of heads around the desk, and Howard said, "Right."
"Well," Jones went on, "then we have to put ourselves in his mind, and figure out how he would lose himself. I think anyone smart enough to have worked out this plan so that we don't even know how he did it would also know there'd be a warning out for the bills, and would plan on not spending any of them for a long time, perhaps a matter of years. Agreed ?"
"Seems plausible," said Howard.
"In fact, his visit to Perez looks as though he somehow got wind of the fact that Perez was spending some of the money, and was trying to put a stop to it. But that's a side issue; the main point is that he'd have to hide out some place where he could earn enough money to live on. Now, he's got two professions—bank clerk and electronic chemist. But banks check pretty close on their employees. Moreover, chemical firms pay more. So I think we'll find him quietly working at some chemical plant, where he began building up an identity for himself a while back."
Howard commented: "It would have to be fairly near here, too, for him to have come calling on Perez. That narrows the field down considerably. You'd suggest covering the chemical firms?"
"I think there's an easier way than that. The American Chemical Society keeps a register of chemists at the research level because special jobs sometimes turn up. They can tell us what firms hired an electronic chemist back in June."
Howard shook his head. "I don't like it very well. These big industrial firms will do anything rather than produce their personnel records, and if we raid one of them and it turns out we've grabbed the wrong man, we'd be in a hell of a jam on personal privacy and personal security both."
"Won't do any harm to find out what we can, will it 1" asked Swigart. "Let me try this society."
"Go ahead," said Howard. "It's about all we can do for the present about locating Warburton. Now let's take up the Di Paduano angle. How did your job of roping one of the bank employees come out, Dewey?"
O'Neill, who had been sitting silently, spread his hands. "Not a tumble. I picked up a guy named Christy, we went to a bar together and then to a leg show, and I gave him the old song and dance about how there'd be some dough in it if we could turn up Warburton. Hell, I might as well of been talking to one of them stone lions out front; it wasn't that he was clamming up, he just don't know from nothing."
Jones said: "I think I can give you something on the Di Paduano angle."
"The hell you can!" said O'Neill. "What have you got that we ain't got on that?"
Jones told them about his deduction while sitting on the steps at 78th Street, waiting for Perez. "So it seems to me," he finished, "that the Owl must be working for Di Paduano. That would explain the dough behind the Owl. Or for someone connected with Di Paduano, who would answer to the description of 'some babe.' All we have to do is find the babe."
"Think you're smart, don't you?" said O'Neill with a grin. "Well, here's one for you; you don't gotta find her; I done it for you."
"Huh?"
O'Neill waved a hand and enjoyed himself. "I been hanging around that bank, see? Yesterday noon, when I'm meeting my contact, out comes this dame, built like a fire engine, you know, the kind that has them chemical knobs out front. I looked at her long enough to classify her walk in case it might come in handy sometime, and said to my contact how would he like to swap jobs so I could have something like that around when I got to feeling low, and he says that ain't for me, that's the boss's daughter, Dolly Di Paduano."
There was a momentary silence. Then Jones said: "That would explain a lot, all right. One of our inconsistencies has been that Di Paduano, who stands to lose by the robbery, has been so uncooperative about trying to find Warburton. But if his daughter is mixed up with the guy "
Howard nodded. "I agree. It could be that the two Di Paduanos are afraid that Warburton is mixed up in the robbery, but aren't sure, and don't want to take any action until they find out. Or it could be that they're afraid that Warburton innocently let loose some tip that made the robbery possible. Hell, it could be any kind of a hookup, but one thing's for sure. We know how the Owl found out about the bills on 78th Street even before we did. Di Paduano must have tipped them off."
O'Neill said: "Okay, we got it, you don't have to rub our noses in it. What next?"
"I think the next thing is to make assignments," said Howard. "Swigart will try to trace Warburton through his connections. You, Dewey, better take 78th Street; you haven't been seen there, and you can pick up any leads floating around about Warburton and Perez, especially about the getaway during the raid. George, I'm afraid I'll have to send you to Frisco. I'm not in the least satisfied with that Juan Fernandez angle." He looked at the three of them. "However, you can take the night plane and be comfortable. Somebody's got to find this Di Paduano girl, and since you're the Chesterfield of this bunch, I guess you're nominated."
Before be left, another idea occurred to Jones, and he put through a call to Angela to ask her whether her "brother Benson" had ever known anyone named Warburton. The answer was no.
Seventeen
The voice said Miss Di Paduano was not at home, but the visi-plate didn't go on, and Jones had enough experience with society people to be perfectly aware that this meant she wasn't at home unless you could prove you weren't going to ask her embarrassing questions. Like that dame mixed up in the Atlanta counterfeiting case, social register and all, who had defied him to prove that she had known the bills she had undoubtedly purchased from a "shover" were queers.
It would have to be a campaign, then. He wished he had Angela with him as he got into a taxi; having a wife who looked like a tri-di star was a great help when you wanted to get into some place where you wouldn't normally be admitted, under guise of making a social call. But the idea he needed still hadn't jelled out when the cab wheeled to a stop where the East thirties meet the river; here a screen of African hedge was intended to give the occupants of the monolithic buildings beyond the illusion that they were living in a park. The Di Paduanos' house would be the third one down, one of the detached units. They could afford to pay for privacy.
Jones paid off his taxi and turned toward the building, deciding he would have to depend upon the inspiration of the moment. The number woven into the ornamental gate was 16; as he entered and started up the path toward the monolith—
"Where y' going, Mac ?"
Jones turned to face a man who had just stepped out of a watchman's kiosk inside the hedge, and in the same moment recognized the man as one of the pair who had tried to drag him up 78th Street the previous night. In a flash so swift that it had not time to be a conscious thought, his inspiration reached him.
"Going to give you a present," he said, and brought his left up from the waist.
It was no knockout. The Owl man staggered, snarled and countered with a left of his own that showed he had at least some boxing training. Not enough, though; Jones slipped the punch, crossed a right over it, and followed up with another terrific left to the pit of the stomach. The Owl man gave a grunt and sank to his knees. Before he could recover, Jones had a hammer lock on him and was whipping out a snake wire to lock his wrists in position behind his back.
The man said thickly: "I'll put a personal security rap on you for this, you lousy fed."
"Come along and get your lollipop," said Jones, jerking him into the kiosk. There was a phone in there and a chair; he would have to take a chance on the Owl man's reaching the instrument somehow, but at least he could make it pretty difficult. A jerk brought the private eye into the chair; a couple more turns of snake wire had him fixed firmly to the legs. The Owl man said balefully: "You won't make it, stink-eye. I gotta give them the office from here."
"I'll take a chance on that," said Jones, then he swung the door of the kiosk shut and started toward the house, hoping that the little encounter hadn't been seen and that the Owl man had just been trying to upset him with the story about notice from the gate being needed to get in.
The building was one of those with a blank lower story, door set flush into the wall, and visi-plate flush into the door. When he pushed the bell the woman's voice that answered was cold enough to have formed ice on the East River: "Yes?"
"I'm from the Owl," said Jones, and rapidly flashed his identification past the nlate, his hand held partly over it so she wouldn't see the "U.S."
"I'm afraid I can't—no, wait, come in," said the voice, and the door swung open on an entry with a long-haired carnet and indirect lighting:. The voice said: "On the left, please." Jones went down the hall to where thick curtains hung" in a door on the left. They parted at the bidding of an electric eye, and he found himself looking down into a sunken living room which had been transformed into an Italian garden by the use of modeling in the recessed walls. The lighting had been arranged for that of a serene twilight, and out of the center of it, a voice that seemed to have the same quality as the light said, "Please sit down."
Dolly Di Paduano was not tall, but even in the low chair behind the low table, her dark face had a regal quality that seemed to make a crown of the mass of black hair. Jones felt awkward and out of place as he came down two steps, crossed the room, and took the chair opposite hers. He said: "They sent me up from the office. One of our people has been pinched for obstructing an officer while doing: his duty."
She remained as cool as before. "I am sorry to hear it, but I don't see why I should be concerned. Your people should be more careful."
Jones leaned forward. "Yeh, but he got there for helping your friend Warburton make a getaway. The boss thought that maybe your father could tell someone to have them lay off. It's the feds."
She gave him a long level look, then without stirring from her position or losing her poise, said: "You're not from the Owl. Who are you ?"
Jones grinned, and abruptly changed his manner. "No, I'm not," he said. "My name is Jones, and I'm from the U.S. Secret Service." He flashed his identification again, visibly this time. "Frankly, we're very anxious to find Warburton and ask him a few questions, and we thought you might be able to help us."
"I see. You haven't any charge against Mr. Warburton." It was a statement, not a question.
"Not now, but he's disappeared, and there are several things we'd like to have him explain. Including his connection with a man named Perez, who has been spending some of the money stolen from an express rocket."
"But that's assuming— " Her gaze shifted suddenly past his head and her tone of voice changed: "Look, why not have a drink with me and talk this out?" "Please do." She leaned forward and touched his arm with a gesture of surprising warmth. "It won't take a minute." She was on her feet and through the curtain at the side of the room before he could stop her, and from behind it he heard a few words and the tinkle of glass.
In a moment she was back, her manner a graciousness that contrasted strangely with the way she had received him. "Look," she said, "I do know Wesley Warburton quite well, but it's silly to think that he would have anything to do with a robbery. It's just that he— You can put the tray on the table."
Jones glanced up to see a man approaching with the sedate gait of a butler, carrying a tray with a shaker and glasses. There was something . . . "He's had some family troubles," said the girl, "and there are times when all of us want to get away from our families. I have myself. This is a specialty of the house. I mix them with dry ice."
She moved the shaker and poured as Jones watched the plume of carbon dioxide come from the mouth of the shaker. He reached for one of the glasses and she took the other, and opened his mouth to say something when his fingers suddenly went dead and the glass slipped to spill its remaining contents on the floor; he was caught in a frightful and frightening paralysis, and he realized that it hadn't been carbon dioxide in that drink, but paraethyl triazine.
She had it, too. Across the table, her head was still a trifle lowered and to one side, as though she had tried to avoid the impact of the paralyzing gas when it hit her, her fingers still locked around the stem of the cocktail glass from which she had never intended to drink. And as Jones stared, mouth half open for the remark that had never been uttered, he remembered what it was he had almost noticed about the butler. It was something just a trifle unnatural about the features, invisible unless one looked for it carefully, that showed he was wearing a plastic mask.
Warburton—and it wasn't much comfort to sit there and figure out that his walk analyzed as a type JM 22-16-8.
A small sniff of paraethyl triazine paralyzes the motor nerves for a good four hours. Long before it was over, Jones heard the phone ring insistently, then the click over as a record was made; and then the doorbell began. If he could have smiled he would; a relief man had evidently come to replace the one he had left trussed at the gate and was trying to pass the word. Jones wondered if there were any servants in the house to find them, and decided there probably weren't; if the girl had Warburton in the place, she probably arranged for them to be out. There was nothing to do but wait for the stuff to wear off; as the phone rang again, Jones settled himself philosophically to calculate the prime numbers as far as he could do it in his head.
The girl began to move first, unclasping her fingers from around the glass. Jones hoped she wouldn't make it soon no enough to get away on him, but at the same moment, his jaws came together with a snap and aching, and then he began to flow from the center of him, out to the numbed extremities. As Dolly Di Paduano sat back in her chair, he stood up and produced his gun.
"Lady," he said, "I want you to get out and get away from that thing. I think it's mostly evaporated, but I'm not going to take any chances, because you and I are going to have a little talk."
"If you wish," she said, and stood up with catlike grace. The cold mood was back. "May I get the records from the phone?"
"No," said Jones. "I'll get them myself, and later. Come over here."
He kept her in front of him until they had reached another corner of the Italian garden and sat down. Then he said: "I could arrest you, and I think I probably will, but you can save yourself a lot of trouble by telling me a few things. That was Warburton, wasn't it?"
"I haven't anything to say."
"All right, that wraps it up. You're under arrest."
She stood up indifferently and held out her hands as though expecting the snake wire to be put on them. The door clicked, and Di Paduano came into the room. "Dolly!" he said. "Why didn't you answer— ? What's this?"
He was looking at Jones's gun. "This," said the Secret Service man, "is an arrest. Your daughter has just enabled the escape of a suspected criminal by dosing me with paraethyl triazine."
The banker's face flushed. "If you think you can invade a
private home like this— " he began, but his daughter took three quick steps to him and laid a hand on his arm.
"Don't, Father," she said. "It's true. I did it, and I'm glad I did it."
The banker put an arm around her as he addressed Jones: "I think that we had better talk this out," he said, in an almost startling reproduction of Dolly's words. "Please sit down."
The perpetual twilight of the Italian garden was close around them. Di Paduano turned to Dolly: "Why?"
Two little red spots came into her cheeks, but her head was still held queenly high. "Because I love him. Because he's my lover. You might as well know it right now; he spent the night here."
Jones said: "Warburton?" "Yes, Wesley Warburton." .
Di Paduano said: "I think you had better tell us about it, dear."
Her hands came up to her face. "I've been so afraid, and I didn't like that Perez, and— "
Jones interrupted: "Perez is in jail. He was spending some of the money from the roeket shipment. And we know he and Warburton both came from Lubbock."
Dolly said: "I know. He told me. But he wouldn't stop seeing Perez. He said Perez needed him, and it was just prejudice to be down on a man, and not fair, because he'd been in the mines for something he really didn't do at all."
"Mmmm," said Jones. "It seems to me that the record shows Perez was fairly guilty."
"I know," said the girl again. "But it was just like that business Wesley himself went through, about the heli."
"I don't know about that," said Jones.
"Oh, it was a long time ago, but Wesley told me perfectly frankly, soon after we first met. One of the boys stole a heli, and took some of the others for a ride and smashed it up. And it really wasn't fair; Wesley didn't know the heli belonged to someone else, but they sent him with all the others to be psyched. And it was so unfair that he resisted the psych, and then they sent him to a social development school, and before he got out, his parents died and he couldn't go to college."
"I see," said Jones. The picture was becoming clearer in his mind—Wesley Warburton, embittered by what he considered the unjust treatment he had received from the government, determined to make the government pay him for it. Keeping in touch with Perez, the expert in armed robbery. Working out a plan over months and even years. Using his connection with Dolly Di Paduano. Jones decided he didn't like Warburton, a cold-blooded and rather repulsive character. He said:
"Why did you help him to get away this morning? I only wanted to ask him some questions."
