A Time of Predators

He broke off for more squawks, caught Curt’s eye, winked, and then went on in a nearly apoplectic voice. “You go right ahead. I’d contact her myself if I had her new address and — say, you’d better give me that, now I think of it, I — what? What the hell do you mean, you don’t... oh. Well, address, phone number, what the hell’s the difference? After three o’clock, huh?”

He listened a final time, scribbled on the back of an envelope, dropped the receiver back on the hooks, and gave the envelope to Curt. “She can be reached there, 982-7764, any time after three P.M. It’s probably unlisted, but she might have gotten cute and given a work number. Just let me check...” He got the phone company service rep on the number, asked for the registration on it, and after thirty seconds of waiting, listened, nodded, and hung up. “What I thought. Unlisted. That makes it tougher, because Ma Bell is a bitch with employees who dish out unlisted numbers.” He shot a look at the wall clock. “We’ve got until three o’clock to wait.”

Curt said, “You’re damned tired, Archie; I didn’t mean that you should do this today, without sleep...”

Matthews yawned again, rasped his hand over his stubbled chin. “Yeah, I just came in today to check the mail; was just on my way to the gym when you caught me. What say you meet me there at three o’clock and—”

“Only if you let me pay you for a full day’s work.”

The detective shook his head. “To hell with that, Curt. I cost you three yards without turning a damned thing, and here you find the kid all by yourself. For my professional pride I’ve got to do you some good. Tell you what. Buy me and the mirror athlete a good lunch, and we’ll call it square.”

Over lunch with Preston and the detective, Curt realized that Matthews, like Preston, was another of a type which was coming to interest him more and more. A doer, not a talker. Not a cynic, but a bleakly hard-nosed realist, accepting human nature as he found it, not attempting to explain evil, merely accepting its existence. Hell, Curt, my profession is the dead-beats, the drop-outs, and the cop-outs. Those who aren’t making it or want to make it all at once. He sounded remarkably like Monty Worden, that professional prober in the soft underbelly of society. There’s just two kinds of people in my book, mister: the worms and the human beings. Law-breakers and law-keepers. Even Preston, whom Curt had come to regard as a professional man, lived by the philosophy: If a guy wants trouble, hit him first.

And were they so wrong? If Curt found the predators, would it make any difference to him if they were products of slums or broken homes or racial minorities? Had it made any difference to Paula? Or to Rockwell? The only difference between a “disadvantaged” boy and a Yale student swinging a tire chain was that the disadvantaged boy would probably be a hell of a lot more accurate.

They got back to the gym at 2:55, and Matthews sat down at the desk to begin laboring over a sheet of scratch paper. “Working out my cover story,” he explained. “The most important part of skip-tracing is to never let them ask a question you can’t answer.”

When he finally dialed the phone, Curt found himself taut as a cable; he had come to feel that Barbara Anderson and her son somehow would furnish the key to all his questions.

“Yeah, hello,” said Matthews in a bored voice, “are you still having trouble with your phone?” He listened then, nodding unconsciously. “I see. Still humming sometimes, huh? And this is 982-7764? Mmm-hmm. Thought so. You see, I dialed 362-4872. That’s right. It’s what we call at the phone company an ‘electronic inversion’ — caused by faulty wiring, insulation rubbing away, or sometimes just by a mis-connected circuit. Beg pardon? No, not all the time, that’s what makes it so rough. That means we have to trace it all through each time it happens...”

Despite his offhanded tone of voice, a sheen of sweat had appeared on Matthews’ face; he was working, and working hard.

“Yes, ma’am, that’s right, Lineman Chester Drumm, ID card 384, Telephone Repair Service. Yes. What I’ll have to do is trace right through from your main relay box.” A drop of sweat fell from the end of his nose with the strain of keeping all strain out of his voice. “Do you have a one-family dwelling or an apartment? And what’s that number? Twelve? That’s fine ma’am, I’ll be out in an hour if that’s convenient for... oh, I almost forgot, I’d better get the street address, hadn’t I?” He chuckled. “No, ma’am, in repair service we’re never given more than just the phone numbers themselves, as a safeguard for the subscribers. Some people have unlisted phones, and...”