The Erection Set

“Why, it’s simple. Stanley here wiggled loose, untied Stoney and Beth and you overpowered the bums.”

Cramer’s voice was weak with surprise. “Us?”

“Sure,” I said. “Those guys aren’t going to deny it. Just do what I’m telling you.”

Lucy had lived a long time. Her eyes had narrowed into the tired folds of fat and the pupils were little dark pinpoints reading my mind. I let her gauge me until she was satisfied, then she said, “Okay, Dog. That’s the way it’ll be.”

I left Lucy making the call and Stanley Cramer walked me to the door. When I opened it he touched my arm. He was standing in the shadows and I couldn’t see his face, but there was something odd in his voice. “Don’t worry too much about that there Cross guy, Mr. Kelly.”

“Why’s that, Stan?”

“Because worrying don’t leave time for nothing else to get done. You’ll see.”

“Glad to know there’s another optimist left,” I said.

The night lights around the factory made dull little halos in the rain. On the west side of the main buildings the trucks and trailers had been buttoned up, the only sound of life coming from inside the portable watchman’s shack where a TV was blaring away and a couple of voices were loud in beery laughter.

My collar was turned up against the downpour that slashed at my back and I edged through the shadows to the rows of bushes that shielded the front of the building, got behind them and felt my way to the old service door that led inside. It squeaked open on seldom-used hinges, the noise echoing in the empty corrider. It had been a long time since I had come in this way and the place had been renovated since, so I stood there a minute until I was oriented, then picked my way through the darkened offices until I reached the foyer.

On the other side, in the area reserved for the S. C. Cable Productions office, I saw the deliciously familiar back of a beautiful little blonde poring over a ledger, one hand fingering a stack of printed cards. I crossed to the door, stood there enjoying the light glinting through the carelessly swept-back hair and said, “Hello, pretty girl.”

Sharon jumped, knocked half the cards off the desk and wung around to look at me with her breath caught in her throat. “Dog! Damn, don’t ever do that again.” Then she saw my face and her eyes opened wide before she was able to speak again. “What happened to you?”

“Trouble. Nothing new. Nothing unexpected.”

She got up and came into my arms, her fingers digging hard into my biceps. “Oh, Dog. Damn you, Dog!”

“At ease, doll. I’m all right.” I pusher her away and tilted her head up with the palm of my hand. “A war’s made up of battles, kid. I just won this one.”

She let out a short laugh and wiped the tears out of her eyes. “And I don’t suppose I get to know what happened, do I?”

“You suppose right.” I pulled the door shut, locked it and checked to make sure the Venetian blinds were all shuttered tight. “You run down anything at all?”

“All I should tell you is up your bucket,” she said.

“What about those Social Security cards?”

“Nothing.” Sharon hooked her arm under mine and led me to the desk. “I doubled back on everybody they hired through Cable and not one thing looked phony. I’m no detective, but I know how to run personnel and everybody here is as square as a pair of Los Vegas dice.”

The disappointment went through me like liquid tar and she sensed it. There was only that black, sticky feeling that kept you from going any place at all, holding you right in the target area like a staked-out goat waiting for the tiger to come get him.

“But I got another idea,” she said.

I was so damned disgusted I almost didn’t hear her. It finally sunk in and I turned my head to look at her.

“The factory is hiring too. I got the girl in their department to let me look at their records because I said we might need some character types in a hurry. There wasn’t much time so I only ran down those who were around the sixtyfive-year-old mark. Barrin doesn’t hire over that age. Took a lot of phone calls to cross-check their identities, but I came up with three nobody could vouch for at all. Each had given local businesses as references, but two of those places said they had never worked there and the third one gave a business that didn’t even exist at all.”

“What business was that?”

She told me and the black, sticky feeling went away. “You have his address?”

Sharon picked up a card and handed it to me. “Nine-o-one Sherman. Know where it is?”

“Yeah,” I said. “I know where it is.”

“And don’t tell me I can’t go with you.”

“No ... I won’t tell you that. You earned that much.”

She stepped back and gave me a slant-eyed look. “You’re agreeing a little too easily. I don’t like that.”

I could feel the tiredness in my voice. “It’ll make you a perfect escape clause, kitten.”

“What?”

“Never mind. You’ll see what I mean.”