Occasion for Disaster Part 32

There was no sense in causing suspicion, Malone told himself. Instead, he reached for the phone and called the desk.

"Great Universal, good afternoon," a pleasant voice said in his ear.

Malone blinked. "What time _is_ it?" he said.

"A few minutes before six," the voice said. "In the evening, sir."

"Oh," Malone said. It was later than he'd thought; the list had taken some time. "This is Kenneth J. Malone," he went on, "in Room--" He tried to remember the number of his room and failed. It seemed like four or five days since he'd entered it. "Well, wherever I am," he said at last, "send up some kind of a car for me and have a taxi waiting outside."

The voice sounded unperturbed. "Right away, sir," it said. "Will there be anything else?"

"I guess not," Malone said. "Not now, anyhow." He hung up and stubbed out the latest in his series of cigars.

The hallway car arrived in a few minutes. It was manned by a muscular little man with beady eyes and thinning black hair. "You Malone?" he said when the FBI Agent opened the door.

"Kenneth J.," Malone said. "I called for a car."

"Right outside, Chief," the little man said in a gravelly voice. "Just hop in and off we go into the wild blue yonder. Right?"

"I guess so," Malone said helplessly. He followed the man outside, locked his door and climbed into a duplicate of the little car that had taken him to his room in the first place.

"Step right in, Chief," the little man said. "We're off."

Malone, overcoming an immediate distaste for the chummy little fellow, climbed in and the car retreated down to the road. It started off smoothly and they went back toward the lobby. The little man chatted incessantly and Malone tried not to listen. But there was nothing else to do except watch the gun-toting "guides" as the car pa.s.sed them, and the sight was making him nervous.

"You want anything--special," the driver said, giving Malone a blow in the ribs that was apparently meant to be subtle, "you just ask for Murray. Got it?"

"I've got it," Malone said wearily.

"You just pick up the little phone and you ask for Murray," the driver said. "Maybe you want something a little out of the ordinary--get what I mean?" Malone moved aside, but not fast enough, and Murray's stone elbow caught him again. "Something special, extra-nice. For my friends, pal. You want to be a friend of mine?"

a.s.surances that friends.h.i.+p with Murray was Malone's dearest ambition in life managed to fend off further blows until the car pulled to a stop in the lobby. "Cab's outside, Mr. Malone," Murray said. "You remember me--hey?"

"I will never, never forget you," Malone said fervently, and got out in a hurry. He found the cab and the driver, a heavy-set man with a face that looked as if, somewhere along the line, it had run into a Waring Blendor and barely escaped, swiveled around to look at him as he got in.

"Where to, Mac?" he asked sourly.

Malone shrugged. "Center of town," he said. "A nice big newsstand."

The cabbie blinked. "A what?" he said.

"Newsstand," Malone said pleasantly. "All right with you?"

"Everybody's a little crazy, I guess," the cabbie said. "But why do I always get the real nuts?" He started the cab with a savage jerk and Malone was carried along the road at dizzying speed. They managed to make ten blocks before the cab squealed to a stop. Malone peered out and saw a nice selection of sawhorses piled up in the road, guarded by two men with guns. The men were dressed in police uniforms and the cabby, staring at them, uttered one brief and impolite word.

"What's going on?" Malone said.

"Roadblock," the cabbie said. "Thing's going to stay here until h.e.l.l freezes over. Not that they need it. h.e.l.l, I pa.s.sed it on the way in but I figured they'd take it down pretty quick."

"Roadblock?" Malone said. "What for?"

The cabbie shrugged eloquently. "Who knows?" he said. "You ask questions, you might get answers you don't like. I don't ask questions, I live longer."

"But--"

The cops, meanwhile, had advanced toward the car. One of them looked in. "Who's the pa.s.senger?" he said.

The cabbie swore again. "You want me to take loyalty oaths from people?" he said. "You want to ruin my business? I got a pa.s.senger, how do I know who he is? Maybe he's the Lone Ranger."

"Don't get funny," the cop said. His partner had gone around to the back of the car.

"What's this, the trunk again?" the cabbie said. "You think maybe I'm smuggling in showgirls from the edge of town?"

"Ha, ha," the cop said distinctly. "One more joke and it's thirty days, buster. Just keep cool and nothing will happen."

"Nothing, he calls it," the cabbie said dismally. But he stayed silent until the second cop came back to rejoin his partner.

"Clean," he said.

"Here, too, I guess," the first cop said, and looked in again. "You,"

he said to Malone. "You a tourist?"

"That's right," Malone said. "Kenneth J. Malone, at the Great Universal. Arrived this afternoon. What's happening here, officer?"

"I'm asking questions," the cop said. "You're answering them. Outside of that, you don't have to know a thing." He looked very tough and official. Malone didn't say anything else.

After a few more seconds they went back to their positions and the cabbie started the car again. Ten yards past the roadblock he turned around and looked at Malone. "It's the sheriff's office every time,"

he said. "Now, you take a State cop, he's O.K. because what does he care? He's got other things to worry about, he don't have to bear down on hard-working cabbies."

"Sure," Malone said helpfully.

"And the city police--they're right here in the city, they're O.K. I know them, they know me, nothing goes wrong. Get what I mean?"

"The sheriff's office is the worst, though?" Malone said.

"The worst is nothing compared to those boys," the cabbie said.

"Believe me, every time they can make life tough for a cabbie, they do it. It's hatred, that's what it is. They hate cabbies. That's the sheriff's office for you."

"Tough," Malone said. "But the roadblock--what _was_ it for, anyhow?"

The cabbie looked back at the road, avoided an oncoming car with a casual sweep of the wheel, and sighed gustily. "Mister," he said, "you don't ask questions, I don't give out answers. Fair?"

There was, after all, nothing else to say. "Fair," Malone told him, and rode the rest of the way in total silence.

Buying the papers in Las Vegas took more time than Malone had bargained for. He had to hunt from store to store to get a good, representative selection, and there were crowds almost everywhere playing the omnipresent slot-machines. The whir of the machines and the low undertones and whispers of the bettors combined in the air to make what Malone considered the single most depressing sound he had ever heard. It sounded like a factory, old, broken-down and unwanted, that was geared only to the production of cigarette b.u.t.ts and old cellophane, ready-crumpled for throwing away. Malone pushed through the crowds as fast as possible, but nearly an hour had gone by when he had all his papers and hailed another cab to get him back to the hotel.

This time, the cabbie had a smiling, s.h.i.+ning face. He looked like Pollyanna, after eight or ten shots at the middleweight t.i.tle. Malone beamed right back at him and got in. "Great Universal," he said.