The Greatest Works of Randall Garrett. Randall Garrett

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СКАЧАТЬ job. And we need that information. Don't bother to send along a detailed report, though, unless you find something out of the ordinary."

      "Of course, Mr. Malone," Leibowitz said. "I wouldn't have bothered you except for the production speed-up here."

      "I understand," Malone said. "It's perfectly all right. I'll be hearing from you, then?"

      "Certainly, Mr. Malone," Leibowitz said.

      Malone cut the circuit at once and started to turn away, but he never got the chance. It started to chime again at once.

      "Federal Bureau of Investigation," Malone said as he flipped up the receiver. He wanted badly to copy Boyd's salutation, but he found that he just didn't have the gall to do it, and said sadly instead: "Malone speaking."

      There was no immediate answer from the other party. Instead, the screen slowly cleared, showing Malone the picture of a woman he recognized instantly.

      It was Juanita Fueyo—Mike's mother.

      Malone stared at her. It seemed to him as if a couple of hours passed while he tried to find his voice. Of course, she'd looked up the FBI number in the phone book, and found him that way. But she was about the last person on Earth from whom he'd expected a call.

      "Oh, Mr. Malone," she said, "thank you so much! You got my Mike back from the police!"

      Malone gulped. "I did?" he said. "Well, I—"

      "But Mr. Malone—you must help me again! Because now my Mike says he must not stay at home! He is leaving, he is leaving right away!"

      "Leaving?" Malone said.

      He thought of a thousand things to do. He could send a squad of men to arrest Mike. And Mike could disappear while they were trying to get hold of him. He could go down himself—and be greeted, if he knew Mike Fueyo, with another giant economy-size raspberry. He could try to plead with Mike on the phone.

      And what good would that do?

      So, instead, he just sat and stared while Mrs. Fueyo went right on.

      "He says he will send me money, but money is nothing compared to my own boy, my own Mike. He says he must go away, Mr. Malone—but I know you can stop him! I know it!"

      "Sure," Malone said. "But I—"

      "Oh, I knew that you would!" Mrs. Fueyo shrieked. She almost came through the screen at him. "You are a great man, Mr. Malone! I will say many prayers for you! I will never stop from praying for you because you help me!" Her voice and face changed abruptly. "Excuse me now," she said. "I must go back to work."

      "Well," Malone said, "if I—"

      Then she turned back and beamed at him again. "Oh, thank you, Mr. Malone! Thank you with the thanks of a mother! Bring my boy back to me!"

      And the image faded and died.

      Boyd tapped Malone on the shoulder. "I didn't know you were involved in an advice column for the lovelorn," he said.

      "I'm not," Malone said sourly.

      Boyd sighed. "I'll bite," he said. "Who was that?"

      Malone thought of several possible answers and finally chose one. "That," he said, "was my mother-in-law. She worries about me every time I go out on a job with you."

      "Very funny," Boyd said. "I am screaming with laughter."

      "Just get back to work, Tommy-boy," Malone said, "and leave everything to me."

      He hoped he sounded more confident than he felt. Lighting a cigarette and wishing he were alone in his own room, so that he could smoke a cigar and not have to worry about looking dashing and alert—Malone strolled out of the office with a final wave to Boyd. He was thinking about Mike Fueyo, and he stopped his chain of reasoning just long enough to look in at the office of the Agent-in-Charge and ask him to pry loose two tickets for "The Hot Seat" that night.

      The agent, a tall, thin man, who looked as if he suffered from chronic stomach trouble, said, "You must be crazy. Are they all like that in Washington?"

      "No," Malone said cheerfully. "Some of them are pretty normal. There's this one man—Napoleon, we call him—who keeps insisting that he should have won the battle of Waterloo. But otherwise he's perfectly fine."

      He flicked his cigarette in the air and left, grinning. Five steps away the grin disappeared and a frown took its place.

      VIII

       Table of Contents

      He walked along Sixty-ninth Street to Park Avenue without noticing where he was going. Luckily, the streets weren't really crowded, and Malone only had to apologize twice, once for stepping on a man's toe and once for absently toeing a woman's dog. When he reached the corner he headed downtown, humming "Kathleen Mavourneen" under his breath and trying to figure out his next move.

      He needed more than one move. He needed a whole series of moves. This was not the usual kind of case. Burris had called it a vacation and, in one way, Malone supposed, Burris was perfectly right. For once there was no question about who had committed the crimes. It was obvious by now that Mike Fueyo and his Silent Spooks had been stealing the Cadillacs.

      It was even obvious that Mike—or someone with Mike's talent—had bopped him on the head, and taken the red Cadillac he had been examining. And the same gang probably accounted for the Sergeant Jukovsky affair, too.

      Or at least it was reasonable to assume that they did, Malone thought. He could see how it had worked: one of the Silent Spooks was a lot smaller than a grown man, and the two cops who hadn't seen anyone in the parked car just hadn't been able to catch sight of the undersized driver. Of course, there had been someone in the car when it had been driving along the West Side Highway. Someone who had teleported himself right out of the car when it had gone over the embankment.

      That, of course, meant that there would be no secret machines found in the red Cadillacs Leibowitz & Hardin were examining now. But Malone had already decided to let that phase of things go on. First of all, it was always possible that he was wrong, and that some such machine really did exist. Second, even if they didn't find a machine, they might find something else. Almost anything, he thought, might turn up.

      And, third, it kept Boyd decently busy, and out of Malone's hair.

      That had been an easy solution. And, Malone thought, the problem of who had been taking the red Cadillacs looked just as easy now, if his answers were right. And he was reasonably sure of that.

      Unfortunately, he was now left with a new and unusual question:

      How do you catch a teleport?

      Malone looked up, jarred to a stop by a man built like a brown bear, with a chunky body and an oval, slightly sloping head and face. He had very short brown hair shot through with gray, and he gave Malone a small, inquisitive stare and looked away without a word.

      Malone mumbled: "Sorry," and looked up at the street sign. He was at Forty-seventh Street and Park Avenue. He jerked a hand СКАЧАТЬ