Out Like a Light, Randall Garrett and Laurence M. Janifer [books recommended by bts .TXT] 📗
Book online «Out Like a Light, Randall Garrett and Laurence M. Janifer [books recommended by bts .TXT] 📗». Author Randall Garrett and Laurence M. Janifer
Malone was down the stairs before he'd finished. He went up to the desk.[Pg 43]
The desk sergeant looked down. "What's it this time?" he said.
"I'm in a hurry," Malone said. "Where are the cells? I want to see Lieutenant Lynch."
The desk sergeant nodded. "O.K.," he said. "But the lieutenant ain't in any of the cells. He's back in Interrogation with some kid."
"Take me there," Malone said.
"I'll show you," the sergeant said. "On duty. Can't leave the desk." He cleared his throat and gave Malone a set of directions.
There was a door at the end of a corridor at the back of the station. It was a plain wooden door with the numeral 1 stenciled on it. Malone opened it and looked inside.
He was staring into a rather small, rather plain little room. There were absolutely no bright beam lights burning, and there didn't seem to be any rubber hoses around anywhere. There were only four chairs.
Seated in three of the chairs were Lieutenant Lynch and two other police officers. In the fourth chair, facing them, was a young boy.
He didn't look like a tough kid. He had wavy black hair, brown eyes and what Malone thought looked like a generally friendly appearance. He was slight and wiry, not over five feet five or six. And he wore an expression that was neither too eager nor hostile. It wasn't just blank, either; Malone finally pinned it down as Receptive.
He had the strangest impression that he had seen the boy somewhere before. But he couldn't remember when or where.
Lieutenant Lynch was talking.
"... All we want, Mike, is a little information. We thought you'd be able to help us, if you wanted to. Now, how about it?"
"Sure," Mike Fueyo said. His voice was a little high, but it was well controlled and responsive. "Sure, lieutenant. I'll help if I can—but I just don't dig what you're giving me. It doesn't make sense."
Lynch stirred a little impatiently, and his voice began to carry a new bite. "I'm talking about Cadillacs," he said. "1972 Red Cadillacs."
"It's a nice car," Mike said.
"What do you know about them?" Lynch said.
"Know about them?" Mike said. "I know they're nice cars. That's about it. What else am I going to know, lieutenant? Maybe you think I own one of these big red 1972 Caddies. Maybe you think I got that kind of money. Well, listen, lieutenant, I'd like to help you out, but I'm just not—"
"The Cadillacs," Lynch said, "were—"
"Just a minute, lieutenant," Malone said. Dead silence fell with great suddenness. Lynch and all the others looked around at Malone, who smiled apologetically. "I don't want to disturb anything," he said. "But I would like to talk to Mike here for a little while."
"Oh," Lynch said sourly. "Sure. Sure."
"I'd like to ask him a couple of[Pg 44] questions," Malone said. "Alone."
"Alone." Lynch said. "Oh." But there was nothing for him to do, Malone knew, except bow to the inevitable. "Of course," he said. "Go right ahead."
"You can stand outside the door," Malone said. "He won't get away. And you'd better hold this." Malone, knowing perfectly well that staying armed and alone in a room with a suspect was something you just did not do—for very good reasons—unstrapped his .44 Magnum and handed it to the lieutenant.
He left reluctantly, with his men.
Malone could understand Lynch's attitude. If Malone solved the case, Lynch would not get any credit. Otherwise, it might go down in his personal record. And, of course, the NYPD would rather wrap the case up themselves; the FBI was treated as a necessary interference. Unfortunately, Malone thought, Lynch had had absolutely no choice. He sighed gently, and turned his attention to Mike Fueyo, who was still sitting in his chair.
"Now, Mike—" he began, and was interrupted.
The door opened. Lieutenant Lynch said: "If you need us, Malone, just yell."
"You'll hear me," Malone promised. The door shut.
He turned back to the boy. "Now, Mike," he began again, "my name is Malone, and I'm with the FBI. I'd like to ask you a few—"
"Gee, Mr. Malone," Mike broke in eagerly. "I'm glad you're here."
Malone said: "Well, I—"
"These cops here have been giving me a pretty rough deal, you know?" Mike said.
"I'm sure they—" Malone began.
"But I've been looking for you," Mike went on. "See, I wanted to say something to you. Something real important."
Malone leaned forward expectantly. At last he was going to get some information—perhaps the information that would break the whole case wide open. He said: "Yes?"
"Well—" Mike began, and stopped.
"You don't have to be afraid of me, Mike," Malone said. "Just tell me whatever's on your mind."
"Sure," Mike said. "It's this."
He took a deep breath. Malone clenched his fists. Now it was coming. Now he would hear the all-important fact. He waited.
Mike stuck out his tongue and blew the longest, loudest, brassiest and juiciest Bronx cheer that Malone had ever heard.
Then, almost instantly, the room was empty except for Malone himself.
Mike was gone.
There wasn't any place to hide, and there hadn't been any time to hide in. Malone looked around wildly, but he had no doubts at all.
Mike Fueyo had vanished, utterly and instantaneously. He'd gone out like a light.[Pg 45]
[Pg 46]
VII.
hirty seconds passed. During that time, Malone did nothing at all. He just sat there, while a confused montage of pictures tumbled through his head. Sometimes he saw double exposures, and sometimes a couple of pictures overlapped, but it didn't seem to make any difference, because none of the pictures meant anything anyhow.
The reason for that was obvious. He was no longer sane. He had cracked up. At a crucial moment, his brain had failed him, and now people would have to come in and cart him away and put him in a strait[Pg 47]jacket. It was perfectly obvious to Malone that he was no longer capable of dealing with everyday life. The blow on the head had probably taken final effect, and it had been more serious than the doctor had imagined.
He had always distrusted doctors anyhow.
And now he was suffering from a delayed reaction. He wasn't living in the real world any more. He had gone off to dreamland, where people disappeared when you looked at them. There was no hope for him.
It was a nice theory, and it was even comforting, in a way. There was only one thing wrong with it.
The room around him didn't look dreamlike at all. It was perfectly solid and real, and it looked just the way it had looked before Mike Fueyo had ... well, Malone amended, before whatever had happened had happened. It was a perfectly complete little room, and it had four chairs in it. Malone was sitting in one of the chairs and all the others were empty.
There was absolutely nothing else in the room.
With some regret, Malone abandoned the theory that he had gone mad. This left him with no ideas at all. Because if he hadn't become insane, then what had happened?
After another second or two, some ideas began to filter through the daze. Perhaps he'd just blacked out for a minute and the kid had gone out the door. That was possible, wasn't it?
Sure it was. And maybe he had just not seen the kid go. His eyes had failed for a second or two. That could certainly happen, after a blow on the head. Malone tried to remember where the sight centers of the brain were. Maybe whoever had hit him had disturbed them, and he'd had a sudden blackout.
Come to think of it, that made pretty good sense. If he had blacked out, then Mike would have seen it as he went groggy, and Mike had just walked out the door. It had to be the door, of course—the windows were out of the question, since there weren't any windows. And six-inch-wide air-conditioner ducts do not provide reasonable space for an exit, not if you happen to be a human being.
That, Malone told himself, was settled—and a good thing, too. He had begun to worry about it. But now he knew just what had happened, and he felt relieved. He got up from his chair, walked over to the door and opened it.
Lieutenant Lynch nearly fell into the room. He'd obviously had his ear pressed tightly to the door and hadn't expected it to open. The other two cops stood behind him, just about filling the hallway with their broad shoulders.
"Well, well," Malone said.
Lynch recovered his balance and glared at the FBI agent. He said nothing.
"Where is he?" Malone said.
"Where is he?" Lynch repeated, and blinked. "Where's who?"[Pg 48]
Malone shook his head impatiently. "Fueyo," he said.
Lynch's expression was the same as that on the faces of the other two cops: complete and utter bafflement. Malone stopped and stared. It was suddenly very obvious that the lovely theory he had worked out for Mike's disappearance wasn't true in the least. If Mike Fueyo had come out the door, then these cops would know about it. But they obviously knew nothing at all about it.
Therefore, he hadn't come out through the door.
Malone took a deep breath.
"What are you talking about?" Lynch said. "Isn't the kid in there with you? What's happened?"
There was only one thing to do and, straight-faced, Malone went ahead and did it. "Of course not," he snapped, trying to sound impatient and official. "I released him."
"You what?"
"Released him," Malone said. He stepped out into the hall and closed the door of the interrogation room firmly behind him. "I got all the information I needed, so I let him go."
"Thanks," Lynch said bitterly. "After all, I was the one who—"
"You called him in for questioning, didn't you, lieutenant?" Malone said.
"Yes, I did, and I—"
"Well," Malone said, "I questioned him."
There was a little silence. Then Lynch asked, in a strangled voice: "What did he say?"
"Sorry," Malone said at once. "That's classified information." He pushed his way into the corridor, trying to look as if he had fifteen other jobs to accomplish within the next hour. Being an FBI agent was going to help a little, but he still had to look good in order to really carry it off.
"But—"
"Thanks for your co-operation, lieutenant," Malone said. "You've all been very helpful." He smiled at them in what he hoped was a superior manner. "So long," he said, and started walking.
"Wait!" Lynch said. He flung open the door of the interrogation room. There was no doubt that it was empty. "Wait! Malone!"
Malone turned slowly, trying to look calm and in control of the situation. "Yes?" he said.
Lynch looked at him with puzzled, pleading eyes. "Malone, how did you release him? We were right here. He didn't come through the door. There isn't any other exit. So how did you get him out?"
There was only one answer to that, and Malone gave it with a quiet, assured air. "I'm terribly sorry, lieutenant," he said, "but that's classified information, too." He gave the cops a little wave and walked slowly down the corridor. When he reached the stairs he began to speed up, and he was out of the precinct station and into a taxicab before any of the cops could have realized what had happened.[Pg 49]
He took a deep breath, feeling as if it were the first he'd had in several days. "Breathe air," he told himself. "It's good for you." Not that New York had any real air in it. It was mostly carbon fumes and the like. But it was the nearest thing to air that Malone could find at the moment, and he determined to go right on breathing it until something better and cleaner showed up.
But that wasn't important now. As the cab tooled along down Broadway toward Sixty-ninth Street, Malone closed his eyes and began going over the whole thing in his mind.
Mike Fueyo had vanished.
Of that, Malone told himself, there was no shadow of doubt. No probable, possible shadow of doubt.
No possible doubt—as a matter of fact—whatever.
Dismissing the Grand Inquisitor with a negligent wave of his hand, he concentrated on the main question. It was a good question. Malone could have sat and looked at it admiringly for a long time.
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