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paid off in suitcases full of money."
"I haven't been paying much attention. He asked for it."
"Yeah."
As they walked down exterior steps to where O'Lochlain's driver had parked his
limo in a No Parking zone, the Irishman asked, "You got any angles?"
"Not that I can believe. Either it's O'Brien and he's been moved fifty-four
years, without damage, or it's not, and nobody in the whole goddamned country
knows who he is."
"Maybe he's a Russian spy."
"Maybe." Cash chuckled, didn't bother giving details which made that answer
less than satisfactory. He said good-bye and returned to the station, where
Railsback was waiting with the third degree about consorting with known
hoodlums. The lieutenant was sorry he asked.
John came in later, looking glum. "Gardner won't help."
"Why not?"
"I laid it all out. He only asked one question."
"What?"
"Did we have any evidence that a crime had been commit-ted."
"Yeah. I should've figured."
"But I do have a new angle." And suddenly he seemed frightened and nervous.
Cash was puzzled by it.
"Norm, if I tell you something personal, will you keep it quiet?"
"Eh? Sure."
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"I mean really. Not even tell Annie. Especially not Annie. Or any body."
"Hey, if you're that worried about it, you better keep it to yourself. That
way nobody can tell."
"Well, if I tell my news, I have to tell the other thing too."
What the hell? Cash thought. He had known John since Michael's second day of
grammar school, didn't think there was much he didn't know about the younger
man. "It's up to you. But I'll keep it under my hat."
"Well, there's this girl. We went to high school together."
A ghost of a smile fleeted across Cash's lips. So John was messing around. He
almost confessed his own secret, in the matter of the doctored photograph, but
remembered his own advice. There was no way he would risk getting that stirred
up again.
"She works at the Post. In Classifieds. I had this wild hunch last night, see,
so I called her and asked her to do some check-ing."
He had turned a startling red. Cash began to suspect a name: Teri Middleton.
John and Michael both had pursued her during their senior year, and, Cash
suspected, had caught her. They had vied for her weekends while in college.
She had gotten married somewhere along the way, about the time that Nancy and
Carrie had come into the picture, and had dropped from sight. Cash thought he
remembered Annie saying she had gotten a divorce after two and a half years
and two kids. For a while there, the girl had been as much a part of the
fam-ily as John.
"Anyway, we had lunch and she gave me this." He offered a pink, scented bit of
stationery covered with numbers. "She's going to check some more."
"I can't make anything out of this. What is it?"
"Dates and codes. These first numbers are the dates they ran classified ads
for a certain party."
"Miss Groloch?"
"I think so. They were put in by her accountants. And get this. When she
showed me this, I asked her to check her subscription file. She got back to me
a few minutes ago. Sure enough. They've got one to Rochester, New York, in the
name of Fial Groloch, that's been going out regular as long as they've been
keeping track."
It was a breakthrough of sorts, proof that there was more than one Groloch,
and pinned him or her to a specific address.
"Kind of corny, don't you think? And clumsy. And slow. But secure, I guess.
Lucky you thought about it."
"Carrie's fault, really. She was reading the paper and asked me what I thought
some Personal meant. You know how cryp-tic some of them are. Anyway, I started
thinking about spy stories where they sent messages that way. And Sherlock
Holmes. He was always putting ads in. Then I remembered you said she took the
paper. Decided to check it. But I never thought I'd find anything."
"Serendipity, that's what you call it when you get some-thing good when you
don't expect it. Still good thinking, though. You get any of the ads?"
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"Not yet. She's going to check through their file copies. She has to do it on
her own time. You won't say anything, will you?"
Cash tried for a bemused expression. "About what? I haven't heard anything
yet. I can't tell what I don't know."
Harald relaxed a little. "I won't hear anything more at least till Monday...."
"It's another piece in the puzzle, but it probably won't get us anywhere. All
we found out is that Fial Groloch, or some-body using the name, is alive and
well enough to subscribe. Doesn't help us with our dead man."
"Maybe not, but it makes me wonder if we shouldn't bring in the FBI, or
somebody."
"What the hell for? Don't we have problems enough?"
"Norm, don't it bug you that we've got a woman a hundred and thirty years old
hiding out here? And she's got a relative in Rochester who might be even
older? Goddamned, they must be some kind of Draculas. And you keep worrying
about the dead guy. I'm starting to think maybe he shouldn't matter so much,
that we should be worrying about the ones that're still alive."
"John, there's people in Russia that old. There's even this old guy down in
Florida that was in the army during the Civil War and can prove it. Anyway, we
don't have a shred of proof that these people are really that old. They don't
have to be the same Groiochs...."
Harald looked at him. Cash looked back. "You're ducking it," said John. "I
don't believe it's that simple. And I don't think you do either. Only you're
scared of the can of worms...."
"I'm scared? Anyway, what right do we have? We can push about the corpse, but
the rest really isn't any of our business."
"Yeah?"
"All right. Look. I know a guy in New York. We did the FBI course together,
years ago. I'll call him Monday. Maybe he'll dig something up. Give me that
Rochester address. And I'll try Immigration on the name Groloch. I don't know
if their records go back far enough, but it's worth a try. The Feds never
throw anything away."
Harald settled himself in a chair and put on his stubborn look. Maybe he was
right, Cash thought. Maybe it was time to get some government agency involved.
Somewhere in Wash-ington, with its numberless bureaucrats, and bureaus, there
was bound to be an outfit that investigated people like Miss Groloch.
"You get anything more from your Mrs. Caldwell?"
Harald shrugged. "Been trying to stay away. But she should have her stuff
ready sometime next week. She called about it the other day. What about your
saucer people?"
Cash had almost forgotten. "Nothing. They made copies of everything we had,
then disappeared. One guy said they wouldn't bother me till they got
something."
Harald's expression grew more stubborn. "Norm, I'm get-ting some really bad
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vibes from this thing. If we can't give it to the Feds, maybe we should let it
go."
Where had his enthusiasm gone? Cash wondered. It was just minutes since he had
been excited.
"How? The way I see it, we're riding a tiger. People have started to notice,
to watch. Might be some difficult questions if we turned loose now."
John nodded, looked more glum, glanced at the clock. For an instant Cash saw
another Hank Railsback foreshadowed in the younger man's face.
"You and Carrie having trouble?"
He seemed startled. "Is the Pope a Catholic?" Then, "It shows, huh?" He
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