The Man of Maybe Half-a-Dozen Faces (6 page)

“No.”

“You seem to be pretty much lost at sea.” Prudence gathered her bag and got up.

“Who, me?” I scooted to the side so I wouldn't have to be peeking around my monitor at her. “No way. It's just these things take time. I'll get into Pablo's office. You can bet on that. Hey, as it happens that's at the top of my list. Relax. You can't expect instant results.”

“I guess not.” She walked toward the door.

“Hey,” I said, “how can I get in touch with you if I need to?”

She stopped at the door. “I'm on the list,” she said. “Send me e-mail.”

I watched her leave, and then I settled back in my chair. I fired up my word processor and called up Randy Casey's game instructions.

SEVENTEEN WORLDS

It must have been some game. The manual was as thick as a novel.

I looked first for chapter 66. No chapter 66. No section 66. I looked at page 66. Something to do with elves on World twelve. No clues. I counted paragraphs from the beginning of the book. Paragraph 66 didn't shed any light on the case. Ditto with word 66.

I spent a few minutes thinking about 1966.

I turned to the index and scanned down the page looking for 66. I found one right away. Devils 66. Strange I didn't remember reading about devils on page 66. I kept scanning, and near the end found Spiders 66. I turned to page 66 and read it again. Carefully. No devils. No spiders. No devil spiders. The index was wrong.

five

Lulu finally just tossed the BOD list onto my desk and left the office. Thinking was getting us nowhere.

We hoped to pick up Frank's trail downtown at Maxwell's Lunch Room. Lulu would have to forgo chocolate lime cake at the Whisper Café today. Frank wouldn't be there. After all these years, Marvin's mother still didn't like Frank. I suppose the Whisper was no place for a hardy cop lunch anyway.

Maybe Lulu's confidence was low. When she passed the big front windows of Maxwell's and saw Frank bent over his plate forking noodles into his mouth, she didn't go in and take a table where she could keep an eye on him. Instead, she just kept on walking. He didn't look up as she passed.

Once downtown Eugene had been a pedestrian mall that ran unbroken for blocks. Now the mall was crossed by reopened streets, but there were still long quiet patches. A little to the east of Maxwell's, there were two wood and iron benches and a couple of trees. Just down the block was an espresso booth. It had rusted wheels and looked like someone had knocked it together with old plywood and bent nails. The red paint screaming
ESPRESSO
! was chipped and you could see that the sign had once said something else, but you couldn't tell just what. Lulu got a double raspberry latte and sat down on one of the benches where she could watch Frank Wallace eat his lunch.

A man walking by gave her a head-to-toe full body scan. Then he did a double take, and his eyes went cold. He put on his attack smile, his in-your-face grin, his what-the-hell-is-this and would-you-get-a-load-of-that look. Lulu turned her face away, ignoring him, and found herself looking right into Frank's eyes. She glanced away, but not before she'd read his face, and what she read made us reassess, at least for the moment, our attitude toward Frank Wallace. The look he had beamed at Lulu said you need some help you just holler. Our hero? That was not a feeling any of us were comfortable with.

The man muttered something nasty and moved on, and when Lulu looked back at Frank, he was eating noodles again. This was pretty much what it had been like all along watching Frank. He didn't do anything exciting. He didn't spend much time away from the office, and when he did go out, he mostly had business downtown and he mostly walked everywhere. His main task seemed to be moving papers from one building to another. We'd only lost him once when he hopped into an official car at the corner of Oak and Eighth and zoomed away before we could get to our own wheels.

Because he was so predictable, Lulu was surprised when she saw him signal his server for the check. That meant he'd been at Maxwell's for some time. He'd taken an early lunch. She gathered her bag and got up quickly and walked to the waste barrel and tossed the rest of her latte. What if he stopped and spoke to her? We just didn't feel that secure in our identity. He would see right through us. Lulu walked up the block and stopped to stare through a store window.

Frank came out of the lunch room. Lulu glanced at him then went back to window-shopping, then glanced at him again. He looked both ways up and down the mall. He gave her a puzzled look, and for a moment she was sure he was going to walk up to her, but then he pulled up his sleeve to see his watch and turned and walked the other way.

What would she have said to him? Something about whatever she'd been looking at in the window? She let her eyes focus on the merchandise in the window. She gasped and took a step back. Through the window she saw many people at desks all looking back at her.

She took another step back so she could look up at the sign—
SPLASHDOWN SOFTWARE
. They'd taken over the old dime store that had closed several years ago. She knew that. Frank knew that, too. Her staring into this particular window was what had puzzled him. His cop instincts.

Lulu still assumed she was being watched; she always assumed that, so she waved at the people inside as if that's what she'd been up to all along.

And she did see someone we at least recognized—Arthur Snow, the head guy at SplashDown. He had a handful of printouts, and he stopped to say something to a woman at one of the desks. We knew the woman, too, but couldn't retrieve her name. She and Snow both looked up at Lulu.

We moved away from the window.

Frank had reached the corner. That was lead enough. We hurried to follow.

Ordinarily he would just walk back to his office after lunch, but we could tell he would break his pattern today. For one thing, he already had. He'd taken that early lunch alone.

Following anyone is an art, but following a cop takes special care. Lulu turned on Olive, leaving Frank to continue down Broadway on his own. She was pretty sure she could pick him up anywhere along the mall before he reached the police station.

As long as he didn't get into a car along the way, we probably wouldn't lose him. If he used his own car, we'd be okay. The lot where we had permanent parking places was only a block from the police department's underground parking garage. Sky kept his Cherokee in that lot, and Lulu's old Ford Escort was pretty much permanently parked there. The car was registered in my mother's name. I wondered what Frank would think if he suddenly suspected Lulu was following him and had the plate checked. Would he think my mother had lost twenty years and gained fifty pounds?

Lulu passed the police station and walked around to our parking lot. She was playing a hunch. If he just went back to his office, she'd know soon enough, but if he walked through to the parking garage, she would be ready to follow him in the Escort.

Lulu unlocked the Escort, but before she climbed inside she saw a small group of mushrooms on the floor under the steering wheel. We didn't remember buying mushrooms, much less dropping them as we unloaded groceries. Lulu leaned down to pick one up. It was growing in the Escort's carpet! How long had it been since she'd used the car? She didn't remember. We hoped the battery wasn't dead. Lulu plucked the mushrooms from the carpet and tossed them to the pavement and climbed in behind the wheel.

Sometimes you win. Not only did the Escort roar to life when Lulu turned the key, but she had no more done that when Frank pulled into view on the one-way street in his own beat-up green Dodge.

Lulu gave him a moment, and then followed. Frank took Seventh Street to Franklin and for a moment we thought he would drive right out of town. Maybe he had a rendezvous in Springfield.

Fast food and motels on the left, the University of Oregon on the right. He pulled into the left turn lane at a light.

It was decision time. We could pull in behind him and risk him spotting us, or we could take a chance that he would make a legal U-turn here in order to get to the businesses on the other side of the street. That was the main purpose of a left turn here. If he really went on down the cross street we'd probably lose him. We stayed in the lane that didn't turn.

Frank made a U-turn. The light turned green and the traffic in front of us moved on. We just needed a moment more to see what Frank was up to. The traffic behind us waited patiently, but they wouldn't wait much longer. A bunch of horn honking might attract Frank's attention. We thought he might be doubling back to downtown, but before he got out of sight he turned into the parking lot of the Quack Inn. Lulu dropped the Escort into gear and zipped into the left turn lane. Got some dirty looks, but no one honked. That reticence on the part of locals to use the horn aggressively is one of the things that amazes visitors.

By the time we could make our own U-turn and get down to the Quack Inn, Frank had parked and disappeared into one of the rooms. That meant someone else had already rented the room. Or at least that Frank had done it himself some time in the past. He hadn't had time to check in while we waited at the light.

The bar at the Quack Inn was called the Tail Feathers Lounge. Both of the names had to do with the U. of O. Ducks. A lot of stuff in Eugene has a duck theme, the school's mascot being a duck and all, especially in this part of town, what with the university just across the street.

We were a little surprised Frank would pick this part of town when he was looking for a steamy love nest. There's a whole other area of town with motels catering to hanky-panky. Lulu was glad we weren't there. While Eugene has no really mean streets, there are a few decidedly grumpy ones Frank might have picked.

Part of the Tail Feathers Lounge was dark and smoky, but part of it had once been a coffee shop and was bright and filled with potted plants and little white tables with bent-wire soda fountain chairs. Lulu took a seat at a table by the window and ordered a glass of white wine. From that vantage point we could see Frank's car and a row of upper and lower motel room doors. Unless Frank parked around the corner from his room, we ought to be able to see him when he came out. More important, we ought to be able to see who he was with. Lulu opened her bag and fussed with her Nikon Auto-Everything. She pointed it out the window and snapped one shot of Frank's car. Then she dropped the camera back into the bag and took a sip of her wine.

So it was all true. Elsie had been right to suspect Frank. He was out for a nooner with some bimbo, and we would soon get the goods on him. We had begun to suspect that he was on the up-and-up which would have been disappointing.

Lulu had time for another glass of wine. It was a lazy afternoon, and she relaxed and let our mind wander. Surely Frank would have to get back to work soon, but until he did we could take it easy. The Tail Feathers had no tap dancing floor, so we were in no danger of wandering off to lala land and losing track of time and space. We could just relax all afternoon and drink wine and wait for Frank to come out with his secret squeeze so we could take his picture.

Some forty-five minutes later, he did come out of a room three doors down from his car and on the bottom floor—room 142.

Alone.

Damn. We were hoping for some hand holding. An affectionate butt squeeze. Maybe a good-bye kiss.

Frank marched to his car and dug into his front pocket for his key.

Lulu snapped his picture.

Oregon clouds. They are such a part of your life you don't even see them coming and going. The Nikon thought it needed more light and flashed, and Frank jerked his head around. Lulu yelped and dropped the camera into her lap. Frank scanned the window then walked quickly toward the door of the lounge. Lulu snatched up her bag and camera and hurried into the shadowy part of the bar.

The bartender's look said, “Hey, don't barf in here,” and a man at the bar twisted around to see who was running by. Lulu ducked into the ladies' room. We hoped no one would be in there. We hoped Frank wasn't so fired up he'd come in there himself. We hoped the bartender and his lone customer wouldn't mention us.

Okay, the flash was a dumb mistake, but we learn from our mistakes. When things get too automatic there's usually trouble. Put it on the to-do list—get a simpler camera. Lulu pushed open one of the stalls and went inside, closing the door behind her. Looked around. This would have to do. She didn't sit down.

We took a deep breath. We took a bunch of deep breaths. We waited ten minutes.

Lulu peeked out into the bar, but the angle of the door was wrong, so she couldn't see much. We couldn't hide in the ladies' room forever. Lulu pushed back into the bar. No Frank. She walked back to her table by the window and sat down. The server came by and Lulu ordered one more glass of white wine.

Frank's car was gone. He must have figured the flash had not been about him. We weren't off the hook. The idea of the flash had been burned into Frank's mind. Even if he didn't know it, on some level, he would be thinking about people taking his picture. Since it looked like he really was fooling around on Elsie, the subconscious awareness of being photographed coupled with his guilt could make him even more dangerous to follow. We'd need to be extra careful.

But Frank was not here now. We decided to wait and see who else might come out of room 142.

If anyone else did come out. If she hadn't already come out while Lulu had been hiding from Frank.

An hour passed and no one came out of the room. We didn't think Lulu could handle another glass of white wine, so we left.

Whoever Frank had met wouldn't know Lulu nor have any reason to suspect she wasn't telling the truth when she said, “Whoops, wrong room. Sorry!” It was possible Frank's squeeze was still in there.

Lulu walked up to the door of room 142 and knocked. No answer. Knocked again. Nothing. She put her ear to the door. Just silence from the other side. Sleeping? Lulu banged on the door. Listened again. Nothing. We were pretty sure there was no one in there.