Hush Money by Peter Israel Page B

hours there I’d been right in the thick of it, the center of attention you could almost say, and now it was one of those don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-you situations.
    The two stops I did make before I hit the freeway north were a waste of time. I went over to the Bay Isle Club just on a hunch. My stormtrooper at the gate had been replaced by another twice his size and half his age, but just as dumb. He told me there was no one home at Number 11, therefore he couldn’t let me across. I said I had reason to believe there was and asked him to call up. He said there was no point calling up because there’d be no answer. I said maybe they were down in the squash court. He thought about that awhile. Then he said his instructions were that the house was closed and he was to let across nobody.
    I suppose if I were James Bond I’d have gotten my scuba tank out of the trunk and gone for a swim, but as is I didn’t feel like getting my knickers wet.
    â€œWhat happened to Ingie?” I hollered at him as I started to back up. Something about him made you want to holler.
    He didn’t seem to know who Ingie was.
    â€œThe guy who used to work here,” I shouted.
    â€œOh him!” he shouted back. “He’s on vacation!” and from the grin that spread his ears I got the impression the vacation might be permanent.
    I doubled back to the campus. There was still no answer up in 708, and the Fish Net was jammed to the gills with people I didn’t know and didn’t want to know. Even my Vice Chancellor had left for the weekend.
    So I quit.
    No Californian in his right mind, they say, would be caught dead on a freeway between four and seven of a Friday afternoon—none that is except a couple of million idiots, and me. The result being that it took the Mustang two and a half hours to make a normal hour’s run, two and a half hours of stop-and-go in the smog, the more so because around the airport I had to turn off the air conditioning and open up the windows. The temperature gauge was into the red and going purple, and the Mustang had developed a catarrh I hadn’t heard since Aunt Hilda died of pneumonia. As is, I just made it home before the grease monkey I go to closed up shop. He said with his workload and all he couldn’t get around to the Mustang for a week, no way, and it cost me double his usual exorbitant rates to squeeze a twenty-four-hour I’ll-see-what-I-can-do out of him.
    I walked—walked, mind you—to the local gourmet shop and snack bar, and then home, loaded down with enough provisions to feed and water an army of Cages for the weekend, or at least two.
    Two was what I had in mind.
    I rode up in the elevator, juggled my bundles while I fished for the key, opened my door, turned on the lights and walked in on an uninvited guest.
    He was sitting on my white leather couch, a little wimp of a guy, reading one of my Sports Illustrated s in the twilight. To judge, he’d been waiting some time, because there was a stack of Sports Illustrated s on the coffee table and he’d worked his way back to February. If I were his mother I’d have turned on a reading light for him, but I’d never seen him before. Except maybe in the dark.
    He dropped the magazine when I came in, picked up a little cannon that was lying in his lap and pointed it in my direction. He motioned to me to sit down. I did, putting the bags gently on the floor.
    Guns now. It had been a long time since I’d seen one—though I supposed Garcia hadn’t been dropped by a spitball—and longer still since I’d had one pointed my way. I own one myself, but like Andy Ford with his grass I keep it at the bottom of a drawer.
    â€œI guess you know why I’m here,” he said. “It’d save us both a lot of trouble if you just handed it over.”
    â€œHanded what over?” I said.
    He tried to look annoyed, but patience must have been a habit with