"Yes, sir," she told Smith.
He handed her the letter and she glanced at it quickly.
"I want you to find the writer."
She looked up from the hugely scrawled writing on the yellow sheets.
"What asylum should I look in first?" she asked. When she saw that Smith did not think that was funny, she said "Right away."
She took the letter to her small private office outside Smith's where she was the only other person in CURE to have a computer console and access to the giant memories of the organization's electronic brain.
She punched up the computer console, then spread the three pages of the note side by side by side on her desk to examine. The sprawling, semi-literate handwriting might be her best bet and she asked the computer to reproduce for her the signatures from the license applications of all the private detectives in New York City.
The machine sat silently, as it scoured its banks for three minutes, and then on photo sensitive paper which clicked out of the top of Ruby's console, it began to spin out samples of the signature and, next to
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them, the printed names of all the private detectives in New York.
There were hundreds of them and they came out on a big reel of paper from the back of the console. Ruby looked at them carefully. The samples of handwriting were small, hardly enough for a perfect analysis, but she narrowed the long string of names down to ten. She also reminded herself that there were ten illiterate detectives in New York City whom she would never hire under any circumstances.
Ruby looked at the letter again and smiled to herself when she read the diatribe against Italian jockeys. On instinct, she punched in the ten names of possible suspects into the machine and asked the computer to cross-check them against telephone accounts with New York's Off-Track Betting office.
The computer narrowed it down to three names. Ed Kolle. J. R. DeRose. Zack Meadows.
She checked the samples of the three men's signatures against the note again, but was unable to tell which of them might have written it. All of them seemed to have gone to the same school to learn illegibility.
She read over the note again, finally fixing on a paragraph that read: "And when you start doing something in the white house, don't you think you ought to do something about cops on the take, and corruption cops who take a piece out of everything and shake down everybody whether they deserves it or not."
On another hunch, she punched the three names into the computer and asked it to check the names against applicants during the past twenty years for
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the New York City police department. The machine searched for another three minutes and then gave Ruby back one name.
Zack Meadows.
Ruby took out a Manhattan telephone book and called the office of Zack Meadows. She recognized its location as a seedy section on the west side, a rollicking dirty slum.
The telephone had been disconnected. She asked the computer why.
It patched itself into the computers of New York Bell system and reported back that the phone service had been shut off for nonpayment of bill.
Ruby asked the computer for a full background on Zack Meadows. It gave back his home address (a slum); his military record (undistinguished); his educational background (sparse); and his income tax records (laughable).
There was no home telephone listing, but Ruby got the address of the apartment house superintendent from a reverse telephone directory, called him and found out that Meadows had not been seen in two weeks and his rent was four days overdue.
Enough.
The letter had been written by Zack Meadows. And Zack Meadows had been among the missing for the last few weeks.
She went back into Smith's office.
"His name is Zack Meadows. He ain't been seen in three weeks."
Smith nodded and thought for a moment.
He said, "I'm sending you to New York."
"Good. My ass be dragging hanging out at my
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desk all the time. You want me to look for this Meadows?"
"Yes," said Smith. "This is why." He filled her in quickly on the threat to the Lippincotts and what it might mean to America's economy if there was a full-scale threat against the family.
"Got it," said Ruby. "I'll leave right away."
She turned for the door. Smith said, "Also, arrange a meeting for me with Remo."
"When?" Ruby asked.
"As soon as possible."
"Okay. Tonight," she said.
"It'll never be tonight," Smith said.
"Why not?" asked Ruby.
"Remo likes more notice than that. He won't show up."
"He'll be there," Ruby said. "You can bank on it."
At the door, she turned back. "You putting him on this too?" she asked.
Smith nodded.
"Tell that turkey I said I'll find out what it's about before he does."
CHAPTER FOUR
Remo glared at Smith.
"You want us to do what?"