"Count it. Enough to get into Shangri-la, if that's what you want. Just let me see what you've got on the place."
"But I have to be worth a half-million dollars a year to join," Burdich whined.
"Say you came into an inheritance. The files?"
"I guess it wouldn't hurt. An inheritance, huh? Maybe they'd buy that." He counted the money as he pulled open a rusted drawer and extracted a single file. In it was one sheet of paper, a hand-drawn map of a region in northwestern Pennsylvania. "I did it myself, based on scattered conversations, but it's quite accurate," Burdich said. "I've even been up there to verify the accuracy of it, but they wouldn't let me in." He waved the bills in front of him. "They will now, though."
"I thought it was too late for you."
"I'll dye my hair. They'll accept me. I'll have a place. I'll be one of the BPs." He fell to his knees and grasped Remo's ankles. "Thank you. Bless you," he
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rasped, dragging behind Remo as far as the door.
So that was that, Remo thought. He hadn't gotten anywhere going door to door. If everybody who last saw Admiral Ives was at Shangri-la, that was where he was going. And it only cost him five or six thousand dollars in paper money.
"Sure you don't want Greta's phone number?" Burdich yelled as Remo made his way down the street.
He called Smith and told him about the fruitless interviews.
"They're all out of town?"
"Just about. Everyone's gone to the clinic or something in Pennsylvania named Shangri-la. The last hoople I talked to says it keeps them young."
"That's what all those places claim," Smith said.
"Yeah, I know. Only this seems to work." He explained the discrepancy between the ages of the party guests and their appearances, and gave Smith Burdich's information on Doctor Foxx.
"Many people in their fifties look twenty years younger," Smith said as the Folcroft computer banks whirred into action. "It seems to be a transitional time of life. . . . Foxx, you said?"
"Felix Foxx."
The line was silent except for the noise of the computers. "That's strange," Smith said at one point, lapsing back into silence as the bleeps and whizzes in the background increased.
"It's two degrees above zero, and I'm standing in an open phone booth," Remo said. "Can you think on your own time?"
"Very strange," Smith said. "I've got Felix Foxx here on the screen, but it's a very sketchy biography,
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mostly from IRS files. There seems to be no date of birth."
"I suppose that means he doesn't exist," Remo said.
"It could," Smith answered. Harold W. Smith had total faith in his computers. They did not, as far as he was concerned, produce incorrect responses.
"He's on TV, for crying out loud," Remo protested. "He's on the cover of People magazine."
"And his life seems to have begun with the publication of his books," Smith said. "That's when his IRS records begin. Before then, there are no bank accounts in his name, no credit cards, nothing. He seems to have materialized a year ago."
Remo sighed. "I'm just calling in, the way you wanted me to do. I don't care if the guy exists or not. But if you want me, I'll be at Shangri-la." He gave him the coordinates of the place.
"Fine. I'll check some cross-references here."
"And one more thing. I'll need some money."
The bitter voice at the other end rankled. "I just gave you several thousand dollars."
"I gave most of it to a guy for a beauty treatment."
A low whinnying sound issued briefly from the telephone before the line went dead.
Chapter Six
Patrolman Gary MacArdle opened his desk drawer at the precinct for the twentieth time since he had come in that day and clutched the small rubber stamp hidden there.
it would be his way out. Out from under Master-charge, the rent, the grocery bills. Out from under the colossal weight of Christmas in New York and the drain that put on his already straining bank account. The stamp, if he used it often enough, would pull him out long enough to wait for a promotion and a decent salary. The stamp would bring deliverance.
He didn't think it was illegal. Lots of the guys-even the young ones, the rookies like himself-were already taking bribes from the street dealers they were supposed to be arresting and accepting payoffs from whorehouses. But MacArdle had played it straight. He wanted to be a cop, a good cop. Still, he could see how a good cop could get twisted after his son's first Christmas, when the accounting came due in January. So MacArdle was working overtime every night, and he hardly ever saw his wife and kid anymore, and he was dead on his feet, and it didn't matter anymore if it was illegal or not-not at this point.
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But Herb downstairs said it wasn't. He'd sworn to it, right there in Records. AH MacArdle had to do was to stamp any report with the word fox in it, and he'd get a $20 cashier's check from the government. No department, no name, no tax. Just money. And Herb would get a check, too, just for adding an extra 9 at the front end of the code when he submitted the report for processing into the computer.
Checking to see that no one was looking, MacArdle pressed the stamp onto his ink pad and stamped a piece of scrap paper in the desk drawer. It printed a series of numbers beginning with three zeros.
How could it be illegal? Nobody except Herb was even going to see the report before it was processed, and Herb was in on it. And afterward, when it had gone through the computer and come out tagged and ready for filing, nobody would see it, either, unless it was a big case, but even then it would only be spotted by some computer nerd.
"But who's giving you the money?" MacArdle had asked Herb down in Records that day. Herb had done this sort of thing before. Not with fox, but with other key words. From time to time over the years, Herb, who'd made a career out of the 37th precinct's records, would receive a telephone call. At first he thought the lemony-sounding voice was some kind of crank, but since he had nothing to lose, he'd added the 9 to the appropriate documents just to see what would happen. What had happened was that he'd gotten a check for each report he'd put through the computer with a 9 on it. No strings. No questions. Just money.
"I don't know," Herb answered. "But it ain't the Mafia sending me U.S. government checks. My guess is the CIA."
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"What? You've got to be crazy. What's the CIA want with foxes?"
"Who knows?" Herb said. "Maybe there's foxes with rabies in New York, and the CIA wants to catch them on the Q.T. All I know is they're in a hurry this time and can't wait for the reports to come down to Records through the usual channels. That's why you got to stamp every one that says 'fox' and bring it down here yourself. Got it?"
MacArdle was skeptical. "I still don't see why the CIA's so interested in this precinct."
"Don't kid yourself, kid," Herb said. "I got a friend uptown who's got a stamp just like this one. We make them up ourselves, just like the way the guy on the phone says, and when the first check comes, there's even extra to take care of the cost of the stamp. If that ain't government regulation, I don't know what is."
And so Gary MacArdle had taken the stamp and carried it with him on his beat and stayed on for overtime and had eaten supper at his desk, just in case any "fox" reports turned up, and now he slammed the desk drawer shut with a bang because any fool knew there weren't any foxes in Manhattan.