Day Two
July 22, 1952
Tuesday Afternoon
The dark beauty London Marshall bounded through the door early afternoon looking like a hundred crazed banshees were on her tail. “Someone broke into my house,” she said. “It’s trashed.”
“When?”
“I don’t know,” she said. “When I left for work this morning everything was fine. When I swung by just now it was trashed.”
Wilde swung his suit jacket over his shoulder and dipped his hat over his left eye.
“Let’s have a look.”
At street level Wilde pointed to Blondie and said, “That’s mine, the little green one.”
London headed to the passenger side and slipped in to find the steering wheel in front of her.
“It’s English,” Wilde said. “Everything’s backwards.”
They got rearranged and Wilde merged the front end into thick, noon-hour traffic.
He exhaled and said, “I have to be honest. I haven’t had ten seconds to work on your case.”
“That’s okay.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay, I understand.”
“I’m on it now though,” he said.
“You still have the map, right?”
He put a confused expression on his face and shot her a sideways glance.
“I thought I gave that back to you.”
Her mouth opened.
“Just kidding,” he said. “Yeah, I have it.”
The woman smelled nice.
Her voice was a song.
She was a vision in white-a white skirt, a matching white jacket, a white blouse and white high-heels.
The skirt rode up as they drove.
Wilde kept his eyes off her nylons but it was a struggle.
Her house turned out to be a two-story Tudor in a nice section of town out by Colorado Boulevard. The tree-lawns were wide and lined with shady elms. Vines crept up wrought iron fences. It wasn’t Capitol Hill, but it wasn’t anything to sneeze at.
London led him around to the back.
The door was jimmied.
“This is how he got in,” she said. “From the get-go, he didn’t care if I knew he’d been here. The first time was different-he was discrete. This time he was out for blood.”
Inside, a bomb had gone off.
Everything in the kitchen cabinets had been swept out and smashed on the floor. The drawers were pulled out, tipped upside down and dropped.
Cushions were cut open.
Clocks and TVs were smashed.
Furniture was overturned.
“I have some bad news,” Wilde said. “This was his last chance trying to find the map on his own. You’re next. He’s going to grab you and make you tell him where it is. I’m sorry to be so blunt but I don’t want to sugarcoat it. You need to know what you’re up against.”
She flipped a couch back upright, put the cushions in place and sat down.
“I can’t run,” she said. “I have a job, friends, everything. My whole life is here in Denver. I have a trial starting next week.”
Wilde lit a cigarette.
“In that case we’ll have to go to Plan B.”
“Which is what?”
“There are two options.”
“Which are what?”
“The easiest one is to just give him the map.”
She shook her head.
“That’s not going to happen. What’s the other option?”
“The other option is that we trap him.”
“How?”
“By dangling the bait.”
“Meaning me.”
Wilde nodded.
“You and the map.”
“How do we do that?”
“I don’t know but we need to do it tonight. Like you said, he’s out for blood.”
She stared out the window then back at Wilde.
“What happens if we actually get him trapped? Do we kill him?”
Wilde shrugged.
“Maybe he’ll put us in a position where we have no choice. Self-defense and all that.” A beat, then, “In the meantime, you’ll need to go down to the police department and file a report.”
London shook her head.
“I don’t want anyone to know about the map.”
“You don’t have to tell them about the map,” Wilde said. “Just get the report on file and let ’em come out here and investigate. Then if the guy shows back up and ends up dead, they’ll know it was self-defense.” He frowned and added, “Keep in mind that the guy is probably just a hired gun. If he ends up dead, he’ll get replaced. We need to get to the source.”
“How?”
“I don’t know.”
“You must have some idea.”
“Well, there is one thing,” he said. “The guy probably knows who hired him. If we ask him nice and polite and put a cherry on top maybe he’ll tell us.”
London smiled.
“I’ll pick up some cherries this afternoon.”
“They’re in the produce section.”