Going to the Dogs

It was after six when I finally got back to the Trans Am. After hiking down Diamond Head’s cracked access road to Bridgeport’s side streets, I figured out the route. My mistake had been in trying to get at the plant from Thirty-first Street: you had to go down to Thirty-third and snake up and down a few times.

I laughed a little to myself over my encounter with Chamfers. With all the industrial surveillance I’ve done over the years it was funny—as well as embarrassing—to make such a clumsy entrance that they took me for a spy. I should have just waited for Monday morning, when I could have spoken to Chamfers’s secretary in the accepted fashion. Now I’d have to do it anyway, but I’d have a big hurdle of suspicion to jump over.

I wondered if Chamfers would really get his own detectives to check up on me, or if that had been bravado to make me back away from my supposed espionage. I amused myself during the long drive up the Kennedy with figuring out what steps I would take if I were going to investigate myself. It would be hard for me to prove I wasn’t spying: by the time they’d checked with some of my corporate references, they’d realize it made up a significant part of my practice. They’d have to start tailing me; that would take a lot of time and money. It wouldn’t make me cry to think of Chamfers trying to justify it to his corporate masters, whoever they were.

When I got home, Mr. Contreras jumped out of his front door to greet me. “Got anything on Mitch, doll?”

I put an arm around his shoulder and gently propelled him back into his apartment. “I’ve started asking people questions, but I’ve got a long way to go yet. I’m going to tell you the same thing I say to all my clients: I make regular reports, but I work less and less efficiently the more I get hounded for them. So pretend we’re neighbors who are both in love with the same dog, and let me handle the investigation as best I can.”

Mr. Contreras elected to be hurt. “It’s just that I’m worried about him. I ain’t trying to hound you or criticize you.”

I grinned. “Perish the thought. Can you give me Kruger’s old address—the one he had before he came home with you last Friday?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I got it right here.”