“Bluff?” Chookie said uncertainly.
“Arthur looks very reliable and respectable. And I know he’s got the nerve for it.” Arthur flushed with pleasure. “So we do a little shopping first. I mean you two do. I’ll make out the list.”
There seemed to be an unusual number of cars and people in Goodland when we drove slowly through at two-thirty, and we were stared at with open curiosity. There was an official car parked at the entrance to the shell road that led to Waxwell’s place. Two men squatted on their heels in the shade. One sauntered out and held up his hand to stop us. He was a dusty little lizard-like man in bleached khakis. He strolled back and stared in curiously. Chookie, secretarially severe in white blouse, black skirt, hornrimmed glasses, hair pulled back into a bun, was driving. She rolled the window down and said, “This is the way to the Waxwell place, is it not?”
“But you can’t go in there, lady.”
Arthur rolled the rear window down. I was in the back seat beside him. “What seems to be the trouble, officer?”
He took his time looking us over. “No trouble. You can’t go in.”
“Officer, we’re working on a very tight timetable. We’re advance technical staff for network television. The generator truck and the mobile unit will be along within the hour. I’m sure they’ve cleared everything. We have to mark locations, block out camera angles and placement. I’d like to get it done before they get here.”
“The shack is sealed, mister.”
“I don’t have to get into the shack. That’s up to the lighting people. That’s their problem. We’re setting up the outdoor shots and interviews, officer. And we’ll lay some cable so it’ll be all ready for them to hook on.”
Arthur was very earnest and patient. He wore my bright blue linen jacket, white shirt, black knit tie. I yawned and turned a little more to make doubly certain the man would see the CBS over the breast pocket of my work shirt. Mailbox letters from the five and ten, backed with stickum. Gold. I hoped he had noticed the letters on the big tool box off the boat, resting on the floor beside my feet.
I said, “Hell, Mr. Murphy, let em sweat it when they get here.”
“I don’t like your attitude, Robinson. They depend on us to do a job.”
“I was told no kind of reporters at all,” the dusty deputy said.
“We are not reporters, sir!” Arthur said indignantly. “We’re technicians.”
“And you don’t want to git into the shack?”
“We wouldn’t have time if we wanted to,” Arthur said, and looked at his watch. My watch. A gift I never wear. It tells the day, month, phase of the moon, and what time it is in Tokyo and Berlin. It makes me restless to look at it.
“Well, go on ahead then, and you tell Bernie down there that Charlie says it’s okay.”
Bernie was on the front steps, and he came out with a shotgun in the crook of his arm. He had one of those moon faces which cannot look authoritative. And when he found out Charlie said we were okay, he was delighted to be so close to the mysterious functioning of something he watched every day of his life. Too delighted. The gold letters and the reel of cable were symbols of godhead, and his smile was pendulous and permanent. We could not sustain the myth of locating proper areas to ground the equipment with Bernie hovering over every move. Chookie took him away from the play, notebook in hand, easing him back to the porch to get his expert opinion on who would be the best people to interview, and who had known Waxwell the longest, and what other interesting places were there in the area where the mobile unit could be set up.
I’d had them pick up another length of rod, and Arthur had sharpened both of them with the file from the ship’s tool supply. I picked two likely spots, and with Bernie out of sight, we each began an orderly search pattern, working out from the initial probe, an expanding checkerboard pattern, six inches between the deep slow stabs into the moist earth of the open area in the grove.
“Trav!” Arthur said after about twelve minutes. I took him a spade. It was eighteen inches down, a super kingsize special bargain glass jar that had once held Yuban powdered coffee and now held three packets of curled new bills. The jar went into the car trunk, tucked back behind the spare. I moved to the border of his area. Six feet from the first find I struck something that felt metallic at about the same depth. Prince Albert tobacco can that had once held a pound and now held three more curled packets. Put it with the jar. Fill the holes. I checked my watch. We worked as fast as we could. I could not move well yet. Arthur was faster. We covered a continuously expanding area. When the total elapsed time was forty minutes, I said, “Knock it off.”
“But there could be…”
“And there might not be. And we want to get out with what we’ve got. Move!”
As planned, he sank a rod deep, and I taped a cable to the exposed stub. We put the other rod down ten feet away, ran cable from it back toward the cottage, and I wired the two ends into the impressive heavy duty receptacle they had picked up in a hardware store.
We drove out. Chook, eyes on the narrow road, said, “I knew the time was running out. You didn’t get anything, did you?”
“Not what we. expected. Just a token. Sixty thousand.”
She hauled the car back from the brink of a damp ditch. She stopped at the entrance. Arthur rolled the window down. “We’re all set, thanks,” he called. “We’re going to go out now and check with Project Control, officer. These things change very rapidly, depending on the news breaks. At least, if they do decide to use that location, it’s all set for them. I personally appreciate your cooperation.”
“Glad to help out, mister.”
“If there’s a change of plan, don’t worry about the gear we left there. It shouldn’t be in anyone’s way, and somebody will be through later on to pick it up.”
Out on the main road off the island, heading toward the Trail, Arthur began to giggle. And it became infectious. And soon we were all roaring and howling, with, for Chook and Arthur, a potential edge of hysteria in it. Gasping, we told Arthur Wilkinson he was superb. He was big media, through and through.
“Next let’s try a bank job,” Chook said. And we were off again.
In the interest of avoiding any unfortunate coincidence, we turned north on 952 before we reached Naples, then west on 846 to come out at Naples Park Beach eight miles north of the city.