A different voice answered. Smooth but equally abrupt. "Yeah? Who you want?"
"Hello?" Joe said inanely.
"Who you want to talk to?"
"I was calling Davis Drugs. Can you tell me what place I've reached?"
"Davis Drugs! That's a good one! We ain't got that brand, buddy. Who you calling?"
"Can you tell me what place this is? Maybe I have the…"
A clanging, metallic voice sounded in the background, its vibrating rumble so loud they couldn't make sense of the words. Sounded like "Wall uh-uh-ers heave ta ecc-ecc-ecc-ed wall at once." A man shouted, "Come on, Joobie. Get off the damn phone! I got a call coming." Then a click and the line went dead. In a moment the recording came on telling Joe to hang up and dial again.
He slapped his paw to silence the offensive message. "What was that all about?"
Dulcie sat scowling, trying to make out the words. She lifted her paw. "Let me try."
She punched the redial and the speaker button so they could all hear. She sat washing her paws, listening with all the sophistication of a debutante buffing her nails while monitoring the call of a dull-witted suitor. The gravelly voice answered. "Start talking. It's your nickel."
"Hi, honey. This is May."
"May who?"
"Maybe I could give you a good time, baby."
He guffawed, his laugh so loud that Dulcie backed away. But her voice was sweet and smooth as cream. "Honey, are you the handsome one?"
"You bet I am, baby. That's me." The guy bellowed a rasping laugh. "Handsome as a hound pup. Who is this? Where you calling from, honey?"
"My name's Chantelle. What's yours?"
"Baby, this is Big Buck Brewer. You calling from near here? Why don't you come on up? Have us a little conjugal visit."
Dulcie rolled her eyes at Joe. "I'm just a few blocks away, honey. Maybe if I come up there, we could party?"
"Baby, if you can figure out how to get in here, I guarantee you'll have a party."
The loudspeaker went again. "Waaalll pr-boom-boom- boom-out of the… yar-yar-yard…" And the phone clicked and went dead. Dulcie looked at Joe, her green eyes huge.
"A prison," Joe said softly.
Dulcie nodded. "Prison loudspeaker. 'All prisoners out… out of the exercise yard'?" Her eyes were wide and gleaming, her ears sharp forward. "A prison, Joe? How could we call inside a prison? What prison?"
"There's only one prison in that area code." And Joe Grey thanked the great cat god-or the great phone god-that Pacific Bell was so explicit in its billing, listing each city along with its long-distance number. "San Rafael, Dulcie. San Quentin State Prison." He showed his teeth in a wicked feline grin. "San Quentin, temporary home of every serious felon and convicted murderer in the state of California."
"But… how could we phone into a prison? Were those inmates-how could inmates answer the phone? What am I missing here? They're locked up, they're supposed to… They wouldn't have telephones."
"Right. And I don't have claws and whiskers."
She only looked at him, her green eyes wide with shock-and with growing excitement.
The kit gaped at them both. She was beyond her depth.
And Joe Grey looked like he'd swallowed a whole nest of mice. "This is from the horse's mouth, Dulcie. Straight from Harper's men, at the poker table. There are pay phones all over San Quentin. Maximum security prison, but the inmates can make a call to anyone, any time they please."
"You're putting me on."
"Not a bit. They can call out, and can receive incoming calls if they stand around and wait for them. Like, say, their outside contact calls at a prearranged time."
Dulcie shook her whiskers, her green eyes narrowed with disgust. "What's the point of putting them in prison? I thought it was to get them out of circulation. What good, if they have all that contact with the outside?"
"Exactly. But the phones are only part of it. Those prisoners have computers, e-mail, the Web, you name it."
Dulcie sighed.
"The Justice Department wants to crack down on the phones, though. Justice thinks the prisoners are making too many drug deals and orchestrating too many murders from behind bars."
"Now you're kidding."
"Dead serious."
"Too many drug deals? And just how many is too many? Too many murders?" Her tail lashed with rage. "What's happening to the world?"
"You have to make allowances. You're dealing here with humans."
"Oh, right."
"Bottom line-the state earns a lot of money from those pay phones. Harper said the take in California alone last year was something like twenty-three million bucks from prison pay phones."
"Come on, Joe."
"Knight Ridder Newspapers-the wire service," Joe said authoritatively. "Harper was so angry about it, he clipped the article to show Clyde. It gave statistics for Illinois and Florida, too. Said in Illinois, in one year, inmates placed over three million longdistance calls-and the deal with the phone company is, the state gets half the take."
Dulcie's ears went back; her eyes darkened with anger. "Why do we even bother to try to catch a killer, if that's all it means? He gets free room and board, free computers, free phones so he can do his dirty drug deals-and the state of California rakes in twenty-three million dollars." She was so worked up she growled at Joe and the kit both. "Those cons sit inside like some Mafia family in its Manhattan penthouse arranging drug sales and murdering people by remote control."
"That's about it," Joe said. "Used to be, prisoners were allowed maybe one call every three months-and those were likely monitored. Now they can use the phone all day. That's who you talked to, Dulcie, some inmate waiting for a call."
And Joe Grey smiled. "Lee Wark escaped from San Quentin, but his accomplice in the Beckwhite murder is still there-and Osborne is not on death row. Osborne's serving life. He'd have unlimited phone privileges. And he isn't the only no-good that Harper helped put in Quentin. Kendrick Mahl's there, too."
Max Harper had helped see Mahl convicted for the murder of Janet Jeannot.
Joe and Dulcie had also helped-though only two people in the world knew that.
Joe sat down on the blotter. "This could be not one felon setting up Harper, but a partnership. A whole squirming nest of rats."
"Fine," Dulcie said. "Our source of department information dried up. Harper knows no more than we do. And when we can't pass on the tiniest little tip without implicating Harper."
Joe said nothing. Pacing back and forth across the desk, his ears and whiskers were back, his scowl deep, pulling the white splotch down his face into washboard lines.
The fascinated kit lay belly-down on a stack of bills, looking from one to the other as if watching them bat a mouse back and forth.
"So how are we going to play it?" Dulcie asked. "How are we going to lay this on the new detective? Clyde's right about the phone tips. We try an anonymous tip with Garza, he thinks Harper's trying to manipulate him.
"Still," she said, "when the tip proves to be true…"
Joe rubbed his whiskers against hers. "We don't want to blow this, Dulcie. I want to think about this."
He gave her a broad grin. "I could move in with Garza."
"Oh, right. Play lost kitty, as well fed as you look?"
Joe dropped his ears, sucked in his gut, and crouched as if terrified, creeping across the desk as though someone had beaten him.
"Not bad."
"Add a little roll in the dirt, scruff up my fur, and I'm as pitiful as any homeless. You're not the only one who can play abandoned kitty."
"But you can't play stray kitty for Garza. His niece, Hanni, knows us from when she gave us a ride to Charlie's apartment. Hanni knows you're not a stray."
Joe looked sheepish. He didn't often forget such important matters.
He had to get hold of himself. This worry over Harper was fogging his tomcat brain.
"So I stroll in the front door, look Garza in the eye. Don't offer up an excuse. Make myself at home. Demand food, lodging, and respect. I think Garza could relate to that."