“What’s the difference? I know.”
“You sound like a cop.”
“Well, I’m not,” I assured her.
“A fed maybe . . .”
“Nope.” I picked at a stubborn thorn embedded in my rear end.
“Or maybe Ma Bell fuzz . . .”
That was a giveaway. “Why would phone fuzz be interested in Swift?”
“Why are you?” Randy wanted to know.
“O.R.G.Y. is doing a study of the psychoerotic causes and effects of phone tripping,” I improvised glibly. “The information I have says Tom Swift is one of the biggest phreaks in the country. I just want to interview him. Anything you tell me about him or his whereabouts will be kept confidential.”
“Why should I tell you anything?”
The thorn finally came loose. I looked at it. It was a full inch long. I flicked it away. “After all we’ve been to each other,” I wheedled.
“Trouble! That’s all you’ve been to me!” Randy’s disposition wasn’t getting any better, either. “Do you have to keep picking at yourself that way? It’s disgusting!”
I stopped plucking. Silence. We walked. My fingers itched to relieve my thorny problem. I restrained them.
“Does money interest you?” Awhile later I tried another tack.
“How much?”
I mentioned a figure. Randy upped it. We compromised. Amazing how loquacious she became. So much so that when I resumed plucking a few more quills as I listened, Randy didn’t even notice. We walked as she talked.
For openers, she filled me in on her own background as it related to her going to work for Tom Swift. Orphaned at the age of twelve when her parents were killed in a car crash, Randy had been taken in by a widowed uncle who had a farm in Vermont. Six years later, by which time she was filling out a shirt and jeans in ways that had even the hogs ogling her, Unc suddenly remembered he wasn’t a blood relative. One night, after a tussle in the haymow which left Randy’s jeans in tatters and Unc rejected, dejected, and ejected to the trough with the rest of the pigs, she helped herself to some of Unc’s seed money and took off for the nearest town.
Randy rented a furnished room and bought a local paper. She started answering the “Help Wanted” ads. Tom Swift’s was the third one she answered, and he hired her.
Besides taking care of his dog, her duties consisted of keeping his small cabin in order, running a few errands, and occasionally taking him places. The relationship, Randy said, was strictly business.
“An attractive girl like you?” I questioned the point.
“He couldn’t know that,” Randy reminded me. “Tom Swift is blind.”
“Braille . . .” I suggested, leaving it hanging.
“He never laid a finger on me.” A little regret there.
“What was he like?”
“Reserved, but very nice. Sort of good-looking, too. He smoked a pipe.” Randy went on to describe him. It tallied with the description Putnam had given me. She also told me Tom Swift had rented the cabin only a short while before she went to work for him. He had no friends in the area. Randy had no idea Why he’d chosen that particular locale.
“Do you know where he went when he left?” I asked.
No
“Did you know he was going?”
“Yes and no. He told me he’d be leaving soon about two weeks before he went. He gave me money to put the dog in the kennel, and paid my salary plus a month extra. But he didn’t say anything about sneaking off the way he did. Then, the day he left, he called and asked me to come to the cabin. Nothing unusual about that. Our arrangement was pretty loose, and I had lots of free time. But he’d often call me to come down if he needed something. This time, though, when I got there, he told me he was leaving immediately on urgent business. He was very nervous. He kept cocking his head toward the window like he was listening for something. Then he asked me to do this really weird thing. When I did it, he walked past the window, nodded like he heard what he expected to hear, and just took off.”
“What was the weird thing he asked you to do?”
“Take off all my clothes.”
“That doesn’t sound so weird.” I dug at another quill lodged in my sitter.
“Remember, he was blind. But it wasn’t just that. He said I should walk around nude after he left, play with the dog or something, and that I should stay there naked for at least a half-hour.”
So Tom Swift had deliberately arranged to distract the snoops’ attention! I mulled that one over as I removed the thorn. “Did you know Tom Swift was a phone phreak?” I inquired after a moment.
“Yes.” Randy nodded. “I put two and two together. See, I’d read a story in the paper about a phone phreak who got caught. Not one of those deals where a guy finds out a phone-company credit-card number and has the operator charge a long-distance call to it. This guy actually did something to the phone itself. Now, when I first went to work for Tom Swift, he’d have me take him down to the pay booth by the gas station and wait while he made some calls. He’d stay there a really long time. And once I saw him holding this little gadget up to the mouthpiece and pressing buttons. What was really peculiar was that he had a phone in his cabin. He got calls on it, but he never used it to make outgoing calls. Then, around the time he told me he was going to be leaving, he had the cabin phone disconnected. Of course, by then he’d learned the trail to the pay booth and could get there by himself, without me.”
I guessed that Tom Swift must have thought things were getting hot. He hadn’t wanted to chance being traced by incoming calls. “What about the calls he got at home?” I asked Randy.
“That was another peculiar thing. He never seemed to talk on the cabin phone. He’d just listen and hang up. Then, later, he’d go down to the gas station and call back.”
“How do you know he was calling back?”
“Because sometimes I answered the phone. Like if he was out at the john, or playing with the dog, times like that. These people with these funny names would leave their numbers. I’d tell him, and later he’d go down to the pay booth.”
“Funny names? Do you remember any of them?”
“ ‘Bugs Ameche,’ ” Randy remembered. “ ‘Gino Goldberg.’ And—oh! Sure!—‘Phoebe Phreeby’! She was always calling. I think she was his girl friend or something. She left her number with me so often it got so I knew it by heart.”
“Do you still remember the number?”
“Sure.” Randy rattled it off.
I repeated it aloud until I was sure I had it down pat. Phoebe Phreeby. It was a real break! I happily pulled out another bristle.
Of course, having located Randy Beaver, I could just have reported to Putnam and called it quits. I’d completed my assigned task. But I couldn’t rest on my laurels with a world at stake. Not when I had the lead which might turn up Tom Swift. To turn that lead over to Putnam’s snoops, to one of the fed agencies whose record smelled for itself, just wasn’t my style. Besides, it was O.R.G.Y.’s rainy season, and Putnam had mentioned a bonus if I could locate Tom Swift.
Humanitarianism? Or greed? So whose motives are pure? . . .
We reached the outskirts of Inferno. It was about three in the A.M. The streets were dark and still. I was still plucking away.
Randy was shivering beside me. My own naked body was chilled through. I wished I hadn’t given up smoking. I could have used a cigarette just to warm my hands.
Suddenly a figure stepped out of the shadows down the street. Coming closer, I recognized him. It was Pete, the leader of the tar-and-feather soiree. He was pointing a double-barreled shotgun straight at us.
“Hold it right there!” he ordered. “Just set down nice and easy. I’ll come to you.”
“I can’t sit down,” I told him. I turned around so he could see why.
“Sodomy with a porcupine,” he decided. “That ain’t gonna make it any better for you.”