I waited. It took less than an hour. Then he was back on the line with the information.
The number belonged to a pay phone just outside the town of Darnell in the Wind River area of the Oregon woodlands. It was logging country, and the biggest thing in the town was a sawmill. The phone itself was located on the midway in an amusement park frequented mostly by loggers and teen-agers from the town.
My informant had been thorough. He was able to tell me precisely where the booth was in the amusement park. It was located directly across from a shooting gallery, between the roller coaster and the Hall of Mirrors.
Was Phoebe Phreeby a roller-coaster freak, too? I wondered as I went back to my room and packed. An amusement park. It seemed an odd place for phone tripping. But maybe not. Maybe the more public, the more private. In that kind of a setting, an M.F.-er’s operation might well go unnoticed.
I paid up at the rooming house, and then, suitcase in hand, I walked over to the local rent-a-car place. I arranged for a jalopy I could drive to the nearest airport and leave there. They wheeled it around to the front. Just as I was getting in, a hand grabbed my arm like a vise with lockjaw.
“Goin’ somewhere, Porcupine Plucker?” Law-and-Order on the hoof.
“I have to take a trip,” I told Sheriff Pete.
“No sheep dip?” His claw didn’t get any looser. “Some folks might call that jumpin’ bail,” he allowed.
“Some folks might,” I agreed. “But not me an’ you. We know I’d never do a thing like that. Besides, you’re dropping the charges. Remember?”
“I am? Now, why would I do a thing like that?”
“ ’Cause you’re so shucksy, folksy friendly,” I told him.
“Don’t put me on, wise-ass!” The claw came up.
I came up with it. Out of the car. But I kept my cool. “Sure you’re dropping the charges,” I repeated. I quickly went on to explain why.
I spoke admiringly of his technique in the saddle. I spoke enviously of his leather-skinned prairie flower, Amanda. I spoke sorrowfully of how I might feel myself forced to point out the horns on Judge Julius’ forehead to him if I was compelled to remain in Inferno. I spoke very earnestly, very convincingly.
And when I got through speaking, Sheriff Pete solicitously smoothed out the wrinkles his big paw had put in my jacket. He allowed as how I was really a fine fellow and he’d had me wrong all this time. He apologized for the tar and feathers. He even held the door for me as I climbed in behind the steering wheel of the car I’d rented.
“I’m gonna miss you, old buddy!” So help me, there was a lump in his throat. “But if you gotta go, you gotta go.”
“Like the laxative says.”
“Haw-haw-haw! That’s a real knee-slapper, that is. ‘Like the laxative says’! I gotta remember that one.”
“You do that.”
“Now, don’t you worry ’bout that little legal matter. I’ll see it’s cleared up ’thout no fuss a-tall.”
“Thank you, Sheriff.”
“Where you goin’ anyhow?” he asked.
“I’ve got a date with a porcupine.” I eased the car away from the curb.
“Well, don’t turn your sitter on the critter, old buddy!” he called after me as I roared away.
Next stop, Phoebe Phreeby!
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Playtime Amusement Park was just far enough out of town to be beyond the jurisdiction of the Darnell, Oregon, police force. The site was probably chosen for that reason. Besides the usual stomach-dropping rides, and attractions like a Fun House and a Tunnel of Love, Playtime offered a variety of less licit activities which the Darnell city fathers doubtless wouldn’t have allowed within the township’s limits.
There were skin shows-—topless go-go, strippers, belly dancers, etc.-—and rigged, carny-style gambling games (toss a rubber ring on a stout peg angled to make it bounce off; roll a ball down a ramp toward a series of numbered slots with the high-score one just enough narrower than the others to frustrate winning; pay a quarter to burst a balloon with a dart, and win a prize worth a nickel; even the old shell game), and porno shops, and slot machines, and bars galore. Nor were the ginmills too particular about who they served -- already drunken loggers, underage kids, hookers out for pickups. Playtime was Coney Island, Forty-second Street, the Sunset Strip, and the Ginza all rolled up into one.
The rides were open during the day for kids, but it was at night that the amusement park really came alive. I’d learned this—and little else—after spending a week on the premises trying to track down Phoebe Phreeby. It was strictly a haystack deal.
I hunted the needle by staking out the phone booth. I worked out a way to watch it without being obtrusive. The wall of the Hall of Mirrors facing the booth was one large looking glass. From the shooting gallery I could see the pay phone clearly reflected while looking in a different direction. The tricks you pick up in jail!
Except for the hookers, women by themselves were a rarity on the midway. None of those I spotted used the pay phone. Until that last night. . . .
The girl approaching the booth was black. Not light brown, or golden brown, or chocolate brown, but jet black. One look, and I didn’t need Stokely Carmichael to tell me black is beautiful. She was a knockout from the top of her wild Afro to the tips of her sandaled ebony toes.
Under the Afro was a face that combined sensuality and pride. The word is “identity”; this lady knew who she was. Her mouth was wide, the lips a little thin — stubbornness there. A well-shaped nose with nostrils that flared— anger too. High cheekbones, a firm chin, and dark, liquid eyes that said she could be as soft as melted butter when she wanted to be completed the neck-up picture.
From the neck‘ down it was Centerfoldsville. Not that she was dressed provocatively-—midi-skirt, neck-high sweater, sandals -- she wasn’t; but she had the goods; she didn’t need the wrappings. Her frame was tall, slender, long-legged. Perhaps the high breasts were a bit too heavy for the slim torso, but they were nicely balanced by solid hips curving away from an extremely narrow waist. Her rear end was also high and well-rounded; I suspected it took control to keep it from undulating sassily when she walked. For a girl in her freewheeling early twenties, she had control.
Watching in the mirror while pretending to aim a rifle at the gallery targets, I noticed that when she entered the booth she carefully left the door slightly ajar. This kept the overhead bulb inside from lighting, and rendered her less visible. Still, the bright lights of the midway, bounced back by the mirror, illuminated her enough for me to observe her actions.
She took the receiver off the hook, dropped a dime in the coin slot, and dialed. I counted. Ten digits were spun. That made it a long-distance call.
As soon as she was through dialing, however, she hunched up her shoulder in such a way that my view of the phone was blocked. I turned and looked directly at the booth. No better. I still couldn’t see past her shoulder.
Why was she sitting that way? Was it deliberate? Was she concealing something? An M .F .-er perhaps?
Twenty minutes later she hung up and left the booth. I cut crosswise from the shooting gallery to intercept her. “Excuse me, miss.” I blocked her path. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
“Buzz off, man!” She looked strangely frightened. “I’m not looking for company.”
“I’m not trying to pick you up,” I assured her. “I just want to ask you a couple of questions.”
Suddenly she bolted. It caught me by surprise. By the time I started moving myself, a man had brushed past me and was hurrying after her. She looked over her shoulder, spotted him, and dodged into an alley between a topless joint and an ice-cream stand.