Brock felt a lot of his weariness disappear, felt the muscles bunch along his thick arms as he clenched his hard hands. This was a start. Maybe this was it.
Karkoff slouched in the straight chair and said, “I tell you, you guys are on the wrong track. Sure, I got a record. That was a hell of a long time ago and I’ve been straight ever since. But that don’t do me no good when it comes to a thing like this. I figured that if you guys couldn’t find out who did it, you’d pin it on me somehow. I was skipping out of town, sure. But I don’t know anything about it.”
Brock stepped over to the chair, clubbed Karkoff in the side of the head with a clenched fist, picked him up off the floor, and jammed him back into the chair.
Karkoff shook the mist out of his eyes and said, “That stuff won’t do you no good, pal. I got nothing to tell you.”
Brock glanced at Maclaren. Maclaren shook his head slowly. Horowitz was kneeling on the floor, going through Karkoff’s luggage. He straightened up. “Nothing here, John. A mess of tools and wire and clothes. One hundred bucks in a tin box along with some pictures of some lush women.”
“You guys going to book me?” Karkoff said.
“Sure. Maybe we haven’t got anything to go on, but we’ll find something,” Maclaren said with a tight smile.
“Okay. I don’t mind. But there’s no sense in carting all this stuff of mine down to your game rooms. Let me drop it off at my room and pick out some clothes when you take me down.”
Something restless stirred in the back of Brock’s mind. Something wasn’t right. Why should Karkoff be concerned about such a trivial thing? It didn’t make good sense. The man was too casual. He glanced at Maclaren. Apparently John felt nothing wrong. Neither did Horowitz. Brock wondered if the lack of sleep was harming his mental processes.
He stepped over the tin suitcase and looked down. Wrenches, a battered micrometer. Some spools of fine, white wire. This was the stuff that Karkoff wanted to leave in his room.
Suddenly a lot of things made sense. He felt the quick thud of his pulse. He went over it again in his mind. It still checked. Maclaren said sharply, “What is it, Jud? I’ve seen you look like this before.”
Brock said, “I can’t tell you... yet. Play along with me, John. Just a little while. Hold Karkoff here. I want to go down into the shop.”
He heard the scream of boards ripped loose as he stepped into the shop. Oliver was prying open a small case. Against the far wall was a pile of empty cases. Oliver, a smudge on his cheek, grinned up at Brock. “A little night work, Brock. Got to get all this stuff uncrated so we can see what we’ve got. If I don’t unload it soon, Brasher is going to take the forty thousand out of my pay.”
Just beyond Oliver was a bulging burlap sack. Brock kicked it. “What have you got here?”
“Oh, some damn wire that’s fastened to each unit. No good to me. Thought I might as well peel it off as I uncrated the stuff.”
Brock grinned. “Don’t work too hard, Oliver.” He walked back to the office. He didn’t answer Maclaren’s questioning look. He picked up the phone, dialed the operator, and asked to speak to the President of the Stoeffer Corporation of Birmingham, Alabama. The operator said she’d call back. He hung up.
Horowitz said, “Have you gone nuts? Alabama! What goes on?”
“Leave him alone,” Maclaren said. “Take a look at Karkoff.”
The man had slouched further in his chair and his face was white, his lips compressed.
A Mr. Stoeffer got on the line and Brock asked him a few questions. Stoeffer said, “I’m afraid that I don’t have the detailed knowledge to answer that question. My production head was a man named James Beeson. He’s no longer with me, but he’s still here in town. Try phoning him.”
Beeson came on the line in a few minutes and Brock heard him yawn into the phone. Brock snapped him out of it by saying, “This is police business, Mr. Beeson. You worked for the Stoeffer Corporation on government contract W-one-eighteen — ORD-three-two-five-five?”
“I guess so, but I can’t remember them by number. What sort of an item was it?”
“Computer, M-eighteen. Do you remember it?”
“Yeah, I remember it, but what’s the tieup with police business?”
“How big a contract was it?”
“Two thousand units at a price of eighteen hundred a unit. Three million six hundred thousand. That was what they called an experimental quantity. They were for the Artillery Section of the Office of the Chief of Ordnance. You can tell that by the ORD in the contract number. We made those... let me see, now... about four years ago. Then we found out that some other device had made them obsolete anyway.”
“Suppose somebody managed to buy the whole lot at twenty bucks a copy?”
Beeson laughed. “I don’t know what the hell they’d do with them. Maybe they’ve got a—” He stopped, and Brock, his heart pounding, heard the man gasp. Beeson’s voice was shrill. “Hey! Wait a minute. Our unit price was only eight hundred bucks, and the reason it became eighteen hundred was when we found out that the damn specifications called for a lot of platinum wire for each one. About a thousand bucks’ worth, if I remember rightly.”
Brock thanked him, hung up, and stooped over the metal suitcase. He picked out the reels of white wire and put them on the desk in front of Maclaren. “This stuff is platinum,” he said.
As Maclaren picked up one of the reels, Karkoff jumped for the doorway. It was unexpected. Horowitz made a grab for him that missed and then yanked the Positive from his hip holster. There was no point in shooting. Karkoff had disappeared into the shadows. He thumped down the side stairs.
As the three of them, hearing Karkoff clatter against a pile of scrap, spread out and followed him across the yard, the light in the shop went out suddenly.
Brock realized he was without a gun. He fumbled in the darkness and found a two-foot length of one-inch bar stock. It fitted his hand snugly.
Their eyes were getting used to the darkness. The glow of the city against the low-hanging clouds faintly illuminated the yard. Following Maclaren, Brock drifted out to the side, hurrying around the far end of the shop. A dark figure was struggling against the fence, drawing himself up. Maclaren aimed carefully and fired. The figure screamed like a woman and dropped heavily to the ground. A dark shape ran back into the shop.
Horowitz took the main entrance and Brock and Maclaren covered the back door through which the figure had run.
“Where are the lights?” Maclaren whispered.
“I think there’s a set just inside the door on the left. Let me try.”
“Okay. But stand back when they go on. He might have a gun.”
His fingers found the switch, and the sudden glare of light threw the shop into sharp illumination. The massive baler, hydraulic plungers silent, stretched squat and powerful along one side of the shop. The crane hook dangled without motion.
Maclaren bellowed, “Come on out!”
Gun ready, Maclaren walked into the shop. Brock saw Horowitz standing framed in the main door, his gun in his hand.
The shop seemed to be empty. The three of them stood stupidly. Brock caught a glimpse of movement high overhead, hissed, “Up there! On the catwalk!”
A shadowy figure ran quickly along the catwalk to a skylight. Brock knew then what the plan was. Smash through the skylight and run down the sloping roof. From the edge of the high roof, an active man could jump the fence.
Horowitz fired, but the figure didn’t stop. There was a smash and tinkle of breaking glass. As Maclaren fired, Brock turned and ran out the back door, along the side of the building. He heard the pound of running steps on the roof.