"Give up!" Sammy Spayed's wife had whined for perhaps the hundredth time only the night before Llona's visit. "You're not cut out to be a detective," she'd told him. "You're too fat. You have bad feet. You don't have a muscle in your whole body. You couldn't hit the side of a barn with a gun if James Bond pointed it for you from three feet away. And besides all that, you're not smart enough."
"You're right," Sammy Spayed had sighed. "But-"
"Mama's right! Daddy's a lousy gumshoe!" the four youngest of his eight children had chanted.
"As a dick, you're a dud, Dad," the oldest of the eight had chimed in.
The other three kids had nodded agreement.
"Shut up!" he'd snarled, trying to twist his face up like Humphrey Bogart.
The children all giggled. "Daddy's imitating Liberace," the second oldest deduced. "Do it again, Daddy!"
"Do it again, Daddy!" all eight demanded.
"Leave Daddy alone," their mother commanded, and they subsided. "Give it up, Sammy." She resumed her attack. "Face it, the agency will never support eight kids. Give it up and go to work for a living like every other normal man."
"But what would I do? I'm not cut out for anything else. Being a detective is the only thing I know. If I wasn't a shamus, I'd be a bum."
"Maybe you could get into one of them government retraining programs. You know, where they teach you some new skill and relocate you and all."
"But I like being a detective," Sammy had protested.
"That don't put meat on the table."
"Maybe things'll pick up."
"I heard that before!"
"I know. But let's give it a chance."
"Why? Even if you do get some business, you're sure to foul it up."
"Behind every successful man there's a woman," Sammy had reflected. "A woman doing her damnedest to hold him back!"
"You'll foul it up!" his wife had repeated positively.
"Daddy will goof it!" the children had chanted. "Daddy's gonna snafu!"
Now, taking the check from Llona, Sammy Spayed was determined to prove to them that he wouldn't flub the job. At last opportunity had knocked on the door of the Confidential Detective Agency and he was determined to hold on to it. He firmly believed that a satisfied customer was the best advertisement. He was determined to see to it that Llona would be a satisfied customer.
In return, tacitly, Llona was pinning all her hopes on the Confidential Detective Agency. The more time that passed since George's demise, the more obsessed she became with finding Archer. As she left Sam Spayed's office, she felt as if she'd put all her future happiness, her life itself, in the hands of the mild, roly-poly little detective.
She went home and waited impatiently for results. Her impatience grew as the days passed with no word from Spayed. Finally, over a week later, she received a phone call from him.
"I was going to send you a progress report, Mrs. Rutherford," he told her. "But I uncovered something that made me delay sending it out. I wanted to check it out first, and now I think I can show you some really positive results."
"What do you mean? Have you found him?" Llona's heart was pounding.
"Not actually. But I have a very strong lead. See, I went down to the Bureau of Licenses and checked out all the marriage applications issued for the date you mentioned. I found that a man with the first name of Mortimer was married that day. I've been investigating this Mortimer. And he does have a cousin named Archer."
"That's wonderful. Where is he? Have you found out his address?"
"Not yet. But I'm working on it. We want to be absolutely positive he's our man. Another day or two should tell the tale. You'll be hearing from me."
"Ooh! I can't wait!" Llona told him. "Please hurry."
"Now, we don't want to sacrifice thoroughness to undue haste," Spayed said firmly. "You'll just have to be patient a bit longer, Mrs. Rutherford. You'll be hearing from me. I have to go now. I'm following through on this Mortimer, tailing him, hoping he'll lead me to the man we want. Goodbye now." Spayed hung up abruptly.
The reason for his abruptness was that the man sitting at the drug store counter had finished his Alka-Seltzer and was paying the cashier. Casually, Spayed fell in behind the man as he left the store. Keeping to the shadows, he tailed him down the street.
The man turned in his tracks once, abruptly, and stared straight at Sammy. Thinking fast, Sammy kept walking right past him and turned into a darkened store entrance. When the man passed the entrance, Sammy Spayed was hidden behind a newspaper.
He folded the paper and followed cautiously as the man crossed the street. Looking over his shoulder, the man spotted Sammy and broke into a half-run. Sammy trotted after him wheezing heavily, his round belly jiggling uncomfortably under the houndstooth check of his vest.
The man pulled open the door of a car parked at the curb. He got in and started the motor. Sammy Spayed was just able to hail a cab as the car started away.
"Follow that car!" he instructed the driver.
The cabbie gunned his motor and broke into tears.
"What's the matter?" Sammy asked.
'.'Thirty years I been hackin'," the cab driver sobbed. "Tomorrow starts my retirement. This is my last night behind the wheel. I was just heading back to the garage. You're my last call. And what do you say? You say 'Follow that car!' " The cabbie's sniffles grew louder.
"I'm sorry." Sammy was confused and he didn't know what else to say.
"Sorry! Sorry! Oh, no! Don't be sorry! You don't understand, sir! I'm grateful to you. Eternally grateful! Thirty years I waited to hear those words. 'Follow that car!' I hoped and I prayed, but they never came. Thirty years of hackin'. It was like life passed me by. Know what I mean? It's the one high point in a cabbie's career. It's a dull job. Pickin' 'em up, lettin' 'em off. One trip just like another. But all the time, in the back of your mind, you figure it's got to happen. You figure someone's gonna jump in your cab and say 'Follow that car.' It's like a raison d'etre, know what I mean? You see it happening. First the words: 'Follow that car!' Then you shove her into gear and take off with your tires squealing. You keep your eye on that little red tail-light like a hawk. It swerves around corners trying to shake you. But you stay right behind it. Sixty, seventy, eighty per-trying to lose you, but they're no match for a professional hackie. They take the turns on two wheels, go the wrong way on one-way streets, but you stay with them. Maybe they even shoot at you, but you just duck your head and keep on their tail. It's a cabbie's finest moment, his moment of truth, the moment he's been training for during thirty years of pushing a hack. I thought I'd missed them, but now- Oh, thank you, sir. Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!"
"Uh, excuse me," Sammy Spayed said meekly. "But you're following the wrong car."
"What? What do you mean?"
"The car we were following turned off two blocks back. You're following the one in front of it."
"Oh, no!" The cab driver braked to a halt and leaned over the steering wheel, burying his face in his hands. "Oh, no!" His sobs were louder than before now and truly heartrending.
Sam Spayed's nature inclined him to empathy rather than criticism. "There, there," he comforted the driver. "Don't take it so hard. Maybe if you just turn around and go back and make the turn he did, we can pick up the trail."
"Even if we did it wouldn't be any good now. It's spoiled. It would be like a bullfighter tripping over his shoelace and killing the bull by accident."
"Well, let's give it a try anyway," Sammy urged. "What have we got to lose?"
"Oh, all right." The cab driver sniffled and dried his eyes. He pulled the cab away from the curb, made a U-turn, went two blocks, and turned where Sammy indicated he should.