She drew a long breath. "Maybe. If so, do you mind?"
"Not a bit, as long as your business doesn't interfere with my business."
She hesitated. "What about your business interfering with mine, Mr. Helm?"
"Such as how?"
"We want to get the goods on Warfel. Legally."
"How far have you got?"
"Not very far as yet, but sooner or later he'll make a mistake, and we'll catch him at it." She paused once more. When she continued, her voice was kind of harsh and challenging: "And we don't want some trigger-happy super-spook shooting him down for vengeance purposes so he can't stand trial! We want to make a public example of Mr. Frankie-boy Warfel, not a martyr!"
I ignored the final half of what she'd said, and asked, "At what?"
"I… I don't understand," she said, disconcerted.
"At what are you planning to catch Mr. Warfel?"
"At… well, at anything illegal. Just let him spit on the sidewalk in front of witnesses… Why are you shaking your head like that?"
I waited while the elderly mechanic went into a spasm of frantic hammering. When relative silence descended once more, I said, "It won't do, Charlie. You're not the lady gangbuster type."
"Well," she said, "well, I try not to be, of course. Just as you try not to look too much like-"
"Like a trigger-happy super-spook?"
She had the grace to flush slightly. "I didn't really mean-"
"The hell you didn't," I said. "But don't try to convince me you want to bust Frank Warfel just because he's Frank Warfel. You reek of high moral purpose, sweetheart. There's some peculiarly atrocious crime you're concerned with, not just jailing one racketeer because he's a racketeer."
She drew in her breath sharply. "You have no right to make fun of-"
"And you have no right to hold out on me," I said. "You're supposed to be helping me, not obstructing me. Okay, start helping by telling me what Frankie's been up to that's so naughty that you get that holy, dedicated look in your eyes when you speak of making an example of him."
"Damn you, Helm-" She stopped while the phone rang in the tiny corner office, and the mechanic walked past us to take the call, wiping his hands on a greasy rag. When he'd finished talking, and returned to the car on the hoist, I looked grimly at my female companion.
"All right, let's do it the hard way," I said. "Let's use the old word-association technique. I've been reading your West Coast news the last day or so. Maybe there's been something in the papers that relates to our problem." I stared at her so intently that she squirmed. It was just part of the act, of course. I had a pretty good idea of the answer I wanted already; but I wanted to get it from her so we could talk about it rationally. I said, "What about mud slides, earthquakes-" "You're being ridiculous!"
I watched her eyes. "Smog," I said, "drugs, missing scientists-"
"What missing scientists?" she demanded quickly.
"Actually, just one that I know of," I said. "A Dr. Osbert Sorenson, meteorologist at UCLA, who recently turned up vanished, according to last night's Los Angeles paper."
"Sorenson? Isn't he the crackpot who wants to abolish the automobile?"
"One of them. And his associates in the Anti-Internal-Combustion-League, or whatever they call it, seem to think the big car manufacturers did him in. to stop him. Would that have anything to do with your Warfel problem?"
"Why, that's just silly!" she said. "What could Frank Warfel possibly have to do with a crazy program like that? And can you really imagine General Motors-"
"No," I said, permitting myself a grin, "not really, and neither can I imagine you giving a damn about Dr. Osbert Sorenson, lost or found. He's just a red herring, isn't he? The word that made your eyelids wiggle, just a little, was the obvious one: drugs." I sighed. "Well, I figured it would be. It had to be, to explain your semi-religious fervor. There's something about dope that seems to arouse the fanatic in a lot of people, including some supposedly sane and objective law-enforcement characters."
She said sharply, "How can anybody be objective about a traffic as filthy and degrading as..
She stopped, realizing that I'd been needling her deliberately to get her to betray herself. Angry, she started to speak once more, but checked herself. We faced each other for a long moment.
I said, "For a dope cop, you've got a mighty thin skin, doll. What are you people, anyway, some special agency helping out the Customs and Treasury boys?" She remained silent. It was really none of my business, so I went on: "Well, never mind… So Frankie's been playing around with drugs, has he? I thought the syndicate had made a big point of getting out of that racket. I thought they'd decided it brought them more trouble and adverse publicity than the profits justified."
"That's what they said, but we don't have to believe they meant it. Certainly their boy Warfel doesn't seem to!" Charlie drew a long breath. "Oh, all right. I suppose there's really no reason I shouldn't tell you about it. You've heard of Operation Guillotine, I suppose."
"Sorry," I said. "I can't keep track of all the fancy code names. What's this one supposed to signify?"
"A guillotine is a machine for severing the head from the body, isn't it? Well, that's what we're going to do with this dirty business! We're going to separate the great, sprawling, ugly bodies of foreign dope production from the greedy, profit-seeking heads-the importers and distributors-in this country. And one of the heads we're going to chop off is Frank Warfel, to show that even the all-powerful syndicate can't get away with flooding this nation with insidious poison… What are you grinning at now, Mr. Helm?"
"Sweetheart, I'm a pro, remember?" I said. "You don't have to beat me over the head with all the propaganda clichйs. Okay, it's a filthy and degrading traffic in insidious poison, but let's just try to consider it calmly, like an ordinary racket, like protection or extortion or white slavery. How about it?"
She said severely, "You seem to think it's something to joke about! Do you think it's humorous that we're trying to protect innocent people from-"
"From their own bad habits?" I said deliberately. "Hell, no. I think it's serious as helclass="underline" protecting kids from the evils of marihuana by subjecting them to the evils of jail. Of course, it's rather like protecting the baby from colic by administering a massive dose of strychnine, but I agree there's nothing funny about it."
She started to react, instantly and indignantly. She was so easy to tease it was hardly sporting. I held up a hand, quickly, to check the impending outburst of righteousness.
"Okay, okay, simmer down," I said. "I'm just needling you again, Charlie. I'm sorry. I apologize. The drug traffic is a dreadful thing, and I'm glad we have fine people like you fighting against it. Now tell me all about Frank Warfel's connection with it."
She disregarded my request, and said stiffly: "I see absolutely no justification for your sarcasm, Mr. Helm, or your air of tolerant superiority. Unless you're one of the misguided people who think-"
"Who think a joint of grass is no worse than a dry martini?" I shrugged. "Hell, I don't know a thing about it. I'm a martini man myself. I've never tried the other stuff. Honest. Dope-wise, I'm pure as a mountain spring-well, as a mountain spring used to be." I drew a long breath. "Look, Charlie, you've got your hangups and I've got mine, one of which is that I feel strangely compelled to discourage people from shooting at me or my colleagues in a fatal sort of way. And even if I didn't feel that way, my boss does, and he's the boss. Since Frank Warfel is involved in the current incident of this kind, could we please discuss him dispassionately just for a minute."