exerpts from the novel
The Electronic Windmill
By Pete McKinley
Chapter VII
Cole sipped the coffee Mario had sent up on the dumb waiter. His thoughts were interrupted by the ringing phone. Setting the cup on the edge of the desk, he lifted the receiver, “Cole Rain.”
“Oh, Mr. Rain, I didn’t know you were back,” said Mattie Lou, one of the switchboard operators at Columbia Office Services. “I was trying to reach Mr. Shu-li or Miss Jones. How was your vacation?” she asked.
“Fine, Mattie Lou. I just got here and I’m the only one. I thought we had a stockholders’ meeting scheduled this morning. Do you know anything about it?”
“I think your meeting was postponed until around noon. Larry Carver called in yesterday to say he couldn’t return until sometime late this morning. He talked with Miss Jones and there should be a message on your recorder.”
“I’ve got a note from Pilar to check the tape, just haven’t gotten around to it yet. Do you have anything for me?”
“Nothing important, Mr. Rain. I screened your calls and recorded the information. I can place them for you any time you’re ready.” She paused, “I think Miss Baker has something for you. Let me switch you to her.”
Cole waited until he heard Miss Baker’s sultry voice.
“Good morning, Mr. Rain. What a pleasant surprise to have you back.” Low and husky, Cole thought it sounded as though they had just wakened up together.
“Hi, Joanne. Do you have a slight cold? Mattie Lou said you had something for me.”
The burr in her voice was even more pronounced, “I don’t have a cold, Mr. Rain. I never felt better, and I do have something for you.”
Cole felt a slight twinge in his loins and wondered what the hell it would be like to meet Miss Baker in person. She interrupted the exotic thought.
“You have a half-dozen or more letters from law enforcement people concerning your “Investigative Procedures Manual.’ I’ve put them on the T-viewer, and I’ll be ready for you,” she said slowly, “any time you’d like to dictate replies.”
Gazing at the couch across the room he saw Miss Baker’s nude form reclining there beckoning: I’m ready any time you’d like to ravish me. “I’m ready,” he started, “No, I mean - I’ll get back to you sometime this afternoon or tomorrow morning, Joanne.”
“I’ll be waiting.” she purred.
Joanne had done the bulk of his secretarial work for the past year and a half, but everything was done through their private line to Columbia Office Service. He had never met her in person. Dictation consisted of pushing a button, talking into a mike directly to Joanne, or into a recorder for her to pick up later. Correspondence was microfilmed and filed in Columbia’s office. There was a televiewer with transmitter and receiver at both locations. The transmitters held as many as twenty microfilmed pieces of correspondence, and Cole could switch on the T-viewer merely by pressing a button, and click through an entire file of letters, memos or other data.
He backed off the tape and flipped it forward into a group of telephone messages. Pilar’s voice came through, “I’ve cut you into Cole’s recorder, Larry, so you can explain the delay.”
Larry’s voice was modulated and controlled with half a laugh, “Good morning, Mr. Rain. Hey, that sounds like a song title,” and he sang a couple of stanzas from “As Time Goes By.” He was big on Bogart and especially, “Casablanca.” Smogsville must be Dullsville, Cole thought, if he’s reduced to watching the late, late show.
“Cole, baby, we’ve set up three franchises and one brand new business venture, and it’s been such fun - such a great challenge and terribly exhilarating to present cost analyses, market studies, cash flow projections, and the important item, payback guarantees, to all these hip bankers, government agents, and plain accountants. You’d have just loved it, but you missed it all. You had to take that dratted ocean voyage to hunt and fish for the meat that will see us through the balance of the winter. (The recording went on):
“Well, I too have had my problems. As I already mentioned, I’ve been seeing a lot of bankers. Yesterday, I invited this banker to dinner. Actually, she’s not the owner of the bank, nor the president, nor even a vice-president, she’s been working in this bank as the Number Seventeen teller. But with her intelligence and equipment, I would think she’d make an excellent Chairman of the Board.
“But I digress. During dinner I discovered that she needed my help. Her former husband - she’s divorced now - Oh, yeah, I found out an interesting statistic; ninety-two percent of all the people in southern California have been divorced. Anyway, they had bought this cabin in the mountains, which is now hers after the divorce settlement. It has a mortgage on it, and she tells me the place is beautifully furnished, but the furniture isn’t all paid for either, so even though she loves the place, she’s decided to sell. She has an offer for everything, including the furniture, that would retire the indebtedness and still leave a small profit of fifteen hundred dollars. Off hand, this sounds like a hell of a deal, but after we talked it over and approached it from a conservative business analysis and financial consultant position, it was decided that I should see the property. She’s taking the afternoon off tomorrow, and we plan to lay in a supply of packaged and bottled provisions for an overnight study in depth of the property. Next morning she’ll drive me back to the airport, and I should arrive at No. 10 Black Pearl Road around noontime. Since our watchword has always been ‘Business Before Pleasure,’ I didn’t want to risk corporate censure by not helping a banker friend. All for now - see you tomorrow.”
Cole flipped off the recorder shaking his head as Kang walked through the door, grinning with an outstretched hand, “You look like there was lots of sun in Mexico; how long have you been back?”
“Hi, Kang. The ship docked a little after eight this morning. I got here around nine-thirty.”
“Sorry about the meeting, but I guess you listened to Larry’s explanation.”
“Yes, I did. It sounded as though he had no other alternative, let’s hope he gets back sometime this week.”
Kang laughed, “Hell, he’s downstairs now. Lucretia fixed him one of her famous potions, and he’s getting around to taking a little black coffee. Pilar’s there too. She and Lucretia are talking about having lunch sent up here, so if you want anything special, you’d better call. I think they’re planning cracked crab, bean salad, hot sourdough bread and a couple bottles of Pinot White.”
Larry stuck his head in the door, and Pilar walked around him.
“Welcome back from the hunt. You look marvelous,” she said.
“Hi, Pilar, glad to be back. Who’s your friend?”
Larry came over with a sheepish grin and shook hands. “Man,” he said, “I, too, need a vacation. I’ve been thinking about one of those rest cures where you just lie around in hot springs full of mud and sweat. You know, if I had to live in Southern California, I don’t think I’d last another five years.”
“Who wants to last a long time just to be lasting?” Cole asked. “It’s not the locality, Larry, you’re just an active liver. Aunt Hester always said ‘It’s better to die from living too much than not to have lived at all.’ But I’ll admit you do look a little tired.”
“Yeh,” Larry said, “If I wasn’t black, I’d have dark circles under my eyes.”
“Don’t let anybody put you on. You’re black and you’ve still got dark circles under your eyes. I hate to keep quoting Aunt Hester, but she always said ‘Dealing with bankers can be a caution.’ “
“Why don’t we postpone the meeting and go to the beach?” Larry suggested. “The position of the corporation is all in Kang’s succinct report, and he was only going to quickly go over the certified figures that Cash Weatherholm prepared. They’ve included a balance sheet showing assets, liabilities, shareholders’ investments, along with statements of income, retained earnings, capital surplus and disposition of funds. Let’s each take a copy, look it over, and if there are any questions, Kang can answer them, if not, we’ll go back to Cash Weatherholm.” After he said all this he started moving toward the door, but he was voted down three to one.
Fifteen minutes later Kang moved that the business portion of the meeting be concluded and adjourned, so that Cole could give an account of his trip. The dumb waiter back of the bar in the plush lounge buzzed, signaling the arrival of food and drink. They moved from Cole’s office and opened up a table beside the bar. Pilar and Cole carried trays of food to the table and Kang and Larry brought up chairs. The cracked crab was the usual excellent, but Cole insisted it was the best he’d ever eaten. With the coffee, Pilar asked him to tell them about the ocean voyage and Mexico.
“There is an aura of mystery about this only because Myron Brown insisted that I not divulge - even to you - what my assignment was. The minute I left the ship this morning, I called him and got permission to discuss anything I wished to at this meeting. The trip might still turn out to have been a vacation. I told Brown that if I were unable to resolve his problem, I would so consider it, and he wouldn’t be billed for my time.
“It still sounds like a good deal,” Larry said. “How’d you manage it?”
“I first met Myron Brown at his home on the Peninsula. As you know, Pilar has done work for McWhorter Brown, and she also did some special tile designing for their new home. She was invited, and I went with her to a sort of new house showing party.” Remembering the party Cole decided to talk about Pilar.
“As these things go, they can get a little flat,” he said. “However, Pilar made it a memorable evening. Her design work, as you can imagine, was truly beautiful and later on in the evening, she changed to a bikini and gave a diving exhibition in the lighted pool with what can only be described as devastating effect.”
Larry and Kang both started to speak, and Larry won.
“Hold it! This may give us the diversification we’re looking for. I know where we can lease an indoor pool that will accommodate from five to six hundred spectators. We could charge five dollars a head to see the show, get a license to serve drinks and rent a porpoise or two from the aquarium to fill in the act.”
Kang broke in, “And I could be Zanter, a Chinese ape man and come swinging in over the audience on a vine and drop into the pool just in time to save Pilar from the lecherous assault of the excited porpoises.”
“That’s good,” Larry said. “You know those babies are supposed to be smarter than people.”
“That’s the most ridiculous suggestion you two ever made,” Pilar said. “I wouldn’t perform in a show like that for less than fifty dollars a head.”
“O.K., a great idea and I appreciate everyone’s contribution but now that we’ve got the price fixed, shall I go on with my story? Where the hell was I? Oh yeah, after Pilar came out of the pool, she went into the dressing room and put her clothes back on; let me say that it was prior to all this that I’d had a talk with Myron Brown. He told me that the United States Customs suspected their ship, the Crescent Moon, of smuggling. The ship operates between the United States and Mexico as a carrier of clay. Having read some of my books on crime and investigation, he thought maybe I could be of help. I thought it over, and the next morning called and told him I’d take the job.”
Cole told about the ship’s being used both as a cargo carrier and as a sales promotion vehicle for customers. The sea voyage itself was pleasant and the hunting and fishing and other diversions in Mexico were there for those who wanted it. Cole gave a factual account of all that had happened on the ship and shore and even included a sketchy summary of the Letha interlude. He hoped it just might have some bearing. Everyone continued to eat as he wound his story down and he wondered if they understood all he’d said.
“You’ll notice that I use the jargon of the sea. After you’ve been at sea a while, it just comes naturally. It’s funny; I’ve flown over the ocean many times and never run into all the new words that one finds on a ship. I’ll explain ‘forward’ and ‘aft’, ‘port’ and ‘starboard’, ‘bulkhead’ and just plain ‘head’ for you people of the land later.”
“Don’t bother on my account,” Pilar said. “I’ve been sailing since I was five years old.”
“My uncle took me to Fo-shan when I graduated from grammar school,” Kang said. “After we landed at Hong Kong, we went on a train from Kowloon to Canton. Fo-shan is about forty miles southwest of Canton on the Pearl River in the Republic of China, so along with my sea slang I also know a little of the language of trains and sampans.”
“And I worked on a Danish freighter one summer when I was in high school,” Larry broke in, “that’s how I became a football player. Being a steward, I had the run of the kitchen, and when I wasn’t serving food, I was eating it. The voyage was supposed to last three months and I was to be back to start school in the fall. The ship got some new contracts in Australia and kept going around the world. I missed a year of high school, grew seven inches and gained sixty-five pounds. Next year I was All Northern California fullback.”
“O.K., O.K.,” Cole said. “I won’t bother to explain any nautical terms.”
He leaned back to await the reaction.
“That’s the damnedest detective story I ever heard,” Kang said.
“I kept thinking what Sam Spade would have done in a situation like that,” Larry interjected, obviously referring to the Letha interlude. “Man, she would have been so tired Sam would have had to carry her back to the cabin.”
“Sam Spade and 007 are out,” Pilar stated. “I thought Cole handled it beautifully, although it is a little hard to believe.”
“After Letha left,” Cole said shortly, “I went back to bed.”
“I remember reading about a detective that sort of reminds me of Cole’s experience,” Larry said, emptying one wine bottle in his glass. “This guy, in the department he was known simply by the fraction .00033333 ad-finitum and to shorten it they sometimes called him Infinitum and other times just plain Ad. Anyway, Ad was marked for a hit by Murder Incorporated. He escaped down an alley and went through the back door of an apartment building and raced up the steps intending to escape over the roof tops, but when he came out on top, there was this unclothed broad - excuse me, Pilar, - chick sunbathing. They looked at each other and I guess it was love at first sight because he started taking off his clothes. I forgot to mention that as he ran up the steps, he smelled smoke and noticed that the building was on fire. Anyway, he placed his clothes next to her mat but held on to his sixty-pound Swedish automatic disintegrator pistol. They fell into each other’s arms and kept twisting around on the mat so that Ad could get a shot at his pursuers who were not only coming through the roof, but were also on top of the adjacent buildings. To make a long story short, under the circumstances, Ad was adequate.”
“My Buddha, what happened next - were they both killed?” Kang pretended he he wanted to know.
“Oh, no,” Larry explained. “As Ad’s pursuers came onto the roof, their automatic carbines blazing, Ad shot two of them and then calmly picked off the three who were banging away from the other buildings. When the fire department arrived, he picked up the gorgeous bronze blond and, both nude, jumped into the net below.” Then he concluded sadly, “But from that day on he was known as ‘Inadequate Ad’.”
“I thought you said he was adequate,” Kang protested.
“He was that first time, but remember I said ‘under the circumstances’. According to the girl, and this came out a long time later at the divorce trial, she testified that they were married a few hours after the escape from the pursuers and the fire, and that Ad was inadequate from that moment on.”
“That doesn’t follow. Why?” and Kang really wanted to know this time.
“You see, the excitement the first time had so stimulated him that he could never settle for less,” Larry explained. “Ad’s conditioning had been fixed. They tried again and again but couldn’t quite duplicate exactly the roof, the shooting, the fire, the smoke and the sirens screaming up; so, of course, without these few embellishments, Ad was inadequate.”
“That doesn’t sound like a detective story” Pilar said. “It’s more like a sticky sweet, sentimental, romantic novel and the hero, who just happened to be a detective, was over-stimulated in his job.”
The direct line from Borgia’s buzzed, and Kang flipped the speaker on. It was Giuseppe announcing that Cole’s luggage and ducks had arrived, wanting to know what he should do with them. Then without waiting for a reply he suggested Lucretia cook them for dinner that night. Everyone agreed and Cole said he’d pick up his luggage later. Lucretia would prepare the ducks Italian style, and it was decided the birds would come out of the oven at seven-thirty sharp. Giuseppe was firm. “That means that everybody has to be ready to eat; no delay for another picon punch.”
Pilar had a prior date, but said she could postpone it until nine o’clock if it would be all right for Virgent Eddington to meet her at the restaurant. Kang and Larry suggested she break the date but Cole insisted she should keep it, going so far as to propose postponing the dinner until another night. But since it was the best night for the Borgias it was decided to let the arrangements stand. After the meeting broke up, Pilar called Virgent Eddington and then left to go home and dress.
Hang and Larry left together to go downstairs to the bar where they would meet Cole later.
Cole went to his office to record his report to Myron Brown. He could only report the lack of results, but wanted to hold out hope that something would fit together, some clue, clearing or condemning the ship of the smuggling charge.
Trying to construct his thoughts, Cole found that Virgent Eddington kept intruding. Where the hell had she found a guy with a name like that? It was obvious that for all her tolerance of the three of them, her ribald comments, and her early marriage, she was completely naive about men. Maybe she was impressed by his looks, but the guy could turn out to be a nonentity and quite possibly queer as well. But to hell with it; it was her life and he had problems enough of his own without worrying about hers.
Before switching on the recorder Cole decided to call Aunt Hester. She answered right away and Cole decided she must be in the kitchen.
“Hello, who is it?” she said much too loudly. Then there was a crash. It could have been a couple of pans or one of Millie Peterson’s oversized cookie sheets.
“It’s me,” Cole said.
“Oh, Coleridge,” her voice rose even higher. “You always catch us when we’re the busiest. How are you, dear? Where are you? When will you be home?”
Cole expected the multitude of questions and knowing she wouldn’t wait for an answer, he didn’t.
“Where are you calling from?” she asked. “We’ll expect you at six for supper. I suppose you’re at the public meeting place you call an apartment. Well, your rooms here are ready as always and I don’t see why you don’t spend more time here or give up that dreadful apartment altogether.” Aunt Hester had only seen his apartment once in two years but he didn’t dispute her point.
“I called to tell you I’m back,” Cole said. “And also to let you know I’ll be having dinner at Borgias’ tonight; but I’ll be home to sleep and unload some luggage.”
“Practically the only things left here are your diaries,” Aunt Hester said. That wasn’t true, at least half his clothes were there.
“I’m going to make a report now, a case I’m working on. I like to keep my confidential stuff there where nobody can get at it.”
“Shall I wait up for you?”
“No, Aunt Hester, it could be late.”
“I’m sure it could. What have you been up to?”
Cole explained much of his dilemma in a broad outline. This was his secondary purpose in calling. It was sometimes uncanny how Aunt Hester could go to the heart of a problem and point the way to a solution. Then there were other times when her responses only very tenuously touched the subject they were discussing.
“It sounds like you’re a detective now,” she said. “I think that’s fascinating.”
“You might say that,” Cole admitted.
“Is it dangerous?” she asked. “What I know about detectives they’re always getting beat up and left in a locked basement someplace or down a back alley. I hope you’re taking proper precaution and I don’t think you should work at night. That’s always the time when bad things happen to detectives. Crooks perform their dire deeds in the dark.” She became alliterative and non sequitur.
“If they only perform in the dark, how am I going to catch them in the daytime?” Cole wanted to know.
“That’s just it, you have to trap them. They’re not used to the day and you’re not used to the night,” she said with some doubt in her voice about the latter.
“I’ll take precautions,” Cole promised. He remembered the time she had sent him to the doctor to learn how to take precautions. She wasn’t giving him much help but it was hard to head her off now that she knew something of what he’d been up to.
“Coleridge, maybe you should stop being a detective,” she worried. “I remember your uncle used to go off half cocked and sometimes I think you take after him.” Cole knew she was referring to his Uncle Abner her late husband, and Uncle Abner was no blood relation. But this had never prevented the comparison.
“Did you know we found a rat in the basement? It was under the wing where your rooms are. Carl killed it and we buried it out back near the big lemon tree. I don’t know if we should have done that but Carl said it would only help the trees. Do you think he’s right? I’ve always heard that rats carry the bubonic plague. I might never be able to use another one of those lemons.”
“I wouldn’t worry about using the lemons,” Cole said. “He could only be carrying the plague if he just got off a ship and why would a rat climb all the way up there if he just got off a ship?” Now he realized he was involved in her problems as sometimes happened.
“Coleridge,” she started hesitantly, “I know that you’ll be careful and I know you’re going to go ahead and do whatever you have to do.” Her voice almost broke on this last, but then she came on very calm. “If I had to guess how sailors or the kind of people you describe smuggle in drugs off a ship I’d have to say they’d do it the most practical way. I don’t believe there’s a secret compartment in the bottom of the ship where a frog man swims under and retrieves the drugs, and I don’t believe it’s blown out through those pipes with the clay. There’s too many complications and too many chances to go wrong. All you have to do is think of the most practical way these men have to get their stash off the ship.” Cole could tell she had read something about drugs.
“It’s probably something very simple and right in plain view. I just read about a man, a big scientist, who put a gyroscope inside an eggshell and sealed the shell all back again so that no one could tell. After he used a magnet to start the gyro the egg wouldn’t lay on its side any more. It always hopped up and stood on one end or the other. A lot of people saw it and said it was a marvel, but I don’t hold with that. I think Christopher Columbus, and he was a sailor, was a lot smarter. When out of the blue someone asked him to stand an egg on end, he just tapped the egg gently until he’d made a round crushed base and set the egg right up on a polished table.”
Cole wasn’t sure the table had been polished but he did remember the story and decided Aunt Hester might have something. But what?
“Were you thinking about having home baked beans, stuffed pork chops and homemade cherry pie for supper tomorrow night?” he asked.
“Well, yes, we had thought of it,” she said. “But it seemed too much just for us.”
“I’ll be there,” Cole said with a warm note in his voice.
