Thorn by Fred Saberhagen (reading like a writer TXT) 📕

picked up again. “Lieutenant Keogh.” The voice was familiar to Thorn, but at the moment it carried a load of official boredom he had not heard in it before.

      “Yes, Lieutenant. This is Jonathan Thorn, calling from Phoenix, Arizona. Regarding that merchandise you were trying to trace, I believe I will have the information you need very soon now. If you could call me back, at your convenience, here at my hotel?”

      At the other end there was a silent pause, concluding in a sigh and followed by a muttered vulgarity. After this a footstep, and then the shutting of a door which effectively cut off the office background.

      When the lieutenant’s voice returned it sounded no happier than before, but at least all traces of boredom had been effectively expunged. “We can talk now. This is something really important, I take it?”

      “Of course, Joe, of course.” Thorn smiled and lay back on the bed, letting his lean frame relax. A white plastic bag as long as a mattress and as narrow as a cot had been unfolded on the rich green spread. This bag was thin enough to be folded into a suitcase, and it was sparsely stuffed with something that crunched faintly as Thorn’s weight came onto it, sounding for all the world like dried earth.

      “Of course,” he repeated into the phone. “Neither of us would call upon the other in a merely trivial matter, is it not so? Your wife’s family did not summon Dr. Corday from London, after all, until the situation warranted. By the way, how is the lovely Kate? And how are her fine parents?”

      “Fine, fine.” The distant voice remained wary. “Her brother and sister are okay, too. By the way, if you’re looking for Judy, she’s away at school. But I guess you must know that.” The comment was tinged with a certain fatalistic disapproval.

      Thorn made his own voice soothing. “Say hello to Kate for me. No, Joe, I am not looking for Judy. Nor do I want anything from you that might be embarrassing to you officially. My dearest Mina would be unhappy if I did anything like that with anyone in the family. By the way, I am somewhat surprised—pleasantly, of course—that you continue on the force.”

      “I like to work, and I’m too young to retire.” Joe’s voice showed no sign of relaxing yet. “Anyway, Kate’s busy a lot with volunteer work, and her old man respects me more for being self-supporting … so, tell me what you want.”

      “I would like whatever information you can give me about two people. The first is Mary Rogers.” Thorn recited a brief description. “Mary tells me that she was a nun, or at least a postulant, in the Chicago area, where she did charitable work with runaway youth. She—”

      “Wait a minute, wait a minute. Mary Rogers rings a bell. Wasn’t she a kidnap victim, a hostage, in that double Seabright killing out there in Phoenix?”

      “Yes. I was about to add that.”

      “Ho. Wait a minute. Ho, ho, ho. You’re mixed up in that?”

      “My present concern is not with that sordid crime directly. Of course if I should come upon anything that might aid in its solution, then you in turn shall hear it from me. As from an anonymous and confidential source. Is that to your liking?”

      “Well, yeah, of course I’d appreciate any kind of a tip. If you’d rather send it my way than tell it to the locals, and it worked out, it wouldn’t do my career any harm. Who’s your second person?”

      “A young man. Patrick O’Grandison.” Thorn gave the spelling that seemed to him most likely. “As I understand it, this youth is somehow involved in making films, quite possibly pornographic ones. Probably in Chicago during the last few months. I should like to find and talk to him.”

      “What about?”

      “A personal matter.”

      “I know what some of your personal talks can be like. Listen, I wouldn’t want to help you find this guy, assuming that I can, and then hear later that he’s missing some parts or something.”

      “Joe.” Thorn sounded reproachful, almost hurt, a wounded uncle. “I have said that I mean only to talk to him. Of course what he tells me may conceivably change my attitude. But at the moment I bear him no ill-will.”

      “On your honor?”

      The question had sounded grimly serious. And it was taken seriously, as Joe Keogh must have known it would be. Lithely but slowly Thorn arose from his crackling bed of rest, to stand with squinted eyes fixed on some point in the burning sky outside his tinted window. “Yes, on my honor, Joseph.”

      “All right.” The distant voice reluctantly gave in. The scratch of some writing implement told that Lieutenant Keogh was making notes. “I’ll see what I can find out. Give me your number and when I have something I’ll call you back.”

      “I shall be waiting for your call. Oh, Joe, one more thing. You might try to learn whether the young lady has ever been in Idaho.”

      Thorn put down the phone, then picked it up again and dialed the front desk. “Have there been any calls for me?”

      “Yes sir, there was one, as I recall. About half an hour ago. A lady, but she didn’t leave her name.”

      “Thank you.” Half an hour ago he had been asleep; more than asleep. Waiting now, in no hurry, Thorn strolled to stand at the high windows and confront the daylight world through slotted blinds and tinted glass. An inferno of sun out there; he peered at it as into a blast furnace. Later in the afternoon he would rest more, and then go out again at sunset. Right now the high view made him think of flying. It helped to take his mind off certain things in the far past, things about which nothing could now be done. Nevertheless they were lately coming back, for some reason, to bother him. Most likely because he had again seen the painting at long last. He watched the smoggy landscape until even the