Man on a Leash - Charles Williams(7)

“He walks forward with the two suitcases, puts them in that
steel box in the trunk, and latches it. If he takes one more step,
up the side of the car toward you, the whole thing goes up. If he
tries to pass you a gun or a tool of some kind, she blows. He’s
been told all that already. So he goes back to his pickup, turns
around, and heads back to the highway. It’ll be hours before he
gets there; that’s been explained to you—the rock slide. He’ll
have to walk most of the way.
“The rest of it’s marked on your map, the turns you make and
the distances. We’ll pick you up and disarm the thing before you
go out of transmitter range. It’ll be dark very shortly after then,
and we’ll be out of the country in a different set of vehicles
before they even find out what direction we went. Okay?”
Man on a Leash — 134
“If you could call it that,” Romstead said.
“So you can take off the blindfolds when I sing out. Then just
wait.” Footsteps receded. Sing out, Romstead thought. Exseaman.
So far, that was the only slip Top Kick had made.
“Okay,” Top Kick called, some distance behind them. At the
same moment a car door slammed, and he heard the other
vehicle accelerate in low gear, going away.

Man on a Leash - Charles Williams(6)

“And I always loved sex,” she said. “Do you suppose I’ll ever
be capable of it again?”
“Sure,” Romstead replied. “Barnyard matings never bothered
you before, did they?”
She lighted another cigarette. “It’s a wonder the great genius
didn’t put a TV camera in here so they could watch us as well as
listen.”
“Oh, we’re being watched.” He gestured toward the front
wall. “The mirror’s a phony.”
She looked at it with interest. “You mean like those they’re
supposed to have in some of the casinos? How does it work?”
“You just have to have more light on the front side than the
back. It’s probably in a closet out there, or there’s a curtain over
it.”
“Oh. What was all that about a burro?”
He explained about finding the skeleton with its broken ribs.
“It was a demonstration, to put the old man in a receptive frame
of mind. They strapped a bundle of dynamite to the poor little
bastard, tied some tin cans to his tail to make him run, and then
blew him up several hundred yards away.”

Man on a Leash - Charles Williams(5)

“Personally,” Brubaker said, “I think they set him up with a
sucker phone call sometime this morning, because he took off
right from his sister’s funeral without even going home to
change clothes. But now we’ll never know. Any more than we’ll
ever know what he found out in San Francisco or what they
were afraid he’d found out. That’s the beauty of amateurs
showing the police how to do it. By God, they don’t waste half
their time sitting around on their dead asses making out reports
like a bunch of dumb cops or even bothering to tell anybody
what they’re doing.” Brubaker removed the cigar from his
mouth as if to throw it against the wall but merely cursed again
and reclamped it between his teeth.
“Well, he did give you the letter,” Romstead said. “When did it
come, and specifically what did it say?”
“It came yesterday morning,” Brubaker said. “But you might
as well read it, since it concerns your old man.” He grabbed it
out of the confusion on his desk and passed it over.
It was written with a ball-point pen on a single sheet of cheap
typing paper. Romstead read it.

Man on a Leash - Charles Williams(4)

“Well, you’re pretty cool yourself, Hotshot,” Romstead said.
While he didn’t like any of it, he still didn’t want to scare her
over what so far was just a feeling. “But don’t let it go to your
head. If there are prowlers working those apartments, keep the
chain on your door the way I told you, and don’t let anybody in
until you’ve finished the first two volumes of his biography. I’ll
call you tomorrow, and I’ll be back early tomorrow night.”
They talked a few minutes more, and as soon as he’d hung up,
he put in a call to Murdock. His answering service said Mr.
Murdock wasn’t at his office or at home yet, but that he should
report in shortly. Romstead gave her the number of the motel.
“Ask him to call me as soon as he comes in.”
All he could do then was wait. And wonder about it. Too many
things were wrong with the picture, Naturally, any prowler
could get names off the mailboxes down below, but this guy
wasn’t some punk who’d wandered in off the street with a strip
Man on a Leash — 69