Binary - Michael Crichton [13]
'The City Fathers hate it,' Lewis said, and grinned. It was a youthful grin, the grin of a person who still found sin amusing, risqué, fun.
Graves could no longer find the fun in prostitution. Why not? he wondered. Was it age - or was it striking some uncomfortable chord in himself?
But he didn't pursue the thought. Lewis turned left, going up into the hilly section of town towards Wright's apartment.
HOUR 9
SAN DIEGO
8 AM PDT
Lewis slowed as they approached a dry cleaning van advertising 24 HOUR SERVICE AT NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE and PLANT ON PREMISES.
'You want to talk to 702?' Lewis said.
'Yeah, for a minute,' Graves said.
Lewis pulled over. Graves got out. The driver in the van wound down his window.
'I hear you're rolling it up,' the driver said.
'That's right,' Graves said.
'When?'
'Later today.'
'What's proto until then?' Proto was slang for protocol.
'Business as usual,' Graves said. 'Where's 703?F
'Off duty today.' The driver shrugged.
'Call them in. I want them to pick up the girl this morning.'
'Oh?'
'Yeah.'
'Anything else?'
'Yeah. You got some coffee in there?'
'Sure. Two cups?'
Graves looked into the sedan at Lewis. 'You want coffee?'
Lewis shook his head.
'Just one,' Graves said. 'Black with four sugars.'
The driver sighed and looked into the interior of the dry cleaning van. 'Give the boss his usual,' he shouted. A moment later a styrofoam cup was passed out to Graves.
'You're going to catch diabetes,' the driver said.
'This is breakfast,' Graves said, and walked back to his car. In the background he heard the van driver saying, '702 to 703. Over. 702 to 703. Over.'
Graves got in the car, slammed the door. To Lewis: 'Let's go.'
'The apartment?'
'The apartment.'
Wright had taken a fashionable apartment in the hilly north-central section of San Diego, not far from the Cortez Hotel. His building looked out over the city and the harbour. At this hour people were leaving the apartment house, standing in front and waiting until the doorman brought their cars around from the underground garage. Graves had had some trouble getting used to that when he first came here. He was accustomed to the East, where people in cities walked to work or took public transportation. In California, everybody drove. Everybody.
Wright himself was an exception. He had a driver and a limousine. But then, Wright was always an exception, he thought.
Wright usually came out about 8:20. His girl for the night - one of five or six he saw with some frequency - preceded him by ten or fifteen minutes.
'There she is,' Lewis said.
Graves nodded. It was odd how you could yell Wright's girls. Even from across the street they could be spotted instantly. Yet there was no particular physical type, no particular details of dress. They weren't professionals. But there was a certain quality about them, something blatantly erotic. They were the girls a man would choose if he wanted to be reassured. Graves watched this one, who wore a simple white dress and had very long legs, as she climbed into a Datsun sportscar and drove off.
'701 to 703,' he said, speaking into the intercom mounted on the dash.
There was a crackle of static. '703 here. I thought we could sleep in today.'
Graves ignored the complaint. 'Red Datsun sportscar, convertible, California licence ZVW 348. Got it?'
'Got it. Out.'
A moment later, a Ford station wagon drove past them, and the driver gave them the high sign briefly. That was 703.
Graves slumped down in his seat, thinking. They had not bothered to interrogate Wright's girls in recent weeks. When they began, they had had dozens of interviews with the girls. Sometimes they had been straight interrogations; more often they were casually arranged meetings. In both cases the information was monotonously the same. John Wright was a nice and kind and generous and charming man. He was also nervous and definitely conservative. He sweated a lot, preferred the missionary style, kept the room dark, and always remained a little aloof.
Hardly valuable intelligence insight.
'Why do