Goodbye California - Alistair [48]
As notebooks go it was large – about eight inches by five – and secured by a locked, brass clasp, a sufficient deterrent against the young or merely curious but of no avail against the ill-intentioned armed with a knife. Ryder sliced open the spine and rifled through the exposed pages – which told him nothing, inasmuch as they were covered with neatly-typed figures, not letters. He wasted no time on the notebook. He knew nothing of cryptography, which didn’t worry him: the FBI had its own highly specialized department of code-breakers who could decipher anything except the most highly sophisticated military codes, and even those they could do if given enough time. Time. Ryder looked at his watch. It was one minute to eleven.
He found Jeff methodically going through the pockets of LeWinter’s considerable number of custom-made suits. LeWinter and the girl were still resting comfortably. Ryder ignored them and switched on a TV set. He didn’t bother to select any particular station: the same programme would be on every one. Ryder didn’t bother to look at the screen. He didn’t appear to be watching anything at all but, in fact, he didn’t allow the couple on the bed to move out of peripheral vision.
The announcer, who might just coincidentally have been dressed anyway in a dark suit and tie, used his State funeral voice. He confined himself to the facts. The San Ruffino nuclear power reaction station had been broken into that late afternoon and the criminals had made good their escape, taking with them weapons-grade material and hostages. The precise amount of material taken was specified, as were the names, addresses and occupations of the hostages. Neither the person giving this information nor the source from which it had come had been identified, but the genuineness of the information was beyond dispute as it had been confirmed in detail by the authorities. The same authorities were carrying out an intensive investigation. The usual meaningless poppycock, Ryder thought; they had no leads to investigate. He switched off the set and looked at Jeff.
‘Notice anything, Perkins?’
‘The same thing as you were noticing. What you can see of Casanova’s face here didn’t show much change in expression. Didn’t show anything, in fact. Guilty as hell, I’d say.’
‘Good as a signed confession. That news was no news to him.’ He looked at LeWinter and appeared momentarily lost in thought before saying: ‘I’ve got it. Your rescuers, I mean. I’ll send along a reporter and a photographer from the Globe.’
‘Isn’t that interesting?’ Jeff said. ‘I do believe Don Juan has registered a slight change of expression.’
LeWinter had, in fact, registered a marked change in expression. The bronzed skin had assumed a greyish hue and the suddenly protuberant eyes seemed bent on parting company with their sockets. One could enjoy the Globe without being able to read too well. It specialized in artistic portraits of unclad feminine illiterates who spent their evenings reading Sophocles in the original, in candid shots of the newsworthy caught in apparently compromising or undignified situations, and, for the intelligentsia among their readers, extensive muck-raking couched in terms of holy crusades against shocked morality. All of this was, perforce, in the very simplest of prose. And such was the intolerable pressure brought to bear through the demands imposed by the clamorous urgency, the evangelistic immediacy and the socially important content of those journalistic imperatives that the overworked editorial staff were frequently and reluctantly compelled to encapsulate, hold over or, most commonly, altogether forget, such trivia as the international news or, indeed, any but the most salaciously elevating items of the local news. One did not require telepathic aid to guess that the judge’s mind