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Dataset card Data Studio Files
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Flagg looked at no one. He grinned. He led the woman to the elevator and inside. The doors slid shut behind them and they went up to the top floor.
For the next six hours Lloyd was busy trying to get everything organized, so when Flagg called him and asked for a report, he would be ready. He thought everything was under control. The only item left was tracking down Paul Burlson and getting whatever he had on this Tom Cullen, just in case Julie Lawry really had stu...
He picked up the telephone and waited patiently. After a few moments there was a click and then Shirley Dunbar’s Tennessee twang was in his ear: “Operator.”
“Hi, Shirley, it’s Lloyd.”
“Lloyd Henreid! How are ya?”
“Not too bad, Shirl. Can you try 6214 for me?”
“Paul? He’s not home. He’s out at Indian Springs. Bet I could catch him for you at BaseOps.”
“Okay, try that.”
“You bet. Say, Lloyd, when you gonna come over and try some of my coffee cake? I bake fresh every two, three days.”
“Soon, Shirley,” Lloyd said, grimacing. Shirley was forty, ran about one-eighty… and had set her cap for Lloyd. He took a lot of ribbing about her, especially from Whitney and Ronnie Sykes. But she was a fine telephone operator, able to do wonders with the Las Vegas phone system. Getting the phones working—the most imp...
Also, she did make nice coffee cake.
“Real soon,” he added, and thought of how nice it would be if Julie Lawry’s firm, rounded body could be grafted onto Shirley Dunbar’s skills and gentle, uncomplaining nature.
She seemed satisfied. There were beeps and boops on the line, and one high-pitched, echoing whine that made him hold the handset away from his ear, grimacing. Then the phone rang at the other end in a series of hoarse burrs.
“Bailey, Ops,” a voice made tinny by distance said.
“This is Lloyd,” he bellowed into the phone. “Is Paul there?”
“Haul what, Lloyd?” Bailey asked.
“Paul! Paul Burlson! ”
“Oh, him! Yeah, he’s right here having a Co-Cola.”
There was a pause—Lloyd began to think that the tenuous connection had been broken—and then Paul came on.
“We’re going to have to shout, Paul. The connection stinks.” Lloyd wasn’t completely sure that Paul Burlson had the lung capacity to shout. He was a scrawny little man with thick lenses in his glasses, and some men called him Mr. Cool because he insisted on wearing a complete three-piece suit each day despite the dry c...
Paul did manage to speak a little louder.
“Have you got your directory with you?” Lloyd asked.
“Yes. Stan Bailey and I were going over a work rotation program.”
“See if you’ve got anything on a guy named Tom Cullen, would you?”
“Just a second.” A second stretched out to two or three minutes, and Lloyd began to wonder again if they had been cut off. Then Paul said, “Okay, Tom Cullen… you there, Lloyd?”
“Right here.”
“You can never be sure, with the phones the way they are. He’s somewhere between twenty-two and thirty-five at a guess. He doesn’t know for sure. Light mental retardation. He has some work skills. We’ve had him on the clean-up crew.”
“How long has he been in Vegas?”
“Something less than three weeks.”
“From Colorado?”
“Yes, but we have a dozen people over here who tried it over there and decided they didn’t like it. They drove this guy out. He was having sex with a normal woman and I guess they were afraid for their gene pool.” Paul laughed.
“Got his address?”
Paul gave it to him and Lloyd jotted it down in his notebook.
“That it, Lloyd?”
“One other name, if you’ve got the time.”
Paul laughed—a small man’s fussy laugh. “Sure, it’s only my coffee break.”
“The name is Nick Andros.”
Paul said instantly: “I have that name on my red list.”
“Oh?” Lloyd thought as quickly as he could, which was far from the speed of light. He had no idea what Paul’s “red list” might be. “Who gave you his name?”
Exasperated, Paul said: “Who do you think? The same person that gave me all the red list names.”
“Oh. Okay.” He said goodbye and hung up. Small-talk was impossible with the bad connection, and Lloyd had too much to think about to want to make it, anyway.
Red list.
Names that Flagg had given to Paul and to no one else, apparently—although Paul had assumed Lloyd knew all about it. Red list, what did that mean? Red meant stop.
Red meant danger.
Lloyd lifted the telephone again.
“Operator.”
“Lloyd again, Shirl.”
“Well, Lloyd, did you—”
“Shirley, I can’t gab. I’m onto something that’s maybe big.”
“Okay, Lloyd.” Shirley’s voice lost its flirtiness and she was suddenly all business.