Dunn resumed. “Look, Mr. Lindsey, excuse me if I’m a little slow, but I don’t see why you came to RTS. You’re the insurance carrier for Comic Cavalcade, right? They suffered the loss, you have to pay. Are the Berkeley cops in the act?”
“Officially, yes,” Lindsey said. “But they don’t seem to be doing much about it. Too busy with muggers.”
Dunn spread his hands. “Whatever. But it looks like it’s your problem. Yours and Terry’s. RTS will just have to get back its deposit and look for another supplier.” He rubbed his eyes. “Probably have to rerun the computer selection. Patterson said he’d completed the order?”
Lindsey nodded. He extracted Terry Patterson’s list from his pocket organizer and laid it before Dunn.
Dunn read it and nodded, shoving the paper back to Lindsey. “I don’t know it by heart, but I’ve handled the list enough times to recognize it. That’s our order.” He frowned. “I think he even stuck in an extra book or two, but this is certainly our list. Now the scarcity factors will all change, the values will jump. Circuitron will probably change the whole list around. What a nuisance! Selena will blow her program when she hears about this.”
Lindsey glanced at the computer on Selena Mabry’s desk. The logo plate on the processor said Circuitron 95 XT.
“But I still want to know what you need from RTS,” Dunn said.
“If I can track down those comic books I stand to save my company a great deal of money. If I know who wanted them, and why, then there’s a good chance I can find them, isn’t there?”
Dunn let his breath out slowly. The expression on his face changed. “You think we stole them? Somebody from RTS?”
“No. I don’t know who stole them.”
“But RTS is a good suspect, eh? Somebody in-house, or somebody we hired? You think maybe Marty Saxon has them stashed in the president’s office?”
“I don’t think so,” Lindsey said. “But it’s possible.”
Dunn shook his head, grinning. “You don’t understand a thing, Mr. Lindsey. If you had any inkling of what this is about, you’d know that we didn’t steal those comic books. If somebody walked in and offered them to us for nothing, we wouldn’t want them. We have to buy them. If we don’t pay for them we don’t have any use for them. You think Marty wants to sit in his office and read comic books? This is a tax situation. We have to convert surplus cash into hard assets or we get taxed on it.”
Lindsey nodded. That much jibed with the things Terry Patterson and Marvia Plum had told him. He looked at Selena Mabry’s darkened computer, then back at George Dunn. “Tell me a little more about how you selected the comics for your list.”
“Selena’s the techie,” Dunn said. “She knows a lot more about it than I do. For that matter, so does Marty.”
“Try,” Lindsey said.
“Well, we started with some standard investment portfolio software. It wasn’t hard to change the parameters from earnings-to-cost ratio, long-term value accrual, product line performance projections and so on, to characteristics of comic books. Things like scarcity, age, condition, theme category, artists and writers. In fact, we came up with a piece of plug-in software that we’ve been marketing to collectibles dealers and collectors for the past few months. Very profitably, I might add.”
“I suppose you can account for your whereabouts last night?” Lindsey said.
Dunn stood up. “Come on, fella. If you’re here about the insurance we’re glad to help out. If you’re trying to weasel out of paying the claim by saying we stole the comics Patterson was assembling for us, you’d better haul back to the cops and get them to do it for you. Don’t come around here making wild accusations.” He glared at Lindsey, who stood up and slipped his pocket organizer inside his jacket.
“Don’t forget to give back your guest badge on the way out,” Dunn told him.
* * * *
Two up, two down, Lindsey muttered to himself. He stopped at a café near the Rockridge BART station and the freeway overpass. He ordered a coffee and Danish. Maybe he’d have to ask Harden for help after all. But, damn it, the idea just rankled too much. Besides, he’d been too many years with the company doing a routine job and pulling a petty salary to let this chance slip away. It was his first shot at making a hero of himself, of saving the company big bucks and getting a bonus or a promotion out of it.
He walked back to his Hyundai, shoved the overtime parking ticket into his briefcase with a snarl, and headed back toward Telegraph Avenue and Comic Cavalcade.
Patterson said he was about to eat his lunch. Brown-bag fashion. Lindsey suggested they find a restaurant together so they could talk without interruption.
Patterson didn’t even make a show of resistance. He ordered an expensive sandwich and a Moretti beer instead of the burger and pop that Lindsey had expected to pay for. Bart checked in with his own stomach and ordered a bottle of mineral water. While the waitress was filling their orders, Patterson asked Lindsey when he could expect his check from International Surety.
Lindsey said, “Don’t get eager, Patterson. I told you once, it’s going to take a while.”
“But—but the consignors—”
“Do they know about the burglary?” Lindsey suspected that they didn’t, since even George Dunn, the customer’s contact man, hadn’t known until he’d been told.
Patterson shook his head. “Th-They still think their comics are safe. I-I suppose they’ll have to know eventually. I was hoping we could either get the comics back or the money in time to pay them. Nobody’s inquired yet, but sooner or later they will. Probably sooner. What should I tell them?”
Lindsey said, “Before you tell anybody anything, get up a list of the owners and give it to me. It’s not impossible that one of them stole his own merchandise back. I’ve seen it happen, believe me. That way he’ll have both the comic book and the money. Plus all the other comics!”
“Oh, no,” said Patterson. His sandwich arrived and he began to devour it, washing down the mouthfuls with beer and talking around the whole soggy mess. “Not the consignors. They’re all serious collectors. They’re all, uh, honest people. I mean, they can get pretty competitive with each other and they can drive hard bargains when they’re trying to set up a deal. But nobody would do a thing like—like what happened!”
“That’s what you think, kid,” Lindsey said. He was trying out his Humphrey Bogart voice. “Get me the list.”
That fast, Terry Patterson had finished his sandwich and was washing down the last of it with the dregs of his Moretti beer.
“Is—is it okay if I have another?” he asked.
Before Lindsey could say no, he’d signaled the waiter. Instead of canceling the order, he sipped his mineral water and studied Patterson.
“Listen, you said you had an idea for getting the comics back. Spill it.”
“Well, maybe it isn’t so much of an idea. I just th-thought that whoever took them might try to sell them again.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.”
“So, ah, most of the comic store owners know each other...”
“Uh-huh,” Lindsey encouraged him.
“Well, you see, I thought that I might ask some of the other dealers to keep an eye out, and if anybody brings in the stolen comics they could get in touch with us right away, or maybe call the police. You think that’s a good idea?”
Lindsey told him that was a very good idea. He also asked him who his chief competitor was.
“Oh,