Daniel Cooper was already aware of what the meeting in J. J. Reynolds's office that morning was about, for all the company's investigators had been sent a memo the day before regarding the Lois Bellamy burglary that had taken place a week earlier. Daniel Cooper loathed conferences. He was too impatient to sit around listening to stupid chatter.
He arrived in J. J. Reynolds's office forty-five minutes late, while Reynolds was in the middle of a speech.
"Nice of you to drop by," J. J. Reynolds said sarcastically. There was no response. It's a waste of time, Reynolds decided. Cooper did not understand sarcasm - or anything else, as far as Reynolds was concerned. Except how to catch criminals. There, he had to admit, the man was a goddamned genius.
Seated in the office were three of the agency's top investigators: David Swift, Robert Schiffer, and Jerry Davis.
"You've all read the report on the Bellamy burglary," Reynolds said, "but something new has been added. It turns out that Lois Bellamy is a cousin of the police commissioner's. He's raising holy hell."
"What are the police doing?" Davis asked.
"Hiding from the press. Can't blame them. The investigating officers acted like the Keystone Kops. They actually talked to the burglar they caught in the house and let her get away."
"Then they should have a good description of her," Swift suggested.
"They have a good description of her nightgown," Reynolds retorted witheringly. "They were so goddamned impressed with her figure that their brains melted. They don't even know the color of her hair. She wore some kind of curler cap, and her face was covered with a mudpack. Their description is of a woman somewhere in her middle twenties, with a fantastic ass and tits. There's not one single clue. We have no information to go on. Nothing."
Daniel Cooper spoke for the first time. "Yes, we have."
They all turned to look at him, with varying degrees of dislike.
"What are you talking about?" Reynolds asked
"I know who she is."
When Cooper had read the memo the morning before, he had decided to take a look at the Bellamy house, as a logical first step. To Daniel Cooper, logic was the orderliness of God's mind, the basic solution to every problem, and to apply logic, one always started at the beginning. Cooper drove out to the Bellamy estate in Long Island, took one look at it, and, without getting out of his car, turned around and drove back to Manhattan. He had learned all he needed to know. The house was isolated, and there was no public transportation nearby, which meant that the burglar could have reached the house only by car.
He was explaining his reasoning to the men assembled in Reynolds's office. "Since she probably would have been reluctant to use her own car, which could have been traced, the vehicle either had to be stolen or rented. I decided to try the rental agencies first. I assumed that she would have rented the car in Manhattan, where it would be easier for her to cover her trail."
Jerry Davis was not impressed. "You've got to be kidding, Cooper. There must be thousands of cars a day rented in Manhattan."
Cooper ignored the interruption. "All car-rental operations are computerized. Relatively few cars are rented by women. I checked them all out. The lady in question went to Budget Rent a Car at Pier Sixty-one on West Twenty-third Street, rented a Chevy Caprice at eight P.M. the night of the burglary, and returned it to the office at two A.M."
"How do you know it was the getaway car?" Reynolds asked skeptically.
Cooper was getting bored with the stupid questions. "I checked the elapsed mileage. It's thirty-two miles to the Lois Bellamy estate and another thirty-two miles back. That checks exactly with the odometer on the Caprice. The car was rented in the name of Ellen Branch."
"A phony," David Swift surmised.
"Right. Her real name is Tracy Whitney."
They were all staring at him. "How the hell do you know that?" Schiffer demanded.
"She gave a false name and address, but she had to sign a rental agreement. I took the original down to One Police Plaza and had them run it through for fingerprints. They matched the prints of Tracy Whitney. She served time at the Southern Louisiana Penitentiary for Women. If you remember, I talked to her about a year ago about a stolen Renoir."
"I remember," Reynolds nodded. "You said then that she was innocent."
"She was - then. She's not innocent anymore. She pulled the Bellamy job."
The little bastard had done it again! And he had made it seem so simple. Reynolds tried not to sound grudging. "That's - that's fine work, Cooper. Really fine work. Let's nail her. We'll have the police pick her up and - "
"On what charge?" Cooper asked mildly. "Renting a car? The police can't identify her, and there's not a shred of evidence against her."
"What are we supposed to do?" Schiffer asked. "Let her walk away scot-free?"
"This time, yes," Cooper said. "But I know who she is now. She'll try something again. And when she does, I'll catch her."
The meeting was finally over. Cooper desperately wanted a shower. He took out a little black book and wrote in it very carefully: TRACY WHITNEY.
