Chapter 9
In the back seat of the Cadillac limousine, a large black 'thing' – perhaps best described as a lump – shifted slightly. If Remington Steele had been asked to describe it, he might have likened it to the eponymous creature from The Blob, Paramount's 1958 monster movie classic. If Laura Steele, née Holt, had been asked to describe it, as a television fan she would have said it was a dead ringer for the Horta from Star Trek. What it was, in fact, was Remington Steele himself, lying in the back seat of the limo under a heavy black cloth, reading.
Laura and her husband were on a stakeout overnight, as they had been for the previous five nights, in the Los Angeles suburb of Vernon. The agency limo was parked, as discreetly as possible, some way down the street which the Rossi Gelati factory backed onto. The small rear gate of the factory could be seen in shadow, about forty yards away.
Vehicular stakeouts were difficult and boring, and were a particular problem for Remington Steele Investigations. As Remington and Laura had often joked to each other, for a night time stakeout their choices amounted to a white vintage sports car, a white German convertible or a black limousine – none of them very inconspicuous. It was one of those things that Laura had often thought that they should really sort out – either by getting rid of one or more of their cars, or by buying something anonymous – but they had never gotten around to it.
And so now they were in the limousine, which by dint of its black color had been selected for this particular job. Laura, dressed in an all black, one piece jumpsuit and wearing her black English flat cap, was taking a turn in the front seat, keeping watch with night vision goggles on the rear of the factory. Steele – also dressed in his black break-in clothes – was in the back, making his way with a little difficulty through Elizabeth David's French Country Cooking using a mountain climber's flashlight mounted on a headband. The black cloth prevented the light from drawing attention to their car. How he wished that they had had blacked out windows installed in the limo!
This stakeout was tedious, but unfortunately, it was the only option that they had left on this case, which had turned rather sour. Unlike the world of her TV detective idols from childhood – Mannix, Perry Mason and the 77 Sunset Strip boys – real life was not neat, mused Laura. The cases she and Remington were called in on didn't always smoothly fall into place – one clue following another, one key conversation with a critical witness coming easily on the heels of another. Real life detective work could sometimes be messy. They still had no idea who had tried to kill them with a runaway ice cream truck the previous week. Their only real clue in the case was Remington's hunch about how the saboteur had gained entry to the Rossi factory, through the unmonitored rear gate. Laura had full faith in Remington's intuitions, of course, and didn't doubt that he was right; but by mounting a watch on the gate every night for days, they had surrendered the initiative – they were waiting for something to happen.
It was one of the principles of being a private detective that you always had to try and maintain the initiative in a case. Official police work, Laura knew, almost always depended on waiting for a break in the investigation. Solving big crimes – a series of daring robberies, say, or catching a serial killer – depended on checking and cross-checking vast amounts of information. Ted Bundy, or the Yorkshire Ripper, for example, had eventually been caught when they had made a mistake, or often through sheer good luck – and after the police had interviewed dozens of suspects, run hundreds of license plates, chased down thousands of leads. But for a private investigator, this approach was difficult because clients got antsy, and every PI knew that their clients would start to put the pressure on them as the billable hours on a case mounted up.
The same thing had happened with Warren Rossi; he had been harassing Steele and Laura during the last few days for results, although there had been no new incidents affecting his company since the runaway ice cream truck had nearly killed them. And he had been grouching about the mounting costs of the investigation.
Laura glanced at the little digital clock which she had with her, as her normal gold Omega watch could not be made out in the dark. The green digits showed that the time was just after three in the morning. Laura made a mental note to get herself another watch – something cheap which had a glow-in-the-dark dial. Or maybe, she thought with a smile, she'd tell her husband to buy her one; he still owed her a present from last Christmas, and had been going to buy her a new watch, until their office had been invaded by a group of terrorist Santa Clauses. She grinned a little wider: 'husband' – she liked the sound of that word. She was, she realized with one part of her mind – the objective part – getting used to the idea that she had a husband. Of course, she sometimes felt annoyed that most of the adjustments since they had married seemed to have had to be made by her; she was the one who had had to move out of her home – which she minded a little – and she was the one who had had to change her name – which she didn't mind very much at all. But so far, she liked being married more than she disliked it. And the sex was fantastic!
Suddenly, Laura saw a movement near the factory's rear fence. She ducked down low. "Remington, turn the light off!" she whispered urgently.
Steele clicked off the light, threw back the black cloth and cautiously stuck his head between the front seats. "Is there something there?"
Laura nodded in the dark. "Yes. It's a man," she said, giving a running commentary of what she saw through the night vision goggles. "He's opening the gate. Definitely going inside. He's in – let's go!"
Remington and Laura got out of the limo and ran to the gate; the heavy chain and padlock were hanging loose and open. Remington pulled out the agency revolver and held it in front of him as they pushed through and approached the rear exit door. Everything was in darkness. Laura very briefly shone the heavy flashlight she was carrying around for a look, then turned it off again. The door was propped open with a fire extinguisher, just as Remington had suspected. "Well, Mr Steele, you were right about how the perp got inside," said Laura. "Nice work."
"Thank you, Mrs Steele. After you?"
"Oh no, be my guest!"
Steele went through the door, Laura close behind. They walked down the corridor to the inner door, which had no lock. Cautiously, Remington pushed it open; it gave directly onto the main factory floor. Dim night lights mounted high on the walls allowed them to make out the room; the huge, gleaming steel machines were quiet – nothing seemed to be stirring. "Split up," whispered Laura, even as Remington shook his head – but she had already headed off towards one section of the room, so he went in another direction, wishing they had two agency guns.
Laura tiptoed along, heading down one aisle beside huge freezer-churning machines that were twelve feet high. As she rounded a corner, she suddenly saw a man, dressed all in black, crouching by some other kind of machine. Laura could just make out the back of his neck and sandy hair poking out from under a black baseball cap. She hefted the flashlight and took a couple of strides as quietly as she could, ready to brain the guy. "Don't move," she said in a normal voice.
As quick as lightening, the man jumped up, turned around and charged Laura. "Argh…" she screamed, taken by surprise by his move and unable to react in time as he barged into her with his full weight, sending her flying to one side, before running off.
"Laura!" shouted Remington, hearing the commotion. He spotted her on the floor, and ran up to her. "Laura, are you hurt?" he asked, somewhat frantic with worry.
"I'm fine. Quick – he's getting away," said Laura, rising up and following as Steele chased after the intruder. "He's not armed, but be careful," she called, her first thought being for Remington's safety.
Remington reached the fire exit, which was wide open, with Laura on his heels. The man was not in sight, and as they barged through the outside door, they could see him making hell-for-leather towards an anonymous blue sedan parked in an alley a few yards up the street. Steele and Laura turned the other way and ran to the limousine. As they clambered in and Remington started the engine, the blue car came careering out of the alley and accelerated away down the street. Remington gunned the engine and headed after it.
"Oh fantastic," said Remington, "now we get to be in a car chase and I'm driving an oil tanker."
Laura was all business, her nostrils flared, her eyes focused on the blue car some forty yards or more in front of them. "Please don't joke around – you'll lose him."
"Okay, okay, Laura; I've got it under control."
The chase continued. Vernon was an industrial district, composed of large, anonymous factory buildings and warehouses which had no windows; expanses of brick walls or metal siding loomed over the streets, giving them a canyon-like feeling. The area was utterly deserted – there were very few cars parked at that time of night, and the streets were wide but lit only sporadically.
"You know, Laura, maybe we should get a Ferrari, eh? All the best detectives have them – Tom Selleck, that John Donson fellow?"
"Jessica Fletcher rides a bicycle on Murder, She Wrote, Mr Steele."
"Hmm! She is about eighty years old, though!"
"Will you concentrate? If he gets away, Remington, I'm going to send you to bed without any dinner."
"Ha! I'm not sure how you'd manage that, Laura, given that I do all the cooking!"
The car in front turned this way and that, left and right, trying to shake off its tail. It was a nondescript old sedan which could not make much speed, but it was still gradually pulling away from the Cadillac, despite Remington's expert driving, which kept the blue car just in sight. The car would gain an advantage every time it took a corner, while turning the limo was, indeed, like turning an oil tanker; but Remington managed to make up some ground on the straights.
Slowly the car in front was escaping. It was about eighty yards in front of them when it approached a crossroads, turned right and disappeared from sight. When they reached the same spot, just as Remington made to turn the car, they were launched into a huge skid – the limo careened left rather than right, spun 180 degrees and came to a stop with a jolt and a squeal of brakes. The Cadillac's body vibrated for a couple of seconds on its marshmallow-soft suspension.
