by Dan Willis
Something else was at work here and he needed to know what.
Fortunately for Alex, radio stations operated on Sunday, and one of them was only a few blocks away from the Brooklyn Tower. That meant the problem of the warehouse thefts was an itch Alex could scratch.
The offices of WGRM radio were in a tiny building in a nondescript Brooklyn neighborhood. The only thing that gave it away was the large antenna rising above the back of the building. Stepping up to the door, Alex knocked. A full minute passed before he knocked again. Finally, when Alex was ready to knock a third time, the door was pushed open by a short, rotund man in shirt-sleeves and suspenders with the stub of a cigar clenched in his teeth.
“What are you, lost?” the man demanded.
Alex held out one of his cards and introduced himself.
“I got about a minute until I have to change the phonograph,” the man said. “What’s a private dick got to do with me?”
“Can I come in and ask you a few questions? It’s about some equipment you ordered.”
“We order equipment all the time, so what?”
“I think some of your gear might have been sabotaged.”
The man chewed his cigar for a second, then he stepped back, allowing Alex inside.
“I’ve got to change the record, but then we can talk,” he said. “Wait here.”
The inside of the building had a lounge room just beyond the door with broken down couches and chairs arranged in a rough circle. A small desk, probably for a receptionist, stood by the entrance to a narrow hallway where the cigar-smoking man had gone. The wall behind the desk had windows running its length and revealed a studio where microphones had been set up. Just inside the glass was a row of instruments and dials along with several phonographs.
As Alex watched, the fat man spun up a record on a phonograph just as the song on a second phonograph was ending. With precision born of experience, he effortlessly switched the microphone over to the new phonograph, then he stood and made his way back out to the lounge area.
“That’s an overture,” he said, still chewing on his cigar. “We’ve got about ten minutes, so what is it you want to know?”
“You got a shipment of parts a few days ago,” Alex said. “I was wondering if you noticed anything wrong with them?”
The man looked confused and shook his head.
“Like what?” he demanded. “As far as I know everything is working properly. I have to check the signal and frequency at least once an hour and everything is fine.”
“Look, Mr.—”
“Wilkerson,” the fat man said. “Aaron Wilkerson.”
“Mr. Wilkerson,” Alex began. “There was a break-in at the warehouse where your parts were stored and the thieves broke open the crate with your parts, but they didn’t take anything.”
“Sounds like the crime of the century,” Wilkerson said, rapidly losing interest.
“I think they sabotaged your parts,” Alex explained. “Could there be something wrong with what you got and you not know about it?”
Wilkerson thought about that, chewing on his cigar the entire time.
“I suppose,” he admitted finally. “I don’t remember anything being worked on this week, but I’m not here all the time. Let me look at the maintenance log.”
He went back into the booth behind the glass and pulled a clipboard out of a drawer. When he returned, he was flipping through the pages.
“Here it is,” he said. “We ordered some new transmission equipment. With Andrew Barton’s new tower just up the street, we need more power to cut through the static. Our system uses an old Alexanderson rig, it just doesn’t have the juice of the new ones with the vacuum tubes.”
“So is it working like it’s supposed to?” Alex prodded, not really understanding what Wilkerson was talking about.
“Don’t know,” he said, shaking his head. “It wasn’t installed.”
“Can I see it, then?”
Wilkerson shook his head.
“The reason we haven’t installed it is that it was expropriated,” he said.
“Ex…what?” Alex asked, wondering if his tired mind had missed something.
Wilkerson raised an eyebrow, flipping the paper down on the clipboard.
“Expropriated,” he said again. “Means the government came in and took it.”
“The government can do that?” Alex asked.
“Sure,” Wilkerson said. “If the feds want something, they just show up with paperwork and take it. They’re supposed to pay us for it, but I’m not going to hold my breath.”
Alex’s tired brain snapped into focus as he processed that information. Why would the government take radio equipment? The obvious answer was that they needed it for something right away and didn’t have time to order one for themselves. So what did they need it for?
Wilkerson needed that equipment to cut through the static put out by Barton’s new tower. Did the government need it for the same reason?
“Anything else?” Wilkerson asked. “I need to get back to work.”
“Who took the equipment?” Alex asked.
“I told you, the government.”
“But who from the government?”
“I don’t know,” Wilkerson protested. “I wasn’t here when they came.”
“Who was here? Would they know who picked up the equipment?” Alex pressed.
“I guess,” Wilkerson said. “But if you really want to know, come back tomorrow and talk to Martha, she’s our receptionist. Whoever expropriated that equipment would have brought paperwork. The government runs on paperwork, and they don’t do anything without it. Martha can show you the form they brought and that will tell you who took it.”
Alex thanked Wilkerson and headed back to the street. His mind was working overtime and he didn’t even notice he’d walked two blocks until he reached the skycrawler station near the transmission tower. The phony thefts at the warehouses were starting to make some sense. If someone knew in advance that the Feds needed radio parts, and if those parts were hard to come by, then whoever it was could intercept the parts and alter them. Then, when the Feds showed up and took said parts, they’d be getting sabotaged equipment. It was a brilliant scheme, but there were an awful lot of ‘ifs’ involved. Whoever it was would have to have knowledge of whatever the Feds were doing, and they’d have to know what parts the Feds would need. That might make whoever was behind this easy to identify, assuming Alex could find out what federal agency needed the parts and why.
Why was the real question.
What could the saboteur have done that would really matter? If Alex could figure that out, it might tell him why the government needed a new vacuum tube transmitter.
“But if all they needed was the transmitter,” he mumbled out loud as he waited for a skycrawler, “why sabotage three orders of parts?”
The obvious answer was that the saboteur didn’t know which parts the government would expropriate. They had to sabotage every transmitter that arrived in the city during their window of opportunity. And that meant that the other radio stations might have the sabotaged parts. If Alex could find out what had been done to them, it might tell him what the saboteur was after.
Feeling more energy than he had had in hours, Alex opened his notebook and checked for the address of the closest radio station.
25
Kidnapping
Alex was up early the next morning, despite still being tired. Iggy had worked most of Sunday writing mending runes to fix the damage Diego’s explosion had done to the brownstone, so Alex dressed quietly and let his mentor sleep. There still wasn’t a front door, but the runes on the inner vestibule door were just as sturdy, so Alex wasn’t worried. With Iggy sleeping, however, Alex was on his own for breakfast. Iggy had taught Alex a great many things, but thus far competency in the kitchen wasn’t one of them. Fortunately, Empire Station opened at six, ready for the influx of working people traveling around the city to their various places of employment. A
nd with the opening of the station, Alex had access to breakfast and, more importantly, Marnie’s coffee.
He was excited to get started but Martha, the receptionist, wouldn’t be in at WGRM until eight, so he ate at the Empire Station cafe, drank his coffee, and read the paper. The day before, he’d visited all three radio stations to ask about their new equipment. He’d assumed, after the first visit, that only WGRM’s equipment had been taken by the government, but that turned out to be wrong. All the stations had ordered different parts, and all of them had been confiscated in the name of government need.
Alex had thought that whoever took the transmission equipment from WGRM had sabotaged multiple versions of the same equipment because they didn’t know which one the government men would take. Now it looked like the saboteurs were working with a turncoat in the government, perhaps whoever authorized the expropriation.
He needed the forms the government men brought when they seized the parts. Those would tell him who had done the authorizing, and what agency they worked for. Fortunately, all he needed to do was to ride the crawler out to Brooklyn and meet WGRM’s receptionist when she arrived.
When Martha Tourmaline, receptionist for WGRM Radio, arrived at the station promptly at eight, Alex was already waiting for her. He was properly fed and caffeinated, and wore his most ingratiating smile. Martha turned out to be a young woman, just out of her teens, with short chestnut hair and a pretty face. When Alex asked her about the paperwork, however, he found that her virtues were primarily her looks.
“I think it’s this one,” she said at last, handing Alex an official-looking paper from a large stack of the radio station’s receipts.
Alex barely glanced at it before handing it back.
“This is a bill for water service to the building,” he said, working very hard not to shout.
“Well, I’m sure it’s in here somewhere,” Martha said at last, her voice as vacuous as her expression.
“Can I have a look?” Alex asked.
“I told you,” she said, holding the folder to her chest. “Mr. Zimmerman said I wasn’t supposed to let anyone see company papers.”
“I promise to only look at the one from the government,” Alex said, holding out his hand.
Unbelievably, that worked, and Martha handed over the folder containing the receipts.
“No peeking at the others though,” she admonished as Alex began to page through the receipts. Most of them were for the various goods and services that kept the station running, though there were a few that showed where the station had paid entertainers and live guests to come in and talk on-air.
Finally, Alex found a paper that looked crisp and new. It was filled with the kind of legalese he’d come to expect from official forms, so he pulled it out. Sure enough, the first few lines declared it to be an Order of Expropriation. Alex had to read all the way down to the bottom to find the signature of whoever approved the order.
“William Masters,” he read aloud.
Underneath Masters’ name was the name of his agency.
“The War Department?” Alex read, somewhat confused. The War Department was one of the Cabinet offices attached to the President. What were they doing in New York?
Something about that tickled Alex’s memory. He’d heard something about the War Department recently.
“Harcourt,” he growled. Earnest Harcourt, the meddling government busybody. He’d claimed that he worked for the War Department.
“Thank you, Martha,” Alex said, folding up the expropriation order and tucking it into his inside coat pocket. “You’ve been a great help.”
He handed her back the folder with the rest of the receipts, giving her his most charming smile, then headed for the door. It was tempting to go around to the side of the radio station and open a vault door there, but there wasn’t any cover, and someone might see him. Instead, he walked briskly in the direction of the Barton Electric Power Projection Tower. He knew he could open a vault from inside the tower and not be observed. There was even a chalk door on the wall opposite the elevator.
When Alex reached the top floor of the tower, however, there was a great deal of activity. He’d forgotten about the workmen putting on the new roof.
“Are you supposed to be up here?” an enormous blond man asked when Alex got off the elevator. He had a barrel chest and thick arms, and he didn’t look happy to see Alex. From his demeanor and the stub of a cigarette dangling from his mouth, Alex assumed he was on a smoke break.
“I’m here to check the runes on the glass case,” Alex lied. He couldn’t very well explain to the man that he’d come to use the chalk drawing on the wall, so he stepped around him and headed into the transfer room. The work on the roof was well underway and the construction crew had brought up crates of supplies that were strewn all over the place.
Picking his way through the various stacks of lumber and metal sheeting and boxes of nails and other gear, Alex moved to the case covering the transfer plates. The copper plate was right where he’d left it, stuck to the top of the glass case by a binding rune. As he reached the case, he felt the bubble of magical force that would keep water away from the transfer plates slide over him. It was strong and solid, just as he knew it would be.
Not wanting to appear to be hurrying, Alex touched the plate, then took out his notepad and jotted a line of nonsense. The big blond man was still watching him from the far side of the room, and it was putting Alex on edge. Looking around, he found several of the construction crew watching him surreptitiously.
Probably think I’m here to check up on them.
He continued fiddling with the plate until the big man finished his cigarette and went back to work. Once he was no longer occupying the elevator hallway, Alex tore a vault rune from his book and moved like he was leaving. He was certain someone would check to make sure he left, so he pushed the elevator button before opening his vault door. Once the elevator chimed and the door opened, Alex went inside his vault and pulled the door shut behind him.
Pushing the thought of the apprehensive workmen from his mind, Alex made his way to the candlestick phone that sat on the rollaway table by his writing desk.
“Detective Nicholson, please,” he told the operator at the Central Office of Police.
“Yeah?” Nicholson’s voice came on the line, sounding surly.
“Did you get hold of Harcourt?”
“Lockerby?” he guessed. “Yeah I did, and thanks for that. The little weasel spent the last half hour yelling at me and threatening to charge me with everything from jaywalking to treason. He’s on his way in now to pick up the letters.”
“Stall him,” Alex said. “I’m on my way over and I think I’ve found something that’ll make you happy.”
“Will Harcourt like it?” Nicholson asked.
“I doubt it.”
“Then I like it already. How long till you can get here?”
Alex checked his watch.
“About ten minutes. Just have him fill out a custody receipt for the letters, that ought to do it.”
“With pleasure,” Nicholson said, then he hung up.
Alex thought about stopping at his office, but he didn’t want the inevitable distractions that would come with that, so he exited his vault in his apartment and rode the secure elevator down to Empire Station. From there he took the stairs to the ground level and caught a cab to the Central Office of Police.
“And here’s your co-conspirator,” Harcourt yelled when he saw Alex approaching across the open room where the detectives had their desks. Clearly he’d been shouting for some time, because a crowd of detectives and other officers had gathered around to watch.
“You ought to be careful, Harcourt,” Alex said, louder than he needed to. “You needed Detective Nicholson to find Alice Cartwright’s office, despite the fact that you knew she worked with government secrets, then you missed her hidden safe and those coded letters.” Alex pointed to the folder Harcourt had clutched in his hand. “If someone mad
e an anonymous call to your supervisor, he might wonder about your competence.”
Grins spread through the onlookers, most hidden behind hands and coffee cups. Harcourt glared at Alex, then seemed to realize that people were listening and shifted his glare to them. The crowd broke up quickly.
“I ought to have you brought up on charges,” Harcourt hissed, getting right in Alex’s face.
“For what?” Alex scoffed back. “Making you look bad? Well in that case you’d better take notes, because I’m about to add to the charges.”
“You are interfering in Federal matters, scribbler,” Harcourt fumed.
“I’m pretty sure that’s not a crime,” Nicholson piped up.
Before Harcourt could shift his attention to the detective, Alex held up the paper he’d taken from the offices of WGRM.
“Someone from the War Department ordered the expropriation of radio equipment from three different radio stations last week,” he said. “You work for the War Department if I remember correctly, right?”
Alex was looking straight into Harcourt’s face when he mentioned the radio equipment and there was a flicker of recognition in the man’s eyes. He covered it quickly, but Alex had seen it.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Harcourt lied. “I didn’t order the removal of any radio equipment.”
“I know you didn’t,” Alex said, unfolding the paper. “This was signed by someone named William Masters.” Alex shifted his gaze to Detective Nicholson. “What do you want to bet Harcourt here knows Masters?”
“No bet,” Nicholson said.
“Of course I know him,” Harcourt said. “We work in the same office, but what do radio parts have to do with you and your cop friend,” he jerked a thumb at Nicholson, “hiding coded letters from me?”
Alex smiled sweetly.
“I’m glad you asked,” he said. “You see, I found out about those radio parts because someone broke into the warehouses where they were stored during shipment, and opened the crates they were in. They tried to hide what they were doing by stealing some random stuff, but they dumped that in an abandoned garage in Brooklyn. The only reason to do that is if the thefts were cover, a distraction from what the burglars were really after.”