The Road To Ruin

It had seemed to Yancey the bozo had been asking which of the plainclothesmen was Blanchard, but maybe not. Orville hadn’t taken it that way, anyway, because he said, “So you’re an old friend of Blanchard’s, are you?”

“Oh, yes,” the bozo said. He had some kind of accent that made him sound like a knife sharpener. “It has been too long since we have met.”

Yancey said, “Lieutenant, he’s got a weapon under that jacket. Heck, stay behind him.”

“Oh, yeah.”

The bozo looked startled. “I have done nothing.”

Orville might be slow, but he could catch up eventually, because all at once his own pistol was in his hand and he was saying, “Lieutenant Orville, CID. Put your hands on top of your head.”

“I have done—”

“Now!”

“I shall go away,” the bozo suggested, but he did put his hands on his head. “I shall come back another time.”

“Bob, frisk him.”

“No, I go away.”

“Heck, shoot him in the leg if he takes a step toward the door.”

“You bet!”

So the other one frisked the bozo, and he turned out to have two loaded Glocks on him. Also three wallets, each with different ID, but all showing photos of this same guy.

Orville could not have been happier. He was practically kissing himself on both cheeks. “I knew we’d get to the bottom of it,” he chortled. “And I knew, when we did get to the bottom of it, we would find Fred Blanchard.”

“I have diplomatic immunity,” the bozo said.

“Not here you don’t,” Orville told him. “But you’re a diplomat, are you? Bob, it’s that foreign embassy again.”

“I think you’re right,” the other one said.

Orville, suddenly even more excited, jabbed a finger at the bozo and said, “You and Fred Blanchard and the butler and your whole crowd, you probably killed the ambassador, too!”

From the flinch the bozo gave, and the sudden skittery look in his eyes, Yancey guessed that, whether they were thinking of the same ambassador or not, in some way or another Orville was right.

“All right, my friend,” Orville told the bozo, “I’m taking you in for questioning, and before I’m done with you, you’ll spill everything you know about Fred Blanchard. Put the cuffs on him, Bob.”

As the other one put the cuffs on the bozo, Orville looked out the guardshack window at the county road, but he was clearly seeing much farther. “I knew I was go