Lively Game of Death Read Free Page A

examine and shook his head. “These pictures,” he said, fishing a few of the photos from the pile and separating them from the rest, “are the ones that I took. All the rest are of the Goetz knock-off.”
    I looked across the table at Hilary, who shrugged, saying, “I thought they were all pictures of Tricky Tires, too.”
    “And there you are,” Wallis said, spreading his hands and smiling. “If this young man cannot tell the difference between the two toys, what hope is there for us when the consumer sees our car on the same retail counter as the Goetz knock-off? Not to mention the buyers who are going to walk into the two showrooms this week!”
    There were four of us in the combination office/boardroom, a place shaped something like a thermometer on its side. The conference table where we sat ran the length of the long, narrow room, at the far end of which opened a spacious office belonging to the company president, Scott Miranda. The latter cavity contained a few leatherette chairs, several filing cabinets, and a polished teakwood desk holding a phone, blotter and pen stand, and a gold replica of Trim-Tram’s first toy.
    The lanky chief executive—a haggard look on his angular face—was resting against the high-backed chair positioned at the short end of the table nearest the office. To his right and left, respectively, along the long sides of the table, sat Hilary and I.
    Wallis stood between Scott and Hilary at the right angle of the tabletop. My position across from my boss enabled me to watch her attempt to stifle the dislike she felt for the adman, whose pomposity of manner was the perfect match for his short, blubbery frame.
    Scott had said almost nothing so far, choosing to let the other brief us on the problem. So it was Wallis’ show, and he was clearly enjoying his chance to be the center of attention. Pointing a pudgy finger at a colorful chrome-and-plastic toy auto on the table in front of him, he informed us that we were looking at the prototype of Tricky Tires.
    “This handmade model,” he wheezed, “has never left this room in the past seven months. And the master engineering plans are always returned to the office at the end of the day. Unless, of course, they have not been out of the office in the first place, which is the more usual occurrence.”
    “And where are the plans put?” Hilary asked.
    “I was, of course, coming to that next. Mr. Miranda locks them up each night in his desk.”
    “And I’m the only one with a key to the desk,” Scott said, cracking his knuckles in a kind of percussive punctuation.
    Hilary put out a gloved hand and took the proffered prototype from Wallis. She examined the model, turning it over and over, comparing it with the two sets of glossies.
    It was a one-thirty-second scale model of “Buzz” Armstrong-Stewart’s so-called Funny Car, which he named, of course Tricky Tires. The original of the racer was the hottest thing going, for it seemed to defy physics and come in ahead of more logically styled vehicles at various competitions. The Trim-Tram version was miniscule but identical, complete even to the inclusion of a miniature head-and-shoulders of Armstrong-Stewart protruding from the driver’s seat.
    I looked at the photos of the Goetz knock-off. Although I had to mentally transfer the prototype into two dimensions, as well as monochrome, it was obvious to me that both playthings were derived from a common design. (In fact, Wallis had earlier boasted that Tricky Tires followed the precise engineering specs of the life-sized original down to the inch. Since Armstrong-Stewart’s licensor had granted an exclusive permit to Trim-Tram to make a toy version of the car, Goetz could not have achieved the accuracy of his toy in any other way but by copying his competitor’s design.)
    Hilary, removing her gloves, asked Wallis when the photos of the Trim-Tram toy had been taken.
    “Oh, I shot the series about six weeks ago, if I remember