Operation Whiplash Read Free

the block. “What about clothes for you?” Robin asked, pausing after she’d unlocked the car door. “What about toilet articles?”
    “I have a few things with me,” I said. “And I’m used to traveling light.” I took the car keys from her.
    I was thinking ahead to Hudson, Florida. It irritated me that I couldn’t pinpoint the problem there. It had to be serious, or Hazel wouldn’t have asked me to come. She knew better than anyone what was hanging over my head in Hudson.
    I drove around the block and pulled in at the curb behind Hazel’s fire-engine-red MG. I tossed its keys onto Robin’s lap. “Take it two blocks straight ahead, then pull into the parking lot on the left with the big red neon sign,” I directed her. “Tell the attendant you might be away for three or four days.”
    Robin got into the MG. She had a little trouble with the gears at first, but finally she moved the feisty little car slowly down the street. I followed in the Chevy. I had a reason for making Robin drive the MG. When she turned into the parking lot, I parked on the street, far enough beyond the lot so she couldn’t see me.
    I walked around to the Chevrolet’s trunk and opened it. I’d already made sure there was nothing in the back seat. There was a single piece of women’s luggage in the trunk. It wasn’t locked. I opened it and lifted handfuls of clothing while I explored beneath.
    The contents didn’t tell me much about Robin Ford. She traveled light, too. One demonstrable fact was that she had a remarkably exotic taste in underwear. Toiletries were in a small leather case. In one corner of the bag was a slim billfold. It contained two ten-dollar bills and five crisp hundreds. The five hundred was probably what Hazel gave the girl to make the run, I decided. Nothing else in the bag was of any significance except to a female.
    I put the bag back in order, snapped it shut, and closed the trunk lid. I wasn’t thinking anything adverse about Robin Ford. It just would have been a damn-fool play to pass up the chance to check out her bag.
    I crossed the street and located Robin in the parking lot. The attendant was giving her a receipt. I opened the passenger-side door and picked up a slightly-larger-than-attaché-sized briefcase. Ever since the plastic surgery after the gas-tank explosion, I’ve needed a complete makeup kit for my face. I never go anywhere without it, and it’s never as far away from me as the locked trunk of a car or the baggage compartment of an airplane. Once I’d stood and watched helplessly as a quarter of a million dollars burned up in the trunk of a car to which I didn’t have the keys and to which I didn’t dare get too close; the little Pakistani plastic surgeon had warned me my once-burned face couldn’t be repaired again. After he said that, the briefcase never left my side.
    In addition to the makeup kit, I always carry two extra wigs in the case. And the.22 was in it. I wasn’t worried that Robin might have opened it as I had her bag. Hazel had given me the briefcase, and she’d had it set up with a four-letter alphabetical combination lock. In her usual whimsical fashion she’d had the combination set to s-e-x-y.
    Robin and I crossed the street to the Chevrolet. I set the briefcase down on the front seat beside me, got under the wheel, and we took off. I knew it was 270 miles from Little Rock to Jackson, Mississippi, because I’d driven it before. It should be about the same from Stuttgart, because we had to backtrack to Pine Bluff on Route 79 before we could head southeast on Route 65. “We’ll take two hours on and two hours off at the wheel,” I told Robin.
    I could see the route in my mind’s eye. At Tallulah we’d turn east on 80, crossing the Big Muddy at Vicksburg. Across the river, Highway 80 becomes Interstate 20, and Jackson wasn’t far beyond that. It was mostly two-lane to Jackson. No speed driving.
    “Are you planning on hammering it straight through?” Robin