Name Withheld : A J.p. Beaumont Mystery (9780061760907) Read Online Free PDF Page B

name, of course, but they’ll be thrilled to know that I was the jogger in question. And having a real detective’s signature on it willmake it that much better. My mother is a big fan of true crime.”
    What the hell? I thought. “Where do you want me to sign?”
    â€œAnywhere.”
    Doing my best to mimic a doctor’s prescription handwriting, I scrawled my signature across the body of the article and then handed it back.
    â€œThanks,” Johnny said gratefully. “If you don’t mind, I’ll send your card along with the article. You have no idea how much this will please my mother. She would have liked me to be a policeman, you see. I’ve never quite had the courage to explain to her why that wouldn’t work.”
    I made for the door and Johnny followed. As I started down the steps, he was standing in the doorway, carefully holding the front of his robe to keep it from yawning open. I have no idea how one goes about staging a series of sex-change operations, but I have to admit, Johnny Bickford did have a figure.
    He must have understood my questioning glance. He smiled. “They don’t call them WonderBras for nothing,” he said.
    I was still blushing when I closed the car door and shoved the key into the ignition. I kicked up a spray of wintertime, road-sanding grit as I backed out of the driveway and headed downtown.
    I was just starting south on Fifth Avenue when a call came in for me on the radio. “Sergeant Watkins wants to know what’s wrong with your pager,” the dispatcher said. “He’s been trying to reach you for the past fifteen minutes.”
    In recent years, pagers, along with laptop computers and Kevlar vests, have all been added to the ordinary police detective’s tools of the trade. There are circumstances in which all of them offer some advantage. As far as I’m concerned, when it comes to pagers, though, the bad far outweighs the good. It’s a real annoyance, especially when I’m in the middle of a complicated witness interview, to have a pager buzzing away in my pocket, telling me that I really need to be talking to someone else. A pager can be almost as obnoxious as the phone company’s little custom-calling gimmick—“Call Waiting.” Call Interrupting is more like it.
    Having been issued a brand-new pager, I do buckle under and wear it, but that doesn’t mean I always keep the infernal thing turned on, especially not in interview situations. I try to be conscientious about turning it back on once I’m through talking to witnesses. In my hurry to leave Johnny Bickford’s place, however, I had completely forgotten to do so.
    â€œWhat’s he want?” I asked.
    â€œSomething about Chip Raymond needing to get in touch with you. He says it’s important. Want me to patch you through to Watty?”
    Not particularly , I thought. Besides, if Chip was trying to reach me, that probably meant someone had turned up who looked like a possible matchwith Mr. Floater John Doe. “Can you put me through to Detective Raymond?”
    â€œNo can do. Watty, yes. Detective Raymond, no.”
    â€œPut me through to Sergeant Watkins, then,” I said. “I might as well get it over with.”
    But when Watty’s voice came through the radio, he didn’t say a word about the pager, not at first. “Detective Raymond wants you to meet him at thirty-three hundred Western ASAP. The name of the company is D.G.I., ‘Designer Genes International.’”
    â€œDo you have a suite number?”
    â€œNo, it’s a brand-new building. According to Chip, the same outfit evidently owns the whole thing.”
    â€œDid you say D.G.I .? I’m assuming that’s not jeans, as in Levi’s?” I asked.
    â€œRight,” Watty replied. “The other kind: G-E-N-E-S, as in DNA. It’s one of those new bioengineering companies. Some kind of cancer