"We needed the cars," he said doggedly. "We had to keep them for an emergency, you see. That's all that counted. In case there was a fire or a burglary, the cars had to be here."
"Don't explain. Please, do I get a car? I'll be careful. I could write out a check, leave a deposit—" She had almost said five hundred dollars. "A hundred dollars?"
"Don't have to." Like a man in a slow-motion movie he hauled a memo pad across the desk, hoisted a pen from his uniform coat pocket. He wrote painfully. "Give this to Mr. Cioni—you know where the cars are? Across the street? All right. How far do you have to go?"
She threw up her hands. "Who knows? Always before it was seventeen miles. Now we have to go around and around—who knows?" There was an edge to her voice.
"Tell him I said to give you a half a tank of gas."
"Thank you," said Mrs. Goudeket.
Across the street, three trucks and four pleasure cars, one of them with the tires flat. The motor pool. A civilian in charge, and in the back a national guardsman with a gun.
The man in charge of the motor pool studied the note with a flashlight whose beam was fading to orange. He looked at her doubtfully. "You going to drive it?"
"Don't worry, mister," she snapped. "Do you want to see my license?"
"Me? Nah." He pottered over to a '47 Dodge sedan and copied the plate number on the chief's note. "Give me your address, lady?"