But a car or two every night? How many joyrides can one gang take? Malone thought. And how long does it take to get tired of the same prank?
And why, Malone asked himself wearily for what was beginning to feel like the ten thousandth time, why only red Cadillacs?
Burris, he told himself, must have been right all along. The red Cadillacs were only a smoke screen for something else. Perhaps it was the robot car, perhaps not—but whatever it was, Burris' general answer was the only one that made any sense at all.
That should have been a comfort
ing thought, Malone reflected. Somehow, though it wasn't.
After they'd finished with the files and personnel at Sixty-ninth Street, Malone and Boyd started downtown on what turned out to be a sort of unguided tour of the New York Police Department. They spoke to some of the eyewitnesses, and ended up in Centre Street asking a lot of reasonably useless questions in the Motor Vehicle Bureau. In general, they spent nearly six hours on the Affair of the Self-Propelled Cadillac, picking up a whole bundle of facts. Some of the facts they had already known. Some were new, but unhelpful.
Somehow, nobody felt much like going out for a night on the town. Instead, both agents climbed wearily into bed thinking morose and disillusioned thoughts.
And, after that, a week passed. It was filled with ennui.
Only one thing became clear. In spite of the almost identical modus operandi, used in all the car thefts, they were obviously the work of a gang rather than a single person. This required the assumption that there was not one insane man at work, but a crew of them, all identically unbalanced.
"But the jobs are just too scattered to be the work of one man," Malone said. "To steal a car in Connecticut and drive it to the Bronx, and then steal another car in Westfield, New Jersey fifteen minutes later takes more than talent. It takes an outright for-sure magician."