Or at least it was reasonable to assume that they did, Malone thought. He could see how it had worked. One of the Silent Spooks was a lot smaller than a grown man, and the two cops who hadn't seen anyone in the parked car just hadn't been able to catch sight of the undersized driver. Of course, there had been someone in the car when it had been driving along the West Side Highway. Someone who had teleported himself right out of the car when it had gone over the embankment.
That, of course, meant that there would be no secret machines found in the red Cadillacs Leibowitz and Hardin were examining now. But Malone had already decided to let that phase of things go on. First of all, it was always possible that he was wrong, and that some such machine really did exist. Second, even if they didn't find a machine, they might find something else. Almost anything, he thought, might turn up.
And third, it kept Boyd decently busy, and out of Malone's hair.
That had been an easy solution. And, Malone thought, the problem of who had been taking the red Cadillacs looked just as easy now, if his answers were right. And he was reasonably sure of that.
Unfortunately, he was now left with a new and unusual question: How do you catch a teleport?
Malone looked up, jarred to a stop by a man built like a brown bear, with a chunky body and an oval, slightly sloping head and face. He had very short brown hair shot through with gray, and gave Malone a small inquisitive stare and looked away without a word.
Malone mumbled, "Sorry," and looked up at the street sign. He was at 47th Street and Park Avenue. He jerked a hand up to his face, and managed to hook the chunky man by the suit. It fell away, exposing the initials S.M. carefully worked into his shirt. Second Mistake, Malone thought wildly, muttered, "Sorry," again and turned west, feeling fairly grateful to the unfortunate bystander.
He had reminded Malone of one thing. If he wanted to get even a part of his plan past the drawing-board stage, he had to make a call in a hurry.
He found a phone booth in a bar called the Ad Lib, at Madison Avenue. Sternly telling himself that he was stopping there to make a phone call, a business phone call, and not to have a drink, he marched right past the friendly bartender and went into the phone booth, where he made a call to New York Police Commissioner John Henry Fernack.
Fernack's face was that of an old man, but there was no telling how old. The early seventies was one guess, Malone imagined; the late fifties might be another. He looked tough, as if he had spent all of his life trying to persuade other people that he was young enough for the handball tournament. When he saw Malone, his eyebrows lifted slightly, but he didn't say anything.