The Assassin (Badge of Honor 5)

"If you can find him, you can talk to him. I don't know where he is. Nobody is here but me and the plumbers."

"I'll try him later, Mrs. Lanza, thank you."

"You see him, you tell him he's got to come home and talk to these plumbers."

"I'll do that, Mrs. Lanza," Sanders said, and hung up.

He walked back to the bar.

"His mother doesn't know where he is. She's all alone with the plumbers."

Hansen nodded, and took a small sip of his beer.

"Is there anything on the TV?" he called to the bartender.

"What do you want?"

"Anything but the soap opera. I have enough trouble with my own love life; I don't have to watch somebody else's trouble."

The bartender started flipping through the channels.

****

At five minutes to twelve, Marion Claude Wheatley left his office in the First Pennsylvania Bank amp; Trust Company, rode down in the elevator, and walked north on South Broad Street to the City Hall, and then east on Market Street toward the Delaware River.

He returned to the Super Drugstore on the corner of 1lth Street where he had previously purchased theSouvenir of Asbury Park, N.J. AWOL bag, and bought two more of them, anotherSouvenir of Asbury Park, N.J. and one with the same fish jumping out of the waves, but markedSouvenir of Panama City Beach, Fla. He thought it would be interesting to know just how many different places were stamped on AWOL bags the Super Drugstore had in the back room.

And then he thought that Super Drugstore was really a misnomer. There was a place where one presumably could have a prescription filled, way in the back of the place, and there were rows of patent medicines, but he would have guessed that at least eighty percent of the available space in the Super Drugstore was given over to nonpharmaceutical items.

It was more of a Woolworth's Five and Dime, he thought, than a Super Drugstore. They really should not be allowed to call it a drugstore; it was deceptive, if not downright dishonest.

He had almost reached the entrance when he saw a display of flashlight batteries, under a flamboyantSALE! sign. He knew all that meant, of course, was that the items were available for sale, not on sale at a reduced price. But he headed for the display anyway, and saw that he was wrong.

The Eveready Battery Corporation, as opposed to the Super Drugstore itself, was having a promotional sale. He could tell that, because there were point-of-purchase promotional materials from Eveready, reading "As Advertised On TV!"

The philosophy behind the promotion, rather clever, he thought, wasAre you sureyour batteries are fresh? Be Sure With Eveready! "

This was tied in, Marion noticed, with a pricing policy that reduced the individual price of batteries in a sliding scale tied to how many total batteries one bought.

This triggered another thought. Certainly, there would be nothing suspicious if he acted as if he were someone taken in by Eveready's advertising and bought all the batteries he was going to need.

And then he had a sudden, entirely pleasing insight. There was more to his having come across this display than mere happenstance. The Lord had arranged for him to pass by this display. He had, of course, planned toBe Sure his batteries were fresh. But he had planned to buy four batteries here, and four batteries there, not all twentyfour at once.

The Lord had made it possible for him to buy everything he needed toBe Sure With Eveready at one place, and in such a manner that no one would wonder what he was doing with all those batteries.

He paid for the batteries, and then put them in theSouvenir of Asbury Park, N. J. AWOL bag, and then folded that and put it in theSouvenir of Panama City Beach, Fla. AWOL bag, and then asked the girl at the cashier's counter for a bag to put everything in.

He didn't want to walk back to the office, much less into the office, carrying a bag withSouvenir of Panama City Beach, Fla. painted on it.

When he got back to the office, he got out the telephone book, and a map of Philadelphia, and carefully marked on the map the location of all hardware stores that could reasonably be expected to sell chain, which were located within a reasonable walking distance of the house.

He would, he decided, hurry home after work, leave the lunch-time purchases just inside the door, and see how much chain he could acquire before he really got hungry, and the headaches would come back, and he would have to eat.

****

At twenty-five minutes past one o'clock, Mrs. Antoinette Marie Wolinski Schermer telephoned to Mr. Ricco Baltazari at the Ristorante Alfredo and informed him that Corporal Vito Lanza had just left her apartment.

"Jesus Christ! I told you to keep him there!"