The staked Goat

disappoint—”
    ”Listen, I really think we should talk.”
    ”I don’t know—”
    ”Today.”
    ”I’m afraid I’m pretty well jammed for—”
    ”Two hours. In front of your house. I’ll be in a yellow Ford station wagon.”
    ”I’m afraid that’s—”
    ”Perfect for you? Excellent. See you then.” I hung up and walked over to an army/navy surplus store, keeping my back to his building and watching his door in the store’s reflecting plate glass window.
    The next five minutes must have been bad ones for him. A few notches up from an annoying consumer complaint lodged with the Real Estate Board. I was dead sure he had a stash of contingent money and identification somewhere. Maybe at home, or in a safety deposit box, or with an attorney. Perhaps some fail-safe combination of all three. My gas-guzzling dinosaur was the ace in the hole there: no matter where he ran, its engine was big enough to catch his car and its body heavy enough to force him off the road.
    I had just moved my window watching from the surplus store to a video shop when my man slipped casually out the front door, an attaché case swinging lightly at his side. He smiled and waved to a couple of people as he made his way up the sidewalk. As he crossed the street to my side, I checked my watch and strolled over to the Pontiac. When he got a block ahead, I started up and slid into the stop-and-go traffic, slowly trailing him.
    There have been lectures given and volumes written about methods of following subjects. Two-operative, three-operative, street-zigzag, vehicle-parallel, etc. If you’re alone, you can follow almost anyone for a short time without help. However, you can follow almost no one, even a complete boob, for a long time without a lot of good, and not a speck of bad, luck. I wanted my man to be unaware of me only until he had cleaned out his hidey-hole. After that, I wouldn’t need to follow him anymore.
    He weaved leisurely through the sidewalk throngs, still nodding and waving like a candidate on the stump. The flow of traffic cooperated nicely; only once did I nearly pull even with him.
    About two and a half blocks down, he turned into a bank’s main doorway. I checked around for cops, then eased over into a yellow loading zone. I waited. And worried.
    Probability said he was going into the bank to take a huge chunk of cash from a safety deposit box. Possibility said I had caught him just before a scheduled real estate closing at the lender’s, and he was merely intending to collect his six percent check. Nightmare said he was cleaning out his cache but would smilingly prevail on the security guard to let him out a back entrance.
    I sweated for about seven minutes. Then he emerged from the bank. A bit quick for a closing to have concluded, and the attach6 case seemed to swing a good deal less lightly at his side.
    I put the Pontiac in gear. I pulled into the bank driveway just as he was drawing even with the sidewalk.
    ”Mr. Belker,” I called in an artificial, Southwestern twang. ”Yo, Mr. Belker.”
    He turned, looked at me impatiently and turned back to continue on his way.
    I called a bit louder. ”Yo, I do have that name right, don’t I? It is Clay Belker, from Vietnam, isn’t it?”
    He froze and looked around. He didn’t think anybody had heard me either time, but he was afraid my next decibel level might call attention to us.
    I expect he decided then and there he’d be having to kill me.
    He turned toward me again, smiling and giving his little wave. He walked up to the driver’s side window, unbuttoning his coat and glancing into the empty back seat. He leaned down a little. ”I’m sorry,” he said pleasantly, ”but I’m afraid you have the better of me.
    I smiled back. I said, softly but in my normal voice, ”Get in the car, Sergeant Crowley.”
    ”I don’t know—”
    ”If I intended to turn you over to the authorities, I wouldn’t have forewarned you. I’m talking private deal here. Now get in the car.”
    ”But I have to get some papers back to my—”
    ”I have a feeling those papers will figure prominently in our negotiations. Now get in.”
    The wheels must have been spinning furiously in his crew-cut brain. There were two alternatives.
    One, I was working for the authorities, who had staked me out to lure him in. If so, they were probably within sight and/or sound and could thwart any attempt by him to run. If I were with the authorities, he couldn’t risk reaching into his