The Man of Maybe Half-a-Dozen Faces by Ray Vukcevich Page B

awareness of being photographed coupled with his guilt could make him even more dangerous to follow. We’d need to be extra careful.
    But Frank was not here now. We decided to wait and see who else might come out of room 142.
    If anyone else did come out. If she hadn’t already come out while Lulu had been hiding from Frank.
    An hour passed and no one came out of the room. We didn’t think Lulu could handle another glass of white wine, so we left.
    Whoever Frank had met wouldn’t know Lulu nor have any reason to suspect she wasn’t telling the truth when she said, “Whoops, wrong room. Sorry!” It was possible Frank’s squeeze was still in there.
    Lulu walked up to the door of room 142 and knocked. No answer. Knocked again. Nothing. She put her ear to the door. Just silence from the other side. Sleeping? Lulu banged on the door. Listened again. Nothing. We were pretty sure there was no one in there.
    That special someone really had left while Lulu was hiding in the can.
    We’d missed her!
    There was still the back of the building to check. It wasn’t impossible these units had back doors. That would be good to know.
    They didn’t. And if someone had crawled out the back window, she would have had to crawl through a lot of shrubbery. And why would anyone bother?
    We could try to bribe the desk guy. Probably not a good idea. What we could learn was not enough to risk someone telling Frank about us.
    There was nothing to do but go back downtown and see if Frank would do anything else today.
    So, by three that afternoon, Lulu was prowling around outside the police station waiting for Frank to come out and do something his wife could be told about. We bought an Italian soda (vanilla) from a street vendor. We wandered down to the underground garage to make sure his car was still there.
    We sat in the Escort for over an hour.
    We wandered back to the mall and spent some time throwing quarters into the guitar case of a street musician.
    Frank didn’t come out until after five and then he drove straight home.
    Lulu grabbed some dinner at a Thai restaurant in the Market District and then ambled on back to the office.
    Stripped.
    Showered.
    Gargled scotch.
    Brushed my teeth.
    Wandered around the office making painful faces.
    Brushed my teeth again.
    I don’t know why I let Lulu order Thai. Eating the kind she likes is like letting a live wasp go crazy in your mouth. Hours later your tongue still feels like it’s sitting on a bed of nails.
    The blinking pink glow from the TOFU sign across the alley on the Baltimore building taunted me. See? You should have fried up some tofu.
    I was disappointed about not wrapping up the Wallace case, but it wouldn’t do any good to brood about it. I decided to switch gears and spend time with the case of the Graffiti Murders.
    Prudence Deerfield was hot for me to get back into GP Ink. The big guy I’d surprised had been looking for something. Putting those two facts together, I could only conclude there really was something to find there. The police had surely been all over the place, and they probably had gone over it again after I’d bowled over Frank and Marvin, but they may have missed something. I would have to go back, and I might as well do it right now while I still had some momentum going.
    Maybe go as Dieter?
    No, if I let Dieter go, we’d probably stop off in some secret back alley kitchen for midnight menudo. My tongue needed the night off.
    I’d let Dennis do it.
    Dennis was an old disguise. I could put Dennis on in my sleep. Being Dennis reminded me that there would be the GP Ink computers to poke around in! He couldn’t wait to get his hands on them. Who knew what neat stuff they might have squirreled away over the years?
    Curbing his enthusiasm a little, I pushed our disguise down a level by disguising Dennis as a janitor in tan overalls. I looked Dennis over from head to knees in the long mirror on the