The Trail to Buddha's Mirror Read Online Free Page A

harder than it has to be.
    He found the hotel number in the file and dialed the phone.
    “Room ten-sixteen, please,” he said.
    “I’ll transfer you to the operator.”
    He took a sip of coffee.
    “Operator. May I help you?”
    “Room ten-sixteen, please.”
    “Thank you. One moment.”
    It was more than a moment. More like ten moments.
    “What party are you trying to reach, sir?”
    Uh-oh.
    “Dr. Robert Pendleton.”
    “Thank you. One moment.”
    Ten more moments. Long ones.
    “I’m sorry, sir. Dr. Pendleton has checked out.”
    Swell.
    “Uuuhh … when?”
    “This morning, sir.”
    While I was showering, filling my face, and lounging over the spring training reports, Neal thought.
    “Did he leave a forwarding address?”
    “One moment.”
    Did he leave a forwarding address? Your basic desperation effort.
    “I’m sorry, sir. Dr. Pendleton left no forwarding address. Would you like to leave a message in case he calls in?”
    “No, thank you, and thanks for your help.”
    “Have a nice day.”
    “Right.”
    Neal poured another cup of coffee in the time it took to call himself an asshole. All right, think, he told himself. Pendleton’s checked out. Why? Maybe money. Hotels are expensive and he’s found himself a pad somewhere. Or maybe AgriTech kept bugging him, so he changed hotels. Or maybe the party is over and he’s on his way back to Raleigh. That’s the best maybe, but you can’t afford to count on it. So back to work.
    Pendleton isn’t a pro, so chances are he won’t think about covering his traces. He probably doesn’t know that anyone is on his trail. And there’s only one place to pick up his trail.
    Neal hustled to get dressed. He put on a powder blue button-down shirt, khaki slacks, and black loafers, slipped on a red-and-blue rep tie but left the knot open, and dumped half the stuff out of his canvas shoulder bag, leaving enough in to give it some weight. Sticking his airline ticket jacket into the pocket of his all-purpose, guaranteed-not-to-wrinkle blue blazer and shoving a ten-dollar bill in his pants pocket, he hoofed it to the elevator, which seemed to take forever to get there. He figured he was ten minutes away from his only shot at tracking Pendleton and he didn’t know if he had the ten minutes.
    The Holiday Inn was on Kearny Street, a straight shot down California Street from the Hopkins. Normally he would have walked there, but the cable car was pulling up just as he hit the sidewalk, so he bought a ticket and hopped on, hanging on the side like he’d seen in the movies. It was sunny and cool out, but he was already sweating. He was in a race with the maids at the Chinatown Holiday Inn.
    He got off on the corner of Kearny and California, three blocks south of the Holiday Inn. He didn’t run but he didn’t exactly walk, either, and he did the three blocks in about two minutes. Avoiding the doorman’s eyes, he headed straight for the bank of elevators, and there was one waiting for him. He caught his breath on the way up. Or almost caught it. He wanted to look a little breathless for the show.
    The doors slid open and he looked at the sign—1001-1030—with an arrow pointing to the left. He trotted down the hallway and, sure enough, there were two maids’ carts sitting between rooms 1001 and 1012. So, Neal thought, it all depends on where they started.
    He tried to look worried, hassled, and in a hurry. None of this required any serious level of method acting.
    “I’m going to miss my flight,” he said to the maid who was just stepping out of 1012. “Did you find a ticket?”
    She gave him a blank look. She was young and unsure. He stepped around her to 1016 and jiggled the handle. It was locked.
    “Did you find a ticket in this room? Airline ticket?”
    The other maid came out of 1011. “What you lose?”
    She was an older woman. The boss.
    “My plane ticket.”
    “What room?” she asked, checking him out.
    He knew he couldn’t give her time to connect