Read Hildegarde Withers Makes the Scene for Free Online Page B

don’t think. But we are not here to exchange either compliments or slanders. I’m looking for a girl, and you apparently know where she is. I’ll pay you fifty dollars when you have told me.”
    “Why the hassle? Live and let live, moms. What’s the big thing about finding this chick?”
    “That is no concern of yours. However, I assure you that it’s for her own good. No harm will come to her.”
    “No trouble with the heat?”
    “If you mean the police, certainly not.” Miss Withers, being addicted to the truth, made an unobtrusive King’s-x. “The police would hardly send an elderly lady out to do their business.”
    “Well, this chick rode in here on her Volks and crashed the pad of another chick up on Ozone Court. They knew each other from somewhere, it seems. Anyhow, they had a powwow in the pad one night, and I make the scene. It didn’t take long to see that this Lenore chick offered possibilities to a cat with a little initiative. Probably a teeny bopper who’d split. A runaway with maybe pops back home ready to lay out a little bread to get her back. What’s more, she was faking it. She’d never been turned on. No grass. No acid. No nothing. The only high she ever had she got from folk rock. Oh, she was in tune, all right. She was intellectually sympathetic, I mean, full of peace and love, with a flower for everybody, but she wasn’t a member of the club. I had this feeling that she had a box full of bread, but I couldn’t get a lead on her. Not until I read your bit in the paper and made the connection. Now I’ve got a feeling I’m selling cheap.”
    “Where is the girl now?”
    “She split. Like ten days ago. Went north with her daffodils.”
    “North? Can’t you be more specific?”
    “Do I have to spell it, moms? The town by the Golden Gate. San Francisco. Is there any place else north?”
    Miss Withers felt her heart sink like a stone. It had been a dispiriting and exhausting experience searching a great city for one elusive girl, without any help whatever from the vast network of the metropolitan police, and she wondered if she had the strength or the will to carry the search alone to still another city and renew her contact there with the dim and disturbing subculture of hippiedom. Of course, she needn’t necessarily do so. Even Inspector Oscar Piper would not demand so much. She had done her job, and if she hadn’t been able to learn precisely where Lenore Gregory was, at least she had learned where she wasn’t. Why not let it go at that? Why not, indeed? Miss Withers, if asked, could not have said. All she knew, having sniffed fifty skins’ worth of scent on a trail growing cold, was that she couldn’t and wouldn’t.
    “Did she ever mention her purpose in going to San Francisco?” Miss Withers asked.
    “Well, I wasn’t exactly her guide. I mean, we didn’t huddle up and exchange secrets, or anything like that. But I’ve got big ears. I’ve got this habit of hearing things. She talked to this other chick with the pad about something big that had her flipped, a happening out of the world. Whatever it was, she was heading to make the scene.”
    “Did she mention names?”
    “She dropped one. Carol Hadley. I’ve got this habit of remembering names. You never know when they’ll come in handy.”
    “It’s apparent that you have many habits. Are they all bad? However, I must concede in this instance that your information has, as you put it, come in handy. I don’t suppose you could tell me where to find this Carol Hadley?”
    “Wrong, moms. I can. And if you’ll quit bugging me, I will. She’s doing her bit at SFU.”
    “San Francisco University?”
    “That’s what I said. This Lenore chick was planning to crash her pad for a few days.”
    “Address?”
    He shook his head sharply, whipping his lank hair. “Endsville, moms. I’m turned off. You got my load for fifty skins. Pass me the bread, and I’ll split.”
    “That,” said Miss Withers, “is a most