That should have been a comforting thought, Malone reflected. Somehow, though it wasn't.
After they'd finished with the files and personnel at Sixty-ninth Street, Malone and Boyd started downtown on what turned out to be a sort of unguided tour of the New York Police Department. They spoke to some of the eyewitnesses, and ended up in Centre Street asking a lot of reasonably useless questions in the Motor Vehicle Bureau. In general, they spent nearly six hours on the Affair of the Self-Propelled Cadillac, picking up a whole bundle of facts. Some of the facts they had already known. Some were new, but unhelpful.
Somehow, nobody felt much like going out for a night on the town. Instead, both agents climbed wearily into bed thinking morose and disillusioned thoughts.
And, after that, a week passed. It was filled with ennui.
Only one thing became clear. In spite of the almost identical _modus operandi_, used in all the car thefts, they were obviously the work of a gang rather than a single person. This required the assumption that there was not one insane man at work, but a crew of them, all identically unbalanced.
"But the jobs are just too scattered to be the work of one man," Malone said. "To steal a car in Connecticut and drive it to the Bronx, and then steal another car in Westfield, New Jersey fifteen minutes later takes more than talent. It takes an outright for-sure magician."
This conclusion, while interesting, was not really helpful. The fact was that Malone needed more clues--or, anyhow, more facts--before he could do anything at all. And there just weren't any new facts around. He spent the week wandering morosely from one place to another, sometimes accompanied by Thomas Boyd and sometimes all alone. Time, he knew, was ticking by at its usual rate. But there wasn't a thing he could do about it.
He did try to relax and have some fun, as Burris had suggested. But he didn't seem to be able to get his mind off the case.
Boyd, after the first little while, had no such trouble. He entered the social life of the city with a whoop of joy and disappeared from sight. That was fine for Boyd, Malone reflected, but it did leave Malone himself just a little bit at loose ends.