Grist 01 - The Four Last Things (28 page)

Chapter 25

“H
ave you got a gun?” I asked into the phone.

“Does Archie got zits?” he said. “What caliber you want? Twenty-two? Thirty-eight? Automatic? Revolver? Belly-gun? Smith & Wesson? Uzi?”

“You’ve got an Uzi?”

“Nah. I lied about the Uzi.”

“Can you get your uniform?”

“I don’t need no uniform.”

“Why not?”

“White reflects light, don’t you know that? Black absorbs it. Black skin is the cloak of invisibility, least as far as white people are concerned.”

“I’d still rather you wore the uniform.”

He let out an exasperated breath. “Man don’t trust the power of metaphor,” he said.

“What about the truck? Can you get it?”

“Why not? Who else gone want it?”

“Can you get them tonight?”

There was a pause. “Thass a problem,” he said. “The yard’s closed for the night.”

“What time do they open?”

“‘Bout five-thirty in the ayem.”

“Fine. We won’t begin until noon or so. You can pick them up at ten.” I sat there thinking.

“You gone tell me what we doin’?” he said into the silence.

“I’ll explain it when you get here. How long will it take?”

“Well, that depend on where you are, don’t it?”

I told him where I was.

‘They got room service there?”

“Hell,” I said. “They’ve barely got rooms.”

“Order us up a pizza. You’ll see me before you see it. One thing.”

“What?”

“No anchovy on that pizza, or I’m gone.”

He beat the pizza by about two minutes, lugging a six-pack of Mickey’s Big Mouth, and sauntered around the room looking both amused and pleased with himself. “My, my,” he said, “You do live in style, don’t you? One fine domicile after another. Ain’t you afraid of gettin’ soft, pampering youself like this?” In the cramped confines of the Russell Arms he looked even taller than he had at my house. He had to duck his head to pass under the lighting fixture that hung from the center of the ceiling.

“I got a couple of questions,” he said, popping the top from a Mickey’s and handing it to me. “This gone to be dangerous?”

“No more dangerous than Grenada.”

“Good. I slep’ through that. Next question. We the good guys or the bad guys?”

I put my hand over my heart. “Dexter,” I said, “You wound me. Look at this face.”

He grinned. “Thass the pizza,” he said. I hadn’t heard anything. A moment later, someone knocked.

“Jus’ in case,” he said, stepping behind the door.

It was the pizza. The delivery boy, a bent and befuddled octogenarian, was terrified when I closed the door behind him to reveal Dexter looming two feet above his head.

“This hinge is terrible,” Dexter said to himself, examining it. He looked down at the delivery boy. “Oh,
hello
,
”
he said in a British accent. “I’m the doorman. This door needs help. You wouldn’t have any WD-40, would you?”

The delivery boy shook his head helplessly and wobbled backward out of the room. He forgot to give me my change. Dexter opened the box and folded himself somehow so that he could sit on the edge of one of the beds. His knees jutted out at acute angles, reaching almost to his chin. He took a bite of pizza.

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s hear what you proposin’.”

I gave him five or six minutes of background. When I got to Sally he stopped chewing, and when I told him about Merryman and the little girls he put the pizza down. “Riptahls,” he said. “Snakes and ‘phibians.” I told him the rest of it. He shook his head, not looking like anyone I really wanted to know.

“This all got somethin’ to do with those pieces of paper on the wall?”

“Well, yes,” I said with more than a little reluctance. I took down the overhead view and told him what I thought we might do. He listened in absolute silence, except for one brief cackle of laughter. When I’d finished he sat quietly for longer than I would have thought possible, following the floorplan with his eyes. Then he grunted and looked up at me.

“From a purely determinist viewpoint,” he said, “we might not get killed. I ain’t sure I always agreed with ol’ Jerry about determinism, though.”

“Have you got a better idea?” I said. It hadn’t sounded exactly watertight to me either.

“Maybe one or two little improvements,” he said.

It took him two minutes to fix things to the point where I could almost believe the plan would work.

An hour later he was stretched out on top of the other bed, sound asleep. His head was touching the headboard and his bare feet dangled over the end. He hadn’t bothered with the blankets. Other than the boots, he hadn’t undressed. Neither had I. I turned off the light and lay for what seemed like hours, looking up at the ceiling and listening to Dexter breathe. When I eased myself off the bed to go to the bathroom, a hand grasped my wrist. I looked down at Dexter. I hadn’t even heard him move.

“All right,” he said, gazing up at me. When I came back a minute later he was asleep again. A few minutes later, so was I.

The phone rang from very far off, at the end of a long, narrow, dark corridor. I had to navigate the corridor to get to it, but it kept receding in front of me like the shimmer of a mirage. When I finally caught it and picked it up, the handset turned into a snake. I woke up.

The phone was ringing, and Dexter was lying on his side with his eyes wide open. “Hard man to wake up,” he said.

“Nobody knows this number,” I said. “Nobody but Eleanor.” I picked it up and said hello.

It wasn’t Eleanor.

“Simeon,” a familiar voice said. “How nice to know you’re in the neighborhood.”

“Who is this?”

“Please. You disappoint me. Simeon, it’s Dick.”

IV - Hell

Chapter 26

I
signaled to Dexter, but he’d already gotten up without looking at me and started to pull on his socks.

“Hi, Dick,” I said, fighting a wave of blind terror. “What’s up?”

“Well, I’ve been having the most fascinating chat with your Miss Chan,” he said. “She has a genuinely amusing idea. She wants to make a mini-series based on the Church. Think of it, Simeon. We’ll all be famous.”

Dexter was tucking in his shirt. He hadn’t made a sound.

“How’d you get her?” I said.

“We just bumped into her last night in the parking lot of the
Times
. Coincidence of the sheerest sort. Well, I hadn’t actually had the pleasure of meeting her, although all sorts of other people had, so naturally we brought her over here.”

“Last night.” I felt like I’d been kicked in the stomach.

“Oh, we’ve had hours. It’s been very entertaining. I must say, though, it took some persuasion to get her to tell us your new phone number. You move around so. Still, I suppose if people can walk in and out of your house with ease, it’s a good idea to take up temporary residence elsewhere. And, of course, it’s given me an opportunity to get to know Miss Chan.”

“She’s a little old for you, isn’t she, Dick?” I said. Dexter had pulled on one boot.

“Now,” he said, “that’s no attitude to take. I find her delightful. Even attractive in an exotic sort of way. Her skin is so much smoother than you’d expect in a woman her age. Perhaps I should have discovered Oriental women earlier.”

“If you’ve hurt her I’ll kill you,” I said.

“I don’t think you’ll get the chance,” he said lightly. “Listen, Simeon, it really is convenient, your being in the neighborhood. This mini-series idea is intriguing, but there are a few details I’d like to discuss with you before we give you exclusive rights.”

With both his boots on and laced, Dexter was straightening the bed and gathering up everything he’d brought. He hadn’t met my eyes since I picked up the phone.

“What I’d like you to do,” Merryman said, “is come straight over here, on foot, alone, without calling anybody first. And to make sure you don’t, I’ve sent someone to walk with you. In fact, he’s there already.”

I looked helplessly up at Dexter. He picked up the automatic he’d brought and glanced down at me carelessly. It was the first time he’d looked at me. Then he examined the room to make sure he hadn’t forgotten anything.

“At the sound of the tone,” Merryman said, “it will be eight o’clock.”

Someone knocked on the door.

Dexter ripped the floor plans off the wall and stepped into the closet, closing the door after him. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

I went to the door and opened it, and found myself looking at Needle-nose.

“Hi, I’m Barry,” he said in a toneless voice. “I’ll be your flight attendant this morning. Dick told me to say that. Would you like to get your shoes?” He looked incuriously around the room. “What a shithole,” he said.

I put my shoes on while he went over and picked up the phone. “I’ve got him,” he said. He listened for a second and then hung up. “Aren’t we going to have fun?” he said.

I pulled on my jacket.

“Turn around,” Barry said, “and put your hands against the wall. Higher.” He patted me down professionally and removed the automatic from the jacket pocket. “Naughty, naughty,” he said reprovingly. “Anything else?”

“No,” I said. He’d missed the pimp’s knife, which I’d shoved into the jacket lining just behind the base of the zipper. It banged against my stomach as we walked toward the door. He opened it and motioned me through. “Say good-bye,” he said.

“Good-bye,” I said obediently. “This certainly messes up my timing.” I hoped Dexter could hear me through the closet door.

“It doesn’t matter,” Barry said, closing the door. “It doesn’t matter at all.”

We went down in the elevator in silence.

“Now, you’re not going to give me any trouble,” he said as we stepped into the bright, warm morning, “because of your pretty little Chink girl. I don’t have to hold a gun on you or nothing. Just think about her and walk a nice straight line. You know where the hotel is.”

“Attention to detail is essential to success,” I said as we shouldered our way into the foot traffic on the sidewalk.

“Say again?” he said.

“One of my mother’s maxims,” I said. “She’s a fool for detail.”

“Isn’t she going to be sorry to hear about you?” he said.

I supposed she probably would be. Anyway, it wasn’t the kind of remark that invites a rejoinder.

“My friend’s in the hospital,” Barry said from behind me. “He’s got bad burns. I wonder how you’re going to like bad burns.”

“I don’t think it’s something one looks forward to,” I said. “What slum of the spirit did they find you in?”

“I found them,” he said. “Just like I found you.”

We crossed the square. Most of the homeless were still asleep beneath their washing-machine boxes. I hadn’t known so many washing machines were sold in Los Angeles. The people on the sidewalks all looked normal and safe, on their way to enviably boring jobs. No one caught my eye. I guessed I didn’t look like someone who was on his way to die.

The Borzoi lobby yawned dingy and empty. We went straight to the elevator and up to the floor marked executive offices. Barry stood very close behind me, using the privacy to indulge himself in the luxury of poking a gun, probably my gun, into my back. That was the second gun I’d had taken from me.

“God, I’d love to puncture your kidneys,” he said as the doors opened. “Second door on the right.”

The door said DR. MERRYMAN. I pushed it open.

“Simeon,” Merryman said, “nice of you to come. I know it’s early.” He was wearing a turquoise shirt this time, and pale yellow slacks. “And look,” he said, smiling. “Here’s a friend of yours.”

I turned, looking for Eleanor, and saw Meredith Brooks.

Chapter 27

B
rooks looked like he hadn’t slept in days. He had on the same clothes he’d worn the night before, and his hair was rumpled and his mouth drawn into a line of disgust as though he suspected his tongue was contagious. For what was probably the first time in forty years, he hadn’t shaved. He seemed to regard Merryman with almost superstitious dread.

“Where is she?” I said.

“Where she’ll keep,” Merryman said. “Don’t worry, Simeon, you’ll see her soon enough.” He glanced at Needle-nose and said, “Shut the door, Barry,” in the tone of a man who had given a lot of orders in his life. Barry shut the door. “You’ve met, I believe,” he said to me.

“Only recently,” I said. “But I’ve admired his work for some time.”

“Barry has his uses,” Merryman said as though he and I were alone in the room. “He’s a genuine textbook sadist, rarer than you’d think. It’s always a pleasure to work with someone who enjoys what he does.”

“There’s nothing like cheap labor.”

Merryman flashed his teeth at me. “Won’t you sit down?”

“I thought you’d never ask.”

I sat down in a heavy metal chair. Merryman seated himself behind his desk, every inch the professional man despite the vivid color of his shirt. Brooks and Barry remained standing. On Merryman’s desk were the congealed remains of a dinner and two breakfasts. The meeting had clearly been going on for some time, but Merryman looked like he’d had twelve hours’ sleep, followed by two sets of tennis and a sauna. He gave me an anticipatory smile and then glanced over my shoulder.

“For Christ’s sake, Meredith, stop hovering like that,” he said sharply. “Sit down and don’t fidget. Brooks has been having pangs of conscience,” he said to me.

“That must be a new experience,” I said.

“Yes. He’s quite unprepared for it. It’s sweeping through him as measles did with the Indians. After a life of more or less perpetual professional betrayal during which he never developed so much as a night sweat, his immune system has suddenly sprung to life, and the result is the shivering, shambling wreck you see sitting there. Of course,” he added confidingly, “he’d never really made plans to betray
me
before.”

I didn’t say anything.

“Although we must remember that we haven’t firmly established that he did. This isn’t a court of law, and if it were, Meredith would be more at home in it than any of us, wouldn’t he?” He smiled again.

“Do you want an answer?” I said.

“I have a number of grievances with you, Simeon,” Merryman said, letting the smile slip a notch or two, “not the least of which is that you tried to divide Meredith and me. We’ve had our little problems, I won’t deny that. We’re not naturally congenial with one another, any more than you and I are, although heaven knows I’ve been pleasant enough to you. But Meredith and I, in spite of the occasional friction between us, complement each other. We built this operation together. He’s a brilliant man of business. I’m a brilliant stage manager. Together we give the people what they want and persuade the people to give us what we want. And we take what they’ve given us and together we build with it. What’s wrong with that?”

“I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“Don’t bother.” He winked brightly at Barry. “You’ll be talking soon enough.”

“He offered me a million dollars,” I said.

Merryman’s eyes flicked to Brooks. “He did? That’s not quite the way he tells it.”

“This man came to my house—” Brooks began.

“He called me,” I interrupted. “Told me he didn’t want to see me at the office. Said he knew I’d been working on Sally’s death and he wanted to know if I’d found out what she had on you.”

Brooks sputtered. “Dick,” he said, “this is—”

Merryman held up a hand. “Go on, Simeon,” he said.

“Well, I
had
been working on it. I kept working on it even after you phoned to warn me off. I knew there was money in it but I didn’t know how to use what I’d learned. I was going to come to you to see what it was worth, but then Brooks called and offered me a million on a platter. He invited me over, introduced me to Adelaide—nice lady, by the way …”

“Is she,” Merryman said equably, resting his chin on his hand. “I haven’t had the pleasure.”

“And he asked me what I had. I asked him what it was worth, and he said it was worth a million, cash, if it was something that would allow him to control you absolutely, keep you working for him, but deprive you of whatever power you had in the Church. I said that what I had would do all of that and more, and told him what it was, and we arranged to meet at five this evening for the payoff.”

“Isn’t that interesting?” Merryman said conversationally. “We hadn’t learned that it had gone quite that far.”

“It hadn’t,” Brooks said. His face was filmed with sweat. “He barged in with some cock-and-bull story about dentists and Utica—”

Merryman’s gaze flattened and grew opaque. He looked straight at Brooks. “That’s enough, Meredith,” he said. “It’s certainly provocative, isn’t it, that you didn’t call us after your visit with Simeon last night. If we hadn’t had the courtesy to call
you
to tell you our news about Miss Chan, we probably still wouldn’t know all that Simeon knows about dentists and Utica, would we?” He arched his eyebrows and smiled inquiringly. “And it’s such fascinating information.”

“The Fox sisters,” I said. “When you first fell into the Church it must have felt like old home week.”

“Meredith doesn’t know anything about the Fox sisters,” Merryman said. “I’m amazed you do.”

Brooks slumped further down in his chair, studying one of his cuff buttons.

“Of course, Simeon,” Merryman continued in the same chatty tone, “I realize, and I’m sure that Meredith here does too, that you’re just continuing in your effort to divide us. I certainly have no intention of taking seriously anything you’ve just said. For one thing, I’m positive that Brooks doesn’t have a million dollars anywhere that he could have given to you without my knowing it. Do you, Meredith? That isn’t the way our bookkeeping works, is it?”

“Of course not,” Brooks said faintly.

“You see, Simeon?” Merryman said, shrugging his shoulders. “With a discrepancy like that, how could I take you seriously? The idea that Meredith keeps two sets of books is too absurd to contemplate. Good Lord. I’ve known the man for eight years.”

“Would you miss a hundred thousand?” I said. Brooks shifted nervously in his chair. Merryman put one hand on top of the other, very much the listening doctor.

“You have my attention,” he said.

“I’m sure it’s all there, of course, right out on the books where it should be. One hundred thousand dollars for delivery of Sally Oldfield.”

Merryman looked at Brooks but directed the question to me. “Paid to whom?”

“Hubert Wilburforce.” I tried to sound surprised. “You mean you didn’t know how Brooks got hold of Sally?”

“No,” Merryman said. “I’m embarrassed to say that I didn’t. A hundred thousand dollars, Meredith. How much is that per pound? She didn’t look like a very big girl. And paid to good old Hubert, too. I must call Hubert one of these days.”

He regarded Brooks for a long moment and then sighed. “Well,” he said, “it seems my partner hasn’t been completely candid this morning. Especially where the books are concerned. We’ll have to look into that. Not for a moment, of course, do I believe that Brooks is really a threat to me,” he went on almost dreamily. “He’s got ink in his veins, foolscap for skin. He’s a paper man. Aren’t you, Meredith?”

Brooks made a little dry noise that might have been assent.

“But since he hasn’t been completely candid, and since I need to know everything you know, Simeon, I’m going to have to ask you a few questions. Then you can go join Miss Chan while we debate the matter of your reward. Stand up.”

I looked around me. Barry was standing directly behind my chair. Brooks was still seated, staring fixedly at the floor. He looked old.

“Have you searched him, Barry?”

“I found a gun,” Barry said, displaying it.

“Listen to my question, Barry,” Merryman said, as though he were speaking to a child. “Have you searched him? Pocket by pocket?”

Barry hesitated.

“No, he didn’t,” I said.

Merryman smiled up at me, all white teeth and dark skin. “I appreciate the impulse to get Barry into trouble, Simeon, but you’ll learn it’s counterproductive in the long run. What you want is for Barry to like you, to have a teeny smattering of regret that he has to practice his craft on you.”

“I think it’s a little late for that,” I said.

“You’re probably right.” Merryman suddenly sounded impatient. “Search him.”

Barry patted me down again, then went through one pocket after another. He pulled out everything I’d stashed away the night before: my money, my car keys, my address book, my wallet, a comb, a little travel bottle of after-shave, and two handkerchiefs. I’m not in the habit of carrying a comb, but I thought it would make the after-shave look a little less odd, just in case someone should get a chance to look in my pockets. Barry lined the items up on Merryman’s desk. Merryman examined them in turn, pausing to flip through the address book, then picked up the handkerchiefs.

“Is our nose running?” he asked in the first-person plural of medical people all over the world.

“I don’t know about yours,” I said, “but mine is.” I picked up the handkerchiefs and put them back in my pocket.

“We’ll keep these for the moment,” he said, pocketing the keys, “and I’ll want a closer look at this.” The address book followed the keys. He opened the after-shave, sniffed it, and handed it back to me. “A bit heavy for my taste,” he said. “I prefer real lime.”

“So do I,” I said, “but who can afford it?”

“Now, Simeon,” Merryman said as though I hadn’t spoken. “I need to know absolutely everything you’ve found out, figured out, intuited, guessed, whatever. The complete dossier, anything that might help us to evaluate how much your silence is worth to us. You can think of it as a Listening session if you like, except that we haven’t got the time to do it absolutely properly, so we’re going to have to accelerate the process. Sit down again.”

I sat. Barry passed a belt around my lap, threaded it through the rungs of the chair, and pulled it tight. Then he took my left hand, pulled one of the handkerchiefs from my pocket, and twisted it around my wrist. He knotted the handkerchief through the belt.

“Didn’t bring your tools?” I asked. My voice wasn’t very steady.

“He doesn’t need tools,” Merryman said comfortably. “He’s very ingenious.”

Barry took hold of my right hand and turned it palm down. He held it in a surprisingly strong grasp while he reached over to the nearer of the two breakfast plates and picked up a fork. Then he slipped one of the tines of the fork under the nail on my index finger and shoved it in.

I screamed for what seemed like a very long time. I kicked the chair backward and scuttled like a crab until I cracked its back against the wall. Then I kept scuttling, going nowhere but away from Barry, screaming until my throat felt like rags. Barry leaned against Merryman’s desk and watched me with total absorption, turning the fork over and over in his hand. His mouth was open.

When I’d finished screaming and was leaning forward in the chair, fighting down an urge to retch, Merryman held up both of his beautifully shaped hands, fingers spread wide. “Ten,” he said. He curled his right index finger. “You’ve got nine to go. Then, if you want to experience really exquisite pain, Barry can go back to the one he just did. You have absolutely no idea what it feels like a second time.” He turned to Barry with an indulgent expression.

“ Would you like to do another one?” he asked.

Barry nodded and got up. I was screaming before he took a step, twisting against the bonds of the chair. Merryman leaned forward and placed a restraining hand on Barry’s arm.

“Later,” he said. “I think Simeon’s ready to talk to me now. Is that right, Simeon?”

I managed a nod.

“Nothing to be ashamed of,” he said. “All those stories about people resisting torture are nonsense. No one can stand up to the prospect of real pain once they’ve felt it. That’s why we started the conversation with a little attention-getter. So I wouldn’t have to waste time asking you the same question twice.

“Wait outside,” he said to Barry. “I’ll call you if I need you.” He turned to Brooks, who was looking ashen. “I think I’d like you outside too, Meredith. Just to create an atmosphere of perfect candor. Do you mind?” He might have been offering him a ride home. Brooks waved off the question with one heavy hand and stood up, with some difficulty, to follow Barry out of the room.

“I should be afraid of
him
?” Merryman said to me as the door closed. It had been loud enough for Brooks to hear. “Hardly. He has the narrowest comfort zone of any human being I’ve ever met, including other lawyers. The slightest change in the status quo turns him to milk. That’s one reason he’s good in business. Very conservative, very steady. With all the cash we have to deal with, an impulsive man would be disaster. Still, I’ll have to look into those books.” He crossed his arms across his chest and regarded me in a friendly fashion from across the room. “All right, Simeon, tell me. If anything strikes me as false or incomplete, or if you fail to answer any of my questions in a forthright manner, I’ll call Barry back in. Once he’s in the room, I won’t stop him no matter what you say, so don’t make me call him. Have I made myself clear?”

“Yes.”

He reached up and smoothed his hair. “Start at the beginning, if you don’t mind.”

I did. I told him about Harker, about the assignment to tail Sally, about Sally’s murder and the fact that I’d seen Barry on the scene. I explained about the real Ambrose Harker and about Skippy Miller being my only link to the man who’d hired me.

“Why didn’t you just wash your hands of it and go to the police?” he asked. He hadn’t taken his eyes off me since I’d started talking. “A girl is murdered virtually under your nose and you don’t go to the police?”