Hush Money (10 page)

The funny thing was, most of the bottles had prescription labels pasted on, and some of them at least were what they were supposed to be. I mean, a bottle of calamine lotion turned out to be a bottle of calamine lotion. At least it smelled like it and when I shook a pink drop on the back of my hand, it dried right up and it didn't burn a hole. There were powders in addition to the liquids, and pills every color of the rainbow, all in bottles with neat labels on them, complete with Latin words that meant nothing to me and dosage instructions and the names and addresses of drugstores. For about half a second it almost had me fooled into thinking Andy Ford must have been the biggest hypochondriac in history. But then I opened up a phial of powder and licked a little, and even I in my innocence could tell it wasn't talcum.

It sure as hell wouldn't have fooled a narc, I thought, and kids who ride around in vans are supposed to be shaken down by the law at every traffic light. But then I thought of my friendly there-is-no-local-drug-scene sheriff, also his pension program, and I figured maybe Ford wasn't trying to fool anyone at all, that it was just his way of doing business. And mighty convenient out our way, door-to-door service, just bring your own spoon.

Andy Ford, mobile pharmacist. At that he ought to have painted a sign on the outside.

I shut the sliding cabinet door on my wit and almost missed it. Well, it wasn't hard to do given all the stuff on the walls, but there it was right before my nose, or at least the top half of it: a handbill of the kind old ladies pass out on tired streetcorners, and which hit the pavement even before you reach the next trash basket.

! JESUS SAVES !

said the lettering across the top, with the exclamation points at either end. Underneath it was drawn a crude stick figure of the great man on the cross. A quotation from the Book of Revelation ran across his chest.

As art it wasn't much, he didn't even look particularly worried to me, and somebody had torn the handbill diagonally across his thighs. But there was some lettering below the figure and at the bottom left corner in big type: THE SOCI before the tear, and below it MEE and below that what might have been the beginning of an address.

The good old Society of the Fairest Lord, I figured, Meetings every full moon, hymnals furnished, free milk and cookies.

I rummaged around in the debris for the missing part. I even got down on my hands and knees and poked around in the corners behind the driver's seat, between the refrigerator and the wall, thinking never once but twice and expecting maybe a cascade of ! JESUS SAVES ! handbills to come tumbling out along with A. Ford's prescription forms.

Nothing.

And then something. A sound, a quiet little sound, about as insignificant as a Mack truck making its way up Mount Whitney.

I must have been too full of love and prayer to hear them coming, and by the time I saw the headlights they were staring right up my ass. I twisted, stood up, banged my head on the van roof. I heard voices, but it was too bright to see a damn thing. I ducked and lunged and crashed out, screaming like a banshee, and about six of them met me all at once on the way down.

Or maybe there were twenty. Or maybe only one, who had a dozen pairs of arms and a baseball bat in each. One of them clubbed me in the belly and another in the small of the back. Something the size of an L.A. Ram caved in my legs and up between my ears Dizzy Gillespie was blowing “Onward Christian Soldiers” with the Heavenly Choir on the cymbals.

It was no contest. I think I must have been out before I hit the macadam.

9

I came to with the light still in my eyes, only it was the sun. I had a vague recollection of waking up sometime in the middle of the night and hearing the Chink guards bickering like mice. A familiar sound. I was cold, bone cold. The ache in my gut told me I was back home in Camp Number 5, since deep down inside I've always known that's where I'll wake up again some day.

But with the sun already high over the hills, the one fence in sight was the green spiked job which guarded the swimming pool, and the only people I saw stirring outside didn't have slanty eyes, and they were shuffling about on the terraces of Blue Pacific Villas in good old sunny California.

I was scrunched up around the steering wheel of Jack Roland's Dodge Polara. That was where they must have tucked me in. Mighty nice of them. I felt a little stiff in the joints but no more, and for a second there I was thinking I'd dreamt them too. But then I made the mistake of sitting up too fast, and the bugle started blasting again in my skull, and when I raised my hand to my forehead the muscle in my arm felt like the Peter Pain part of the commercials before the Ben-Gay showed up.

At least I was alive, though, and I sat there awhile wondering how that could be when Garcia was already on his way to Quetzalcoatl. When the news got out, if it did, the aztecs up in the barrio would start screaming their heads off about racism again. I told them to calm down, they'd made a hash out of me whereas they'd done a nice clean job on him. If my they and his they were the same they.

Then it occurred to me that one John R. Roland would have long since finished up his Crunchy Twinkies, kissed the Mrs. goodby and stepped out his front door, ready to slip on his ignition and beat his boss to the office for the 365th straight day. Then John R. Roland started screaming in my head, and I couldn't think of a way to shut him up. On the one hand I couldn't exactly drive up to 22 Acacia Drive, toss him his keys and thank him for the test drive. For one thing, I didn't have the keys. But on the other, it wouldn't have done to still be sitting there once the Polara made it onto the law's stolen-car roster.

Before I left, I stumbled over to Garage Number 63 and peeked inside. The mobile pharamacy was gone, naturally. I was tempted to check on Garcia's whereabouts, but from the stare one of the neighbors gave me as she headed up the circle of garages, I figured I'd outstayed my welcome.

So I plugged the Polara back together and drove it as far as the freeway. I parked it under a palm in front of a church. Then I pulled out my rusty thumb, and about a half hour later a northbound newspaper truck took a chance on me, and when he dropped me off I walked the rest of the way from the freeway exit, the exercise keeping my aches and pains down to a dull roar.

My friend in the Firebird was long gone, and when I finally found Acacia Drive there was no law in sight, no John R. Roland tearing his hair, no little Rolands beating the bushes for the missing family treasure. Only my beat-up Mustang, looking as ugly as I must have with her jaw bashed in that way.

I patted her on the snout, fished my keys out from the dashboard ashtray and listened to her grumble. And off we went, trading combat stories.

I went back to the motel. The morning was mostly shot. There were no messages for me, none at all, which was passing strange because all of a sudden I had a lot of people I wanted to talk to. I wasn't particular about the order. Twink Beydon would have done for a starter, and for a change I wanted his report more than he wanted mine. I mean, if he was paying me to get my nose spread all over my face, well, even a blocking back has to eat, but I wanted the plays chalked out on the blackboard with a big X across the guys I was supposed to hit.

Maybe Garcia had felt the same way.

I lay down on the bed, telling him all this in my mind and plenty more. He took it all. He was sitting by the picture window looking out at the channel, behind a big polished wood desk with nothing on it but his elbows. Their portrait was up on the wall behind him. He kept running his hand through his hair, and while I was talking young Karie walked in, not the one in the portrait but the one with the lopped-off hair and the runny nose, and she put her arm around his shoulder and stared at me.

“Now I'm going to lay it all out for you, Cage,” he was saying, “clear as a picture …”

But before he could lay it all out for me, I fell sound asleep.

It wasn't the phone that woke me up, it was my stomach. My watch said two o'clock. I called the motel operator and asked her what time it was. “Why it's two o'clock, sir,” she said cheerily, and I told her to put me onto room service.

I guess that's human gratitude for you. A couple of hours before I'd been happy as a pig in sunshine just to be alive. Now nothing would satisfy me short of a bath and a meal, both hot. I had them with a shave thrown in, also a couple of fingers of Chivas just to keep the ice cubes from making so much noise in the glass. All in all I wasn't feeling as bad as I thought I should be, which goes to show what clean living will do for you, and the only thing missing was something I'd been going without for more days and nights than I cared to count. An idea which led me, oddly enough, to my friend Miss Plager.

I got no answer at the Bay Isle hideaway, ditto at the big house in town. Maybe the help got Friday off. I tried the Wilshire office and the switchboard operator said both Mr. Beydon and Miss Plager were in conference and not to be disturbed, and I told her to cut out the crap, sweetly enough though to keep her from hanging up on me. She checked it out and came back with the news that they were down at Bay Isle. I said if they were they weren't answering the phone. She giggled nervously at that and said maybe I ought to call Pacific Telephone.

I tried Bay Isle again, letting the buzz buzz a few dozen times. I tried the various other numbers I'd used. Zero. I called the operator and let her try Bay Isle for me, and then on a hunch I got Andy Ford's Blue Pacific Villas number from directory assistance and tried it and a recorded announcement told me “This is a recorded announcement, the number you have just called has been disconnected, please check your directory or dial directory assistance,” and then I dialed the campus and got through to Robin Fletcher's dormitory and was told there was no answer up in 708, and then I called my answering service and the biddy's substitute told me there were no messages for me at all. “None whatsoever, Mr. Cage,” said the biddy's substitute.

A tough day for Ma Bell all around.

The one person I did reach, though it took some doing, was Freddy Schwartz. He had his buzz on for the day, and he was all ears. I asked him as casually as I could to run a check for me on the Diehl finances, not just the Diehl Corporation but the brothers as individuals. He wanted to know what was up. I wouldn't tell him, and he accepted it pretty well. I asked him if he knew anything about the dope scene down this way, and he said that was out of his beat but he'd ask around. I also tried on the Society of the Fairest Lord for size. He thought I was pulling his leg. His laugh turned into a cough, and for a minute I thought he was going to have apoplexy right on the phone. “You laughed when you killed Christ too, old buddy,” I told him. Finally he agreed to check that one out too, but as I hung up I could see him shaking his head and motioning to the bartender.

Nobody followed me when I drove out of the motel. My bag was in the back seat and the receipted motel bill in my spiral, and I was heading home, home sweet home. It was spooky, kind of. I mean, for some twenty-four hours there I'd been right in the thick of it, the center of attention you could almost say, and now it was one of those don't-call-us-we'll-call-you situations.

The two stops I did make before I hit the freeway north were a waste of time. I went over to the Bay Isle Club just on a hunch. My stormtrooper at the gate had been replaced by another twice his size and half his age, but just as dumb. He told me there was no one home at Number 11, therefore he couldn't let me across. I said I had reason to believe there was and asked him to call up. He said there was no point calling up because there'd be no answer. I said maybe they were down in the squash court. He thought about that awhile. Then he said his instructions were that the house was closed and he was to let across nobody.

I suppose if I were James Bond I'd have gotten my scuba tank out of the trunk and gone for a swim, but as is I didn't feel like getting my knickers wet.

“What happened to Ingie?” I hollered at him as I started to back up. Something about him made you want to holler.

He didn't seem to know who Ingie was.

“The guy who used to work here,” I shouted.

“Oh him!” he shouted back. “He's on vacation!” and from the grin that spread his ears I got the impression the vacation might be permanent.

I doubled back to the campus. There was still no answer up in 708, and the Fish Net was jammed to the gills with people I didn't know and didn't want to know. Even my Vice Chancellor had left for the weekend.

So I quit.

No Californian in his right mind, they say, would be caught dead on a freeway between four and seven of a Friday afternoon—none that is except a couple of million idiots, and me. The result being that it took the Mustang two and a half hours to make a normal hour's run, two and a half hours of stop-and-go in the smog, the more so because around the airport I had to turn off the air conditioning and open up the windows. The temperature gauge was into the red and going purple, and the Mustang had developed a catarrh I hadn't heard since Aunt Hilda died of pneumonia. As is, I just made it home before the grease monkey I go to closed up shop. He said with his workload and all he couldn't get around to the Mustang for a week, no way, and it cost me double his usual exorbitant rates to squeeze a twenty-four-hour I'll-see-what-I-can-do out of him.

I walked—walked, mind you—to the local gourmet shop and snack bar, and then home, loaded down with enough provisions to feed and water an army of Cages for the weekend, or at least two.

Two was what I had in mind.

I rode up in the elevator, juggled my bundles while I fished for the key, opened my door, turned on the lights and walked in on an uninvited guest.

He was sitting on my white leather couch, a little wimp of a guy, reading one of my
Sports Illustrated
s in the twilight. To judge, he'd been waiting some time, because there was a stack of
Sports Illustrated
s on the coffee table and he'd worked his way back to February. If I were his mother I'd have turned on a reading light for him, but I'd never seen him before. Except maybe in the dark.