One Fearful Yellow Eye (23 page)

She stared at me and even with the puffed lids she opened her eyes as wide as I had seen them.

"But, I thought that was where she got the money to... to go on a vacation!"

"Did Saul quarrel much with her?"

"Oh yes. But it..." She stopped and put her hand to her throat. "No! He wouldn't!"

"Let's hope it's a lousy guess."

She said, "I have to get back there! I left Freddy a note. I said I was going.to go off to get Momma and bring her home and not to worry, and be good, and help each other and not fight.

If he... if he..." She could not continue.

"Sit tight, honey. Draw me a map so I can find the place. I am a registered licensed sneak. I'll go check on your clan, gather them up, and haul them back here. You've got more friends on your side than you know what to do with. Me, Heidi, Mrs. Stanyard. And there's always your grandmammy Mrs. Ottlo."

"She doesn't like children very much," Susan explained. "I think they make her nervous."

Heidi spoke from the doorway, startling me. "She's right, you know. When we were little if we got in her way in the kitchen when she was busy, she'd do things that would hurt like fury, like snapping your ear with a fingernail, and giving a little pinch and twisting at the same time. She'd laugh but it was... kind of a mean laugh." She tilted her head and frowned. "I remember once Gretchen showing us her back. She took her blouse off. She must have been about thirteen, and that would make me about four and Roger was probably eight. Anna had thrashed her with a belt. I can remember the marks still, the dark places and the little streaks where it had broken the skin."

"Please hurry," Susan said to me.

ELEVEN

I TOOK Heidi into the outside corridor beyond her red door and said, "Settle her down. Get a sleeping pill into her. I'm not going to go fumbling around in the boonies in the black black night. And I don't think he's going to do any harm to those kids. I've got a hunch they might be there alone, and Saul Gorba may be rocketing south with the loot. The boy is fifteen. He should be able to cope."

"When are you going out?"

"In time to pick a nice observation post and see who gets on the school bus. I'll report by phone.

Like having a sister?"

"I don't know how I feel yet. I like her."

"A staunch one. The kind that knows how to cope. Go in and be family. She needs it."

"Okay." She gave me a nervous smile. I guess it is the smile dentists see when the patient walks in and looks at the chair and the drills and then at the dentist. "I could need it too."

"So cozy each other, Heidi. Everybody has days like this."

The smile turned wry. "That's a little hard to believe."

I had noticed a change in her. The little provocative animal grace of her moments was gone. She had taken to walking like a stick doll. But at the eame time she had stopped saying no. I knew she kept remembering the bargain she had made. But there was a certain little awareness mixed with trepidation. I had the feeling that if I made a sudden movement she would make exactly the same protective gestures Susan had made when we had looked into the room and seen her in the light from the hallway.

I rested my hand on the warm shoulder under the off-white knit and felt her tense up, and saw her throat work in a convulsive swallow.

I leaned and kissed her just to the starboard of the right eye and gave her shoulder a little pat and said, "Walk out there on that stage and give it all you've got, Gwendolyn, and I'll make you a star."

"Oh God, McGee, am I that obvious?"

"It's only terror, honey. No worse than a bad cold."

I drove famished to my hotel, ate hugely and well, and found no messages waiting. It was nine forty-five when I got to the house that Fort built, out at Lake Pointe. Bits of light shone through cracks in the drawn draperies and closed blinds.

Anna called through the door. "Ya? Ya?"

"McGee again, Anna."

I heard the rattle of chain and the chunking of the bolt, and she opened the door part way and said, "Comen in, please sir."

I slid through and she rebolted and rechained the door. She was concealing something in the folds of her dress and when she saw that I was aware of it, she held it out, a big ugly Army issue Colt.45 automatic pistol. She held it clumsily.

"Are you frightened of something?"

"Hear noises, maybe. Herr Doktor's gun."

I took it from her. Full clip, a round in the chamber and the safety on. I put it on the table beside the door.

"How is she? How is the dear little missus?"

"I'll phone from here in a little while and find out. Anna, we have to have a heart-to-heart talk.

And it might make you very unhappy."

She accepted the formality of the situation. She invited me into the kitchen into the booth. She served us coffee and little cakes and eased herself shyly into the booth across from me.

I had to start by saying that I knew Susan had been fathered by Fortner Geis. It distressed her that I should know. She acted as if it was her own guilt, her own shame. She kept telling me how

"goot" the Doktor had been, and what a "bat" girl Gretchen was. Very stupid girl. You have to do your best. Some people are "veak." Gretchen had a veakness for men. Five children, four fathers.

Yes, she said, she had made it a habit to go visit Saul and Gretchen every Sunday. If a daughter tries, it is a duty, nein? They had married officially at her urging. True; Saul Gorba was a criminal, a veak man, but brilliant. A pleasure to talk to. In prison he had studied many things.

Languages. German. He had learned German so quickly. She helped him with his accent, with the idioms. She had the Germanic reverence for the erudite mind. She said she would take along small gifts for the kinder, help Gretchen cook the dinner, mend the clothes of the kinder, of them all a family to make.

Then poof. Shrug. Cast eyes heavenward. What Kcuot is it? They are gone. No message, no word, no Ietter. Like animals of the forest. No consideration. It Is never to try again with such a daughter, you van believe.

Key question. Anna, did you talk about Doctor Geis? Did you talk about Gloria and Heidi and Nager to Saul and Gretchen?

Deep blush, bowed head, contrite little nod. What lit harm to talk? It is her life more with this family than that one, nein? A good man dying slowly, the civar wife trying to hold death back from him by love, his own children hating the wife, it is a sadnoss, and who else to talk to?

Did Saul encourage such talk? Did he ask questions?

Oh yes. Why asking?

And you know of the missing money?

She said with firmness that whatever the Doktor did, it was right. One should trust.

So it was time to pull the pin. "Anna, I am convinced that Saul Gorba used the information he got from you to extort all that money from Dr. Geis."

Much the same effect could have been achieved py cleaving her open from the crown of her head to the brow line.

"Lieber Gott!" she whispered. "Can not be. Can not be! The Doktor would not give to him!"

"I don't think the Doctor knew who he was giving the money to. Someone gave him some little demonstrations. Someone said, in effect, you are dying and you know it. Dying is at best a lonely thing. If you want to hang onto all the money that won't do you any good anyway, you can really
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die alone. I have shown you how easily it can be done. Your grandson, your second wife, Nurse Stanyard, your daughter Heidi, and the daughter you had by Gretchen will all predecease you. I think he made a logical decision. I think he sensed he was dealing with somebody merciless and perhaps a little mad. And I think he was strong enough to make his decision and then not let it bother him. He made sure Heidi got a good settlement from Trumbill. He saved out a single insurance policy for Gloria. Susan was already taken care of."

She mumbled and groaned about the cruelty of it, about how she could not believe it. Then her eyes widened and she said, "Ah! With the money he left. They ran far."

"Not very far. Now I have to ask you if you will take the responsibility for your five grandchildren."

"How do you mean, sir?"

"Gloria told me you plan to go to Florida and stay with your old friend Mrs. Kemmer. Let me see. Her son Karl fathered one of the tribe before he died, didn't he?"

"Freddy. Strong boy."

"Suppose I bring all five of them to you tomorrow and drop them in your lap. Susan's checks haven't been cashed for four months. There's a sizable emergency fund too. They are going to need stability and order. Susan is responsible and mature and devoted to the younger ones.

There'd be money to set up a place here or in Florida. I couldn't promise anything, but I think there might be some financial help from Heidi to make college possible for Susan. Flow about it?"

"But there is Gretchen!"

"I don't think so. It's only a hunch, but I better tell you. I don't want to, believe me. I think she's dead. I think Saul killed her. She disappeared three weeks ago. And Saul has the hots for Susan.

He gave her a very bad time. Gretchen drank. She wasn't smart. She was too friendly. She talked too much."

Anna Ottlo got up with astonishing agility and balled her apron up over her head. It was a gesture I had heard of but never seen. She trotted into a sort of pantry arrangement off the kitchen and I could hear her in there whuffling and snorting and moaning. I ate a little cake. It didn't swallow readily. I washed it down with cooling coffee. She came trudging back, knuckling her eyes like a fat child. She plumped herself down and sighed and shook her head.

"I'm going to go jounce Gorba around some. He's going to get a real good chance to work on his languages if they don't electrocute him. He can pick up Croatian, Tasmanian, and Urdu. He can have a ball. But even with what all those kids have been though, this will shake them badly."

She sighed again. She looked down at her hands, at the palms and then the backs. "All the life,"

she said. "Verk, verk verk. I have the arthritis: I have the high blood. Cook, clean, sew, scrub for children? Six years is the little one. How much more years of that? Nerves make the heart flutter like a bird and the eyes go black. No. I am sorry. After the Iong verk there is rest. I must have.

Susan is eighteen years soon, ya? With those checks I think the judge says she can have the brothers and sister, take care. Maybe the welfare comes and looks sometimes to make sure. She is young. She can do it. I know that one. She would want it. A good lawyer could fix, nein?

Maybe I am selfish old woman. Too bad. Did I ask Gretchen to have five kinder? Life is too hard. Time to sit on the porch now. Rock the chair. Warm in the sunshine. Don't blame, please sir."

"Okay. I don't blame. W C. Fields had a thing about children too."

"Who? Who?"

"Skip it." I looked at my watch. "Want to get on an extension while I find out about Gloria?"

"Oh yes!"

The operator at the hospital had me hold. I had a two-minute wait before Hayes Wyatt in his dusty, reedy voice said, "Mr. McGee?"

"Yes, Doctor."

"Bad news, I'm afraid. Pneumonia. Pulmonary edema, and we can't seem to hit it with antibiotics. Did a tracheostomy. Got her in a tent and a good team doing everything indicated, but we can't seem to make a dent in the fever. Almost a hundred and five, and if we get another three-tenths we're going to pack her in ice. So I haven't the faintest idea how much residual disturbance we've got from the dose she took, and the question may be academic. The first thing is to try to get her through the night. I better get back there, but here's someone who wants to talk to you."

"Travis? Janice Stanyard. I'm on the case with Dr. Wyatt."

"Is she going to make it?"

"If she's tough enough. I wondered how..."

"Everything is just fine. How would you respond to my dumping five kids on you tomorrow for an indefinite stay? Buy you some rollaways. Bedding, chests of drawers, cardboard closets."

"I would love it!"

"Go back to work, woman."

"Yes sir!"

"I'm just checking possibilities. Don't count on the kids for sure."

"All right, but really I would..."

"I believe you. When should I phone back to check?"

"It will go one way or another by dawn, I would guess."

Anna let me out. She was snuffling. She said Mrs. Stanyard was nice lady.

I placed my dawn phone call long-distance, from a red brick Georgian motel just off the
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Interstate west of Peru, Illinois. My heart sank when I was told that Dr. Wyatt had left the hospital. I asked for Janice Stanyard. She came on, her voice blurred and dragging with exhaustion. "She was tough enough, Travis."

"Thank God!"

"She's sleeping now. I'm about to go home and do some of the same. She's going to be very weak. And we don't know about the other yet."

I went out into a bright gray Wednesday world to find that a warm wind was blowing in from somewhere. Maybe all the way up from McGee country. I had driven through inches of sticky snow, but it had all been transformed into busy water, hustling down every slope it could find. I had no idea how early the school bus picked up the kids. I had forgotten to ask Susan. I did know that the coming Friday was the last day before Christmas holidays. And I knew the kids walked out to Depue Road and caught the bus there. The place was marked on the map Susan had drawn for me.

I knew that getting into position was more, important than my morning stomach. It was flat lands, with a few gentle rolls and dips and hollows. It all looked bleak in the overcast morning light. There were some substantial farms, all trimmed and tended, and there were deserted places with tumbled buildings, fencing rusting away, leafless scrub tall in the silent fields, and it made you wonder how this one had made it and that one hadn't.

I parked by a produce stand on Route 26, shuttered and vacant. I was there a little before seven, and I had a forty-minute wait before I saw the yellow bus in my side mirror, coming around the bend. I let it get out of sight before I started up. I hung well back and then picked up speed after it made the turn onto Depue Road. Susan had said their dirt road was a mile from the corner and came in on the right, and I could tell it by the bright red paint on the post that held up the mail-box. There was no name on the mailbox.