The Erection Set (22 page)

“That's right. The explosion was against the wall where the safe was.”

“Anything worth stealing?”

He gave me another one of those vague shrugs. “Depends on how badly you need four hundred dollars in petty cash and a lot of old papers. Used to be that old safe was never even locked. For a while we used it for storage. The only reason it was there was because the lab was part of the original office before Cam built the new wing. Any cash or other valuables were in the vault over there.”

“And Cousin Al was in the clear again.”

“I take it you don't like that boy.”

“He's a meathead.”

“You can say that again,” Cramer agreed. “Yeah, he was clear. He was with Dennison all night. Anyway, I shouldn't've shot my mouth off. That car could have belonged to anyone. It wasn't like his big Caddie or that little foreign job he generally drove. Couple of guys at the plant even had one like it.”

“But you still think it was his,” I stated.

“Son, when an old man gets an idea stuck in his head it's pretty hard to dislodge, even if it's wrong. Age is funny that way.”

“Sure.”

“Incidentally, mind telling me why you're so interested in ancient history?”

“Curiosity,” I said.

“It killed the cat.”

“If you were right, it could kill Alfred boy too.”

“And you'd like that?”

“Why not? He tried to kill me once.”

Sharon put her glass down and looked over at me. “You must be aging too. You won't let ideas get away either.”

Stanley Cramer let out a big smile and scratched his head again. “If I were you, I'd get ideas about the pretty little lady here and let the past stay buried.”

“You may be right,” I told him. “Let's go, pretty little lady.”

 

It was old and musty, animals from the field had left their litter around and nested in the stuffing from some of the chairs. Moonlight through the cracked windows ran down the silky strands of cobwebs, giving the place a fuzzy appearance.

She had asked to see it again, and this time she wanted to go in. A pair of old hurricane lamps she dug out of a cabinet were the only light, the glow soft and feeble, but enough to reflect the wetness under her eyes as she touched pieces of tattered furniture.

Her old house was too far away from town to have been vandalized by kids or used by tramps, too remote and weed hidden to be a sex pad for lovers. Twice a bat flapped past and little scratching noises came from the woodwork.

“We always had mice,” she said. “I wouldn't let Dad trap them. He didn't know it, but I used to leave scraps of food on the floor in the kitchen so they could eat.”

I let her talk, listening to her ramble on about days in pigtails and pinafores or her father pulling her along on a sled. Finally she stopped at the foot of the stairs, hesitated a moment, then started up. There were three rooms at the top. The door to the smallest one was open and a foot-treadle sewing machine and a spindleback chair were waiting for another seamstress.

Sharon opened the middle door, the lamp outstretched in her hand. “My father and mother's room,” she said. I edged up close to her and looked inside. Wind and rain from a broken pane had discolored the mattress and blown the covers across the room. The veneer tops of both dressers had warped off, the mirrors discolored, barely reflecting our images.

She closed the door gently and went to the last one on the end. It didn't open at first, then I twisted the knob, put my shoulder against the edge of it and leaned inward. It creaked open, then stuck halfway and we had to slip in one at a time.

The window was intact, and with the door wedged so tightly shut little dirt had had a chance to collect. A quilted spread still covered the bed, a few empty makeup jars and a stack of movie magazines were on one end of the bureau, a rocker leaned quietly in a corner next to an old rolltop desk and a pair of shoes were on the closet floor under a few items of outgrown clothing. She had pasted up all her hero pictures, snipped from papers and books, interspersing them with school photos and pennants stenciled with the trademarks of various vacation spots.

“And you lived here,” I stated.

Sharon walked over and put the lamp down on the dresser. “My own little sanctuary. I loved this room.”

“You never really closed down the house, did you?”

“I couldn't. I just took what I needed and walked away. I never thought I'd come back here. Too many memories, Dog. I started out fresh.”

“You don't wipe out memories, kid.”

That oddball look came back in her face and disappeared almost as fast. “Yes, I know.” She was looking at me in the dresser mirror, then her eyes went to one side and she picked a small photo out of the frame, smiled at it and dropped it in her pocket.

“Dog ...” Her fingers were doing things with the buttons of her jacket, popping them open one by one. “Can we stay here tonight? Together?”

“You're mixing me up in your daydreams, kid.”

“I had a lot of them in that very bed.”

“Will you quit knocking me in the head? One night on the beach I could take. It was fun and it was funny. Another time and it won't be like that at all. You're no little girl anymore, doll. When you take off those clothes you're all lovely soft flesh and woman curves. I don't buy the frustration bit at all. It gets hard on the dingus. We used to call it lover's nuts.”

She had the jacket off and threw it on the rocking chair. She started on the buttons of the blouse when I put my lamp down and grabbed her before she could get them open. Sharon smiled and shook her head. “The last time I wanted you and you wouldn't take me. Now I want you not to take me.”

“You don't make sense,” I damn near shouted.

“Please, Dog? Just this once? It won't happen again.”

“Look, fantasies are fine, but ...”

“Sometimes you live with fantasies a long time. Please, Dog?” She pushed me away with small, gentle hands and walked back to the dresser. I watched her undress slowly, feeling my insides go tumbling all over again. She was more beautiful than ever in that pale yellow light, but a different kind, a beautiful, a young, unself-conscious kind of beautiful. When she was all naked she tossed the single cover back and writhed down under it.

I looked at her, wondering what the hell I was letting myself in for, then I undressed too, but not with the same unself-consciousness. I did it fast, blew out the lamps and got in beside her.

“Just hold me,” she said.

I wanted to say the same thing, but I didn't.

The .45 was in my hand, the hammer cocked the second I touched the knob. Lee was a typical New Yorker who kept himself barricaded behind triple locks and now the door swung open easily. I had gone too far to pull back so I smashed on it, hit the floor rolling and ended up in a corner ready to spit lead at anybody who came at me.

I waited, changed positions fast and waited again. Nothing moved. Motes of dust danced in the late-morning sunlight streaming in the windows and from the street below the traffic noises were a dull hum. When another thirty seconds had passed I stood up and angled toward the door of my bedroom. It was empty, untouched and just as quiet.

On the other side of the living room Lee's door was closed, a half-dozen letters and the day's paper strewn on the floor. I reached it quickly, kicked it open and waited to see what would happen. Nothing did.

But this time I heard a noise, an almost inaudible murmur with odd bubbly overtones. The blinds were still down and I picked my way across the unmade-up bedroom to Lee's bathroom, the strange sounds getting faintly louder, seeming to rise, fall, then break with a weird hysteria.

Then I knew what the sounds really were, shoved the gun back and went through the door so hard I snapped the tongue out of the lock. Lee was stretched out in the tub, hands and feet lashed together behind his back, his mouth taped with wide surgical adhesive. The heavy metal desk chair had been tossed on top of him to keep him at the bottom and the tap turned on a slow trickle to make dying a long-drawn-out torturous affair. Muscles in his neck were taut cords as he stretched to keep his face above the surface, his eyes bulging wide with terror.

I turned the tap, flipped the chair away and dragged him out of the tub. When I cut through the tape that bound him the sudden release of his twisted body brought vomit spewing out of his nose and I ripped the gag off his mouth with one pull before he could choke to death. He looked up at me, groaned once and went into a dead faint.

Aside from a small discoloration on his temple there weren't any marks on him at all. I got Lee in bed, cleaned up and sat there mopping him with a cold wet towel until his eyes fluttered open. I said, “Take it easy, don't push it. We'll talk later.”

His head made a small motion in acknowledgment.

“You hurt at all?”

One hand made a negative sign.

“Okay, then stay there.”

I wet the towel again, laid it across his forehead and went out and locked the front door. I kept saying damn to myself for being idiot enough to think this wouldn't happen. I'd left everybody exposed I had touched because I didn't figure they'd be dumb enough to want to set the whole dirty machine in operation again and I was as wrong as hell. There wasn't any sense trying to follow up the attempted hit. The tub had been almost filled, which meant the water trap had been set long enough ago to give anybody a good chance to clear out. It had been a simple operation. They caught Lee coming up with the mail, held a gun on him, followed him in and sapped him.

I picked up the letters from the floor, then looked at the dateline on the newspaper. It was yesterday's. That meant they nailed him last night coming in from work. They had waited right through the night hoping to get me and when I didn't show, decided to leave a present for me.

When it hit me I let out another curse, ran into the bathroom, threw the drain on, flushed the tape down the toilet bowl and set the chair back in front of the desk where it belonged. As I ran past Lee I saw his eyes go wide again and said, “Get dressed and get ready to put on an act.”

I barely had time to get my coat off, the gun stashed away and a call in to Leyland Hunter when the raps came on the door. I told his secretary to hang on, walked over and threw the lock open. The same two cops stood there, the one called Tobano and his partner, two guns pointed at my middle from either side of the opening.

“Don't just stand there,” I said. “Come on in. I'm on the phone.”

I started to walk back inside but Tobano stopped me. “Hold it, buddy.”

Everything was done with standard classical police procedure, even to the partner checking on the phone call. He told Hunter's secretary I'd call back and hung up. Before they had a chance to look through the rooms Lee came out in the bottom half of his pajamas and stood there scratching, a perfect picture of a guy dragged out of a sound sleep. He even managed a yawn. “What the hell's happening, Dog?”

“Beats me.” I looked at the two cops. “Mind telling me what this is all about?”

“Mind if we check around first?”

“Go ahead.”

“Make my bed up while you're at it,” Lee told them.

Tobano stayed with us while his partner went through the place. He came out of my room shaking his head.

“Clean.” Their guns disappeared under their coats.

“Now?” I asked.

The big cop nodded. “We had a report there was a dead body up here.”

Lee faked a grin. “My cleaning lady did that to me once when she found me passed out on the floor.”

“This wasn't a lady,” the cop told him.

“Anonymous?”

“Aren't they all?” he said to me. “That your room over there?”

“Uh-huh.”

“It's made up.”

“I'm neat.”

“Here all night?”

“This an arrest?”

“Nope.”

“Then let's skip the questions. You didn't even advise me of my rights.”

“I said it wasn't an arrest. And we don't like games, either. If you know any practical joker who'd try this crap, you'd better tell them to knock it off.”

“Don't worry.”

The big cop gave me a disarming smile. “I'm not. I'm just wondering if this was a practical joke.”

“Why?”

“Because we're not used to seeing the same two people so often. Seem a little odd to you?”

“Now that you mention it.”

“Any explanation?”

I shrugged, picked up a butt and lit it. “I told a few people about that last episode. Maybe one of them felt like having some fun.”

“It's going to cost them if they keep it up.”

Tobano didn't see the look on my face as I walked past to hold the door open for them. “You bet your ass it is,” I said.

Lee couldn't hold his act any longer. It dropped as they went out and he sagged to the couch with a stifled groan and lay there shielding his eyes from the sunlight. His hands were shaking and a tic was playing around the comer of his mouth.

I went out to the kitchen, brewed up a pot of coffee and brought him a cup. “Drink it, you'll feel better.”

He pushed himself to a sitting position and took the cup in his trembling fingers and sipped at it until it was gone. I took the cup away and lit him a cigarette. “Feel like talking?”

His eyes rolled toward mine in a face pasty white. “Dog ... what the hell are you into?”

“Sorry, kid.”