The Little Death (23 page)

“How
do you know who I am?”

“Your
picture’s in the papers,” he said. “Mr. Smith wonders if he could see you.”

“John
Smith?”

The
driver nodded.

“Now?”
“Yes, sir.”

I
looked at him. He seemed harmless but then I couldn’t see his lower body from
where I was standing.

“And
where does Mr. Smith propose we have this meeting?”

“He’s
waiting for you at the Linden Museum on the university campus.”

“Step
out of the car, please, and come around to my side.”

“Sir?”

“Please.”

I
heard him sigh as he opened the door and got out. When he came around I told
him to turn his back to me, put his hands on the top of the car, and spread his
legs.

“Is
this really necessary?” he asked as I patted him down for weapons.

“Don’t
take it personally,” I replied, “but the last time I got into a small enclosed
space with one of Mr. Smith’s employees he pulled a gun on me.”

“I’m
not armed,” the driver replied.

“So
I see,” I said, turning him around by the shoulders. “On the other hand you’ve
got twenty pounds over me and it feels like muscle. Do you know where you are
now in relation to the museum?”

“Yes.”

I
looked into the car and saw the key was in the ignition. “Then you won’t mind
walking there.”

“Come
now, Mr. Rios—” he began.

“Look,”
I said. “I’ll drive myself to the museum alone, or I won’t go at all.
Understood?”

After
a moment’s pause, he said, “Understood. But be careful with the car.”

“I
hear they drive themselves,” I said, getting into the driver’s seat.

I
calculated that it would take the driver at least a half hour to walk back to
campus. Smith, or whoever had dispatched him, was probably not even certain I
could be lured to the museum, much less at a fixed time, but he would begin to
get nervous if too much time passed without word from the driver. I could cover
the distance to the campus in about ten minutes. This gave me, I decided, about
fifteen minutes of dead time before anyone got jittery. Fifteen minutes was
more than enough time for the plan that now suggested itself to me.

I
made a stop. When I started up again, ten minutes later, I noticed the white
van a car length behind me. I began to whistle. The van’s lights flickered on
and off. I relaxed.

I
drove beneath the stone arch and onto Palm Drive. Just before I reached the
oval lawn that fronted the Old Quad I turned off a rickety little side street
called Museum Way. When I looked in my mirror, the van was gone. I followed the
road for a few hundred yards until it ended, abruptly, at the voluminous steps
of a sandstone building, the Grover Linden Museum of Fine Art. I parked the car
and got out.

The
edifice, reputedly inspired by St. Peter’s, consisted of a domed central building
and two wings jutting off on each side at a slight angle. As a law student, I
had sometimes come here to study since it was as deserted a spot on campus as
existed. It was deserted now as I made my way up the steps to where a uniformed
university security guard stood. Behind him, the museum’s hours were posted on
the door and indicated, quite clearly, that the museum was closed on Tuesdays.
Today was Tuesday.

“Mr.
Rios?”

“That’s
right.”

“Go
right in, sir. Mr. Smith is up on the second floor in the family gallery. Do
you know where that is?”

“Yes.”

The
monster was surprisingly graceful inside. Sunlight poured into the massive
foyer from a glass dome in the ceiling. A beautiful staircase led up from the
center of the foyer to the second floor. Walkways on that floor connected the
right and left wings of the museum. The staircase and interior walls were white
marble, the banisters of the staircase were polished oak and the railings were
bronze. All that glare of white and polished surfaces made me feel that I was
inside a wedding cake.

I
started up the stairs to the second floor, got to the top and turned right.
Above the entrance to the gallery at my right were chiseled the words “the
Linden Family Collection.” On each side of that entrance stood an armed
security guard. They weren’t wearing the university’s uniforms. I stepped past
them into the room.

The
family gallery was a long and narrow rectangular room, Along one of the long
walls were six tall windows looking out over a garden. Along the other were
paintings of the various buildings of the university as they existed on the day
the university opened its doors for business. There were also a dozen standing
glass cases that displayed such memorabilia as Grover Linden’s eyeglasses, Mrs.
Linden’s rosary and a collection of dolls belonging to the Linden’s only
daughter.

I
strolled past these treasures toward the end of the room. There, alone on the
wall, hung the only well-known work in the room, a six foot portrait of Grover
Linden himself painted by John Singer Sargent. Beneath it, on a wooden bench
_;
sat an old man, John Smith.

There
was no one else in the room and the only noise was the soft squish of my
running shoes as I walked across the marble floor. Smith rose as he saw me
approach. At six foot four he had five inches over me but was thin and
frail-looking. The tremulous light that fell across his face washed it of all
color. Even his eyes were faded and strangely lifeless as if they’d already
closed on the world. He extended his hand to me, His grip was loose and
perfunctory and the hand itself skeletal and cold. And yet, even that touch
conveyed authority. He sat down again and motioned me to sit beside him. I did.
The two guards at the other end of the room moved to just inside the gallery. I
felt their eyes on us.

“Thank
you for coming,” Smith said in a surprisingly firm voice. He elongated his
vowels in the manner of Franklin Roosevelt, I noticed; the accent of wealth
from an earlier time,

“You’re
welcome. Though I must say this is an odd meeting place.”

“My
lawyers,” he said, “advised me not to speak to you at all, since it’s likely
that I’ll become involved in this lawsuit of yours, but I had to talk to you.”

“So
we’re hiding from your lawyers?”

“Exactly,”
he replied. We watched dust motes fall through the air. “You know I haven’t
been to this museum since it was dedicated sixty years ago. Of course I was
just a boy then. But for years I dreamed about this portrait of my grandfather.”

“Is
it a fair likeness?”

“It
errs on the side of tact,” he said, smiling a little. He cleared his throat
with a murmur. “Now, Mr. Rios, perhaps we can discuss our business.”

“Which
is?”

“This
— lawsuit.” He looked at me and said, “What will it cost me to persuade you to
drop it?”

“Well,
to begin with, an explanation of why you would make such a request.”

“My
family’s good name,” he said.

“Robert
Paris was a member of your family by marriage only,” I said, “and, from what I
understand, no friend of yours. Additionally, my information is that he was
responsible not only for the murder of Hugh Paris but also your sister,
Christina, and your nephew, Jeremy.”

“Your
information,” Smith said with a trace of contempt. “Are you so sure your
information is correct?”

“I’m
positive of it. Aren’t you?”

“As
to my sister and nephew,” he said, rising, “yes. As to Hugh,” he shrugged,
slightly, and moved toward a window. I rose and followed him over.

“How
long have you known about Christina and Jeremy?” I asked.

“Twenty
years,” he replied. “John Howard sought me out after they were killed and
brought me the wills. I had some of my men conduct an investigation of the
accident and the subsequent coroner’s inquest. They established that the
accident had been arranged and the inquest rigged for the purpose of a finding
of simultaneous death. It wasn’t difficult, Robert was inept as a murderer and
left a trail of evidence that would have sent him to the gas chamber but the
evidence was scattered through half a dozen police jurisdictions and the police
were even more inept than he.”

“But
you had the evidence. Why not use it against him?”

He
regarded me coolly as if deciding that I was not as bright as he’d been led to
believe. “I did use it, Mr. Rios.” “Not to go to the police.”

“No,”
he said, laying a fingertip against the windowsill. “My investigators obtained
the evidence as,” he smiled at me, conspiratorially, “expeditiously as
possible. Their methods were not the police’s methods and, consequently, my
lawyers informed me that Robert would’ve been able to suppress enough of the
evidence to weaken the case against him, perhaps fatally.”

“Nonetheless,”
I insisted, “it was worth a try.”

“You
don’t understand,” he said, impatiently. “There were higher stakes to play.”

“Something
greater than justice for the dead?” I asked.

He
raised an eyebrow. “I was told you had a lawyer’s way with words,” he said, not
admiringly.

“You
were talking about higher stakes.”

“Yes,
there was the money to think about, Christina’s estate, one-half of my grandfather’s
fortune. It had fallen into Robert’s hands. Robert was many things, most of
them contemptible, but he was good with money. I had to think ahead about what
would’ve happened to that money had Robert been removed from the picture.”

“It
would’ve gone to its rightful heirs.”

“Who
at that time,” Smith said, “were my lunatic nephew, Nicholas, and his
ten-year-old son, Hugh.”

“Why
couldn’t you have had yourself appointed their guardian?”

“Because
there was someone with a much stronger claim to that office.”

“Who?”

Smith
snorted. “Your client, Mr. Rios. Katherine Paris.”

I
said, “Ah.”

“Katherine
Paris,” he said with recollected scorn, “a writer.” It was the ultimate
epithet. “She didn’t know the first thing about money.”

“Whereas
the judge knew all about money.”

“And,
more importantly, I had a lever with which to control him.”

“So
you took the evidence that linked him to the murders and used it to blackmail
him.”

Smith
looked out the window. A few late roses clung tenaciously to life. Perhaps
they were the ones that had been named in his honor. “Yes,” he said, defiantly.
“Yes.”

“And
what did you get in return for not exposing him?”

“An
agreement.” He began to walk across the room. I walked with him. “At Robert’s
death, his entire estate was to revert to the Linden Trust, of which I am
chairman. In the meantime, his affairs were controlled by my lawyers. He couldn’t
invest or spend a cent without my approval.”

“And
if he had?”

“My
lawyers would’ve seen to it that criminal proceedings were initiated against
him the second he deviated from our agreement.”

“Other
than your lawyers, who knew about the agreement?”

“His
lawyers, of course.”

Grayson,
Graves and Miller — Aaron’s firm. In the remote reaches of my mind something
fell into place but was still too distant for me to articulate.

“So
you see, the blackmail — your word, not mine — was a necessary evil.”

“That
seems to be your forte.”

“That
was cheap, Mr. Rios,” he said, stopping in front of a painting that depicted
the original law school.

“A
moment ago you indicated that I was right about the murders of Christina and
Jeremy Paris but not about Hugh’s. What did you mean?”

The
color, what there was of it, seeped from his face. “Robert Paris didn’t have
Hugh murdered,” he said.

“You
mean Peter Barron acted on his own?”

“No.”