Waiting (30 page)
Authors: Frank M. Robinson
Chandler had become preoccupied with his arguments and Artie could feel a little strength flow back into his arm. He was careful not to move a muscle.
“We’ve been in tight spots before—”
“Meaning
Homo sapiens
? Come
on
, Banks, be real. The Black Plague nearly did you in, and that was only a few hundred years ago. You’ve survived this long only because you’ve been separated by oceans and your technology was primitive. You’ve tried to substitute political systems for wars and what’s been the result? There hasn’t been a year since World War Two without one. And each political system is convinced it’s the best and anxious to convert the political heathen—by force, if necessary. Wasn’t it Churchill who said that as a system democracy was crap, it was just better than any of the others?”
Homo sapiens
? Come
on
, Banks, be real. The Black Plague nearly did you in, and that was only a few hundred years ago. You’ve survived this long only because you’ve been separated by oceans and your technology was primitive. You’ve tried to substitute political systems for wars and what’s been the result? There hasn’t been a year since World War Two without one. And each political system is convinced it’s the best and anxious to convert the political heathen—by force, if necessary. Wasn’t it Churchill who said that as a system democracy was crap, it was just better than any of the others?”
Artie could feel the butt of the gun in his hand and casually rested his finger on the trigger.
“What was it like, pretending to be human?”
“You mean pretending to be one of you?” Chandler leaned back in his chair, the light from the lamp illuminating the shadows of his face and reflecting off his vividly blue eyes. Artie was startled. He had never really looked at Chandler before, probably because nobody ever takes a clown seriously. Except for his slightly buck teeth, Chandler was one of the handsomest men he had ever seen. Cathy must have been obsessed with him.
“Fun, in a way. You learn what buttons to push and you can have almost anything you want from anybody if your stomach is strong enough. You saw the photographs in the hallway? They’re special, Artie—I slept with all of them. They’re handsome or pretty, all of them famous, and most of you have wet dreams about them. But to be honest, few of them are any good in bed—or at much of anything else. I remember going to a party at a film convention in Vegas and by two in the morning everybody was either dead drunk or balling their brains out in the various bedrooms. I wandered into one looking for a place to crash and here was one of the biggest movie stars in the country screwing some hooker from the Strip. A big education for me, Artie. Take away the soft lights and the music and the romantic camera angles and what you’ve got left are smells and sweat and grunting. No whispered endearments, no tender moments. Just two animals rolling around on satin sheets rather than in the dirt.” He laughed. “I know what you’re going to say—‘Hey, they’re only human!’ I couldn’t agree more.”
“Not as romantic as you and Cathy?” Artie said sarcastically. His finger was on the trigger and he had angled the barrel up just enough so he could catch Chandler in the groin.
Chandler shrugged.
“I suppose I meant something to her, but I never encouraged her. She fed her own fantasies. But she was a danger to us, Banks. She could have been responsible for the deaths of thousands—”
Artie tried to pull the trigger and his hand jumped slightly in the attempt. His fingers suddenly froze.
Chandler’s face changed then. No longer smiling, no longer casually amused or arrogant. It was hard, furious, all angles and hollows, the lips thin bands against his large white teeth, which showed in a snarl. It was like somebody had morphed Chandler’s face and White Beard’s when the old chief had been angry and his heavy brows had become like stone, his eyes slitted and rimmed with red.
you shouldn’t have tried that
… .
… .
Artie felt like somebody had jumped on his chest, knocking the wind out of him. He couldn’t breathe and he started to struggle in his chair, then felt his sphincter give way and realized he had shit in his pants. His heart was going crazy and he could feel it tumble into a fast, erratic beating.
your species or mine, monkey—you think I ever had a choice?
Artie forced the chair sidewise and managed to fall to the floor and for just a moment felt the pressure on his heart lessen and his hand loosen up. He managed to get off one shot and heard it shatter the front of the television set. But nobody would hear it outside the soundproofed room. The pressure abruptly returned and his vision started to fade, the room turning black. He was going to die right then and there. It was more than his heart now; it felt like something was tearing up his insides. His stomach was spasming with cramps and somebody’s hands were squeezing the rest of his guts. In the distance he heard screaming and realized with mild surprise that it was himself.
He managed to roll behind a couch and for a second was free. He could feel a sly probing in the air around him and tried to crawl for the doorway. Then Chandler caught him again and Artie felt himself being squeezed like somebody might squeeze a balloon. It felt like his head was blowing up to a monstrous size and he could look down on the room and see himself lying on the floor and Chandler sitting calmly behind his desk, staring at him. He had no sensation of a body at all.
This was it.
Then there was the faint sound of another shot and he was back on the floor, acutely aware of his own stink. There was no pressure on his chest or guts, but he ached as if he’d run a marathon. On top of everything else, he was going to be sick from sheer exhaustion. It took a moment for him to realize he hadn’t managed to get off a second shot after all. Somebody else—
“Artie!”
He was being helped off the floor and onto a chair. It took a moment for his eyes to focus.
“Charlie,” he mumbled. “What the hell …”
He looked over at Chandler, who was slumped back in his chair, his eyes a dull watery blue with no life in them at all. Artie watched the blood pump from Chandler’s chest onto his desk and then simply flow over his shirt and down to the floor.
Artie desperately wanted to get out of his clothes; he needed to shower badly. He looked up at Charlie Allen, staring in sick fascination at Chandler slumped in his chair.
“What the hell was he, Artie?”
“A hero to his own kind,” Artie muttered. “To us, a homicidal maniac. Maybe we all are, depending on which side we’re on.”
Allen didn’t know what he was talking about. “I listened to him for a couple of minutes. He never saw me—he was concentrating on you.”
Artie took a breath. His heart had slowed, but it didn’t seem by much.
“How did you know I was here? You must have reread your diaries after all—you must have figured it out.”
Allen shook his head. “I never had time to go through them. But when I got home Franny and I started talking and she told me all about Cathy and Chandler. She was pretty hurt back then, pretty envious. She remembered everything. She insisted Cathy was still tight with Chandler. After you read the diaries, I figured you’d come right over here. Dave was a night person; he’d still be up.”
Artie held his head; he had the start of a whopper of a headache. He couldn’t think straight. Not everything Charlie was saying made sense but he couldn’t argue with his timing.
Charlie was looking at him with an almost belligerent expression on his face. “I’m not going to be left out this time, Artie. Larry and Cathy were friends of mine.”
“He killed Cathy and the boys.”
Charlie nodded sadly. “I heard him.”
“Your gun,” Artie said. Charlie was still holding it. “I didn’t know you owned one.”
Charlie looked down, surprised. His hand immediately started to tremble and he put the gun on the desk. “It isn’t mine. I found it in the library months ago. Somebody had left it there, believe it or not. So I stuck it in my desk—too late to turn it in, the guard had gone home—and forgot about it. Until tonight.”
He stepped closer to Chandler to look at him, and Artie was afraid Charlie was going to be sick.
“You didn’t do a bad thing, Charlie, you—”
“Don’t worry about me. Larry Shea was one of my best friends. So was Cathy. She played around but she was still a good person.” He reached out to touch Chandler, his hand jerking back when he made contact. “I don’t know how he did … what he did, I didn’t understand a lot of what he was talking about.” He glanced back at Artie, his face grim. “You’re going to have to tell me, Artie. I’m serious—you owe me.”
“Someday,” Artie said. Then: “Take me home, Charlie. I need to shower down. I stink.”
Charlie glanced around the room, frowning. Something had just occurred to him.
“Where’s Mitch? I thought he’d be here with you.”
Mitch’s house on Telegraph
Hill was eerily quiet. It was midmorning and everybody on the Hill had left for work and their maids hadn’t yet arrived to clean up the mess from the night before. The BMW wasn’t parked on the street above, and Artie sat in his car for twenty minutes, just watching. There had been a black-and-white at the corner and Artie guessed that Schuler was finally going to bring him and Mitch in, that too many members of the Club had died for Schuler not to think they were involved in some way. Especially with Chandler’s death.
Hill was eerily quiet. It was midmorning and everybody on the Hill had left for work and their maids hadn’t yet arrived to clean up the mess from the night before. The BMW wasn’t parked on the street above, and Artie sat in his car for twenty minutes, just watching. There had been a black-and-white at the corner and Artie guessed that Schuler was finally going to bring him and Mitch in, that too many members of the Club had died for Schuler not to think they were involved in some way. Especially with Chandler’s death.
The police had left their squad car five minutes ago and sauntered down the hill to a coffee shop. They wouldn’t return for a good half hour. Artie still had the keys Mitch had lent him some time back, and he let himself in the back door, hesitating a long moment for any sound of Mitch in the bathroom or his office. Nothing. Nobody. As far as Artie could tell, the house was pretty much as he had left it three mornings before. The sink had a coffee cup in it, and a rinsed-out cereal bowl sat in the drainer. Artie opened the cupboard out of curiosity. One box of bran flakes. The life story of the American male: you started with Cocoa Puffs and ended with All-Bran.
He glanced around the kitchen again and noticed the Mr. Coffee still plugged in, the little On light glowing orange. The glass carafe was half full and Artie rummaged around in the cupboard for another cup, poured some of the coffee in it, and tasted it. It was still light colored and not bitter; the unit hadn’t been left on overnight. His guess was that Mitch had left the house probably not more than an hour before.
The good news was that Mitch was still alive. The bad news was that he had no idea where Mitch had gone.
Or why.
Artie wandered into the bedroom, feeling more like a spy than ever. Jesus, what was he doing here? For twenty years, Mitch Levin had been his best friend, ever since they had both collapsed in laughter watching old tapes of the Three Stooges in a crash pad just off Haight Street. For twenty years, they had been as close as brothers. He and Susan and Mitch had gone on vacations together, he had confided in Mitch about almost everything he had ever done or ever thought of doing, he had even asked Mitch to be a latter-day godfather to Mark.
He started for the door to leave, then shrugged. It was Mitch who’d failed to show up the other night, who had left him to face the Hound by himself. He didn’t owe Mitch any apologies.
He glanced around the bedroom again. What the hell did he hope to find?
He hadn’t been to Mitch’s house all that often—when Mitch had offered to let him spend the night, he’d been surprised and touched. He couldn’t remember Mitch ever throwing any parties there. But that made a sort of sense: it was easier for a bachelor to visit his married friends than the other way around. If you invited people over it meant you had to do the dishes and pick up your dirty underwear from where you’d dropped it on the floor.
He pulled open the drawers of the bureau and did a quick and careful search. Fancy-label boxers and T-shirts, a stack of carefully folded linen handkerchiefs. Along with his suits, Mitch’s shirts were hung in the closet on hangers; they didn’t come neatly folded with a thin paper band around them. Expensive designer shirts, Italian suits—nothing really ostentatious but enough good taste to choke on.
There were no surprises in the john. Two electric razors, one a barber’s special for trimming sideburns, an electric toothbrush, a stand-up canister of Mentadent, mint-flavored Listerine, dental floss, a row of nonprescription cure-alls for headaches, constipation, and diarrhea. A small prescription container of Valium, another of Percodan. Apparently psychiatry had its occupational hazards.
One thing was missing, which left Artie puzzled. There had been no condoms in the drawer of the bedside table and there were none in the medicine chest, which surprised him. Mitch wouldn’t have led a risky life in that respect. Which meant Mitch was something of an ascetic, reputation aside. Maybe it was a reputation he’d deliberately fostered, man-about-town, so none of the wives would keep asking why he didn’t settle down and they knew a woman he would love to meet. Or maybe after listening to hundreds of patients over the years, he’d just turned off to sex.
Or maybe his personal life was more professional than that. Casual encounters deliberately kept casual, maybe play for pay, though in that case you’d think his medicine chest would be loaded with condoms and ditto the bed table.
But there was nothing very exotic about the average man’s sexual life. It was when you looked at the emotional one that you found the variations, the odd and the unusual and the pathetic.
The largest room in the house was in the back, with a huge picture window overlooking the bay. Every home had one room for show, the one that usually sold the house to prospective buyers. Mitch had taken it and turned it into a combination office and den. The desk was separate from the computer area and clean of papers. A small table radio, a combination phone and answering machine, a notepad, desk calendar …
And two photographs, one a candid shot in a small, black frame and the other a studio portrait sandwiched between two sheets of clear plastic and standing upright in a black plastic base.
Artie picked up the smaller one first. The photograph was faded but he could make out a very young Captain Levin standing on the top of a small Japanese-style bridge in a city park, his arm around a young Oriental girl of perhaps sixteen or seventeen. They were both smiling for the camera. There was an inscription in the lower right corner that he could barely make out.
Love you alway, your honeybunch Cleo … Saigon, 1975.
An unlikely partner for Mitchell Levin, but there it was. A wartime romance in which Madame Butterfly had disappeared completely when the city had fallen. No way for Mitch to trace her even if he had wanted to. If he did now and succeeded he’d probably discover she was forty and graying, had a husband and three kids but no memory of Mitch from among the hundreds of GIs she’d serviced when she was a working girl so many years before.
The studio portrait was signed simply
For Mitch, all my love
—
Pat.
No indication who she was or what part she had played in Mitch’s life, though it was obvious she must have had an important role. Artie started to replace it on the desk, then noticed a newspaper clipping taped to the back of the frame. It was dated September of 1981. A tabloid tragedy—Patricia Bailey had apparently dumped a boyfriend, who then showed up at her small carriage-house apartment late at night, dragged her into the courtyard, shot her, and then shot himself. The boyfriend had been a law student at a local university and had a history of mental instability.
For Mitch, all my love
—
Pat.
No indication who she was or what part she had played in Mitch’s life, though it was obvious she must have had an important role. Artie started to replace it on the desk, then noticed a newspaper clipping taped to the back of the frame. It was dated September of 1981. A tabloid tragedy—Patricia Bailey had apparently dumped a boyfriend, who then showed up at her small carriage-house apartment late at night, dragged her into the courtyard, shot her, and then shot himself. The boyfriend had been a law student at a local university and had a history of mental instability.
Artie knew who she had dumped him for. Mitch would have had his first courses in psychiatry by then. Maybe he’d taken it upon himself to suggest she drop the old boyfriend, about whom she must have already had her doubts, and take up with good old stable, lovable Mitch. Perhaps she already had, and the old b.f. had shown up one evening after weeks of brooding about it.
Mitch had never told anybody. But it was obvious that he’d never really been a man-about-town—that had been a role he’d played, helped along by Cathy Shea’s friendly praise when they were younger. In reality, he had been disappointed in love twice, and the last time must have been traumatic. After that he had become a man for whom life was all work and definitely little play. He was a top psychiatrist, but Artie now wondered whom he went to himself. It was like the quatrain from
The Rubaiyat
: “I often wonder what the Vintners buy one half so precious as the Goods they sell.”
The Rubaiyat
: “I often wonder what the Vintners buy one half so precious as the Goods they sell.”
But what about the stories Mitch had told him and the others about his affairs? Not that many, not that gamey, but enough so nobody would wonder about his personal life. Or lack of it.
Artie glanced around the room, frowning. He’d overlooked something. He went back to the bedroom and opened the doors of the chiffonier. Behind them was Mitch’s gun collection. Most of the guns dated from ’Nam, but the Uzi looked new and so did several of the others. All of them were polished and oiled and appeared ready for action. Disturbingly, there were four empty spaces, vague shadows on the wood indicating where the guns had been.
Artie hurried back to the closet and brushed aside the suits and shirts hanging in a neat row. At the back were a Samsonite two-suiter and several briefcases. Mitch should have had an overnight bag or two to go along with them, but there weren’t any.
Among the lineup of suits and coats were several empty hangers, and Artie wondered what had been on them. One overcoat, that was for sure. Trousers, probably a jacket, and maybe a couple of sweaters.
When Mitch had left him in the Haight, he’d returned home and spent the rest of the day catching up on work and rescheduling appointments. This morning he had packed and left. For where? He’d taken an overnight bag and his car; he hadn’t packed for an extended trip nor had he chosen to fly. Wherever he had gone, it was relatively close by. Not more than a day’s driving, if that.
Artie wandered back to the office-den. Through the picture window he could see clouds rolling in from the ocean. The mist was turning into a light rain and he thanked God he’d stopped by the hotel to pick up his car. It would be hell trying to get a cab up there once the rain hit in earnest.
He looked around, then settled into the chair in the office area of the room. Unlike the desk, the computer table was cluttered with notebooks and a pile of opened letters. Mitch probably didn’t use his computer much except for typing and maybe billing—though Artie was sure Linda did that—and E-mail. There was a small stack of it that Mitch had printed out.
Artie hesitated, then picked up the stack. If you were going to be a snoop, you might as well be thorough. He’d already checked out Mitch’s sex life, or lack of one. This couldn’t be any more embarrassing.
He riffled through the stack, then stopped abruptly at one message. DOD, Department of Defense. From a colonel in Intelligence, somebody Mitch had apparently kept in touch with from his ’Nam days.
No, the colonel had written, they had no information on other species, aliens, or flying saucers. But if Mitch had proof … The humor was heavy-handed but friendly. Artie checked the date. A little more than a week ago. It had been sent the day after they had first talked to Paschelke. Mitch had been a true believer after all. When he’d gotten home that night, it was too late to phone so he had told his old colonel all about it via E-mail.
Artie hastily leafed through the rest of the correspondence. The ones from Washington got increasingly serious, the bantering tone dropping away. Mitch had kept them fully apprised. Paschelke’s death, Hall’s murder, Lyle’s, Cathy’s, the near suicide with the bottle of Valium and the scotch.
Artie felt his face gradually go white. There were mentions of himself, references to the various incidents he had told Mitch about. Not all the mentions were flattering, and he felt his face flush. The last E-mail said simply that the information Mitch had fed them was being bucked upstairs, but that they needed proof for the situation to be taken seriously. If Levin could offer something really solid, they would move on it immediately.
They hadn’t trusted phones; they could be tapped. The E-mail had undoubtedly been encoded, and Mitch had a program for decoding when he printed it out.
Artie pulled open one of the drawers in the filing cabinet next to the table and started checking the correspondence at random. Mitch had never stopped playing the intelligence officer. He had kept a line open to Washington even after he had been mustered out, a part-time agent for the Bay Area. Attend the protest meetings for this and that—the Bay Area was full of them—and report back. He’d been something of an agent provocateur on at least one occasion. There had probably been others, but Artie didn’t bother checking the rest of the files.
Even after his two true romances had fallen apart, Mitch still had a life. A lousy one.
What was it Chandler had said? That he thought Artie had as much to fear from Mitch as he did from Chandler? That he was surprised Artie had trusted Mitch? Levin, he had said, was a Hound.
For the other side.
It didn’t make sense, Artie thought. He’d suggested to Mitch that they call in the Feds and Mitch had advised against it. Why? Because they hadn’t known enough about what was going on? So Mitch could hog all the glory? So he could still play the game of intelligence officer?
The answer was probably simpler than that. A good Hound wouldn’t trust anybody, and Mitch had never really trusted him. Mitch had wanted to watch him a little longer, see what he did, where he went, what happened to him. After Larry and Cathy, he had been the major player, and Mitch had treated him as bait.
Now Mitch had packed and split, and there was no indication of where he had gone. But after that morning, Artie knew it had to have something to do with him.
He leaned back in the chair and let the small stack of mail slip to the floor.
Twenty years of friendship had just turned to ashes. Twenty years of looking forward to nights of racquetball, to Sunday picnics, to drinking beer in one of the local bars and shooting the shit about the Good Old Days, which had never been all that good but you wanted to think they were. Susan had liked Mitch, had always looked forward to having him over for dinner. And when Mark had been younger, he’d doted on Mitch, who had played the role of uncle to perfection.
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