Written in Dead Wax (43 page)

“It’s all taken care of,” said Ree. She peered out into the traffic. “In fact…” She slowed down at the lights, signalled and turned right. We were in a residential street. She reversed the signal, turned left, and we pulled into the parking lot of a KFC. At the far end of the building, on the blind side, Berto was waiting for us, standing beside my car.

We pulled up next to him and got out. He came over and slapped me on the shoulder. “Sorry to rat you out to your old lady, bro, but I could tell something wasn’t right.”

I said, “When she dropped off the message… They were setting a trap for me. By pretending to be Nevada. The redhead in the Porsche that second time was actually Heidi. But you spotted it was a different girl.”

“No, dude. All white chicks look the same to me. But I spotted that it was a different
car
.” He grinned at us. “Anybody want to split a bucket of wings?”

My stomach turned over. “No thanks.” I looked back at the car we’d driven here in. Besides the dents I could see at the front, there was no doubt all sorts of DNA evidence on it. “What are you going to do with the car?”

Ree smiled and shrugged. “By tomorrow that car won’t exist.”

“Speaking of which…” said Berto. He took the keys from her and got behind the wheel.

“Thanks, Berto,” said Ree. He gave a casual wave and pulled away. We looked at each other. The night was cool and there was a steady rumble of traffic passing on the boulevard. Headlights moved across her face. My brain was working now. I couldn’t stop it.

I said, “It just happened to be the perfect spot.”

“What do you mean?”

“It just happened to be the perfect spot to ambush them. For you to wait up the hill and then come zooming out of nowhere and nail them.”

She shrugged. “I think I nailed them pretty good. And just in time, by the look of things.”

“You chose the location,” I said. “It was you who changed the rendezvous. You sent a message to me and you sent a message to them.”

She nodded. “It was the way it had to be. We had to draw them out. We had to deal with them.”

“How did you get their number?”

“It was printed on the bottom of the map she gave to Berto. So we trimmed it off.”

“And wrote another one on it,” I said. “So when I thought I was calling them, I was calling you.”

“Right.”

“And what did you do, text them using my phone? The bugged one, the one you kept in London?”

“That’s right.”

I said, “So you set it all up. You laid a trap for them.”

“I guess.”

“You staked me out,” I said. “To lure them there. Like a tiger for a goat. I mean, a goat for a tiger.”

She came to me and put her hand on my chest. “You were right the first time,” she said, “Tiger.”

For a moment, I almost bought it. But then I took her hand away. I didn’t say anything, but she must have seen it in my eyes. Her voice trembled a little and she looked down.

“Anything I did, I did to protect us both.”

I said, “Thanks for keeping me in the loop,” and turned and walked away into the night.

* * *

I found a quiet bar and had a few drinks then caught a taxi back home. I mean, to Ree’s house. I didn’t know whether she would be there or not. I wasn’t sure which would be worse. I just wanted to get my stuff and get out, find a hotel. But when I climbed out of the cab the house was dark and silent. I paid the driver and he pulled away. I suddenly thought longingly of Clean Head and I realised how keenly I missed London. I just wanted to go home.

I turned and walked towards the house.

A man stepped out of the shadows.

He was a small man with angular features, dark skin and a pale suit. I must have moved back very abruptly at the sight of him because he said, “I’m sorry to startle you. I came by earlier, but no one was at home.”

“Who are you?” My voice was curt and hoarse in my own ears.

“I’m Easy Geary.”

I stared at him. He didn’t look anything like Easy Geary of course. He was even the wrong height. Geary had been a huge bear of a man. In addition to which, there was the small matter that this guy was, at most, in his early thirties. Whereas Easy Geary would be over a hundred.

I decided either he was insane, or I’d misheard him.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t catch that.”

“I am Easy Geary. My name.”

“Okay.”

There must have been something in my voice because he scrabbled for a business card and handed it to me. “Gordon Hallett gave me your address. Dr Tinmouth wanted that we should meet. He didn’t say why, but he seemed very excited about it.”

The card read:

Philip Ysaguirre

“Philip Easy Geary,” he said.

I looked at him. I said, “Ysaguirre. So that’s how you pronounce it.”

* * *

I was sitting on the steps when Ree pulled up and got out of her car. “Haven’t you got your keys?” she said.

“I’ve got them. I just don’t feel like going inside. I don’t feel like going anywhere.”

She sat down beside me. “Look,” she said, “I’m sorry about what happened.”

I watched the moths attacking the porch light. “So am I.”

“Once they knew about me, about who my grandfather was, they were going to come after me.” She looked at me. “They would have killed you and then they would have killed me.”

“I’m sure you’re right.”

She reached over and squeezed my knee. “I had to take them out. Like I said, kill or be killed. And they were suspicious because we’d changed the place to meet. They would have sniffed it out if you’d known about it. Don’t you see? You had to be in the dark when you arrived there. You couldn’t know anything.” She peered into my face. “When it turned out that it was the Aryan Twins, and not Nevada, your surprise had to be genuine.”

“Well, it fucking was,” I said.

She took my hand and we both sat in silence and watched the moths. She said, “They found another box at the garage. Of Dr Tinmouth’s books. It turns out there wasn’t twelve boxes, there were thirteen.”

“Thirteen,” I said. “Lucky for some.”

“It was just a small box. When they put it in the storage area it was set behind some boxes of auto parts. So we didn’t notice it until now.”

“The thirteenth box,” I said.

“It’s full of books…”

“About Professor Jellaway.”

She stared at me with those disconcerting eyes. “How did you know that?”

“You had a visitor. You just missed him.” I turned and gazed at her. “He was some kind of distant cousin of yours. His name was Philip Easy Geary. Spelled like this.” I handed her the business card. She read it then looked at me.

“What does it mean?”

“Ysaguirre was Jellaway’s real surname. And it means that when your grandfather was looking for a new alias he chose a phonetic pronunciation of his original family name.”

“His original family name?”

I nodded. “Easy Geary was Burns Hobartt. But Burns Hobartt was Professor Jellaway.”

She put a hand to her head. “Wait a minute. This is all just a little too…”

“Tell me about it. But I’ve gone over the timeline, and it all fits. Jellaway vanishes from the scene and Hobartt appears. Hobartt makes an exit and Geary turns up.” I watched it sinking in. “It explains so much,” I said. “Like the reason why Burns Hobartt was content with obscurity, playing in small territory bands, until the fire that disfigured him in 1935.” I looked at her. “Jazz critics have always said it was as if the fire triggered something in him. Sparked his genius. People have surmised that perhaps it was because it gave him an awareness of his own mortality. But it was a lot simpler than that. The fire took away his face. It made him unrecognisable. It freed him.”

“Holy shit,” said Ree. “All three of them?”

“There’s a sort of inevitable symmetry to it. Professor Jellaway was screwed by his music publishers the Spike brothers and Burns Hobartt was similarly screwed by the Davenports and Easy Geary was screwed by AMI. But it was all the same corporation. Spike Brothers Music became Davenport Music and Davenport Music became AMI. And it was all the same man—Jellaway, Hobartt, Geary.”

I looked at her.

“Which means you don’t just own a chunk of AMI.”

“No?”

“No. You own a controlling interest.”

I said, “It’s incredible. He was a great genius of jazz in three different eras. Every time the music changed, he rose to the top. He was like the Stravinsky of jazz.”

“Never mind that,” said Tinkler in London. “Tell me about the money.”

“Well, there’s inevitably going to be a battle-royale in the courts, but she’s his direct descendant. So, basically, a cornerstone of the American music and media business belongs to her.”

“But
how much
?” said Tinkler.

“Well, the Davenport cousins were the children of the Spike brothers. Davenport was their real name. ‘Spike’ was a highly appropriate
nom de plume
or maybe
nom de guerre
. The kids were the son of one and the daughter of the other. And their company is the same corporation as their fathers’. Clear so far?”

“Suppose I say yes?”

“Basically, when we discovered Ree’s grandfather was Burns Hobartt, she owned a big chunk of that corporation because it was founded on his music. But now we know her grandfather was also Professor Jellaway, that big chunk suddenly gets bigger. In fact, it becomes a majority shareholding.”

“But how much does she get? Exact numbers, please.”

“Apparently sixty-two and a half per cent. Of everything.”

Tinkler whistled tunelessly.

I said, “Don’t forget to book Clean Head to pick us up at the airport. International arrivals are at Terminal 2.”

“See if you can remind me half a dozen more times.”

* * *

Clean Head did meet us and in fact Tinkler came with her. He’d brought two bottles of champagne to welcome us back. Ree was very touched.

We drank one bottle on the way home. We dropped Tinkler off at his house in Putney, then headed to my place. As we unloaded our baggage, including the remaining bottle of champagne, Clean Head gave me a sardonic look and said, “Your boy asked me out.”

“Tinkler?”

She nodded. “Mmm hmm.”

“Did you say yes?”

“I said maybe.”

We paid her and she drove away. Ree and I hefted our bags and set off across the square towards my bungalow, and the boiler room where the dragon had once slumbered. The dragon was still having his funeral—indeed the crane was even now delving into the basin and winching up a large piece of what had once been the boiler from what had once been the boiler room. The amount of noise and general commotion was impressive.

I looked down at the work site, cautiously because they still hadn’t replaced the safety rail, and saw to my surprise that some progress had actually been made in our absence. The old boiler room was now well on its way to its new fate as luxury flats, tennis courts or quite possibly a pilates centre.

The cats came streaking to meet us as we stepped through the door. They swirled around my legs, creating a navigational hazard. Ree watched us with amusement. I said, “See how pleased they are to see me after Uncle Tinkler’s reign of terror.”

“He probably spoiled them rotten.” Ree set her bags down on the sofa. “I’ll let you have some quality time with your cats.” She went into the bedroom. I put the bottle of champagne on the table and then I set my luggage down on the sofa beside hers. Fanny instantly jumped on it. For some reason she had made it her life’s mission to try and kill my rucksack and whenever I had it out she gave it another instalment of the old needle-sharp claws and teeth.

She waited impatiently while I unzipped it and searched around inside. As soon as I found what I was looking for and left the bag unguarded, she pounced on it and attacked again.

While she gave the rucksack hell I took the bug buster, the Stone Circle 10, proud souvenir of the Westfield Century City mall, and checked its batteries. Its charge was fine, so I switched it on and started to sweep my house with it. In the same instant the doorbell rang, as if the two devices were wired together.

As I walked towards the door I read the result on the bug buster’s screen without surprise.

I set it down as I opened the door.

He was standing in the doorway, almost filling it. He had an expensive-looking black backpack slung over one shoulder. On his left leg there was some kind of medical brace. In his right hand was a gun, which he pointed at my stomach.

He smiled at me and I backed away. He followed me into the house.

“Heinz just walked in,” I said loudly. “And he’s got a gun.”

“I don’t know why you keep calling me Heinz, mate.”

Ree walked in from the bedroom, drawing a brush through her hair. “What did you say, honey?”

I turned to look at her and Heinz promptly stepped behind me and pointed his gun at her over my shoulder. I could feel the metal of it cold against my neck. He addressed Ree. “Come into the room slowly and sit down. Glad you could make it. No funny business or…” He moved the gun a casual fraction so the muzzle was now against my skull.

Ree came in and sat down. I felt him relax and the gun moved away from my head. I thought that if ever there was a time when I should make a grab for the gun it was now. I had no sooner begun to think this than Heinz shoved me forward, hitting me in the back with an arm like a piston.

I stumbled into the sitting room and had to grab the table to stop from falling. Ree half rose to help me, but he pointed his gun at her. “Sit down. Both of you.”

We sat at the table and he sat opposite us. “You should see your faces. I guess you’re wondering why I’m still around. Well, there was a tree on that slope. Just the one tree. And I landed in it.” He smiled at us. “So I guess it was just meant to be.” He put a hand to his forehead and I saw he had some scratches that I hadn’t noticed before. “So I just got this. And this.” He patted the leg brace. “I’ve been telling girls I got these trail biking and I have to tell you it’s been going down a storm.” He sighed wistfully. “It feels funny to be travelling alone again, but I kind of like it.”