The Sweetman Curve

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Let’s get those mikes out,’ said Umberto, and ushered Val out into the bedroom. ‘You look for wiring under the rug, and bugs under the bed. I’ll check the mirrors for cameras.’

  Val looked back at Lollie just once. He said, ‘You know something, when you think of the risks, you wonder why they do it. Dumb broads.’

  Twenty-Three

  When the painted wooden clock on the living room wall struck eight on Wednesday evening, John switched off his desk lamp, rubbed his eyes and stretched. Vicki, who was embroidering a bead belt across on the other side of the room, said, ‘Finished for tonight?’

  He looked wearily over the heaps of newspaper cuttings and papers in front of him. ‘I guess so. But it’s one of those problems you can never quite come to grips with. There seems to be some kind of connection, some kind of answer, but somehow there’s never enough solid evidence.’

  He stood up, and walked across to the centre of the room. ‘I could do with a beer,’ he told her. ‘Do you want one?’

  ‘If I have a beer, it’s going to go straight to my head, and this embroidery is going to wind up a mish-mosh. Do you remember the time I tried to mend your socks when I was stoned?’

  He went through to the kitchen and opened the icebox. ‘I remember. How could I ever forget? They were the most beautifully darned socks in the history of needlework. What did it matter if they were sewn to the arm of the chair?’

  ‘They made good record cleaners,’ she retorted, as he walked back in with a cold can of Coors.

  ‘Sure, and we were the only couple in Topanga with Ban-Lon record cleaners.’

  He came over and kissed her dark, silky hair. It smelled of natural shampoo, and that elusive smell of her. ‘Did I tell you that I loved you today?’ he said.

  She raised her head and kissed him on the lips. ‘You just did,’ she said quietly.

  He sat down in a big Victorian rocking chair, and rocked backwards and forwards for a while. ‘Is Mel coming over tomorrow?’ he asked.

  ‘I think so,’ she said. ‘That’s if you haven’t scared him off with all these conspiracy theories of yours.’

  ‘My conspiracy theories? It was Mel who turned me on to the whole idea.’

  She put down her embroidery and looked at him. ‘And now he’s scared. Can you blame him? The sweetest thing he ever heard in his life was Detective Morello saying that he’d checked out every one of those twelve people who died, and that the evidence still pointed to a lone fruitcake.’

  John swallowed beer, and shrugged. ‘I still think Mel was right in the first place. It’s just inconceivable to me that all these people should have been killed for no reason.’

  ‘Maybe Mel was right in the first place. But don’t forget that Mel has an estranged wife and a little girl he loves very dearly, and when Mel got himself involved with this business he suddenly came face to face with death. So did we, for that matter.’

  ‘You want to back out, too?’

  ‘Sure I do. But I’m not going to back out until you do.’

  He thought for a moment. Then he said, ‘There has to be a reason for these killings. There has to be some common factor that explains them all. I thought it was politics at first, but maybe Detective Morello’s right. None of the victims were particularly political, and even the ones that were had such mild opinions.’

  He got out of the rocker, and walked back towards his desk. ‘All the people I’ve checked had the same kind of middle-of-the-road liberal point of view. They were all teachers, or social workers, or college lecturers, or insurance salesmen, or housewives. All of them with a decent education, all thinking people, but people who weren’t prepared to take anything for granted.’

  ‘You’re trying to tell me they were killed for that?’ asked Vicki.

  ‘Well, why else?’

  She knotted a blue thread, and snipped it off. ‘I don’t know, John. I really don’t. But even if it’s only to keep us out of danger, I think I’m beginning to believe Detective Morello.’

  She added softly, ‘I love you, John. You’re the first man who’s ever given me real happiness. I don’t want to see you killed because of some crazy idea about a conspiracy. You can see that, can’t you?’

  He was silent for a moment, and then he nodded. ‘Sure, I can see it. But I can also see that an awful lot of people are getting killed out there, completely innocent people, and if it is some kind of weird conspiracy, then it ought to be brought out in the open.’

  He picked up some news clippings from his desk.

  ‘Look at this one,’ he said. ‘A twenty-five-year-old postgraduate student from Madison, Wisconsin. Inexplicably shot dead while he was pushing off his boat early one morning on Lake Waubesa. Here’s another. A grocery store manager, forty-two, shot dead for no reason while he was waiting at a stop light on his way home in Pennsauken, New Jersey. And another one. A nineteen-year-old Post Office trainee shot dead in Hattiesburg, Mississippi, when he was out on his first letter-carrying round.’

  John dropped the clippings back on the desk.

  ‘None of these people were robbed. All of them were killed by unknown assailants for no known reason. All of them were shot, usually by sniper fire, or from passing automobiles.’

  Vicki had put down her embroidery again, and was sitting in the circle of light from the brass reading-lamp with an expression of gentle sadness.

  ‘I’ve called as many of the bereaved on the phone as I’ve been able to trace,’ John went on, ‘and police departments in fifteen states. It’s always the same story. Shots from military surplus rifles, usually M-14S. And always the same kind of person. The quiet, unassuming liberals. People who were liked and respected. It’s almost as if they’re being shot because they’re popular.’

  ‘Are they really your responsibility?’ Vicki asked.

  ‘I guess it depends what responsibility means. If it means looking after yourself, and to hell with your fellow human beings, then, no, I don’t think they are my responsibility. But somebody shot my father, Vicki, and that somebody is going to shoot somebody else’s father, and somebody else’s mother, or brother, or sister, or lover. And even if I make myself think that responsibility ends at the front door, I can’t let those people get killed without making some effort to save them.’ She came across to him. ‘Hasn’t it occurred to you that these shootings are just coincidence? There’s so much crime, maybe this is just an ordinary national percentage of unexplained shootings,’ she said.

  He reached out and touched her hair, tugging it softly into separate strands.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘I thought of that.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘The number of unexplained shootings in the continental United States has quadrupled in the past two years, compared with a general rise in the homicide rate of seven percent.’

  ‘So what does that mean?’

  He let out a sigh. ‘It means that a lot of innocent people are being shot for no apparent reason. It doesn’t prove anything, or establish anything, but that’s what it means, and I believe that a conspiracy is possible. Not certain, maybe not even probable. But possible.’

  Vicki went across to the telephone and picked it up. She held out the receiver. ‘Call the FBI. That’s all you have to do.’

  ‘Call the FBI? And what am I supposed to tell them?’

  ‘Tell them just what you told me. Then you can leave them to investigate it. They probably know something about it already, if the crime figures have gone up the way you say they have. Come on, John, that’s what they’re there for.’

  ‘And what if they just laugh at me? Or what if they don’t laugh, but don’t do anything about it?’

  ‘John,’ she insisted, ‘call them.’

  He took the receiver from her, and laid it back on its rest.

  ‘I want to make one more check. There’s a woman in Mar Vista whose son was shot on the Santa Monica Freeway. I called her this morning and promised to go talk about it. I’ll make that one check, and t
hen I’ll call the FBI.’

  Vicki lowered her eyes, and then said softly, ‘All right. As long as you promise.’

  ‘Cross my heart and hope to fall off Mount Baldy.’ She put her arms around him and kissed him. A slow, sensitive, lingering kiss, both provocative and tender.

  ‘I just want to keep you alive,’ she whispered. ‘You’re no good to me dead. No good at all.’

  Twenty-Four

  It was a corner house overlooking Mar Vista playground. A bunch of neighbourhood kids were out skateboarding and playing ball when he pulled up outside. They stared at his car with blatant curiosity. He climbed out and locked it.

  The car was a ’58 Lincoln Capri that had been loaned by the custom bodyshop where his Imperial was being repaired. They specialised in 1950s automobiles, and he was a favoured customer. He had picked it up this morning on his way to Mar Vista district, and he was already wishing he had walked enough dogs and waxed enough cars to be able to afford to buy it. It was Pepsodent-white, with whitewall tyres, and a front end that looked like a Chinese dragon, all slanted headlamps and chrome bullets.

  A black kid in a Charlie Brown T-shirt came up to him and said, ‘Are you an alien, or what?’

  He grinned. ‘I come from the planet Mongo, and here’s a quarter to keep an eye on my spaceship.’

  He went up the dusty steps of the house, and looked down the row of bell-pushes by the front door. He saw K. Perlman on the third floor, and he pressed it. A crackly voice on the intercom said, ‘Who is it?’

  John identified himself, and the door buzzed open. He stepped into the stale-smelling hallway, stepping over bicycles and strollers and toys. He walked upstairs until he reached the third floor, and knocked at a cracked, brown-painted door.

  He waited for a while, then the door opened a crack, and an old woman’s face appeared. She was extravagantly made-up, with henna-red hair, plucked eyebrows, and a mouth of vivid scarlet lipstick.

  ‘Mrs Perlman?’ he asked. ‘I’m John Cullen.’

  ‘I know,’ she told him. ‘I was just checking to see if you looked suspicious or not.’

  He smiled. ‘I see. And what do you think?’

  ‘You’ll do,’ she said, and unlatched the security-chain. Inside, Mrs Perlman’s apartment was hung with dozens of engravings and daguerrotypes of early American and European landscapes. In the living room, there was a circular table with a fringed velvet cloth, and a large mildewed rubber plant in the centre of it. Mrs Perlman led the way through, and pulled out a chair for each of them.

  ‘Would you care for some coffee?’ she asked him. ‘I bought a fresh can of Maxwell House last Friday.’

  ‘That’s kind of you,’ he said.

  While he waited for her, he looked around the room. The cheap print drapes were drawn back, and the morning sunlight came through the dirty windows like bright fog. On the varnished sideboard, there was a hideous china fruit dish, and a framed photograph of a young boy of nineteen or twenty, an obvious studio portrait, and somehow all the more poignant for that.

  In a glass-fronted bookcase, there were rows of bound copies of Vogue.

  After a few minutes, Mrs Perlman came shuffling back in, carrying a wooden tray with two cups of pallid instant coffee and a saucer of coconut cookies. She set them down on the table, and then sat down herself, with a deep sigh.

  ‘Sugar, Mr Cullen?’

  ‘No thank you.’

  She took a coconut cookie off the tray and dipped it into her coffee until it was soggy. She said, ‘You’ll have to excuse me. My dentist makes false teeth like a klutz.’

  John sipped the tepid coffee, and then set the cup back on the saucer. ‘Did the police tell you how your son died?’ he asked.

  She nodded, without looking at him. ‘On the freeway, coming home early from work. He was a processor for movies, developing the rushes for big feature movies, you know? He worked on Silver Streak, with Gene Wilder, and Gene Wilder told him’ personally afterwards he was the best.’

  ‘That’s real nice,’ John said politely.

  There was a silence, and then Mrs Perlman said, ‘The police said they couldn’t think of any motive, why anyone should shoot him. He was just driving home, and some other car came up alongside him, and only one shot was fired. Straight at poor Nathaniel’s head.’

  ‘Were there any witnesses?’

  ‘None. Everybody’s blind when there’s danger. So the dybbuk who killed my son goes free.’

  ‘What were your son’s political opinions, Mrs Perlman? Would you call him a liberal, or what?’ John asked.

  ‘A liberal, that’s right,’ she told him. ‘Always a liberal. At work, he organised a club for movie process people out of work. He said the big studios and processors, they didn’t care for the little people.’

  John took a small notepad out of his coat pocket, and made a note of that. Nathaniel Perlman, thirty-one, film processor, liberal. Killed on the freeway from a moving car by an unknown assailant, for no obvious motive. In two days of telephone calls, and three personal visits, John had checked out twenty-seven of these shootings. He had chosen a random from the press clippings. Nathaniel Perlman was the twenty-eighth.

  He talked to Mrs Perlman for an hour or two, until eleven o’clock, and then thanked her for the coffee and left. He guessed he was going to have to keep his promise to Vicki now, and call the FBI. He only wished he could have a little more time to analyse some of these homicides, to check up on more of them, to find out what kind of a fatal plague was systematically ridding America of apparently innocent and well-liked people.

  He was halfway down the stairs when one of the doors on the next landing opened, and a young blond man in a plaid shirt and jeans stepped out. John tried to get past, but the young man jerked out his hand and grabbed the rail, and stopped him. John cautiously took a step back, and looked the young man up and down.

  ‘Are you going to let me pass?’ he asked the young man.

  The blond man was tanned, and looked athletic and fit. ‘Are you John Cullen?’ he said.

  ‘What’s it to you?’

  The young man waited for a moment, and then said again, ‘Are you John Cullen?’

  ‘That’s right,’ John finally said. ‘Now, who the hell are you?’

  Without any warning at all, the young man punched him hard in the stomach. Totally winded, John fell back against the stairs, and cracked his head against the skirting-board as he collapsed. Then the young man kicked him in the legs and the ribs.

  John lay there, his face against the worn linoleum, his stomach aching and his head ringing with noise. He could see the young man’s feet, and he gingerly looked up towards his face.

  The young man was impassive. He said, in a quiet but distinct voice, ‘I’m sorry I had to do that, Mr Cullen. But I was told to put you into a co-operative frame of mind before we left.’

  John wiped blood away from his lips with the back of his hand. ‘Left?’ he said hoarsely. ‘Left for where?’

  The young man reached down and pulled at his arm. ‘You’ll find out when you get there. Meanwhile, I’d appreciate your help. Just get yourself up off the floor, and walk downstairs a little way ahead of me. When you get outside, turn left, and walk as far as a brown Buick Century parked by the kerb in Rose Avenue.’

  John painfully climbed to his feet, using the railing to support himself. He was still trying to catch his breath, and he felt uncomfortably nauseous. The young man jerked his thumb towards the next flight of stairs, and said, ‘Faster, Mr Cullen. And please remember that I have a gun.’

  He stared at the young man’s face for a long, tense moment. The young man smiled, and said, ‘Believe me, it’s all the same to me if you live or if you die. So please get moving.’

  John went down the stairs to street level, stepping carefully over the junk in the hall. He opened the front door, and outside, the street was glaringly bright. With a quick look back at his captor, he went down the steps, and turned left towards Rose Avenue. The yo
ung man with the plaid shirt and the blond hair followed twenty or thirty feet behind, glancing quickly and nervously around the street as he walked.

  From across the street, the black kid who had been looking after his car came running. The kid skipped along beside him, and said, ‘I took care of your spaceship, mister. I took care of it good.’

  John quickly looked over his shoulder at the young man. The young man jerked his head at him urgently, telling him to keep moving.

  John said, out of the side of his mouth, ‘You want to make yourself a whole buck?’

  The black kid nodded his head up and down enthusiastically.

  ‘Well, here’s what to do,’ said John. ‘You just go to that phone booth over there, and dial 625-3311, and ask for the police. When they answer tell them I’ve been kidnapped, and they’ve got to get here real quick, and put out a call for that brown Buick Century over there.’

  ‘Are you kidding me?’ asked the kid, dancing along beside him.

  The young man called out: ‘Keep going, Cullen. Tell the kid to scram.’

  John said, ‘He was just looking after my car, that’s all. I was telling him to look after it a while longer.’

  ‘Well, just tell him to scram.’

  John said; ‘Go on, scram.’

  ‘What about my buck, man?’ asked the kid.

  ‘I’ll pay you later, when I’ve been rescued.’

  ‘Oh, sure,’ the kid said sarcastically. ‘I’ve heard that one before. What do you take me for, a dummy?’

  The young man in the plaid shirt caught up with them, and snapped; ‘Keep your mouth shut, Cullen. Kid – you get out of here before I twist your legs off and use them for toothpicks.’

  The black kid went running off, and the young man pushed Cullen roughly towards the parked Buick. He opened the back door, and hustled John inside. There was another man already sitting behind the wheel, a fat man with huge shoulders and ears like growths of red fungus. He held the wheel in his hands like a toy.