The Sweetman Curve

by Graham Masterton

  ‘I told you she found the gun,’ said Ken. ‘She kept pushing me to tell her what it was for. I tried to shut her up, but she kept on.’

  T.F., his eyes nothing but blank reflections, looked at Adele and grinned. ‘Curiosity killed the cat,’ he said, without changing expression.

  Adele said, ‘I demand to know what’s happening. You can’t simply force your way into my house and—’

  T.F. came closer. The M-14 was over his arm, but his finger was on the trigger. Tall and dark and threatening, he stood over Adele, and she could feel the coldness of his personality like an aura of liquid oxygen. She had always considered herself frosty and haughty, but this man carried with him an utter indifEerence to everyone around him that could have cracked mirrors. He was still grinning.

  ‘This is kind of a complication,’ whispered T.F. ‘We had hoped that all this would go off without any complications.’

  ‘All what?’ demanded Adele.

  ‘We have a little business here, that’s all. A little unfinished business. We had hoped to carry it off without your becoming aware of it at all. But, well, it seems like Ken here got careless, and too excitable, as usual. It can’t be helped.’

  ‘You’re going to shoot Senator Chapman, aren’t you? That’s it, isn’t it? You’re going to assassinate the senator.’

  T.F. shook his head, without answering her. His grin looked as if it had been scratched on a frozen lake with an ice-skate. He turned to Ken. ‘We’ll hold him as hostage,’ he said, pointing to Mark. ‘I’ll keep him up in your room. The party goes ahead as planned or else he gets his brains on the ceiling.’

  Adele felt chilled. ‘You can’t do that. You’ll never get away with it. Holman, go call the police at once,’ Adele ordered.

  Holman hesitated, and then took one step towards the house. Almost casually, T.F. raised his M-14 in the crook of his arm, and fired once across the swimming pool. The noise was deafening, and the echoes sounded loud and flat in the desert night. Holman, petrified, looked down at the string of decorative bulbs he had been holding. One of them, an inch from his hand, was shattered.

  T.F. said softly, ‘Miss Corliss, I don’t want anyone hurt who doesn’t need to be hurt. But I’m warning you here and now that if this party doesn’t go ahead like it was planned to, without any kind of winks or nods or signals from you that there’s anything unusual going on here, then your black fellow here is going to be shot dead at once, and you too, and most of your staff.’

  ‘But you’re going to kill somebody,’ said Adele. ‘If I hold the party, you’re going to kill one of my guests.’

  T.F. grinned. ‘Maybe. Maybe not. And even if we are, you don’t know who it’s going to be. So what are you going to do – take a chance on the life of somebody who may not mean anything to you at all, or have someone you know and care about wiped out?’

  On the concrete, Mark began to regain consciousness, and he groaned. There was blood splattered all over his face from his broken nose, and he looked grey from concussion.

  ‘He needs a doctor,’ insisted Adele.

  T.F. raised a hand. ‘He can get one Sunday morning. After the party. Meantime, he’s coming on upstairs with me.’

  ‘What shall I do?’ Ken asked.

  ‘Make sure the servants know the score. Then keep an eye on your lady friend here. Make sure she knows that neither of us have anything to lose.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Adele.

  ‘It means that if the cops come, we’re not going to throw our guns away and come out with our hands high. We’re going to shoot to kill and we’ll probably get away with it.’

  Sixteen

  That night, in their two-hundred-dollar suite at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles, the Chapmans, together again after days of separation, both slept badly. At three in the morning, Carl rolled out of bed, shuffled his feet into his slippers, and went into the sitting-room. He switched on the desk lamp, took a sheaf of hotel notepaper out of the desk, and began to write.

  A few minutes later, Elspeth followed him, her hair in curlers, dressed in a pink quilted bathrobe. ‘Do you want something to help you sleep, Carl?’ she asked. ‘You’ve been tossing and turning all night.’

  ‘I’ll have a brandy in a while. I guess I’m just tense.’

  ‘Tense about what? Not about me, surely.’

  ‘A little.’

  She went across to the tray of drinks on the bureau, and poured herself a dry vermouth on the rocks. She sipped it slowly as she walked to the window, and looked out over the lights of the Avenue of the Stars. So far, they hadn’t spoken about her phone call from Minneapolis, or what she had said about protecting herself from him. Their conversation over dinner had revolved mainly around tomorrow night’s party, and how bad Cousin Kate’s sciatica was, especially now that it was snowing in the northeast. They had carefully skirted around threats, and elections, and anything to do with politics.

  Carl sat heavily back in his chair, and turned towards Elspeth with a serious, jowly expression. ‘Elspeth, how does a married couple get into this kind of a conflict?’ he asked softly.

  Elspeth didn’t turn around. ‘It’s not a conflict, Carl. It’s a breakdown of trust.’

  ‘Well,’ he said, ‘I guess a lot of that is my fault. The girls, and all.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘The girls, and all.’

  He was quiet for a while, and then he said, ‘I don’t suppose it’s any use if I promise to stay faithful.’

  ‘Why should you?’ she asked him. ‘Why stay faithful when you can have me, and the presidency, and all the sexy young girls you want? It doesn’t make sense, staying faithful.’

  ‘Elspeth, I don’t like having things hanging over my head. Those films and tapes you hired that guy to take at the Doral – those worry me. They really worry me. I mean, it’s okay if you keep them as your personal insurance policy. I don’t mind that, because I know that I’m always going to treat you right. You’re never going to have to use them. But supposing they got into the wrong hands? Supposing someone did a black bag job on the house, just to see what they could come up with, and found them? Where do you think the future President of the United States would be then, if people found out he was cheating on his wife, and not only that, but cheating on his wife with a dead girl?’

  Elspeth turned around. ‘Dead?’

  ‘You didn’t know she was dead?’ he asked her.

  ‘No. Of course not. How did she die?’

  ‘Soon – er, soon after I left her. She, er, took a bath. It must have been too hot. Or maybe she was doped on pills. She, er, drowned. She drowned.’

  ‘She drowned?’

  Carl stood up, and came across to put his hands on Elspeth’s shoulders. ‘It was an accident,’ he said. ‘I made sure the police investigated very thoroughly. They checked everything. The Las Vegas coroner said it was an accident.’

  She stared at him, alarmed. ‘And what really happened to David Radetzky?’ she asked. ‘I called him today and all I got was his answering service.’

  ‘Radetzky? How should I know? A future president can’t look after the whole damned population individually.’

  ‘Carl, I called him yesterday and I called him four times today and he didn’t answer.’

  ‘Elspeth, you’re getting into areas that don’t concern you. We talked to Radetzky, sure, but that’s all. If he doesn’t choose to come into his office for a couple of days, that’s nothing to do with me. Maybe he’s taking a week off for Thanksgiving. I don’t know.’

  Elspeth took hold of her husband’s wrists and lowered his hands off her shoulders. Her face was lined and grim.

  ‘You’ve had him killed, haven’t you?’ she said.

  Carl grunted, trying to appear amused. ‘Killed? You think I’ve had him killed? Who do you think I am? A1 Capone?’

  ‘I think you’re worse than A1 Capone. I think you’re having people killed to help you win the presidential election in 1980. I think you’re having
a great many people killed.’

  He didn’t answer her. He went across to the drinks tray, found the brandy, and poured himself a large one, which he topped up with club soda. He paced around the room swallowing it in four or five hefty gulps. Then he set his empty glass down on the desk.

  ‘You haven’t answered me, Carl. I want to know the truth.’

  ‘The truth? The truth about what? The truth about the stinking rotten state of this country?’

  ‘The truth about what you’re doing, Carl.’

  ‘What you don’t know, Elspeth, can’t hurt you. I should think, in any case, you know too damned much already.’

  ‘How can I help you if you won’t tell me anything?’ He flushed. ‘I don’t need to tell you anything. You have your private detectives following me everywhere, taping my conversations, filming my sex life. You know more about me than I do.’

  ‘Carl, you’re arguing again.’

  ‘Do you blame me? I try to be conciliatory, I try to talk to you like a husband, and you never listen. You always keep me at arm’s length. You always have your insurance policy. When we first got married, you made sure you kept your little cottage in Wealthwood, just in case. Then you made sure you had plenty of money in your savings account, just in case. Now you’ve got yourself a pornographic movie of me, just in case. You talk about trust breaking down, Elspeth, but when you talk about it, you just remember all those little insurance policies of yours, and just how much they give the lie to your trust in me, that’s all.’

  She looked at him scornfully. ‘You’re full of wind,’ she said. ‘You have about as much sincerity as a bullfrog.’

  ‘You want insults?’ he demanded. ‘I can give you insults. Only I hope I’ve grown up enough not to bother.’

  ‘I don’t want insults,’ said Elspeth. ‘I want truth.’

  ‘Well, you hand over that film, and you can have all the truth you want. One gesture of trust deserves another.’

  ‘Truth first, Carl. Film later.’

  He came up close and looked at her with a hard, impatient expression. He was breathing heavily, as if he’d just been running. ‘I want that film, Elspeth, and I want it now.’

  She turned away superciliously. ‘You know my terms.’

  ‘Your terms? What are you talking about? We’re husband and wife here, Elspeth, trying to patch together a marriage that probably didn’t ever have a dog’s chance. But at least we’re trying. Now, will you give me that goddamned film?’

  She shook her head. ‘You’re talking nonsense, Carl. You’re talking as if we were an ordinary couple. But we’re not, are we? You’re a lecherous, unscrupulous man, with his heart set on the White House, and I’m a woman who recognises that her only chance to make anything out of her life is to go along with this lecherous., unscrupulous man.’

  Carl was trembling. He could feel his temper rising inside him like black mercury rising up a thermometer. He took three deep breaths, and then he said tightly, ‘Elspeth, give me the film.’

  ‘No, Carl.’

  He paused for a moment, and then he roared, ‘Give me the goddamned film!’

  She smiled a contemptuous smile, and that was the worst thing she could have done. Carl seized hold of her hair, and threw her against the settee, wrenching out a whole handful of curlers and dark hair. She shrieked, ‘Carl!’ and tried to protect herself from him, but he was a big, heavy man, and his jogging had kept him fit. He was angry, too, from years of frustration, years of being patronized, years of sexual disparagement and social embarrassment.

  He heaved her up from the settee, and punched her hard in the ribs. He was enough of a politician not to hit her in the face. She doubled up without a sound and dropped to the rug.

  Carl, panting, bent down and pulled her to her feet. Her mouth was wide open, desperate for breath, and her face was blue. He waited until she had gasped some air into her lungs, and her colour began to come back.

  ‘Now,’ he told her, ‘I want you to give me that film.’

  Still gulping air, she shook her head.

  ‘Elspeth,’ he warned evenly, ‘I want you to tell me where the film is.’

  ‘No.’

  His mouth tilted into something that could have been a smile. He said, very quietly, ‘I’m not giving you five minutes to make your mind up, Elspeth. I’m asking you now.’

  All she could do was shake her head.

  ‘You want to be First Lady, don’t you? You want to get into the White House as badly as I do. But you’re not coming with me unless you learn to do what I tell you, Elspeth. I can’t have disobedience. Maybe it’s going to hurt my chances, if we split up, but you’re going to hurt me more if you act like this, because you’re going to make my life dangerous, and I can’t have that.’

  ‘Let go of me, Carl.’

  He twisted her arm and forced her close to him. ‘You tell me where the film is, and I will.’

  ‘There’s no chance, Carl. If I give you that film, you’ll kill me, too. Just like you did all the others.’

  He shoved her violently back against the wall, pressing his full weight against her. Then he seized her breasts in his big hard hands, and screwed them viciously around, twisting her nipples until she screamed out loud. He punched her again in the stomach, and she collapsed on to the floor.

  While she lay there, he went back to the drinks tray and poured himself another brandy-and-soda. He felt numbed and unreal and angry. He could have smashed up the whole hotel room. Thrown the damned stupid television out of the window. Torn the pictures off the walls. But he knew that he needed to keep control. He had to keep himself calm. He swallowed his drink, and paced edgily back to where his wife was lying.

  She was whining for breath.

  ‘Well? How does it feel on the floor?’

  She couldn’t answer.

  ‘Now do you want to tell me where the film is?’

  Again, she shook her head.

  He glanced across at the drinks tray. A bottle of brandy, a bottle of vodka, a soda siphon, a bottle of vermouth, a bottle of club soda, half-empty. ‘There was something we used to do in the Army, you know, when someone ratted on us,’ he said.

  Elspeth lay where she was, saying nothing. He squatted down beside her.

  ‘It hurt like hell,’ he told her. ‘And if you don’t tell me where that film is, I’ve got a damned good mind to do it to you.’

  She shook her head weakly. He looked at her for a while, and then he stood up and went across to the bureau. He came back with the vodka bottle, unscrewing the cap as he came.

  He squatted down again. She watched him, but she was too hurt to move. He said, ‘You stuck-up bitch. When I think of all the hard years you’ve given me, it makes me realise I should have hit you the first night we got married. I should have thrashed the hell out of you. Then we would have gotten ourselves straight.’

  She turned her eyes away.

  ‘Now, you’ve got yourself one last chance,’ he said quietly. ‘Either you hand over that film, or else I’m going to hurt you, Elspeth, really hurt you.’

  She didn’t stir. Didn’t even give any indication that she’d heard him. That was just like her. Even when she was beaten and humbled she was contemptuous.

  Carl rolled her over until she was face down on the floor. Then he sat astride her, facing her feet, pressing his whole two hundred pounds on her waist. He lifted her bathrobe at the back, baring her pale bottom, and then he pulled the cheeks apart with one stubby-fingered hand. In. the other hand he gripped the vodka bottle, three-quarters full. He began splashing vodka on her thighs and between her legs.

  The first time he pushed the bottle, she twisted beneath him and said, ‘Aah!’ He waited for her to give in, to give him the film and tell him she was never going to try any stunts like that again. After all, in the Army, he’d seen grown men beg for mercy at the first thrust.

  ‘You give in?’ he asked her roughly.

  There was no answer.

  ‘You give in?’


  He waited some more. Still no answer.

  ‘All right, bitch,’ he told her, and he bent his arm to force the vodka bottle harder and harder, twisting it around as he pushed it, and he was grunting and sweating so much that he hardly even heard her shrieking. He took a breath, and then he pushed it again, until almost half of it had disappeared.

  ‘Take it out! Take it out! I give in! Carl! For the love of God! Take it out!’

  When it was over, she lay on the floor sobbing, and he stood by the bureau, finishing off his brandy-and-soda. He could see his reflection in the dark glass of the window, with the lights of Century City beyond, and it occurred to him how old and heavy he looked.

  Elspeth shaking got to her knees, and shuffled over to the settee. She lay down on it, white-faced and shocked, and held herself close for security and warmth. He looked across at her, but said nothing.

  After a while, she whispered, ‘It’s in the vault at the Security Pacific Bank, the branch under the Chinese restaurant on Century Plaza. It’s under the name of McCarthy.’

  ‘Was that your idea of a joke?’ he asked, but she didn’t say any more. There was a polite knocking at the door of the hotel suite, and Carl had to go to answer it.

  It was the night manager. He said courteously, ‘I’m sorry to disturb you. Senator, but a couple of our guests have expressed concern at some of the noise from your suite. Is everything all right?’

  Senator Chapman smiled reassuringly. ‘Everything’s fine,’ he said, with his best electioneering clap on the shoulder. ‘Everything’s real fine.’

  Seventeen

  The morning of the funeral there was a high layer of cloud. The cemetery was unpleasantly close, like the inside of a linen cupboard, and John stood a little apart from the others, sweating inside his black suit, feeling as if the flesh was melting away from his bones. Perri was there, as she had promised, and stood a few feet behind him, in a plain grey suit and a black hat with veil.

  In the blurred, shadowless light, they lowered the casket of William Cullen into the grave, and John sifted a handful of dry dirt on to the polished lid. Then he turned away, hoping that his father was being received somewhere in joy and dignity and grace. Mel came over and put his arm around him, and with Perri staying close, they walked to the cemetery gates.