The Sweetman Curve

by Graham Masterton

  Detective Morello was waiting beside the white Lincoln. He shook hands with John and Mel, and John introduced him to Perri.

  ‘I hope you don’t think I’m intruding,’ said Detective Morello. ‘I can come back later if I am.’

  ‘That’s all right,’ said John. ‘I’d be interested to hear what you’ve got.’

  ‘Well,’ said Detective Morello, ‘we don’t have a great deal. We have some more ballistics results, but they’re not exactly conclusive. We ran a check on the Fury that followed you down to San Diego, too, but that’s clean of any prints except the owner’s. It was stolen, you see. By someone intelligent enough to wear gloves.’

  ‘So you’re still some way off an arrest?’ asked Mel. ‘I’m afraid so. We’re making progress, but it’s slow.’ John loosened his black tie. It was only eleven o’clock, but the humidity was building up. ‘Is that why you came?’ he asked Detective Morello. ‘Just to tell us that?’

  ‘Well, not exactly. In fact, the reason I came was because of Miss Shaw here. You were seen in her company by some of my men last night. Because of that, I was kind of worried that you might be trying to tie in Father Zaparelli’s death yesterday morning with what happened to your father and your fiancee.’

  ‘Is there anything wrong in that?’ asked John.

  ‘Not per se. But I’m afraid we don’t really approve of private citizens trying to undertake detective work. It fouls us up more often than not – sometimes tragically. In the past few years we’ve had a couple of cases of police stake-outs being blown by some enthusiastic amateur going right in with his Saturday night special blazing, thinking he’s Cannon and Kojak and Commissioner McMillan all rolled up into one.’

  John glanced at Mel, who simply shrugged. Detective Morello said, ‘I know how you feel about your father, Mr Cullen. I know you’re sore and you’re mad. I know you want to bring his killer to book. But I’d really appreciate it if you left this Freeway Fruitcake to us, because we’re the professionals and we’re going to catch him. I’m saying this for your own good. I don’t want you to foul up the police department, and most of all I don’t want you to get hurt. Neither you, nor Mr Walters here, nor Miss Shaw.’

  John opened the Lincoln’s doors. ‘All right, sir,’ he said quietly. ‘We won’t interfere. You go track down the Freeway Fruitcake, and we’ll stay right out of your way.’

  Detective Morello looked at John for a moment, not sure whether he ought to believe him or not. But then he said, ‘I’m not trying to make you feel that your interest isn’t appreciated. We really do appreciate it.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said John. ‘I appreciate yours.’

  ‘What it simply boils down to is that we can’t let you go risking your life,’ added Detective Morello. ‘It’s our job to hunt down killers, and we know what the odds are. But we can’t let civilians go taking those risks for us.’

  ‘I understand,’ said John.

  ‘It’s not that we don’t value public help,’ said Detective Morello. ‘The Los Angeles Police Department depends a great deal on public help.’

  ‘Sure,’ nodded John.

  ‘Right, then,’ said Detective Morello. He didn’t know what else to say. John climbed into his car, closed the door, and rolled down the window. He sat there with an expectant expression, as if waiting for Detective Morello to come up with a resonant and dramatic closing statement.

  ‘Well, that’s all,’ said Detective Morello.

  ‘That’s it?’ asked John.

  ‘Just keep in touch if anything happens, if anyone else tries a hit. And let us know if you change hotels.’

  ‘Okay,’ said John. ‘So long.’

  He started the motor, and they drove out along Forest Lawn Drive towards the Ventura Freeway. Mel was sitting on the right-hand side and Perri sat between them. The morning was smoggy as they turned south on to the Golden State Freeway. They didn’t talk much as they drove. The sad atmosphere of William Cullen’s funeral was still with them, and Detective Morello’s warning hadn’t done much to cheer them.

  They sped along the coast past Oceanside and Leucadia, and by the time they reached the outskirts of San Diego, it was a few minutes past four. John drove straight to Fairmount Avenue, turned the corner, and pulled up outside Professor Sweetman’s house. They got out of the car, and walked across the shrivelled lawn and rang the bell.

  Abruptly, the front door of the Sweetman house was opened. A Mexican woman in an apron stood there, looking them up and down with grave suspicion.

  ‘Is Professor Sweetman home?’ John asked.

  The woman stared at him mistrustfully.

  ‘Professor Sweetman?’ he repeated. ‘Is Professor Sweetman a casa?’

  The woman slowly shook her head from side to side.

  ‘Are you sure?’ Perri asked her.

  The woman nodded.

  ‘If he’s not at home, where is he? Where can we find Professor Sweetman?’ John asked.

  The woman ruminated for a moment, and then said, ‘Laboratory. That way. By university.’

  They thanked the Mexican woman, and then drove up Fairmount Avenue as far as the university campus. There was hardly anyone around. A couple of students jogging across the grass. A groundsman pushing a lawn-mower. They parked in the main lot, and walked around the block until they found a sign with an arrow that pointed left, and read Demographic Research Lab.

  ‘That has to be it,’ said John, and they crossed the grass to a small, squat building of concrete and brick. They walked around the front of the building, and found a pair of mahogany doors with windows inset in them. John shaded his eyes and peered inside.

  ‘See anything?’ asked Perri.

  ‘There’s a small entrance-hall, then another set of doors. Come on, let’s go inside.’

  They quietly pushed open the double doors and found themselves in a bare, tiled lobby. There were windows in the next pair of doors, too, and from within they could hear the humming of electrical energy and the intermittent clicking sound of computers. John walked softly across the lobby and looked into the next room.

  ‘What’s in there?’ hissed Perri.

  John raised his hand to show that she ought to keep quiet for a moment. Then he whispered, ‘There’s a whole bank of IBM computers, on three sides of the room. They’re all working like crazy. I can see a couple of lab assistants. There’s someone else in there, I can’t see who it is right now. Some guy in a yellow sport shirt and grey pants.’

  ‘Any sign of Sweetman?’ Mel asked.

  ‘No – wait a moment. Here he comes. He’s holding a whole armful of print-outs. He’s talking to the guy in the sport shirt and explaining something about them.’

  For three long minutes, John watched as Professor Sweetman, tall and intense, talked to the short, stockily built man about the print-outs he was holding over his arm. He looked like a head waiter explaining the menu of the day. The stocky man kept nodding, and from the way he was nodding, John guessed that he’d heard it all before. Yeah, professor. Sure, professor.

  Abruptly, the stocky man turned around and walked towards the doors, with a brief wave over his shoulder to Professor Sweetman, and a nod to the lab assistants. John said, ‘Get back – he’s coming out. Get around the corner!’

  They slipped through the outer doors and dodged around the corner of the demographics building, keeping as far back out of sight as they could. They heard the front doors of the building open, and the stocky man crossed the lawn to the parking lot. The printouts he was carrying fluttered brightly in the afternoon wind.

  ‘We ought to stop that guy,’ Perri suggested. ‘Maybe he knows something.’

  ‘Stop him!’ said Mel. ‘Are you nuts? How are we going to stop him?’

  ‘I don’t know. How does one man go about stopping another man?’

  ‘Perri’s right,’ John said. ‘We’ve made it this far. Let’s take the risk.’

  The three of them left the cover of the demographics building and walked quickly
towards the parking lot. The short, stocky man was standing by a light green Cadillac Coupe de Ville, and he was awkwardly reaching into his back pants pocket for his keys. John signalled to Mel to skirt around the back of him, and to Perri to stay close.

  When they were only ten or fifteen feet away, the man looked up. He squinted at them across the glare of the hot parking lot, turning from John to Mel and back again.

  John said, ‘Excuse me, sir.’

  The man said nothing. He opened the door of his car, and pushed the print-outs into the front seat, and then stood there staring at them silently.

  ‘Would you mind if we asked you a question?’ John asked.

  The man had a sour, squashed-looking face. ‘If it’s money you want, you’re out of luck. I didn’t get to the bank this week,’ he said.

  ‘Do we look like muggers?’ Perri asked.

  The man shrugged. ‘How the fuck should I know?’

  ‘We want to ask you about those computer printouts,’ John said.

  ‘What business is it of yours?’

  Mel, coming up close behind the man, said, ‘No business at all. But I’m sure you’d like to help with a police investigation.’

  ‘Police investigation? What is this? You’re no more police than I am.’

  John edged nearer. ‘All you have to do is show us the print-outs. Then you can go.’

  ‘I don’t have to show you doodly-squat. Now, get out of here, before I call somebody.’

  ‘Mel,’ said John, and beckoned him to make a rush for the man, but the man was alerted to what they were doing, and slid quickly into the driver’s seat of his car. He slammed the door and locked the power locks just as Mel made a grab for the handle. Then he started the car’s motor, gunned it, and swerved away from the parking-space and screeched towards the exit.

  Mel was calm and decisive. He pulled the .38 revolver out from his belt, steadied it with both hands, and fired one shot across the parking lot. It hit the Coupe de Ville’s front tyre as it was turning out of the exit, and the green Cadillac mounted the sidewalk outside the demographics building and struck a tree. The motor whined for a moment, then died.

  They ran towards the car. Inside, the stocky man was sitting dazed and shaken, but unharmed. Mel waved the revolver at him, and he unsteadily unlocked the doors and stepped out. He sat on the kerb with his head between his knees, looking pale, and then he suddenly vomited.

  John took the print-outs off the front seat and held them up. They were lists and lists of names, addresses, and dates, followed by coded comments. Altogether, there must have been well over a thousand of them.

  Timothy P. Sheldon, Attleboro, Mass. Intersected soonest 77

  Margarita Ramonez, Hemet, Ca. Close intersection report later e 78

  Herman T. Kreisler, Lansing, Mich. Intersected ordinary 1 77

  At the top of the print-out was the heading: Sweetman Curve Process 35/710/409. CXC. Private & Confidential.

  John pointed it out to Perri. ‘You see that? CXC. I don’t think it’s any coincidence that CXC are the initials of Carl X. Chapman, do you?’

  ‘You think that clinches it? Do we call the police now?’ Mel asked.

  ‘I don’t know,’ John told him. ‘On its own, this list doesn’t signify anything much. I mean, we’re only guessing what it is. And even if it is a list of people Chapman’s planning to kill, none of them are dead yet, and it’s going to be a hell of a job proving that what we’ve got here is a political death roll.’

  ‘Let’s go ask Professor Sweetman,’ suggested Perri. ‘Maybe you’ll find him a little more informative this time.’

  Mel prodded the short, stocky man to his feet, and they walked quickly back to the demographics building. This time, they barged straight through the doors and into the computer room.

  Professor Sweetman was leaning over a console, tapping out the beginnings of a programme. John said clearly, ‘Professor Sweetman,’ and the old man raised 11 is head and stared at them all as if he couldn’t believe they were real. There was an amber skylight above their heads, and his pinched and elderly face looked oddly unwell in the light filtering down from it.

  ‘Dennis, you came back,’ he said, momentarily unable to grasp why the print-out messenger had returned in the company of two men he had thrown out of his house yesterday and a perfectly strange girl. ‘Is anything the matter?’

  ‘Better ask these turkeys,’ said Dennis. ‘I just run the errands and get fucking shot at.’

  Professor Sweetman dithered, and then looked around the room. ‘You all better come into my office,’ he said. ‘It’s right through here.’

  With Mel staying inches behind Dennis, they walked through into a musty-smelling office. There was a clutter of cheap modern furniture and desklamps and scientific periodicals. On the walls were pinned graphs and charts of demographic profiles, and dozens of scribbled notes. It looked more like a stationery cupboard than an office, except for one thing. In a gilt frame on the desk stood a sensitive colour portrait of a middle-aged woman, with a sad, soft face. She looked younger and less emaciated than she was in real life, but John recognised her as Mrs Sweetman.

  Professor Sweetman closed the door behind them. ‘Now,’ he said, ‘do you mind explaining what this is all about?’

  John held up the print-outs. ‘I think it’s what they call the end of the line,’ he said gently. ‘We know who your political client is, and we know what he’s using your curve for, and we’re pretty sure that you know, too. We’re going to take you in to the Los Angeles police, Professor Sweetman, and all these print-outs, too, as evidence.’

  Dennis shrugged, and took a crumpled pack of cigarettes out of his shirt. ‘Don’t ask me,’ he said. ‘All I did was pick up the stuff every week and take it to Mr Chapman’s office. That’s all I did. I don’t know what the fuck it’s for.’

  Professor Sweetman sat down at his desk, took off his spectacles, and stared for quite a long time out the window. Eventually, he turned back and looked at them, and gave a small, regretful smile. ‘I suppose it was too radical to last,’ he said, tiredly. ‘You can’t expect to change the political pattern of a nation like ours overnight, by fair means or foul.’

  ‘I’d say the means were pretty foul,’ said John tersely. Professor Sweetman nodded. ‘You’re probably right. I’m not going to confess anything. I shall leave all that to my attorney.’

  ‘But it’s true?’ asked Perri. ‘It’s actually true that you’ve been selling this curve for political murders?’ The old man shook his head. ‘This isn’t the time or the place to admit to things like that. But I will say one thing. When the person you love most of all in the whole world has a chance of survival, a chance for a few more years, then I’m afraid that your sense of morality changes. Mima had a brain tumour that was almost certain to kill her. She was irrational and ill for three years. They told me that the necessary operations would cost over half a million dollars.’

  He carefully put his glasses back on. ‘Out of the political and commercial applications of the Sweetman Curve, I made nearly three quarters of a million dollars for myself alone, most of that from my political people. Mima has had her operation, and she is recovering. As you saw for yourself, Mr Cullen, she is now quite rational.’

  John looked at Mel almost sadly. Now that he knew their hunches and suspicions had all been right, now that he knew their worst fears about the Sweetman Curve were proved, he felt drained and exhausted. He could have dropped into a chair and slept around the clock. Mel didn’t know what to say. The enormity of what Professor Sweetman had done was almost too much to take in.

  ‘Dennis, unimpressed by Professor Sweetman’s explanation, said, ‘Do you mind if I leave now? I didn’t do anything. This was just a job.’

  ‘Stay here,’ ordered John. ‘I think it’s time we called the police.’

  Professor Sweetman got up from his desk and went across to an untidy grey steel filing cabinet. He opened the drawer and took out a bottle of Madeira and
a single glass.

  ‘You don’t mind if I have one? I think I need it to steady my nerves.’

  ‘Go ahead,’ said John. He felt so disgusted with Professor Sweetman that he could scarcely conceal it in his voice. ‘Go ahead and drink the whole damned bottle.’

  Professor Sweetman poured out a modest half-glass. He took a careful sip, and then looked at his watch.

  ‘I suppose I might tell you something which would mitigate any future prosecution,’ he said. ‘Something which might stand in my favour.’

  ‘I can’t think of anything which could stand in your favour, professor,’ said John.

  Professor Sweetman looked a little hurt. ‘No, well, I suppose you can’t. But a court might. And I suppose I owe it to myself, and to Mima, if I try. The truth is, we have a very big project lined up for tonight. A special one, which required a most interesting curve. I worked it all out myself, and it was fascinating.’

  ‘A killing?’ asked Perri.

  ‘Well, the end result is a killing, but ‘It’s a killing, and it’s fascinating?’ said Perri, totally shocked.

  Professor Sweetman seemed extremely put out by Perri’s hostility and shock. ‘I don’t plan the killings, you know. I have nothing to do with their execution. I simply—’

  ‘I don’t want your excuses, professor,’ John said. ‘I just want to hear what you have to say.’

  Professor Sweetman sighed, and stood up. He took a chart from the wall, and spread it out on the table. The chart was covered in complicated curves and lines, and marked with dozens of fainter lines labelled ‘probability tangents.’

  ‘This is a draft curve worked out for a very talented and complex personality,’ Professor Sweetman ex-’ plained. ‘Usually, we’re dealing only with very ordinary people, people whose influence is felt on the society in which they live because of their popularity, but not for any other reason. In this case, we’re dealing with a man who is politically influential not only because of his personality but because of his talents and the way in which he uses them.