‘No reason. I wondered if they were still giving you that busy switchboard routine.’
‘I haven’t tried since seven o’clock last night.’
Della stood up, and tightened the silk tie around her waist. ‘I guess Shearson’s trying to keep us all out of public circulation until his money’s been safely salted away.’
Ed said, ‘The truth is that Peter Kaiser said I could call Season if I wanted to.’
Della looked up. ‘He did? And you didn’t? Don’t tell me you didn’t want to.’
Ed stooped down and picked up his sneakers. When he stood straight again, he simply gave Della an unhappy smile.
‘It’s not because of me, is it?’ asked Della. ‘You mustn’t ever think of abandoning your wife because of me.’
‘No,’ said Ed, quietly. ‘Peter Kaiser says there’s a private detective following Season and Sally around. Well – I don’t have any way of telling whether he’s bluffing or not. But the twist is that unless I suffer severe loss of memory whenever anybody asks me about Shearson Jones and the Blight Crisis Appeal, that private detective is going to get orders to kill both of them, right away. I’d like to call them, but I think it’s safer if I don’t. Not just yet, anyway.’
Della came slowly over to Ed and laid her hands on his shoulders. Her hair gleamed coppery-gold in the faint light from the open windows. ‘So that’s why you wanted to know if the FBI had any proof that Shearson was really a killer.’
‘Yes,’ said Ed, quietly. He hesitated, and then he said, ‘I know that things haven’t been too good between me and Season lately… We’ve bickered over the farm, and we’ve argued over living in Kansas, and we’ve had enough rows about my mother to send up the Goodyear blimp. But I don’t want anything like this to happen… not in a thousand years.’
Della kissed him, gently and lingeringly, on the lips. It was a kiss of affection and understanding, rather than a kiss of passion. ‘Do you want to back out of this break-in?’ she asked him. ‘I’ll understand if you do. Your wife and child are far more important to you than Shearson Jones.’
Ed shook his head. ‘If we can find something to lock Shearson Jones up in the pen, then I’m ready to help.’
‘You’re sure?’ she said.
‘Just tell me what to do,’ he replied, ‘and make sure that the FBI send me a case of bourbon at Christmas for the next twenty years.’
Della checked her watch. ‘Let’s go, then. The Muldoons are usually awake at the crack, and it’s going to take us at least a half-hour to get what we need.’
The upper landing outside Ed’s bedroom was silent, and illuminated only by a low-voltage bracket lamp. Della paused for a moment, and looked carefully along the landing towards the double doors of Shearson’s personal bedroom suite. They were closed, as usual, and probably locked. One of the Muldoon brothers had told Ed that Shearson had once been attacked in a hotel in New York by a prowler, and ever since then he had been neurotic about the idea of being surprised in his sleep.
‘Don’t they have anybody patrolling the house during the night?’ whispered Ed.
Della shook her head. ‘The Muldoons check on all the doors and windows before they go to bed, and switch on an outside alarm; and there are a couple of Dobermanns loose in the grounds. For tonight, they’ve closed down the switchboard, too. The only telephone that works is Shearson’s private line. Maybe Peter has a phone, too. But that’s all. They don’t need much else in the way of security, out here in the wilds.’
She gripped Ed’s sleeve, and led him swiftly along the length of the landing to the angled cedarwood staircase. The stairs were so well constructed that not one of them creaked as they padded down to the main living area. They waited for just a second, listening, to make sure that they hadn’t been heard; and then they crossed the wide living-room floor, and approached the passage to Shearson’s study.
A portrait of a sour-faced trooper by George Caleb Bingham observed them from the passage wall; and a little further along, they were stared at fiercely by a Kwakiutl Indian mask in green and scarlet, fringed with real human hair. The cold magnetic light of the moon fell across the passage from a triangular wood-framed window, and pointed to the door of Shearson’s study as if it were a mystic sign.
Della said, ‘Keep an eye open, will you? This shouldn’t take long.’ And while Ed loitered at the corner of the passage, wishing that he’d thought of going to the bathroom before he ventured out on this bag job with Della, she reached into the pocket of her emerald green bathrobe and took out a plastic envelope, which, by the clinking sound it made, probably contained lock-picks.
‘They teach you to burglarise people’s houses?’ asked Ed, in a breathy whisper.
Della raised one finger to her lips. ‘They call it “gaining essential access”. It’s only called “burglarisation” when you get caught, and the agency disowns you.’
She peered at the lock closely. ‘It’s nothing special,’ she told him. ‘A five-lever armour-plated deadlock.’
‘Is that all?’ asked Ed. ‘In that case, you should be able to open it with your hairgrip.’
‘Will you keep a look-out, and shut up, and trust me?’ hissed Della.
Ed waved a hand at her to calm her down. ‘Just open the door. I trust you.’
He kept a watch on the silent living area as Della worked at the lock. The polished tables, the empty chairs, the long-case clock that ticked away the small hours of the morning with tired reluctance. From where he was standing, he could see the stairs and most of the upper landing, too, and there was no sign yet that anybody was stirring. He looked at his watch and it was eleven minutes after two. He wondered why he felt so unreal, so detached from everything that was going on. Maybe it was this stylish and stylised house, with its Indian art treasures, and that indescribable aura of sheer wealth and political power which surrounded Shearson Jones. Maybe it was the terrible events of Sunday night, the looting and the burning – events which he felt responsible for starting, but which he had only been able to experience at second-hand, on television.
Another oddity, too, as far as his feelings of reality were concerned, was that the television news programmes kept informing him that ‘Kansas farmer Ed Hardesty, who publicly exposed the threat of a nationwide famine, is now in hiding in Washington, DC, along with Senator Shearson Jones, the man he claims is responsible for the crisis.’
The gates of Lake Vista had been firmly locked against the press since eleven o’clock Sunday evening, and two attempts by CBS News to land in the grounds by helicopter had been thwarted by Shearson’s yapping dogs and by the Muldoon brothers, waving scatter-guns and threatening all kinds of murder. Through his office in Washington, Shearson had announced that he was returning to the capital, in due course, and that he would make ‘a full and uninhibited statement’ later – but first he felt it his duty to make several ‘private and confidential’ visits to friends and political associates in Kansas. That had lent him the time to empty the Blight Crisis Appeal of anything that wasn’t nailed to the floor, while reassuring the President that he was quite prepared to return to Washington and face the music.
What Ed didn’t know was that Season had called Lake Vista five times during Sunday night and Monday morning, and that Willard Noakes had called, too, just to leave a message that ‘we’re right behind you, and if you need us, call.’
Della, wrestling with the door of Shearson’s study, said, ‘I can’t get to grips with this fucking lock. What the hell does he need with a five-lever deadlock?’
‘I thought you said it was easy,’ said Ed.
‘It should be,’ she told him, irritably. ‘It just so happens that it isn’t.’
‘Do you want me to try?’ Ed asked her.
‘Are you an FBI agent? Or a professional thief?’
‘No, I’m not.’
‘Well then, keep quiet, and let me get on with it.’
‘All right. I’m sorry. I was only offering to help.’
�
�Don’t.’
Ed turned away from Della, and checked the living area again. It was 2:21 a.m., and the house was still silent. He thought he could hear someone snoring, but he couldn’t make out who it was.
The events of Sunday night had created an extraordinary kind of tension in the house. Ed had seen hardly anything of Karen since Sunday morning: Peter Kaiser had been keeping her away from anybody who might be considered an enemy of the Lake Vista establishment. Peter wasn’t sure yet if Karen had been responsible for tipping Ed off about the extent of the crop blight, but he wasn’t taking any chances. His mother had once told a new and rather sophisticated girlfriend of his that he had wept as a child in Bambi, especially in the scene where Bambi wanders through the fiery forest calling ‘Mother! Mother!’, and Peter had never trusted any woman since.
The tension had been heightened by Shearson’s silence. Instead of storming and raging about the house as Ed had expected him to, he had closeted himself away, and spoken to nobody but Peter and his servants. Several times during the day Ed had felt tempted to ask to talk to him, if only to clear the air. But Shearson had stayed out of sight. He wasn’t interested in Ed’s apologies, or explanations, or even his pledges to see Shearson roasting in hell. Shearson had several millions of dollars to rake off, and that was all that mattered.
‘That’s it,’ said Della, with surprising suddenness. Ed turned, and the door was already ajar.
‘You’re a genius,’ Ed told her. ‘A five-lever, armour-plated lock?’
‘They give us a pretty thorough training,’ Della explained, with unconvincing modesty.
‘You bet your investigative ass,’ said Ed, flippant, but also impressed. He’d tried to pick a padlock once, on Season’s diary, and he knew just how damned difficult lock-picking could be. He’d had to wait until Season had gotten around to telling him about her affair with Clive Harris of her own accord, and by then he hadn’t been really interested any more.
‘Come on,’ whispered Della. ‘And make sure you close the door behind you.’
They stepped into the office. It smelled of wine and cigar-smoke, and Shearson’s underarm sweat. Della switched on the green glass desklamp, and directed it away from the window, in case it cast any light across the gardens outside which could be seen from a balcony upstairs.
The wide oak desk was in chaos, heaped with scratch pads and graph paper and accounts books. It looked as if Shearson and Peter had finished their day’s work and then left everything exactly where it was, without bothering to clear up. There was even a half-smoked cigar in Shearson’s ashtray, and a congealing cup of coffee beside Peter’s chair. Ed picked up a yellow legal pad that Shearson had carelessly dropped on to the floor. On the top page, he had doodled an animated dollar-sign, with a broad smile, a big nose, and two little legs.
‘It seems like even dollars can walk,’ said Ed, throwing the pad down again.
‘Sure they can,’ said Della, who was busily leafing through the papers that Peter Kaiser had been working on. ‘They walk right out of the Blight Crisis Appeal fund, around the block a few times, double back around the next block, and then dodge in to Shearson Jones’s hank when nobody’s looking.’
‘I call that smart,’ said Ed.
‘I don’t,’ said Della. ‘I call it embezzlement.’
Ed looked around the office. The walls were clad with knotted pine, sanded and varnished. There were five or six photographs of Shearson making presentations to smiling wheat farmers in Kansas, and a misty early-American landscape by George Catlin. On the oak bookshelf beside the desk reclined a Victorian alabaster sculpture of an idealised Indian maiden, Pocahontas out of Wonder Woman, with feathers in her hair and bare breasts.
Della threw Ed a heavy pile of loose papers. ‘You can start on those. You’re looking for any financial movement out of the Blight Crisis Appeal fund. You’re looking for where it goes, who handles it, which banks are involved, account numbers, possible pseudonyms, that kind of thing. You’re looking for double entries and obvious laundering jobs. You think you can manage?’
‘Sure I can manage,’ said Ed, taking the papers across the room and spreading them out over a small side-table. ‘I mean, pinning down two expert embezzlers out of a whole mess of memos, that can’t be difficult.’
‘You don’t have to find anything specifically criminal. All we need is names, or account numbers. Anything that looks remotely unorthodox.’
‘Okay,’ said Ed. ‘This is your party.’
They worked their way through the papers for forty minutes. Most of the notes and jottings were indecipherable, crowded with notes about tax law – such as ‘Arizona acct exempt under Code Sec 501(c)3??’ and ‘trnsfr to cemetery company poss?’ – and then there were columns and columns of figures, hardly any of them annotated or explained.
But after a while, Ed began to detect a distinct flow of correlated figures from one page of all these scribbled accounts to another. He pulled the desk lamp nearer, and switched on Peter Kaiser’s print-out calculator, and after five minutes of intensive button-punching, he said, ‘That’s it. I think I’m on to something.’
Della came across and looked over his shoulder. ‘See here,’ he told her, ‘this figure of 1.72 million dollars has been ostensibly transferred into a holding fund, to accrue interest while the Blight Crisis Appeal fund management decide how best it’s supposed to be spent. It’s been split six ways, and invested under the perfectly legal terms of the holding fund into six different agriculture-related industries. But if you look at the figures on this page here, you’ll see that a real-estate development company in Fort Myers, Florida, has been lent by six different sources a stun of money that amounts to 1.548 million dollars, which is 1.72 million dollars less ten per cent. There are only two names jotted down here – “Olga” and “Jimmy” – but God knows who they are.’
Della quickly looked through the accounts. ‘It’s not much,’ she said. ‘But maybe it’s enough to point the FBI fraud people in the right direction. At least it’s something. Shearson Jones is usually so good at dusting over his tracks.’
She collected up the papers, folded them, and tucked them in the pocket of her robe.
‘Supposing Shearson notices they’re missing?’ asked Ed, replacing the desk lamp, and tearing the strip of paper off the calculator.
‘It won’t matter if he does. As soon as the Muldoons are up, and the alarms are switched off. I’m getting out of here, and fast.’
‘Where does that leave me?’
‘It leaves you right here. You’ll be safer that way. If Shearson thinks you’re implicated in stealing his personal papers, he’ll hang your guts on the outhouse door.’
‘You FBI agents have such a delicate turn of phrase.’ Della checked the office to make sure that everything was back where it was supposed to be. But she was about to switch off the desklamp when the door opened. Just like that, unannounced. And there, in a plaid cowboy shirt and BVDs, his eyes still blinking with sleep, was one of the Muldoon brothers.
For a moment, Muldoon stared at them both in total surprise, and they stared back at him, and nobody said a word. But then Muldoon turned back towards the passage and yelled out: ‘Calvin! Calvin, c’mere! And bring the gun!’
Ed made a rush for him. He managed to seize Muldoon’s right arm, and pin it behind his back, but Muldoon twisted around and punched him very hard in the ear. Ed said, ‘Shit!’ and lost his balance, banging his head against the door-frame.
Della unceremoniously pushed Ed aside, and struck Muldoon on the collar-bone with her elbow. Then she jabbed him straight in the throat with her rigid fingers, and he pitched backwards across the passage with a high whining sound, like a vacuum cleaner with its bag full.
‘Now – quick, for Christ’s sake!’ panted Della, and seized Ed by the hand.
Ed’s ear was still singing, but he jostled his way out of Shearson’s study, and down the passage, and across the living area. He barked his shin against a chrome coffee-t
able, and swore under his breath, but Della reached back and tugged at his sweatshirt to get him moving.
Calvin Muldoon popped out from a door beside the staircase, his pump-gun raised, his face white with surprise. Della snatched at the barrel of the gun, missed her grip, but chopped Muldoon in the kidneys with a short, vicious stroke of her right hand. Muldoon folded, and Ed hit him again, straight in the mouth. The gun dropped to the wooden floor with a clatter, and Ed reached down to pick it up.
‘Shearson!’ gasped Della. ‘He’s our only way out!’
Ed wasn’t sure what she meant, but he hauled himself up the staircase after her, and pelted along the landing just behind her, and they skated along the last few feet together and collided with Shearson’s double door at the same moment.
Della jiggled the door handle, but the doors were locked.
‘Shall I blow the lock off?’ asked Ed.
Della snapped her head around and stared at him as if he was mad. ‘Are you crazy? You can’t shoot locks off with a rifle! All you get is noise and smoke and bullets flying in all directions.’
‘Oh,’ said Ed, disappointed. ‘They always do it in the movies.’
‘In the movies they don’t have solid cedarwood doors.’
Behind them, Calvin Muldoon was already up off the floor and coming up the stairs. Ed turned around and pointed the pump-gun at him, along the length of the landing.
‘You come any nearer and I’ll blow your head off!’ he shouted, in what he hoped was a convincing tone of voice. Muldoon raised his hands, but still kept on coming, in a slow and sidling kind of a walk.
Just then, across on the other side of the landing, Peter Kaiser’s bedroom door opened, and there was Peter himself, in a white T-shirt with PK embroidered on it, and white shorts.
‘What the hell goes on here?’ he said, irritably.
Ed swung the pump-gun around and fired. There was an ear-splitting bang, and an Indian tapestry that was hanging only two feet away from the open door of Peter’s bedroom was ripped into black ribbons. Peter slammed his door shut instantly, and locked it.
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