Jack’s eyes narrowed. “Maybe you’re curious to see what a bullet would do to your sweetie, here, huh?”
“Just a thought, Jack,” I said.
“Keep the dirty ones to yourself.”
I had to cough into my hand to keep from blurting something out. Murder was okay. Treachery was okay. Using sex to buy an alibi was okay. Sleeping with another woman was dirty. And, since it hadn’t worked, Aranda had denied it the next day as a matter of pride. Or maybe to confuse things some more. It had done that.
“You left yourself without an alibi,” I said.
“Didn’t figure I’d need one. I was Gabby’s best friend. And I had the sprained ankle and all.”
“Got that sliding down the tree, didn’t you?”
“Yep. Stringing the cable for the body trick. God, did that go wrong. How’d you figure that?”
“Almost did the same thing myself. When you were shooting at me, remember? Probably would have broken both my ankles if the rain hadn’t made the ground soft.”
“I didn’t have as good an excuse as you. I just slipped the last goddam twenty feet. I used to climb rigs, you know, slick with oil and every other damn thing, but this tree was different. Not enough handholds. Nothing to do but to lace up the boot tight and keep walking on it until the work was done. Of course, that made it a whole lot worse when I finally did ease up on it. If we hadn’t been stocked up with pills, I never would have made it.”
“You would have been better off if you hadn’t.”
“Don’t say that, boy. When a man decides something, he’s got to carry it through, no matter what it is. Gabby—well, I loved him like a brother. But I love Aranda like a woman. Ain’t but one woman in a man’s life can make him feel the way Aranda makes me feel. That’s one time, if he’s lucky.”
“But Dost was getting ready to move on, wasn’t he? All you had to do was wait and you and Aranda could be together with no complications.”
“Now, that would have been just fine, wouldn’t it? Like I was a charity case, needing Gabby’s old toys for Christmas, or something. Bad enough folks saying I’m just a hanger-on. I’m a damned good businessman myself, you know. I did my part to make Gabby what he was. More than my part.”
“Did you figure this out for yourself, or did Aranda help you to see it?”
“You trying to say she put ideas in my head? No, she didn’t. We talked, that’s all. Hell, it was a terrible thing for her, too. What would it make her look like to the world, being passed along from man to man like that?”
“So he had to die.”
“That’s right. I was sorry about it, but I’ve always been one to face facts.”
“You made a plan. You and Aranda.”
“Leave her out of it.”
“Too late for that, Jack. Besides, the things that have happened here have Aranda’s style written all over them.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“Flamboyant,” I said. “Not of This Earth. And deep down, basically stupid.”
“It was a good plan,” Jack insisted.
I took a step forward. He glared at me, and I stopped. “But it wasn’t your plan, was it? You would have planned something simple and unprovable, like his falling overboard from a fishing boat or something.”
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.
“Then tell me.”
“There’s more to these things than you think.”
“Not so much. Shall I tell you why you smashed the phone service and put the cars out of commission?”
“Go ahead. You’re supposed to be a smart boy.”
“Not all that smart. It took me until today to realize it. I kept thinking of Dost in terms of his purchase of the Network. I had all sorts of ideas about people selling Network stock short to make a killing—so to speak—after the news got out about Dost’s death. Haskell Freed had even tried to do just that.
“I kept forgetting that Dost’s death would affect dozens of companies worth billions of dollars. That’s why it was such a good plan, wasn’t it? Some madman would kill Dost, but we’d have no communication with the authorities—”
“Yeah,” Bromhead said, suddenly belligerent. “You had a lot of balls telling everybody you’d spoken to the sheriff and he’d made you a deputy. I almost called you a liar to your face.”
“That was the idea.”
“Yeah. We’re just chock-full of ideas, ain’t we?”
“You mean you, me, and Aranda? I guess so. So Dost would be dead, and nobody would know about it. So you’d have, what? A day? We’d probably wait a day before we tried to walk to town.”
“That’s what we figured. It’s a good four hours’ walk to the bottom of this mountain even if it didn’t snow, the way the road curves and all. And the weather forecast called for some snow. We didn’t know we were gonna get a whole winter’s worth all at once.”
“So there would be at least a day for the people you had fronting stock for you to sell your interests in Dost’s various businesses. You’d have an enormous amount of cash.”
“Enormous is right.” Jack shook his head at the size of it.
“Then, when the news of his death came out, and the price of the stock crashed—all of it, not just the Network stock—you’d be in a position to buy it all back.”
“No, son. Not all of it. That’s the point. I’d have enough cash to buy up the businesses it made sense for me to run. The drilling-tool company we started out with. The trucking firms. That kind of thing. What the hell do I care about cupcakes, or television, or any other of the damn-fool things Gabby got himself involved with?”
“Of course, you’d still have a lot of money left, to keep Aranda happy. The kind of bono she’d grown used to.”
“I told you to stop that.”
“Was it always the idea to frame Barry? I suppose it was. Aranda and he never did get along. Did you know of the legal angles Wilberforce came up with? I mean, did you hope to get the whole thing legitimately? Then you could sell off what you wanted, and never have to worry about any stock manipulations at all.”
I scratched my chin. “Nah. I don’t think so. Your mind doesn’t work that way, and I don’t think Aranda’s smart enough. I think Barry was always scheduled for the squeeze, though. I hope your original plan was something better than that bogus TV business. How did you ever let her force that one on you?”
Jack took a tighter grip on the handle of the pistol. He wanted to shout, but choked it off. In a strained voice, he said, “You seem to be forgetting, while you keep insulting my woman, that I’ve got yours trussed up like a prize fowl in here, with a gun aimed at her belly.”
I hoped Roxanne would forgive what she was going to hear next. “What is this ‘my woman’ stuff? You tried to kill me, Jack. That makes it me and you. The rest of the world can take their chances.”
“Don’t try to bullshit me, Cobb.”
“Didn’t Dost’s famous reports say it was a big mistake to piss me off?”
“They said that. They also said you were tight with Miss Schick, and that you’d undoubtedly try to call her once a day to see how she was holding up under the strain of selling the family business.”
I said nothing. The reports were probably right.
“Hell,” Jack said. “That’s why we sent the poison-pen letters. To get you up here. If you couldn’t get in touch with your people, you’d start looking at things. We didn’t want to risk what you might turn up.”
“That sounds like Aranda.”
“It was a damned smart idea,” Jack proclaimed.
“It was a ridiculous long shot.”
“It worked, didn’t it?”
“It got me up here, alert, and suspicious. All you’d have to do is get one of your lawyers to tell Tom Falzet you wanted me up here to talk about confidential things we’ve got going in Special Projects, to see if you wanted to continue them once the sale went through. I wouldn’t have been as ready for trouble.
I might have missed things I noticed. You might have gotten away with this, if Aranda hadn’t planned a murder like it was one of those New Age parlor tricks.”
“All right!” Jack took the gun off Roxanne and pointed it at me. “All right. I’ve had about enough of you. You just back on out that door. Nice and slow, don’t trip. Take your doggie with you.”
“What’s the brilliant plan?” I asked.
He stuck his arm straight out as if to fire. I didn’t flinch as much as I might have because fear made it impossible for me to move.
Jack didn’t know that. “One thing I’ve got to say for you, Cobb, you got guts.”
Sure, I thought, the contents of which had come very close to landing in my shorts.
“The brilliant plan is this,” he went on. “I am going to take Miss Schick out of the car again, and have her by me while I finish getting this car running. Then she and I will drive out of here, unmolested. I should have a decent head start. It will take you awhile to find the spark plugs for the other cars.”
“And you and Miss Schick plunge to your death off the side of the mountain.”
“Just taking our chances, like you said. Now get.”
“As you leave the woman you love holding the bag.”
“She’ll be fine. There’s no evidence against her.”
“Which means she suckered you into doing all the dirty work.”
“I keep telling you to shut up, boy. You don’t seem to be listening.”
“How long do you think it’s going to take her to sell you out?”
Jack spat. “This has all been planned for, Cobb. You don’t get to be as old as I am without learning some plans fall apart.”
“It’s been planned for, all right. Aranda’s just got a different plan. She’s singing like a canary—of course, she’s a professional singer, so, what the hell—about how you forced her into everything. ‘Terrorized’ her was the word, I think.”
“You’re lying, you son of a bitch. All she has to do is be quiet—”
“Right, and meet you in Brazil when the heat is off.”
A voice outside said something.
I called back over my shoulder. “Is that you, Fred?”
“Costa Rica,” Fred called back. “She was babbling on while you were talking to the red-haired gal. He’s supposed to go to Costa Rica. She said Jack has a disguise and a fake passport and another car and God knows what all in a cabin about twenty miles north of here. Stuff they set up in case something went wrong. That fellow Bats was writing it all down when we came out here.”
I turned to Jack Bromhead. “So that’s the answer to my question. She sold you out before you could even think. And screwed up your getaway plans, even if you could get down the goddam mountain.”
Jack reached into the car and pulled Roxanne roughly across the seat. He kept pulling, and she fell to the concrete floor of the garage. He dragged her to her feet.
“Go on,” he said. “Get out of here. Go on, I didn’t tie your feet. Beat it!”
“Come on, Rox,” I said.
Her eyes were wide and frightened above the gag. “It’ll be all right,” I said. “Ralph will get you loose. I love you.”
She mumbled something into the gag. I patted her on the back and she went.
Jack pointed the .45 at me again. “You stay.”
“I wasn’t going anywhere.”
“You wouldn’t even let me have this, would you? You had to destroy what was left. I saved your life, you ungrateful son of a bitch!”
True, I thought, although at the same time, he’d preserved his various plans from whatever Barry might have told me about them.
I didn’t say that. Instead, I said, “I’m not really sure what you’re talking about, Jack.”
“Well, how big an asshole do you think I am? I know there’s no way down this mountain without getting killed! I was gonna let the gal off at the edge of the property and try my luck, that’s all. She would have got a little wet. I wasn’t even gonna leave her tied up.”
He started to cry. “Don’t you ever go scoffing at this supernatural stuff, because I swear, Aranda’s a witch. She’s no damn good. I knew she was no damn good from the minute I laid eyes on her. I was around her for years, you know, but the minute Gabby started getting tired of her, she had me the way the snake gets a rabbit.
“I am in love with that evil creature. I am a fool, I have been a fool, and I continue to be a fool—look at me, crying like a little boy. I killed my best friend because she wanted it that way. I killed a boy I used to build kites for.
“I could do it, because I got real good at lying to myself. That’s all I was going to have, Cobb. Her body for a while, more money than anybody sane could ever have a use for. And the lies that made it all seem to make sense. The ‘reasons.’ Remember what I said about reasons.
“Then you came along and ruined me. When I came into this garage, all I had left was the lies. But you fixed it so I couldn’t even pretend to believe them anymore.
“So I want you to see this. Remember it, if you ever fall in love with a witch.”
The gun came up, past my face, to his right temple.
I yelled “No!” and ran at him. I’d forgotten to give Spot his command, but the Samoyed jumped him, too.
Jack didn’t really want to die. If he had, he would have just pulled the trigger, and I might have reached him in time to catch his corpse as it hit the ground. As it was, he wavered, trying to figure out whether to shoot Spot, me, or himself. In the end, he shot only a hole in the garage roof as we knocked him over.
There was a struggle. The gun went flying. I got on top of him, and things were going fine, until he kneed me in the groin.
That’s something it takes a more determined man than I am to ignore. First came the pain, then the nausea, then the panic at the idea that you might have just been whistled out of the gene pool. Men will know what I’m talking about. Women will have to take my word for it.
By the time I quit rolling around on the concrete and decided I was going to live, after all, Jack had jumped up and scuttled along between the noses of the parked cars and the wall of the garage to another door.
I’d have to talk to Ralph and Fred. Neither of them had mentioned another door to the garage. If they had, one of them could have been covering it.
I tried to yell to them that Jack had gotten loose and was now behind the house, but my voice came out a strangled groan. I swallowed, tried again, and managed to make sounds that would pass for human speech. I got to my feet and took off after him.
The second most amazing thing about a shot to the balls (the first most amazing thing is how much it hurts), is how quickly it goes away. If you’re not seriously injured, you’re generally good as new (if warier) as soon as you get your breath back.
Once again, I plunged into mud and slush.
When I caught up to him, Jack Bromhead was standing on the wall behind the house, trying to get up enough nerve to jump.
“Don’t do it, Jack.” I said it quietly—I didn’t want to startle him.
He kept looking down at the face of the cliff. “Why the hell not?” he asked.
“Because you won’t fall clean. It’ll hurt like a bastard. You’ll be flayed alive against the rocks. Two, once you jump, you can’t change your mind, but I’ll bet you’ll sure want to.”
“I’d take that bet, if I was gonna be around to collect.” He still wasn’t looking at me.
“Three, if you jump, some poor deputy sheriffs or state troopers are going to have to risk their lives to bring your worthless carcass out of there again.”
Jack stood there for a long time with the rain beating down on him. I heard Ralph and Fred and Roxanne come out of the garage, but I waved frantically behind my back for them to stay where they were.
Finally, Jack said. “Yeah. I guess enough is enough.” He looked over his shoulder at me, and began to turn around.
And his sprained ankle gave way.
It
looked at first as if he’d gone through a trapdoor. By the time I finished gasping, though, I realized he hadn’t disappeared completely. The upper part of his body had shot in the opposite direction from his feet, and had landed on the top of the wall. Through the wet snow there, I could see the top of Jack’s head, and his hands grasping for purchase against the rock.
I could also see he was slipping.
I was already running toward the wall. It was hard going through the mud, and Jack was slipping farther into oblivion by the second. I got there just as his grip gave way. I jumped up, reached over, and caught the neck of his jacket just before he disappeared.
A soaking-wet man is heavy. For a long, long moment, I felt my own feet coming clear of the ground. I had to brace one hand against the wall to keep from being pulled over.
“Try to climb up,” I said.
“Yeah,” Jack said.
The trouble was, the way I had him, I was pulling his head right into the wall. There was no way he could climb up, and no way I could change my grasp.
I squeezed my eyes shut and concentrated all my strength into my right wrist and hand.
I didn’t know how much longer I could do this. There was a roaring in my ears and a pain up my arm that made the knee in the groin a fond memory.
Through the roaring, I could hear a voice screaming at me to let go. I resisted to the limit of my will for an eternity of fifteen seconds. Then it occurred to me it might not be a demon urging me to let the man die.
I opened my eyes. It was Ralph Ingersoll. He and Fred each had one of Jack’s arms. If I let go, they could easily pull him to safety.
I was delighted to let go.
Ralph and Fred heaved, and Jack tumbled to the snow at our feet.
I looked at him while I flexed my fingers and worked my arm.
“Should have let him fall,” Fred Norman said.
Jack showed no reaction. He was breathing. He lay on the ground like a dead man. His face was as dead as any bullet could have made it.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get him into the house.”
23
On with the show, this is it!
—Mel Blanc, “The Bugs Bunny Show” (ABC)
Killed on the Rocks Page 19
