On the face of it, the problem was simple. With Birdie dead, I needed someone else to take me to Aimee. That part was easy. Where we began to get into trouble was the fact that the only remaining possibility was Mrs. Brussels.
Unless I'd read her completely wrong, Mrs. Brussels wasn't going to open up the way that Birdie had. She'd just deny everything I confronted her with and then, as soon as she could, she'd cut her losses, pull money out of the bank, and disappear. Judging from what Birdie had told me and from the volume of orders in the data base, she had enough money to disappear to someplace very far away.
And whatever I did couldn't point directly at Aimee. If it did, she'd be dead in a minute—assuming that she wasn't dead already. As far as I could see, there was no reason why she should be dead; the kidnap note and the ransom had been Birdie's idea, his endearing way of getting some of what he saw as his by right. The little weasel wouldn't have told Mrs. Brussels anything about it.
So I was looking at a teenage sidekick who blew his nose in polysyllables and a plan that was technical and complicated, and I distrusted it for both reasons. But I couldn't think of anything else, so I was stuck with it.
I gave up and went to bed. The moment I turned the light off, Woofers climbed up on the bed and nestled on my chest. Swell. I couldn't even turn over. This was going to be the longest night's sleep I'd had in months, and I was going to spend it flat on my back with a Yorkshire terrier listening slavishly to my heartbeat. To my surprise, I fell asleep instantly.
I forced myself to doze until eleven the next morning. Upon arising I made and actually choked down about a pound of pasta covered with tomato sauce. Eleanor would have called it carbo-loading. I ate it anyway because I had a feeling I might need endurance. Woofers ate the leftovers. She liked them better than I did.
At one, I made my first call.
She answered herself, as I'd anticipated she would. “Brussels' Sprouts,” she said, sounding harried and snappish.
“Mrs. Brussels?” I said. “This is Dwight Ward.”
“Mr. Ward,” she said, warming slightly. “You certainly dropped from sight, didn't you?” There was a trilling sound from the other end of the phone. “Damn,” she said, “there's my other line. Will you hold on for a moment?”
I said I would.
“Mr. Ward?” she said less than a minute later. “Excuse me. I'm handling the phones myself. My secretary seems to have decided to take the day off. How's our sweet little Jewel?”
“She's fine.”
“Her flu is better?” Her voice was full of matronly concern. “She's such a pretty little girl.” She paused.
“Well,” I said into the silence, “that's why I'm calling. I'm ready to sign those papers.”
“Wonderful. I think I can put her right to work. Did you say you objected to her traveling?”
“No,” I said.
“We've got a lot to do,” she said. “You and I have to have a good talk first, of course, and then if we come to an agreement we'll have to get some pictures taken. I'm sure she'll photograph beautifully.”
“We'll come to an agreement,” I said. “Don't worry about that.”
“That's grand, just grand. Can you come today?”
“Is fourish all right?” It would begin to get dark at five.
“Let me check my book.” I held on, regulating my breathing, as she left the line again. Four had to be all right. By tomorrow she might know Birdie was dead.
The line clicked. “Four's fine,” she said.
“Swell,” I said heartily, “that's great. See you then.”
The pay phone at the Oki-Burger was busy. Five minutes later it was still busy. At ten till two I was ready to get into Alice and drive down there, but I dialed the number one more time as I went out the door, and this time the Mountain answered.
“Christ,” I said, “what the hell have you got, a party line?”
“I got one of them to call home,” he said proudly. “Guess which one.”
“I don't want to guess,” I said. “I haven't got time.”
“Apple,” he said.
To my surprise, I found myself grinning. “I'll be damned,” I said. “How’d you do it?”
“Donnie didn't come back,” he said. “She was scared to death.”
“But she was afraid to go home.”
“She's got some aunt in Utah. They talked for two hours. Apple was a mess, you should’ve seen her, crying and laughing at the same time. I got her nose blown and her face dried and loaned her the money for a bus ticket and got her into a cab, and she's gone.”
“You're just fine, Mountain.”
“She kissed me good-bye.”
“Hell,” I said, “if I'd been there I'd have kissed you myself.”
“Then I'm glad you weren't here.”
“Remember when I told you I might need help?”
“Sure.”
“How about I pick you up a little after three behind the Thrifty at Sunset and Fairfax? I don't want anyone to see you get into my car. And, Mountain,” I said, “bring a gun if you can get one.”
He considered it. “I can't,” he said. “Anyway, I hate the goddamn things. But I don't need one.”
Three hours later, I was early and Mountain was late. I used the time to go into the Thrifty and call Morris to synchronize our watches. It wasn't necessary, but I knew it would thrill him.
“They look great,” he said, meaning the pictures. “You should see them on the screen.”
“And the message?”
“All in caps, like you said. I found this really fancy font. They look like they came out of the Bible.”
“That's great, Morris. I'm going to buy dinner for you and your parents if this works. Someplace fancy.”
“Just not Cap'n Cluckbucket’s,” he said. I realized that Morris had made a joke, and I was so nonplussed that I laughed. “And Jessica,” he added, sounding gratified. “Can Jessica come too?”
“Morris,” I said, “you're on your way to being a mensch”
The Mountain was waiting in the parking lot, red-faced, sweaty, and fetid, when I came out of the store. A tight little band of Japanese tourists was giving him a wide berth, trying desperately to pretend he wasn't there. Once they were safely behind him, one of them, a shrunken old man in loud plaid slacks, lifted a little camera to one eye and snapped a picture. They got people there who look like this, he would say as his neighbors in Osaka registered thrilled disbelief.
“So,” the Mountain said, lumbering toward me as the tourists climbed hurriedly into their van, “what's the skinnies?”
“You go with me to Sunset Plaza,” I said, maneuvering upwind. “I go into an office and you wait in the car. Then I come out and we see what happens.”
“And?”
“And maybe all hell breaks loose.”
He gave me the kind of gargoyle's smile that you sometimes see in cognac-fueled dreams. If you're lucky, it wakes you up. The last time I'd seen one, I'd sworn off cognac. Temporarily. “Here's hoping it does,” he said.
It was almost four when we rolled into the parking lot at Brussels' Sprouts. The weather was obliging us: an oppressive lead-gray layer of clouds had rolled in from the Pacific, and senior-citizen drivers, alert to any impending emergency, were driving dead center in the street with their headlights on full bright. The lights were on in the stores of Sunset Plaza too, picking out the spangles and bugle beads sprinkled across the fronts of overpriced dresses and the gleam of silk in handmade men's shirts. None of the little spotlights, I noticed, was focused on a price tag.
“Nice neighborhood,” the Mountain said. “How much per breath?”
“If you have to ask, you can't afford it,” I said, quoting J. P. Morgan. “Exhale only.” I opened Alice's door. “You're going to stay right here, right? When I come out we may have to move in a hurry. I don't want to have to go looking for you.”
“What a shame,” the Mountain said, gazing with exaggerated longing at a beauty p
arlor. “I'm overdue for a facial.”
“If this works out,” I said, “I'll buy you a new face.” I closed the door and started across the parking lot. A muffled rapping sound made me turn back. The Mountain had been knocking on the passenger window. Now he held up two crossed fingers and shook them at me. I returned the salute and went around to the front of the building, checking my watch as I went. It was 4:03.
Morris was supposed to start sending at ten after four.
The doors into Mrs. Brussels' waiting room whispered open. Birdie's desk was empty, and the Flash Gordon door leading into the inner sanctum gaped at me. One of the lines on the phone was blazing away. Woofers' plaster-of-paris pawprint still sat on the desk, but the appointment book was missing. Presumably she'd taken it inside. It was 4:04.
I could hear her voice from the other room. She sounded normal, sane, persuasive. If I hadn't seen obedience school and if Jessica and Morris hadn't figured out the code identifying the pictures in the Actors' Directory, I would have begun to wonder whether I were right.
The voice stopped.
“Mrs. Brussels,” I called. “Mrs. Brussels, I'm here.”
My pulse was hammering against my wrists. It was pounding with such urgency that I thought it might show, so I jammed my hands into my pockets and waited. After a moment she came out. She was wearing a tailored buff-colored linen suit with the trendy linen wrinkles in all the trendy linen places. A ruff of collar rose up almost to her chin, covering the not-so-trendy wrinkles on her throat. The smile she gave me was professional but hardly warm. It was, if anything, a conspirator's smile.
“Mr. Ward,” she said. “So glad you could make it. I'm afraid we're a bit crazy here, what with Bertram gone missing.” She gestured at the empty desk.
“Does he do this often?”
“Only when he's got boyfriend trouble,” she said, speaking to me as though I were already one of the family. “Frankly, I thought he'd finished with all that a year ago. Birdie's meticulous,” she said, “but he's not really stable.”
“Can you trust him?” I asked.
She gave me a measured glance. “He worked for my husband before I took over,” she said. “He's proved himself. Some of the information he handles is extremely sensitive.”
I tried not to imagine the way Birdie would look by then. “I'm sure it is,” I said. “I just need to know.”
“Of course you do,” she said with the barest of smiles. “Jewel's your ward and I'm sure you must love her very much.” She managed to make the words sound as though they'd been coated in rancid baby oil, smooth, shiny, and foully suggestive.
I just smiled.
“Come in,” she said, all business. “I've found your papers.”
She turned her back and vanished through the door. Wisps of hair hung over her collar. As I followed I yanked a hand out of my pocket and sneaked a look at my watch: 4:05.
Mrs. Brussels was fast; she'd already seated herself behind her desk by the time I entered the room. The desk was clean and uncluttered except for a wad of stapled legal-size sheets of paper covered with very small writing. The computer console was turned part of the way toward me. My heart sank as I realized that its screen was dark.
That was something that had never occurred to me. In my projections of the scene, it had always been on. I developed an immediate stomachache.
“The contracts,” she said, lifting one corner of the stack and then letting it flop back onto the desk. Then she sat back and threw one arm over the back of her chair, regarding me like a fisherman estimating the weight of his catch. Without the third-grade teacher's smile she looked older and considerably meaner. Gravity had done its work on her face; gravity and something else, something she supplied from within.
“We're going to need many signatures,” she said, tilting the chair back even farther. “I hope your writing hand is in good shape.”
“I even brought a pen,” I said, pulling out one I'd stolen from Morris. I was trying to figure out how to get her to turn the damned computer on.
“Good, good, good,” she said automatically. “But first, before you sign, I'd better tell you that I think we can put Jewel to work almost immediately. Will that be all right with you?”
“Anything that gets the cash flow going,” I said, trying to keep my eyes away from the empty screen.
“It'll flow,” she said. “You have no idea how it will flow. However, there are technicalities. I already asked you if she could travel, so that's out of the way. But there is one other point, and it's an important one.”
“And what's that?” I was beginning to perspire.
“I need to know that you have the legal right to sign these papers.”
“I told you,” I said, working up a semblance of affronted indignation. “She's my ward.”
“And you told me that her parents are dead.” Her gaze was as steady as a dial tone.
I could hear my watch ticking and I fought down the impulse to check the time. Morris was probably keying in by now. “Dead as Marley,” I said.
“Aunts? Uncles? Cousins two or three times removed? Anybody who might suddenly take an interest in the child? Anyone who might get someone looking for her?”
It had to be 4:10. I leaned forward and put my hands on my knees so I could see my watch: 4:09. “Forget it,” I said. “I'm the whole story. It's just Jewel and me.”
“We both know what we're talking about,” she said. She was looking through me. This was a conversation she'd had many times.
“Honey,” I said, licking my lips. They were drier than dry cleaning. “Even Jewel's not completely in the dark.”
Now she focused on me and gave me the motherly smile. “Well,” she said, “that simplifies things.” She turned the contracts around so that they were right-side-up for me. “Everywhere there's a red X,” she said, “just sign your name.”
“Dwight Ward,” I said.
The motherly smile broadened and turned slightly gamy at the edges. “Anything you like,” she said. “Sign away.”
“Wait,” I said. “I've got a couple of questions of my own.”
She lifted an eyebrow. Four-ten had come and was in the process of going. “You're not going to hurt her?” I asked, trying to keep the desperation out of my voice.
“Damaged goods,” she said with a shrug. “Who wants them? The prettier she is, the better you'll do.”
“That's the other question,” I improvised. “What's my cut?”
“Thirty percent,” she said.
“Only thirty!”
She gave a world-wise shrug. “Expenses,” she said. “Security. This is not an inexpensive operation.”
“Um,” I said. “Still, thirty?” It was 4:11. I knew without looking at my watch because I'd been counting.
“Thirty percent of quite a lot,” she said. “The average job, say two days, costs two thousand. She can do three jobs a week, sometimes four.”
I squinted at the ceiling like someone whose idea of a complicated math problem was buying a new belt. “That's, ah . . .”
“Thirty percent of six thousand is eighteen hundred,” she said coldly. “And you don't have to do piss-all for it. Just get the checks, deposit them, and spend it.”
“I have to think,” I said.
“Think while you sign,” she said, shoving the contracts at me. “It's the standard deal. We don't make exceptions. Eighteen hundred a week is almost ninety-four thousand a year. That's a lot of money.”
“Not enough,” I said, stalling. By now Morris was slamming away at the keyboard, and anyone who happened to tune in was in for an interesting surprise.
“Thirty-five,” she said flatly. “But that's it. And that's only because she's so pretty.”
“Thirty-five,” I said, chewing on the end of my pen.
“That comes to a hundred and ten thousand a year,” she said, “and that's if we don't push her. This little girl, she's going to be flavor of the month. So figure it'll be more for the first year. Th
at's enough to buy a new ward. Maybe we'll set up a long-term relationship.”
“More than one kid?”
“You can field a baseball team, if you can find them.” She leaned toward me. “Boys too,” she said, dropping her voice. “Some boys do better than girls.”
“Gee,” I said, straining my brain to find some reason not to sign the papers. After I signed them, I'd have to leave. Why hadn't I anticipated the possibility that her computer wouldn't be on? “How many on a baseball team?”
“Nine,” she said through tight lips. ‘That means rich, is what that means. Now, are you going to keep fucking around or are you going to sign your name?”
I gave up. “Fine.” I scrawled “Dwight Ward” next to the first red X. She watched with satisfaction.
A phone trilled, a bright little soprano gargle. A button, one of six on her desktop instrument, lit up. Holding my breath, I flipped through the contracts, counting the red X's.
“Brussels' Sprouts,” she said, watching me. “Yes, this is Mrs.— What?” she demanded. “What are you talking about? What're you, nuts? Hold it, hold it, slow down and tell me . . .” The phone rang again and another button lit up. I went on signing Dwight Ward's name as she put the first person on hold and punched the new button.
“Yeah?” she asked. “Who is this? Bullshit, that can't be right. Listen, I've got someone—” The voice on the other end squawked and squalled. “Hold it,” she commanded. “Shut up and hang on.” She swiveled the computer toward her and looked up at me. “Keep writing,” she said grimly, flicking the On switch.
I invented names for each of the red X's as she punched her way across the keyboard and accessed the data base. I'd gotten to Alice B. Toklas and was halfway through Anna Q. Nilsson when she got through. Then I lifted my head as her computer whirred, and watched her, hoping she wouldn't look at me.
I needn't have worried. I could have sprouted wings and a full set of serpents' scales and turned into Quetzalcoatl right there in the chair, and she wouldn't have noticed. She'd worked her way through the menu and was staring at Morris’ surprise.
Everything but the Squeal Page 28
