Forever and a Death

by Donald E. Westlake

  “It’s all right, Kim, it really is.”

  “Well,” Luther said, “there’s nothing we can do now. It’s nearly six o’clock on a Friday afternoon, everybody’s gone away for the weekend. What I suggest you do, first you should call your parents.”

  “Oh, my God, I have to!” Kim said, startled by the realization. “They were told I was dead, weren’t they? What time is it in Chicago?”

  “They’re here,” Luther said. “Well, not here, in Brisbane, but here in Australia.”

  Kim blinked. “They are? Why?”

  “Because you’re dead,” Jerry told her. His voice sounded hollow, as though he were speaking from a tomb.

  “I’m really sorry, Jerry,” she said, almost reflexively by now.

  Luther said, “They’re down in Sydney, in a hotel there, you should phone them soon.”

  “Yes. I will. But then, what about George?”

  “I think,” Luther said, “Manville was right when he said you shouldn’t go to the police yet, until he’d had legal advice. But now things are different. I think you should stay here tonight”—Jerry gave him a startled look, and Luther went smoothly on—“we’ll get you a room as close to this one as we can, and then in the morning you can telephone the place where you and Manville were staying, to see if he’s come back. If he hasn’t, we’ll go look for the car in the parking lot. If it’s still there, I vote we go to the police.”

  “Oh, absolutely,” Jerry said. “This is Richard Curtis at his worst, his absolute worst. I know some people think I harp on him too much, but now you get a sense of the man, you see what it is he’s capable of, what we’re up against. The police, absolutely.”

  “Thank you, Jerry,” Luther said, and said to Kim, “Do you want to call your parents from here, or wait till you’ve got your own room?”

  “You call, Luther,” Kim said, “if you don’t mind. Talk to them first. Prepare them. I don’t want to cause any more people to faint.”

  * * *

  Lying in yet another bed, in yet another room, this time with the brightness of Brisbane beyond the curtain over the one window, Kim felt very strange. It had been a weird rollercoaster day, being chased by those people, losing George, finding Jerry and Luther, talking on the phone with Mom and Dad, and then having dinner with Jerry and Luther as though they were all three equals together, in a way that had never been true on the ship.

  She’d also made another batch of the same small purchases: toothbrush, toothpaste, lipstick, all the usual. And more clothing, outer and under, enough to carry her for a few days, all bought with money borrowed from Jerry. And a new cotton shoulder bag to put it all in. And by now Mom would have phoned Aunt Ellen in Chicago to go over to the house, pack up Kim’s passport and wallet, which had just arrived there today, and air express it all back to Sydney, to arrive on Monday. So, except for George, things seemed to be going pretty well.

  George. She was tired, but she couldn’t sleep, here in this strange new bed, all alone. Every time she moved, the sheets above and below her felt rough and cold. When she lay still, the big flat hard-mattressed bed seemed immense, as big as a football field. If she put her left arm out to the side, that other unused pillow over there was a big cold mound, an alien that didn’t belong with her.

  Last night had just been the beginning with George, and yet already being here without him seemed unnatural. She wanted the feel of him, the solidity of him, the knowledge that he was there. To have had it just begin, and then stop like this, was terrible.

  She needed to sleep, because tomorrow would be another crowded day, but she remained awake, her mind skittering around recent events, and always coming back to George. To remember how he had been last night, so gentle and then so strong, did not lead her toward sleep at all, but she couldn’t help the thoughts, they just kept swirling around and around, constantly there.

  Is he all right? Where is he? What’s happened to him?

  13

  There was a knock at the door.

  Manville looked at it more in irritation than surprise. “You’re the ones who locked it,” he called. “What do you want me to do?”

  The key was already turning in the lock, with a loud snick, before he was finished speaking, and then the door opened and a young woman entered, in a tan pantsuit, smiling apologetically, saying, “I did not want to startle you.” A pile of clothing was over her arm. “If I may?”

  He stepped to the side. She’d left the door open, and the hall looked empty from where he stood, but he didn’t doubt one of the men who’d brought him here was out there, or some other goon of Curtis’s, leaning against the wall, casual but making damn sure Manville stayed where they wanted him.

  The young woman laid the clothing on the bed, neatening it, smoothing out wrinkles, then turned to smile at Manville again and say, “Mr. Curtis asks you to come to dinner in thirty minutes. You may refresh yourself in the bathroom there, and here are garments that we hope will fit you. The door will not be locked now, sir. In thirty minutes, if you would go out and to your right, and at the end of the hall turn left, that is the dining room. Thank you.”

  She dipped her head and left, closing the door behind her. There was no sound of the key turning in the lock.

  Manville guessed he’d been in this room now no more than fifteen or twenty minutes. He hadn’t looked at his watch when he’d first come in, assuming they’d be leaving him in here overnight.

  They’d driven directly into the garage inside this building, and as they’d gotten out of the Daimler, all of them stiff, stretching, a young man in the same kind of tan pantsuit as this woman had opened an interior door at the left end of the garage, stepped forward through it, and called, “This way, please.”

  Manville had paused to note the other two vehicles parked there, a tan Land Rover and a kind of dune buggy made mostly out of chrome pipe, and then he’d followed the man, while the leader of the thugs who’d captured him—Morgan, he’d called himself—had followed Manville into that broad low-ceilinged hall outside, with what looked like Navajo carpets on the red tile floor and framed aboriginal art on both walls. At the first open door on the right the man in the pantsuit had turned and made a please-enter gesture.

  “That means you,” Morgan had said, and Manville had stepped into this room, and the door had shut behind him, with the unmistakable scrape of the key being turned in the lock.

  This was normally a guestroom, apparently, with only the vertical bars outside the one window to suggest a prison; but probably all the ground floor windows were barred in a building as remote as this. The room contained a double bed, more native-looking throw rugs on the floor, a dresser and an easy chair beside a round table bearing a reading lamp. The compact bathroom next to it had an extremely small window, not barred, a telephone-booth-type shower, and more than enough towels.

  Manville had expected to be left here by himself, locked in, to brood and worry and be the subject of psychological warfare. But now, to be suddenly presented with a change of clothes and a dinner invitation, threw him off; which might have been the idea.

  Still, he should take what comfort he could. The shower was fine, with a clear lucite door and plenty of hot water and a big white bar of soap. Standing in there, letting the spray roll over him, easing the stiffness in his joints, he wondered again, for the thousandth time, what had happened to Kim. Those three had seen her—accidentally? somehow on purpose, following them?—and she’d escaped, and then they’d come back to the cafe to pick him up, and he’d walked right into it. So what would Kim have done next?

  She might have gone to the police. Presumably there was a report somewhere that she was dead, so when she turned up alive, even without identification, it might force the authorities to take notice; though not necessarily to believe her fantastic accusations against a rich and respectable businessman.

  Or she might have called the Planetwatch people, that guy Jerry Diedrich she’d mentioned a number of times.

  He tur
ned off the water, and stepped out of the shower.

  The clothing he’d been given provided everything but shoes, and it all fit very well. Underwear, socks, dark gray slacks, pale blue buttoned shirt but no necktie, light gray sports jacket. The left pocket of the sports jacket contained two three-year-old tickets to La Bohème at the Sydney Opera House, suggesting this jacket had been left behind, forgotten by some houseguest, and never retrieved.

  At the appointed time, Manville left his no-longer prison and followed the woman’s directions. Down the hall he went to the right, then a left, and there was the dining room.

  Low ceilings seemed to be the norm here, but otherwise the place was lavish. The dining room was actually one end of a very long room that was a parlor at the farther end, all deep sofas and chairs on animal skin rugs, with a broad gray-stone fireplace taking up much of the far wall. There was no fire lit at the moment, but the room was comfortably warm. A pair of refectory tables, dark wood, bearing muted lamps, stacks of magazines, framed photos, marked the dividing line between parlor and dining room.

  Four people were seated, very low, in the sofas down there; Richard Curtis, and three others Manville didn’t recognize, two women and a man. One of the women saw Manville enter and said something to Curtis, who immediately looked over, waved a hand over his head, and called, “There you are! Be right there.”

  Manville waited. Closer to him was a long dark wood dining table, big enough to seat twelve. Five elaborate place settings took up the left half of the table. Apparently Morgan and his friends would eat somewhere else; in the kitchen, maybe, or out back with the dogs.

  The four people approached, Curtis smiling like a host. Saying, “Well, George, you look rested. Good. A hell of a long drive, isn’t it?”

  “Not too bad, in that car,” Manville said. He was surprised at the calmness of his response, but could see nothing else to do. It’s a natural instinct, apparently, to be polite to somebody who’s being polite to you, return friendliness with friendliness, good manners with good manners.

  Curtis went so far as to make introductions: “George Manville, may I introduce Albert and Helen Farrelly, they run Kennison for me, and Cindy Peters, an old friend visiting for the weekend. George,” he told the others, “is a brilliant engineer, absolutely brilliant. We’ve been working together for a year and a half now, haven’t we, George?”

  “About that,” Manville agreed. Not so long ago, he wanted to say, while everybody exchanged friendly greetings, you were sending people to kill me, then to kidnap me, imprison me. Has one of us lost his mind? But dinner party politeness was just too strong a force; he couldn’t say a word.

  Curtis even rubbed it in, saying, “It’s too bad your friend Kim couldn’t be with you, George, we’d make an even number. Well, we’ll do what we can. I’ll be father at the head of the table here, George, you take that place there on the right, Helen, you between George and me, Cindy, you on my left, and Albert, if you’d sit across from George?”

  Everybody did, and Manville saw Curtis extend his foot toward what must be a call button in the floor, because almost immediately two servers in the tan pantsuits came out with plates of crisp green salad.

  Manville said to Helen, on his left, “Kennison?”

  Surprised, she said, “The station. This place, you’d call it a ranch. And the house. This is Kennison. You didn’t know that?”

  “I came here unexpectedly,” Manville said.

  Wine was being poured. Around the server’s arm, Curtis said to Manville, “Kennison’s a great place, George, I wish I could be here more often myself. I’ll show you around, I think you’ll be surprised and pleased.”

  “I’m already surprised,” Manville told him, and Curtis laughed.

  When the five glasses had been filled with an Australian white wine, a chardonnay, Curtis proposed a toast. “To the good life, in a good place, to getting it and keeping it.”

  They all drank to Curtis’s toast, Manville last and only a sip. It was a good clean wine, nicely cold. He would have to be alert not to drink too much of it.

  As they started their salads, Manville looked more carefully at these three new people. He might be needing allies soon; would any of them fit the bill?

  Albert and Helen Farrelly were a middle-aged, comfortable-looking couple, both overweight, both with the leathery cheeks of people who spend a lot of time outdoors, as they would do if they were the overseers of a large ranch. They were Australian, by their accents, and they seemed on very easy terms with their employer.

  Would the Farrellys help? They came across as decent people, not criminals, but Captain Zhang was a decent man, too, and look at what he had been prepared to do. How vital was this job, this life, to the Farrellys? Helen Farrelly spoke of Kennison as though it were heaven on earth, and her husband smiled and nodded in agreement; how willing would they be to risk it, or lose it, for a stranger?

  Cindy Peters was about thirty, a poised girl, pleasant, well-spoken, also Australian. An old friend of Curtis, visiting for the weekend.

  There’s no comfort here, Manville told himself, as the salad plates were removed, replaced by plates of a butterflied boneless chicken breast with lightly sauteed vegetables. And more wine. I have to count on nobody but myself.

  Manville turned to Curtis. “How long have you had this place? Kennison.”

  “Seven years. It was my second wife’s idea. She’s Australian, she wanted a footprint in her homeland, so we bought this. She’d have liked to keep it after the divorce, but by then I was in love with it. And not with her, you know?”

  “I didn’t know you were ever married,” Manville said. He wanted to encourage this new friendliness in Curtis, this companionship, until he could find a way to escape.

  “I was married twice,” Curtis told him. And sounding more grim than before: “The second one was the mistake.” Then he lightened again, and turned to rest his hand on Cindy Peters’s, saying, “You don’t mind if I talk about my wives, do you?”

  “Just so you don’t bring them around,” she said.

  “No fear,” he told her, and turned back to Manville to say, “My first wife died at thirty-nine of leukemia.”

  Cindy Peters looked shocked and embarrassed, as Curtis had no doubt intended, and Manville said, “I’m very sorry.”

  “So was I, George, so was I. Isabel was my life to me. She got me started in business, what a team we were going to be.” His jaw set and his eyes looked angry, and he said, “Isabel would have known how to deal with the goddam mainlanders. She was Hong Kong born and bred, she’d have tied them in knots, not run around wasting time and money like me.”

  Manville said, “She was Chinese?”

  “No, a Brit,” Curtis said. “Her background was. Her grandfather came out, started a construction company on the island, over a hundred years ago. Called it Hoklo Construction, which was a joke, because the Hoklo were 17th-century pirates from China that settled in Hong Kong and then assimilated and disappeared, so anybody could be Hoklo. Anybody could be a pirate, you see?”

  Manville said, “It’s an interesting point.”

  “One Isabel’s grandfather always kept in mind,” Curtis said, “as should have his successors. Anyway, the grandfather built the business, and went back to England to marry, and had children, and his first two sons took over the business, and Isabel was a daughter of the second son. I was just a roustabout from Oklahoma, my father was in construction but in a small way, little tract houses in developments in the dirt around Tulsa, not like Hoklo. They were big, always, from the beginning, building the big godowns the Chinese used for waterfront warehouses, putting up office buildings, apartment houses. I was always interested in travel, seeing something other than the tan dirt of Tulsa, and when I got to Hong Kong I took a job for a while with Hoklo, and met Isabel, and that’s where it all started.”

  Manville said, “You went into the firm.”

  “I became the firm,” Curtis said, and his voice was harsh again
, but then it softened as he said, “The difference between the first generation and the third, you see, the first generation has to work for it, and the second generation at least gets to see their parents work for it, but the third generation gets it handed to them on a plate, with no idea there’s any work involved. Isabel’s brother and two of her cousins were supposed to take over the company, and it would have been like having the company taken over by the Pillsbury Doughboy.”

  “You took it away from them.”

  Curtis smiled. If tigers smiled, it would look like that. “I showed them what it was like to be in a fight,” he said.

  “And lose,” Manville suggested.

  “I was always the one to bet on,” Curtis said. “And then, no sooner was it mine, mine and Isabel’s, than it hit her.”

  Cindy Peters put a sympathetic hand on his forearm. “That must have been horrible.”

  He nodded at her, “It killed me, Cindy. I was dead before she was, and she was dead in five months.”

  “Oh, Dick. I don’t know what to say.”

  “Thank you, Cindy.”

  Manville noticed, but thought that Cindy did not, that his smile to her was patronizing, that it said, thank you for your sympathy, but you’re too shallow to know what I really went through. He holds himself aloof from the human race, Manville thought, and that’s why he can be so dangerous.

  Curtis turned back to Manville to say, “It was because I missed Isabel so much that I married again, which was probably the biggest mistake of my life, and I know you know I’ve made a number of mistakes.”

  “We all do,” Manville said.

  “But I don’t get mad at other people’s mistakes,” Curtis said. “Not the way I get mad at my own. The thing is, George, it’s too goddam easy for a man to be an idiot. I married Rita because she looked like Isabel. Looked like. They couldn’t have been more different, they— I’ll let it go at that. When I realized— Well. I’ll let it go at that.”