Forever and a Death

by Donald E. Westlake

  Manville said, “Is Rita still alive?”

  Curtis laughed. He seemed genuinely amused. He said, “I’m not Henry the Eighth, George. Rita and I divorced, seven months into the marriage. She got a damn good settlement. She doesn’t think so, of course, but she did.”

  Curtis turned away, the veneer of friendliness gone, his attention back on the food on his plate, and Manville picked up his knife and fork as well; it was time to quit, while he was ahead.

  * * *

  At the end of the meal, as though a sudden gong had gone off, though in fact there had been no signal at all that Manville could see, both Farrellys thanked their employer, told Manville and Cindy how lovely it had been to meet them both, patted their mouths with their napkins, rose, said good night, and left the room, through a wide doorway down at the living room end.

  Manville, starting to rise, said, “I should go, too. Thank you—”

  “Wait, George,” Curtis said. “Cindy, George and I have a little boring business to talk over, and then I’ll be up.”

  “Fine,” she said. “I’ll be reading.” And she too on her way out assured Manville it had been a pleasure to meet him.

  Once they were alone, Curtis gestured toward the living room. “Let’s get comfortable over there, let them clear this away.”

  “All right.”

  As they walked across the long room, Curtis said, “Brandy? A cordial? After-dinner drink?”

  “Thanks, but no thanks.”

  Curtis patted Manville’s shoulder. “Come on, George, you don’t have to be wary with me.”

  Manville looked at him, astonished. “Of course I do.”

  Curtis shrugged and shook his head, as though abashed. “Well, I suppose you do,” he said. “Or you have reason to think you do, which is the same thing. Take that chair, it’s comfortable and it isn’t impossible to get out of.”

  They sat at right angles, and Curtis seemed to be thinking for a minute how to phrase himself. Then he said, “I owe you an apology, George. And I offer it.”

  “Thank you,” Manville said, wondering what on earth was coming next.

  “With an explanation,” Curtis said, and grinned at him. “Mea culpa, but with an explanation. Okay?”

  “Fine,” Manville said.

  “You know the situation I’m in, I told you some of it.”

  “You told me some,” Manville agreed. “I guess you thought you told me too much.”

  “I was running on panic, George,” Curtis said, “what should have been a perfect day was completely destroyed. Your technique on Kanowit Island was perfect, it showed me I can do it again when I need to. My investors were happy, very impressed. But all of a sudden there was Jerry Diedrich, that son of a bitch, spoiling my day yet again. And I realized, the man would find some way to trip me up when I was ready to make the move, the real move. Don’t worry, George, I’m not going to tell you any more about that move. I maybe didn’t tell you too much, out there on the Mallory, but I almost did. It’ll be better for both of us if you don’t know any more than you know now.”

  “Fine by me.”

  “The thing is, I panicked,” Curtis said. “And then one damn thing led to another. First, Diedrich is going to destroy me. But no, he killed a diver and I can destroy him. No, the goddam girl’s alive, I’m back to square one. But she should be dead, She’s beat up enough, maybe she’ll die. Maybe there’s no reason for her to live. And you know, if you hadn’t intervened, between us, Captain Zhang and me, we would have finished her off.”

  “I know you would.”

  “And we would have been wrong. I would have been wrong, completely wrong. But I didn’t realize that then. And I was damn angry at you when you interfered, as you know.”

  “You made it pretty plain,” Manville said. “The people you sent out made it plain.”

  “You astonished me, George,” Curtis said. “I admit it, I was astonished. You’re a handier man than I gave you credit for. But the point is, you did handle it. You handled me, and you handled the men I sent out, and now you and the girl are both still alive, and I realize I’m in no worse shape than I was before, I can still go ahead the same as ever. I can defuse Jerry Diedrich some other way, and I’ve got nothing to get in my way except my own damn foolishness. I didn’t have to panic, I didn’t have to make you an enemy, it was foolish of me, and I regret it. When I was trying to do you harm, George, you knew I wasn’t in my right mind, didn’t you?”

  “I suspected,” Manville said.

  “All right, George,” Curtis said. “I’d like us to start all over, from now. And I have a deal to offer.”

  “A deal?”

  “I’d like you to stay here a few days,” Curtis said. “A week or two at the most. Think of it as a vacation.”

  “Why?”

  “So I can find you if I need you.” Now Curtis was intense again, leaning forward in his own soft low chair, saying, “George, you know I’m going to do something big, and you know it’s going to be soon, and you know I’m going to use the soliton.”

  “That’s what you told me.”

  “I felt I could trust you, George. In a funny way, I still do.” He gave Manville a keen look, and a rueful smile, and said, “You probably think the question of trust goes the other way.”

  “If it’s a question,” Manville said.

  “Oh, it is, George, it is. But here’s the thing. I think I can pull this off on my own, but there may be questions I can’t answer. The people I’m working with aren’t your caliber, George. I’d like to think, if I got stuck, I could give you a call, right here, and ask you a question in a general way, not too specific, nothing that makes you a collaborator or an accessory or any of that, and you would answer it.”

  “For the ten million in gold, again?”

  Curtis shook his head. “I don’t know why money doesn’t interest you, George, that’s one thing I can’t figure out.”

  “It interests me,” Manville said.

  “Then there’s hope. Look, George, if you stay here, no more than two weeks, I promise, probably a lot less, I’ll give you whatever it is you want. Money, no money, that’s all right with me. The first thing, though…” His smile this time was sly, pleased with itself. “You know about the industrial espionage?”

  “I’ve been in a number of newspapers,” Manville told him. “Yes, I know about it.”

  “I’ll get rid of it,” Curtis said. “Guaranteed. I’ll explain it was my error, you weren’t the guy, sorry I blackened your name, a public apology and you’re cleared and as good as new. All right?”

  This was important. If Curtis did this, whatever else happened, Manville would be able to get on with his life. As it now stood, no one on earth would hire him. He said, “When?”

  “Tomorrow,” Curtis told him. “Saturday isn’t a problem, with news. I’ll get it on CNN International by tomorrow night.” Pointing generally away at the interior of the house, he said, “We’ve got dish reception here, you’ll see it for yourself.”

  “It would be good. If you did that,” Manville agreed.

  Curtis said, “George, you see now how easy I can knock you down, and how easy I can pick you up again.”

  “Yes.”

  “So I’m just asking you to help me, in a small way. And otherwise I’m only asking you to keep out of the way. Because believe me, I don’t need Pallifer and his friends—”

  “Who?”

  Curtis laughed, surprised. “No formal introductions, eh? The people who brought you here.”

  “Pallifer. He’d be the one I met on the ship. Morgan?”

  “The same. And you don’t ever have to meet him again, George. And you don’t have to read about yourself in the newspaper, either. Just take a little vacation, right here at Kennison. Do you ride?”

  “Horses? No, I never have.”

  “We have horses here, you could learn,” Curtis offered. “Albert taught me to ride, and if he could teach somebody like me, he can teach anybody. It�
�s a relaxing place, George, a beautiful time out from the cares of the world. I envy you, I honestly do, ten days or two weeks in this place, no worries, no problems.”

  Manville said, “And Kim?”

  Curtis looked blank. “What about her?” Then he suddenly seemed to understand. “Oh, what am I going to do about her!”

  “Yes.”

  “Nothing, George, why should I? If she was dead on the ship, then she’s a club I can beat Jerry Diedrich with. Now she doesn’t mean a thing, and I’ll get at Diedrich some other way.”

  “But what if she went to the police?”

  “And said what, George? That I did something to her? I saved her life, that’s all, rescued her from the sea, carried her safe to shore in my own yacht. If somebody tried to harm her in any way, what does that have to do with me?” Curtis leaned closer to say, “George, if I could swat you down without half-trying, what sort of threat is this girl?”

  “You’re not afraid she’ll raise questions.”

  “About what? No, George, I’m safe from her, and therefore she’s safe from me.”

  Was that true? Curtis was so devious, yet so apparently straightforward, that Manville had constant trouble figuring out what the man really wanted, what he really meant, what was lie and what was truth. “Your people were after her today,” he said.

  “To find you,” Curtis told him. “That was the only reason. Then they did find you, so they weren’t looking for her anymore.”

  Again, what Curtis said was plausible, without being quite persuasive. Manville brooded on it, trying to think his way through Curtis’s words, while the man watched him, half-smiling. He said, “What if I don’t want to stay here? What if I want to leave, tomorrow?”

  Curtis sat back, but didn’t lose the half smile. “I hope you won’t feel that way, George. I hope we don’t have to deal with it. I tell you what.” He sat up again. “Sleep on it. We’ll talk again tomorrow morning, Cindy and I aren’t leaving until after lunch. Think it over, and we’ll talk, and as soon as we’ve reached an agreement you can sit there and watch me get on the phone to get rid of that espionage story. Immediately. All right?”

  There was nothing to be gained by arguing. “All right,” Manville said.

  “Fine.” Curtis got to his feet, and so did Manville. “We’ve worked well together, George,” Curtis said. “I’m sorry it turned bad for a while.”

  “So am I.”

  Curtis put his hand out. Hiding his surprise, Manville took it, and Curtis shook his hand with self-conscious pomp, as though some important international treaty had just been signed. “I’m glad we had this talk, George,” he said.

  “Yes.”

  “Good night.”

  “Good night,” Manville said, and turned away.

  As he walked back down the long room toward the dining area, its table now cleared, headed back toward his no-longer prison, or possibly prison again, Manville was very aware of Curtis behind him, standing as Manville had left him, unmoving amid the low sofas, the great gray stone wall of fireplace behind him, watching Manville recede. He’s wondering if he’s pulled it off, Manville knew. He’s wondering if he has me fixed in place, or if I’m going to go on being a pest. And I’m wondering the same thing myself.

  If I tell him no tomorrow, I’ve thought it over, and I don’t want to stay here, beautiful and restful though Kennison might be, what then? Will he just allow me to leave, like that? Unlikely. If I don’t give him my parole, what else would he do but simply make me a prisoner?

  What was it that Curtis was going to attempt, sometime in the next ten days or two weeks? If Manville did nothing about it, would he regret that? Would people be hurt, or even killed? What is Richard Curtis up to?

  Should he try to escape tonight? Assuming the door to his room was left unlocked, should he try to get out of here? It was impossible to believe they would have left any of the vehicles where he could get at them, but even if they did, which way would he drive? The road into here was barely a track in the dirt, difficult enough for Curtis’s own chauffeur to find at night, and constantly blocked by stray cattle. Kennison was who knew how many thousands of acres in size. There was no way to get off it tonight.

  Tomorrow? Were Pallifer and the other two still around? Manville for a giddy second visualized Albert Farrelly teaching him to ride a horse and then, magically, Manville atop the horse, racing over the downs to freedom.

  He left the dining room, and started down the empty hall toward his room. Curtis had been ingratiating tonight, persuasive, reasonable, plausible; but Manville wanted none of it. He wanted nothing but to leave this place. For now, he entered the small neat guestroom and shut the door. Richard Curtis is at his most dangerous, he thought, when he seems the most sane.

  14

  Jerry was amazed and delighted at how seriously the police were taking their story, which they’d now told three times. The first time was to a detective in the police station where he and Luther and Kim had gone to report the disappearance of George Manville, the second was to his superior at the same station, and now the third time was to an extremely senior inspector in his office here in police headquarters.

  The inspector was a very tall, large-framed tweedy man with thick gray brushlike hair and astonishingly dainty granny glasses perched on his hawk nose. His name, he said, was Tony Fairchild, which seemed too diminutive for such a large man, and as he listened he made many notes on a legal pad on his desk in tiny crabbed writing that surely no one else would ever be able to read.

  Other plainclothes detectives were in and out of the small but sunny office, going on mysterious errands at nods and hand gestures from Fairchild, returning with equally mysterious nods or headshakes of their own. Sometimes they returned with small slips of paper, which they put on his desk and at which he barely glanced.

  Saturday morning. Before breakfast, Kim had come to their room, where she’d phoned the motel in Surfers Paradise, to be told that George Manville had not as yet returned. After breakfast at the hotel, she’d led them to the parking lot where the red car was still where Manville had left it. So then they’d gone to the police.

  By now, it was nearly eleven o’clock, and Jerry was beginning to feel talked out. Kim had described the events on the ship at length, Jerry and Luther had described their own activities, Kim’s parents’ whereabouts in Sydney were given, the parents’ unprofitable meeting with Captain Zhang related, Jerry and Luther’s own encounter with Zhang told, and finally the disappearance of George Manville.

  Oddly, Fairchild seemed for a while most interested in Captain Zhang, wanting to know every detail of the encounter between him and Jerry and Luther, asking if they’d been in Zhang’s hotel room for even a second. “I would have,” Jerry told him, “I’d have gone right on in and insisted he tell us the truth, but Luther wouldn’t let me.”

  “Hard to know if that would have made a difference,” Fairchild said, and at last left that issue to say to Kim, “The lawyer Manville was going to see. His office was in the Mansions in George Street?”

  “I think so,” Kim said. “I think that’s what he said.”

  “And he told you the name, but you don’t remember it.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kim said. “I didn’t know I was going to have to.”

  “Of course not,” Fairchild agreed. He was managing to be both remote and sympathetic at the same time. “There aren’t that many lawyers in the Mansions,” he said. “Was it a European name or an Asian name, do you remember?”

  “It sounded European, I think,” she said, “but it wasn’t anything ordinary.”

  Fairchild brooded, gazing at the far wall over his granny glasses, then he frowned at Kim and said, “Just a minute. You say Manville got to this lawyer through a friend in America.”

  “An architect in Houston, he said. I’m sorry, I don’t know his name either.”

  “Building trades,” Fairchild said. “Manville is in that line, his Houston friend is, he would have sent him on
to someone in the same sort of line here, so it’s a lawyer who represents architects or developers or— Would the name be Andre Brevizin?”

  “Yes!” Kim said, delighted. “That’s what he said. I remember it sounded like too nice a name for a lawyer.”

  Fairchild laughed. “I expect we have areas of agreement, Miss Baldur,” he said. “Although I doubted it at first, when I heard the story you wished to tell.”

  “Richard Curtis, you mean,” she said.

  Fairchild nodded. “Among other things. But let us look at what I began with. Two days ago, in this city, your Mr. Curtis brought a complaint to the police—not to me, I’m sorry to say, I wish I’d met the man, considering subsequent events—a complaint charging a former employee, one George Manville, with industrial espionage and theft. I’ve had a looksee at the complaint itself, and he did seem to have sufficient evidence for the charge.”

  Jerry wanted to break in here with a ringing denunciation of Richard Curtis as a polluter and a well-known liar, but he restrained himself.

  “Now this morning,” Fairchild went on, “an unknown young American lady, yourself, with no identification but claiming a friendly relationship with the same George Manville, presents herself to the police with a wild story of kidnapping, piracy, attempted murder and the suspicious disappearance of the man Manville himself, all pointing to Richard Curtis as the villain. I must admit. Miss Baldur, at first blush you did not bring us anything we could be expected to take seriously.”

  “But you do take it seriously,” Kim said. “I can see you take it seriously.”

  “For one reason only,” Fairchild told her. “It is why you were brought to this office, and not dealt with rather summarily at a lower level.”

  Kim, looking uncertain, possibly a little afraid, so that Jerry had the urge to grasp her hand but again restrained himself, said, “Why is that?”

  Fairchild lowered his head enough to look at them all, one at a time, over his granny glasses. Jerry had to force himself to meet that steady look. “I take it,” Fairchild said, “none of you has had any dealings with Captain Zhang Yung-tsien since your unsatisfactory interview with him yesterday.”