by Del Howison
“Oh, Johnny, I’m so scared!” the Teen Queen cried.
The little girl who had been playing elevator operator began to wail.
“Hush, hush, Charlotte!” her mother said, but her own voice had a quaver.
“I smell blood, too,” the Teen Queen moaned. “I think I’m gonna puke.”
“Everyone just stay still, now,” George said. “I have a cigarette lightah with me.” He spun the wheel. An inch of flame illuminated faces and the muzzle of the little dog as it tried to squirm free of the black woman’s tote. The dog’s bulging eyes had a mad cast in them from the flicker of light. “And madam: You must do something about your little dog. I nevah have cared for dogs. Or animals of any kind, for that matter. All animals make me nervous.”
The woman glared at him. The dog went on barking hysterically.
“Johnny,” George said to the high school jock, “would you be so good as to hold my lightah for me?”
The boy held out his free hand—his other arm cradled the cowering Teen Queen—and took the lighter from him.
George set his attaché case on the floor, put his dripping glasses on, and opened the case.
“Have any of you evah noticed,” he said conversationally, “how one little thing goin’ wrong can lead inexorably to anothah, and screw up what started out to be a promisin’ day? Of course, there is no point in gettin’ upset when the elements go against you: Now is there? And a little inconvenience like a stalled elevatah when you are in a hurry—why waste energy gettin’ all fussed about that? These are mattahs ovah which we have no control. But a savage-actin’ little barkin’ dog that irritates the nerves”—George pulled the .32 automatic from his case—“that we can do somethin’ about.”
“Omigod!”
“He’s got a gun!”
“Hey, man!”
George straightened up with the gun in his less-bloody hand. The droplets of blood from the red lens of his glasses had become a steady thin stream over his chin and down the length of his Burberry.
“We’re all going to die!”
Shrieks of horror. George shook his head slightly and made a pacifying gesture.
“Nonsense. I don’t wish to bring harm to any of you. I am just going to shoot this miserable yapping excuse for a—”
With that the black woman yanked her toy pooch free of the tote with an expression of outrage, clutched him to her bosom, stepped forward, and kneed George in the groin. She also slapped him with her other hand. Blood flew into her face and the dog’s. As George tried to stay upright on the blood-slippery floor of the elevator the dog squirmed from the black woman’s grasp, flew at George’s face, and locked its small sharp teeth into his cheek.
George pushed the woman away from him and yanked at the fluffy tail of the dog hanging from his cheek. It weighed only eight or ten pounds, but it had the bite of a badger. The dog wouldn’t let go. No use yanking any harder on its tail; he was likely to lose half his face. He stuck the automatic in the dog’s belly and shot it. The dog jerked a couple of times—then went limp—but its jaws remained locked on George’s cheek.
The lights in the elevator flickered, came on full strength. The elevator surged upward once more. George, gun in hand, the odor of dead dog entrails stifling him, looked around at the other passengers pressed against three of the four elevator walls.
Ten minutes in his private office suite. That was all he would need. The exits were closing, but they weren’t all shut yet.
His glasses continued to drip blood. His cheek hurt like hell. Maybe the dead dog would release him at sundown, like snapping turtles were supposed to do. George felt very tired. But he had calmed down. Calm was essential for straight thinking. Ten minutes. The jet gassed and ready to go. Panama. Paradise. No worries.
The elevator arrived on 44. At last.
“Madam,” George said to the hysterical black woman as he backed off the elevator into the smartly appointed, carpeted reception area, “I very much would like to return your animal, for a proper burial I suppose, but for the life of me I can’t figure out how.” He waved the pistol at them. “Now you all go about your business, as I intend to go about mine, and let’s not make too much of this.”
The elevator doors closed. George turned around. The girl at the reception desk was Heather. A knockout, tall and poised. Usually. This morning she had the expression of someone who had just driven a Ferrari into a telephone pole.
“Mr. Whitaker—!”
“Not entirely my fault, Heather,” George admonished her. “I was attacked by the little monster. I had no recourse but to protect myself.”
“Should I—do you want me to call—”
George stood on the pearl gray carpet he was staining rapidly with Lisa’s blood, looking around slowly at paintings of his predecessors as heads of the oft-beleagured family firm. His father, of course. His great-uncle Tab, who had made a career of underestimating the IRS. His older brother Bailey, who never got it through his head that continually drawing to inside straights was a bad practice in business as well as poker.
There was space for his own portrait, which now he would never get around to posing for.
“I’ll be in my office,” George said. “Traffic bein’ what it is today, kindly have a helicopter waitin’ for me on the roof. I’ll be catchin’ a flight soon as I’ve tidied up. Oh, and Heather? Admit no one who might be inquiring of my whereabouts.”
“Yes—sir.”
He trudged down a hallway with the dead dog hanging from his cheek and his glasses bleeding profusely, almost a torrent now from that one little spot not much bigger than the pupil of Lisa’s turquoise eyes. He accessed his private elevator and rose to his sanctuary, half a floor in size and kingly in its comforts. There he was alone. Or was he? He thought he heard his father’s cheery tone.
They never caught a single one of us with our pants down. Did they, boy?
“Easy for you to say,” George muttered, fingering the dead dog he wore like some sort of outlandish piercing.
“It’s Whitakers who choose how and when. His uncle Tab reiterating his favorite philosophy.
Mind you don’t miss that last exit.
“I took care of it already,” George said defensively, but he knew it was time. He heaved a couple of sighs and got to his feet, walked slowly through a couple of cool silent rooms to the vault. The sight of it refreshed him. Hadn’t been much of a day so far, but it was about to improve.
He dialed the combination with bloody fingers, gave the wheel a couple of hard turns. The thick steel door swung open and George walked into the vault.
The atmosphere inside was gloomy, stuffy. Old brick walls with mortar oozed between layers. Curved ceiling overhead. The floor dusty. He took off the bleeding glasses. But the troublesome spot of Lisa’s blood seemed to be gone. He still had the dog hanging from his cheek but as he touched the furry corpse, it shriveled up and fell away. He rubbed the cheek the dog had bitten. No pain. No wound.
He heard voices from deeper inside the vault. One in particular made him smile.
Never caught us with our pants down.
Can’t get up early enough to get ahead of a Whitaker.
And brother Bailey in high dudgeon exclaiming, Goddamit, there’s that eight I was needing!
George walked through a short passage and down a flight of steps toward a candle’s flame and there they were, gathered around some long-deceased Whitaker’s stone bier, Tab shuffling the pasteboards with his skeletal hands, Daddy looking up with what seemed to be a twinkle in the glass eye that remained in his hairless skull, smiling toothily.
“Here he is!”
“What kept you?” Uncle Tab grumbled.
“I don’t know,” George said. “Some little inconvenience, I suppose.” He looked around the family crypt with a glum smile. Lacking a woman’s touch, it would take some getting used to.
Uncle Tab passed the shuffled shabby deck to Bailey, who looked up at his brother before he began flipping the car
ds around.
“Deal you in?”
“Might as well,” George said.
* * *
The homicide detective finished his scan of the back of the limousine, then yielded the scene to his CSI colleagues for a closer examination of the body and the weapon used. He walked back half a block to a sector car, one of several units on the scene along with a fire-department paramedic bus. The rain had nearly stopped but the street was still awash. Uniforms had the traffic moving again, slowly. One of the cops touched the bill of his cap and opened the rear door of the sector car. The detective took off his hat, shook rain from the brim, and got in.
“Mrs. Whitaker? I’m Lieutenant Peterson.”
Lisa Whitaker looked up with grief-emptied eyes. Her hands were twisted tightly together in her lap. She had chewed most of her lipstick from her lower lip. Her lips parted as if she were going to speak, but then she simply shook her head in an anguished way.
“I know how rough this has been for you, Mrs. Whitaker.”
“Rough,” she repeated dryly.
“I’ll be as brief as I can.”
“Thank … you.”
“Your chauffeur, Mr. Stokes, said he didn’t hear or see anything. What can you tell me, Mrs. Whitaker?”
“Well … he shot himself. It was … so quick. And so awful. He had just handed me … this.” Lisa showed Peterson the bracelet crumpled in her hands. “It’s platinum. The stones are rubies.”
“Birthday? Anniversary?”
“No.” Words came slowly. “No particular reason for a gift.” She smiled tautly. “Except George liked giving them.” Lisa drew a great shuddering breath. “When I … looked up to thank him … the muzzle of the gun was against his temple. George was … smiling. I couldn’t begin to describe—” She lowered her head, clenching the bracelet again. “Then he did it. I only had a second or two to react. It was that quick. No way … no way I could believe what he’d done.”
“I understand your husband’s father committed suicide after a string of business failures.”
She looked at him again, blinking. As if she had cobwebs in her eyes. She wiped at the lashes. “It’s like … a family curse. That aptitude for making huge sums of money, but then … just slips through their fingers. George’s father, his brother, an uncle or two … they all took their lives rather than … you know. Jail. Humiliation. They gladly left the humiliation for … loved ones to endure.” She looked as if she wanted to cry again, but there were no tears left. “I know George was in trouble. That federal investigation. But to do such a thing—in front of me—monstrous.”
“I have to ask you this. Were you and your husband getting along, Mrs. Whitaker?”
“Oh … we had our differences, like any married couple. Nothing we weren’t mature enough to deal with.” Lisa reached out suddenly and seized one of Peterson’s wrists. “Lieutenant. I’ll never forget what I saw! Never.”
“I’m so sorry, Mrs. Whitaker.”
“There was something I noticed … in George’s eyes, in that moment before he squeezed the trigger. They say when we’re about to die, our entire lives flash through our minds. But could it be … for those who deserve it, there’s something else they see?
A vision of heaven, or … hell.” A uniform tapped on the window; Peterson turned his head and let the window down.
“Mrs. Whitaker’s chauffeur is here with another car, to drive her home.”
“Can I go?” Lisa asked anxiously.
“Yes. We’ll need for you to sign a formal statement when you’re up to it. By the way—was your husband familiar with guns?”
“This is Texas, Lieutenant Peterson. Aren’t they all? It’s a custom of their manhood.”
“So he always had a pistol with him?”
“Yes. We also have an indoor range. He practiced three or four times a week. In fact, he was downstairs on the range before breakfast this morning.”
“How about you? Handy with firearms?”
Lisa looked back at him as she was getting out of the car.
“Not at all. I just don’t like them.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Whitaker. My sympathies.”
* * *
Lisa rode in the front seat of the rented Town Car on the way home.
“Thank God that’s over,” she said as they left the city behind them.
“Yes, ma’am. Praise the good Lord.”
“Sooner or later, he was going to do it anyway. It’s in the family genes. We just helped George realize his destiny without the usual difficulties. The indictments. Handcuffed on the six-o’clock news.”
“I know he been done a blessing, Mrs. Whitaker.”
“And God knows I didn’t feel like waiting around for later, FBI snoops all over, attachments on all our properties. My nerves couldn’t take it. Just dispose of my gloves the way I told you, Delano.”
“You can count on me.”
“And don’t go on a spree in Mo’ Bay or wherever you decide to take up residence. Don’t spend a lot of money conspicuously.”
“I didn’t fall off the back of no turnip truck yesterday, Mrs. Whitaker. Got me plenty of livin’ left to do.” Delano grinned broadly. “And like Mr. George always used to say, ‘Life sure be a hard act to follow.’ ”
A GENTLEMAN OF THE OLD SCHOOL
A story of Saint-Germain
CHELSEA QUINN YARBRO
“BUT SURELY THE Count is willing to talk to the press? He’s been very generous, and I would have thought he’d want to make sure people know about it.” The reporter was a crisply attractive woman in her midtwenties, bristling with high fashion and ambition; she was hot on the scent of a story. She lingered in the door of the secluded house in an elegant section of Vancouver, a tape recorder in one hand, a small digital camera in the other. “And there is the problem of the murder, isn’t there? The VPMNC audience wants to know.”
The houseman—a lean, middle-aged man with sandy hair and faded blue eyes, roughly the same height as the reporter: about five-foot-seven—remained unfailingly polite. “I am sorry, but my employer has a pronounced dislike of all public attention, even if the intention is benign.” He nodded to the young woman once. “I am sure there are many on the hospital board who will be delighted to give you all the information you seek. As to the murder, you should speak to the police—they will know about it.”
“Everyone’s talked to them, and there’s nothing new to get out of them,” the reporter complained. “Everyone’s looking for a new angle on the case, and the Center was a good place to start. That led me to the Count, and I found out about the Count only through the Donations Administrator’s secretary, and that was over a very expensive lunch.” She frowned. “I was told that the Count visited the facilities only twice: shortly after construction began and just before it was opened: The Vancouver Center for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Blood Disorders. Ms. Saunders said the Count’s donation covered more than seventy percent of the cost of building and equipping the facility, and that he provides an annual grant for ongoing research. That’s got to be a lot of money. I was wondering if the Count would care to confirm the amount? Or discuss the body found on the roof of the Center two days ago?”
“Neither is the sort of matter my employer likes to talk about. He is not inclined to have his fortune bruited about, and the investigation of crime is not his area of expertise. He leaves such things to the police and their investigators.” The houseman stepped back, preparing to close the door.
“Then he’s talked to them?” the reporter pursued.
“A crime-scene technician named Fisk has asked for various samples from the Count, and he has provided them.” The houseman started to swing the door shut.
“Fisk—the new tech?”
“That was his name. I have no idea if he is new or old to his position. If you will excuse me—” There was less than three inches of opening left.
“I’ll just return, tonight or tomorrow, and I may have some of my colleagues with me: I
am not the only one with questions.” This last was a bluff: She was relishing the chance for an exclusive and was not about to give up her advantage to any competition.
“You will receive the same answer whenever you call, Ms…. is it Barradis? If you want useful information, I would consult the police, Ms. Barradis.” The houseman lost none of his civility, but he made it clear that he would not change his mind.
“Barendis,” she corrected. “Solange Barendis.”
“Barendis,” the houseman repeated, and closed the door firmly, setting the door-crossing bolt into its locked position before withdrawing from the large entry hall, bound for the parlor on the west side of the house that gave out on a deck that was added to the house some fifty years before. It had recently been enlarged to make the most of the glorious view afforded down the hill, colored now with the approaching fires of sunset.
The house had been built in 1924 in the Arts and Crafts style, with cedar wainscoting in most of the rooms, and stained glass in the upper panes of many of the windows, all in all, a glorious example of the style, for although it did not appear to be large from the outside, it had three stories, and thirteen rooms, all of generous proportions. The parlor, with its extensive bow and the deck beyond provided the appearance of an extension of the room through two wide French doors into the outside, making it one of Roger’s favorite places in all the house. Here he lingered until a beautiful Victorian clock chimed five; then he started toward the stairs that led to the upper floors, to the room cm the south side of the second floor, a good-sized chamber that once held a pool table, but was now devoted to books. He went along to the library and tapped on the door, opening it as soon as the occupant of the room called out, “Do come in, Roger.”
Roger opened the door and paused on the threshold, watching his employer, who was dressed in black woolen slacks and black cashmere turtleneck, up a rolling ladder where he busied himself shelving books at the tops of the cases. “The reporter was back.” The French he spoke was a dialect that had not been heard for more than two centuries.
