She stretched her arms. “What a relief! For you too, no?”
“I’m sorry he beat me,” Larry pushed out.
“He hasn’t, yet. You still mean to deal with him and his hired killer, don’t you? Oh, you’ll earn your share of my guaranteed half-million.” Her voice could be said to gleam. “Or my whole million. I’ve got hopes.”
Larry drew a chair to the bedside, folded himself into it, fumbled with tobacco. Julia wrinkled her nose slightly at the sourness—he hadn’t cleaned his pipe nor exchanged it this day, and it had seen furious use—but spoke no complaint. Scowling at his match flame, he didn’t notice.
“We do have to watch out, and then some,” he warned, and went on to relate his encounter with Gayle and hers with Matt. “They’re onto us, Flagler and Nordberg. They know we know. Your life’s in danger. Mine too, maybe, but yours for sure. Did I goof?”
She stroked his bare forearm. The hairs rose beneath her fingers. “No, Larry. You did magnificently.”
“Poor Gayle.”
“Well, she is an accessory to murder. If she suffers no worse punishment than you witnessed, she’ll have gotten off lightly. As for you, what you’ve accomplished—I’ve read a bit of information theory and strategic analysis. It sounds confusing, but the fact is that knowing what they know about what we know is a tremendous asset for our side.”
“Never mind theory,” he growled. “What do we do?”
“We plan how to convince Haverner that Matt must be made harmless.”
His laugh rattled. “Do we actually need to approach him … tomorrow?”
“We’d better.” Julia grew intent. “Let me think a minute.”
In the morning, when they applied to Captain York, he said, “Yis, mah’m, sir, yis, he been ’specting you. Please, dis vay,” and ushered them into the office.
The master sat at his rolltop desk. The subtle machinery hummed around him and the otherwise sterile air seemed to have a tinge of odor: blood, sweat?
“Good day,” he greeted. His manner was downright genial. The perfection of false teeth shone from a withered smile. “How are you?”
They refrained from observing that he must know precisely how they were. “Uh, okay, sir,” Larry said, unable to meet that stare. Julia, who could, responded, “Fine, thank you. I hope you’re the same. Is everything ready for my turn?”
“Yes. Certain equipment came yesterday while you were busy, and is in the main shed under lock and key. It will be installed and checked out this night. Meanwhile I’ve worked out a program which I trust will prove suitable.”
Julia could not altogether repress a shiver. Larry gave her a troubled glance. She had not yet revealed to him what she had in mind.
“I have, of course, followed your progress, like everyone else’s, as closely as I have been able to,” Haverner said. “I pass no moral judgments. Do remember that: no moral judgments. I am an observer, an amateur scientist, an ancient in whom every passion has burned low except a certain curiosity about this ridiculous species to which we belong—I too, I too. I am most obliged to you for the generous supply of data. Believe me, they will remain confidential. I have no particular interest in publication.”
“Then you’d better take steps to make sure we can keep on performing,” Larry said in a rash.
“Eh? Explicate, please.”
“You know. You’ve recorded everything we talked about.”
“True. But I prefer to hear you out viva voce. More data, you see.”
“Well, we’ve learned that Nordberg hired Flagler to kill Orestes when Orestes called a game only he could win. I … don’t suppose … you objected seriously, … sir.”
“Do you imply I might have connived a trifle at the event, dropped a hint or three, instructed my subordinates to look into the middle distance, in order that my experiment might continue?” Haverner’s cheerfulness was unruffled. “It’s conceivable. Further than that, deponent sayeth not.”
“Now,” Julia stated, cooler than her escort, “we’ve a single challenge left. Mine. You told me it fascinates you. But what happens if I’m killed before Ellis and I play? They, Flagler and Nordberg, they know we know about their guilt. Quite aside from the prize itself, can they afford to let us go back to Ciudad Vizcaya—to the States? We may not have courtroom proof, but we could make things pretty damn awkward for them. If you want your game played out, Mr. Haverner, you’d better take steps to protect us.”
“I’ve got a responsibility to Gayle, also,” Larry put in. “I can’t leave her in the claws of those vultures.”
The old man arched skeptical brows at that but made no direct comment. He did ask Julia, “What do you propose?”
“That we stow Flagler where he can’t do any further damage,” she replied. “You still have your magisterial commission, don’t you? Not that anybody in Santa Ana would ever question your right to the high, the low, and the middle justice on your fief, I’m sure. Well, arrest Matthew Flagler on suspicion of murder. Then turn him over to the authorities.”
“That—the prospect of eventual official investigation—might unduly perturb Mr. Nordberg, might handicap him vis-a-vis you,” Haverner said. “He deserves his fair chance.”
Julia stamped her foot. “What about me?”
“Indeed. I have given thought …”
For a long while silence filled the room. The two who stood, since they had not been offered chairs, grew visibly more nervous.
Finally the one at the desk continued. “It’s certainly unfeasible to call in the constabulary or, for that matter, try to deputize such peaceful retainers as Captain York to confine Mr. Flagler. Gossip, if nothing else. Your threat to ‘make things awkward’ upon your return home is idle, I fear. Think. You yourselves don’t want publicity. So much of what you have done here could be misinterpreted.” He snickered. “Or interpreted, as the case may be.
“Furthermore, we do have an experiment going, hence a need to control the variables, to restrict the number of persons who significantly interact. My focus is upon this select group. To bring in outsiders will interfere with my objective, which is to observe the behavior of my chosen people. You must concede me a few rights, Mrs. Petrie. A million dollars, even in an age when Caesar finds it convenient to advance under the banner of egalitarianism, a million dollars of one’s own money ought to buy a certain privilege, ought it not? I would be sorry to call off the contest at this late stage, Mrs. Petrie.” Larry inhaled a lungful. Julia asked flatly, “But you do agree something has to be done about Flagler?”
“Yes, provided it can be kept within the family, so to speak.”
“What, then?”
“Well, suppose I give you carte blanche. Within reason, of course. We must not scandalize my staff unduly, or otherwise risk a plague of officials. But if, say, you confine Mr. Flagler under citizen’s arrest until the last game has been played out—on a clear understanding with Mr. Nordberg that the eventual disposal of the case will not publicly embarrass him—”
“I guess we’ll have to work some kind of deal,” Larry said at the end of his report to Byron. “Be hard to send Matt up for murder without involving the guy who hired him, and so all the rest of us.”
“You mean they go free? But we protect ourselves from them by demanding signed confessions which we stow in the traditional safe deposit box with the traditional instructions to open in case of our sudden deaths?”
“Yeah, something like that. Wish I could think of something better.” Larry kicked the gravel. “I hate to let murder go unpunished. It’s not right!”
Byron barely smiled. “Rightness, fairness, justice are human artifacts. Lies—gallant or cowardly, depending on how you look at it—lies we tell ourselves, the same as God and immortality and love. Quite irrelevant to a universe estimated to be ten or twenty billion years old and that many light-years in radius and mostly hollow.”
“I dunno.” Larry scratched his head. “I’m not a believer, exactly, but it doesn’t make sense
that there isn’t any … Hell! Why am I arguing metaphysics?”
“I take it you want my help in confining Flagler.”
“Yeah. He’s got to be confined, or we won’t be able to bargain at all, and he may kill again—maybe back in the States, even, as a precaution. Haverner won’t stand in our way, but neither will he deputize any of his men. The business will have to be handled strictly among us white rats.” Byron nodded. They walked on in a minute’s silence along the roadway to the landing strip, a path they had picked arbitrarily to get away from possible eavesdroppers. No one else was visible beneath the sun of early afternoon. Elms lining the way gave scant shade at this hour against gathering heat and glare. Flies and bees droned; ants scurried past scrunching shoes; a hawk dipped and soared on watch overhead.
“To be frank,” Byron said at length, “I’m rather disgusted. What you’ve told me—perforce, almost everything—is altogether sordid.”
“Sure, you can be smug if you want,” Larry rasped. “You’re out of the running. Go ahead, relax, watch us twitch, watch us die.” He paused before continuing more quietly. “Sorry, I didn’t mean it that way. And I beg your humble pardon for what happened between us earlier. But I need your help. Two women need it worse, and that kid away off on Long Island.”
“Hm. You don’t think you could take Flagler by yourself?”
“I could try. I will, if I have to. But he’d have a better than even chance of slashing me to pieces.” Larry went red and swallowed. “Or he could escape, and somewhere out in the woods is that loaded hunting rifle.
“Actually, Byron, you’re in this too, whether you want to be or not. You too know more than he likes. You knew it even before we had this talk.
“The pair of us ought to be able to handle him fairly safely.”
The younger man’s eyes glistered. “All right!” He laughed. “I could protest that I’m crippled from what you did to me, but the truth is I’m back in fair shape and—All right, Larry, you bastard. If you’ll put on the gloves when we come home and let me trounce you according to Queensberry rules and afterwards buy you a drink, I’ll help you today.”
“Good guy!” They clasped hands. “I think he’s in his room,” Larry said. “Let’s go for him before he does any further damage.”
But instead they met him on their way to the house. He was crossing the lawn from the row of cottages, where he had been boasting to a young nephew of Captain York.
Larry and Byron stopped and stiffened at the sight. “Hey!” the first called. “Hey, uh, Matt, wait up.”
“Yeah?” The quarry obeyed. But as they trotted close, he squinted at them and tensed. “Wha’ d’ya want?”
“Oh, a, uh, discussion.” Larry started to sidle around, to get at him from behind.
Byron frowned and gestured. Matt edged from them both. “Hey, what is this?” he protested.
Larry pounced. Matt dodged. “Hold on there!” Byron cried. “Stay where you are. Matt, we have business with you.”
“What kind?” Matt poised himself on his toes. “Don’t come no closer. Don’t.” The switchblade went snick. “I’m warning you, you mothers. Stand back.”
Byron grinned and slipped near, ready to dance dear of a thrust. Larry moved again to Matt’s rear.
The lone man saw. “No, you don’t!” he screamed, broke past and ran.
Larry and Byron swapped glances, the first grim, the second rueful. They lined out in pursuit. Astonishingly fast, Matt distanced them and vanished in the northward jungle.
“He’s gone for that gun,” Larry panted. “Should we follow?”
“We’d better!” Byron loped on. Larry clenched his fists and accompanied him.
Feet whispered behind them. Armed, white-clad, Anselmo Gomez drew alongside and matched their speed in an effortless cat-pace. He gave them a minimal smile. “I weel go along,” he said. The walkie-talkie was slung across a shoulder.
—And in the old house, Sunderland Haverner said to a part of the wallpaper whose pattern suggested a face, “You woe right, Samael. They are behaving just as we hoped.”
MATTHEW FLAGLER
Branches like claws. They scratch after my eyes; they grab my ankles; they jab at my balls. Christ, it’s gloomy in here! And hot and stinking. Nature, shit! That’s what this woods is, shit and death. The trees crowd around; the brush fights me and snaps, rustles, yells where I am.
Like the graveyard at night, a few pus-yellow street lamps far far off, and red sky-glow, but the church, the warehouses and tenements crowd close, the damn graveyard’s a black well and it’s past midnight, quiet like a corpse waiting underground to reach up and grab me and haul me down to him in his coffin, and I’m seven years old and Bull Brannigan’ll beat me if I don’t stay here the whole night through, my punishment for goofing that errand he gave me. Oh, Mother Mary, oh, Saint Matthew, Saint Patrick, help me, don’t let a little boy go down into the grave!
Stop that. Stop where I am. Think. Maybe the jungle does remind me too much, but that’s its way of tricking me. If I let the jungle paralyze me with fear, it’ll have won. They’ll have won, the smug rich motherfuckers chasing me.
Stand still and think.
Don’t breathe loud. Strain out the laughing of that damn bird, somewhere off in these thick shadows. It hates me too. Well, I hate right back. I’ll whip you yet, you Island, you sons of bitches.
Figure. What do they want to do? Lock me up. Maybe kill me. They’re afraid of me, that’s what they are. Suppose I promised … but they wouldn’t listen. I suppose old Haverner gave them his okay. He doesn’t care what happens to human beings, the creepy crazy mummy. Jesus, he scares me! He ought to run away if I make the sign of the cross, that vampire, but he won’t…. Stop. I’ve got to think hard.
(Ellis said, “His only interest is in watching us. He looks on us as animals. If he has any preference about how we behave, it’s that we keep his show going as long as possible. Get me, Matt? If it seems like somebody’s about to make a clean sweep of the field and end his fun, … why, he’ll be grateful, in his way, to whoever fixes that.”
(And I did, Haverner. I shot that godless Communist who’d’ve walked off carrying your whole million bucks. You know I did. You haven’t said anything, of course, but you know, you know. I did you a good turn. Then why are you letting them treat me like this?
(Why aren’t you helping me, Ellis? I helped you.)
Think, think, in the damn damp shadows.
He’s got no gratitude, Haverner, no conscience. He’d as soon turn me over to the Santa Ana cops … and God, those kids and niggers back home that whine about police brutality, they’ve sure never seen a Santa Ana jail! Or a Santa Ana firing squad; that’s what a murder rap can mean. Gimme a Chicago flatfoot anytime, and I know what I’m talking about.
Oh, God, Chicago! Civilization! Let them whine about smog and pollution, too. I’ll trade them this tropical paradise for it, even-Steven, quicker’n a whore can roll a drunk. Hell, after these heavy stinks around me, exhaust would smell good, clean car fumes, and the same for piss in the cheapest pool-hall john, and stale cigar smoke, oh, I love you, I love you. Cars … me behind the wheel of a Cadillac, steering her under flashing neon, over pavement where nothing worse lays around loose than old newspapers, dust, chewing gum wrappers, maybe an epileptic bum…. I’ll take your winters too, Chicago, sooty snow, overcoat dragging me down, wind like a wolf off the plains and frost-howl from the wheels of the El train…. What’d I ever do that they made me spend this past six years in hell?
I’m going back. I can go back. If I think.
Haverner—I don’t expect Haverner gives a damn what happens to me either way. If I can take care of myself, that’s all right by him. I’ve always had to take care of myself. From the beginning. Father a drunk working stiff, mother a drunk slob, eight brothers and sisters crowding me in a tiny apartment, at a skimpy table—what could I do but hang around street gangs, damn near from the first time I could walk, and run errands for th
em and try to pick up a little money or … ? Nobody ever looked after me except myself. Nobody ever helped me.
Not Ellis either. I don’t kid myself he cares about me. If I can’t do this one more job he wants, and it looks like I can’t, why, he’d be just as glad to have me cooled, because of what I know.
Or, no, not exactly that. Let me prove, here, today, that I’m tough and smart enough to be worth his while and … He did talk about putting me on his payroll.
So. What I’ve got to do is last out the game. And like a free man, not a prisoner that they can do anything they want with. One more day to go. After that, well, I have my return ticket, or at least a ride back to Vizcaya. (The rich motherfuckers go to the States.) And Ellis did for sure promise me more if he wins, and he’ll keep his promise—he’d better—if I stay free.
Especially if I help him against the Petrie dame. We should talk that over more, this night. We didn’t get a chance to make real plans. I wouldn’t mind putting a slug in her belly, the snotty bitch. No, sir. But Haverner might get mad if I spoiled the last match. Maybe if I caught her alone and beat up on her or something…. Well, Ellis and me can talk about that. What I’ve got to do right this minute is make a chance for us to talk.
Okay. If Haverner doesn’t care about me, he doesn’t care about Rance or Shaddock either. They’re both out of the game anyway. (Why are they persecuting me, then? Because the Julia cunt put them up to it! Why else? She laid them and bribed them. Oh, how I’d like to get you alone, Julia!) If I kill them—well, hell, plain self-defense. A man’s got a right to defend himself. They attacked me when I was walking along minding my own business, me that never did them any harm and even saved their bacon that day on the beach.
Besides, if I chill them, that’ll be two less possible stoolies for Haverner to worry about afterward. He ought to appreciate that.
The Devil's Game Page 23
