The Language of Cannibals

by George C. Chesbro

  “He sure as hell had a powerful itch to kill me.”

  “And he was waiting for you in ambush. He knew you’d probably be using 9W to get to the Palisades Parkway. How did he know you were in Cairn? Could he have been following you?”

  I shook my head. “He couldn’t have been out of the hospital himself for more than a short time before he came at me. Besides, Gregory Trex wasn’t interested in following me, only killing me—and, if he’d been following me, he’d have had a lot better places to kill me than on 9W. Even if they weren’t in trucks, that shithead and his friends wouldn’t be good enough to tail me without my knowing it. He must have seen my car parked outside Town Hall, or seen me go in. He figured I’d be going home eventually, so he rounded up a buddy and set up the ambush.”

  “Maybe Culhane put Trex and his buddy on to you.”

  I thought about it, nodded. “Could be; it would be enough simply to drop a hint to Trex that I was in town, and Trex would take it from there. After Mosely called him, Culhane had time to call Hendricks at the FBI before he came to confront me. Maybe he also took the time to call Trex.”

  “There’s another possibility, Mongo. There is indeed a death squad operating here, with Gregory Trex and his masked buddy being two of its members and Jay Acton controlling it.”

  “Acton shouldn’t have a clue that I’m breathing down his neck. Supposedly he was out sailing when Mosely called Culhane.”

  “Mosely could have reported to Culhane on the conversation you had with him on Friday evening. If Culhane mentioned to Acton that you had questions about Burana’s death, it would have put Acton on his guard.”

  There was something odd in Garth’s tone that made me nervous. “Okay, Garth,” I said, watching his face, “that’s a possibility. But I really can’t see a clever KGB agent having anything to do with a loose cannon like Gregory Trex. Like I said, Trex didn’t need anyone to goad him into trying to kill me. The ambush may be totally unrelated to the other matters.”

  “I think it is related.”

  “What’s the matter, Garth? What is it?”

  “Somebody has been following you, Mongo—and I agree that it had to have been a pro, or you’d have picked up on it.”

  “How the hell do you know somebody’s been following me? You didn’t even know I was in the hospital until a few hours ago, and you didn’t know what’s been happening until a few minutes ago.”

  Garth bowed his head slightly, sighed as he ran the fingers of both hands through his long hair. “Harry Peal’s dead, Mongo.”

  “Oh, God,” I said, turning my face away and clenching my fists against the new pain that suddenly shot through my heart. “Shit. How?”

  “He died in a fall off the cliff outside his home sometime Sunday afternoon.”

  “That was yesterday; I told you I went up to see him yesterday afternoon.”

  “I know. Supposedly there was a witness to his death. This witness claims there was a struggle between Peal and a very small man—‘dwarf’ is the word he used, I’m told—and the dwarf pushed Peal off the cliff.”

  I kept my fists clenched and face turned away, fighting back tears of grief, frustration, and rage. Mosely had been dead on target when he labeled me, in so many words, a kind of pariah, but that wasn’t news to me. A grand old man of folk song, conservation, and fierce real patriotism had survived more than eight decades of severe trials to body and soul; he’d survived everything but one Sunday afternoon conversation with Robert Frederickson. “Why didn’t you tell me this at the beginning?” I asked in a voice that I hardly recognized as my own.

  “To what purpose? I knew you didn’t kill some old man. I wanted to hear what you had to say so that maybe I could get some clue as to who did kill him. My money’s on your KGB plant.”

  “For Christ’s sake, Garth, Harry Peal was Jay Acton’s father.”

  “He’d never met the man. Harry Peal would have been just one more threat, like Burana, who had to be removed; we’re talking KGB here, not the Junior Chamber of Commerce. And he figured he’d try to take you out along the way.”

  That’s fucking absurd,” I said, turning back to face Garth. “It doesn’t make any sense at all. If Acton wants me out of the way because I know he’s probably KGB, why didn’t he just kill me, instead of trying to frame me on some bullshit murder charge that can’t hold up? Arranging for me to be charged with murder isn’t going to keep me from talking.”

  “You have a point,” Garth said evenly, staring thoughtfully at the palms of his hands. “Except that he couldn’t be in two places at once. He took care of Peal himself, and he was counting on Trex and his buddy to take care of you.”

  “And they muffed it; I end up alive and in the hospital. So what’s to be gained by this stupid murder charge? Who’s this witness?”

  “An anonymous phone tip.”

  “An anonymous phone tip?”

  “What the hell; it did the job. You’re currently under arrest, dear brother, on the charge of suspicion of murder. There’s a guard sitting outside your door right now. He was looking real bored when I came in, so I managed to find him a newspaper.”

  “How did you get in here?”

  “My old NYPD courtesy card and a little courtesy from a former comrade-in-arms.” “Mosely?”

  “Uh-huh. That’s where I got my information.”

  “I take it he failed to mention all the other shit that’s been going down around here.”

  “It must have slipped his mind,” Garth said absently.

  “You remember Mosely from the good old days?”

  Garth nodded. “Vaguely. Our paths used to occasionally cross at the station house, and I remember seeing his name on the duty list. He spent some years in safe and loft, then was transferred to full-time U.N. detail. The word on him was that he was a straight arrow—probably a lot straighter than most of the other cops in that precinct.”

  “Except you.”

  “There are a lot of honest cops, Mongo. You know that.”

  “And you’re saying Mosely was an honest cop?”

  “I never heard otherwise—and I would have.”

  “Well, he’s a real … he’s something else now.”

  “But not necessarily dishonest,” Garth said distantly. I suspected he was thinking about the same thing that was troubling me, namely what my enemy or enemies hoped to accomplish by maneuvering Mosely into arresting me. “He’s got a political job now.”

  “I still don’t understand this move, Garth. What’s the point of trying to pin Harry Peal’s murder on me, especially when the witness is nothing but an anonymous phone tip? It can’t stop me from talking about the KGB officer on Elysius Culhane’s staff. I’ve already told you, and—oh, shit.” Suddenly I understood. I sat bolt upright in bed, ignoring the pain that shot through my skull and back. “It’s just a holding action, Garth. Acton had counted on Trex to kill me, and Trex blew it. Now Acton needs time to figure out how to get at me. I wanted to freeze him in place by having him arrested, and that’s precisely what he’s done to me. I have to die, same as Michael and Harry Peal, because of what Harry told me. Now you’ll be marked too.”

  “Why wasn’t Peal killed the same time as Burana?”

  “There wasn’t time. Harry left for Eastern Europe within hours after he talked to Michael. The KGB didn’t want Harry to die in a communist country, because it would have been an embarrassment to the Russians and their allies. Harry had just returned from that trip when I talked to him on Sunday.”

  Garth rose, looked over his shoulder to make sure the door was closed, then reached into his jacket pocket and took out his old Colt automatic. Garth no longer liked guns and didn’t even bother practicing on a firing range. I hadn’t seen the old Colt in years, and yet from the way he held the weapon as he checked the firing chamber and magazine I suspected he remained the deadly accurate shooter he had once been.

  He looked up, reacted to the surprise he must have seen on my face. “I noticed your gun
was missing from the safe, so I figured I’d better bring mine along. I assume you lost the Beretta?”

  “Yeah,” I replied curtly. I felt very tense and anxious. Now that it had finally dawned on me why I was under arrest for the murder of Harry Peal, I hoped I wasn’t too late to prevent another killing. “Listen, there has to be a pay phone around here someplace. Go find it and call Mary Tree; get the number for the Community of Conciliation from Information. Whoever’s been following me must know that she and I talked, which means that her life is probably in danger; she’s the one who steered me to Harry Peal in the first place. She has to be warned. Her organization has offices all over the world. She has to split, and she has to do it right now. Tell her to find some other Community residence to hole up in, preferably one that’s a long ways from here. Tell her to pack her bags in a hurry, and you’ll take her to the airport.”

  Garth grunted, clicked on the Colt’s safety catch, then stepped forward and slipped the gun under the sheet, next to my thigh. “Hang on to that until I get back,” he said, then turned and left the room.

  I gripped the taped butt of the Colt and waited, my heart pounding. Hours had passed since Harry Peal had been killed and the attempt made on my life. Everything indicated that Jay Acton, whoever he really was, was in a hurry to clean house, to eliminate everyone he thought could connect him to his Russian mother and birthplace and membership in the KGB, which meant that Mary Tree might already be dead. I would not like that at all. It would be my fault.

  Garth returned twenty minutes later. “Did you reach her?” I asked as soon as he stepped into the room and closed the door behind him.

  “Yeah,” Garth replied easily as he walked over to the bed, took the gun from my hand, and put it back into his jacket pocket. Then he went to the window, looked down. “No problem.”

  “What the hell does that mean? Does the Community have some other residence that’s secure, and where she can hide?”

  “I suppose so,” he said in a tone of voice that I thought sounded oddly distracted under the circumstances.

  “What the hell do you mean, you suppose so? Are you taking her to the airport?”

  “No,” he said evenly as he turned away from the window. “As a matter of fact, you and I are going to the Community residence here for an indefinite stay.”

  “What?”

  “We both agree that your arrest is somebody’s idea of a holding action, and we agree that said holding action isn’t going to serve any purpose unless you’re taken out before you can start talking to the media. Your police guard doesn’t exactly remind me of Wyatt Earp to begin with, and when I came back from using the phone I found him down the hall trying to make time with one of the night nurses. I don’t think you’re safe here, brother, and I wonder how safe you’d be in police custody. If I were a KGB killer, I don’t think I’d lose much sleep worrying about the prowess of the Cairn Police Department.”

  “I can’t say I’m overjoyed with my situation, but I don’t much care for the idea of putting you and Mary in the position of aiding and abetting a fugitive.”

  “I discussed that with Mary, and she and I agreed that the two of us have more serious things to worry about. As you pointed out, I’ll be marked for death now that I’ve come to see you, so the three of us are all in this together. Even if she did want to fly out of the country, there’s no guarantee that the KGB wouldn’t be able to trace her. But I doubt we’d even make it to the airport; by now my car has been identified, and somebody is probably keeping an eye on it. Mary says she can sneak us into that mansion and find a place for us to hide in there without anyone else knowing about it. We’ll have sanctuary there and time to figure out our next moves.” He paused, turned back to the window, continued, “I checked again with your night nurse, and she said you definitely don’t have a fractured skull. You’re under observation, and she figures you’ll be released from the hospital into police custody in two or three days. I’m kind of hoping that means your head won’t fall off if you’re moved.”

  “It’s all well and good for you to say things like that, since it’s not your head that’s likely to fall off. What’s so interesting out the window?”

  “Mary should be here in about ten or fifteen minutes to pick us up; she told me she could sneak out in one of the Community’s cars that isn’t used too much and shouldn’t be recognized.” He turned back to me, raised his right hand. “How many fingers?”

  I squinted my unbandaged left eye in an attempt to focus on the blurred figure across the room. “Four,” I said.

  “Be serious.”

  “I am being serious. I can count four fingers when I see them.”

  “Two,” Garth said with a sigh as he lowered his hand. “It looks like you’ve got a good case of double vision, but it can’t be helped. You’ve been hurt worse. Just divide everything you see by two.”

  “Thanks a lot, Garth. There are times when I can’t imagine what I’d do without your sage advice. What floor are we on?”

  “The third.”

  “Great. I like all your thinking and planning up to this point except for one very minor little detail. Even assuming I can walk without a serious wobble, which I don’t assume at all, how the hell do you plan to spirit me out of here without us being seen? The guard may not be Wyatt Earp, but he’s obviously not blind either.”

  “Tsk, tsk. You’ve always been such a worrywart.”

  “Garth? What the hell are you planning to do?”

  Garth smiled sweetly, always a bad sign, and walked toward me. “You let me worry about spiriting you out of here, baby brother. It’s as good as done.”

  Chapter Eight

  Being lowered from the third story of a building by a rope of bedsheets, blankets, pillowcases, and towels knotted together and fashioned into a sling under my arms made for what I considered an ignominious exit. On the other hand, it occurred to me that a short flight in a car and a good knock on the noggin had done wonders for my sprained wrist, sore knee, and bruised left arm, since the stabbing pain in my head had made me forget all about the other injuries sustained while I was bouncing off and being bounced by Gregory Trex, the current scourge of my existence.

  The window of my hospital room conveniently looked out over a wide alleyway used for deliveries and garbage pickup; Mary Tree, driving with her lights out, had backed into the alley just as I finished dressing and just as Garth was putting the finishing touches on my improvised escape route—remarking, with another of his ominously sweet smiles, that he hoped it would reach all the way to the ground.

  As I continued my descent, with Mary craning her neck and peering anxiously up at me, I tried to improve on my undignified position by crossing my arms over my chest and proudly thrusting out my chin, posturing as if I were totally accustomed to this sort of royal transport. My vamping got a muffled laugh out of the woman. However, there was nothing but shock and concern in her face and eyes by the time I reached the ground and she managed to get a better look at me. She wrapped her left arm around me, used her right hand to undo the sling from under my arms.

  “Mongo!” she said in a low, tense whisper. “Oh, my God, your head—!”

  “It’s okay,” I said, gently pushing her arm away and taking a couple of tentative steps. I felt dizzy. “It looks worse than it is. You know how hospitals love to waste bandages.”

  I glanced up, found Garth half leaning out the window and looking down at me. I gave him a thumbs-up sign. He returned it, let loose of his end of the knotted linens, then stepped back out of sight. Mary gathered the tangle of linens and blankets together in both arms, dropped it all into a dumpster off to one side of the alley. Then she opened the back door of the car for me, supported me around the waist as I eased myself down across the back seat. She closed the door, hurried around to the other side of the car, and slid in behind the wheel. I noted with satisfaction that the interior lights had been disconnected; Garth had briefed her well. And the woman had more than her share of guts.<
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  “What happens now, Mary?”

  “Your brother said to wait here,” she replied in a low voice that was breathy with tension. She twisted around in her seat to peer out the back window, then squinted down at me over the tops of her bifocals. “He said he’s going to go down to the lobby, then try to find a way to sneak out the back without anyone seeing him. God, the way he acts and talks you’d think he does this kind of thing every day.”

  “Garth’s a very good man to have around in a pinch, Mary. Or any other time, for that matter. He doesn’t know the meaning of panic.” I paused for a moment, then continued, “Mary, I’m really sorry about all of this. I hope you know that I’d never have contacted you if I’d known it was going to involve you like this.”

  Her response was to reach back across the seat and squeeze my thigh; the gentleness and affection in her touch were belied by the anger in her voice. “Harry Peal never hurt a soul in his whole life. I can’t believe some bastard killed him. I told you there was a death squad in Cairn, Mongo.”

  “In this case, I think the murderer is Elysius Culhane’s good buddy Jay Acton.”

  She grunted softly. “So your brother told me—but it wasn’t that cold-blooded, preening son-of-a-bitch who ran you off the road.”

  “Right.”

  “Acton may be the mastermind; I’m still convinced there’s a death squad operating here.”

  “You could be right.”

  The figure of Garth suddenly loomed out of the darkness, appearing outside the windows on the passenger’s side. He opened the door, slid onto the front seat beside Mary, quickly closed the door. “Sorry I took so long,” he said tersely as he looked back over the seat to inspect me. “The guard wanted to chat with me after I left the room.” He paused, turned to Mary, extended his hand. “It’s nice to meet you, Miss Tree. You are one gutsy lady. Thank you for helping us get out of there.”

  Mary pushed Garth’s hand away, leaned across the seat, and kissed him on the lips. “Miss Tree—who never wants you to call her that again, since, as I told Mongo, it makes me sound like a character in a nursery rhyme—thinks that it’s she who should be thanking you, since it’s also her life you’re undoubtedly saving. It’s nice to meet you too, Garth Frederickson.”