But this wasn’t a movie! Someone had just tried to kill me. For the second time in twenty-four hours I was almost dead. Of all the people in Los Angeles, California, why me?
I quickly decided that the proper place to answer such questions was on a plane to San Francisco, and ran off to catch my bus. It was only a few more blocks; I traveled on the most crowded streets I could find, which occasionally resulted in a turned head and sour expression from shoppers who didn’t care for my odor—a reaction I sympathized with.
I was in luck. The bus was still at the curb. I smiled calmly as I walked toward it, only ten delicious feet to go. I straightened my sweater, patted down my hair and marched happily toward the bus when I was suddenly intercepted by two stocky men who slipped strong hands under my arms and carried me away.
“Hey, what the hell’s going on! Who are you guys?” I screamed into their expressionless faces as my bus quietly drove off.
Chapter Eleven
It must have looked like something out of a Charlie Chaplin movie the way they carried me down the street to their car, my toes just barely scraping along the pavement. Until it actually happens to you, you just don’t realize how painful that procedure can be, what with the strain it puts on your arms, not to mention under your arms. That, combined with my other pains, the shock of being shot at, the exhaustion of running, the smell of my clothing, the disappointment at missing my bus, plus the fear of not knowing where I was being taken and who was taking me there—all tended to make me a little anxious.
Surprisingly, the no-nonsense efficiency with which my escorts handled themselves had a calming effect on me, as if somebody finally knew what they were doing. Unfortunately, they felt no obligation to share that knowledge with me.
“I’ll call in,” one of them said as the other pushed me into the back seat of a black four-door sedan, and slid snugly in next to me.
My previous questions as to who they were and where they were taking me had gone unanswered, but now that we were alone I tried again. “Just who are you guys anyway?”
Silence.
“Where are you taking me?”
Silence.
“Did it ever occur to you that you might have the wrong guy?”
Silence with a grin.
“You’ve heard that before, huh?”
Gabby’s partner hurried back and jumped into the driver’s seat with only a dry glance at me. “We’re supposed to go directly there,” he told the steering wheel.
“Check,” Gabby answered.
There was something remotely ludicrous about being kidnapped from downtown Los Angeles in the middle of the afternoon. What made it even stranger was the fact that it was such a warm sunny day. I felt like I’d just been picked up by truant officers for playing hooky.
We moved evenly through the traffic for about twenty minutes until we finally pulled into the garage of a small white-shuttered house. The neighborhood was a shaded middle-class community complete with redwood fences to guard the pools. There was a man in madras shorts and T-shirt mowing the lawn of the house whose garage we were now sitting in. I could see the usual football, Frisbee, jumping rope scattered over the lawn and the front stoop—toys which the man would toss aside with an appropriate curse.
“Honey!” the man in the shorts hollered above the growling mower. “Your brothers are here.”
The driver jumped out of the car and closed the garage door as I heard a woman’s voice calling out, “Well then, shut that silly thing off and come on in. It looks like they brought that friend they were telling us about.”
“I’ll be right in,” he answered. “Just as soon as I finish this little part here.”
“John Mandel you shut that thing off and come in here right now or you won’t get a single slice of the pie I baked,” she yelled back good-humoredly.
I couldn’t make out his answer because we were too busy climbing out and slamming car doors. My stomach started fluttering as they slid their hands under my arms again and lifted me through the connecting door into the kitchen.
The inside was a typical American middle-class house that resembled those pictured in television commercials for floor waxes and deodorants. It had the same look of not having been lived in, just furnished for display—as I soon found out was accurately the case. The homey Ma Kettle-voice belonged to a husky woman of about thirty-five, with severe facial features and the same no-nonsense expression of my bearers. Her nose wrinkled and mouth frowned distastefully at our approach.
“Ugh! What happened to him?” she snapped, taking a few steps backward.
“He was that way when we found him,” shrugged the driver.
“You’ll grow accustomed to my stench,” I sang, which was tastefully ignored by all. Besides being scared, I was beginning to resent the casualness with which everyone was maneuvering my life. First a bomb almost kills me, then a gunman almost kills me, and now I’m kidnapped by the Addams Family. I was mad, but obviously not in a position to do much more than irritate my captors with defiant quips.
“Take him downstairs!” she ordered and I was quickly ushered through a door, dragged downstairs with my toes slamming against each step, thrown carelessly into a tall unsteady bar stool in the middle of the room. The pool table near the bar and the dart board on the wall suggested that this was the game room. But what kind of game this was going to be I didn’t want to guess.
They both sat somewhere behind me and the three of us waited silently, if not patiently, for our hosts. The upstairs door opened followed by heavy trudging footsteps. I turned around in time to see her thick legs, wide hips, rolling torso and grim mouth descend into the room, followed by the man who had been mowing the lawn. Despite his harsh expression, I felt comforted by the thought that a man who shared a common distaste for mowing lawns couldn’t be all that bad. Could he?
“Just what’s going on around here?” I demanded.
He ignored me—a reaction that had become increasingly popular lately—walked over to the bar and pulled out a Coke from the refrigerator. After a few swigs he motioned with the bottle for the woman to sit down somewhere behind me. He was well over six feet tall, in his mid-forties and had the quiet firmness of a man who knew how to talk back to waiters.
“Are you ready, Miss Lancaster?” he asked, to which she must have nodded for I heard no answer. “All right, let’s begin.” For the first time he looked directly at me, as if I was a piece of modern art whose meaning he was trying to determine. He circled me slowly a couple times, pausing occasionally for another swig of Coke.
“Read him his rights, Jerry,” he finally said.
Jerry, the driver, appeared from behind, produced a crumbled slip of paper and said: “You have the right to remain silent. If you refuse your right to remain silent, anything you say may be taken down and used as evidence against you in a court of law. You have a right to the presence of an attorney. If you wish an attorney but cannot afford one, one will be appointed by the state for you. Do you understand what I have just read?”
“Not bad, Jerry,” I appraised, “but it needs a little more character development.”
The man in the madras shorts took another swig of his Coke and then cuffed me across the mouth with a backhand sweep of knuckles. This especially alarmed me because of the increased precious regard in which I now held my remaining teeth. The prospects of losing any more teeth was almost as frightening as having been shot at. However, the offhand, not to mention backhand, way in which I was being treated was becoming extremely irritating to me, as well as painful.
“Do you understand?” the man with the Coke bottle echoed.
“Yes, and I refuse to say anything until my lawyer is present.”
I heard a faint snort from Jerry but the man with the Coke bottle remained expressionless. “Would you please read back the official transcript so far, Miss Lancaster?”
“All of it, sir?”
“No, just the last few lines,” he said staring with unflinching concentrat
ion into my eyes.
“‘Special Agent Taylor read the subject’s legal rights to him and upon concluding asked the subject whether he understood said rights. The subject expressed confusion. Special Agent Hager rephrased the question, to which the subject confessed full understanding and waived his right to remain silent and to the presence of an attorney.’”
“Now, once again. Do you understand your rights?”
“Perfectly.”
“Fine, then you can start answering a few questions for us,” he said, setting his empty bottle on the bar.
“Not until I see my lawyer,” I stated firmly.
He drifted behind the bar, opened another Coke and returned to hover over me. He slapped me again, almost knocking me off the stool. I felt the blood tickle the inside of my nose as it crawled toward my lip. I was annoyed, very annoyed, but I’d had enough experience with this kind of thing to avoid becoming angry, especially at these odds. So I just gritted my teeth and wiped my nose with my sleeve.
“I think he understands his rights now, Ben,” Jerry sneered sarcastically from behind.
“Perhaps you’re right,” Ben said, taking another tug at his Coke. “You probably aren’t aware of this, Gould, but you’ve cost us a lot of money trying to find you before the local police. We’ve had to station men all over the city, at the airport, at bus terminals, railroad stations, just about every place you can imagine. Now, we have to pay men to do that, plus their expenses. And let me tell you that it comes out to quite a tidy little sum of money. On top of all that, I’m working toward the end of the fiscal year, so my budget is especially tight right now and my boss likes me to come in under-budget. It makes him happy. And when he’s happy, I’m happy. And when I’m happy, Jerry and Bob here are happy.” He drank some Coke. “But we are not happy, Gould. Do you know why we are not happy?” he asked rhetorically in a see-Spot-run tone. “Because we are not under-budget.”
“Then maybe you should cut down on the Cokes.” I suggested, for which I received another sharp backhand. I was beginning to feel like I was being housebroken.
“In fact,” he continued undisturbed, “we are very much over-budget as my superior informed me an hour ago. He was very unhappy about that and now I’m unhappy.”
“So am I,” declared Jerry.
“Me too,” added Bob.
Miss Lancaster did not join in the testimonial, but remained huddled over her note pad.
“Just who is ‘us’?” I asked.
He considered me for a moment as if uncertain whether or not he should hit me. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation,” he finally admitted without the slap.
“What do you want with me?”
I could tell from his amused expression that he was sharing the joke with the rest of them. “We simply want to know who hired you to kill Eugene Bartlett and who your next assignment is.”
You probably expected me to jump up shouting in indignant surprise, but I didn’t. I forced myself to sit quietly in the chair, my face staring blankly ahead, thus avoiding the backhand I would have received had I listened to you.
“Well, Gould,” he said, his voice taking on a hard edge. “How about it?” The abruptness of his speech as well as his set jaw warned me that game time was over. They were finished taking it slow, trying to make me mad by slapping me around. Now they were ready to get what they wanted.
“What about my rights?” I said flatly.
“Rights are for the innocent, not crooks like you.”
Jerry and Bob had moved in by now and the three of them formed a tight intimate circle of intent expressionless faces.
“Who hired you?” demanded Ben, leaning over almost touching my face.
“Nobody,” I answered.
“You did it on your own then?” asked Jerry.
“I didn’t do anything.”
“Then why didn’t you report to the police?” asked Bob.
“I was going to. I was on my way when you picked me up.”
“In an airport bus?” one of them asked.
“I was misinformed.”
“Who’s next?”
“Nobody.”
“You mean you’ve already killed him?”
“No!”
There was a silent pause as they all straightened up, looked at each other and walked around me, shifting positions. I was finding it hard to breathe, not so much because of the badgering, but because one of them had had sardines and beer for lunch and his breath was making me nauseous. I suspected Jerry.
“Who are your working for?” Ben said as they all leaned in again.
“Nobody, I told you.”
“You working for De Young?”
“No! I never heard of him.”
“He’s paying you, isn’t he?” Somebody poked me in the back of my head.
“No!”
“How much is he paying you?” Another poke.
“He’s not!”
“Then who is?” Another harder poke.
“De Young?” Poke.
Another pause as they circled into new positions. I rubbed the back of my head.
“Who hired you? De Young?” Jerry asked with a poke.
I swung around to my right where he was leaning and punched him in the face so hard that he flew into the wall and I fell off my stool. Ben and Bob scrambled to the floor to restrain me. By that time Jerry had recovered and was standing over us waving his hands and shouting, “Come on, get him up! You guys hold him! Come on!”
“You poke me again and you’ll be waving that hand from your navel!” I shouted back as they jerked me to my feet.
“All right, settle down, both of you!” Ben commanded, his expression somewhat confused. “If you’d just answer our questions, Gould, it would go a lot easier on you. We know you’re just a hired killer and we don’t particularly care about you. We want the person who hired you and the name of the next target. You tell us that and we’ll see what we can do for you.”
If my violent outburst surprised you at all, it surprised me even more. As you’ve probably noticed from my past experiences, my usual strategy is to roll with the punches and hope for the best. Usually they finally get tired of punching me or just plain bored. But this time everything was different. For one thing, it’s easier to take an honest punch than a malicious poke. There’s something so personally insulting about it. For another, whenever I get beat up it’s for a good reason, like I owe money. But this time I was relatively innocent. Yet, despite my innocence, somebody had tried to blow me up, somebody had tried to shoot me, and now the FBI was trying to poke a hole in my head. Enough was enough.
The indignant determination in my face seemed to startle them, except for Miss Lancaster, whose pencil I could hear scratching away behind me. Ben’s once-set jaw was now slack with indecision. Should he proceed with the strong arm method, should he offer a deal, or should they go into their nice guy/mean guy routine?
“Just what’s the FBI doing in on a murder, anyway?” I asked firmly, taking advantage of the temporary confusion. “That’s a state offense.”
Ben instinctively hesitated, knowing his job was not to answer questions but to ask them. However, he apparently decided it might be best to play along with me for a while. “This isn’t just a murder this time, Gould. It’s also tampering with federal evidence.”
“And not even De Young and his lawyers are gonna be able to get you off this time,” Jerry scowled.
“Your boss is going to be very unhappy when he finds out you went over the budget to bring back the wrong guy,” I said confidently.
I could see that possibility glaze over Ben’s face, as could Bob and Jerry. A dim uncertainty caused him to frown at them, who in turn frowned at each other. Being at the bottom of the pecking order, as well as being the ones who officially brought me in, they would naturally be the ones to take the fall if there was any mistake. Ben glanced grimly at Miss Lancaster, a glance which would probably become “an expression of doubt as to Mr. Gould’s guilt by
Special Agent Hager” in the official transcript, thus giving him a way out.
“There’s been no mistake,” he stated firmly. “You are Harry Gould.”
“That’s right, but I didn’t have anything to do with Eugene Bartlett’s murder.”
“We know otherwise.”
“Prove it,” I challenged.
“I’ll do just that,” he agreed, as if grateful for the opportunity to practice his presentation. “First, you were placed by the butler at the scene of the crime at the time of the murder, a story which will undoubtedly be confirmed by Farrow when he regains consciousness.”
“Of course I was there. I was in the explosion!”
“But you weren’t killed.”
“Neither was Farrow.”
“Yes, but that was a fluke. He wouldn’t’ve been stupid enough to set a bomb and then stick around in the bathroom while it went off.”
“Oh, but I would? Look Lieutenant, or whatever you are, I was downstairs at the party when I got a message from Henry that I was supposed to meet Mr. Bartlett in his bedroom. I went up and waited on the balcony for some fresh air. I heard someone coming down the hall and started to return to the bedroom when the explosion knocked me backward off the balcony and into the bushes.” I lifted my sweater and shirt to reveal my elastic bandage. When that didn’t seem to have any effect, I lifted my lip to display my missing teeth.
“You could’ve set the bomb and have been making your escape from the balcony when you slipped and fell, thereby receiving the same injuries.”
“That’s ridiculous!” I shouted in frustration. “I was his bodyguard. Why would I kill him?”
Ben smiled, his case gaining more confidence. “We find it confusing that a man with fourteen arrests . . .”
“But only one conviction.”
“Nevertheless, why a grand larcenist from New York City should suddenly be working as a bodyguard in Los Angeles. Especially since he has had no previous experience at being a bodyguard.”
“There was an ad in the newspaper,” I explained.
The Goulden Fleece Page 7
