“Maybe, maybe not. Who’s behind Biloxi?”
Covington sighed. “Hell, I don’t know. I was in the office real late one night. No one knew I was there. I picked up a phone at the switchboard to make a call and somehow got hooked into a line that someone else was on. He was asking some guy named Quale all about Biloxi, whether it officially existed yet, when they could start moving with the rest of the plan, that kind of thing. It all sounded fishy to me, so I did some checking but it never came to anything. What do you know about it?” He paused. “No. I take that back. I don’t care what you know. I’m going to sleep.”
“Whose voice was it on the phone?”
“I don’t know. It was too soft. Someone at the paper.”
I stood up and walked over to the bed. “Don’t do anything about this whole thing without letting me know,” I said to him.
“Why?”
“I don’t want to see Karl get hurt.”
“I’ll think about it,” Covington said casually, “but as far as I’m concerned we’re even. So don’t expect any favors. Now get out of here.”
“Listen to me, hotshot. If you start babbling about this, or printing it, one of your competitors is going to learn just how snugly you were tied and gagged out there, and how someone had to carry you out like a sick calf. It’ll be hell on your image.”
“Okay, okay. I get your point. You know, Tanner,” Covington added sleepily, “when you were carrying me out of that place I must have come to for a second. I heard a woman yelling, or thought I did. It sounded just like a chick I know at the Investigator. She’s a real bitch, too. Weird, huh?”
“Weird.”
Covington closed his eyes. I walked over to the file cabinets and began to thumb through them. I finally found what I wanted in a file labeled “ROTC.” The dead girl’s name was Linda Luswell. She’d lived in Berkeley at the time of her death. Dean’s list. Music major. Popular, cute and dead.
I put the file back and looked at Covington. He was snoring, his mouth a cavern of bestial sounds. I let myself out. Eddie Winkles was still bringing home a winner.
THIRTY-THREE
By the time I got to my apartment it was four A.M. and felt like it. I fixed a drink and slipped off my shoes and sat in the living room in the chair facing the window and looked out across the street. The neighbors had left the Christmas tree lights on. There were red, blue, green and yellow lights, gold ornaments, silver tinsel, a tin star on top. Popcorn strings. Paper chains. I had a vision of neat little packages arrayed under the tree, red bows and white paper, and inside the packages all varieties of precious gifts—cocaine, hashish, angel dust, smack. To Debbie from Santa.
I fixed another drink, then sat back in the chair. Tension crawled up and down my back like feasting maggots. My eyelids felt infected—hot and bloated. A dull ache inhabited the nether regions of my skull.
In the midst of these sensations I tried to think about the case. The cases. First one, then two—Kottle, then Covington and Kottle—and now one again. But maybe not. I sensed two strands still, a bifurcation, multiple vectors. Karl Kottle kidnapped, but not really. Ransom money paid, but not received. Max Kottle announced as dead, but still alive. Wes the leader, but someone behind him. Biloxi benefiting, but shareholders behind it. Threads dangling, still unwoven. Tangled.
I finished off my drink and pulled out the telephone book and looked up the number of Zenger, J. P. Mark Covington hadn’t been in very good shape when I’d left him, and I wanted to remind him that Wes and the other Sons and Daughters knew where his apartment was and might decide to come and reclaim him. But Covington didn’t answer. I hung up after the twelfth ring, hoping he was merely sleeping and not headed back to Potrero Hill in search of the Pulitzer prize.
During the next few minutes I considered whether to call Charley Sleet and tell him where he could collect Karl and Wes and Woody. It was risky, but in the end I decided against it. They didn’t have the money and they didn’t have a hostage. They had to be more concerned about the breach in their defenses than in staging further assaults. With any luck their capacity for effective terror had become severely limited, at least for a while. If Charley stormed the place someone might get hurt. Thus fortified with rationale, I called my answering service instead of Charley Sleet.
I hadn’t expected a message but there was one. A sleep-slowed voice told me that Belinda Kottle had called some forty minutes earlier. She’d left no instructions and no request to call her back; merely a dilemma.
It was a barbaric hour to be telephoning anyone but an undertaker. Still, she might need me. I pulled the telephone onto my lap and called the Kottle number.
The phone rang six, seven, eight times. I was about to put it down when a voice come over the wire. “Yes?” it inquired, sounding very far away.
“Hedgestone?”
“No. Walter is asleep. Everyone is asleep. This is Max Kottle.”
“Mr. Kottle. I’m sorry to wake you. This is Marsh Tanner.”
“Yes, Mr. Tanner. How are you?”
“I’m fine. How are you?”
“Alive. Rather amazingly, Doctor Hazen tells me.”
“Your wife called me about an hour ago. I was out. My service took the call. I thought I’d better check with her to see if everything was all right. I didn’t mean to wake you.”
“Everything is under control, Mr. Tanner. However, the kidnappers have called again.”
“They have?”
“You sound surprised.”
“I am, a bit,” I admitted. “What did they say?”
“They want three million this time. I’m to have it ready by the end of the day. Fortunately, my contact at the Bank of America has been cooperative. The money will be available.”
“Don’t pay it,” I said bluntly.
“What?”
“Don’t pay it.”
“Of course I shall pay. They’ll kill Karl if I don’t.”
“No they won’t.”
“How can you know that?”
“I just know. Listen, Mr. Kottle. This isn’t the time to go into it, but there have been some new developments. You shouldn’t make a decision about the ransom before you’re aware of them. I have a couple of things to do this morning, then I’ll come by your place and tell you all about it. If they call before I get there, stall. Tell them you’re having trouble getting the money.”
“I won’t jeopardize Karl, Mr. Tanner.”
“You won’t be. Take my word for it. I’ll be there by midafternoon at the latest.”
Kottle took his time. “I’ll see what they say,” he announced finally. “I can’t promise anything. It’s my money, after all. And my son.”
“Get some sleep, Mr. Kottle,” I said.
He laughed. “I think not. Sleep seems inexcusable, somehow, in my circumstances. Fortunately, my malignant cells have apparently become indefatigable. I’m not at all tired.” He paused for breath. “Is Karl alive, Mr. Tanner? Can you tell me that?”
“Yes,” I said. “At least he was an hour ago.”
“You’ve seen him?”
“I’ll tell you about it later.”
“Come as soon as you can. Please.”
I told him I would.
After hanging up the phone I went to the kitchen and dug out a fresh pack of cigarettes and lit one. When I reached into my jacket pocket to put the matches back I felt something small and oval and hard, like a pebble shaped by the rush of a stream. I pulled it out. It was a pill, blue and shiny, the capsule I’d picked up off Max Kottle’s floor the first time I’d seen him.
I toyed with it for a few minutes, rolling it around in my fingers like a small kernel of truth that would grow into something much bigger if planted in the proper soil. Several minutes later I rounded up some unread Chronicles and took them to an all-night restaurant on Columbus and waited for the people I wanted to talk with to wake up.
Five cups of coffee and three hotcakes later I was on the road, a counter-commuter dri
ving in the opposite direction from the rush-hour throng of East Bay businessmen and Christmas shoppers, plunging headlong into the rising sun and into the past of a family who undoubtedly preferred to forget it.
The Luswell house was on Blake Street a couple of blocks below Shattuck, white, square, pert. As I pulled to the curb a white panel truck backed out of the driveway next to the house and drove off toward the bay. The words “World of Plumbing” were painted on its side in red above a globe with a pipe wrench clamped around it. I walked up to the door and rang the bell.
The woman who answered was gray-haired and tiny. I smiled down at her. “Mrs. Luswell?”
“Yes?”
Her hair hadn’t been combed yet and it embarrassed her. As she tried to pat it down I apologized for coming by so early. When she finished with her hair she gripped the throat of her housecoat around her more securely. “Are you one of those Moonies?” she asked, with sudden ferocity. “Harold told me not to let any more of those Moonies in here.”
“I’m not a Moonie.”
She looked me over as though the truth were inscribed somewhere between my forehead and my belt. “You do seem a trifle old for it,” she said dubiously. “What is it you want?”
“I’m here about your daughter,” I told her.
“Nan? But she doesn’t live at home anymore. She was in Albuquerque, last I heard, working with some kind of Indians. Has that boyfriend of hers gotten her in trouble? Is that it? Harold said it would happen sooner or later.”
I shook my head to spike both the tide of nerves and Harold’s prescience. “Not Nan,” I said. “Linda.”
“Oh. Linda.”
Strangely, her contracted features suddenly relaxed, became smooth and serene, as though Linda had caused all the harm she possibly could, as though no matter why I was there it couldn’t be worse than what had gone before. “Linda’s dead,” Mrs. Luswell declared simply. When I told her I knew it, she seemed disappointed.
“I’d like to ask you some questions about her,” I said.
“Whatever for?”
“Because Linda’s death may have something to do with some strange things that have been happening to people over in the city. I’d like to find out if there’s some connection.”
“It’s so long ago. How could that be?”
“I won’t know until I learn more about Linda.”
She looked up at me, suddenly strong and unblinking, assessing my suitability to know more about her dead daughter. “You might as well come in,” she said finally.
I followed her into a small living room that was dominated on one side by an upright piano and on the other by a harp. Stacks of sheet music rose in the corners, the top sheets spilling to the floor like leaves. The couch under the front window was draped by a thread-bare blanket with a rim of blue ribbon. The only chair in the room was a recliner, one of the ones you can put right next to the wall. On the small TV screen Phil Donahue was talking to Norman Mailer about a book about a killer.
Mrs. Luswell asked me to sit down. Then she told me her husband had just gone to work. Then she asked if I would like some tea. Lipton’s. I said that would be nice, and she went off to fetch it. While she was away I gave in to an impulse and went over and plucked a few harp strings. The sounds seemed naked, overexposed. I retreated to the couch.
When Mrs. Luswell came back she had a smile on her face that said she was prepared to be civil and hoped I was, too. She placed two tea cups on the end table and then walked to the harp and sat behind it and whirled her hands across the strings and made a waterfall, a breaking wave, a flood. Then she stopped and came and sat beside me. I bowed my head to applaud her and took a sip of tea.
“What do you want to know about Linda?” she asked as she got comfortable.
“Do you mind talking about her?”
“Not really. Not now. In a way it’s a pleasure to meet someone who’s still interested in Linda. Harold hasn’t uttered her name since the funeral. He forbids me to mention her. Ever.”
“How old was Linda when she died?”
“Twenty. A junior at the university.”
“I read a newspaper account of the fire. She seemed to be an exceptional girl.”
“Well, it’s prideful to say so, but yes. She was. Exceptional.”
“And she was just studying in the ROTC building? She didn’t have any connection to the radical groups?”
“No. Not at all.”
“Are you sure?”
“Don’t misunderstand, Mr. Tanner. Linda was not unaware or unconcerned. She was as disturbed about the war and that type of thing as anyone. But protest marches weren’t her style.”
“What was her style, Mrs. Luswell?”
She beamed. “Music. She took after me in that way. You should have heard her play that piano; Chopin himself would have cheered. The teacher at school said she could have a concert career if she wanted it. I have some tapes, if you’re interested.”
“Tapes? Sure. That would be nice.” I looked at my watch.
Mrs. Luswell started to get up, then sagged back and looked at me sadly. “Of course you’re not interested. Why should you be? But thank you for saying you were.”
“I’d enjoy hearing them. Really.”
“Don’t be silly,” she sighed. “I shouldn’t even have mentioned it. Now go on with your questions.”
“Does the name Karl Kottle mean anything to you? He was a student there at that time, too.”
“Kottle. No.” Her hand went back to her throat, clutching the housecoat. “Wait a minute. He’s the one who set the fire, isn’t he? He’s the one who killed our Linda.” The gray eyes blazed, weapons of a fierce defense.
“That could well be what happened, but no one’s ever proved it, Mrs. Luswell.”
“Are you this Kottle boy’s lawyer or something? Have they finally found him after all these years? Are you trying to get him off, is that it? Harold always said something like this would happen.”
I shook my head, hoping I would never have to meet Harold. “They haven’t found him and I’m not his lawyer. I’m not interested in who set the fire, Mrs. Luswell, I don’t want to mislead you. I’m just trying to learn who Linda knew, what she did, where she went, that kind of thing.”
She sighed. “I see. I’m sorry. It’s just that no one seems to be blamed for anything anymore. Kids can kill other kids, or mug old ladies, or leave their parents and go off to a desert somewhere with a bunch of Indians, and no one does anything to them. You know what I mean?”
I nodded. What I knew was that Mrs. Luswell was like the rest of us, she had a list of grievances she wanted others to be aware of, and to validate.
“I need some more tea. Do you care for another cup?”
I shook my head and she left the room and I went over to the harp and tried to whirl my hands the way Mrs. Luswell had but it didn’t work and it hurt my fingers. I started to go back and sit down when I noticed something back in the corner behind a pile of music. It was a lump of metal, oblong, crevassed and folded, and vaguely anatomical in appearance. I looked it over and then sat down. When Mrs. Luswell came back I asked her what it was.
“Oh. That. Doctor Clifford Hazen gave us that. One of his first works of sculpture. Ugly, isn’t it? Harold calls it the Prune.”
“How do you know Doctor Hazen?”
“He treated Linda.”
“I’m sorry. I thought she died immediately.”
“Oh, she did. This was before, when Linda was sick.”
“What was her trouble?”
“Cancer. A melanoma. Doctor Hazen is a famous radiologist. Linda was his prize patient.”
“I don’t understand,” I said. “Linda had cancer when she died?”
“No. She had it four years before, and then Doctor Hazen cured her. That’s what hurt Harold so, the irony of it all. We thought we had lost her back in sixty-six, then Doctor Hazen came along and performed a miracle when all the other doctors said there was no chance. And then she
upped and died in that stupid fire.” Mrs. Luswell laughed, briefly and mechanically. “Doctor Hazen used to say that Linda was his ticket to the Nobel prize. I think he was almost as upset as we were when she died. He never seemed the same afterward, at least to me.”
THIRTY-FOUR
The office was as cold and empty as an abandoned mine. Peggy had gone on a Christmas trip back East to see her daughter who had been married and divorced all within the past year. In the middle of my desk was a present from her, wrapped in gold foil, the shape and size of a carrot. Taped to the top of the package was a card that read “To the Boss, from his Head Elf.” I wanted to open it but I couldn’t; it was five days early. Then I wondered if I should have given Peggy something besides money.
I tossed my jacket over the back of a chair and sat down at the desk and put in a call to Harrison Quale. Quale was one of those lawyers who spends nine-tenths of his time in the halls of the Federal Building because one government agency or another—the SEC, the Justice Department, the NLRB, someone—was always investigating one of his clients. Quale wore high-heeled patent leather boots and suits two sizes too small and white hair that seemed groomed with Super-Glue instead of Brylcream. No one had ever claimed Quale was stupid, and no one had ever claimed he was honest. He’d been charged with jury tampering at least once, and had been divorced and remarried three times. To the same woman.
His secretary put me through to him when I told her I was in big trouble, real big trouble. People didn’t call Harrison Quale for any other reason.
“Tanner,” Quale said after I told him who I was. “What’s the matter? Bureau of Collection and Investigative Services got their beady eyes on you? Someone catch you with your eye in the keyhole?”
“No, Harrison. When I decided to go into this business I decided not to use your methods.”
“Results, Tanner. That’s what they pay for and that’s what I give them. How I get there isn’t any business of yours or anyone else.”
“That’s not what the Bar Association claims.”
Quale snorted. “The Bar Association. Bunch of old men who’ve never been in a criminal courtroom in their lives for fear they’d catch something their dermatologist couldn’t identify. The Bar Association thinks the law is contracts and wills, Tanner. The law is war. Me against them. And you know what they say about war.”
Death Bed Page 24
