“Wait,” she said. “Let me get this straight, there were two sets of men watching you? Porkpie and Rain hat getting wet and the two leprechauns at Matthews Hall … Everybody watching you and me, then turning up later? Incredible …”
“Oh, we’re just getting started. My revelation cut no ice with the Irish Rovers, but they did tell me to watch the news on the tube in the evening, hinting clumsily that there’ll be something to interest me. So what the hell was that supposed to mean? I was ready to forget these two jerks when my pal Brennan goes to fill his pipe to get the taste of my coffee out of his mouth and inside George Washington’s head—”
“What are you talking about?”
“I’ve got a humidor made of Houdon’s bust of Washington—”
“Yes, and it got broken.”
“No, no, I’ve got another big one at home—had, I should say—”
“Of course.”
“So Brennan reaches into Washington’s head and finds something other than tobacco! A bug, a tiny microphone, put there when the vile McGonigle was loading his own tobacco pouch with my tobacco—”
“Good Lord,” she cried, half amused, “what an obvious place, you’d find it the first time you filled your pipe.”
“Listen, you didn’t see these guys, they were not the height of spy fiction sophistication … it was like a joke. If it wasn’t my tobacco they were fucking with I’m sure I’d find it awfully funny. But it was my tobacco—”
“I’m afraid your McGonigle is an idiot—”
“Well, anyway, we dug a hole in the dirt in my window box and buried the bug in there.”
Polly burst out laughing, covered her mouth.
“Yes, awfully amusing,” he said. “But once I’d thought about them I remembered a curious thing. Fennerty and McGonigle hadn’t been spying on me in the Yard. They’d been spying on Porkpie and Rain hat …”
The logs had burned low. It had begun raining hard again, drumming on the window, and thunder rumbled over Beacon Hill. Somewhere a car backfired and he felt himself flinch. Thank God the rain had held off until he’d gotten inside, safe. Polly got up and laid three more birch logs, the bark peeling away as the flame caught. She left the room and returned a few minutes later with a blanket and fresh coffee.
“You’re shivering,” she said. “I don’t want you to do a man-who-came-to-dinner on me.” She spread the blanket across him. “Come on, feet off the floor. Invisible drafts, as my mother used to say …” She stood back, smiling indulgently: “Comfy? That can be your bed tonight … Are you up to coffee? It’ll get you through the rest of the story—”
“Sure, fine, let’s get on with it—”
“Calm down, I’m just taking care of you.” She poured coffee and handed him the purple Heller cup. “I don’t think you know just what a wreck you are … You’re no spring chicken, not anymore.”
“Would you just shut up and sit down? It’s three-fifteen and I’m not done with this saga.”
“I’m waiting for the rapine and pillage,” she said.
“Enough whimsy.” He clutched the heavy blanket around his bare feet, sipped the coffee, focused his tired eyes on Polly Bishop’s face which was developing a tendency to blur. “Thursday evening I couldn’t resist, I watched your broadcast—”
“It’s the mongoose and the cobra all over again.”
“Apt, very apt. And there you were going on about Nat Underhill’s murder. Was that what they wanted me to watch? Well, it must have been … so I’m watching and a particularly awful thought occurs to me. McGonigle and Fennerty were in my office telling me to watch you before Nora Thompson got to work and found Underbill’s body—well, Christ! Now, Miss Bishop, I must say the look on your face is very rewarding.”
“But how could they—”
“Indeed. Well, you can imagine my surprise.” He worked up his last few drops of irony. “And, of course, I would cheerfully have taken a meat ax to you—you just wouldn’t let go of me, linking me with two guys who’d just been murdered … honest to God, like you’re setting the stage for my murder—”
Ignoring the tone of his remarks, she said: “And this was nine hours ago?”
“Seems like only yesterday,” he growled. By telling her everything he was lowering the barriers between them: he realized that, saw his anger with her ebbing. By talking to her, by watching her face, by accepting her blanket and hospitality, he was beginning to feel a vague closeness, a sense of shared purpose, whatever the hell that meant. His mind was wandering: he yanked it back. “I was still reeling from the news that McGonigle and Fennerty knew things they shouldn’t know when the telephone rings—it’s Nora Thompson—”
“Too much,” she marveled. “Why call you?”
He passed her a dour glance: “She insists she’s gotta meet me in Lexington in …” He looked at his watch. “A little over seven hours … She has something she has to tell me. It won’t wait. Don’t ask, I don’t know what it is but I’m betting it’s not her recipe for Apple Brown Betty.”
She lit a cigarette: “There can’t be much more … You’re almost up to knocking on my door—”
“All that’s left is Porkpie and Rain hat visiting me, passing themselves off as D.A.’s special investigators. The little one smelled like a mint breath deodorizer, the big guy had adenoids and a deep, deep voice … and a gold tooth. They told me the D.A. was angry with me, I’m obstructing his investigation and two guys are dead—because of me! They said Bill Davis said some damn thing, ‘Chandler’s got it,’ before he died … Now they think this thing I’ve got is a framed picture—I ask you, how the hell do you authenticate a picture? Then they—he, the big bastard, broke George! Just—smashed him on the floor. And then the little one told the big one to hit me which he did with passionate efficiency … then he started with the pliers and I went off the deep end and threw the Chemex at the one, hit the other with the pedestal, the television set blew up, and I got the hell out …”’
“And came here.” She was watching him from beneath lowered lids. He nodded, shrugged. “Well, I’m glad you did … Can you imagine trying to explain it to anybody else?” She smiled gently. “Whatever you think of me, Professor—and I suppose you think you have your reasons for hating me—I must tell you, you did very well tonight. If we weren’t enemies, I’d be very proud of you—”
“Look, I’m sure you’re a very nice person—”
“Person. See, you’re getting the hang of it. But I’m not … a very nice person. Single-minded, egomaniac, selfish, headstrong—my husband used to say that. I learned them, like the Boy Scout thing … trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent.”
“Amazing!”
“My brother was a Scout. I helped him learn the list. I never forget anything. Want to know the starting lineup of the 1919 Chicago White Sox, known to history as the Black Sox because they threw the World Series? Or how about Academy Award winners?”
“I’m having an awfully hard time believing this.” He yawned.
“Poor thing. You do need some sleep.” She stood up and began to pace. At the window, she peeled back the curtain and stared out into the rain. Ezzard leaped onto the sill and stuck his head out the opening. The clock ticked. Chandler leaned back, stretched full length on the couch, fitting himself in among the cushions. He had just closed his eyes when she began speaking. He edged an eye open. She was standing over him. Thunder cracked.
“Professor, I think you’d better realize something. You’re a marked man, I don’t mean to be melodramatic, but I’ve a little more experience in the real world than you do.”
He closed his eyes.
“You’re going to have to stay out of sight, away from your home and Harvard—”
“But I’ve got to go see Nora in the morning.”
“That’s all right—”
“But I don’t have any clothes—”
“We’ll take care of that in the morni
ng. But the thing that bothers me is these four guys, let’s call them the Buggers and the Goons … I can check on Fennerty and McGonigle with Homicide, I’ll call Tony Lascalle … and I can call the D.A.’s office about the other two, but they’re obviously not special investigators. Somebody killed Bill and Underhill, and Porkpie and Pliers are pretty high on the probable list. Wake up, Professor.”
“I am awake. And call me Colin, will you? And I’m only resting my eyes.”
“You’re about to pass out.”
“Well, I’m no spring chicken.”
“Go to sleep. We’ll figure out the details in the morning.”
“Thanks for putting me up, Miss Bishop.”
“Polly.”
Alone, after she’d gone to bed, Chandler lay on the couch listening to the rain and the crackling logs, feeling the soft breeze from the window, trying to remember the list of Boy Scout things. He’d been a Boy Scout once, but he couldn’t remember them. He couldn’t even come close …
At first the old man thought it was a thunderclap that had wakened him. He came to with a spasm of pain in his left side, shook it off with a grim frown, and turned on the bedside lamp. He heard the thunder exploding above him and the rain pounding on the slate roof but it was the telephone, not the storm, which had dragged him from his customary light, restless sleep. He hated to be wakened in the middle of the night: the three or four hours of rest each night were the most his poor heart ever gave him and he guarded them jealously. Unfortunately, in his line of work calls in the night came with relative frequency. He had so many men working for him, off and on. At any given moment a goodly number seemed to face crises in the wee hours and there wasn’t much he could do about it.
Tonight the call came in on the green telephone. The color coding—red, green, and white—enabled him to know who was on the other end before he answered. It was four o’clock precisely. He gave the green telephone a dirty look, hooked his spectacles over his ears, and extended a liver-spotted, prominently veined hand, clawlike, from the sleeve of his pima cotton pajamas. His outward placidity returned in an instant, though he knew for sure there was a problem. Something had gone wrong with the Chandler scenario. The green telephone meant that it wasn’t Andrew and Liam. It was the other two, the out-of-towners. Pursing his lips, he brushed his white moustache with a parchment knuckle and picked up the jangling green telephone.
By four-thirty his Rolls-Royce was pulling up at the service driveway of the John Hancock Building. The traffic lights in Copley Square blinked on empty, rainswept streets. He extinguished the lights, ducked out of the car, and let himself in through the metal door. He took the elevator to the sixtieth floor. The two floors of heating and air-conditioning equipment overhead throbbed in the stillness of the night.
Alone, waiting, he sat at the glass slab table, packed his Dunhill and got a good smoke going. The unfinished corner of the observation-deck-to-be where he met his operatives was damp and cold and drafty. Puffing clouds of smoke as if it warmed him, he hugged his muffler and raincoat about himself, wondering if it was all still worth it. He was old, his ticker was failing, his blood was thinning, he couldn’t sleep much anymore, and by rights he should be retiring to the arid Arizona desert or a condominium in Florida. But you couldn’t change your nature: he still enjoyed the game … he’d always enjoyed it, for thirty years, and he’d done so well out of it, been so well repaid for his efforts.
Now, let’s see: he forced himself back to the matter at hand. Ozzie and Thorny, he didn’t know as much about them as he would have preferred. In any case, he had no choice but to make do with the men he was sent. But they were sloppy. And they were wasteful. And they were not his kind of people at all.
He’d been so convincing with Andrew and Liam because he’d actually felt much of the outrage he’d portrayed. The murder of Bill Davis was not merely wicked but absurd, obscene. Senseless death was wasteful and drew attention to things better left unattended. But he wasn’t quite sure what tack to take with these two menials … God, the things a gentleman had sometimes to do. Lie down with dogs, get up with fleas.
The red light above the elevator door announced their ascent.
Their actual appearance was a shock.
They seemed to have been set upon by a band of maddened dervishes. The big one, Ozzie, was inexplicably tinged with brown stains, and his broad face was partially hidden by white bandages. He smelled of a greasy unguent. Thorny spoke so raspingly that he was almost impossible to understand: his face was contorted with pain when he spoke and his breath came in short wheezing gasps.
Astounded, the old man heard them out. That Chandler could have left them in such a shambles was very nearly beyond comprehension. Ozzie sat in a full-blown sulk, eyes half-closed, the unbandaged side of his face red and swollen. Exhausted from speaking, Thorny leaned back in the chrome-and-leather chair, shifting his weight gingerly, clutching his chest. Both men seemed weighed down by the old man’s obvious disapproval.
“And after Chandler beat you both into submission and escaped … into the night—we know not where, of course—what then? What did you do? How wide a trail did you leave, thrashing through the underbrush of Cambridge?” The stem of his pipe clicked against his teeth.
“We went to Mass General’s emergency room,” Thorny croaked. “We figured it was the busiest, we wouldn’t be remembered … Used false IDs and insurance cards—”
“Not memorable, eh? A hulking beast drenched in hot coffee isn’t memorable, eh?”
“Did you ever see Mass General’s emergency room? Believe me, there’s nothing to worry about.”
The old man packed the ash down in the bowl of the pipe with his tiny bronze Mr. Pickwick. “I’m horrified,” he said finally, “at your conduct. Such bungling is really beyond any previous experience of mine … You’ve killed two innocent human beings and been dealt with rather roughly by a Harvard history professor without any previous inclination toward violence. In the course of your researches you have learned almost nothing … Have you any suggestions as to how you might advance our cause?” He looked from one to the other: “Come, come, speak up!”
Through the silence came the sound of thunder and the rain lashing the building.
“I see,” the old man said. “Well. We still don’t know where the package is, do we? We’re not even quite sure when and where it disappeared … You discovered Underbill’s name scribbled on a pad in Bill Davis’s bookbag. You went to Underhill Wednesday evening, panicked when he reached for an antique gun which proved to be decorative rather than functional, and killed him … Learning nothing. And even if they don’t know it already, the police will soon know that the same gun killed the boy and poor old Underhill. Everywhere you go, you leave little bits and pieces of yourselves … Chandler’s house is probably full of your fingerprints—looking at you I can’t help but have that feeling.” He pulled his muffler tighter, looked at his watch. “So far as I can tell, we still have only two leads, namely Chandler, wherever he is, and Underbill’s secretary, Nora Thompson. If Bill Davis left the package with Underhill, then she may know where it is or what happened to it. If Chandler has somehow gotten hold of it, we’ve got to find him and watch him. You grasp these possibilities, gentlemen?”
Thorny grunted.
“Would you please check on Chandler’s house? Can you handle that?” He sighed resonantly. “And seek an interview with Nora Thompson … the district attorney approach should work with her, use your credentials, and for God’s sake, don’t kill her. Don’t pull her fingernails out. Remember, we are all God’s creatures. Even you two.” He stood up. “Now go away. You know how to reach me.” He walked to the huge window, turning his back on them, listened while they puffed and groaned and wheezed and scuttled off into the elevator.
The old man waited quietly by himself in the eerie darkness, his mind roving back and forth over the events of the past few days and just how everything had begun to go wrong. Perhaps his mind simply wasn’t as agil
e as it had once been; leaping back and forth from one set of agents to another wasn’t as much pure fun as it once had been … At one time he’d looked forward to growing old gracefully. What a joke. So many things worked out rather differently than one planned.
He watched the sky lighten over the Atlantic, turn the darkened city a musty, wet gray. Rain continued to spot the enormous pane of glass. He knocked his pipe out on the cement and stuffed it into his raincoat pocket. Before leaving he went to the telescope which would eventually serve tourists when the observation deck was completed. He sighted through it, saw Boston leap into distinct detail before him. Somewhere out there in the drenched city, Chandler was waiting, hiding, perhaps in shock from the unexpected confrontation with what must have been a positively horrifying kind of violence. Somewhere, wet and tired, wandering around in his bathrobe, Chandler must be feeling the squeeze. So what would he do? Where would he go?
The telescope picked out the white towers of Harvard up the Charles, the town houses of Commonwealth Avenue, the huge equestrian statue of George Washington by the Frog Pond in the Public Garden below him. He swept on, turned to Beacon Hill and the golden dome dulled by the rain and dim light of morning. Somewhere, Chandler was out there … Did he know where the goddamn package was? Did he know how to find it?
He let the telescope swing down and pushed the elevator button. He packed his pipe with his thumb, from a suede pouch, while he waited. Chandler must be the key. The package hadn’t just disappeared: with Davis and Underhill dead, there was nowhere else to turn … Chandler would have to lead them to it. But what if Chandler had had enough? The elevator came and he stepped in. Was there any way to encourage the man, get him moving? If Chandler found the package, well, their problems would be over … And balancing Andrew and Liam with one hand, Thorny and Ozzie with the other! Goodness, but it was a great deal for a tired old man! In the Rolls, he lit the pipe and reflected that tough as it was, he’d always bounced back. Just maybe he wasn’t done yet.
The Glendower Legacy Page 10
