The Laughing Man

by Forrest, Richard;

  The heavy front door swung open. A man with a cane stepped out to look down toward him. Their eyes met and held for a moment before Brian turned away. It was the man in the newspaper photographs. The mustache was gone and the hair had turned white, but the deep-set, piercing eyes were unmistakable. He wore a dark suit with a regimental tie and a small ribbon in his lapel. He carried himself with a stiffly erect carriage.

  The unforeseen meeting had been accidental. Brian walked away from the house in confusion, and was inexplicably embarrassed.

  “Lieutenant Maston.” The voice immediately behind him was sharp and commanding. Brian slowed his pace, as the end of the cane curved over his arm and pulled him around to face Colonel Wright.

  “I beg your pardon. You must be mistaken.”

  “I don’t believe so, Lieutenant.” At close range, the eyes were even more piercing, with an opaque quality that revealed no emotion.

  The Colonel turned his head slightly toward the man who had just come out of the house. “Buxton, Lieutenant Maston will be joining us. Please escort him to the solarium.” The cane left Brian’s arm as the Colonel walked briskly back to the house. Brian stood transfixed, unready for the confrontation.

  He felt an arm on his shoulder and looked up to see the large black man with reflecting sunglasses. Buxton used his free hand to lightly flip aside his jacket, revealing a holstered gun under his armpit.

  “The man said the solarium.”

  It was the house of a military man. Original paintings of ramrod-stiff troops in various American military uniforms, from the Continental Army to the camouflage of Vietnam, angled up the wall of the interior staircase. A suit of armor, grasping a large battle-ax, guarded the downstairs hall. There was an aura of austerity about the house. Immaculately clean and filled with military artifacts, it lacked any sort of gentle touch. It was a house devoid of any feminine influence.

  Once they were inside and the massive outer door shut, Buxton pushed Brian against the wall. Efficiently, he patted Brian down for any weapon and then shoved him toward a hall leading to the rear of the house. The hall exited into a solarium at the far end of the building. A small fountain in the center of the room was surrounded by hanging baskets of flowers, with nearby plantings of tropical vegetation. In a corner, a white iron table with a glass top sat next to a rolling bar cart. The room’s decor was in strange juxtaposition to the remainder of the house.

  “Sit,” Buxton commanded, and pushed Brian into a chair by the table. “What are you drinking?”

  “You’re out of your goddamn mind! You’ve tried to kill me on three occasions, and now you’re offering me a drink?”

  Buxton removed the sunglasses and stuck them in a breast pocket of his dark suit. “Nothing personal, man.”

  Colonel Wright had changed into a dinner jacket but still carried the cane as he entered the solarium. Brian jumped to his feet. “Do you know this man is a murderer?”

  The cane pushed against Brian’s chest with sufficient power to force him back in the chair. “A question of definition, Lieutenant. A few years ago, Captain Buxton commanded a Green Beret A team and killed most efficiently. Society called him a hero. Unfortunately, the market for mercenaries these days is of a different pigmentation. I was most fortunate to recruit him for my staff.” The Colonel sat across from Brian, while Buxton mixed cocktails. “We had arranged to dine elsewhere this evening, but your arrival has changed our plans.”

  Cocktail glasses were set on the glass-topped table as Buxton ceremoniously poured from a shaker until amber liquid brimmed the rims. Brian looked down at the undulating drink and then up at the Colonel, who leaned on his cane with his feet crossed. “You’re both mad. First you try to kill me, and now you serve cocktails. What’s in it, for Christ’s sake, hemlock?”

  “Gauche, Lieutenant. One should always be courteous to one’s enemies—at least initially.”

  “Since we have never met before, I hardly see how I qualify as an enemy.” The Colonel sipped his drink and looked at Brian over the rim of the glass. “And how did you know who I was?”

  “Intelligence is the first resource of any commander. Captain Buxton, please get the Lieutenant’s dossier.”

  Buxton left the solarium and returned with a heavy manila folder, which he placed before Brian. The first items in the folder were photographs: large, clearly detailed shots of Brian in his Canadian classroom, on the streets of Montreal, and one of him sitting in a restaurant with a friend. There were several more of him in Tallman, one which he recognized as having been taken at the graveyard services for Mary. He flipped rapidly through the folder and glanced at the other papers: a complete copy of his military service record, his college transcript and typed notes from some anonymous observer, describing in detail his personal habits and preferences. He closed the folder and looked back at the Colonel. “Very thorough, almost frightening.”

  “Not very difficult to assemble if one has the staff, time and money.”

  “Why?”

  “You posed a possible threat by becoming involved in areas that did not concern you.”

  “Like the others you killed, all four of them?”

  Colonel Wright looked at Buxton with false ingenuousness. “Was it four, Buxton?”

  “Should have been five, sir. But I blew the last assignment.”

  “Noted, Captain. Never fear, you shall have another opportunity.”

  “Both of you are stark raving mad!”

  “Not really. Practical. Eminently practical.”

  “You’ve both admitted to four killings, you call that practical? Do you know who I am?”

  “Extensively. Do you know who you are?”

  It was an awesome feeling for Brian to realize the extent of his dislike for the diminutive colonel, who now sat so primly across from him. He had a desire to lift the table and crash it across the face, to obliterate the probing eyes. It was the aftershock of this feeling that made him think who this man might be, and what their relationship might be. He sipped his drink, hoping that a mundane action might restore a semblance of control. “You never answered my question. What’s the reason for all of this?”

  “Not what you probably expect. You are aware of the tragedy that befell me some thirty years ago. The child that was taken and uselessly murdered?”

  “Yes, I know of it.”

  “The leader of the criminals was an ex-aide of mine, Captain Ralston, who was apprehended and executed. There were others, however.” He leaned forward with an intensity of expression that elongated his face. “Several others. The authorities knew this, but time brings other crimes their way. I do not have that problem, and my energies have been devoted to the case. Can you understand that? My resources were directed toward the confrontation I knew would eventually take place. When the time arrived, Buxton was the instrument of my revenge. The good captain was my front-line assault.”

  “You think the Rubinows were involved in the crime?”

  “I know they were.”

  “And Mary and Lockwood?”

  “Both accomplices.”

  “You waited thirty years to execute them?”

  “I am a patient man.”

  “I find that hard to believe.”

  “Do you, Lieutenant? And what do you believe?”

  “The child might live.”

  “I identified the remains myself, and then ordered cremation.”

  “You could have been wrong.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Why kill me? I’m obviously too young to have been involved as an accomplice. Your dossier proves that. Why destroy me also?”

  “The sins of the father, my boy. A festering sore must be excised, cut away and destroyed.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “Yes! You are a coward. You are the worst sort of soldier and officer. You deserted under fire. You deserve to be shot. If you were under my command, you would have been shot.”

  “You’re avoiding the issue. You refuse to
acknowledge who I am.”

  “Your interest in Bellchamp has not escaped my notice. Sneaking into the nursery … did you possibly think that would give you information to establish your claim?”

  “I had been there before.”

  “That’s what they all say.”

  “All?”

  “The pretenders. The confidence men desirous of getting their hands on the Wright money. Come, my boy, did you think you were the first? There have been at least a dozen over the years. The Wright child is alive, they claim, and come with outstretched hands for their largess. We’ve proven each claim fallacious, as yours is.”

  “I had been to that house before.”

  “Had you?” The Colonel slowly undid his tie and removed the studs from his dress shirt. “I’ve worn these for years,” he said, and slipped a small silver chain over his head and slapped it on the table covered with his palm. “My army dog tags. They contain my blood type.”

  “That won’t prove anything.”

  “At this juncture, I’m willing to gamble that they will certainly disprove who you pretend to be. Do you know your blood type?”

  “O negative.”

  “How convenient.” He took his palm off the dog tags and tossed them at Brian.

  Brian read the stamped inscription. The blood type was A. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “My wife, the mother of the child, is also A. Read any basic text. You could not possibly be my child.”

  “Evidence like this can be manufactured.”

  “Blood-typing is irrefutable.”

  Brian pushed the folder of personal information across the table. “You know my blood type from medical records.” He twirled the dog tags. “And these could be punched out at any penny arcade.”

  “That would be illogical. Why should I want to lie in order to disown my own child?”

  “The dossier, as you call it, that you prepared on me. You went to a great deal of trouble. It’s occurred to me that perhaps you would not want to acknowledge an army deserter.”

  “The incompatability of blood types was a gratuitous event in your case, Lieutenant. Combat brings out the best in men, and in your case, the worst.”

  “Like the massacre of unarmed prisoners, Colonel?”

  Brian quickly ducked his head as the cane slashed downward, shattering a cocktail glass into a hundred shards and cracking the table top. The second blow caught him across the edge of the cheek and cut the skin open. Brian threw himself backward as the cane was raised again. His arms were pinned to his sides by a powerful grip, and he realized that Buxton, with an agility surprising for his massive size, had moved to his rear to immobilize him.

  Colonel Wright stood trembling as the cane slashed down again and again across Brian’s face and body. It was now apparent that sometime in the near past the Colonel had suffered a mild stroke, as the frenzy of the blows contorted one side of his face, while the other side remained impassive and immobile. The blows ceased and the Colonel stepped back, his chest heaving from exertion. Brian felt blood trickling down the side of his face toward his chin.

  “Dispose of him, Captain. I want it away from here and done in such a manner that the body is never located. I will leave the operational details to you.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Brian’s back arched as Buxton’s massive arm encircled his neck. His fingers tore at the choking muscled forearm. His eyes began to cloud as a prelude to losing consciousness. He was helpless under the superior strength of his assailant.

  The Colonel’s voice seemed distant. “Messy, Captain. Unforgivable that I should lose my temper.”

  The pressure on Brian’s neck slackened slightly as Colonel Wright, at the portable bar, methodically poured a small vial of liquid into a straight glass and then half-filled it with bourbon. Brian had a rapid flash of the irony of the sequence of events: chloral hydrate that he paid to have used on the young officer in Saigon would now be the instrument of his own destruction. They would force him to drink, and then when he was unconscious, his limp body would be placed in a car and taken to some remote area, or the sea, and permanently hidden.

  A hand under his chin forced his head to tilt back as fingers closed over his nostrils. Liquid was poured into his mouth. He tried to regurgitate, but involuntarily swallowed again and again.

  “That’s a good boy,” a far-away voice said as he was lowered onto a chair.

  His eyes began to lose focus as somewhere in the far distance a heavy fist pounded on a door.

  Buxton left the room, while Colonel Wright stood near the fountain, running a hand up and down the length of his cane.

  Brian’s limbs were leaden, and he was barely conscious of the commotion in the hall. Voices came to him across many ranges of mountains.

  “Damn it! The call said a fire at 216 State!”

  It took a long time to turn his head and look down the hall. Groups of rubber-coated firemen filled the downstairs. One tall fireman held the nozzle of a slack hose, while through the open front door the flashing red lights of fire-fighting apparatus cast streaks of red through the house.

  A battalion chief was arguing with Buxton near the suit of armor as Brian flung himself from the chair. He fell toward the floor until his hand caught the edge of a hanging basket of flowers. The basket ripped from its mooring as he staggered from the solarium.

  The hall was a hundred miles long, with dim figures at its end. They looked at him with curiosity. He bounded from one wall to another as he forced himself forward.

  Falling, his arms went around the shoulders of a fireman who pushed him away with a grimace. Voices battered at him.

  “Drunk as a hoot owl.”

  “He’s a sick man. We’ll take him upstairs.”

  “Who turned in the fucking alarm?”

  Someone said, “Help me,” and it was Brian’s own weak voice. He had made it to the door and could look down steps that stretched endlessly below him. Buxton’s hand closed over his arm, and he reeled to look up half-consciously at the smiling black man.

  “I’ll take him.” Someone else was guiding him down the stairs toward onlookers surrounding the fire trucks.

  “Going to kill me … going to kill me.” He tried to communicate to the man holding him.

  “I have a cab waiting down the block. Thought a false alarm might be the best course of action.”

  Vainly, Brian tried to place who belonged to the familiar voice.

  “Only a few feet further,” the voice continued.

  “Clinton,” he gasped. “You knew where …”

  “A reasonable assumption, but I could have been wrong. Thus the firemen rather than police. A little further.”

  “A few feet, oh, Christ.…”

  Chapter Fourteen

  The place was not far from where the Rubinows died. Brian had traveled the same roads then with anticipation, eager to hear what Martha might tell him, and returning in shock and dismay. Now he drove them as a last resort.

  He had left Clinton in a black mood at a motel in Connecticut. The white-maned attorney had spent a good deal of time during the drive from Brooklyn mumbling and making lists. One list contained the charges that could be levied against them, which seemed to range from turning in a false alarm, to withholding evidence and willful destruction of property (lost automobiles). The other list was of charges they might levy against the residents of the State Street house: murder against Buxton, conspiracy to murder and assault against the Colonel.

  Brian found the address and turned into the visitors’ parking lot. Within minutes he had directions from the receptionist and left through the rear of the building, to walk toward the high meadow near the mountains.

  He saw her across the grass and wanted to run to her. He knew she was in her fifties, but distance and perspective belied her age; also, she walked with the limber gait of a young woman. Occasionally, she stopped to pick some small flower, which she added to a bunch already in the basket by her side. His feeling
s toward her were different than toward the Colonel, as if the memory of some long-ago crooning song awakened inchoate remembrances of warmth and security.

  He walked slowly toward her, aware of the long wall surrounding the field and the low clusters of buildings that comprised the hospital. She seemed oblivious to his presence, still intent in searching low meadow grass for further acquisitions for the basket at her waist.

  “Mrs. Wright,” he called softly.

  She looked up. Her eyes flattened and turned opaque as she shrank from him. “It’s not time to go back.”

  “They said I might talk to you a few minutes.”

  “A visitor? I don’t have many visitors. Or are you a new doctor? They come and go so, I can hardly keep track of them. Just when I think I really know one … poof … he’s gone.” Her laughter tinkled momentarily in the bright air before dying away in the wind.

  The childlike woman now on the cusp of middle age looked at him wistfully, awaiting an explanation of his presence. He wondered what strange mental machinations had forced him to this place, and what sort of clue he could possibly expect from her shattered mind. “May I walk with you?”

  “Of course. I’m gathering flowers for the table. That’s always my job, you know.” She looked toward him reproachfully, as if his power might take away such a simple thing.

  It had taxed even Clinton’s resources to find her. The records had been sealed in probate court, and it took ethical gymnastics and the calling of several past favors by the attorney to finally have them opened far enough to reveal her location, a private mental hospital in the Berkshires.