I'll Cry When I Kill You

by Peter Israel

  “You’re the one who asked, darling,” the Counselor’s Wife said. “But all I’m suggesting is that perhaps you needn’t look so far afield.”

  She turned to me, head tilted, eyebrows raised, mouth a little open.

  “What do you think, Phil?”

  My first thought was that I didn’t want to get caught in the middle between them. Second, if Grace was what Bashard was really afraid of, there wasn’t a hell of a lot I could do to help him.

  “Besides,” the Counselor’s Wife went on, “doesn’t she inherit all the money?”

  I glanced at the Counselor.

  “I’m afraid,” he said to her, “that that’s privileged information.”

  Which, needless to say, was about the last thing Nora Saroff could tolerate hearing.

  She got up abruptly.

  “In that case,” she retorted, swirling, “you boys stay here and solve your little crime-to-be. I’m going to walk Muffin.”

  The Counselor stood up, too. So did the spaniel bitch, who, recognizing the buzzword walk, beat her owner to the elevator.

  “It all sounds fascinating, Phil,” the Counselor’s Wife called back to me from the elevator, “being in on a murder before it happens. I can’t wait to go to the BashCon.”

  “What?” I heard the Counselor shout. “What did you say, Nora?”

  But the elevator door had already slid shut.

  I knew, though, what would happen next. The Counselor would say they weren’t going. Nora would accuse him of antisocial behavior, and the Counselor would say he didn’t give a damn what kind of behavior it was, he’d be damned if he was going to spend a weekend in the Catskills with a couple of hundred science-fiction lunatics.

  Etc. Etc.

  In other words, they’d fight over it till one of them gave in, and in the end they’d show up at the BashCon.

  As it turned out, I was right about the second, and I didn’t stick around to witness the first. After a few more words with the Counselor, I went down in the elevator myself and out into the night. I guessed which way she and the dog had walked and headed in the other.

  My beeper was busy those next days. Even after I disconnected it, Grace managed to get through a couple of times, including one awkward occasion when Laura Hugger and I were otherwise occupied. My home number is unlisted, mind you, and I only give it out to friends, but I suppose if Bashard and his computer had found out about Pablo they could find an unlisted number. So the next night I spent at Laura’s, who has a listed number but not one presumably in Big O’s file.

  What got me was that most of the calls came from Bashard’s. This meant that, despite her secretive and lowered voice, they were recorded and probably listened to. Either Grace knew and didn’t care, or there was something in what the Counselor’s Wife had said after all.

  As for me, I ducked and dodged. I tried to reassure her that nothing awful was going to happen to me—or to her, or to anyone. I don’t think she ever heard me. She talked in a fog, and as long as somebody was listening somewhere in the fog, that made it okay. Maybe she was stoned some of the time, but a lot of teenagers nowadays sound like they’re stoned, and while Grace certainly talked enough about doing drugs, I’d never seen her under the influence.

  Would Raul Bashard have tolerated her using them?

  That was another question.

  The last and wildest conversation we had came one afternoon when she caught me at my desk. Sometimes I pick up the phone myself when Roger LeClerc is too slow. This time it was Grace again.

  Did I know where she was?

  No, I didn’t.

  Then I should guess.

  I couldn’t guess. I really had no idea.

  In a shopping mall, the one in Short Hills. I knew where Short Hills was, didn’t I? In New Jersey? It was a super mall, she said. She wished I was there. Oh God. It was a bummer that I wasn’t, one great big humungous bummer. If I hurried, if I left right away, she’d manage to stall till I got there. Why didn’t I come?

  I couldn’t, I said.

  Price had driven her, she said, but there were places in a shopping mall (with a giggle) not even Price could follow her. In fact, she’d already finished her shopping, wait till I saw what she’d bought. It was a teddy. Pause. She’d bought it for me only, she was going to wear it at BashCon. Pause. For me only …

  She went on in that vein, about how she loved me, missed me, longed for me, and I didn’t have anybody else, did I? And so on.

  I remember thinking about what Bashard had said, something to the effect that it would wear off, that it was like a rite of passage she put everybody through. And wondering when, and what, it would take for it to stop.

  Then suddenly, in one of her quicksilver jumps, it did stop.

  I heard it in her tone first. The heavy breathing gone, in its place a harsh, pent-up voice, like she was holding the air in her diaphragm.

  “I didn’t buy it for you, Phil,” she was saying, “I bought it for him. He makes me wear things like that.” A gasping-for-air sound, short, like a sob. “Hey, that’s a lie! He’ll pretend not to notice, he won’t even care! He thinks I want the money, that’s why I’m there. Somebody ought to kill him. If nobody does, maybe I’ll kill him myself. But at least I’ll cry when I kill him!”

  Then she was sobbing for real, and shouting at the same time.

  “You don’t know what it’s like! He killed Jules. You’ve got to help me. If you won’t help me, then maybe Price … Price isn’t such a bad—”

  “Stop it, Grace!” I shouted into the phone. Or something like that. “Stop talking like that!”

  She went still for a minute. I could hear a hiccuping sound, then quiet. I think she said something like: “Price likes me.…”

  “Okay, Grace,” I said. “I like you, too. Calm down. Just pull yourself together.”

  Silence.

  Then I tried: “Grace? Grace?” a few times, even though the last pause had come and gone and I realized I was talking to a dead phone.

  CHAPTER

  5

  “Hnnga Hnnga Hnnga.”

  “Hnnn Hnnn Hnnn.”

  “Hnnga Hnnga Hnnga.”

  “Hnnn Hnnn Hnnn.

  The Hnngas wore horned helmets, Viking-style. They looked like giant long-haired humans with antlers. I didn’t see one that weighed under two hundred ten, and they had big hearty voices to match. The Hnnns, on the other hand, were wiry little people who wore brown leather jackets and those close-fitting brown leather caps with earflaps hanging down, like old-time football players or World War I aviators. The Hnnns had a girl or two among them. The Hnngas were all male. Both groups wandered around the BashCon like rival gangs in some science-fiction novel where size and uniforms divided people into clans. What the purpose of their getups was, or their chants, I never did figure out, but the question didn’t seem to bother them. They were harmless enough.

  Or so the editor had said, at the publishing company that put out Bashard’s works. She was a wispy, curly-headed thing, this Helga Hewitt, pretty in a prim sort of way, about my age but trying to look younger, and she’d come on very literary when I’d gone to see her. She loathed the “cons,” she confessed to me in her office. The maimed, the unloved, and the crippled, she’d said, that’s what they attracted. “Cons” was science-fiction shorthand for “conventions,” and there was probably a “con” a week, she guessed, somewhere in the world. They were mostly money-making affairs, for the organizers, but she personally was tired of overweight fans wearing antlers who drank too much beer and thought they had the right to paw all over her. She didn’t see why the celebration of Raul’s eightieth birthday had had to be turned into another con.

  Why had it been? I asked her.

  Oh, I’d have to ask Ron that.

  Ron was her boss, the publisher himself. Ron—Randall Whitefield was his full name—was a gruff, tall gent with a bald spot and a weight problem who seemed intent on proving to me and/or Helga Hewitt how profit-conscious he was
. The answer was simple, Ron said, when I put the same question to him. He didn’t have the budget for the kind of party that befitted Raul’s eightieth birthday. He’d already told Raul that. If I wanted to see the letter, he’d show it to me. Besides, the fans would come anyway. There was no way anyone could keep them away. That was the bottom line. What the organizers had done, at his suggestion, was to set a registration fee high enough to discourage the unwashed.

  What about security? I asked Ron.

  Well, what about security? Ron asked back.

  It turned out neither he, nor the organizers, had thought much about security. People, after all, didn’t show up at science-fiction conventions carrying laser guns. Not real ones anyway. Maybe so, I said, but Mr. Bashard was concerned about security; therefore I was. Was I authorized to represent Raul? Ron asked. Yes I was, with regard to security at the BashCon. At which point, he pleaded another meeting and ushered Helga Hewitt and me out, telling Helga it was up to her to work out the details with me.

  Helga Hewitt (I should call her Helga, please) was happy to defer to me on such questions, only there was no budget for security, who was going to pay? Did they want Mr. Bashard (Raul) to pick up the tab? I asked. No, of course not. Several phone calls later, I learned, that, yes, Ron and the organizers would split the bill. Several more phone calls and, yes, I should have the bill sent to the organizers. And no, it didn’t occur to me till later that I should have asked Whitefield (Ron) why he’d pay Bashard (Raul) two million dollars for the rights to a single novel but would duck the cost of a birthday party.

  I guess, in hindsight, this is what made him a publisher of literary works and left me masterminding security at a science-fiction convention.

  The BashCon—WELCOME TO BASHCON HAPPY BIRTHDAY R. R. BASHARD read the wide banner over the front gateway—was held in an old rambling place by a lake in the Catskills. It had been built as a private mansion, then converted into a resort hotel, then most recently into a center for business meetings, or “corporate campus.” It had its own nine-hole golf course, a boathouse, tennis courts, an Olympic pool, and three new fully air-conditioned and sound-equipped buildings—two of which broke up into meeting and seminar rooms and the third containing an auditorium and/or banquet facility. Guests stayed either in the old hotel or in cottages closer to the lake, or (at least at the BashCon) in sleeping bags and tents that dotted the grounds. For, as Ron, the publisher, had predicted, there was just no way to keep people out, not even with the help of the local police. There were too many of them, they were too determined, and to judge from some of the license plates on their cars, vans, and campers, they had come too far.

  There were about a dozen of us for security, including several of Bud Fincher’s people who’d been tracking Bashard’s correspondents, and not counting the organizer’s staff or the center’s staff, whom we looked to for auxiliary help. Too many and too few you could say, but we had people in every important building as well as scattered on the grounds, and a walkie-talkie communications setup that was less conspicuous than you might think in that gadget-oriented gathering. We even managed to recruit a Hnnga to our side. As it turned out, he managed a specialty store in Minneapolis, Minnesota, which sold comic books and Dungeons and Dragons paraphernalia as well as science fiction; he was happy enough to have his trip turned into an all-expenses-paid affair. We monitored as many individuals as we could against our lists, including the few on Bud Fincher’s hot list who turned up, but there were just too many. There were on the one hand professionals of all sorts: editors and writers, book publishing people, magazine publishing people, movie people, journalists, photographers, literary agents, booksellers (some of whom rented booths in the meeting rooms and sold autographed copies signed by the writers present), science-fiction artists (similarly selling their own work), comic book collectors, and what I can only call the trinket dealers (peddling a whole range of paraphernalia from Mr. Spock ear sets to little cast-iron figurines of space people and dragons and wizards with wands and pointed hats). There were food concessions in umbrellaed outdoor stands, beer-and-soft-drink concessions, portable outdoor toilet facilities, and computer and electronic-game facilities. All of them at the service of (and making money off) the fans.

  How many fans were there, all in all? The registration roster, fee-paid, ran to some fifteen hundred names. It seemed like they all showed up. How many gate-crashers there might have been is anybody’s guess. With a crowd that size you were bound to find every type and age of humanity—ranging from babies on the breast to octogenarians—and we had both extremes. But it was a predominantly young scene, average age probably in the twenties. The sexes were about evenly mixed. They were all white, mostly scruffy, long-haired, overweight, and pasty in complexion—like this was the first time in months most of them had been out-of-doors. Not a drinking crowd, just a noisy one, and people who didn’t mind jamming together.

  “The maimed, the unloved, and the crippled,” Helga Hewitt repeated to me Saturday morning on the porch of the main building, as we surveyed the incoming throng. “It’s every guy who never made the team, every girl who never had a date in high school.”

  “That seems a strange observation,” I said, “from somebody’s whose career depends on them.”

  “Career?” she asked. “Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, the readers. Well, I may like the literature well enough, some of it, but I don’t have to love the people who read it, do I?”

  I guessed not.

  “Do you think any of them are dangerous?” I asked her.

  “Dangerous? Oh, you mean from a security point of view? I’d think not. There might be some who’d tear Raul’s jacket off his back for a souvenir, but I can’t imagine that they’d do him bodily harm.”

  The BashCon was scheduled over the two weekend days. Bashard himself was set to arrive early Saturday afternoon. He would lead a panel discussion that afternoon on the subject of “Science Future/Science-Fiction Future,” then would be guest of honor at the Saturday night black-tie birthday banquet. I had wanted him to leave immediately after the banquet and be driven home. I’d even gotten the Counselor to intercede. But Bashard wouldn’t be pinned down. This was his event. People would be coming from far and near because of him. He wasn’t going to let them down. He would wait and see. If the Sunday program appeared to “require his presence,” then of course he would stay over for it, provided, that is, that the accommodations suited him.

  I myself had arrived the night before. I’d arranged for Bashard and his immediate entourage, myself included, to be quartered in one of the annexes to the main hotel building. The annex was a two-story affair. The upper floor could only be reached from the inside by two staircases and an elevator, and you’d have needed a ladder to get to it from outside. At one end was a two-bedroom suite where I put Bashard and Grace. I was in a single next to them, and Price across the hall. Behind us, down the corridor, were to be an assortment of science-fiction dignitaries, all chosen with Bashard’s approval. Among them were the Counselor and his Wife, and Ron Whitefield the publisher (but not, I noted, Helga Hewitt). Of the Science-Fiction Greats Bashard had wanted invited, Bradbury and Heinlein had regretfully declined their invitations, Latham was coming, and Clarke hadn’t replied. A room had been reserved for him anyway, at Bashard’s instructions. From the security angle, it couldn’t have been better. Two of Bud Fincher’s people could and did control the stairways and elevator from the lobby floor, and there was no other way in, or out.

  By Saturday noon, though, surveying the scene with Helga Hewitt from the hotel buildings, I had a case of the green chills. This didn’t, in fact, have so much to do with Bashard’s arrival. Noon was when I figured Mr. and Mrs. Charles Camelot would show up. The Counselor’s Wife would be behind the wheel and the Counselor, to judge from history, would be in one of his foulest moods.

  I don’t mean to give the wrong impression. The Counselor’s not a misanthrope really. He is invariably gracious in social situations, can even b
e charming when he wants to be. But only, really, on his own turf. Take him against his will from the East Seventies or the house in the Hamptons, add hundreds of people like the BashCon crowd, and he can become a holy terror.

  I expected them, as I say, around noon. I’d organized things as well as I could. Before I left the office the day before, I’d typed out the route instructions and left them with a marked New York State road map in Ms. Shapiro’s capable hands. That morning I’d given the traffic control at the BashCon entrance their license plate number and arranged that they be waved right on through, and I had a busboy and the valet parking attendant lined up for duty at noon.

  Twelve came and went, and twelve-thirty. No sign of them. I called the front gate. No, the car hadn’t showed yet.

  At one, I started calling the various numbers at the town house. No one answered, not even Althea the housekeeper (who’s supposed to guard the fort on weekends), and I couldn’t think of a message to leave on the machines that would make any sense. I tried the house in the Hamptons and Ms. Shapiro at home, with equal luck, and went through the cycle again for good measure. It seemed as though the entire city had been evacuated. I began to imagine the car breaking down on the thruway, or the Counselor’s Wife (who I knew was a technically skillful but emotionally incompetent driver) having smashed it against a tree at seventy miles an hour. I saw the hood up and smoking and the Counselor in his shirtsleeves trying to make sense of the engine, about which he understood zero. Alternatively, I saw him trying to thumb a ride at the side of the road, his shirtsleeved arms flailing in the air, his voice bellowing words I couldn’t hear at his wife, who now sat cheerfully on a tree stump next to the BMW.

  By two, I was totally convinced one or the other had happened and alerted the state police.

  At 2:12, Bashard’s limousine arrived at the BashCon entrance. Bud Fincher and I got the call on the front steps of the main building, and by one of those peculiar kinds of osmosis I’ve never understood, the crowd seemed to know it at the same moment we did. They pushed forward toward the building and lined the driveway on either side, waving hands, hankerchiefs, banners, breaking into cheers and applause as the limo rolled between them.