Of Mice and Murderers

by John Stockmyer

  Or, playing it in reverse, he could remove the painting, hide it somewhere, then tip Detective Addison where to find it.

  And the body? Move it? .... No. ... Burn it? ...

  For himself, cremation had always had appeal. Ashes to Ashes. Dust to Dust. The Monet to the Gallery. Ted Newbold coddled. Addison, Big-Banged into a shining star.

  Though the school would never know, Bateman College would also benefit, Terbrugghen's incineration sparing the school from having to admit that it had an art thief on its staff. To say nothing of a murderer.

  Actor that he was, even Lucas Terbrugghen would approve the use of the vault-like room for his funeral urn. What ham actor wouldn't like to "check out" with a flamboyant disappearance, exit stage right to the startled speculation of adoring fans?

  Madness.

  What madness had driven the man to murder?

  Z could understand wanting the Monet enough to steal it. He himself had casually considered pilfering a work of art by way of compensating himself for the nasty blows life had dealt him.

  Minor illegalities were one thing. Politicians, athletes, corporate executives, insurance companies, the advertising industry -- cheated as a way of life.

  But murder -- no.

  He supposed the director's larceny was a kind of striking back at a universe that had failed to fulfill its pledges to one so talented. Murder, on the other hand, could never be justified by the complaint that life came with a faulty guarantee.

  While there could be no doubt that the Great Void at the center of the universe had dealt the director severe blows, was Z's existence all that different? Had not the cosmos made exaggerated promises to him ... Susan his only payoff -- even that gift, slipping from his grasp.

  Remembering Susan and the money it would take to keep her, he weighed the obvious compromise. He could call Addison to say that Z's mob connections had come through, that Z was to be the intermediary for a third party, a swap arranged (through him,) the painting to be exchanged for the insurance company's payment – say, for a the nice round figure of a million bucks. No questions asked. That way, the gallery would get the painting; Addison would save his job; Kansas City politicians would find a way to take credit for the painting's return; the local wise guys would enjoy the reputation of moving into a higher class of crime; and Z would get the money -- call it a finder's fee – that he needed to keep his girl.

  The trouble was, doing it that way, Z would get the reputation of someone willing to deal with criminals -- a violation of his first rule: never work for questionable clients. If it got out that he was the "middle man" on the return of the Monet (and it would) people seeking his help from then on would be ... undesirable. It would almost be the same as working for Johnny Dosso. (Though Z might look less than virtuous to other people, he maintained his honor with the Zapolska Code.)

  Yet here he was, struggling for money, struggling to keep his girl ....

  Bob Zapolska's stomach twisted like a wounded snake.

  In the numbing cold inside the ice-encrusted glass of his poor man's car, his head pounded.

  Fumbling the pill bottle from his pants pocket, his fingers numb because he'd forgotten to put on his gloves, he unscrewed the top, put the bottle to his lips, and poured in the remaining aspirin; crunched them up; dry-gulped them; the caustic powder burning his vomit-ravaged throat like Drano!

  Z's mind was in shock; his body in collapse.

  He desperately needed sleep.

  If only he could focus well enough to see the road, he should drive back to the Inn.

  Z tried to see his watch; had to roll down the frosted side window to let in light from one of the campus street lamps across the way.

  Five o'clock.

  Too late to get any sleep this night.

  Though it was as cold inside the car as out, he rolled the glass back up.

  Tomorrow morning -- this morning -- he'd tell Susan she could move back home. He could move back home.

  Still ... Z couldn't let the problem go.

  Perhaps the way to keep his honor was to do nothing. The director was dead. Susan was safe.

  In a strange way, Big Bob Zapolska could do nothing and have the painting for himself. Some gasoline to "sanitize" Terbrugghen's body, and Z could return to view the painting after dark -- any time he liked -- rather like the director had been doing.

  And why not?

  Discovering the painting had put lowly Bob Zapolska in the same position as a person who, after buying a farm, strikes oil beneath the land. That person didn't know the oil was there, and yet, the oil was his.

  Was the painting not Z's strike? The kind of gift an embarrassed universe had provided to compensate him for his shabby life? Keep the painting, and no matter what, he'd have a talisman with the power to transmute his leaden soul to gold!

  And when, at last, his luck ran out, a gun shot having him throbbing out his life in a filthy alley, he'd die knowing he was the last man on earth to view the "Boulevard des Capucines"!

  The last man alive to see the "Boulevard"? No. Even that would be denied him. Someone would eventually discover the concealed niche. A moth-eaten Bateman Hall would be torn down, workmen breaking into the sanctuary with its grizzly skeleton and priceless masterpiece.

  To make certain Z was the last man to see the Monet's beauty, he would have to ... destroy the painting ...........

  With a start, Bob Zapolska was awake. He'd fallen sleep, his head banging forward into the steering wheel.

  Disorientated for a moment ... he came to realize It was still dark.

  Z rolled down the window again. Stuck out his wrist to see his watch. Five thirty-five.

  Back to the problem.

  Though it seemed he had time -- weeks, months -- to figure out this ... horror ... he knew himself well enough to realize he couldn't rest until he'd decided what to do. To keep his sanity, he must make up his mind ... tonight.

  Frozen, the darkness slipping down the sky toward another frigid dawn, Z sat in the Cavalier to puzzle out ... his life ... finally making up his mind, gaining new strength from the decision.

  With the direction he must take now clear to him, he twisted to the back. Got his case and flopped it forward to the passenger seat.

  Unlatched the satchel.

  Took out the siphon and the mason jar.

  * * * * *

  Chapter 24

  It was six o'clock by the time Z got to the theater workroom.

  He figured an hour was all he'd need.

  After that, even if he met an early morning teacher or student as he exited the building, he would wave and keep on walking.

  Leaving on the basement lights, dodging litter, Z swivelled past the shabby tables until he was standing at the head of the stone stairs to the sub-basement. There, he steeled himself in the hope that being prepared for the macabre scene below would help him keep control.

  Still needing ... time ... he paused to review what he would do. And to spit!

  Siphoning gasoline. Nasty!

  Though his first idea had been to go directly to the sub-basement, he realized it would be better to make his preparations first. That decision made, backing away from the narrow paint-scarred wooden door, he set the jar of gas on the corner of a junk-piled table.

  Looking around, he found what he knew he'd seen on the floor -- a wadded piece of dirty muslin, Z bending down to pick up the cloth, its dusty smell blending with the room's odor of old paint.

  Standing, he straightened out the cloth, finding what he was looking for: a relatively clean spot near one edge.

  Though his hands were so cold he had difficulty starting a rip, he was finally able to tear off a thin, three-foot long strip.

  Tossing the rest of the cloth to the floor, Z picked up the jar of gasoline; unscrewed the top; and trailed the length of muslin into the yellowish liquid.

  The strip of coarsely woven cloth quickly soaked, he hooked out the cloth, careful to hold the dripping band away from his body whil
e screwing the lid back on the jar with the other hand.

  Leaving the jar on the table, Z looped the oozing ribbon of cold cloth around his head, centering the gas-soaked band beneath his nose. The wet strip in place, he tied the ends of the cloth in a bow behind his head, drops of gas squeezing out to shiver down his neck.

  Tying a gas-soaked cloth under his nose was what John D. McDonald's detective, Travis McGee, did when having to approach a putrid body, the smell of gasoline blocking the sickly odor of decay. Z hoped this worked.

  An additional benefit he could see to using gas, was it would keep him from losing track of time. When the gas evaporated, the festering smell of Terbrugghen's body would drive Z back upstairs.

  Sniffing hard at the pungent stink beneath his nose, he opened the sub-basement door to find that the bare bulb was still glaring far below. (Snapping off the switch was something he'd forgotten to do.)

  Stepping on the stairs, twisting back to close the warped door, he turned to limp down the stairs, at the bottom throwing his weight into the fireplace, the disguised door sliding back into the wall.

  Ducking, he dodged the prop to enter the passageway.

  A turn and, once more, he stood in the brightly lighted room, the putrefying corpse of Lucas Terbrugghen sprawled in the chair facing the far wall, the fan motor humming toward burn-out, the lights glaring ahead.

  The only difference was that the rank smell of gas masked the noxious stench of rotting flesh.

  A long, long time ago, passed out in the car, coming awake, the light of truth had dawned on Z: that a man could possess but never own a masterpiece. Not the artist. Not the previous owner of the "Boulevard." Not the gallery. Not Lucas Terbrugghen.

  And not Big Bob Zapolska.

  No short-lived mortal could own infinite beauty. All anyone could do was drink, for a moment, from the healing waters of a "Boulevard des Capucines."

  In the hundred years since the work's conception, many men had thought they owned the "Boulevard." At first, those who loved this new Impressionism. After that, the rich, a capitalist more interested in art as an investment than in surrounding himself with loveliness.

  Then the Nelson Gallery.

  Then Terbrugghen.

  Now, Bob Zapolska.

  Approaching Monet's masterpiece with reverence, Z gazed past Terbrugghen's body at what, in that millisecond of the universe, now belonged to common Bob Zapolska: the "Boulevard Des Capucines!"

  His alone -- until the stench of death out-dueled the reek of gasoline.

  Nose band discarded, exiting Bateman Hall, Z found the sun had thawed itself from the horizon. Jar of gasoline in hand, descending the wind-swept stairway down the campus front, he passed two students climbing by the pale morning's light, so bundled they could hardly see.

  The start of another winter day at tiny Bateman College.

  As Z poured the remaining gas into the tank of the Cavalier, he remembered reading that the smell of gasoline might give you cancer.

  Not too high a price to pay for having once possessed ... eternity!

  * * * * *

  Chapter 25

  "Time to tell me about it," Susan said quietly. "Past time."

  It was a late Tuesday morning, the two of them having lunch by the splashy "Signs of the Zodiac" fountain in the center of the limestone-walled Rozzelle Court.

  Under the filtered haze of the two-and-a-half-story skylight, he and Susan had picked up thick, Chinese noodle soup, crisp pieces of finger-broken bread, and thick-buttered blueberry muffins. If "brunch" was what you called mid-morning meals, they were having an early "lupper" -- lunch and supper.

  Looking her black-haired, fashion model best in a dark blue wool crepe dress with round white collar, statuesque Susan was drinking wine.

  Z had water. (While he liked to eat at the Nelson, the gallery's prices made him cut corners any way he could.)

  Susan, who'd taken a half day of her vacation to be with him, had insisted on buying their gallery tickets.

  It had taken no more than a day or two for TV reporters to lose interest in what was universally called at the time, the sensational discovery that a Bateman college professor was the man who'd stolen the Monet. To be fair to the media, TV rarely spent two days on drug assassinations in Colombia, earthquakes in Mexico and Armenia, the erosion of democracy in the Philippines, the latest election in America.

  As for the once-a-day Star, its coverage of the Monet recovery had been the same.

  Z sighed. Like foul weather in the winter, the fact of some greedy bastard turning the K.C. paper into a daily was something you must live with. A real man bore up before what couldn't be changed: part of Zapolska's Code.

  He and Susan had just "done" the gallery -- "sans Boulevard des Capucines" as Susan put it. No telling how long restorers would take to have the painting back in place.

  "You're not going to duck out of this."

  "What?"

  "You weren't listening -- again."

  "I was." How could a normal man listen to a girl who looked like a World War pinup!?

  "Then tell me about the Bateman case."

  "The paper said it all." It was time for Z to try his most soothing purr. And to busy himself eating the last of his butter-spread muffin.

  "You don't know much about women, do you?" Susan fixed him with solemn, blindingly blue eyes.

  While Z's track record in the "woman department" indicated she could be right, what he was counting on was Susan liking the present he would give her later that evening.

  Who would have thought that the money for the gift would come from his percent of the merchandise returned to Easy Rental? But then, no one could have foreseen that the missing equipment of a year ago would turn up in a secret room in Bateman Hall.

  It was, of course, Terbrugghen -- in theatrical disguise similar to the get-up he'd used as gallery guard – who'd stolen the gear to modify his hideaway. (A costume again modified so he could shadow Z that time in the Nelson.)

  As for the secret room itself, it had begun as a "hollow" space, stone quarried from there to build Bateman Hall, the hole sealed off when the building was complete. (So said an embarrassed college official in a TV interview.)

  Now that Bob Zapolska was thinking about that hidden cavity, he remembered the Bateman College schematic he'd found in the director's apartment. There was more truth than anyone knew to the belief that Terbrugghen had made Bateman Hall his own.

  The director had also built the false wall over the Omphalos and eagle: custom-made to fit the fireplace prop.

  The jack hammer was for tunneling to the hiding place and for boring holes to tap into the school's electrical power and ventilator duct.

  "You don't seem to know, for instance," Susan continued as the silence lengthened, "that what a woman wants from her man -- besides the obvious -- is conversation. One of the reasons I went back to school was to hear ideas discussed. To hear good ... talk."

  "I see that."

  A sharp look from Susan told him he'd better pay attention -- making her happy seeming like a good idea at the moment.

  "Now, like you promised, I want you to tell me your part in this whole business. No more putting it off."

  "You know already," he said, pleading innocence. "Calder hired me. The director tried to stop me. Put poison in your milk. Now, it comes out that, disguised as a Nelson guard, he'd stolen the painting." Z shrugged. Put his palms up as a plea for understanding.

  "That's not going to get it, Z." Something about the quick shake of Susan's elegant head got his attention. "I'm not as dumb as you think."

  "I don't think you're dumb." Z's voice was beginning to tire with the strain of having to speak over the fountain's splatter.

  "Maybe not. But that's the way you treat me. You don't take me into your confidence about anything."

  She could be right about that, too. Mostly, because of what he had to do as a detective and partly because of the code he'd made for himself to follow. If a man couldn't ke
ep his mouth shut ....

  "For instance, you are the 'source' that both your storm trooper buddy and the African-American detective keep mentioning when being interviewed. The one who 'tipped' them." Though Z wasn't sure what Susan wanted, she definitely had his attention. While it was probably true he didn't know everything about women, he had a clue this conversation was crucial to their future. "You were the one who traced that man to his hideaway; the one who found the painting. Neither cop turned up anything on his own. They're taking the credit, of course." Susan sounded disgusted that Z wasn't on center stage. Good. She was still on his side, at least. "Someone else did their work for them. Someone, they say, who wants to remain in the background. A reliable informant. You." Susan's stare became a drill. "And how do I know that the so-called 'reliable informant' is none other than Big Bob Zapolska?"

  "How?" Z made increasingly uncomfortable because all four legs of his wrought iron chair weren't solidly on the flagstone floor, he shifted his seat to stabilize it.

  "Because they both said they got their 'tips' at 9:00 A.M. a week ago Thursday. They were quoted as saying that by the Star and I heard that K.C. detective say it on TV."

  "So?"

  "You had to have known the man was dead before 8:00 on the same day. Because that's when you told me it would be safe for me to move back to my apartment. I remember the exact time because I'd been looking for you. You'd just come dragging into the Happy Whorehouse, looking like the wrath of God and smelling like ...." Susan shuddered; dropped her spoon in her half-eaten bowl of soup and pushed the bowl away. "Sometime that night, you found out that the man who'd poisoned my food was dead. The only way you could have known was if you were the one who found him and found the painting with him." Susan paused as if waiting for him to deny it. "I don't care what you had to do to discover the hiding place. I want to hear about it from you. And I want to hear it now!"