Nothing.
I tried to see in the window but the curtains were closed tight.
I turned back to Bobbie Lee. She was watching impassively.
I moved to the door and slid the key into the lock. I gave it a wiggle. The door opened.
I eased myself inside.
The air in the closed room smelled stale.
I found the light switch.
I turned it on.
They were all there. All four of them.
They lay two each on the twin beds, but they were dressed in street clothes.
They were motionless.
They were silent.
They were dead.
Chapter Sixty One
I BACKED OUT OF THE ROOM and pulled the door closed behind me. I gasped for fresh air.
It was right for the people inside room 47 to feel guilt for what they had done. They needed to suffer for the anxiety their “bombs” had caused.
But they did not need to be dead.
No.
No. That was wrong.
The threat to them, their lives, was not great enough for that.
The threat to them was me.
I leaned against the wall by the door. Then I slid down it and sat on the walk.
I heard a sound from the parking lot. Bobbie Lee had opened the door of her car.
She saw that I had seen her. She stopped.
I shook my head.
No. It was wrong.
She got back in the car. To wait. To see what I would do. I realized I should do something.
I rolled to my knees. I got to my feet.
What should I do? Ambulance? Police?
Go back in first, I supposed.
I turned to the door.
I took a breath.
I grasped the doorknob.
It turned as I touched it.
I jumped back. I couldn't speak.
The door opened and Charlotte Vivien stood in front of me.
“You,” she said sleepily. “I suppose I should have known that it had to be the bad penny.”
Chapter Sixty Two
WE SPENT MORE THAN AN hour together, the combined membership of the Scum Front and I. I became acquainted with Lillian Ray and her daughter, Rachel: the Bear and “Kate King.” I heard how it all started. I heard how the name came from the woman who tried to kill Andy Warhol on behalf of the Society to Cut Up Men, SCUM, and how they thought the name was funny. I heard how they had met last night to talk everything through. I heard how they had decided to give it all up. The problem was working out how. They made me coffee.
Not evil people. Innocents of a kind. People who could attend a meeting and hear a speaker ask, “What are you doing about the environment?” and take it seriously, personally. “At first I just made sure to use ozone-friendly hair spray,” Kathryn Morgason told me. “We all did.”
“And unleaded gas,” Lillian Ray said. “But it was all so small. So trivial. What was the point when General Motors and General Electric and the generals at the Pentagon weren't making the same effort?”
“For me it was soap,” Charlotte Vivien said.
“That's right,” Lillian Ray said. “You buy vegetable oil soap to save the whales but the supermarket is still stacked with the other kind. It makes you feel so powerless.”
“And then,” Charlotte Vivien said, “you begin to ask yourself where the real power in society is.”
“It isn't people working alone,” Kathryn Morgason said.
“You have to find each other,” Lillian Ray said. “You have to think it through. You have to be able to work out plans. You'll never have power yourself, but if you work it out right you might be able to make the people with the power do something.”
The turning point was when Rachel Ray came home from high school one day with a copy of Poor Man's James Bond. Classmates had been selling them via a computer notice board.
Bond is a bomb-making book, like The Anarchist's Cook-book in the sixties. Except that Bond even gives instructions for putting together a nuclear bomb.
The police had broken up the high school enterprise. But not before “Kate King” got her copy.
Then, when her mother next talked about her friends, Rachel Ray said, “I've got something you'll be interested in, Mother.”
Mother had looked at the Bond. #dpBombs?”
“I thought you said you guys wanted to do something.”
So Rachel joined the “group” and they had ended up doing something.
Kathryn Morgason brought media know-how. She'd been a copywriter before she married her television magnate.
Lillian Ray had the contacts that led to an illicit dynamite supplier. She was an assistant professor of sociology.
And Charlotte Vivien had the money. And the driving energy. She wanted to spend both on something more significant than giving great parties and sponsoring poets in residence.
And between them they had scared the shit out of a city.
“But we never once considered that someone might pick up one of our bombs and use it,” Lillian Ray said.
There was a chorus of agreement.
“Nobody did use it,” I said.
“What?”
“Wait here.”
Bobbie Lee stood by and watched me take the plastic bag from my trunk. She called to me as I headed back to the room, “I can tell from the way you're walking that it's going all right. What's in the bag? Lunch?”
“Yup,” I said. But I winked.
Getting their bomb back didn't make them feel better. That was good.
They didn't deserve to feel better. The atmosphere they created had nerved up the imitators who put a man in the hospital.
But I had made the decision that I had to make. I would not give the police their names.
“So,” I said, “what do you people plan to do to make amends?”
Chapter Sixty Three
WHEN I CLOSED THE TRUNK I got in the car and faced Bobbie Lee. I said, “You still in this?”
“It's borderline. The excitement of doing nothing night and day is almost more than I can bear.”
“If everything goes all right,” I said, “I'll be able to give you a lot of work soon.”
“So you keep promising.”
“We might even work out some kind of partnership or something.”
“You get the jobs and I do them? You know what's going on and I don't? You go into the motel and I sit outside? Thanks, fella, but I know all about partnerships like that.”
She followed me to College Avenue. Cecil Redman's “flat-back” truck was not outside his house.
We parked in front of the house next door. The house I loved, with its veranda and its gables and its decaying arch.
Bobbie Lee watched as I went to my trunk and took out two suitcases and a plastic bag.
I carried everything to the house.
The door was locked, but that was no problem. I walked in through the wall.
The idea was to dump the bomb makings somewhere anonymous, as if the Scum Front had done it.
I found myself in the living room. Artistically, I favored a dump in the fireplace. It was big enough, and the remains of the mantelpiece showed that it had been a beautiful feature.
But there was a massive hole in the floor in front of it and the signs of rot nearby convinced me to take a more practical course.
There was a closet in the room. I put the suitcases and the bag in that.
I spent a long time dealing with possible fingerprints.
Then I leaned the closet door against the frame from which it once had swung.
“I want you to watch the house,” I told Bobbie Lee.
“Makes a change from watching a motel, I guess,” she said.
“Kids play around here sometimes. They shouldn't play with what I left inside.”
She said nothing.
“But the cops will be here soon. You can go when they arrive.”
“And what building do I sit outside a
fter that?”
“My office,” I said. “With any luck I shouldn't be all that long. And I want to talk to you about our future.”
“Our future?”
Miller was out when I arrived, but his secretary let me wait in his room while she tracked him down.
Captains get comfortable chairs. I leaned back and put my feet up on his blotter.
Miller would not like it when I refused to give him the membership list of the Scum Front.
But I would counter by offering to phone in an anonymous tip-off about where he could find a closet full of explosives. In the closet he would also find a farewell message from the Scummies. “Continuing police pressure,” it would say, “has forced us to end our campaign prematurely. We very much regret our contribution to the atmosphere that led OTHERS to injure the Ohio Street night watchman. We oppose physical violence of any kind. We now see that our campaign was misguided, however laudable its aims.”
A literary analyst might see that the style of the Farewell Message differed from Early Scum Front.
I didn't think the police would care a lot about that.
I was betting that they would settle for being given the credit for driving the Scum Front out of existence. And recovering the bomb-making stuff would give them something physical to show the press and the public.
I was betting that would be enough. That they wouldn't also insist on a body. Someone to prosecute. Someone to spit at. Not when they still had other, “real” bombers to find. Nuts who had blown up a building on Ohio Street and a man with it. And about them I genuinely knew nothing.
As for the Scummie Wrap-up, surely Miller needn't even “know” who tipped him off.
I might just get out of the whole thing unscathed.
Could that happen? Was it possible even though we were dealing with terrorists here, however dangerless? Wouldn't someone have to pay?
I finally heard footsteps outside.
I took a breath and prepared.
As Miller walked through the door I said, “Come on in, Jerry. Sit down. Get comfy. But I warn you, you're not going to like everything I have to say.”
Miller said nothing. He just stood. He looked terrible but before I had a chance to make a crack about it he was roughly pushed aside.
Behind him a man came through the door with a gun in his hand.
I recognized the man from pictures. And from Charlotte Vivien's party, a lifetime ago. He was the Chief of Police.
“Consorting with terrorists, huh, Samson?” he said. “Well, you're not going to like everything I have to say either.”
Miller finally spoke. He said, “Sorry, Al. Sorry.”
Chapter Sixty Four
EVENTUALLY THEY GOT tired of listening to me not answer their questions. They decided to talk in private with my lawyer. So they left me alone. Locked in a secure cell, but alone. I was more grateful for the peace than I could say.
Not that anybody asked.
After about an hour the door clanked. I jumped up. I thought my lawyer was back.
But the door did not open.
I said, “Hello? Hello? Who's there?”
“Chow time,” a man outside said.
“Oh.”
Nothing happened for a moment. Then a square panel in the door slid open, about eye high. I saw an eye. The eye was opened wide and curious. It pressed close to the hole. “So you're the Scum Front,” the man outside my cell said. “What a disappointment.”
On my lawyer's advice, I said nothing.
“I was sure you guys was young, not middle-aged and pudgy. I thought at least you'd look wild. But you don't look tough or anything.”
“What is the time of day, please?”
“Took your watch away, huh?”
“They thought I might hang myself with it.”
The eye glanced away. “Quarter past five. You want this food or not?”
“Is there a doughnut?” I felt like someone to talk to.
“A what?”
“Yeah, I'll take the food,” I said.
The door clanked again before I finished explaining the nature of life to the chocolate pudding. My spoon was poised for life's punch line.
This time there were two male voices.
One I didn't recognize said, “Only a minute. Jesus, you know what kind of chance I'm taking?”
“I know,” the other man said. That voice I knew.
The door opened and Miller came in.
I stood up. We faced each other. Neither of us spoke. Sometimes that's the way people who know each other well talk best.
Then he shrugged and said, “Damn it, Al, you called me. You said you'd done things for the Scum Front. You know what the pressure's been like around here.”
“So you told somebody?”
He nodded. “I just had to. I couldn't keep that kind of shit to myself.”
“You could have waited,” I said. “You could have waited till you heard what I had to say.”
But he hadn't waited. That made him just like me. I could have waited to phone him when I thought the Scummies set the bomb off on Ohio Street. But I hadn't waited to check.
“I'll do whatever I can for you, Al. You know that.”
He left before I could think of anything else I wanted to say.
So, Go-for-It Detective, here you are in jail. I hope you like it, 'cause you're going to be here a long time.
I don't know if I agree with that.
Do you honestly expect a suspected member of the Scum Front to get bail?
I'm no member of the Scum Front. The cops know that.
But they're going to want you for a scapegoat, sunshine.
Yeah, maybe.
No maybe about it.
Well, even cops don't always get what they want.
Get real, gumshoe.
I'll get out. I'll trade them for what's in the arched house on College.
Oh yeah?
I've just got to get the timing right.
And meanwhile Bobbie Lee sits outside?
I feel bad about that. But it's nearly six o'clock. She'll have figured out that things didn't go according to plan.
Plan? Plan?
Yeah, well. . .
So why not just tell the cops the goddamn names and be done with it? Now, that would get you out of here. But I don't want to tell them the names. Judge Samson again, is it?
I guess maybe it is. And it's my life. I'm entitled.
So what are you going to do with your life. Judge?
That is not entirely within my control.
What do you want to do with your life. Judge?
Ah. That's a hard one. All I know for sure at the moment are the things I don't want.
Such as?
I don't want the Franks and their commercials. I don't want endless messages on an answering machine. I don't want to have to spend sunny afternoons typing up invoices. I don't want to be under pressure and tired all the time.
So it's like your mother said? “We aren't all meant to be successful, son.”
I just don't want to be successful as a Go-for-It Private Detective, that's all.
Just as well If you think you're going to get out of here with a P.I. license, you're crazy.
Hey, give me a break. Get off my case. You want to know what's going to happen to me? You want to know how this will go?
Yeah, tell me.
O.K. What will happen is this. I'll get out on bail in exchange for giving the cops the bomb-making stuff and farewell message.
And they'll think they're on a roll. Only the roll will stop there, because I won't play anymore. But while they're huffing and puffing and making my life miserable, another bomb will go off. It'll be obvious it's not the Scum Front. And they'll turn their attention to that because they know full well that chasing bombers who bomb is more important than chasing bombers who don't. And they'll catch the others, and that'll give them people to parade. Meanwhile I'll have all the lawyering that Charlotte Vivien's money can buy. And what
the lawyering will buy is time.
Time?
Maybe it will drag on for a couple of years, but the longer it goes, the further out of mind the Scum Front will be. Face it: they never killed anybody and they never blew anything up. And one day Albert Samson will receive a letter saying that all charges have been dropped.
Yeah, O.K. That's possible.
Damn right it's possible.
But tell me this. What will Albert Samson do in the meantime? Because no way do you keep your license.
They'll “suspend” my license. That's what they'll do. They'll suspend it for a long time. And after charges get dropped the lawyers can go to work on getting it back.
But meanwhile?
Maybe Bobbie Lee will run the business.
And Albert Samson lives on the profits? Ho-ho.
I don't know. I don't know.
No way is your woman going to support you.
At least she'll understand.
For a while. But then she'll need you to get off your butt and do something.
Well, how about fixing up decaying houses? Making them into places where people could live again? I like the idea of that.
Are we talking about more of Charlotte Vivien's money?
A loan. It would be an investment.
Doesn't that smack of corruption, Judge Samson?
Well, maybe. And maybe I wouldn't be able to stomach it. But then again, maybe I would. I'll need some time to think about all that. And time is suddenly something I have a lot of.
About the Author
MICHAEL Z. LEWIN is the award-winning author of many mystery novels and short stories. Most have been set in and around Indianapolis, Indiana, where he grew up. Albert Samson is a low-key private eye and the stories focus on humane understanding of the cases and problems Samson encounters. Leroy Powder is an irascible Indy police lieutenant who truly wants his colleagues to become better cops. They’re bound to be grateful, right? Both central characters have an abiding wish to see justice done. One of the features of the series novels, and some stand-alones, is that that main characters from one book often appear in lesser roles in other books.
Since 1971 Mike has lived in the West of England, currently in Bath where his city-centre flat overlooks the nearby hills. Both his children have made careers in the arts. Masses more information and silly stuff is available on www.MichaelZLewin.com.
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