The Road To Ruin

by Donald E. Westlake

  Mark said, “I saw it, too. Between the eyes.”

  “Horses,” breathed Flip.

  They all frowned at him. Buddy, dubious as could be, said, “Horses?”

  “He’s got a couple horses,” Flip told them, “but his trainer quit. He doesn’t know how to ride, and he wants to learn.”

  Ace said, “What good does—”

  Mark said, “Let him tell us, Ace,” and Ace looked surprised at the interruption and on the brink of being offended when Mac quietly said, “Okay, Ace,” and Ace subsided.

  So then Flip said, “Twice he asked me if I knew a horse-riding trainer, but I don’t. But now I could.”

  Os said, “Flip, that’s very nice, but that electric fence is too high. Even if you knew how to ride, you couldn’t jump that fence.”

  “I’m not talking about jumping any fences,” Flip told him. “Think about horses. How do they get anywhere? Do they walk? Never. Horses ride!”

  Mac said, “Say, you’re right.”

  “We’ve all seen them,” Flip said, “the horse carriers, the trailers, high solid sides, you can never see into them, except a horse’s tail at the window at the back.”

  “And one of these days,” Mac said, “if I get your meaning, Flip, that horse’s tail is going to be Monroe Hall.”

  40

  HALL WAS VERY PLEASED with the additions to his staff. Far from being third-raters, lummoxes that Henry Cooper would palm off on him because he knew he could—what, in fact, Hall himself would have done if the positions were reversed—these four newcomers were just fine.

  Swope, for instance, the new security man. According to Yancey, chief of that section, he was going to be a solid addition down there. “Very handy if we should have an incident,” is the way Yancey had put it.

  As for the driver, Gillette, even the awful Mrs. Parsons gave him high marks, “a very agreeable young man,” and Mrs. Parsons, in Monroe Hall’s experience, had never liked anything on this earth except Alicia. He well knew she hated him personally and would talk against him to Alicia if Alicia would permit it, but she would not. She wouldn’t fire the old shrew, but at least she wouldn’t let the woman poison her mind. Hall could do nothing but keep out of the old bat’s way, eat her food—surprisingly delicious, coming from such a sour source—and wait for some friendly pneumonia to take her away.

  Of the newcomers, the butler, Rumsey, was the most problematic, but that was only because, as Hall had to keep reminding himself, he just didn’t look like a butler. What he mostly looked like to Hall was a second-story man, someone whose slouching shoulders and hangdog expression would show in their best light at a police lineup. On the other hand, he certainly showed willing enough, and was Johnny-on-the-spot if needed, which he really hadn’t been yet.

  In any event, the best of the addition was the private secretary, Fred Blanchard. And to think he’d almost failed to hire the man. He was a dynamo, Blanchard, and he was worth his salary if all he did was remind Monroe Hall what his life used to be like.

  There was a second, smaller desk in Hall’s office, with less of a view, for the use of a secretary, empty ever since he’d immured himself on this property. That desk had been occupied in the old days by a series of impersonally efficient middle-aged women who’d handled his mail, his telephone, and his appointments without ever making much impact on him.

  Blanchard wasn’t like that. He was active over there. The first thing he’d done was dig out the phone book and order a subscription to the local newspaper, the Argosy-Bee. When Hall had objected that he’d never felt a need to know what might be in the pages of the Argosy-Bee, Blanchard had cheerfully said, “We need to know our neighborhood, Mr. Hall, because it’s the springboard for our return to society.”

  “Are we returning to society?”

  “Absolutely! You’ve made your mistakes, but who hasn’t? You’ve suffered, you’ve repented. The world wants to welcome you back, it just doesn’t know it yet. But it will, it will.”

  More phone calls followed: a subscription to a clipping service, “because we need to know what they’re saying about us, so we can correct it,” calls to the local offices of national charities to offer the possibility of money and space for future events, calls to hospitals, volunteer fire departments, Boy and Girl Scouts, on and on.

  What Hall was seeing here was community outreach with a vengeance, a thing he could never have done on his own, but which, as he watched Blanchard schmooze his way through the good people, gave him at last hope for the future.

  The problem was, the only thing he was really good at was fleecing his fellow man. He’d been born rich, so it might have seemed redundant, but he’d also been born with this peculiar skill. It was his only skill, and also his main pleasure.

  But once you’ve become publicly successful as a voracious cheat, as unfortunately Monroe Hall had, you could never ply your skill again, because now everybody was alert. He was retired now, despite himself, and like many retirees, he had absolutely no idea what to do with himself. He had everything he’d ever worked for, except the work itself.

  Wait. In a pause in Blanchard’s phoning, here came an incoming call, which Blanchard took with smooth proficiency: “Hall residence, Blanchard speaking. Who may I say? One moment, please.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece, turned to Hall, and said, “We’ll want the phone company to give us a phone with a hold button.”

  “Fred? Who is it?”

  “Oh. Somebody called Morriscone, Flip Morriscone. Yes? No?”

  “What, is he not coming tomorrow, too? Let’s see what the excuse is this time.” Snatching up the phone on his own desk, he snapped, “Hall here,” as Blanchard hung up.

  Flip’s tone was as happy as ever; apparently, the IRS visit hadn’t been overly painful, after all. “Hi, Mr. Hall. Guess what?”

  “I’m no good at guessing, Flip.”

  “I found you a riding instructor!”

  Astonished, Hall said, “You mean horses?”

  “Well, I don’t know what else you’re going to ride, Mr. Hall. Sure, horses. His name is Jay Gilly, and he wants to know if he can come by tomorrow afternoon. Around two?”

  “That would be perfect, Flip.”

  “Here’s the thing, though,” Flip said. “Since you’re a beginner, he wants to bring his own horses.”

  “I have horses, Flip.”

  “He knows that. But these are special, trained to be gentle with new riders. He’ll bring them in his own horse trailer, and take them away again after the lesson. Okay?”

  “Well, if that’s what he wants to do. And I suppose he’ll talk about fees when he gets here.”

  “Oh, sure. Be sure to leave his name at the gate, Mr. Hall. Jay Gilly, with a horse trailer. Two tomorrow.”

  “I’ll call the gate right now,” Hall promised. “Thank you, Flip.”

  “My pleasure, Mr. Hall.”

  Hanging up, Hall said, “Fred, call the gate. There’ll be somebody coming through at two tomorrow afternoon. His name is Jay Gilly, and he’ll be bringing horses in a trailer.”

  “Right away,” Blanchard said, and did it, and then Hall said to him, “Ever ride horseback, Fred?”

  “I bet on them a couple times,” Blanchard said, “so now I don’t trust them.”

  41

  IT WAS ALL FALLING APART, because nobody wanted to play Jay Gilly. Mac could see the way things were trending, and he just didn’t like it at all.

  They were all gathered in Flip Morriscone’s office, all except Flip, who’d had to go off to tend to another client. “Just pull the door shut when you go,” he’d told his new best friends. They’d assured him they would, and he’d grinned around at them all, said, “Revenge is sweet,” and left.

  But revenge wasn’t being sweet at the moment. Right now, it was turning more sour by the second, and all because nobody was willing to be Jay Gilly. We should have worked this out before Flip made the call, Mac told himself. But in that case, he pointed out to himself, he sti
ll wouldn’t have made it, would he?

  It was Buddy’s contention that Mark Sterling was the ideal Jay Gilly, vociferously backed up by Ace. Their argument was class: “It has to be one of you guys,” Buddy said. “We don’t look like horse people, us three, we look like what we are, which is working stiffs.”

  “That’s right,” Ace agreed. “We couldn’t hoity-toity if you held a gun to our head.”

  “Well, I’m not quite sure what ‘hoity-toity’ might be,” Mark snipped, giving a perfect example of the thing itself, “but neither Os nor I could portray this Gilly fellow for a very good reason. Monroe Hall knows us.”

  “Exactly,” Os said. “We were in business together, worse luck.”

  That stopped everybody for a second, but then Ace said, “He knows you. You’re buddies all the time now? Or were you in an office here and there with a bunch of other guys, sittin around a table, robbin the widows and orphans together, ten guys in a room for an hour, he’s gonna remember you?”

  “Yes,” Mark said.

  Os said, “He’ll certainly remember me. Last time I saw him, I threw a golf trophy at him. If he hadn’t ducked, I’d have shot that upraised golf club straight into his left eye.”

  “Well, that’s you,” Ace said. “What about your pal here? What’s to make him stand out in Hall’s memory?”

  “I’m the one,” Mark said, “who wrestled Os to the ground, then wasted two or three minutes apologizing to the bastard.”

  “Never apologize,” Os said.

  Ace said, “You could go in disguise.”

  Mark looked revolted. “Disguise? Some Santa Claus beards? Those false spectacles with the eyebrows and the nose?”

  “Well, a better disguise than that,” Ace said. “Like they do in the movies.”

  “We can contribute the horse trailer,” Mark reminded them, “and one horse, but that’s the extent of our contribution.”

  It was true. It turned out that Mark had some cousin over in New Jersey who was connected with horse people, and had arranged for the loan of a horse trailer with horse. Tomorrow morning, Mark and Os would drive to New Jersey to get the thing. But in the afternoon, who would drive it to Monroe Hall’s place?

  Mac said, “Mark, I see the problem, we all do really see the problem. Monroe Hall would recognize you. But Buddy’s right, we three don’t look like horse people.”

  “Well, now, there you’re wrong,” Mark told him. “Yes, it’s true, there are some upper-crust horse people. The Windsors come to mind. But mostly, you know, they’re arrivistes. And in any case, a riding instructor isn’t part of the horsey set, any more than a trainer or a groom. These are people standing in horseshit every day of their lives, the ones who actually work with the beasts. The owners are well away somewhere, only to appear when it’s time to grace the winner’s circle. Mac, you know what you have to do.”

  This was the bad place where it had all been trending, and now here it was. Knowing there was no way out, no one else to whom he could hand off this intimidating task, he sighed, long and deep, and said, “Mark, tell me you know enough about those people so you can teach me how to pass.”

  “Done,” Mark said.

  Os, deadpan, said, “Mac, you will look smashing in jodhpurs.”

  42

  “ARE THEY STILL BEHIND US?” Mark asked. No matter how he crunched down, he couldn’t get a useful image from the mirror outside his passenger door.

  “Of course they’re still behind us,” Os said. He was not in the best of tempers. “If they weren’t still behind us, would I still be driving?”

  Mark resisted the desire to say, “God knows.” Instead, deciding it was time to placate his partner, he said, “I know you’d rather we didn’t have to do this.”

  “And how right you are.”

  “But there’s just no alternative. I’ve thought and thought—”

  “I’ve thought and thought,” Os assured him, “and if there were any alternative at all, some dotty absent relation of your own, for instance, we would be hotfooting in that direction this instant.”

  Of course. Mark knew, from long experience of Os, it was time now to let it go, permit Os to fume in silence and gradually come to accommodate the situation. It was only when he was argued with, or even merely talked with, that Os would move on from disgruntled to ominous.

  The problem was what to do with Monroe Hall once they got their hands on him. They would certainly have to hold him for a few days at least, while they pressured him to do their bidding and reassured themselves the money transfers had actually been made. The place to hold him would have to be isolated, yet Internet-linked, and anonymous enough that Hall wouldn’t be able to find or identify it afterward. The three union members in the Taurus behind them were totally useless when it came to such a place, and Mark had to admit he was useless as well. The only answer, which Os was reluctantly forced to admit, was his aunt Elfreda’s lodge up in the mountains. Thither they were going now; to be certain it could accommodate them.

  This lodge had been in Os’s family since the family’s income was based on coal and railroads, built by some ancestor of his as a manly midwinter retreat for hunting and poker, no wives allowed. As time moved on, and customs changed, the lodge became more of a family location, with skiing for the most part to replace the hunting. But the lodge was still only used in the depths of the winter, the family having other places to go and other things to do the rest of the year.

  Aunt Elfreda, a much-married lady of innumerable offspring, had inherited the lodge years ago and used it now mostly for vast holiday get-togethers, followed by smaller more ad hoc ski weekends. The lodge had become Internet-connected some years ago, because many of Elfreda’s children and their spouses were in commerce and wouldn’t have been able to participate in the jollity if their umbilical to the office were disconnected.

  Off-season, such as now, the lodge was shut up tight, protected by alarm systems with which Os was of course familiar. The next legitimate human presence in or around the lodge would be in early December, when the caretaker family from the town twenty miles away would come to clean and tidy and stock the place with provisions for the new season.

  The roads northeastward toward the lodge were increasingly narrow, winding, and hilly, as they moved up into the Allegheny mountains. Towns were few and far between, and Mark was surprised, when they approached one of them, to be greeted by a sign that read GRISSLE. As they passed among the hamlet’s six houses, one church, and combination post office/gas station/convenience store, he said, “Grissle? The town is called Grissle?”

  “It’s where the caretakers live,” Os said. “We’ll be there very soon now.”

  Well, not very soon. It was another twenty miles, higher into the heavily forested mountains, with the occasional dirt road wandering off to left or right, but at last Os took one of those side roads, leftward, and now it really got steep. “They’re having a little trouble back there,” Os said, smiling at the rearview mirror. “But they’ll be along.”

  Up, up, and all at once the lodge appeared. At first there were a pair of elaborate stone gateposts to the sides of the road, but without a gate. Beyond them, the forest had been thinned somewhat but not entirely cleared, and the road curved up to a stop in front of what looked like the world’s biggest log cabin, girdled all around with broad porches and featuring massive stone chimneys at both ends. All the windows were covered with sheets of plywood. Separate outbuildings, also of logs, seemed to be garages and storage sheds.

  Os stopped the Porsche just before the gateposts. “First line of defense,” he announced, shifted into park, and got out of the car.

  Twisting around, Mark saw the Taurus slowly make its way up the road. Turning instead to watch Os, he saw him open what had appeared to be just another stone in the lefthand gatepost, but which now turned out to be a fake, with a hinge. Inside was an alarm keypad, on which Os rapidly punched out a number, then closed the fake stone and came back to the car. Pausing besid
e it, he called down to the Taurus occupants, “Courage, mes amis!” then got chuckling behind the wheel and drove on up to the house.

  Here, it turned out the keypad was behind a concealed panel on a support post of the porch roof, just at the top of the four-step stoop. Os played another brief etude on it, then turned to the front door as the Taurus stopped below, just behind the Porsche. The three union men got out and were clearly suitably impressed, staring around in awe. “And this,” Buddy said, “is the house they don’t use.”

  As they came up the stoop, it was Ace, naturally, who said, “How come there’s no windows? Afraid of snipers?”

  “They’re covered in the off-season,” Mark explained.

  Os, who’d taken a key from a niche in the log wall and was using it to open the door, said, “Rodents will eat through the wood between the windowpanes, when the house isn’t occupied. They like the grout.”

  “And the plywood makes it perfect for us,” Mark said.

  Os opened the door and they all trooped into a very dark room. “One mo,” Os said, marched into the darkness, and a minute later he switched on a table lamp beside a sofa. A very large room sprang into existence, more like the lobby of a fake-rustic hotel than somebody’s living room.

  Buddy said, “They leave the electricity on? All year round?”

  “Of course,” Os said, and it was left to Mark to explain, “For the alarms, and you have to have some heat in the place.”

  “And,” Os added, “one must maintain the temperature and humidity in the wine cellar.”

  “Oh, yeah,” Buddy said. “I didn’t thinka that.”

  Mac said, “Mark, what did you mean, the plywood makes it perfect for us?”

  “Hall won’t be able to see out,” Mark told him. “He won’t be able to identify a thing.”

  Os said, “A couple of laptops are kept here, with the phone number installed for local Internet access. When the family’s here, anyone who needs to log on can take a laptop to his bedroom, plug it into the phone line there, and do whatever he wants. So that means we can put Hall in any of the bedrooms. They all have attached baths, and they all have doors that lock.”