Guilt by Association

by Gilbert, Morris

  “And sitting beside him is Sid Valentine.” Valentine sat straighter and looked directly at Dani with a pair of hard, black eyes. He had a pale, sharp-featured face, coal-black hair, and appeared to be around forty. “Sid is from New Jersey, Miss Ross,” Holtz continued. “He came here less than a week ago, and we’re still getting acquainted. Would you like to greet Miss Ross, Sid?”

  Valentine gave Holtz a sharp look. He had an air of covert suspicion in his lean face, and he only shook his head silently.

  “No? Well, perhaps you’ll have something later. Sitting beside Mr. Valentine is Mr. Bix Bently. He’s the youngest member of our little group, in years, if not in experience. Bix is a musician. Unfortunately we have no instruments here, which is a source of disappointment to him.”

  Bently was no more than eighteen or nineteen, Dani guessed. He had a full head of blond hair, a rather good-looking face, and pale-blue eyes. When he placed them on Dani, she saw in him some of the same reckless spirit she’d seen when doing investigations for the attorney general among some rockers. He was not much older than her brother, but a weariness in his eyes made him seem so. He’d tried everything, she guessed, and nothing had brought any satisfaction. Burnt out by twenty—and absolutely convinced that the values held by his elders were false.

  He was wearing an oversized sweatshirt and a pair of faded cutoffs and sported a Fu Manchu moustache. “Hey, pretty lady,” he said lifting a thin hand. “Awesome!”

  Holtz shook his head, saying, “Later on, Bix. You’ll have plenty of time to convince Miss Ross that the world is a terrible place.” He nodded at one of the two men who sat at a table close to Bently. “Mr. Vince Canelli lists Detroit as his hometown and is in business there.”

  “Hi!” Canelli nodded. “Sorry you got sucked into this, Dani, but you’ll add a little class to the joint.”

  Canelli looked very much like a younger version of Dean Martin—only much harder. Swarthy skin, curly black hair, and the sturdy neck of a lineman complemented his straight nose and wide mouth, along with a tough-looking chin and a pair of large, dark eyes. All went together to give him a raffish look, like a buccaneer, Dani thought. Most of the others, except for Holtz, seemed subdued by their plight, but there was no fear in the eyes of Canelli, and he smiled at her in the practiced way of a man who has had almost unlimited success with women. The man might be handsome and even cultivated in a rough way—but he had the eyes of a carnivore.

  “And finally, we have Mr. Lonnie Gibbs of Corning, Arkansas.” Holtz smiled, indicating the thick-set young man who had served the food.

  “Aw, I guess we done met, ain’t we, Dani?” Lonnie said. “It was me that carried you to your bunk.”

  She smiled and said, “Thank you very much.”

  “Anytime!” He was, she saw, no more than five ten, but he had thick shoulders and a chest that filled his thin, blue sport shirt. A large stomach spilled over his belt, and light-brown pants encased a pair of short, heavy legs. His light skin would sunburn when subjected to the weather, and his face was round and cheerful. He had a set of large ears, light-blue eyes and tow-colored hair.

  “That’s all of us, I think,” Holtz said. “You met all the ladies?”

  Dani said, “All except this one. Betty, is it?”

  “Ach!” Holtz said, shaking his head. “This is Mrs. Betty Orr, the most important person in this place. She is our cook.” He gave the woman an affectionate look and said, “If not for her, I think we would have been in terrible shape.”

  Betty Orr was in no way outstanding, Dani saw, unless her large, light-brown eyes, filled with a warm intelligence, could be so designated. But a pair of gold-rimmed glasses shielded them. She was no more than five foot three or four and thinly compact. When she spoke her voice was flat, with a Midwest twang. “I come from Saint Louis—and I hope you can cook!”

  Dani laughed and nodded. “Not as well as you, I am sure. But I will do my best.”

  Betty smiled then, and it made her look almost pretty. “Well, that’ll be a blessing.”

  “Now, Miss Ross, would you care to introduce yourself?” Holtz asked.

  Dani slowly stood, feeling the weight of their eyes. She was an accomplished public speaker, but never had she felt so awkward. “I’m still confused about all this,” she said slowly. Looking around at the circular walls that rose up into the murky darkness, she shook her head. “If there were an easy way out of this place, you would have found it by now. I might as well tell you that I’m scared stiff!” She heard the small laugh that went around and nodded, “But as that famous American philosopher Yogi Berra once said, ‘It ain’t over, till it’s over.’” She saw Vince Canelli’s lips curl upward in a smile, and Lonnie laughed out loud. “So I don’t have much to say. I have a family and things to do in the world. All of you do. And I believe that somehow, someday, I’ll be out there doing them.”

  She sat down, and Karen said, “Good, Dani. It’s what we need to hear.” Then she got up and said, “Our turn to bus tables, isn’t it, Alex?”

  He rose, and the two began to clean the tables. Dani was surrounded at once by the men, and Rachel took note of it. She smiled grimly, and said to Betty, “Just what we needed, Betty. A glamour girl!”

  “She’s not that kind,” Betty shook her head firmly. “Very attractive, but not a chaser.” Then her lips tightened, and she added, “I’ve seen enough of that kind to know!”

  “Doesn’t matter,” Rachel insisted. “With looks like hers, there’ll be trouble. Look at Vince. He’s like a fox in the chicken house, isn’t he? I wouldn’t be surprised to see him lick his chops!”

  “Maybe now he’ll stop pestering you, Rachel.” Betty gave the younger woman a knowing look.

  Rachel shook her long, black hair in an impatient gesture, then walked away without answering. Candi had come up in time to hear the last of the conversation, and said, “Don’t be too sure she wants Vince to leave her alone, Betty.” A sharp, triumphant light touched her eyes, and she nodded. “He lost interest in her when I came along.”

  “I guess we all know that.” Betty’s mouth became prim, and she turned and walked away from Candi, her back straight.

  Dani was kept busy for nearly an hour, and by the time Holtz came to rescue her, she felt tired.

  “Come, now, let Miss Ross have a rest!” he exclaimed. “We’ll smother her, if we’re not careful.

  “I know you’re tired, but may I show you one thing?”

  “Of course, Commander.” She followed him and saw an angry expression on Vince’s face, though he made no comment. He hates to be crossed, Dani thought.

  The hour had given her time to study her new acquaintances, and of them all, Holtz was the most interesting. “Commander of what?” she asked as he took her to the comparative privacy of a table set along the wall just opposite the kitchen.

  “I was commander of the Triton, a German submarine.” He watched her face. When she said nothing, his tense expression relaxed. “You are not still fighting that war, I see.” When she looked at him in astonishment, he added with a gesture of his head, “Rachel Gold is, I’m afraid. She’s Jewish, of course, and anything German is anathema to her.”

  “But she wasn’t even born until that war was over!”

  “No, but some of her relatives died at Buchenwald.”

  “I see.”

  “Well, you’ll hear about that from her, I’m sure,” he said brusquely. “Here is what I’d like you to do. . . .” He took a sheaf of paper out of a notebook that lay on a small table and gave it to her. “This is a little experiment of mine. If you would fill it out, I would appreciate it.” Dani saw that it consisted of long lists of items—cities, occupations, relatives, and many others.

  “You’re trying to find the common denominator?” she asked.

  “Ah! You are very fast!” He smiled and added, “An accountant is what we need. Someone who has the determination to go through long lists with no impatience.”

  “Well, actually,
Commander, I’m now a private investigator.” His eyes flew open in surprise as she told him of her new work, and he looked pleased.

  “That is even better!” he exclaimed. “We can now work together. The others do not see the importance of this. Some of them will not even take time to fill out the papers.”

  She looked at the people and then around at the steel walls. “What is this thing we’re in, Karl?”

  Warming at her use of his name, he said, “It is what is called a grain elevator. Here, I will show you.”

  He took another folder off the table, which evidently served as a desk, and found a notebook. Opening it, he said, “You’ve seen grain elevators, I’m sure. They’re called silos in some parts of the country. Most of them are like this, huge round tanks as much as ten or twelve stories high—and usually in groups of five or more, all side by side.”

  He put two sheets of paper in front of her and said, “This one has been made into a prison—an escape-proof prison, one is tempted to say. Looking at Drawing A. . . .” He pointed out the features of the neat drawing of two circles with the furnishings and inner walls.

  “As you see, two of these silos have been made into one by cutting a door. One silo is for sleeping; the other is for cooking and lounging. We call this the rec room.”

  Dani stared at the drawing as he went over the features. Finally she said, “It’s odd, isn’t it? The way he’s provided separate sleeping arrangements—for men and women—and the bathroom door can be locked.”

  Holtz nodded with approval. “You are a detective, Miss Ross! It tells us something about whoever it is. He may have kidnapped us, but he has some sort of morality. It would have been much simpler to have put all the bunks in that one sleeping area, but he did not do that.”

  “A strange sort of morality,” Dani mused.

  “There is something else strange,” Holtz said. He pointed out the bunks with a thick forefinger. “There are exactly twelve of them. Seven in the men’s quarters, five in the women’s quarters. They are all welded to the bulkheads—the walls, that is—and I will prophesy that you are the last arrival.”

  “You’re saying whoever it is planned for us specifically?”

  “Yes! Nothing was left to chance.”

  Dani touched the second drawing. “What’s this? A horizontal view of the silo?”

  “Yes. I cannot say how high this structure is.” He tapped the other drawing marked Drawing B. “At least one hundred feet high, I would say, and there is no way in or out, except through the roof.”

  “No doors?”

  “Not now. There were two small ones, but they have been welded shut.” He looked up into the dark overhead space. “You came down from up there in a large supply box.” With a short laugh he added, “The supply box looks almost exactly like a coffin, about two by six. It’s made that size so that our unknown captor could send us down in it. We all came here the same way you did. Every bite of food, everything, must come the same way.”

  He motioned toward the wall. “There’s a slot in the wall over there—the only opening of any kind in this silo, except for the door at the top, which the supply box passes through, and those four vents.” He pointed toward the small openings, about thirty feet high, through which the sun shone in bars of light. “We put messages through the slot, orders for food, clothing, medicine—things like that.”

  “Do you get the things you ask for?”

  “Sometimes exactly what we request—sometimes nothing. I have the idea that someone takes the orders, gets whatever’s handy, and ignores the rest.”

  “What about that camera?” Dani indicated one fastened to the wall by a steel framework. It was about ten feet from the floor and was aimed at the center of the silo. “Are they watching us?”

  “I suspect they are, but we’ve had no message at all.”

  She leaned back and the sound of music drifted across the room. It was what musicians contemptuously call “elevator music.” She looked at the table and noticed a number of magazines and several books. “I see we have some entertainment.”

  “Not much, I’m afraid.” Holtz shook his head sadly. “We have a tape player, and from time to time they send some new tapes, but it’s all very—unsatisfying. Most of it is music from the forties, big-band sound, or else light popular music. No jazz, which drives Bix crazy, and no country-western, which Lonnie keeps ordering. And the magazines are no better. They’re all quite innocuous—Saturday Evening Post type of thing. But there are many right-wing magazines, most of which none of us had ever heard of. You know—keep America pure, that type of literature.”

  Dani sat there silently, thinking, then looked across at the German. “What have you deduced, Karl? About our being here?”

  He dropped his head for a moment, as if the weariness of time had suddenly pressed against him. Finally he lifted it and said evenly, “I have had one experience with a madman named Adolf Hitler. Now I think there is another such in the world—and we are completely at his mercy!” He rose slowly and added quietly, “I think you will find out very soon, Miss Ross, how strong your Christian faith is. As for me, I am an old man and have little to lose, but I would hate to leave this world from such a place as this. I would like to think,” he said very quietly and with a hopeful look in his blue eyes, “that there is more to life than dying like frogs in the bottom of a well!”

  5

  All the Guilty

  * * *

  These are real good, Dani,” Betty Orr remarked. She was standing beside the twin stacks of golden pancakes that Dani had made from scratch. She had picked up the last one, a small cake no more than three inches in diameter and tasted it critically. “I never was much good at pancakes myself. I made a batch a while back, out of a mix, but they weren’t anything like these!” She gave a sudden smile, adding, “You’ll be taking my job away from me, if I’m not careful!”

  Dani had been turning the sausage patties that sizzled in the huge iron skillet, but at Betty’s words she turned and patted the older woman on the shoulder. “No chance of that!” She laughed. “You’re the best cook I’ve ever seen, Betty.”

  That was not true, strictly speaking, for her own mother was at least the equal of Betty Orr, but it was close enough. After only three days in the silo, Dani had learned much about her fellow prisoners. Food and meals were of paramount importance, far more important than on the outside. The boredom of the place magnified any activity.

  Karen had told Dani, “We nearly had civil war before Betty came! None of us could cook worth a darn! We fought over who was going to cook, then complained about the meals, whoever cooked them. But when Betty came, she took over, and it’s made things a lot easier.”

  Rachel came in just at that moment and stood there, waiting to serve the breakfast. She was wearing the outfit that Dani had worn when she was brought in, and it looked very good on her. Dani commented, “You look lovely, Rachel! That looks much better on you than it does on me!” Then she warned, “You’d better put a coat on over it, though. It’s getting colder.”

  Rachel moved over to pick up the platter of pancakes. “Thank you for letting me wear it, Dani.”

  She moved away toward the tables, and Betty said quietly, “Better be sure she doesn’t put strychnine in the commander’s syrup. I wouldn’t put it past her.” She caught Dani’s surprised look, and shook her head, adding as she turned to pick up the coffeepot, “I mean it, Dani! Rachel is hard as nails. She told me once that she’d like to give Holtz what he gave the poor Jews in that concentration camp—and you should have seen those black eyes of hers! She’d do it in a minute!” Then she added, “And he feels about the same way toward her. Look at his eyes sometime, when he’s looking at Rachel!”

  Dani became accustomed to the gossip, for the close confinement intensified frictions between various inmates. Trivia that would not have mattered outside became magnified when they could never get more than a few feet away from one another.

  Lonnie and Rosie, for exa
mple, had almost come to blows over a tube of toothpaste. She had not seen it, but Vince confided that Lonnie had been ready to stomp the other into the concrete when he suspected that the slender black man had used his “personal” tube. “ If I hadn’t been there,” Vince admitted with a grin, “Lonnie would have broken his neck. Those two are sure out of step!”

  Dani noted that the two never sat at the same table or played any of the group’s interminable games together—if they did, Lonnie’s slurs nearly always ignited Rosie.

  She put two sausages on Alex Morrow’s plate, and he gave her a quick smile. “Thanks, Dani. I’ll have to take a pint of Maalox, but it’s worth it!” He was very polite, though short tempered, she quickly discovered. According to his version, he was a wealthy man, and Dani believed it. Morrow seemed accustomed to getting his own way in things, and it irritated him to have to do menial chores.

  As she served Sid, Karl, and Karen, who were sitting at his table, Dani thought of the awful row Morrow had started. It would have been comical, if he had not been so furious.

  The hot water was inadequate for all their needs. A forty-gallon tank had to provide enough to wash clothes and dishes for twelve people, in addition to twelve baths or showers. So Holtz had finally worked out a rigid bath schedule.

  On the night after Dani’s arrival, a practically hyperventilating Morrow had come raging into the rec room, his face red with anger. “Who used up all my hot water?” he had screamed. Alex had reserved the hour of eight in the evening for his shower, because that gave the hot-water tank time to catch up after the dishwashing. He liked to stand under the shower as it dripped on him slowly for a long time—until the hot water was all gone, Holtz told Dani. When he discovered Candi had slipped in before him, Alex had cursed her thoroughly. Such outrage did little good, however, for she stood toe-to-toe with him, giving as good as she got—and even a little better!