All the Bells on Earth

by James P. Blaylock

  WALT LET THE kids go from door-to-door alone. It was nearly dusk, only fifteen or twenty minutes left till dark, but he couldn’t stop them from setting out on the fund drive for Mrs. Simms. There was something endearing about them going at it alone, like two guardian angels. He’d only be a fly in the ointment if he went along. With any luck, he and Jinx could kill the day tomorrow baking cookies for the neighbors.

  He wondered suddenly if he were trying to salve his conscience with this thing. Well, so what if he was? It was good for the kids, and good for Mrs. Simms, too. In fact, it was probably good for Argyle—some kind of object lesson. Nora and Eddie stepped down off the porch of the last house now, turning to wave at old Mrs. Bord, who stood with her arms folded, beaming at them. Eddie waved the order form at Walt. By golly, they were doing it!

  They headed up Maple Street, and Walt strolled down to the corner to keep an eye on them. There were only a couple of houses on Maple, and after that, if the day held up, they could hit a couple more on Cambridge….

  An idea struck him just then, and he walked on down toward the next corner, watching the kids knock on the door of the Fillpots’ house. No one would be home. Fillpot’s Stationers, down on Glassell, didn’t close till six. “How’s it going?” Walt hollered at them.

  Nora and Eddie stood on the sidewalk, looking uncertain where to go next. “Three,” Eddie said. He held up the order form for Walt to take a look at—thirty bucks; that was ten dollars a house! There were two checks and a ten-dollar bill. Eddie gave Walt the money to hold. “I told the lady that everybody was giving ten,” he said.

  “Good,” Walt told him. “Keep it up. That’s called salesmanship.”

  “I get three prizes,” Nora said, making the rabbit face.

  “Well, not quite,” Walt said. “Not three prizes for each kid. What I meant was three prizes for each ten dollars. And if there’s one extra prize, you’ll have to share it.”

  “Oh,” Nora said.

  Walt pointed up the street, toward Argyle’s house. “See that big house down there?”

  “The really big one?” Eddie asked.

  “That’s right—with the big porch. That’s where the millionaire lives, the rich man. It’s getting late, but you’ve got time for one more house. Why don’t you try that one?”

  “I’ll talk this time,” Nora said, setting out up the sidewalk and trying to pull the order form out of Eddie’s hand. He took off running, holding the form close to his chest where she couldn’t get at it. She caught up to him at Argyle’s porch and slugged him hard on the shoulder, then turned around and looked back at Walt, who shook his head at her. She and Eddie climbed the stairs and rang the bell.

  Argyle’s car was in the driveway, so he was probably home. If Bentley was right about him, then his reaction to the kids’ homegrown “fundraiser” would be interesting in about ten different ways….

  His door swung open and Walt stepped back away from the corner, moving out of sight behind the corner house. There was no use letting Argyle see him there; this shouldn’t seem like a put-up job. After a moment he walked forward again and peeked down the street. They were just coming out through the door, and Nora was saying something to Argyle. She stopped suddenly, ran back to the open door, and he bent over so she could kiss him on the cheek. Then she ran off again, down the stairs and out to the sidewalk where both of them ran wildly toward the corner, Eddie carrying a check in his hand. Spotting Walt, Argyle waved cheerfully from the doorway, then disappeared back inside.

  What the hell did that mean? That Argyle was being gracious about it? Walt nearly laughed out loud. The man had to be seething inside, confounded, wondering what this was all about. The best he could do was to put on a good face. His smile was some kind of terrible rictus. Maybe Walt could slip some arsenic into his raisin cookies tomorrow and just do away with him completely.

  “It was Mr. Argyle!” Eddie shouted, out of breath from running.

  “Really?” Walt said. “The Mr. Argyle?”

  “From school!” Nora said. “He gave us money! Show him, Eddie! Oh, he’s … !” She jigged with excitement, bouncing from one foot to the other. “He’s such a good one!”

  Eddie handed over Argyle’s check, and Walt stared at it for a moment, unable to make immediate sense of it. He looked back down toward the house, but Argyle had gone back inside.

  The check was for twenty thousand dollars, made out to Walt Stebbins.

  “How many prizes is it?” Nora asked.

  WALT SENT THE kids inside and headed straight into the garage where he tore the check to pieces, then threw the pieces into the tin pail, resisting the urge to spit on them. Argyle wasn’t going to get away with it, whatever it was he was trying to get away with, him and his dirty money.

  Walt packed boxes, crumpling newspaper and slamming the tape dispenser onto the box tops, zipping them shut, and slapping on mail labels. The afternoon had been a dead loss—first Maggie Biggs and then this damned encounter with Argyle. And that reminded him—tomorrow morning he had to fix the Biggsmobile! He ripped open a carton hard enough to tear half the flap loose. Inside lay a gross of bug catapults along with bags of rubber beetles. He shoved the box toward the garage door, separating it from the rest. Tomorrow he’d by God take it down to the preschool and hand a bug flinger out to every kid there. Every doggone one of them would get a prize. And not because they were day laborers, either, scraping together hatfuls of money for stinking creeps like Argyle, but because they were kids, damn it, and they deserved a prize.

  Shit! The dirty son-of-a-bitch! Walt threw down the tape dispenser and kicked the leg of the bench. Argyle had done this on purpose, to throw it into their faces! First he murders Simms; then he turns the murder into a sort of monstrous joke, hosing everyone down with money. Well, it wouldn’t wash. Twenty thousand bucks was nothing to Argyle. Argyle blew his nose on twenty thousand bucks. That’s what this meant, wasn’t it? The finger. Up yours.

  He kicked the bench again, and his coffee mug fell over, spilling out a pool of cold coffee. And of course the check won’t be any damn good anyway. The damned thing would have bounced over the moon, and Walt would have looked like some kind of criminal idiot.

  The door swung open and Walt jumped. It was Ivy, smiling and happy, full of pep.

  “What’s this about a fund-raiser?” she asked. “Nora and Eddie are out of their minds with it.” She came in and kissed him on the cheek.

  Walt decided not to mention the Christmas wrap fundraiser at all. “Just an idea I had. I wanted to put together a little something for Mrs. Simms.”

  “Well, I think that’s wonderful. The kids are all full of talk about Robert Argyle. Nora tells me he gave them a million dollars.”

  “Not quite,” Walt said. “Everything’s a million dollars to Nora. You know how she is.”

  “How much, then?”

  “Well, he wrote out a check, which I guess was a kind of joke. It pisses me off, too, because he obviously did it to needle me, and now the kids are all excited. I guess he didn’t consider their feelings at all.”

  “What are you talking about?” The smile disappeared from her face.

  “See for yourself.” He gestured at the bucket, which was empty except for the torn-up check.

  Ivy bent over and picked out the pieces, getting them about half arranged on the bench top before she made out the amount. She looked at him in disbelief.

  “Obviously it’s a joke,” Walt said.

  “A joke? Why would it be a joke?”

  “Of course it’s a joke. You don’t know the whole story. Argyle’s running this bogus fund-raiser at school. Get this, he drags in thousands of dollars with these scams, putting children to work selling worthless crap door to door. Then he spends the money on computer equipment and Lord knows what-all. I’m sorry, but I just wouldn’t stand for it. I won’t play the man’s games.”

  “So you tore up a twenty-thousand-dollar check?”

  “You’re damned right I to
re it up!”

  “Don’t cuss at me. Maybe you don’t know this, but every school does fund-raisers.”

  “Non-profit schools, maybe. That makes sense. And that’s what pisses me off. That’s how he takes people, sending kids around. People trust the kids, and so they don’t think anything through. Money for a good cause, they think, and they fork it over. They don’t know that Argyle’s a filthy rich hoser who’s charging six prices already at his so-called school. He’s making a mint. But he can’t buy his own computer? The kids can’t have a slide, for God’s sake, unless they earn it themselves?” Walt shook his head. “What a stinking pig.” He picked up the tape dispenser again, looking for another box to go after, but there was nothing more packed.

  “I think we’ve drifted from the point,” Ivy said evenly. “I don’t know anything about Robert’s so-called fund-raiser. What I do know is that you tore up Mrs. Simms’s twenty thousand dollars and threw it in the trash.”

  “It isn’t that easy.”

  “It isn’t easy being Mrs. Simms right now, either.”

  “I’ve had a bad day, all right?”

  “How bad was it?”

  He gestured, unable to answer. He knew he’d been talking like a lunatic.

  “Let me tell you about my day.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “I sold the property.”

  “Which one? I thought she already bought it.”

  “Who?”

  “Mrs. Fabulous. I don’t remember her name.”

  “You mean Linda Marvel. I don’t mean that one. I mean the two commercial properties that Robert let me represent. Remember? I must have told you about it.”

  “All right, all right. Don’t get ironic. Of course you told me about it.”

  “Because of Robert Argyle I—we—made something like sixty thousand dollars today.”

  “Bring it in here,” Walt said, “I’ll tear it up for you.”

  She stood there staring at him, as if for two cents she’d knock his teeth loose. After a moment she turned around and walked out.

  49

  “I’M SORRY,” WALT said, sitting down at the foot of the bed. “I was worked up. I lost my mind.”

  She didn’t look up from her book. “Sorry is as sorry does.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “I guess so.” Clearly she was still pissed, saying insane things to avoid saying anything at all. “Anyway, I don’t know why I tore up the check. I honestly thought it was some kind of … ploy, I guess.”

  “Ploy to accomplish what?” she asked after a long silence. “Do you really think he’d go to that length to humiliate you in some weird way that nobody but you can figure out? The truth is, he’s not half as bad as you say he is.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

  “Do you?”

  “I’m pretty sure.”

  “You’re pretty sure. You’re so pretty sure that you tore up Mrs. Simms’s check?”

  “What can I do about it now, tape it back together?”

  “Take it back to Robert and ask for another check. It’s easy.”

  “Easy?”

  “Okay, I’ll take it over there. I’ll ask Robert to replace it.”

  “No,” Walt said hastily. “I’ll do it. I’ll see him tomorrow morning anyway, at the preschool.”

  “I’d do it now.”

  “You’re right. I’ll do it now.”

  Walt walked out, down the stairs and into the family room, where Nora and Eddie sat on the floor playing “Uncle Wiggly.”

  “The Pipsawa nearly got me,” Nora said.

  “Pipsisewa,” Eddie told her.

  “Nuh-uh, Pipsawa.”

  “He nearly got me too,” Walt said. “I think he did get me.”

  Out in the garage he gathered up the pieces of the check, and, forcing himself not to think too much about where he was going, he set out down the driveway.

  Then an idea came to him, and he turned around, heading back into the garage and climbing up into the rafters in order to yank out the tackle box. Argyle could have the phony parakeet after all, as payola for his generosity. He grinned at the thought of it. Climbing down, he set the box on the bench and opened the latch. The parakeet was gone.

  He looked around. Nothing else in the garage was touched. There was no ransacking, no opened boxes. Whoever had taken it had known right where to look.

  Bentley? Of course there was no way Bentley believed that Walt had thrown it away. He was too canny for that. Had he gotten the information out of Henry, the old man having revealed the bird’s hiding place thinking it didn’t matter anyway? Of course he had. Walt’s anger drained away. Bentley was on a mission. And it was a good mission, too, even if it did involve stealing another man’s bluebird.

  He went outside, angling around into the backyard where he pried up the corner of the stepping-stone. The real bird was still under there, snug and happy. It occurred to him then that the dead parakeet scam had turned out to be genius after all: even if he wouldn’t have a chance of working it on Argyle, he’d at least got to work it on Bentley.

  He walked down the driveway now, and headed up the sidewalk toward the corner. When he got down to Cambridge Street he could see that the lights were on in Argyle’s house, and his car was still in the driveway. He walked boldly up to the house and stepped up onto the porch, where he rang the bell. There was no use being timid about this whole thing. Argyle opened the door, blinked as if in puzzlement, and then smiled at him.

  “I think this fund-raiser of yours is something else,” he said immediately. “I wish I’d have thought of it myself.”

  “I bet you do,” Walt said. “Actually, there’s been a slight accident with the check that you wrote for the kids.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “The check,” Walt said. “It got torn up.” He handed Argyle the pieces.

  “This is astonishing,” Argyle said. He shook his head, dumbfounded. “Enlighten me.”

  “Well, the truth is, it got put in with the junk mail by mistake. We’ve gotten a lot of crap, flyers and like that, shoved through the slot recently. And so it got torn up by mistake.”

  “I see.” There was the hint of a leer on his face, and he nodded broadly.

  “I wonder if you could write out another one,” Walt said. “That is, if you’re still in such a generous mood.”

  “Of course, of course.” Argyle gestured toward the interior of the house. “Step inside?”

  “I’ll wait out here,” Walt said.

  “Good enough. Checkbook’s still sitting here by the door.” He turned away to pick up the checkbook, opened it up, and started scribbling in it with a pen.

  “Why don’t you make it out directly to Mrs. Simms?” Walt said.

  “Oh, I don’t want that.” Argyle waved the idea away. “I don’t want any mention of me at all. Put this in the general fund along with the rest. How much have you collected so far?”

  “Quite a bit,” Walt said. “The world’s a generous place when you give it half a chance.”

  “We agree on that,” Argyle said. He handed the check over to Walt. “There you go. Take better care of this one, eh?” He started to shut the door.

  “Oh, oh,” Walt said, looking it over. “Wait. Date’s wrong. That’s last year.” He pointed at the miswritten date. “I don’t know if the bank will go for that. It looks like the check’s a year old.”

  “I’ll be damned,” Argyle said. “Let me have it back.” He scratched at the check with his pen, then handed it over again, winking at Walt. “Good as new.” He shut the door this time.

  The date was corrected and initialed, but now Walt saw that the quantity was wrong. The comma was in the right place, but there were only three zeroes instead of four, so that it almost looked like twenty dollars, except with a couple of superfluous zeroes hovering off to the side. Walt was struck with the sudden notion that Argyle was doing this on purpose. He knocked on the door, and Argyle answered immediately, as if he’
d been waiting there.

  “Yes?” Argyle asked, wrinkling his forehead with doubt and surprise.

  “What’s the amount here?” Walt asked. “The comma seems …”

  “Why, let’s see.” He took the check again. “Very perceptive,” he said. “But you always were good with numbers, eh? Here we go …” He touched up the check again and handed it back.

  “And I think you forgot your last name,” Walt said, blocking the door with his foot now. The signature read simply “Robert P.”

  “Forgotten my name?”

  “Here on the signature.”

  “Well I’ll be … Aren’t I something!” He took the check again. “Unbelievable.”

  Hit him now, Walt thought—a haymaker to the belly while he messes with the check again, then work him over good while he’s on his hands and knees….

  Argyle gave him back the check. “Everything’s shipshape now, Cap’n,” he said, winking again. He clicked his feet together and saluted.

  Wait stared at him, leaving his foot in the door. “Looks like they’ll catch the dirty little creep who sabotaged the church bells after all,” he said.

  “That is good news.” Argyle furrowed up his face with concern, glancing unhappily at Walt’s foot.

  “Positive I.D.,” Walt said. “Someone saw the bastard on the church roof, apparently. Police thought it was Murray LeRoy at first, but this new evidence changes all that. This was some other pathetic little shithead. They figure it’s the same one that’s been vandalizing the neighborhood, writing poo-poo words on walls with a brown crayon. Apparently he’s seriously Freudian, if you follow me.”

  Argyle didn’t flinch. “I’m sure it’ll go hard on him if they catch him. And I believe your foot’s in my door.”

  “I imagine they’ll throw away the key,” Walt said, shaking his head. “What a stinking geek, don’t you think?”

  “I couldn’t agree with you more.”

  “Lowest kind of rat-eating scum, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Amen.” Argyle’s face was a mask of barely disguised loathing now.

  “A man like that blows like big rats,” Walt said, “if you can call him a man at all, which I can’t. Personally I call him a treacherous, pig-faced, insect-brained, murdering piece of dog waste. Isn’t that what you call him?”