One Fearful Yellow Eye

by John D. MacDonald

  So I sipped of coolness again, and became Fort Geis. Okay, I have dealt in the very basic life-,anddeath business for many years. I have stuck my fingers into the brain-meat after lifting off the sawed lid of bone and laying it aside. Had I been hooked on money, I would have laid away a lot more. Now here is a crazy who wants to take away what I have put aside. Pay off, Doc, or you'll die absolutely alone, because everyone who loves you and whom you love will go first. I'll wear you out with funerals, man. Dying alone is a dreary bit.

  But, I say, as the Doctor, how did you know I was dying? And, second question, how do you know how much I can come up with?

  Drop that for the moment, chimp.. It won't hold your weight.

  So as the good Doctor Geis, I look around. Nurse Stanyard can make it. Heidi is married to a lot of tax-free municipals. Roger is doing well. But what about the new wife? So negotiations are in order. Look here, old chap, I can't leave Glory without a bean. You'll have to cut the demand a bit so that I can leave some of the insurance intact so she'll have an income. Money is not important to her. It doesn't have to be much. A little security for the girl.

  Then, as I have begun the payoff routine, I find my daughter Heidi is divorcing Trumbill. She will need money. She depends upon it. I find out she is going to let Gadge off lightly. But if she can't get it from me, she better get it from him, so I run in a legal team to pluck him pretty well.

  So why did I send ten thousand to Janice Stanyard with such a vague note? Why did I refuse to talk about it to her when she came to the side of the deathbed? Who has Janice's name and address to use in case of emergency? The signs pointed to Susan, the daughter he had fathered by the housekeeper's daughter during his first wife's final fatal illness. Susan had been given a place to turn, but that had ended when the Doctor canceled his arrangement with Francisco Smith and Allied Services.

  But why Susan? Why would anyone be in danger if Geis was paying off like a good pigeon? I might guess that the insurance saved for Glory was by arrangement, but that the ten thousand for Susan-if it was Susan-had been palmed and tucked aside, without 'permission of the fellow turning the thumbscrew. Again, a box that would crumple if I put any weight upon it.

  So let us see how well Saul Gorba fits. A very meticulous, sly, clever, unbalanced fellow. Arrives in the city four or five months before Geis begins the thirteen-month span of Operation Payoff. Leaves a month after the payoff ends. A nice stick, but too flimsy to whack loose any of the bananas tied to the top of the cage. -

  Last sip of the ice-diluted gin. Cubes clicked against my teeth. I came sloshing and wallowing up out of water gone tepid, all long brown hide flawed by the healed places which marked old mistakes in judgment and reflexes, pelted moderately with sunbaked hair. Wiped misted mirror with the corner of a bath towel. Stared into my spit-pale gray eyes as I slowly dried myself. What are you doing here, laddy buck? This is a dirty one. Something is twisted. Something has gone bad. You are going to lift the wrong rock, and something is going to come out from under it as fast as a moray, aiming right for the jugular.

  And, bless us every one, wouldn't that be a dingy way to die, in one of the greasy twilights of Chicago in December, a page 40 paragraph in the World's Greatest Newspaper.

  Look, Maurie, old sweetie buddy of mine, you are so right about stumbling around alone, my solo gig, white knightism. The ladies have discovered that it stings too much to dangle the tresses down the tower wall for some idiot to use as a climbing rope.

  And all the dragons go around looking just like anybody else.

  On this kind of a Monday I know I'm going to get killed in this line of work. It should interest the statisticians. As I am the only fellow in my line of work, it would give it a rating of 100% mortality. Just as, until we lost an astronaut, travel in orbit was the afest travel man ever devised with 0% mortality for millions upon millions of passenger miles. Safer than wheelchairs.

  Maurie, baby, make me the resident muscle at one of your island operations, with all the beach and broads and booze a man can use, and I shall have cradles built and the Flush deckloaded onto a freighter and let you guarantee all, the rest of that retirement I am taking in installments every time I get well enough.

  But in the cage the chimp was looking at the big box and scratching himself like a Red Sox outfielder. No bananas yet, so I called Glory Geis, who chortled happy welcome, and I fenderfought my way to the lake-shore fireside, where once again in the blue jump suit the graceful ragamuffin lady in her second widowhood plied me with a potion which sharpened the taste buds for what the kitchen would provide.

  The snow had stopped. The wind still blew, whining around the house corners, intruding upon fire-crackle and music off the tape. When I asked my key question about accidents she looked blank., "Heavens, I can't think of anything like that. We had such a quiet life, Trav. Just being together. It was -all we wanted or needed. No, there was nothing."

  "Okay. Not here then. You went shopping and a truck nearly ran you down. Something fell off a high building and nearly hit you."

  "Nothing like that! Really! What are you trying to get at? What does it mean?"

  "Maybe nothing. I look for patterns. Did anybody bully you off the road in that hot little job Fort bought you?"

  "No. I've never put a scratch on it. The only time it had to go in for repairs was when somebody played a joke."

  "A joke?"

  "Oh, one of those fool tricks that kids send away for. They put one on my dear little car. The yard man was edging the driveway and he came in to get the keys so he could move it. I left it in his way. Actually, I'd left it out all night. It was a Friday night, and I was going to go out again so I didn't put it away, and then I didn't go out and I forgot it and left it out and in his way. He used to come Saturdays. It was warm and the house was open, one of the first warm days, and Fort was here, and we heard this funny siren sound. It went up and up and up, and then there was a bang, and we went hurrying out and the yard man was standing about fifty feet from my car, staring at it with horror, and there was white smoke pouring out from the hood. You know those silly torpedo things they sell to play tricks on your friends. Some of the neighborhood teenagers had put one on my little car."

  "It damaged it?"

  "It buckled the hood a little and blew some of the wiring loose. But that isn't the kind of thing you mean."

  "No, it isn't," I said. Doc, I could have put the skewer through the nurse, drowned the grandson, poisoned the candy, and wired the little Mercedes so it would blow her into the tops of several of your tall trees, a little here and a little there. "When did that happen?" I asked casually.

  She scowled into her weak drink. "Hmm. Let me think. Memorial Day came on Sunday last year. So it was the following Saturday which would be..."

  "June fifth."

  "I remember he didn't expect to be home that morning. He had surgery scheduled. It was a primary cancer of the spine, which is very rare and supposed to be inoperable. It was a twenty-eightyear-old woman,.and she seemed very strong, but they phoned from the hospital Friday and said she had died. Fort was depressed. The husband wouldn't give permission for an autopsy."

  "So I suppose the smoke bomb was the final straw?"

  'lie was upset. Not too badly though. He went for a long walk down the beach. I remember I wanted to go with him, but he wanted to be alone that time. It wasn't like him. I was hurt, sort oœ But I guess you aren't doing a husband any favors by smothering him, by hanging on to him every second."

  "Glory, I know you kept pretty good tabs on him. When did he have a chance to pick up the cash and leave it somewhere?"

  "It must have been done at the same time. That's the only thing I can figure out. When he got it at one bank or another, he must have gotten rid of it right away. He must have mailed it. Even if I had seen him mailing it, I wouldn't have paid any particular attention. He was always mailing things in heavy manila envelopes to doctors all over the world. Case histories, notes, things he was going to publish,
film strips of operations. And the mail he got at the hospital was always full of things like that. Later that kind of mail came here."

  In the artsy-fartsy tales of intrigue, the pigeon has to tote the bundle of bread to the city museum and stuff it under the tunic of the third mummy from. the left, whistle the motif from "Lazy Bones," stick his right thumb in his left ear, and walk out sideways. A real live thief will go to the main post office, lay down cash, and rent a box under any name which happens to strike his fancy. If he does not want to take any chance on handwriting or latents, he will take the order form away and have somebody else fill it out for him, and bring it back in gloved hand. If it is a one-shot payoff, he will get a hungry bellhop to go open the box with the key, and then he will. tail the kid through the streets until he is certain the kid is not under observation. If it is on the installment plan he is going to be certain enough that his pigeon will not get restless so that he can risk a bus ride to the main post office to clean out the box whenever it seems convenient. Otherwise the cleanest one I ever saw took place in a big busy New York restaurant during the lunch rush on a weekday. He was carrying the package as directed. He got a phone call. A muffled voice told him to take his package to the checkroom and ask the girl to put it with number 308, and go right from there to the men's room before returning to the dining room, and not to fake out because he was being watched. I got to the checkroom girls perhaps ten minutes after one of them had given the coat, hat, and parcel to number 308. They could not remember one single fragment of description. They were indignant to think I expected them to. Obviously he had checked his coat and hat, then used a pay booth to phone the restaurant number and have my pigeon paged. At Shor's you can see the check counter from the pay phones. He timed it right, when whole flocks of lookalikes were heading back from lunch to the Big Media. And he needed the money.

  "Penny?" said Gloria Geis.

  "Do you think you could make a chance for me to have a little chat with Anna Ottlo?"

  "Why? What about?"

  "Maybe I want to see if she'd like to cook aboard a houseboat for a single gentleman, quiet, respectable, appreciative."

  "Oh, go to hell, McGee. Okay. I'll remember a phone call I have to make."

  I went sauntering toward the good smells. Anna Ottlo looked anachronistic in that mechanized, stainless-steel kitchen. Broad, hefty, florid, with white hair and blue apron and twinkling eyes, she looked like a television commercial grandmaw who was going to tell me how to get the stains out of the sink, or grow coffee on mountains, or get rid of that oily taste. Real grandmothers don't look quite like that anymore. I think it is the water-skiing that keeps them firmed up.

  "You like roast pork, sir? Yah?" she said beaming.

  "I think you could make old floor mats taste good, Anna."

  "To the big strong man, all taste wnderful the foods."

  I leaned against a hotel-sized refrigerator, drink in hand. "Had any word yet from Gretchen?" I asked.

  She stopped slicing a tomato, turned and stared at me, her smile still there, but without meaning. "Nein!" she said. "Nothing. No Gott damn goot, that girl. Trink beer, throw away money, play with mens. Years I hear nothing. Not even how many babies. Gone off someplace. Some man, yah?"

  "She's got a husband, hasn't she?"

  "This Gorba? From jails? Hah! Best she can get. Another mans wink the eye, off she goes, babies and all. Now I forget. All done. Over. I said give me the babies. I can take care, raise goot. More time you have for beer and betting money and boyfriend. Big fight. No goot, my only child, that one. Bad life." She tapped her temple, shook her head sadly. "Not much bright."

  After dinner Glory told me that she wouldn't be staying there as long as she had planned. "I'd be completely alone. Anna wants to leave, after Christmas."

  "New job?"

  "Not right away. Later, probably. She says she wants to go and visit an old friend. Mrs. Kemmer, the mother of the boy Gretchen married. She's somewhere in Florida, and Anna wants to spend the winter with her, and maybe stay down there if she can find work, after she's had a rest. All this hasn't been exactly easy on her either. I guess I'm going to have to find an apartment, and something to do. I'll have to stay in Chicago until... things are settled. But when I can leave, I'm never coming back. I don't think Heidi and Roger will miss me dreadfully, do you?"

  "They'll brood about it."

  "Trav? Are you finding out anything?"

  "It's at that point where I don't really know. I don't want to talk about it until I have something worth telling you. Or asking you."

  She tried to smile. It was a ghastly grimace. "I dreamed you were dead, Trav. It scared me."

  "It scares me too, but nobody has figured out a good way to avoid it. The guy who does will clean up."

  "Fort knew when. You and I don't. I guess that's the big difference. All we know is Sometime." "That's what you know when you've grown up. The ones who never grow up keep thinking Never. Not me, boss. Take those others, but don't take me."

  She hunched her shoulders. "Yesterday wasn't so great. I couldn't find any meaning in anything. I felt lost. I kept thinking I could find my way back if I took just a little more of that. But I didn't know how it would hit me. It might be too strange. I even thought of trying to get you to come out and be with me."

  "Don't go freaking around alone, Glory. Ever. How much of that have you got left?"

  "Just a little bottle. It's in a diluted form so that each drop out of a medicine dropper is fifty micrograms. If I had to guess I'd say there's a hundred drops in the bottle."

  "Flush it down the toilet."

  "Maybe I will. A little later. When I know I won't need it ever again."

  "Why would you need it?"

  "Because yesterday I thought it would be easier to be dead than be alive."

  "I guess it would be a lot easier. No decisions. No headaches. No constipation."

  "Sometimes you make me feel just as silly as I very probably am."

  Fifteen minutes after I left to drive back to the city I felt as silly as a girl myself. It can happen when you get too cute. It can happen when you have a memory a little too fresh in your mind of disillusioning a muscular and hairy karate expert. I saw a movement in the bushes where there should have been no movement. I saw it in my side view mirror as I drove out of the driveway. So I drove briskly off into the curving maze of Lake Pointe, circled, left the car in a dark place near a house without lights, and went skulking back.

  Bare-handed hero. But I cannot think of any kind of weapon small enough to lift: that would have done me much good. I cased the empty bushes. I made a slow circle of the house. From out in the dunes I saw Glory move past an uncurtained window. I stood up and somebody hit my head on a line drive to third, where it was fielded on one hop and hurled across to force the base runner at second, but he came in spikes high to break up the double play, and the second baseman threw my head over the first baseman and smack into the wall in front of the box seats along the first base line. My head rolled dead, eyes turned completely around so that they looked back into the blackness of my brain where fireworks were on display.

  Then I was in a pocket in the dunes with a mouth half full of damp cold sand, my hands fastened behind me with something, and with something tied around my eyes. Somebody of considerable muscular weight and with very hard knees knelt on my back. They put a hand on my forehead and lifted my face out of the sand. They lifted it too far. They lifted it until my neck creaked.

  "Hey!" I said, and spat sand. "Wait!" I said and spat sand.

  A whisper came from lips close to my ear. It seemed to be a whisper with an English accent. "If I tell him to snap your neck, he will snap your neck."

  "I believe you."

  "What is your interest in this, Mr. McGee?"

  "Interest in what?"

  "Are you trying to find out if I will actually tell him to pull your head back another..."

  "No! I was visiting Mrs. Geis. I'm an old friend. I saw someth
ing move in the bushes when I drove out."

  "You are a big man. You are in very good shape. You move very well through the night. With professional competence."

  "They put me in a brown suit and taught me a lot of things like that. Could he ease the tension a little? I'd hate to go through life looking straight up."

  "Terribly amusing," he said. He spoke in a language I could not identify. The fellow on my back lowered my forehead a generous inch and a quarter.

  I said, "Did you fellows squeeze a lot of money out of Doctor Geis before he died?"

  "No."

  "Do you know who did?"

  "It would be a matter of no interest to us."

  "Gloria Geis asked me to come up from Florida and see if I could find out. It's sort of a hobby with me, helping my friends."

  "A profitable hobby?"

  "Once in a while. Not real often."