Pang pang pang pank pock tunk. I got better at it. I put the packets aside. I whistled between my teeth. Lordy me o my I said. Treasure hunt. Here's another. And another.
Admirable idea. Take the rubber mallet, put a careful ding in the tailored metal wide, long, and deep enough to fit the pliofilmed money-package into it. Pack in the plastic glop and let it harden to hold the money in place. Then sand off the roughness of that first shaping of it to the curve -of the metal, paint, and bake.
Gorba had the brains and I had the luck. I worked as hard and fast as I could, dug out eleven packets, couldn't find another place on the body that went tunk instead of pang. I'd had the luck to watch the process one day while roaming around a repair garage, and then to tell the manager what a cheap-ass system it was. He had the kindliness and patience to tell me some of the facts of life. Costs were going up so fast anything more than a gentle nudge would total a car. So be glad there was a new system that would keep the insurance cost from going out of sight a little while longer. If I wanted to complain about something, he said, I should complain about the shyster operators who'd buy one for dimes that had been in a head-on, then scour around for the same year and model that had been crunched hard enough in the rear end to be a total, saw both in half, weld the two good halves together, repaint and sell it a long way from home plate. The plastic just didn't fit the personality of a painstaking man very good with his hands.
I whacked the crumbs of hardened goo off the packets, stowed them in my pockets, ran to the car, carved the mud off my shoes with a sodden piece of wood, and made as good time as I dared driving over to Peru, a small city of about 9000. I put the car in a big gas station in town, told the man to fill it and see if he could hose the worst of the mud off. I bought myself a pair of shoes and, in the dime store, some wrapping paper, twine, tape, and mailing labels. I parked on a quiet street, put on the new shoes, dropped the muddy ones onto the floor in back, packed the money and the gun into the shoe box, wrapped it neatly and solidly, filled out the label, drove to the post office, and mailed it to myself at the Drake. Parcel post. Fifty dollars' insurance. Special handling.
I was hurrying through the things I knew I ought to do because I couldn't find any good handle on the main problem.
The main problem was all too vivid. Country areas have their own kind of radar, and it is as old as man, old as the first villages after he got tired of being a roaming hunter and sleeping in a different tree every night. Once Gorba's mistreated corpse was found, Mildred Shottlehauster would leap into the act, grabbing her little moment of importance, and she would call the sheriff, maybe calling him Ted or Al or Freddy or Hank darling, and tell him about this great tall suntanned pale-eyed fellow driving a such and such, calling himself McGee and talking about a credit investigation and finding out there was nobody at the farm, but maybe he went up there and somebody was there, huh? And when this got around, Brawn-Baby, the gauntleted girl bus driver with the shoulders, would connect and come up with something else, and the ripples in that little pond would finally lap at the doorstep of my Georgian motel where Hank darling would get the license number off the registration.
There was some merit in stopping it dead right at the source, right in Milly's kitchen before she started to make waves. I could hustle back there and make it before lunch, and play it cool, and tell her she'd been so helpful I thought I'd tell her I'd had to turn down the Farley family, and even though she had very probably been slowly turned off by the passage of time, with just a little firmness and insistence she would come back with a rush, and I could finish what Bread Boy had left undone, and later save her face with some sincere and solemn hoke about a sudden attraction so strong we really couldn't help ourselves. And then when she all of a sudden had an overwhelming urge to call Sheriff Darling Dear, doubtless a political buddy of her husband,, she would yank her little competent hands back from that phone as if verily it were a snake. They could bring McGee back and he could answer the right question in the wrong way, and the earth would open and the Shottlehausters' farm and hopes would slide slowly in.
Could do. Even had she known Bread Boy for years, the very basic rationalization was the same, the first hurdle overcome.
Listen, guys, let me tell you about the time I was up in Illinois and there was this little farm wife, six kids, and I'm telling you, I set her onto a counter top and she was as hot as a...
Not today, fellows. Not to save the McGee skin. Had I taken the opening being so tentatively and warily offered when I had been with her before, it would have left a tired taste in the mouth and bad air in the lungs and a sorry little picture in the back of the mind. But this was too cold-blooded to be even thinkable.
So, okay, stop off and see Mildred and tell her that I'd gone to the farm and Farley was dead in a very ugly way, and I didn't want to be brought into it, and if I was I'd have to account for all my, time in the area, and I'd spent some of that time looking in her kitchen window and reading the legends and persuasions on the Darling truck. Sure. Rub her nose in it. Grind her right into the dirt: She who play kitchen game pay big price sooner or later, hey?
Think a little, you big stupid beach bum!
I finally got the rusty gears working upstairs, popped thumb and finger, and hightailed it for the Shottlehauster farm, rehearsing my end of the dialogue en route.
She was surprised to see me. I exuded total con fidence. Something had come up. I needed her help. I'd lied about the credit investigation. Sorry.
Have to do that kind of thing sometimes. Line of duty. I sidestepped her questions, borrowed her phone, and made a collect call to Heidi and, with Mildred at my elbow, I asked Heidi to put Susan on.
"Susan? McGee here. The kids have been staying with the Shottlehauster family since Monday evening. They're okay, and they're in school right now. But I think I'd better bring them back to Chicago. I just stopped at the farm. He's there all right. And somebody has killed him. Very unpleasantly."
At my elbow I heard Mildred give a gassy squeak. "Susan?" I said. "Are you all right?"
"I... I'm trying to be sorry about him. But I can't."
"Now would you do me a favor? Please talk to Mrs. Shottlehauster and ask her to help me get the kids out of the school here. This can be a very ugly thing and they ought to be well out of range. Don't tell her anything about me except she can trust me. Okay?"
I handed Mildred the phone. She stammered and said, "It's a t-terrible thing, dear. I'm so sorry." She listened for a little while and then she said, "Of course, Susan dear. You can depend on me. I'll pack their things and Mr. McGee can bring them along."
After she hung up I ordered her to sit down in her own living room. She was big-eyed and solemn. She said she knew who to call in the school system. She said she was a past president of the PTA.
"Here is what I want you to do. I know you have no training in this sort of thing, but you seem very understanding and intelligent. Here is your story. Susan called you from Chicago. She said a friend would stop by about noon to pick up the things her brothers and sister brought over here, and then go to the school and get them, and would you please arrange it, tell the school it is an emergency. Then she began to cry. You thought Mrs. Farley might be very ill. Mr. Farley had told you both of them were in Chicago. So you asked about Mrs. Farley. Susan then told you that her mother has been missing for three weeks and she thinks something terrible happened to her. So you did as the girl asked. A man came by and picked up the children's things. Just a man. He didn't give a name. But you knew he was all right because of having talked to Susan. Now, do you have a car here that you can use to get up that muddy road at the farm?"
"Harry's old Land Rover will go through anything."
"Do you mind seeing something pretty horrible?"
"I'm not a sissy, Mr. McGee."
"Back to your story. You will go to the farm because you thought Farley acted peculiarly Monday night. You wonder if he is there or Mrs. Farley is there. And you are a little uneasy ab
out having made the arrangements on the word of a seventeen-yearold girl without consulting the parents. You'll find him in the first shed beyond the foundations where the barn was. I think he's been dead since sometime yesterday, but that's just a guess. You will notice that the whole place is ransacked. So you will go to a phone and report it."
She nodded. "To the sheriff. Jimmy Tait. He's an old friend."
"Good. Now then, by the time he gets around to questioning you, I'll be well on my way to Chicago with the kids. You don't know where Susan phoned you from. Suddenly you will remember running into Mrs. Farley a month ago. Think of a logical place. She was tight. She seemed very upset. She talked strangely. It didn't make any sense to you. Something about the Outfit, and something about her husband thinking she was going to fink out, and something about pushers."
Solemn as a library child she said, "Outfit. Fink out. Pushers."
"And then she said something about old farms having their own graveyards and laughed in a crazy way."
"But why do you want me to say all that?"
"Mrs. Shottlehauster. Mildred. If you were trained in this work you could go ahead without question. But I am going to take the chance of telling you what we think. Believe me, it will cause me serious trouble if you tell anyone this. Your husband, anyone at all. We believe Farley is a known criminal. We have no LD. yet. Last Sunday Farley made advances to Susan."
"His own daughter!" Scandal made her eyes sparkle.
"Only the smallest one is his."
"Tommy?"
"Yes. When she resisted him, he beat her badly. She didn't let the other kids see her condition. She took a bus to Chicago Monday evening. She came to us and told us she believed Farley had killed her stepmother three weeks ago and buried her somewhere on the farm. She said Farley was hiding out there, and she had no idea why. I was sent to look things over. You know the rest."
"It's so terrible. Those nice kids!"
I looked at her with a firm official frown. "When you know things other people don't, Mildred, it's a terrible temptation to tell so that you can feel important. I trust you to resist that impulse. Your only reward will be the knowledge you lived up to your obligation as a good citizen. That will be in our files, but we can't thank you in any public way."
"Pusher means about drugs, doesn't it?"
"Please don't ask me any more questions because I've already told you more than I'm authorized to tell."
She glowed with her new responsibility. Her little jaw firmed up with resolve. She would hug her secret closely, cherishing the knowledge she was in our files. In my flush of success with her, I had the eerie temptation to tell her I was the man from A.U.N.T. Association Uncovering the Narcotics Traffic. But there is a limit to what you can make them buy.
She jumped to her feet. "I'll phone the school and then I'll pack their things, sir."
"Forgive me for lying to you the last time I was here?"
"Oh yes! You've got a job to do."
TWELVE
FIVE DAYS later, on Monday morning a little after ten, I sat in John Andrus' office at the bank. A quiet paneled room. We were alone. The door was closed. He had told his girl to hold his calls. He was troubled. He frowned, sighed, shook his head.
"It's a very awkward situation," he said for the third time.
"It doesn't have to be. Just keep it clear in your mind what we keep on the record and what we keep off the record."
"As a trust officer I have certain..."
"I know, John. Fiduciary responsibilities. I gave you every last dollar I chipped out of that damned car.
"One hundred and seventy-eight thousand, six hundred and fifty dollars. How am I supposed to account for it? How did I get it? Where's the other four hundred and twenty thousand?"
"You worry too much. Let's take it one at a time. I told you Janice Stanyard will lie beautifully if she has to. Geis gave her a package to hold for him. She forgot about it. She found it the other day on her closet shelf, opened it, found all the money, contacted Heidi at once, and Heidi said to bring it to you."
'Fine," he said wearily. "Wonderful."
"And when the estate is appraised next October, if the tax boys get sticky about it, you call that number I gave you, and you will get three characters who'll swear that for over a year the Doctor was going over to Gary once or twice a month and playing high-stakes poker in a fast game and losing very very heavily. That is, if we don't turn up the rest of the money somehow in the meantime. Which doesn't look likely. Those three will give you an expert performance, and nobody will break them down."
Staring at me he shook his head in mild wonder. "Where did you develop contacts like that, damn it? How can you so blandly and so confidently come up with people perfectly willing to perjure themselves about something that doesn't concern them at all?"
"I did a favor for a local operator once. He's the type who stays grateful. Maybe local is the wrong word. This is home base. He operates in a lot of areas. John, if nobody comes up with any more of Fort's money, how does the estate thing stand?"
He hesitated and then said, "Rough estimate. Seventy-five for Gloria and half that for each kid, Heidi and Roger."
"Nice if I could have picked up the whole thing out there. Or if they had found anything when they took the place apart, inch by inch. Of course it would have been a rough go proving it was Fort's money if they'd found the rest of it, but you could have swung it."
"Vote of confidence. Hahl"
"John, there's just too many possibilities. He took a lot of little trips. So he was stashing it elsewhere. Or whoever came after him, maybe because he talked just a little bit too much about making a nice score, found everything except what I found. I think it's over. They identified him as Saul Gorba. They know he had an aneurysm that blew under the high blood. pressure pain gives you. They assume that whoever worked on him left with what they'd come for. It is obvious Gorba was hiding out. And it is a safe assumption he strangled Gretchen and buried her five feet under, suitcase and all. And they know the kids don't know anything about anything. Murder first, felony murder, by person or persons unknown. We got a little back. We pick up the pieces, the world goes on."
"Wonder why he killed Gretchen?"
"Maybe because she kept wondering where the money was coming from, and even though she wasn't too bright, she had been given enough twos to add to twos over a long time, and when the answer began to show, she didn't like it. She was an amiable earthy slob, but she wasn't crooked. And putting leverage on a dying man is pretty ugly. Or maybe he just decided the daughter looked a lot better. We'll never know"
"One comment, Trav. It really surprised me to have Heidi pick up the tab for that double funeral." And one of the eeriest ones I had attended. Saturday afternoon. Two boxes. One floral piece on each one. Select little group. The five towheads. Gretch must have had muscular genes. The kids all looked alike. Fair, blue-eyed, round-faced, sturdy. Seeing them together it was an astonishment that Susan had been able to sustain her personal myth of a different parentage. In dark glasses, dark hat and veil, Susan's damages were obscured. So it was the kids and Janice and Heidi and John Andrus and Anna Ottlo and me, and a sonorous voice reading a standard service, and a tired woman diddling with the keys on a small electric organ. Anna whuffawed and snuffled and grunted her anguish. Some tears were shed for Saul Gorba, the tears of Tommy, his natural child. Most of his were for Gretchen, but he had some for Saul. There had been a relationship between them not shared by the others.
"Maybe Heidi Trumbill is mellowing. John, thanks for getting the law boys onto it and getting that money turned loose for Susan."
"She should get it by tomorrow."
"And thanks for getting the court order set up to have the kids stay with Janice."
"On this money, Trav, I have to escrow it until the estate appraisal is firm next October, but Gloria can borrow against it right here if she needs to. She ought to know that."
"When I see her this afternoon I'll see if I
can get it through to her."
In a lounge at the hospital, in a low voice Dr. Hayes Wyatt explained it in layman's terms. "Think of the senses of sight, touch, smell, hearing, taste as being receptors, Mr. McGee. They have no analytical function. Think of a bundle of wires running from each receptor to the part of the brain which acts as a computer. The psychedelics are disassociative in that they loosen these customary connections between receptors and the analysis function. Messages become false and the analysis unreal. Hallucination. As the period of disassociation ends the connections grow tight again and the subject comes back into his familiar ' reality. The massive overdose she took tore all the wiring loose. It has to be fitted back slowly and carefully. To continue the analogy you can say the wiring is hanging free and it is in approximately the right areas, so it touches and brushes the proper connection quite often. But there is a continual hallucination which of course creates terror, so it is best to keep her mildly tranquilized. There are motor defects. She will say a nonsense word when she means to say something quite different. This alarms her too. I think there is a certain amount of progress. I don't know how long it will continue, or if she will ever get all of the way back."
One Fearful Yellow Eye Page 21
