After what I took to be a mile, I turned off the rough road and started through the woods in a northward direction, checking the compass as I went. The going got very difficult indeed. Beneath the newly fallen snow was an older layer, treacherous, holding firm one moment and then letting me fall through to my waist the next. Looking back, I don’t know what possessed me to keep plowing on. The wireless phone in my pocket suddenly seemed like the most important thing I had brought along. It was my out, as they say. I could always call the operator and get through to the SPD and Lieutenant Tracy. Tell him what the situation was and what I was doing.
I kept going. The hill grew increasingly steep. I stopped to strap on the crampons. In places I had to hook the spiked end of the climbing ax on trees ahead of me to pull my way up. Under a rock ledge I hunkered to eat an energy snack and drink from the canteen hanging from my belt. It was already nearly six o’clock, and I knew that, even with the snow and overcast, it would be light by the time I reached the madman’s lair; the advantage of darkness would be gone.
I kept climbing. I felt at times as though I had entered a kind of twilight zone, a realm of unreality in which I was dead and would, with the pain of hope in my heart, spend eternity climbing through snow, wind, and darkness toward an ever-receding destination.
Inwardly, as in a hallucination, I ranted at Freddie Bain and heard his smirking replies. Hitler did not triumph! I shouted at him. Then why, Norman, are we still talking about him? Hitler is dead! Then why, Mr. de Ratour, do we need to keep killing him? Because, you swine, it’s fun. Hitler was a failed artist! Not by twentieth-century standards, mon vieux. God is good! God is smiling, my friend, as you fumble toward your doom.
But the wind eased, the snow abated, and the lilac light of dawn filtered through the trees like an ethereal mist. Its subtle splendor would have enchanted me under other circumstances, would have made me ponder the mystery of so much gratuitous beauty, had it not disheartened me as an impediment to my plans. I struggled on, the dawn brightening into day, until I noticed, up ahead, through the trees, a patch of blue sky.
I came out finally onto a clearing, and my heart faltered once more. I could clearly see the twin peaks and the saddleback they formed between them. But they seemed so far away. And the sun shone in full reflected glory. Jays called. Chickadees came down to visit me. I checked to make sure I still had my revolver and continued my grim journey.
It was seven o’clock before I reached the low point between the two modest summits. I tried to keep under cover, but I’m sure anyone on the lookout could have seen me. Exhausted, but with adrenaline pumping through me painfully, I gained the actual ridge and peered down through the trees to the bastion below. It looked well nigh impregnable. Indeed, it appeared like a fortress anchored to the mountainside by the wide bridge, forming the shape of keyhole.
I took out my birding binoculars and swept over the scene several times. The long drive into the place and the walks had been shoveled. It struck me that I could just as well have driven over, parked down the drive, and walked in. Still, it looked peaceful, the narrow mullioned windows glinting and winking, the greenhouse shedding its cover of white so that the blue dazzle of pool water showed through a clear pane. I saw no movement as I panned the scene for several minutes. Then I noticed, looking up at me, as though expecting me, a huge German shepherd. It had come out of a kennel near a door toward the back, where a deck off the lower bridge part led to a path that went along the slope.
I ducked back under cover and took off my knapsack. I would drug the beast using the doctored meat. But first I took out the wireless phone. After a few attempts I got through to the switchboard at the SPD. I gave them the three-letter emergency code for Lieutenant Tracy. They put me through to his home. The connection wasn’t good. I explained to him where I was and what I was doing.
“Norman, stay where you are,” he kept saying. “We’ll handle this from here. Don’t go any farther.”
“You don’t know how insane he is,” I said. “The first sign of a police cruiser and he’ll go berserk.”
“Norman, don’t do it.”
“I’m going in, Lieutenant,” I practically shouted into the receiver as the wind, picking up again in that open space, made a racket around me. “It’s her only chance.”
“Norman …”
But I had clicked it off.
I made the bag of doped hamburger handy, hoisted my knapsack back on, took a deep breath, and started, as furtively as I could, down the steep slope toward the back of the house. I stopped every once in a while to check through my binoculars. The dog clearly knew I was there, but it didn’t bark. Nice puppy, I said to it softly, nice puppy.
The going was rough, precarious. The wind had scoured the area of fresh snow. Iced-over ledges showed through the sparse vegetation. I must have been no more than a hundred feet from where the dog waited when I lost my footing and took an awful spill. I managed, almost by instinct, to complete a self-arrest using the ice ax. I bruised my arm and scraped my face. I watched helplessly as the bag of meat in its fragile covering slid down the smoothly crusted snow toward the dog.
For a moment I was utterly disheartened. Surely the animal would bark now and give the alarm. Instead, miraculously, it left the small deck and with clumsy determination, made its way up to where the meat had snagged on a bush poking through the snow. I watched with bated breath as it nosed the pack, pawed at it, and finally freed the hamburger from the plastic bag. It wolfed the meat down in a matter of seconds.
It didn’t take long to have an effect. The dog looked up to where I crouched, turned, and started back toward the house, its footing unsteady. Not far from the deck it stopped, sat down, and then lay down. I reached it not long afterward. I think it was dead. But I had no time for regrets about a dog, whatever its innocence. My blood pounded so fiercely I could scarcely think. As stealthily as I could, I made my way to the deck where the dog had its kennel.
A formidable oaken door, studded and barred like those of a medieval keep, led into the house from the deck. For a handle it had a great wrought-iron ring. As quietly as I could, I twisted the ring, felt it give and click. With an ominous creak, the door swung open. I found myself in a dark passage, the darker for my pupils being contracted against the sunstruck snow. I paused a moment. A kind of pantry, curved with the exterior of the building, led off to the right into what I presumed was the kitchen. A bathroom opened to the left. I could see light coming from under the door ahead of me.
I did not have the presence of mind to take out my revolver. I did not have the presence of mind to skirt around the main part of the house through the kitchen. I simply went ahead and started to push open the door in front of me.
It was opened for me with a sudden jerk. I was taken roughly by the arm from the side and propelled into the center of the vast circular space I remembered, as in a nightmare, from my previous visit. Over against the fireplace, on the raised stone area, seated like some kind of petty potentate, was Manfred Bannerhoff, aka Freddie Bain. Near him on the couch sat Diantha, her face drawn and worried.
“Welcome, welcome, Mr. de Ratour. You’re just in time for breakfast. We’ve been expecting you, haven’t we, Diantha. That’s okay, Fang, you can let him go. He’s not going to do anything.”
“Norman!” Diantha cried, rising as though from a deathbed trance.
“Diantha.” I started toward her.
“Stay where you are, both of you, unless …”
I stopped. It wasn’t only the mesmeric powers in his striking eyes. Fang, whom I recognized as the delivery boy from the Jade Stalk, and two well-muscled young men hovered in the background.
Bain pointed to a large television screen next to the fireplace. “We have been enjoying the show, Norman. A jolly good show.” He flicked at a remote control. A moment later I appeared on the screen, emerging from the woods above the building. “Such a hero. Such a fool.” I was looking down with my binoculars. “We’ve all had a great laugh, Nor
man. There you are. Now we can’t see you. You must be behind the rock, getting ready for your assault.” I watched, glanced over to Diantha. Are you all right? I mouthed silently. She nodded. I turned back to the monitor. At least they hadn’t seen me making the phone call.
“Now here’s the best part,” my awful host announced. On the screen I was trying to get down the steep, windblown slope of iced-over snow. Suddenly, I fall and tumble over several times before I stop myself. The view cuts to a wide angle, and the dog can be seen making its way up to the doctored meat. “Poor Mitzi,” Freddie Bain said. “What did you put in the meat, Norman?”
“Morphine,” I said.
Bain laughed his mean laugh. “She overdosed, like so many of my good friends.” Then his laugh died to a snarl. He came toward me. “Mitzi was my friend. She took good care of me. You killed her. And I’m going to kill you, old man, with my bare hands. But first, did you bring the tape?”
“I have it.”
“Give it to me.”
“I will leave it in the foyer as Diantha and I leave.”
Madness showed in his face. “You old fool! You give it now or … I will kill both of you with my bare hands.” He laughed. “Or should we inject them with enough of our new potion and let them go at it in the cage, eh, Fang?”
Fang, who had moved away from me, gave a sycophantic laugh along with the other two.
As much to stall for time, I said, “Is that what you did with Ossmann and Woodley?”
“I’m afraid so. Professor Ossmann proved uncooperative in the end.”
“So you’re the one behind the whole deadly business?”
“Business is right.” He smiled wickedly. “When I see a business opportunity, I take it.”
“From whom did you take it?”
“Oh, from poor Ossmann, of course. But he, I’m sure, took it from someone else. Now, give me the tape …”
“What do you plan to do with the … potion?”
“Free trade, mon vieux, free trade. I will ship it by the carload to the Far East, and, of course, bring back various controlled substances by the carload …”
“A regular businessman, I see.”
His smile became a scowl. He started toward me and stopped. “No, Herr Directkor, not a regular businessman. I will be a force to be reckoned with. I will wreak my vengeance.”
“On whom?”
A thin smile shaped his lips. “On history, my friend, on history.”
“I thought you said history comes and goes.” Though fearful I had botched everything, that Diantha and I were both doomed, I still had this compulsion to argue with him.
“Yes. And I will make it stop.”
“Make history stop? Of course, that is the essence of despotism, isn’t it?”
“I am not in the mood for dialectical diversions, old man. Now the tape. I paid good money for it. Give it here.”
“First —”
“No first!” he shouted. “You are not here to dictate terms. Perhaps if we started on Miss Lowe that would convince you.”
As he turned toward her, I reached into my coat and took out the Smith & Wesson.
Manfred Bannerhoff stopped and threw back his head in a laugh. He turned to the others. “Oh, my goodness, fellas, look, Mr. de Ratour has a weapon.”
“Listen … damn you,” I said, determined to get my points across.
Turning toward me, his face malignant, he snarled, “No, you listen, Gramps. Face it, you don’t have the balls to use that thing, so give it to me before you hurt yourself with it.”
He was right. I felt like some small beast transfixed by the eyes of a cobra. I could not move. A fatal paralysis froze my limbs, my hands, my fingers. But not my mind, not the urge to beat him with words. “You’re wrong,” I snapped, fierce with refutation. Referring to something entirely different, I began, “Hitler —”
When he laughed, interrupting me, dismissively shaking his head, I felt the gun jump in my hand. The sound came like an aural shock from afar. More than anything, I think now, I was trying to get his attention. I hadn’t even been aiming the thing, just pointing, but the bullet caught his left upper thigh. He went down on his knees, cursing and holding his leg. The other two started toward me and stopped when I swung the gun directly them. Fang uttered a cry and ran off behind the door I had come through, followed by the others.
“You son of bitch,” Mr. Bannerhoff cried. “You old …” He reached under his tunic and pulled out a Luger.
I fired again, catching him in the right shoulder, making him drop the gun, which clattered to the floor in front of him. He looked at me, his rage turning to amazement. “You, you …,” he muttered.
“I mean it,” I said, still wanting him to pay heed. “Adolf Hitler was no artist.”
He lunged for the Luger, screaming in German. I fired again, aiming at his heart. He went down with a thump and lay still. Blood began to pool around him on the polished wood of the floor, just like in the movies.
“And God is not a joker.”
I spoke loudly, with bravado, knowing I had won the argument. But I was far more certain of my first utterance than of my second. I also felt a strange vacuity. You cannot argue with the dead.
It turned into a blur after that. The three men had disappeared. I could hear a helicopter approaching. I took Diantha in my arms and held her. Then, the gun still in my hand, I led her out the way I had come in. We went out past the still Mitzi and up a way along the hillside. I gave her my parka, and we hid in a stand of thick hemlocks.
Presently a helicopter from the SPD hovered a hundred feet off the deck, its loudspeaker booming orders for everyone to throw down their weapons and come out with their hands up. Not long after that, several skimobiles rocketed out into the woods from a basement garage. We could hear gunfire, sirens, men shouting. Then, after what seemed an age, we were both in the back of a four-wheel-drive police vehicle. I was wrapped in a blanket. My teeth chattered, but not from the cold.
There’s more. But I can’t keep going right now. I’m dead, dead tired. I’m going to bed, to sleep.
38
The repercussions of the Love Potion Murders, as this curious tale has come to be called, are going to reverberate for some time for myself, for the museum, and for the larger Seaboard community. There has been considerable media hoopla. There were calls from some quarters for a full investigation of Freddie Bain’s death even after it became apparent that I had “taken out” a major drug lord.
Then, as more details came to light, I had to endure the fickle adulation of the media. At the same time, there remains some concern for the safety of both Diantha and myself in terms of possible mob revenge. Actually, I am more worried that some distant relative of Mr. Bannerhoff/Bain will show up with a lawyer in tow claiming wrongful death.
I would like to have it generally known that I do not feel smug in the least about killing Freddie Bain, however richly he deserved to die. Though under duress at the time, though fearful for my life and Diantha’s, I question my motives. Mostly, I fear that I shot him in the heat of an argument. And that is the way despots win arguments — by imposing the ultimate silence. I take some small comfort in the more likely possibility that I killed him because of Diantha; that it was, ultimately, a crime of passion. Who will ever know? In life, unlike in art, loose ends seldom get tidily tied up.
What happened to Celeste Tangent, for instance? Well, she simply disappeared. Perhaps she had divined earlier than most that her erstwhile colleague, Manfred aka Freddie, was going off the tracks. When the Seaboard police, armed with a warrant, searched her apartment, they found evidence that she was long gone. I trust that, given her wiles and other endowments, she will survive quite well.
Lieutenant Tracy tells me that the SPD, now pretty much under the thumb of the FBI in this investigation, has a good idea of how Mr. Bain conducted his business. For some time various federal agencies had been suspicious about the shipping coming and going at Clipper Wharf. The theory, pro
mulgated by the FBI, was that he was using the import and export of highly aromatic spices to mask a far more lucrative drug trade. Apparently not. Instead the wharf, the restaurant, and the spice trade were merely a distraction. Most of his contraband came in on one of the larger trawlers using another dock. This oceangoing vessel “fished” specially wrapped and buoyed bundles of narcotics dropped off by tramp freighters far out to sea. Those little GPS devices come in handy for ill as well as for good.
Indeed, it turns out that Mr. Bain’s castle in the woods contained only his private supply of controlled substances. This was found, cleverly hidden, in a chamber quarried out of the mountain’s granite core, where he maintained a shrine to the memory of Adolph Hitler and the Third Reich. Along with bits and pieces of Wehrmacht memorabilia, the usual flags and rags, there was a fountain pen supposedly used by the Führer and an ornamental dagger with a handle of early plastic, remarkably like ivory, adorned at the top with a swastika inside a circle.
It’s quite clear from the evidence gathered so far that Mr. Bannerhoff/Bain planned, as he told me on that fateful day, to export the powerful aphrodisiac being developed covertly at the lab in exchange for illegal drugs. What he intended to do with the enormous sums generated by such commerce remains a secret he took with him to his grave.
Dr. Penrood, I regret to say, has been deeply implicated in this matter. Among his papers in the Genetics Lab, investigators found a detailed account of how things transpired. It appears that Professor Ossmann, in his work on the hangover drug ReLease, came across a compound — first noted in the research of Dr. Woodley and Professor Tromstromer — which he dubbed JJA-48. It reportedly triggers the vascular dilation needed for an erection far faster and more aggressively than anything in Viagra, for instance. He combined this with other compounds and with a cocktail of psychoactive drugs that act directly on those parts of the brain involved with sexual urges.
The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man Page 24
