Mystery. Part 42

Tom held his breath.

His grandfather was motionless for a second: and then, though he did not move, gesture, or change in any way, his body seemed to alter its dimensions, as if beneath the black suit it had suddenly deflated and expanded like a bullfrog's air sac. He seemed to have drawn all the air in the room into himself. His arms and his back were as rigid as posts.

"And there we are," von Heilitz said.

Tom's grandfather whirled sideways in his chair and looked through the window and out across the terrace. Tom's heart slid up into his throat and stayed there until Upshaw slowly revolved back to the note. He stared at it for another second. Then he pushed the yellow paper to a corner of his desk and picked up the envelope to look at the handwriting and the postmark. He turned his head to make sure the door was closed, and then looked back out the window. He pulled all the rest of the letters toward him and shuffled through them, setting before him on the desk a grey envelope and two white envelopes, set down the others, and held each of the three up to examine the printed address and the postmark. One by one, he slit them open and read the notes. He leaned back in his chair and stared up at the ceiling for a moment before reading the notes again. He pushed his chair away from the desk, and then stood and moved to the window and looked both right and left with an unconscious furtiveness Tom had never before seen in him.

The pink line across the top of von Heilitz's cheeks had heated up like an iron bar. "Not going to get much sleep tonight, is he?"

"He really did kill her," Tom said. "I don't know if-"

Von Heilitz put a finger to his lips.

Tom's grandfather was walking around his study, describing an oval that took him to the gla.s.s-fronted bookcases and back to his desk. Every time he returned to his desk, he looked down at the notes. The third time he had done this, he grabbed the notes, and went around the back of his chair to throw them into the wastebasket. Then he leaned heavily on the back of the chair, pulled it out and sat down, and leaned over to retrieve the notes. He shoved them into the top drawer of the desk along with the envelopes. He opened another drawer, removed a cigar, bit off the end, and spat it into the wastebasket.

"Saint Nicotine," von Heilitz said. "Concentrates the mind, soothes the nerves, eases the bowels."

Tom realized that they had been watching his grandfather for only something like fifteen minutes. It felt as if they had been there for hours. The misery that had been gathering in him ever since Glendenning Upshaw read the first note swam up out of his own bowels like a physical substance. He stretched out in the tall gra.s.s and the sand and rested his head on his hands. Von Heilitz gently patted his back.

"He's figuring out what to do-trying to work out what he risks by telling somebody."

Tom raised his head and saw his grandfather exhaling a cloud of white smoke. He plugged the cigar back in his mouth, and began turning it around and around with his fingers, as if trying to screw it into place. Tom lowered his head again.

"Okay, he's reaching for the phone," von Heilitz said. "He's still not too sure about this, but he's going to do it."

Tom looked up. His grandfather sat with the receiver in his left hand and his right barely touching the dial. The cigar sent up a column of white smoke from an ashtray. He began dialing. He pressed the receiver to his ear. After a moment, he spoke a few words into the phone, waited, s.n.a.t.c.hed at his cigar, and leaned back in his chair to say a few more words. He held the cigar in toward his chest like a poker hand. Then he hung up.

"Now what?" Tom asked.

"That depends on what he does. If it looks like he's expecting someone right away, we stay here. If not, we'll go to the hotel and come back here when it gets dark."

His grandfather opened the desk drawer and peered down at the notes. He lifted out the envelopes and considered the postmarks before putting them back and closing the drawer.

"It's what he does now that tells us," von Heilitz said.

Tom's grandfather looked at his watch, stood up, and began pacing back and forth. He sat down at the far end of the room and worked at the cigar; in a moment, he got to his feet again.

"It won't be long," von Heilitz said.

A slender brow lizard with a stubby tail and a Pleistocene head padded toward them across the sand, its splayed feet lifting and falling like hammers. When it saw them, it raised its snout-one forefoot poised in the air. A vein beat visibly in its neck. The lizard skittered around and darted toward the next clump of palms. The mailman worked his way between the bungalows on the street in back of Bobby Jones way. Tom sweated into his suit. Sand leaked into his shoes. He rubbed his shoulder, which was still sore. A white-haired man and woman in golfing clothes came out on a terrace behind the farthest bungalow in the third row and stretched out on loungers to read magazines.

"Have you ever tasted lizard?" von Heilitz asked.

"No." Tom propped his head on his cupped hand and looked up at the old man. He was leaning sideways against a palm with his knees drawn up, his whole body contracted into the spider-shaped shadow of the palm's crown, his face youthful and alight. "How does it taste?"

"The flesh of a raw lizard tastes like dirt-soft dirt. A cooked lizard is another matter. If you don't dry it out too much, it tastes exactly the way a bird would taste, if birds had fins and could swim. Everybody always says they taste like chicken, but lizard isn't nearly that delicate. The meat has a pungent, almost tarry smell, and the flavor's gamy gamy. Lot of nutrition in a lizard. A good lizard'll keep you alive for a week."

"Where did you eat lizards?"

"Mexico. During the war, the American OSS asked me to investigate a group of German businessmen who spent a great deal of time traveling between Mexico and various South American countries. Mill Walk was technically neutral, of course, and so was Mexico. Well, these men turned out to be setting up escape routes for important n.a.z.is, establis.h.i.+ng ident.i.ties, buying land-but the point is, one of them was nutty about certain foods, and ate lizard once a week."

"Raw or cooked?"

"Grilled over mesquite."

This story, which may or may not have been the strict truth, went on for twenty minutes.

A black car swung into the parking lot. Two men in dark blue uniforms slammed the doors. One of them was the officer Tom had seen ordering David Natchez upstairs in the hospital lobby, and the other was Fulton Bishop. The two men moved quickly across the parking lot and disappeared from view.

"Glen isn't going to say anything in front of the other man," von Heilitz said. "He'll make Bishop send him out of the room. Watch."

Tom's grandfather circled around the right side of the room, landed in the chair, and almost immediately bounced up again. He ground out the stub of the cigar in the ashtray. Then he straightened up and faced the door.

"Heard the bell," von Heilitz said.

Kingsley entered the study a moment later, and Bishop and the other man came in after him. Kingsley left, closing the door behind him. Glendenning Upshaw spoke a few words, and Fulton Bishop turned to the other man and gestured toward the door. The second policeman walked out of the room.

"Bishop is Glen's man," von Heilitz said. "He wouldn't have a career at all if Glen hadn't smoothed his way, and without Glen's protection, I don't think he could keep his hold on things. But Glen can't possibly trust him enough to tell him the truth about Jeanine Thielman. He has to tell him a story. I wish we could hear it."

Tom's grandfather sat behind his desk, and Fulton Bishop stayed on his feet. Upshaw talked, raised his hands, gestured; the other man remained motionless. Upshaw pointed at the upper part of his right arm.

"Now what is that about?" von Heilitz said. "I bet..."

Tom's grandfather opened his desk drawer and took out the four letters and their envelopes. Fulton Bishop crossed to the desk and leaned over the notes. He asked a question, and Upshaw answered. Bishop picked up the envelopes to examine the postmarks and the handwriting. He set them back down and stepped to the window, as if he, too, feared being overheard. Bishop turned around to speak to Upshaw, and Upshaw shook his head.

"He wants to take the letters with him. Glen doesn't want to give them up, but he will."

The mailman came walking back to his van through the parking lot.

Bishop looked through all four of the notes and said something that made Upshaw nod his head. Bishop pa.s.sed one note and the red envelope back to Tom's grandfather, unb.u.t.toned his uniform pocket, folded the notes together, and put the remaining notes and envelopes into the pocket. Glendenning Upshaw came close enough to Bishop to grip his arm. Bishop pulled away from him. Upshaw jabbed his finger into the policeman's chest. It looked like a loud conversation. Finally he walked Bishop to the door and let him out of the study.

"Bishop's got his marching orders, and he won't be very happy about it," von Heilitz said. "If Glen comes back to the window, look at his right sleeve and see if you can see anything there."

Tom's grandfather moved heavily back to his desk and took out another cigar. He bit, spat, and sat down to light it. After a few minutes, Fulton Bishop and the other policeman appeared in the parking lot. They opened the doors of their car and got in without speaking. Glendenning Upshaw turned his desk chair to the window and blew out smoke. Tom could not see anything distinctive about his right sleeve. Upshaw put the cigar in his mouth, turned back to the desk, leaned over to open a drawer on the right side, and took out a pistol. He laid the pistol on the top of the desk beside the note and the red envelope and looked at it for a moment, then picked it up and checked to see that it was loaded. He put it in the top drawer, and slowly closed the drawer with both hands. Then he shoved back the chair and stood up. He took a step toward the window and stood there, smoking. Kingsley opened the study door and said something, and Upshaw waved him away without turning around.

Tom leaned forward and peered at his right arm. He saw nothing except the black sleeve.

"I guess it's impossible to see it," von Heilitz said, "even with excellent eyes. But it's there."

"What?"

"A mourning band," von Heilitz said. "He told Bishop that those letters were about you."

Tom looked back at the heavy white-headed man smoking a long cigar at the window overlooking the terrace, and even though he could not see it, he did: he saw it because he knew von Heilitz was right, it was there, a black band Mrs. Kingsley had cut from an old fabric and sewn on his sleeve.

His grandfather turned away from the window and picked up the yellow paper and the red envelope. He carried them to the wall behind the desk, swung out a section of paneling, and then reached in to unlatch some other, interior door. The note and the envelope disappeared into the wall, and Upshaw latched the interior door and swung the paneling shut. He took one tigerish glance through the window and left the study.

"Well, that's what we came for," von Heilitz said. "You don't have any more doubts, do you?"

"No," Tom said. He got to his knees. "I'm not sure what I do have."

Von Heilitz helped him to his feet. The couple reading magazines on their terrace had fallen asleep. Tom followed the detective to the white concrete wall, and von Heilitz stooped and held out interlaced fingers for him. Tom put his right foot into von Heilitz's hands, and felt himself being propelled upward. He landed on the other side of the wall with a thud that jarred his spine. Von Heilitz went over the wall like an acrobat. He dusted off his hands, and brushed rimes of sand from the front of his suit. "Let's go back to the hotel and call Tim Truehart," he said.

Tom trudged after the detective on legs that seemed to weigh a hundred pounds each. His shoulder still hurt, and his burned hand ached, and sand in his shoes abraded his toes. The old man's suit hung on him like lead. Von Heilitz looked at him over his shoulder. Tom yanked at his lapels, trying to wrestle the suit into a more comfortable accommodation with his body.

When they got into the cane field, von Heilitz turned around. Tom stopped walking. "Are you all right?" von Heilitz asked.

"Sure," Tom said.

"You don't like me very much right now, do you?"

"I wouldn't say that," Tom said, and that was true too: he wouldn't. He wouldn't say anything at all.

Von Heilitz nodded. "Well, let's get back to town." He started walking toward the row of willows, and Tom followed, unable to make himself shorten the distance between them.

The old man was waiting beside the battered red car when Tom came around the first of the trees, and as soon as he saw Tom he opened his door and got in. Tom got in the other door and sat squeezed against it, as if there were two other people in the back seat.

"Everything go all right, Lamont?" Andres asked.

"We saw what we had to see."

Tom closed his eyes and slumped down in the seat. He saw his grandfather inhaling all the air in the study as he read a little yellow note; he saw him turn instinctively toward the window, like a lion that has felt the first arrow in his side.

Tom did not speak during the drive back to the middle of town, and when von Heilitz held open the door of Sinbad's Cavern for him, he hurried past as if fearing that the old man would touch him.

They rode up in the elevator in black silence.

Von Heilitz opened the door to his room, and Tom walked around him to unlock his own door. A maid had straightened the bed and organized the things on the table. The papers and envelopes were stacked on a chair, and the cheese and sausage had been put back in their bags. He picked up the novel about the Blue Rose murders, and threw himself on the bed. From the adjoining room came the sounds of von Heilitz speaking into the telephone. Tom opened the book and began to read.

A few minutes later von Heilitz came into his room. Tom barely glanced up from his book. The old man spun a chair around and straddled it backwards. "Do you want to know what Truehart's been doing?"

"Okay," Tom said, reluctantly closing the book.

"He knows of a man that Jerry could have hired-a guy named Schilling who makes a shaky living brokering used rifles, old cars, even a few motorboats, whatever he can get his hands on. He did a two-year stretch in the Wisconsin state prison for receiving stolen goods a few years ago, and ever since he's been living in a little place near a run-down tourist attraction outside Eagle Lake. Near that machine shop where they kept the stolen goods, too. Two people saw this Schilling talking with Jerry Hasek in a bar. The night of the fire, he disappeared."

"That doesn't prove anything," Tom said.

"No, not exactly, but Tim went to the local bank. Schilling has a little account there, and after Tim had a long talk with the manager, he had a look at the account records. Every summer for the past four years, Schilling has been putting something between eight and ten thousand in his account." Von Heilitz grinned at him.

Tom didn't get it.

"Schilling was Jerry's fence. He went back to his old business when Jerry and his friends started breaking into lodges."

"What does that have to do with the fire? Or with someone shooting at me?"

"The day before you arrived in Eagle Lake, our hero deposited five thousand dollars in his account."

"Five thousand dollars," Tom said.

"It was a half payment, most likely. He would have collected the other half when your body was discovered, but by then Jerry and his friends were in jail, thanks to you."

"He hired his fence to kill me?"

"Probably Schilling volunteered, once he learned there was ten thousand dollars in it for him. Now, Schilling's sister lives in Marinette, Wisconsin. She's married to another con, a friend of her brother's, who's in jail on an armed robbery charge. Tim thinks our man might have gone to stay with her for a week or so, and he called the Marinette police to watch her house."

"So they'll probably get him," Tom said. "They should. They should get the person who killed Barbara Deane." He looked down at The Divided Man The Divided Man, and opened it again.

"Tim thinks that your old friend Nappy LaBarre is getting close to telling him what he already knows. If they arrest Schilling, Nappy's information isn't going to do him any good. Nappy's going to have to sell out Schilling in a hurry, if he wants to turn state's evidence and have his charges dropped."

"Okay."

"Is that all you have to say? Okay? The noose is tightening around your grandfather's neck, and it's all because of you."

"I know."

"Is part of you sorry about that?"

"I wish I knew," Tom said. He saw his grandfather again, turning toward the window like a wounded lion.

Von Heilitz stood up and turned the chair around. He sat down facing Tom, put his elbow on his knee, and cupped his chin in his hand.

"It's just that he's my grandfather, I guess. I was brought up to think he was really special-a kind of hero. He kept everything safe. Everything depended depended on him. And now I feel-I feel cut off from everybody." on him. And now I feel-I feel cut off from everybody."

"Come with me to talk to David Natchez," von Heilitz said. "For one thing, you might be able to help us work out where Glen would be likely to go, if he wants to hide somewhere while he gets ready to leave the island. It would help you get over the shock."

Tom shook his head.

"I'm serious-you have had a shock, a serious one. I know you're angry at me, and that you don't want to be. In the past two days, everything you thought you knew turned inside-out, and-"

"Stop," Tom said. "Maybe I am angry with you, but you don't know everything I'm feeling." Saying this made him feel like a sulky child.

"No," von Heilitz said. "But after all this is over, we'll be able to get to know each other a lot better."

"Couldn't you have gone after my mother, seventeen years ago?" Tom asked. "When you came back to Mill Walk and found that her father had taken her to Miami? You just let him take her away-you just gave up. You might have lived across the street from us, but I never saw you, except for those two times you came to the hospital."

Von Heilitz had straightened up in the chair. He looked uncomfortable, and said, "Glen would never have let me see her. Even if he had, she wouldn't have left with me."

"You don't know that," Tom said. "She was over eighteen. She could have married anyone she wanted. You just let her slip back into-into helplessness. You let her be sold to Victor Pasmore. Or you let Victor be bought for her, or however it worked." Then it seemed to him that he was talking about Sarah Spence and Buddy Redwing, and another degree of misery entered him. "You didn't do anything," anything," he said, and then could not say any more. he said, and then could not say any more.

"You think I haven't thought about that?" the old man said. "I was in my forties. I was used to living by myself, and going wherever I liked. I didn't think I'd make a very good husband. I never pretended not to be selfish, if selfishness means giving yourself permission to concentrate on a few things at the expense of everything else."

"You liked being alone," Tom said.

"Of course I did, but that wasn't the most important reason. I think I was just another kind of father to Gloria. You can't have a real marriage on that basis. Not only that, what I wanted to do would have half-killed her. I couldn't marry Glen Upshaw's daughter. Can't you see that? Just after you were born, I began to realize that he had killed Jeanine Thielman. I wanted to destroy him. Things turned out the way they did because we were all the people we were-Gloria and Glen and me. The only good thing that came out of it was you."

"You only came to see me twice," Tom said again.