“A pipe wrench?” I suggested, wondering what had made me think of that.
“Yes, a pipe wrench. That’s pretty good. As subtle as a pipe wrench. He had this sister in New York, Laura or something.”
“Linda,” I corrected her.
“That’s it, Linda. She picked Shiraz up, at Jeremy’s instructions, and steered him a few places. Jeremy was waiting in a car, with a shotgun. Claeys was driving.”
“He missed,” I said.
“He hit someone else. He got on a plane for Holland the day we sailed. Claeys and I took the boat.”
More silence. The snow had eased off somewhat Visibility was better.
I heard a small stifled sound beside me. It was Erica, not quite crying. “I’ll take on anything else,” she said. “But not murder. Never murder again.”
I thought it was a little too late for that. I remembered Harry Kretschmer. I didn’t say anything.
“Slow down,” Erica told me after a while. We were approaching Gsteig at the other end of the valley. “There’s a highway sign.”
I braked carefully, pumping the pedal to avoid a skid. It was one of those Swiss mountain pass signs. But that was odd, I thought. Could have sworn they were green. I’d always seen them green before. Green for go, I thought brightly. This one was red. Red for stop, I thought, not so brightly.
If the color still left you in doubt, the practical Swiss had covered the sign in four languages, for natives, tourists and visiting private detectives.
COL DU PILLON, it said.
Geschlossen, it said.
Feriné, it said.
Cerrato, it said.
Geschlossen, fermé and cerrato mean, respectively in German, French and Italian, closed.
Underneath, in English, just in case you still harbored any doubts, the sign said: Closed.
“What do you know?” I told Erica. “Pass seems to be closed.”
I didn’t feel anything much. I was behind the wheel. I belonged there. I would keep on driving until the car stopped under me.
We took the first switchback turn above Gsteig. From the top we could see the white church steeple and the deserted streets of the village. The snow on the road was getting deeper.
23
SOME HIGH Alpine passes, like the Furka that snakes above timberline to link the St. Gotthard and Grimsel passes between southern Switzerland and the Oberland, are closed all winter. There, from November to May, the heavy snows pile fifteen or twenty feet of drifts on what the rest of the year is a highway, and nothing can get through.
Some passes, like the Great St. Bernard, are kept open all winter long.
Some passes, like the Col du Pillon, are closed intermittently, during heavy snowfalls or when snow-removal equipment is needed elsewhere.
If the Col had been closed due to a heavy snowfall, I deduced with admirable logic, there wasn’t a chance we could get through. But then Jeremy wouldn’t have been able to get through with Shiraz either. Maybe he hadn’t tried. Maybe he’d seen the sign and turned around and gone somewhere else to run Shiraz off a cliff where the driving conditions were better.
But on the other hand, the same admirable logic told me, the Col could have been closed because the big plows were needed elsewhere. If that were the case, Jeremy could be sure of one thing. If he could get through, he’d find himself up there, at the top of the pass, all alone with Shiraz. Nobody would come tooling along as a witness to murder. From Jeremy’s, point of view it would be perfect.
If he could get through, that fine LSD-induced logic told me, then so could we.
“There’s this thing,” Erica said. She was playing with a little gizmo on the dashboard. “They explained it when we rented the car in Amsterdam.”
“What thing?”
“This gadget here.”
I looked at the gadget there. It didn’t seem like much.
The car began to flounder. We were climbing steeply and must have been hubcap-deep in snow.
“It raises the car,” Erica said.
“What does it do, sprout a pair of wings and fly over the snow?”
“No, really. The hydraulic fluid system. It can raise the chassis about six inches. For driving through mud or on a high-crowned road.”
The Citroën floundered some more, deeper. The front wheels, failing to maintain traction, spun uselessly. The tires whined.
“Or in snow,” Erica said.
I let the car come to a standstill. I put it in neutral and looked at the little gadget on the dashboard. I poked at it tentatively with a finger. There was a faint whirring sound. I felt us going up. It didn’t seem like much, but it was certainly in the right direction.
“Try it now,” Erica suggested.
I put the car gingerly in first and started driving. We went forward. I put her into second. We still went forward.
“How about that?” I said. “Those crazy French.”
For various reasons, old Chuck de Gaulle not the least among them, the French are not my favorite people in the world. But they sure know how to build a clever car, I thought.
After a while the road leveled off somewhat, passing the Diablerets cable-car station. You get into a glass and metal box along with a bunch of other nuts and go gliding across a chasm on a flimsy-looking cable and then up a mountain to a glacier. You can ski down or ride the box down or maybe just jump off.
“You’ve got to be crazy,” I said.
“What?” Erica asked.
“Nothing,” I said.
The cable-car station faded behind us. There were high crags, dimly seen through the snow, and stands of larch and spruce, their branches heavily laden. The road started climbing again. The Citroën went pluckily on. I began to feel a certain fondness for it.
Erica touched my arm. “Top of the Col,” she said.
A road sign confirmed the fact. It said: Col du Pillon. The altitude was listed in meters and again in feet. 5903 feet, it said. There was a restaurant, a snug little red building, abandoned until somebody could fight his way up there with a snowplow. Outside up on blocks and covered with snow I saw a car. A small wagon kept it lonely company.
“It isn’t much further,” Erica said. “Maybe another two kilometers. It will be on the left. An overlook with a flimsy guardrail and one of those SOS phones where you can call the highway patrol. It’s a long, long way down.”
“That’s where we’ll find them?”
“That’s where we’ll find Jeremy. Waiting.”
We approached the place a few moments later. It was just as Erica had described it, except that Jeremy wasn’t waiting alone. I gave a small howl of pleasure and quickly choked it off. Maybe it was the LSD, I thought. Maybe I was hallucinating.
The Mercedes-Benz stayed there.
Not on the road, though. It had been angled off across the shoulder at the overlook. It stood perilously close to the edge. Once it got moving, if it got moving, just its weight would be enough to carry it through the guardrail.
I slowed down. A figure was crouched behind the Mercedes, digging in the snow. Good old resourceful Jeremy even came equipped with a shovel.
If anyone happened by, not that anyone would, they’d see Jeremy trying to free the rear wheels so he could pull off the overlook and continue down the pass.
He was trying to free the wheels. He had come this far, with everything working for him, and then, on the final turn toward the edge of the cliff, the Mercedes got itself stuck in the snow.
With Shiraz waiting inside, in an LSD dream or sapped, waiting to die.
Jeremy heard the sound of our motor. He stopped digging and glanced up over his shoulder. We were fifty yards away and still rolling toward him. I opened the window on my side.
“Jesus Christ, what took you so long?” he shouted. “Come on and give me a hand. Stuck in the goddam snow. I can’t move it.”
We stopped just behind the Mercedes. He was digging again. He stopped digging.
“Or maybe you can just kind of nudge him over with the Cit
,” he suggested. His hair and parka were covered with snow. His face was red and he was panting. Suddenly his eyes narrowed. He had seen me behind the wheel.
“What the hell,” he said. “You brought him along?”
“I’m joining the organization,” I said, getting out my side of the car. I felt giddy. My knees were stiff. I wanted to crawl under a featherbed somewhere and feel the warmth of my body collect under it and sleep off the LSD.
Instead I pointed the automatic at Jeremy. “Get Shiraz out of there and put him in the Cit,” I told him. “We’re all going back to town.”
He took a swing at me with the shovel. Snow sprayed my face and the flat of the blade slammed into my shoulder, making my right arm go numb. The automatic jumped out of my hand and buried itself in the snow.
Jeremy took another swipe at me with the shovel. I jerked my head back and the edge of the blade missed my chin by an inch. Again Jeremy swung, one-handed and awkwardly. His other hand was in his mouth so he could jerk the glove off with his teeth, and then it was in the big side pocket of his parka, and then it was out holding the .44 Magnum.
He fired it once while I was grabbing the haft of the shovel with both hands and pushing it back against him. I heard the slug whine off the Citroën’s fender. That was my own goddam gun he was shooting at me, I thought, outraged, the LSD reminding me that nobody had ever taken a shot at me with my own gun before.
I grabbed for his wrist and got hold of it, forcing the muzzle of the Magnum up. It went off again. I could feel the recoil in my own arm while Jeremy was pummeling my back with the shovel. The Magnum squirted from his fingers and he backed against the Mercedes swinging the shovel at me.
Flat of the blade again, laid against the side of my head. I fell down and tasted snow in my mouth. My ears rang. Down came the shovel. I caught it with my hands where blade joins haft. It was a nice, new, sharp-edged steel shovel. If he caught me sideways with it he could tear my head off. I held on. He dragged me along the snow. Then he planted the sole of his heavy boot against my head and tugged at the shovel, the way you plant the sole of your shoe against a stubborn log when you are trying to free an ax-blade. I held on. Bulldog Drum, the LSD thought for me. Takes one bite and never lets go.
I heard a car door slam. It was Erica, good old Amazonian Erica to the rescue. What she did was go down on all fours in the snow, looking for some artillery.
That distracted me. Jeremy got the shovel loose and swung it again. The blade buried itself in the snow near my face. I caught the haft again and Jeremy planted the sole of his boot where it had been before, trying to free the shovel.
All of a sudden I let go.
Jeremy danced back two or three steps across the snow, off balance, holding the shovel over his head like a tightrope walker holds a stick for balance. I got up groggily. Jeremy crashed into the guardrail. He flung the shovel away.
He went over the, guardrail backwards.
I saw his legs, upside down. They seemed to hang there as the LSD stretched a split second. Then they went away, along with the rest of Jeremy. All that was left, for a long time, echoing from the snowy crags as he fell, was his final scream.
Somebody lit a couple of cigarettes, either Erica or me. We were both smoking. My hand shook so much I could hardly hold the cigarette.
We went to the door of the Mercedes. It opened and Ahmed Shiraz poked his head out.
“D-d-drum?” he stuttered, his teeth chattering with the cold.
His face twitched. He blinked his eyes rapidly.
“Going to be all right now,” I said. “It’s all over.”
“He’s g-g-going to k-k-kill me,” Shiraz stuttered, the spit flying as he spoke. “All the w-way up here he k-kept t-t-telling me. Go-go-gogo-ing to k-kill me. In the c-c-car. Over the c-c-cliff. G-g-go—Jesus.”
His face twitched again, and his eyes were blinking all the time.
“I c-c-can’t talk right,” he said, the spit flying. “Someth-th-thing’s the matter.”
“You’ll be okay,” I said. “You’re frozen.”
“He k-k-kept t-telling me. He was enj—enj-j-joying himself. He was enj-joying the sh-sh-sh-sh—hell out of it.”
His face kept twitching and his eyes blinked.
“Take it easy,” I told him. “Climb in the other car. Heater’s on.” Erica helped him into the Citroën.
I picked up the shovel and attacked the snow around the rear tires of Shiraz’s rented car. If I left the Mercedes there it would be traced to Shiraz through the Amsterdam rental agency. If I could free it, Erica could drive it back to Gstaad while I drove Shiraz back in the Citroën. No loose ends for the Swiss gendarmes. They’d find a corpse, in the spring when the snow melted, and no idea how it got there. The papers wouldn’t have their field day with Shiraz.
It took me fifteen minutes. I climbed into the Mercedes, backing and filling it across the overlook and pointing its prow in the direction of Gstaad. I got out and went over to Erica, who was waiting in the Citroën.
“Drive the actor’s car back,” I said. “I’ll take him.”
She gave me a funny look. “Did you see his face? He can’t stop twitching. And the way he talks.”
“He’s cold,” I said. “He’s exhausted and damn near in shock.”
But I thought of how it must have been on what was almost Shiraz’s final drive. Erica had said Jeremy was a masochist, someone who gets his kicks out of having pain inflicted on himself. There is no clear line between that and the reverse, a sadist who gets his kicks out of inflicting pain.
Jeremy had had his kicks all right, driving Shiraz up to the Col, telling him just how his life was going to end. He must have really hammered it home. He’d probably come close to scaring Shiraz to death, especially since the actor was loaded with LSD. All your sensations are more acute with LSD, including fear.
“The way he talks,” Erica repeated. “Every time he opens his mouth it scares him some more and makes the whole thing worse.”
“He ought to be okay with something hot inside him,” I said. “And a hell of a lot of sleep.”
But I was wrong.
24
CAROL SHIRAZ arrived in Gstaad a couple of days later. I took her to the hospital in Saanen, three kilometers down the valley, where they were keeping Shiraz under sedation. I tried to tell her about it while we drove over.
“Sometimes you can be scared that badly,” I said after giving her the details.
“But why would anyone want to kill him?”
I looked at her. I lit a cigarette. “I don’t know,” I said.
The doctor was pessimistic. They had flown a specialist in neurological disorders up from Geneva. He said something about cold and shock and brain damage.
Carol went into her husband’s room. I didn’t go in with her. After a while the doctor joined them. She came out alone.
She looked at me, wide-eyed. “He was all right alone with me,” she said. “He was so pathetically grateful to see me. He cried like a baby.”
I didn’t get it at first. “What do you mean he was all right?”
“Very little of that—awful business with his face. And he hardly stuttered at all. Then the doctor came in and everything—went wrong. He couldn’t talk and his face—oh God, his face.”
That was the way it went. You had to take Carol’s word for the fact that he was all right, or almost all right, when they were alone together. As soon as anyone else came near him, he went off into those nervous paroxysms.
The day after Carol got there, Shiraz’s Italian producer arrived. He was going to pick the actor up and drive down with him through the Simplon tunnel to start shooting Shiraz’s new picture. He was a plump man named Rienzi, as famous in his own right as Shiraz was, a man of bouncing, enthusiastic energy.
“Where is he? Where’s that man?” he kept saying with a beaming smile as we drove him to the hospital. “A little nerves, what’s a little case of nerves? We’ll take him to Roma. In Roma everything will be hunk
y-dory.”
That was the first time I had ever heard anyone say hunky-dory.
The producer went in to see Shiraz. He came out ten minutes later, a subdued man. “We will delay the shooting,” he said flatly and a little distantly. “We will wait a few weeks and see what happens.”
“And then?” Carol asked him.
“And then, dear lady, if he does not get a firm grip on himself, we must find a replacement. But of course that won’t be necessary,” he said, still more distantly, not believing his own words.
The producer and his entourage went back through the Simplon tunnel without Shiraz.
I saw the actor once more. He was the same as he’d been at the top of the Col, maybe worse. He hadn’t told anyone what had happened up there. A dawn ride on a foolish impulse, he told them, and getting stuck in the snow and sitting there, in the car, at the top of the pass, almost freezing to death. His mind was as sharp as ever.
The day before I left Gstaad I asked Carol, “What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. Have my baby. Go away somewhere, just Ahmed and me. He. can’t bear to be apart from me. He doesn’t want to see anyone else. He says he never will. I don’t know.”
I had moved by then from the Mexican funnyman’s chalet to a room at the Palace Hotel. I had a few drinks in the bar the night before flying back to the States, and Erica came in. There was that same appraising silence that she’d brought into the Café de la Paix aboard the Rotterdam when we’d first met. She settled on the stool next to mine, and the bar went back to normal.
“I thought you’d be back in Amsterdam by now,” I said.
“I’ve been waiting to see you. Didn’t you get my messages?”
I’d got them, two or three a day. “Been busy as hell,” I said.
One look at those big green eyes of hers was enough to tell me she hadn’t got over our LSD game that night at the chalet. The frank and injured adoration in her eyes embarrassed me.
“You won,” she said after a while.
“Yeah.”
“I just wanted to remind you.”
“Okay. You reminded me.”
“You can collect any time you—”
Drumbeat Erica Page 15