When Lyon entered the cocktail party in the wide foyer, all conversation came to an abrupt halt. They turned to face him, drinks in hand, the festive mood switching to awe. He remembered only a few of them: the thin voodoo lady, the crooning grandmother now incongruously holding a large manhattan cocktail, a short bespectacled man with thinning hair, the others a blur of vague remembrances.
They were the usual assortment of individuals who seem to ride long distance buses, but were now fused together by a common experience that would forever weld their lives. He had heard people tell of such cohesion in the Underground tunnels of London during the blitz and by men in combat units who shared a common hell unknown to others.
Half of the passengers were black, who perhaps rode buses for economic reasons; another quarter seemed to be older women on their way to visit relatives; servicemen and commuter types like Lyon made up the remainder of the group.
Lyon smiled and they relaxed. “Do you suppose he’s got a sherry back there?”
The mood broke as they swirled around him with voices that merged into incoherence. A large glass was shoved in his hand as he listened and nodded.
The elevator doors opened and again the crowd quieted. Robert Hannon, the young man who had been shot, stood before them with his arm in a sling. He waved with his uninjured arm. “They said I could go home. Lucky for me he didn’t have Mr. Wentworth’s gun or I wouldn’t have an arm.”
They made a tight circle around Lyon and the young man.
“Everyone listen a minute.” A rotund man with a round cherry face stood on a chair. “I’m Joe Moultrie and advertising gimmicks is my game: matchbooks, golf tees, that sort of thing.”
“We don’t want any.” There was more good-natured jeering.
“Wait a sec. I’m not selling tonight, at least not my usual line. Now, I think that we’ve all been through something today.” There was mutual agreement. “And I think we ought to make this an annual occasion. A get-together. You know, a reunion right here, this room, this date, next year. What do you say?”
There was unanimous approval.
Lyon felt a tap on his shoulder and turned toward a very sincere-looking bus driver. “I’m the one who should really thank you, Mr. Wentworth.”
Lyon shook his head. “I’d rather you didn’t.”
“They wanted to give me a week off with pay, but I talked them into letting me take the special bus tomorrow morning. No other passengers but those of us here, plus a good-looking hostess to serve coffee and rolls. Real class, but the folks deserve it.”
“I think they do.”
At eight they were ceremoniously ushered into a private dining room at the end of the hall. There was momentary confusion over the seating arrangements until the driver took the place at the head of the table. Lyon found himself facing a wilted fruit cocktail with the voodoo lady to one side and a short man with thinning hair on the other.
During the introductions, he discovered that the black woman was Maura Dalencourt, a Haitian who had moved to New York thirty years ago and worked, until her retirement, as a chambermaid for the Plaza Hotel. She talked to Lyon with extreme deference, her eyes never leaving his, as if she still felt him possessed with divine power.
“I understand we’re roommates, Mr. Wentworth.”
Lyon turned to the man seated at his right. “Mr. Collins?”
“Yes. Major Collins, U.S. Army, retired.” The handshake was limp, the palm sweaty. “Don’t worry, Mr. Wentworth, I don’t have any combat nightmares and wake up screaming. Thirty years in the Finance Corps never put me within a hundred miles of any shooting. I’m traveling on a thirty-day ticket and plan to spend a week in New England. I wonder if you could suggest some points of interest I might take in?”
It happened as they were finishing the prime rib entrée.
Maura Dalencourt stood with a sharp cry and raked her cheeks with clawlike fingers. Her choking sounds were nearly incoherent. “The duppy! The duppy of the evil one is here!”
Lyon clutched her hand. “It’s all right, Maura. It’s all right.”
“There is the sign of the duppy!” She pointed a thin finger toward the center of the table where a fork and butter knife lay crossed over each other.
“No, it’s going to be all right.” Lyon put his arm around her and led her from the room toward a small alcove in the foyer. They sat on a narrow love seat with their knees touching. He put his hands over hers. “There is no duppy. The man is dead and the duppy gone.”
“You know of the soul, you know he was Baron Samedi, the evil one.”
“I know you are safe.”
“Because you see such things you are a good Rada, the one who killed Petro the evil one.”
“I am concerned—for you.”
“It is unusual for a white man to be aware of this.”
“I read many books.”
Her hands left his and vibrated before them. “I feel it. The duppy wills us to die.”
“No,” Lyon said softly. “I do not feel that. We are all tired from the day, that is all.” He brought her hands back to her lap and felt the pressure of her squeeze. He wondered how many times in the past he might have passed her in the halls of the Plaza, how many times she might have come into his room unnoticed.
“I will be all right?”
“I promise you.” She sighed, and the very structure of her body relaxed as tension seeped from her hand to his. Her head nodded, her eyes closed, and she leaned against his shoulder and slept.
Later, two of the other women passengers led the barely conscious Maura Dalencourt to her room. Lyon stretched and tried to work out the stiffness caused by the long uncomfortable position on the narrow love seat. They told him he had a phone call.
He took it in his room and held the phone away from his ear. “ARE YOU ALL RIGHT, LYON?”
“I wasn’t hurt.”
“THANK GOD FOR THAT. It took some doing, but Rocco finally got through to Captain Nesbitt, who told us the whole story. We’ll pick you up in less than three hours.”
“Wait until morning. I’m about ready for bed now and have to look at some photographs in the morning.”
“We’ll meet you in Nesbitt’s office. And, Lyon—I love you.”
“I love you too, Bea.” He knew she was searching for more to say, something that would make it all right, but of course the phrases could not be found. It didn’t matter, he knew what she meant. “Good night, darling,” he finally said.
“Good night,” she answered, and there wasn’t any necessity to say more.
“Mr. Wentworth.”
The soft tone startled him and he turned quickly to face the door. “Oh, Major Collins, you gave me a start.”
“I’m sorry, sir. Thought you might like a nightcap. Sherry, isn’t it?” He extended a glass.
“Yes, thank you.”
“Do you think there’s anything to the old woman’s demons and curses?”
“Good Lord, no.”
He sat on the edge of his bed. “I thought I knew you from somewhere, so I hope you don’t mind that I asked that we bunk together?”
“No, of course not. Please call me Lyon, or, in fact, anything you want as long as it’s not Baron Samedi.”
“Samedi?”
“A voodoo bad guy.” Lyon pulled on his drink. “That one’s not in my two-oh-one file.”
“Two-oh-one file?”
Lyon detected the vague trace of an accent in his companion’s voice, but couldn’t place the country of origin.
“What can I do for you?”
Collins extended a copy of Lyon’s book, The Wobblies’ Revenge. “I’m going to stop and see my grandson in Springfield, and I bought it this morning. You are the author, aren’t you?”
Lyon glanced at his photograph on the back of the dust jacket and smiled at Collins. “I plead guilty.”
“If it’s not too much trouble, I wonder if you’d autograph it for me?”
“Of course.” Lyon accepted t
he pen and opened the book to the flyleaf to find there was already an inscription. He glanced at it hastily:
To my beloved grandson, Mark. May he understand the secret of the karst and why it was necessary. Your loving grandpops.
Beneath the message was a finely drawn series of minute symbols:
Lyon turned the page, uncapped the pen, wrote his own inscription, and returned the book.
“Thank you. It will make the book more precious to my grandson. I glanced through it at the store; you can’t be too careful what you place in the hands of children. It seems to be about some sort of monsters fighting other monsters.”
“The Wobblies are the good guys.”
“Yes, the Wobblies. And their village is attacked by the …”
“Waldoons. They had wings and two heads, as I recall.”
“Yes, but not too frightening. I love the Wobblies and I think Mark will too. My only quarrel is that hole the Waldoons come from. You make it seem such a dark, dank place.”
“That’s probably because I’m a terrible claustrophobic, which is why I prefer hot air ballooning.”
“Really, how interesting. I’d like to hear about that. Perhaps on the bus tomorrow?”
“I won’t be going with the rest of you. The police want to see me again tomorrow.”
“Oh, that’s disappointing. Somehow I’d feel safer with you on the bus.”
“I’m sure there’s nothing to worry about, and I doubt that I could help if there was.”
Collins tapped Lyon’s photograph on the book. “I’ve also heard that you sometimes do things of an investigatory nature besides writing your books.”
“Once or twice, accidentally.”
“There are police in the hallway. Did you know that?”
“Yes, I understand it’s purely precautionary and probably designed to calm our fears.”
“It could be that the woman who talks about voodoo is right after all.”
“I wouldn’t have thought you were superstitious, Mr. Collins.”
“Demons can take other forms than the strange names she calls them. I’m an accountant by profession, and tend to believe more in the laws of probability and chance. There’s a rumor among the passengers that the gun you used this afternoon wasn’t yours.”
“It belonged to a man sitting behind me.”
“Did you know him? Is he here?”
“No, he slipped away. I can hardly recall what he looked like except for his cap and beard.”
Collins looked out the window over the darkening city. “A strange set of circumstances.”
“You’re from Yugoslavia, Mr. Collins.”
“Serbia. We used to make a distinction. I didn’t realize it still showed after all these years.”
“And you aren’t a retired army officer.”
“You’re either very perceptive or make wild guesses.”
“You hadn’t heard of a two-oh-one file.”
“That revealed me. What is it?”
“A service records jacket.”
“No. I haven’t been in the army. Let’s say I was involved in a war of a different sort.” He went to the bathroom door. “I know you must be very tired. Good night.”
“Good night, Mr. Collins.”
Sometime during the night a nightmarish dream of a hundred men with revolvers walking bus aisles jolted Lyon awake. He lay on his side staring across the darkened room. Collins sat hunched in a chair by the window. A flashing neon sign from below intermittently illuminated the lower portion of his face. Lyon watched the sad man in silence for a few moments until waves of sleep again released him.
Police Chief Rocco Herbert didn’t hate the state police; he merely liked to avoid them as much as possible. Ordinarily he considered any intrusion into Murphysville matters a violation of his domain, but this morning he had no alternative. The governor had insisted that Bea Wentworth be chauffeured to New York in her official car driven by a state trooper.
He did luxuriate in the width of the rear seat and found he was nearly able to extend his legs their full length. Bea was huddled in the corner staring out the window. “He’s all right.”
She turned and smiled. “I know. Do you know this is the second time I’ve seen you in your full dress uniform?”
Rocco reddened. “When was the first?”
“At the Bicentennial parade a couple of years ago.” She laughed. “And what in the world are those things on your shoulders?”
Rocco turned a deeper hue of embarrassment. “Stars.”
“General’s stars?”
“As chief I’m entitled to wear them.”
“Rocco Herbert! A twelve-man force and you wear stars?”
“They were Martha’s idea. Damn it all, Bea! It won’t hurt to impress those jokers in the city.”
She gave his shoulder a pat. “I only hope they don’t need to be impressed.”
The Department of Internal Affairs had provided Lyon with photographs of all men authorized to wear a gold shield in the city of New York. After examining the fiftieth or sixtieth picture, he found they were all beginning to merge into one image, and he wondered if he’d even be able to identify himself. Nevertheless, he kept doggedly at it, looking for the man who had occupied the seat behind him.
They had sequestered him in a small, glass-partitioned cubicle off the main squad room. Captain Nesbitt, McAllister of the FBI, and two men from Internal Affairs were clustered in a small knot near the elevators and occasionally glanced in his direction. He turned the last page of photographs and closed the heavy binder. The man on the bus could have been there, but even a tentative identification was impossible. He left the cubicle and walked toward the officers.
“You buy that cockamamie story of someone slipping him the piece?”
“Hell, no!”
“Does the Pope say mass?”
They laughed.
“We’ve got to take a position on this,” Nesbitt said. “The goddamn mayor is coming down here and the commissioner wants the official line to be lily white.”
“Which means we believe he found the gun?”
“You better believe it!” Another officer left the elevator and crossed to them. “There’s a mile long Connecticut State car downstairs with a trooper driver and a guy in dress blues that’s seven feet tall and must be in charge of every cop in New England.”
“We officially believe it,” Nesbitt concluded.
They sat in a row along the divan in Nesbitt’s office. Rocco seemed uncomfortable in his tight dress uniform, and Bea held her husband’s hand tightly.
“We’re very proud of your husband, Madam Secretary.”
“Please. Call me Bea.”
“Of course, and I’m John. In fact,” he glanced at his watch, “in an hour the mayor would like to make a presentation with radio and television coverage.”
Lyon abruptly went to the window and stood with his back to them. “There will be no coverage as there will be no event to cover.”
“Mr. Wentworth, the mayor and police commissioner …”
“Am I in custody?”
“Of course not. You can leave at any time. However, we would like you back again if anything further turns up.”
“Do you know anything about the man I killed?”
“We haven’t had time to complete a full investigation.” He picked up a thin file folder. “But there’s enough here to tell me he was a real loser.”
“May I see it, please?”
John Nesbitt hesitated a moment and then handed over the folder. Lyon stood at the window reading the sparse outline of William Banning Shep’s brief life. A room search on East Tenth Street had yielded few possessions except an irate landlady concerned over back rent. His neighbors knew him as a moody, taciturn man who kept to himself; his job history was splotchy, with continued bouts of unemployment. There were several photographs, including a group taken inside the bus, that showed the dead man sprawled in the aisle as Lyon so vividly remembered. He closed th
e file and gave it back to Nesbitt. “I’m going home now.”
Rocco sat in front with the trooper driver while Lyon stared moodily out the rear window. He was unable to shake the sheen of depression that engulfed him. He had tried to view the events with logic, but coherent thought could not dispel his depression.
“You shouldn’t have looked at the file.”
He didn’t answer for a moment. “How’s the campaign coming?”
“Lousy. My unworthy opponent has accused me of everything except soliciting votes on my back, and I believe that’ll be suggested next week. Did you know that I’m a dupe of the Communist party?”
That penetrated his depression and he smiled. “What kind of dupe are you: Russian, Maoist, Red Guard, or CP U.S.A.?”
“He doesn’t know the difference.”
“Is he reaching the voters?”
“He talks a lot about what haunts people: taxes, crime, inflation. People hear what they worry about.”
“I keep going over it again and again.”
“I was afraid of that.”
“He keeps coming down the aisle and I’m holding that damn gun in my lap. There must have been another way.”
“I’ve thought about it, and I could never see what else you could have done under the circumstances.”
“There are always alternatives.”
“Not in this case.”
Rocco turned toward them and pointed out the window. They were overtaking a Nutmeg Transportation Company bus. As they passed, the passengers waved out the window. Lyon recognized Hannon, with his arm in a sling, the voodoo lady, and a few others. He gave them a thumbs-up sign as they pulled past the bus and it began to recede in the distance.
He wondered if he’d ever see any of them again. The camaraderie of the cocktail party the night before had been strong, and the promise of a yearly reunion well-intentioned, but might be forgotten as life continued and feelings diminished.
An accident of life had taken a dozen and a half people and put them into extraordinary circumstances. For the present they were riding an emotional high, but it would fade, just as he hoped the face of the man he had killed would eventually go away.
But there had been an additional passenger—the man with the beard who gave him the gun. Why did he leave and disappear?
The Death in the Willows Page 4