This was after I’d gone back to Washington with Jack Morley by train.
“You can’t see him,” Jack had said. “You’re out of your mind if you try.”
“Who?”
“You know damn well who. Tudson Bonner.”
“You know some other way?”
“No.”
“Me neither.”
“In the first place there’s the Prince Charles County sheriff. You said yourself he was out to get you. That’s where Bonner’s living these days, Prince Charles County.”
I watched the telephone poles slip by. Jack lit a cigarette and said, “Also, what the hell good would it do you? You think maybe Bonner will go to bat for you and implicate himself?”
“I got to see him, Jack.”
We said good-by at Union Station in Washington. I told Jack I’d bring the suit over one of these nights, and took a taxi home. I made myself a big drink and called Bobby Hayst on the phone. There wasn’t any answer. I was almost glad. I didn’t know what to say to her. I made another drink. Before you knew it, I had four or five and no appetite for dinner. I called Bobby again. No answer, which meant another drink. Somewhere along the line I drifted off to sleep stretched out on the sofa in the living room.
I got up in the morning as hungry as a horse, as brave as a lion and as smart as an elephant. At least that’s what I told myself. The hungry as a horse part was easy. I put a pot of coffee up, grilled six strips of bacon and fried four eggs in their fat. While I was waiting for the toaster to pop, the telephone rang.
It was Jack. “I wish you wouldn’t, Chet,” he said.
“You know I’ve got to”
He sighed and told me where Judson Bonner lived. It was on Route 60 a few miles from Toano. I hung up, finished eating and drove over to the office.
Jerry had come and gone, probably last night. His desk was clean. He had even taken his girlie calendar off the wall.
I strapped on my shoulder rig, loaded every chamber of my Magnum .357 except the one under the hammer and thrust it into the holster. Then I tried out the pocket recorder. Figuring out how to get the wires to the tie-clip mike without showing was harder. I finally put the recorder in the inside breast pocket of my jacket and made a little hole in my shirt right under that. I drew the wires out through a button hole and attached them to the tie-clip. But that wasn’t any good because a half inch of wire stuck out around the edge of my tie. I dug a hole in the tie with the desk letter-opener and ran the wires through that. I covered the hole with the tie-clip. It looked pretty good.
That’s the elephant part: Or maybe it’s a fox that’s smart. Anyway, then the lion took over, locked up the office, went downstairs and outside, and drove down into Virginia.
A DREARY autumn rain was falling when I reached the Judson Bonner estate.
From Route 60 you couldn’t see the house at all. A dense hemlock hedge about twelve feet high bordered the road for a quarter of a mile. It must have taken Judson Bonner twenty years to grow a hedge like that. It was as thick as a wall. I drove slowly by, then stopped. Metal gleamed inside the hedge. I got out and went over for a closer look. The hemlock had been planted around a cyclone fence. It was ten feet high and topped by two feet of barbed wire, three rusted strands of it, almost hidden by the hemlock. Judson Bonner was a man who liked his privacy.
There were two gates in the fence, both of heavy black wrought iron and about two hundred yards apart. One had massive white brick gateposts. A plaque on one of them said: Judson Banner. The other didn’t have any gateposts except the uprights of the hidden cyclone fence. Here the plaque was fastened to the wrought iron and said: Judson Bonnet, Service Entrance.
I drove up to the service entrance and beeped my horn. In a little while a figure came running along a muddy path on the other side of the gate. He wore khakis and a lumber-jacket and carried a big black umbrella. When he came close I rolled down the car window and stuck my head out. He was a young, good-looking guy, a pale blond. He didn’t seem happy about being out in the rain.
“What is it?” he said.
“I have to see Mr. Bonner,” I shouted back at him.
“Get out of there so’s I can have a look at you.”
I opened the car door and got out. The rain soaked me in seconds. He seemed to get some satisfaction out of that.
“Who are you, pal?” He had a cocky way of talking and his accent was not native to the Commonwealth of Virginia.
“The name is Drum.”
“Who says you got to see Mr. Bonner?”
I smiled at him. He had a wolf’s grin with nothing behind it.
“I say so.”
The wolfs grin prowled off. “Got an appointment?”
“I don’t need an appointment.”
He sneered. “Climb back in your pushcart and go home, pal. All you’ll get if you stay here is a soaking.”
He started to walk away. The rain drummed on his umbrella.
“Tell him it’s the private dick who lost his license in Richmond yesterday,” I shouted. “Tell him that.”
He turned around and came back. A gust of wind lifted the umbrella and he got wet He wiped the water off his face as if it was acid.
“Drum, you say?”
“Yesterday in Richmond. I didn’t say boo. He knows I could have. Tell him that.”
“All I hear is words pal. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Tell him. If you don’t he’s liable to take away your umbrella.”
He went away without a word. I climbed back into the car and lit a cigarette. He was back in fifteen minutes. He opened the gate.
“Pull her through and wait,” he told me.
I drove through the break in the hemlock hedge and stopped. The blond lad pulled his umbrella shut and got into the car alongside of me.
“Drive slow, pal,” he said.
It was a muddy dirt road that curved twice before running straight between twin rows of sycamores. On the first curve we passed a white clapboard gatehouse that I might have made the down payment on with every cent I had in the bank. After the road ran straight we drove for almost half a mile before we saw Judson Bonner’s mansion through the low dripping arch made by the sycamore branches.
The house was red brick with a white-pillared portico out front not quite the length of a football field and a slate gambrel roof as big as a circus bigtop. The pentagonal gray gambrel dominated the red brick and white pillars and made the house look as if it was sinking into the ground.
“Stop here, pal.”
I pulled to a stop on a driveway which circled around behind the house. It was flanked on the other side by a garage big enough for a dozen cars.
“Now, out you go.”
The gateman pointed to a door in the side of the house. He ran over to the garage and went in. I figured he had done his day’s work.
I opened the door and went in. There wasn’t any bell or knocker. I found myself in a long dim hall with foxhunt murals on the walk, a carpet which almost hid my shoes, and no windows.
When I took three steps down the hall a man came toward me. He was young, like the gateman, and even better-looking. He was good-looking enough to have been in pictures, but he didn’t look like any pushover. He wore a lightweight turtleneck sweater which showed his muscles and a pair of avocado chinos a little too tight. He had wavy black hair and long eyelashes. He didn’t look twenty-one. Judson Bonner, or whoever did the hiring, liked the hired help tough but decorative. It was worth thinking about, but at the time I didn’t come up with any bright ideas.
“Frisk job, dads,” he said, and ran his hands over me in the usual places. His left hand paused for a split second on the pocket recorder, but he must have finally decided it was a thick billfold. He yanked the Magnum out of its shoulder holster, thumbed the cylinder away from the barrel and tapped the bullets out on the palm of his hand. Then he handed the gun back to me. He put the .357 slugs in hs pocket. He smiled.
I smiled too. �
�Maybe I got a pocketful of them myself,” I said.
“Maybe you have. But you’d never get the chance to load up, dads. Come on.”
I followed, him. He didn’t seem to mind turning his back on me at all.
CHAPTER TWELVE
HE KNOCKED on a door and waited. I stood behind him, leaking rainwater on the deep carpet. A voice, muffled through the heavy door, told us to come, in. This time the kid in the turtleneck stepped to one side, so I turned the door handle, pushed the door open and walked. I wondered if getting out would be as easy.
It was the kind of room you’d pay four bits to see, without thinking you were bilked, in Sagamore Hill. The walls were paneled with dark, glossy wood—probably teak. From the teak, trophies glowered down at me. There must have been two dozen of them, the best being a huge Kodiak bearhead with gaping jaws and hanging tongue. The Victorian furniture was cumbersome and cluttered, with high stiff chairs and ornate inlaid tables. An enormous teak and leather desk at the far end of the room almost hid a fireplace big enough to roast a steer whole.
A man sat behind the-desk and just in front of the hearth, brooding, his elbow on the desk and his chin on his hand, as we started out on our safari across the trophy room. That would be Judson Bonner.
The desk was eight feet across. That was as close as you could get to Judson Bonner.
He wore a cashmere smoking jacket with a satin shawl collar. He had a lot of white hair. He needed a haircut He had a thin white two-piece mustache you could hide under a matchstick. He had a gaunt face, and a narrow, high-bridged nose. His eyes, which were not deepset, took ten years off his face. They were young eyes, curious eyes, but eyes which had not done much smiling. His mouth was small and bitter.
I reached for a cigarette, thumbing the starter on the pocket recorder as I did so. That would give us two hours of recorded conversation.
“Don’t smoke,” he said. “I have never smoked in my life. I see no reason for you to contaminate the air.”
I put the cigarettes back in my pocket, marveling at Judson Bonner s voice. It was deep and well modulated. It had the clarity of a perfect belltone. Before retirement four or five years ago, Judson Bonner had spent three terms in the U.S. Senate. His voice, that was made for oratory, had probably got him there and kept him there.
He waved a hand before I could talk. “Please feel no need, Mr. Drum, to recapitulate yesterday’s hearing for me. I have my informants. Now, what is it you wish to say?”
He didn’t offer anyone a chair. They were that kind of chairs: they looked as if they had never been sat in, as if they had been made for a museum. I wouldn’t have been surprised to see ropes tied across the arms.
“All right, then you know,” I said. “I didn’t mention Ernie Dygert yesterday. I didn’t mention you. I could have.”
“That is correct”
“Well?”
“Precisely what is it you wish, Mr. Drum?”
I leered at him. “If I said I never heard of anyone named Dygert?”
“Go ahead and say it. That would make three people in this room who know you’re a liar.”
Turtleneek, who stood a couple of paces behind me, sucked in his breath. But Judson Bonner’s face changed expression exactly as much as the Kodiak bear’s. “Suppose we say I knew him. Then what?”
“Suppose we say you hired him. Suppose we say he gets a thirty grand a year retainer from you. Suppose we say he used part of this year’s thirty grand to buy information I didn’t know one damn thing about from my man Trowbridge. Suppose we say you put that information in a letter and sent it to U.S.N.A. along with certain requests which they feel free to ignore now only because Duncan Lord is dead.”
He stood up. I had not realized how tall he was. “Did you know that men like Duncan Hadley Lord, who see fit to fritter away our resources and our money overseas, are a menace to the security of our nation?”
“Suppose we say,” I went on, ignoring his rhetorical question, “that if I open my mouth to the right people you’re all washed up as a one-man morals lobby or anything else in D.C.”
“That’s extortion!” he shouted. Spots of angry color flared on his cheekbones.
“What do you call the kind of deal you tried to make with U.S.N.A.?”
“That’s different. I was acting in the best interests of our nation.”
The more I riled him, the closer what he said came to what I wanted to get down on the recorder. I asked: “When did you decide what the best interests of our country were? The last time you were out of this room? When you shot that bear, maybe? Around 1925?”
His eyes narrowed and his mouth formed a tight thin line. “Gilbert,” he said, “throw this man out of here.”
Turtleneck moved forward and grabbed my arm. I planted my feet and said: “Go ahead. And read all about it in the Washington Post-Times in the morning. Come on, Gilbert. Show me the door.”
BONNER moved his hand. Gilbert let go of me. I lit a cigarette and this time Bonner didn’t say anything about it.
“Precisely what is it you wish, Mr. Drum?” Bonner asked for the second time.
“First let’s get our cards up out of our laps, huh? Dygert works for you, right?”
“He has done some work for me, yes.”
“And you were out to get something on Duncan Lord?”
“A public figure’s life should be an open book, Mr. Drum.”
“They never are. Answer me.”
“Well, yes. But you are putting the matter crudely.”
“Pardon me for my lack of education. And Dygert got that information for you?”
“Yes, of course. You already know that.”
“Got it how?”
“Apparently you know more about that than I do.”
“You didn’t come to me for any payoff. I came to you. Let’s hear you say it so you know why you’re paying me.”
“Mr. Dygert has never revealed his sources to me.”
We had reached an impasse, but I thought I could coast on what I had for a while. It was more than enough to appeal yesterday’s hearing. It could use a clincher, though. It could use an outburst. I grinned and said, “That sounds as if you’re working for Dygert, not the other way around.”
Bonner’s small mouth fluttered. Color leaped into his cheeks again. Unexpectedly, I had hit a bull’s-eye. It was the first real bull’s-eye I had hit in there.
It was also the last.
A door behind Bonner’s desk, between the fireplace and the first trophy, opened. Ernie Dygert stalked into the room. The door slammed shut behind him. Purple bruises marred his face. His left eye was swollen shut. A lump on his jaw made his face look lopsided.
“I can handle this, Ernie,” Judson Bonner said.
Dygert ignored him. He had a gun in his big fist, a .45 automatic which could blow a hole through a six-inch beam of oak. I was no six-inch beam of oak. The gun was pointing at me.
“I wish you would let me handle this, Ernie,” Judson Bonner insisted.
“Don’t make me laugh,” Dygert said. “You really believe Drum came here for a payoff? He never even got around to naming his price.”
“That’s easy,” I told Dygert, staring at him steadily. “It’s ten thousand bucks, cash on the barrelhead.”
All he did was laugh. With anyone but Ernie Dygert I might have got away with it. But he was that find of detective. He probably carried a pocket recorder around like I carried a notebook and a pencil. For him it was probably the greatest invention since Edison took down his shingle.
“You got some mighty interesting stuff there,” he admitted. Then he stopped smiling. “I want it.”
He came in front of me. The .45 was well-oiled. I could smell the oil. “He held out his free hand. “Give.”
He let me play it dumb for a few seconds while he looked me over. He liked my tie-clip the minute he saw it. His hand reached out, he gave a yank, and six inches of wire dangled from my shirt. He smiled condescendingly.
I fl
icked the cigarette in his face. Sparks flew. I turned and made a run for the door.
It was Gilbert who brought me down with a flying tackle. We rolled over on the floor and got tangled in a polar bear rug. Gilbert had muscles, but he was no heavyweight. I clubbed him once with the edge of my hand where his jawbone meets his ear, and he was all through. I got up.
Dygert stood over me with his .45.
“Unbutton your jacket,” he said. “Then put your hands on your head and keep them there.”
Gilbert sat up, groaning. Judson Bonner was frozen half-rising out of his chair, like one of his trophies. I opened my jacket. The right side hung heavily.
“Heeled too, are you?” Dygert said.
“Gun’s empty,” Gilbert said thickly.
Dygert removed the recorder from the inside breast pocket of my jacket. “Nifty little gadgets, aren’t they?” he asked no one in particular. He tossed the recorder to Gilbert. “Lift the spool,” he said.
Gilbert did so with fumbling hands. He stood up.
“Now let me have it.”
Gilbert obediently did that too.
“Give Mr, Drum back his recorder.”
Gilbert walked in front of me and used the recorder against the side of my jaw. My knees went rubbery but I didn’t fall down.
“You ought to put on some weight, Gilbert,” Dygert said. Then he jerked his head at me. “Turn around, Drum.”
I turned around and stared at the door it had been so easy to enter through. Conversationally, Dygert asked: “What do you think happens to you now?”
I shrugged.
“Go on. Take a guess.”
I didn’t hear Dygert’s footsteps. I did hear a low vocal sound which came from Judson Bonner.
For a split second I smelled the oil on Dygert’s .45. Then the ceiling came down to slam the floor like a punch press. I was caught between.
IT WAS the last day of the planet earth. The sky was lurid. The sun was swollen and bloated. It hung very close. The earth was going to fall into it. The last man in the world, his head swollen and bloated from too much swollen and bloated sun, opened his eyes. At least, he thought he opened his eyes. He couldn’t see anything. He heard an impossible sound. It was almost like rain banging away at a metal roof. It was almost like a car engine. It was almost like tires thumping and whispering over wet pavement. It was almost like wipers swishing and thumping on a windshield. It was almost like all four.
Violence Is My Business Page 8