He Huffed and He Puffed

by Barbara Paul

  “He does?” Jack said, surprised. “What?”

  Instead of answering him I turned to Joanna. “Friday night you kept saying we needed to get something on Strode, that that was the only way we’d ever be free of him.”

  “Yes,” she said, beginning to understand.

  I smiled and gestured toward the open vault.

  “Son of a gun,” Jack breathed, and then burst out laughing. “Son of a gun!”

  I turned to him. “Jack, you’ve never seemed to understand that this weekend is … repeatable. Take your own case. The helicopter pilot—Billy is his name? You’ve destroyed the statement Billy signed, but you haven’t destroyed Billy. As long as Strode has him under his thumb, you’re not safe. Do you understand that?”

  His lips tightened; he didn’t answer.

  “As I see it, you have three options,” I went on. “First, you can kill Billy—”

  “Kill him? I told you, I didn’t have anything to do with that helicopter crash!” Jack said darkly.

  “Of course you did!” I snapped. “For god’s sake, Jack, stop playing these stupid games. Your second option is to kill Strode.”

  Castleberry gasped. Jack said, “You’re getting carried away, Richard. Kill Strode? You’re out of your mind.”

  He really was the limit. “Will you stop being such a damned hypocrite, Jack! You were the one who first brought up the possibility of killing him—and then you pretended to be horrified when Joanna and I took you seriously. But there’s a better way.”

  “Oh, do tell us,” he said dryly. “I can hardly wait.”

  I took a breath. “It’s hard to believe that you and Joanna and I are the only three people Strode’s ever put the squeeze on. That vault is probably full of folders like the ones we just burned. All we have to do is help ourselves. If Strode is withholding evidence in other cases and we can prove it, then we’ve got him. And who knows what else is in there? We have a veritable treasure house at our disposal!”

  To the surprise of us all, none other than Myron Castleberry the Fearless suddenly swung into action. He was struggling to close the heavy door of the vault when Jack reached him and jerked him away. “Naughty, naughty!” Jack scolded. “Do you want us to make you stand in the corner for an hour?”

  But it was more serious than that. I took out my knife again and went over to Castleberry. Without any warning I nicked his chin, and then held the blade up so he could see the drop of blood gleaming on the tip. “Do you think for one minute,” I said, not trying to hide my anger, “do you think that I will let a worthless little flunkey like you stand in my way? Do you think you are that important? You are nothing, Castleberry! A means to an end, that’s all. You have some slight temporary value at most. You are … disposable. If you wish to come out of this unscathed, you will do, as, you, are, told. Is that quite clear? Is it?”

  There was an uncomfortable silence that I did nothing to break. Then Castleberry said leadenly, “I’ll do what you say. I’m not going to die for A. J. Strode.”

  What a surprise. “Then start bringing files out of that vault. You know what we’re looking for.”

  Jack was staring at me with an expression I’d seen before, on the faces of other men. “I’ll … keep an eye on him.” He went into the vault with Castleberry.

  Joanna was watching me closely. “How very interesting.” She perched on the corner of Strode’s desk and tapped at the side casually with one foot. “Tell me something. This is what it was all for, wasn’t it, Richard?” she asked in a neutral voice. “All the plotting, the running around. It was all to get you into A. J. Strode’s vault. The destroying of the evidence against us—that was just a way station on the road. It was the vault you were after all along.”

  There are times when a lie just won’t do the trick; this was one of them. “Do you forgive me?”

  A sparkle appeared in her eye. “You’re about to hand me the means of getting A. J. Strode off my back forever and you want to know if I forgive you. Well, yes, Richard. I forgive you.” She laughed. “Just don’t ever get mad at me.”

  “Never,” I promised her.

  Jack and Castleberry came out of the vault, each with an armload of folders. “He says these are the juiciest ones,” Jack announced, dumping his folders on the desk Joanna was sitting on, Strode’s desk.

  Once Castleberry accepted the fact that he wasn’t going to be able to stop us, he set out to show how helpful he could be. “Start with this one,” he said, handing me a folder. “This man is a money manager who makes a practice of embezzling from his clients’ retirement funds. Mr. Strode has been forcing him to invest client money in various enterprises—ones that are of interest to Mr. Strode, of course.”

  “That’s good for seven to ten right there,” Jack said gleefully. “Let’s divvy these up.”

  We pulled up chairs around Strode’s desk and parceled out the folders among the three of us. We read and asked Castleberry questions, which he answered honestly as far as I could tell. A. J. Strode’s reach extended far. In addition to competing businessmen, he also had the goods on a variety of politicians—in Washington as well as New York, all men and women sitting on committees or engaged in special projects that affected Strode’s financial holdings in some way.

  “Whew!” Jack said at one point. “I’m thinkin’ maybe we ought to go into business for ourselves! Blackmailers Incorporated—we’d make a fortune! What do you think?”

  “Shut up and read, Jack,” Joanna said tonelessly.

  We read and made our selections; I kept a list of all the names on the folders we could use against Strode. I was about to bypass the folder of a professional basketball player with ostensible underworld connections when Castleberry stopped me. “I suggest you hold on to that one,” he said. “His father is a member of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System.”

  Ah. One of the seven men who controlled the nation’s credit market. And Strode was using the son to get at the father. “I certainly shall hold on to it. Thank you.”

  He looked at me slyly. “Perhaps not so worthless after all?”

  I thought back; I had indeed called him worthless. “My mistake. You obviously have hidden talents, Castleberry.” That satisfied him; he leaned back in his chair and even smiled a little. The man was a natural-born toady. He should have been thinking of ways to hand my head on a platter to either the police or Strode or both. But instead he was more concerned with convincing me that I was wrong about him, that he was too an important person and a swell fellow to boot.

  Joanna was starting to droop a little, so I asked her if she felt all right.

  “Yes,” she said, “but it’s three o’clock and I’m supposed to eat something.”

  “Oh, good lord! I’m sorry, Joanna, I should have remembered.” I looked at my list; it had twenty names on it. “I think we have enough here. Castleberry, will Strode accept a call from you before our nine o’clock deadline?”

  He indicated he would. “Mr. Strode said he’d be expecting to hear from me anytime after noon today. He figured that was the earliest you three could … reach a decision.”

  Well, he didn’t miss by much.

  So it was on to the final step. We dragged Castleberry with us when we made a detour to the Port Authority Bus Terminal to divide the folders from Strode’s vault among three different lockers; each of us kept one key. Then we bought envelopes and stamps and mailed the keys to ourselves. Next we found a restaurant; we sat around the table eating and planning strategy. Joanna and I wouldn’t be going back to Strode’s place with the other two because of the risk that Strode might check with the security guard as to who was in the house before he went in. There was a risk in our not going, too, and that was that Jack might not be able to control Castleberry alone. But I made the flunkey understand that if anything went wrong, he would have me to answer to; Strode wouldn’t be able to protect him. He didn’t take much convincing.

  Castleberry would call Strode and tell him Jack was
the winner of the House of Glass sweepstakes (that should surprise him right there) and was at that moment waiting to close the deal. Castleberry said Strode had been staying in a woman’s apartment about twenty blocks away, so it shouldn’t take him long to get there. Joanna and I would wait across the street until we saw Strode arrive and follow him in. Then we’d put it to him.

  Joanna perked up considerably once she had some food in her, and even Castleberry was showing signs of getting into the mood of things; I hoped he wasn’t nursing any ideas of coming to work for me. Jack was laughing and making jokes and acting in general like a condemned man who’d received a last-minute reprieve, as indeed he had. As for myself, I felt completely relaxed. In our own ways, we were ready.

  It was almost five when Joanna and I took up our positions across the street from Strode’s house. We had to stand there for forty-five minutes, looking conspicuous, before Strode finally arrived. He was alone, except for the chauffeur, who drove away once Strode was inside the gate. We crossed the street and made a show of asking the guard if his boss had gotten back yet; he let us in. The inside guard didn’t seem particularly surprised to see us; he just said they were all in the conference room.

  All. Strode and Castleberry and Jack? The back of my neck began to prickle. Outside the conference room, I said, “Joanna,” and stopped her from opening the door.

  But it was too late. The door opened from the inside, and there stood A. J. Strode, smiling at us triumphantly. “Come in, come in. We’ve been waiting for you. Don’t try to run, Jo. There’s no place to go.”

  “I wouldn’t think of it,” she said coolly and walked in.

  I followed, and found myself looking at three men I’d never seen before—big, hefty men, obviously bodyguards and just as obviously armed, if the bulges under their arms were any indication. Castleberry was there, and Jack; the latter was seated at the conference table, the only one in the room not standing. I walked over and stared down at him without speaking.

  “Don’t look at me, man,” he said petulantly. “These goons were already in the house when Castleberry and I got here. What was I supposed to do?”

  “They both have knives,” Castleberry said quickly. One of the bodyguards collected Joanna’s knife and then mine and put them in a drawer of an oak side table, being careful to handle only the blades; I caught a glimpse of Jack’s knife already inside, gleaming pinkly. The bodyguard locked the drawer and handed Strode the key.

  Castleberry was unhappy. “You promised me you wouldn’t see any of them,” he said to Strode.

  “I thought I wouldn’t have to,” Strode said. “But I had to anticipate their trying something. I sure as hell never expected them to get into my vault.” He turned to me. “My men moved in while you were busy stealing from me. Oh yes, Castleberry’s had time to tell me what you were up to. We had a nice long chat on the phone while you were standing across the street waiting.”

  I turned and pointed to the camera. “I want that removed. And the microphones.”

  “They’re not working,” Strode said. “Have you forgotten what your companion-in-crime did to my security system?”

  “No, nor have I forgotten seeing a repairman at work in the monitoring room. If you want to talk, you’re going to have to get rid of the camera and the microphones.”

  Strode looked exasperated. “There’s a little red light in the camera when—”

  “I know about the little red light. I also know it can be disconnected while the camera is still operating.”

  Strode yielded impatiently, not seeming to care one way or the other. There was a wait while the security guard came in with a half-stepladder and a toolbox and removed the camera from its mount. Then he started unscrewing the light-switch plate.

  Jack got up to look. “In there? The mike’s in the light switch?”

  The guard glanced over his shoulder at Strode, who wasn’t paying any attention to them. “It uses the AC lines for both power and transmission,” he told Jack. “Transmitters that run on batteries—they have to be replaced almost every day. No good.” He took out a microphone/transmitter unit not much bigger than his thumbnail.

  “How many of these do you need for a room this size?”

  “Just one. That’s it.”

  “You’re sure now?”

  The guard swore by all that was holy there were no more bugs in the conference room. He gathered up his gear and left.

  “Satisfied?” Strode growled when the security guard had left. We sat down around the conference table, all but the three bodyguards. One stood behind Strode, another placed himself behind me, and the third took up a position near the door. “Now let’s talk about what happens to people who steal from me,” Strode said. “Bruce, do you think you’ll just walk away from this?”

  “I really don’t see how you’re going to stop us,” I said reasonably. “We do have the folders, after all—I assume Castleberry told you about the lockers and the keys? We can send you to prison for life if we want to. For life, Strode. And that’s what we’ll do if you ever try to strong-arm any of us again, for any reason whatsoever.”

  “If I go, I take you with me.”

  “Understood. And I presume you understand the contrary is true. It’s a stand-off, Strode. Neither of us can get the other without incriminating himself.”

  Strode flicked his eyes toward Jack. “Give me one of them.”

  “Hey, what?” Jack cried.

  “This is between you and me, Bruce,” Strode went on. “I can be a powerful ally—we don’t have to be at each other’s throats. Let me have Jack. Or Jo, I don’t care which.”

  “Richard!” Jack, still protesting.

  “Not a chance,” I said to Strode. “I couldn’t give them to you if I wanted to, and I don’t want to. We divided the folders among us. That way no one can turn on the other two.”

  Joanna spoke for the first time. “Ah—that’s why you insisted on three lockers. Smart.” I hoped she understood she was not the one I didn’t trust.

  “What do you want?” Strode asked me. “You must want something. Everybody does. Let’s do business, Bruce.”

  I took out the list of names I’d made, the names of the people whose file folders we’d taken, and started to read it aloud. “Harrison Casey. Margaret Kurian. John W. Streiber. Michael—”

  “All right, all right!” Strode snarled. “I get the point. Now listen, and listen good. You had your chance, all three of you. This started out as a simple business venture—I wanted to buy somebody’s House of Glass shares, and I didn’t even care whose. But now it’s turned into a goddamn contest to see which of us has the tighter stranglehold on the other. I don’t like that. I don’t like that at all. So let me tell you what I’ve done.”

  “Strode—”

  “Just listen. After Castleberry explained what had happened this afternoon, I called my lawyer. I told him I had reason to believe three people named Richard Bruce, Joanna Gillespie, and Jack McKinstry were conspiring to kill me. I said I was fairly sure—a loophole, there—I was fairly sure they had killed before and wouldn’t hesitate to do so again, especially as they thought I might be in a position to expose them. And then I told him if he didn’t hear from me by midnight, he was to call the police and repeat our conversation.”

  “That’s ridiculous,” Jack said disgustedly. “Nobody’s tried to kill you.”

  Strode ignored him. “So it’s a whole new game now. We can forget about Jo’s heartless murder of the two people who gave her life. We can forget about Jack’s self-serving destruction of a helicopter full of unsuspecting people. And we can forget about the poor doomed crew of the Burly Girl—thirty-seven men who died slowly and horribly because Richard Bruce was having money problems. That’s all past history. The charge now is attempted murder, more precisely the attempted murder of me, A. J. Strode. As to proof that I’m not making the whole thing up, in that drawer over there”—he waved a hand at the side table—“are three nasty-looking knives … with
your fingerprints on the handles. Got that? Your fingerprints. And at midnight, my lawyer calls the police.”

  Joanna threw me an anguished look. Jack appeared to be in shock. I checked my watch; it said seven-twenty.

  Strode leaned back in his chair and grinned wolfishly. “Well, then. What are we going to do?”

  PART 3

  The Cops

  7

  Detective Sergeant Marian Larch was negotiating through late-night traffic and practicing looking inscrutable at the same time. Anything that cut short her much-needed personal time was sufficient to raise her Irritation Quotient considerably; but when the interruption was a homicide, then maintaining an image of official cool became something she had to work at. A bigwig, the captain had said. Tread carefully.

  Marian Larch had recently moved into a new apartment; she’d spent the day putting up bookshelves and performing other similar laborious tasks, and she was tired. But man’s inhumanity to man rarely paused long enough to accommodate the constabulary’s need for home improvement, so Marian was back on the job a few days earlier than she’d planned. Arson and a fatal stabbing, same time, same place, find the connection. All Marian had was a name and address, somebody called A. J. Strode off Park. No parking place, of course. She left the car a block away and jogtrotted back to the mansion marked by police cars and an ambulance and a few uniformed officers there to hold back the crowd of onlookers that for the most part had failed to materialize. People minded their own business in this neighborhood.

  Or maybe it was the fact that this was the middle of a Sunday night. Marian showed her badge to the cop at the gate and asked if her partner was there yet. He was. The minute she entered the building, Marian’s sinuses began to sting from the acrid bite of lingering smoke. The fire department had come and gone; evidently the blaze had been confined to one small room off the entrance hall. She covered her mouth and nose with her hands and glanced inside. It looked like a monitoring station of some sort.