Where Is Janice Gantry?

by John D. MacDonald

  “Is there anything we can use to cut it?” I asked her.

  “It’s getting so dark.”

  “Tools should be over there in the corner. Can you get over there, honey, and see if there’s anything?”

  “Help me sit up.”

  I pushed at her clumsily and got her up into a sitting position. She went across the small room by digging her heels against the cement and hiking herself along in a sitting position. It was ludicrous and heartbreaking. I heard a thumping in the darkness, a small metallic clanking.

  She came hitching back in the same laborious way, breathless with effort. “Will this help? Can we use this, Sam?”

  She held it in numb hands against the light, a small triangular metal file.

  “If there’s any way to hold it, we can use it.”

  We adjusted our positions so that she was able to hold it between the heels of her numbed hands and, by flexing her elbows, rub it back and forth against the multiple windings of the strands that bound my wrists. I felt a wetness and knew she had gouged the numb flesh.

  She stopped and gasped as we heard a blur of male voices beyond the closed door. The file dropped onto my chest.

  “Move away from me! Lie down,” I whispered.

  I could barely see the dark shadow of the file against the paleness of my shirt. I worked at it with my bound wrists, shoving it clumsily inside the front of my shirt, between two buttons. I felt the roughness and relative coolness of it against my skin. I tilted my body and it slid down my ribs on my left side, out of sight.

  The door opened. A man some distance away said, “He can carry all that junk, Maurie.”

  A naked bulb clicked on over the door frame. By the time my eyes had adjusted to the harshness of the light, a sizable man was standing over me. He was swarthy, with black hair, small pouched eyes, a small mustache, too much soft flesh on a heavy bone structure, but still powerful. He kicked me idly, casually, without force, in the left thigh and said, “The smart guy! The big brain.”

  “Mr. Weber, I presume.”

  “You presume! Man, you are so right!”

  “I think you’d better let us go, Weber. I think that would be the smart thing for you to do.”

  “I’ve done a lot of stupid things, Brice. So it got me in a big mess. Now I get out of it. I should have dropped Charlie-boy into the Gulf over two years ago. But there wasn’t time to get anybody to help me, and she got right down on her knees and begged, so what the hell. It would have saved a lot of trouble. You would have lived a lot longer.”

  “What was he after? What was in your safe?”

  “You’re so smart and you don’t even know that?”

  “I know what I think it was. I think it was … is, something you’re holding over Charity.”

  “Just a couple of pieces of paper, Brice. And a couple of pictures, and a little reel of tape, all wrapped for mailing. All the time its been like having the next twenty years of her life all wrapped up, because that’s the least she could expect if I ever mailed them.”

  “The murder of her second husband?”

  “Let’s just say she helped arrange it.”

  “But you never married her, Weber?”

  “Christ, no!”

  “So she’s been part of the deal?”

  “You tell me what kind of a deal, friend.”

  I knew I shouldn’t keep on with it. I was showing off, and it wasn’t helping either of us. “Haven’t you been living the big dream, Weber? Living way over your head? I don’t know how you put the squeeze on, or who you put it on, but you got just what you asked for. House and boat and a hunk of cash once a month and servants and exactly the kind of woman a man like you would want to own.”

  “It’s nice to own a woman this way, Brice. You don’t have to beat on her at all. Not when you’ve got the pressure locked up in a safe.”

  “So somebody set up Starr Development to keep you happy. Did it turn out to be everything you ever wanted?”

  “I’ve been living as good as a man can live, Brice. What more do you need? And it’s going to keep on just the same way.”

  “Why did Charlie take his medicine like a little man?”

  He kicked me again, with more emphasis. “I got careless about keeping that broad close to home. I even let her talk me into getting a car for her. So she went after that kid, and she put out for him, and snowed him so bad he was ready to do anything for her, like cracking a safe, but I caught him. She was tired of being owned, I guess. But I told him the story he would tell, and I had a gun that couldn’t be traced to plant on him, and I told him that if he didn’t plead guilty I was going to kill his brand new girlfriend, and I told him just exactly how I was going to do it, and how long it was going to take. And she was there to back me up, and plead with him too, because she damn well knew I would do it. So it took over two years of doing hard time before she wore off him enough so he could start thinking again, instead of just remembering how good she was at it and how noble he was to save her from being killed.”

  “What did he think was in the safe?”

  “God knows what she told him. I never asked. But it would have had to be lies, and when I heard he’d escaped, I figured he’d come back to find out just how much of it was lies. Jail can tough up a soft kid, so I figured some help would be nice to have around. It came in handy, Brice.”

  “And they never went back?”

  “They were ordered to hang around Tampa for a couple of weeks to see if things died down okay.”

  “But they didn’t.”

  “They will now, Brice. They will now.”

  “That’s a pretty good trick, but I don’t think you can do it.”

  “Don’t you?”

  “There’s too much you’re going to have to explain, Weber.”

  “Maybe by the time anybody gets around to asking me anything, I won’t be here any more.”

  “They’ll find you.” I didn’t sound very convincing.

  “You’re the big brain, Brice, going around figuring everything out. See if you can pick any holes in this situation. Charity is aboard the Sea Queen, dead drunk. After she passed out, I poured a little more into her. She doesn’t know what the hell has been going on all day.”

  “So what?”

  “She doesn’t even know that today I phoned that nice friendly sheriff you got here and I told him … I mean I asked him if it was okay if we went on a cruise, around to the east coast. I said we thought we’d try living on the boat for a while, at Lauderdale, at that Bahia Mar place. I said he could get hold of us there if he had any questions about anything. I said you and my sister-in-law were coming for the ride. He told me I wasn’t very choosy about who I asked onto my boat.”

  “There are other people who will know I wouldn’t …”

  “Wait until you get the whole picture, friend. Your wagon is back at that cottage of yours, parked and locked, and there’s a note stuck to your door and printed on it is the message, ‘Back in a week.’ I had the Mahlers pack up and take off to drive the car over to Lauderdale and find a place to stay so they’ll be there to meet the happy cruise folk. The rental car is in the drive. Ben is going to take it down to Naples. You and me and Marty and the two gals and our deceased captain are all leaving aboard the Sea Queen inside the hour. We’ll be towing the dingy with the outboard on her. Once we get outside and get on course, I’ll set the automatic pilot and Marty and me can have some fun with this little sister here. But when we get off Naples, the party will be over. We’ll make you all comfortable, open the sea cocks and take off in the dingy. Once we get ashore we’ll push that loose too. It will be one of the mysteries of the sea, buddy. My personal stuff is in the car. By tomorrow night we’ll be three ordinary guys, flying north. It’ll be a week before the excitement starts. And that’s more than enough time.”

  I moved my lashed hands, and, looking down at them, saw the small coppery glintings where the edge of the file had cut through the plastic insulation. I moved the
m to a position where he would be less likely to notice these marks.

  “Pick a hole in it, friend?”

  “They’ll be looking for you.”

  “If they decide I wasn’t lost at sea with the rest of the people.”

  “You haven’t told me all of it. You haven’t told me why.”

  “Why?”

  “Or how. Or who are you. The name isn’t Maurice Weber, is it?”

  “The Maurie is straight. Not the Weber.”

  “A city hall type. It shows on you, Maurie. A crummy little political leech who spent most of his life trying to pretend he was important. Ignorant, stupid, greedy and dangerous. You’ve got the manner, boy. How did you start out? Running errands for the boss of your ward.”

  He kicked me in the waist, in the left side. The pain made me gasp.

  “They thought I was stupid,” he said in a thickened voice. “They give me the big payoff for loyalty, a crummy job in the assessor’s office. Sixty-fi’ lousy bucks a week. They thought I was so loyal and so stupid, I was the guy to trust with their fat payoffs. They’d slip me an extra ten. Big deal! So after I got smart I kept on acting stupid, just like before. But I was checking out every deal, every payoff. I got me one of those little cameras and I learned how to use it. I packed a transistor tape recorder around. I kept a day by day record. For three years I worked, nailing them all down, all the big names, all the fat cats. I knew the union payoffs and the construction kickbacks and all the ways the grease filtered upstream from the beat cops to the boys on top. I made three complete sets of everything and I planted two of them in the safest places in the world, where if I didn’t check in four times a year, the packages would be sent direct to the F.B.I., which is about the only deal those boys can’t fix. The Special Grand Jury was in session and I gave them an anonymous tip to call me in. The D. A. was fixed and he let the big boys know about it and it made them nervous so they called me in. Papers had already been served on me. So I turned over one complete package. You should have seen their faces. Stupid, loyal Maurie. I laid it right on the line. I told them just what I wanted. A house like this, a yacht, servants, a chunk of cash twelve times a year and some gorgeous broad who’d do anything I told her to. They set it up through a dummy corporation, the house and yacht and so forth, to keep the tax boys off me. I had to pick a new name on account of a warrant being issued when I didn’t show. And it would still be going on if I hadn’t made two mistakes. I shouldn’t have gone so soft she got a chance to mess with that Charlie-boy. And I shouldn’t have let her ask little sister down here. But it’s nothing that can’t be cured. It can all be cured overnight.”

  “Where did you get the two assistant assassins, Maurie?”

  He shrugged. “The boys I put the squeeze on, they’re prominent citizens, but the way they operate, they got mob connections. They have to have. So I got the loan of a couple of specialists.”

  “Do your previous employers approve of your … killing people?”

  “All they care about is to stay the hell out of prison, and that’s where they all go if anything bad happens to me. They’re big men. They would hate to give up the big cars and the fancy women and the club memberships.”

  “Why did you kill the girl too?”

  “Because she was with Charlie-boy. There wasn’t any choice.”

  “Did they come here?”

  “Together, right to the door, Brice. The girl called Char, and she told them she was alone in the house. They walked right into it. I’ve got to see how things are coming along.”

  He walked out into the night, leaving the light on.

  “Horrible, horrible,” Peggy whispered. She moved near me and I was just telling her where the file was when Weber came back with the two men. The smaller of the two wore a cigar and the yachting cap I had last seen on Stan Chase. He had the face of a fat sleepy weasel. The other one, the one Maurie had called Ben, was bigger than I am, with a bulging redness of freckled face, surprised blue eyes and a carroty brush cut.

  “Put her in one of the bunks,” Weber ordered.

  “A pleasure,” the weasel said. “Open wide, sweets.” She would not open her mouth until they worked hard thumbs against the corners of her jaw. When her mouth gaped the weasel crammed a blue plastic sponge into it and tied it in place with a length of clothesline. She made thin gagging sounds as they started to carry her out. The big one mumbled something to the weasel, then took her in his big arms and carried her out effortlessly.

  Maurie and the weasel removed Chase’s body, carrying him with Maurie’s fingers laced across Chase’s chest, the weasel carrying him by the ankles. I was left alone for perhaps ten minutes.

  Ten minutes can be long, long, long. Bitter, black and long. In one corner of my mind I could applaud the bold planning of Weber. He had made some mistakes, endangering the lush life he had promoted for himself. After having been thought stupid for so long, he found it gratifying to think of the monumental stupidity of the rest of the human race. (I was trying to work the file out of its hiding place so that I might try to put it to some clumsy use.)

  Out of arrogance he had made mistakes. He had thought himself bright enough to kill and get away with it. Now he accepted the fact that the job had been so slipshod he would have to give up his corner of paradise. He was taking his loss. Once he was free and clear, he still had his hand on the money machine.

  I could sense how the men he had so carefully blackmailed thought of him. They had made a tactical mistake. He had wrapped them up neatly. And so their only possible course of action had been to give him exactly what he wanted, and wish him a long life. His support had become a matter of business insurance, and very probably a minor expense item compared with the size of the gross. If they were wise they would be delighted that they had not been blackmailed by a man anxious for power and position within their organizational structure. Actually the outlay was minor. The land, house and cruiser were owned by Starr Development, presupposing an eventual liquidation which would return most of the capital involved. The cash payment each month would certainly be no more than two thousand dollars, a tiny part of the illegal gross in any corrupt municipality of any size.

  He had trapped them into financing the kind of life he wanted to lead, and they could rejoice that his wants—in comparison to his leverage—were simple.

  I could even be so objective as to see an untidy parallel between his chosen life and mine. Each in our own way, we had stepped out of the arena. Were his motives any less valid than mine?

  With a continuing exercise of objectivity, I could see just how it would all come out. It was Sunday evening, one week since Charlie had stood outside my bedroom window in the wind. It would be perhaps as long as another week before the Sea Queen was reported missing. The Coast Guard would mount an air search. I could, through an exercise of optimism, assume that a few people would raise enough hell to compel a thorough investigation. D. Ackley Bush, J.B., possibly Peggy’s people, Jaimie France. Through some bright newspaper people the world might be made aware of the odd fact of there being too many disappearances.

  I could guess that Lou Leeman would leap into the act, thus focusing attention on Starr Development. But if it had been set up with enough care, it would be impossible to check it back through the dummies involved to the actual principals. And if, much too late, anybody did get onto the lead of the rental car, it would be impossible to trace Weber. He would have escaped, with his leverage intact, able to safely demand a new paradise and a new captive woman, in Arizona, California or one of the islands of the Caribbean. In any city on any day you see forty men who look enough like Weber to be his brother. For the man without resources, a new identity is difficult to assume. Weber could safely demand everything he needed. (I tried to grasp the edge of the file with my fingers, but I could not even know if my fingers responded to the orders of the brain.)

  Rage is an empty weapon. Terror only makes a man more helpless. My terror was for her, not for myself. Her death would
be the unforgivable waste. I struggled to keep the raw flood of emotion out of my mind. I hoped that I might be given some small chance before it all ended, and if I were to be capable of taking the maximum advantage of any small chance, I would have to remain as cold as an assassin, as impersonal as a weapon. Emotion could even blind me to the small chance so that I would never become aware of it. If I was given no chance to function, or missed the chance because I was beyond any exercise of logic, I would spend eternity with my beloved in a coffin of teak, mahogany and bronze on the floor of the shallow Gulf of Mexico.

  When you have suddenly begun to return to life, death becomes a more bitter irony, more heartbreaking. (I lost the file and turned my body cautiously and discovered it had slipped back down between my shirt and my ribs.)

  In tribute to the size of me, the three of them came back after me. They packed my mouth with a greasy rag and tied it in place. Weber hugged my bound ankles against his side. Marty and Ben each took me by an upper arm. They dropped me in the night grass while Weber turned out the light, closed the utility room door, snapped a padlock in place.

  It was the calmest of nights. I could hear faraway trucks on the mainland highway. An airliner went over, running lights blinking steadily. People sat quietly up there, eight thousand feet over the dark tropic land, and perhaps the hostesses were stowing the soiled dishes from the evening meal.

  They carried me aboard the Sea Queen and dropped me onto the teak deck near the stern. I tried to hold my neck rigid to keep my head from hitting, but it snapped back and hit hard enough to daze me for a few moments. The previous blow on the head and the taste of gasoline on the rag nauseated me. I fought it, suspecting I might strangle if I became actively sick. The peak of nausea slowly subsided.

  Ben and Weber walked up the dark lawn toward the house. Marty sat with one haunch on the rail. I heard him spit the bitten end of a new cigar into the bay water, and saw the pulsing glow of the flame on his fatty weasel face as he lighted the cigar. I lay across the rear cockpit deck, my head to starboard. The waning moon was beginning to rise above the mainland. I rolled my head in a gingerly way to the left, looking toward the stern, and saw the body of Chase sprawled close beside me, on its back, the face like wax in the first touch of moonlight, mouth agape, the one eye I could see half open, but without that wet glitter of life. Dead eyes soon take on a dusty look and reflect no light.