“What do you see?” I ask.
“There’s somebody with my wife,” he says.
“Who?”
“Don’t know. Just beginning to make out the license number. I’ll fix his wagon.”
He writes down a couple of figures on a piece of paper and pulls himself away from the telescope and then screws a black plastic cover over the eyepiece. That’s not so much to protect the lens as to keep others from looking through it. The bastard keeps the thing all to himself.
“Well GASCOYNE,” he says, “I’m just wondering if I can guess what brings you on one of your rare visits to Police Tower, let me think. It couldn’t be that somebody wants you to find a so-called murderer of the late suicided Rufus Roughah, could it now?”
“Who told you?” I ask.
“And it couldn’t be that that somebody who’s hired you is pretty little Nadine Roughah, could it now?”
“How do you know?”
“And it couldn’t be she’s offered a nice round sum for this, could it now?”
“Quit playing games, O’Mallollolly, what are you trying to say?”
“Nothing, I’m just guessing. GASCOYNE, listen to me and take my advice. Look, we’re all happy that Roughah’s gone now, aren’t we? It simplifies the situation so much, especially for you. Now you don’t need the money so why don’t you just forget about Roughah and we’ll go on the way we always have, only as I say it’ll be simpler now without Roughah.”
“I think I hear you talking pretty damn big all of a sudden, O’Mallollolly.”
“Who me?”
“Yes you.”
“Oh no, you know me, GASCOYNE, just another faithful obedient public servant.”
“Election time coming up you know,” I say.
“Sure, how could I forget?”
“Just want to make sure you’re not,” I say.
“Don’t worry, I’ll make it no matter what,” he says with a nice smile.
“No matter what, you say?”
“The public just eats up my charming personality,” he says and then bellows.
“Be careful O’Mallollolly.”
“I am. Very.”
“And do me a favor and tell me something,” I say.
“What?” he says, “shoot.”
“What the hell were you doing at Roughah’s a little before he was supposed to have shot himself?”
O’Mallollolly turns a little pale and reaches over to push the button and I notice then that his left hand is marked with an even curve of fresh tooth marks. He pushes the button and one of the doors behind swings open and the Goon Squad marches in with their white uniforms and shoes and dark wraparound sunglasses. O’Mallollolly picks up a fresh cigar and nibbles at it and looks at me with a slight smile. Then he says, “Mr. GASCOYNE wishes to leave now, would you please escort him out.”
I stand up and say, “Don’t try it, O’Mallollolly, you’ll ruin your future.”
“Do I look like the type who’d try something now?”
Yes, frankly, I think at that moment and then walk with the Goon Squad out the door and through the reception room. I invite all four of them into the executive elevator with me which makes one of them about pee down his leg with excitement. I push the one button and down we go.
“What’s going on, Vic?” I ask the squad leader.
“Oh you know how O’Mallollolly is, he gets into this kind of state every now and then GASCOYNE.”
“Umm. No more than usual?”
“No,” he says, “I think this Roughah thing bothers him.”
“Him?”
“Like you never know who’s next. But he’ll get over it.”
“Sure he will,” I say. “Look Vic if you ever need anything I don’t care what just let me know.”
“Sure GASCOYNE.”
I shake hands with them and get out at the ground floor and leave them inside the executive elevator so they can ride it up and down a little, pretty clearly a treat for them. Well, Vic’s a good guy and though I kind of doubt he knows O’Mallollolly well enough I know he’s the type who’d give the alarm if anything really serious came his way and that goes for most of Police Tower. Not a damn thing to worry about, I tell myself as I climb in the Nash and start the old buggy up. Just then the phone rings. It’s Marge.
“Oh God it’s so good to hear your voice again dear,” she says.
“You sound disturbed.”
“Oh God you don’t know what I’ve just been through!”
“What?”
“I left for the mountains just after you called and I was followed out of town,” she says a little out of breath.
“Get the license number?” I ask.
“I gave it to Chester and he thinks it’s probably a rented car. Well anyway I got out of the suburbs and was going into the foothills with the road twisting and all and you’ll never guess what happened.”
“You ran out of gas,” I guess.
“No. The front axle and wheels came off.”
“No Marge that’s impossible.”
“Wait let me tell you what happened. I was rounding the long sweeping curve with those wavy dips in it you know and all of a sudden the front end of the car made a huge leap and came down clank on the road with the wheels gone. Well the back wheels ran over the front with a crash and out of the rearview mirror I could see them lying there on the road, and then the car started spinning around digging huge holes in the pavement with sparks flying everywhere and the loudest noises you’ve ever heard.”
“Well?”
“Well of course there were no brakes and the throttle was stuck full on and there was nothing to steer with and a two-piece gasoline truck was coming downhill around the corner with its brakes locked and skidding all over the road like a snake.”
“And?”
“Well fortunately the gasoline truck came apart in the middle and half of it went over the cliff on one side and the other into the bank on the other side, and I came to a sudden stop when the car hit another dip and dug its nose into the ground and went over on its roof.”
“Yes?”
“Well I unfastened my seatbelt and pushed the door open and no sooner was I standing up and about to powder my nose than I saw another great big truck barreling down on me. I jumped into the ditch just as the truck slammed into the poor old Dodge and blasted it into a hundred flying pieces, and then the truck sideswiped the ditch or something and turned over and threw its load all over the highway with the most horrible crash you have ever heard.”
“What was on it?” I ask.
“The truck?”
“Yes of course.”
“Seven brand-new Lincoln Continentals.”
“Holy shit! Hang up Marge and call me right back and hang on till the line’s free.”
“What?”
“Do it!”
She hangs up and I dial Chester as fast as I can.
“Chester have we bought those seven out-of-state Continentals yet?”
“No boss, not yet.”
“Well don’t.”
I explain briefly and then let Marge back on the line.
“Then what happened?” I ask.
“Well then the tow trucks and police began to arrive and the garage man looked over the wreckage and told me that the front axle and wheels hadn’t come off all by themselves but had been unbolted.”
“Hmm.”
“What do you suppose it means?” she asks.
“Well it’s pretty clear somebody doesn’t want you to look at Condor’s Crag.”
“Yes.”
“Which makes it all the more imperative that you go up and take a look at it,” I say.
“Oh. But dear I’m rather tired.”
“Well Marge I know but you’re halfway there already and you might as well go on. Stay the night in the Wolverine Lodge if you want. Charge it to my account.”
“Well …”
“That-a-girl Marge, that’s the spirit!”
“Wh
y don’t you come up for the night dear? It would be so nice.”
“I’ll try Marge. Say did you ask Chester to send up a car for you?”
“Yes Ralph’s on the way with a new Jaguar roadster from the agency.”
“A demonstrator I hope,” I say.
“Yes, I think so.”
“That’s all right then. You weren’t hurt or anything?”
“Where?” she asks.
“In the accident.”
“Oh no. Nice of you to ask though dear.”
“Well I’ve got to get moving Marge, give me a call when anything new comes up.”
I hang up and turn right at Seventh Street and head toward the Infracity Expressway on-ramp, checking the gas and oil gauges, everything okay. The Widow Roughah pops into mind and it strikes me that she doesn’t really give a damn about who killed Roughah and that what she cares about is just having me prove that Roughah was killed by somebody no matter who, so she’ll get the insurance money, even if a murderer can’t be found or fabricated. That makes sense in terms of dollars and cents but why O’Mallollolly wants to cover the murder up completely doesn’t make any sense at all, and the trouble is he’s got the body and probably the murder weapon. This one, I decide, is going to take an awful lot of thinking about.
I hit the Infracity on-ramp and zoom up it with the left directional signal blinking and merge in front of a semi and then pull left three lanes to hit the fast lane where I run it up to eighty and dial Chester.
“Yeah boss,” he says.
“We’ve got a hundred lemons sitting on the used-car lot and you have to go and do something like send a new Jag demonstrator up to Marge, what’s got into you Chester?”
“Sorry boss but there’s not one of them Ralph would trust over two hundred miles, especially in the mountains.”
“Not one? All right, but tell Ralph for God’s sake to fix a couple of them up, hell of a lot cheaper wrecking them than a new Jag. Also Marge has got to have something to replace the Dodge.”
“Ralph says there’s a ’52 Hudson convertible, good shape, runs nice.”
“Okay, run it over to her place, she’ll take it.”
“Say boss I just got the news that Louis slipped through TJ last night with a twenty-pound load.”
“Great,” I say. “When’s he due in?”
“About seven hours.”
“Call me right off when you hear.”
“Will do.”
I hang up in time to scoot over to the slow lane and catch the Nuvappian Boulevard off-ramp, thinking that Nancy, Roughah’s mistress, might be in a talking mood at the moment. I brake and make the green light at the bottom and turn left onto Nuvappian Boulevard, the flashiest street this side of Las Vegas but for all its glitter not very profitable. I drive a couple of blocks and turn right at the ANOTHER ROBERT G. LOVE’S FOOT-LONG HOT DOG STAND onto Rantananta Road where I turn off the ignition a little before Nancy’s house and coast to a stop in front of her three-story Greek Revival mansion, damn nice house. A blue Ferrari GT is parked in front and I take down the license number and slip myself out of the Nash and walk across the immaculate lawn to the front door which measures a good five by ten feet and oddly enough has been left ajar.
I squeeze through and am pretty nearly bowled over to find the downstairs a shambles such as I have never ever seen in my whole life. Every stick of furniture and bric-a-brac in the living room has been broken up, torn apart or smashed, the carpet is all ripped up and the padding under that and the floor in places under that, pages from books and other papers are laying and floating around, glassware pulverized, the piano is a heap of splinters and wire and small metal fixtures, the cabinetwork in the walls hardly exists and the wallpaper and plaster moldings in piles here and there on the remains of the floor.
I immediately conclude that whoever has gone through the place must have been damned determined and whatever he was looking for a damned small object. But just then I hear a tremendous crashing-smashing upstairs and conclude he’s still here and still searching. I quietly make my way over to what used to be a sweeping marble staircase but now looks more like a quarry and ease my way up to the second floor which looks like it’s been hit by the Super Chief—the wallpaper’s down, crystal chandeliers in glassy heaps here and there on the pried-up parquet floors, a real mess. I’m standing there taking this all in when there’s a bone-banging clang upstairs which drops about two hundred pounds of plaster off the ceiling right at my feet. I turn and start up the stairway to the top floor when I hear the sound of a big diesel coming to a stop outside, and since the stairway’s rather exposed to the outside I go back down to the second floor and peek through a hole ripped in a damask curtain.
Outside double-parked is a huge flatbed truck with a crane on the bed and though the crane is lowered I can see what is on the end of the cable—a gigantic demolition ball which I estimate weighs a ton and a half. I look at this a moment and think and then I see the light. It’s pretty damn clear they’re going to demolish the house and cart away the rubble to sift and examine at their leisure and they’ve undoubtedly got themselves armed with all sorts of official-looking papers. And then, crazy things go on all the time in Betsy Hills so only some crackpot would call the police.
Of course I’m wondering who’s doing the interior desecration upstairs and who’s behind him. This is pretty clearly a professional job and there’s no two ways about it. I’m also wondering what I ought to do. Whatever they’re looking for is probably of considerable interest to me too, and I calculate that the house was worth at least a hundred and fifty grand before the man with the hammer hit it, and so whatever they’re looking for is worth over that figure, simple logic. I’m wondering whether there’s any connection with Nadine Roughah’s cool million. One thing’s at least clear, which is that Nancy, Roughah’s mistress, has nothing to do with this because she got absolutely clear title to the house in ’62 and nobody in their right mind would tear down a hundred-and-fifty-thousand-dollar house of their own on the chance of making a profit. But somewhere there’s a hole in the puzzle.
I do some more addition. There are two guys outside with the crane and another with a dump truck that’s just showed up and maybe two upstairs, a total of five, which is too many to take on so I slip back downstairs and out the back door and take cover in some bushes at the end of the rear lawn. Pretty soon the two guys upstairs come down and I gasp when I see one of them is none other than Roughah’s chauffeur Dmitri dressed in dusty overalls. They walk around to the front of the house and soon I hear the sound of the big diesel in the crane and decide I’d get a better view of things from the side of the house. I work my way through the bushes and discover a little tree fort that some kid has built in a tree and I climb up into it where I am completely concealed from everybody on the ground. Also I have a damn good view of the front and side of the house.
They start putting the big truck into position and erecting the crane and then another truck arrives with a bulldozer on it and parks across the street. A crowd gathers and two Betsy Hills police cars drive up and the cops get out and start directing traffic, word sure spreads fast. The crane is now fully erected and they test the cables by lifting the ton-and-a-half demolition ball off the ground a few feet and dropping it on the sidewalk which turns to powder, and the tree I’m sitting in shakes.
Then they hoist the demolition ball to a height level with the third story, left corner of the brick and marble façade, and pull the crane back and forth giving the ball a good swing. It strikes the brick wall with a dull thud and breaks through it and goes on through and pretty well guts the roof structure on the way out, and on the swing back it tears down the whole third-floor right wall which makes the roof sag. The second swing shoves the whole damn roof into the backyard where it lands with a big dusty crash and brings down most of the rear wall.
Then with a leisurely figure-eight swing the ball clears off the rest of the third floor including two large bathtubs and about twenty-
five interior walls. Next comes the white marble portico with five Greek pillars which the demolisher attacks by swinging the ball so that it goes between the pillars and the front wall which causes the cable to be wrapped around them bolo-style. As the ball swings out and around and back toward the pillars, the cable tightens and one by one the solid marble pillars snap like fresh carrots until they are all pulled together for the climactic moment when the ball comes around a third time and strikes them all together at once, reducing them in one blow to the consistency of coarse gravel. And no sooner do they drop to the ground than the cornices and hand-carved friezes collapse of their own weight and splatter into pieces on the pile of rubble below.
The bystanders who have grown to a considerable number applaud with enthusiasm and so do I until I remember that I am to remain concealed. The demolition ball now goes around the house and gives light taps to the walls low down near the ground and foundations. Next the ball is positioned over the center of the house at the maximum height of the crane. It sits there barely moving but probably the operator is waiting for it to become absolutely still. After a moment it moves a few inches right and back which causes it to start swinging some and again the operator waits for it to stop. I take a look down at the crowd and read tension all over their faces, it’s clear to everybody that this man’s a real artist and is about to try something really difficult that’s never been done before. A few people close their eyes and put fingers in their ears not knowing quite what to expect.
Just then the operator leans out of the crane cab and shouts something at the guy in the truck the crane sits on. The truck engine starts and I can see the demolisher motioning the truck driver to back the thing a little closer to the house. They move about two inches and the demolisher tells him that’s enough. Then the demolisher adjusts the position of the ball to correct for the movement of the truck and then waits for it to stop swinging. He sticks his neck out of the cab again and peers up at it apparently dissatisfied with something and finally asks the driver of the truck to get out. Again he waits.
All at once I can see his hand pull the lever and the ball drops into the center of the house out of sight. For the smallest of instants after it has passed through the second floor and the first floor and the basement to strike what I figure is the furnace boiler with muffled booms, everything is so quiet you can hear the next-door canary cheeping and the only thing moving is a little puff of dust just above the hole where the ball went in.
Gascoyne Page 4