“Louie. It’s bad, Louie,” Greco said.
“No shit …” The man struggled to swallow, as if it made a difference anymore.
“Why, Louie?”
“Some … book or something … the General … funny, I don’t hurt anymore … Pete … whatta mess …”
“What book?”
“General’s … scared … shitless …” He sighed heavily, and Greco thought for a moment he was gone. “Everybody … dyin’ for a … for a stupid … book—” He coughed, licked weakly at his lips.
“Who did this? Who shot you?”
“Sy … sy …”
“Say it, Louie. Time’s almost up—”
“Psycho …”
“Psycho?”
“Psycho … Branch …”
Then he gave a gentle little cough, like an apology, and died.
Celia was leaning over, close to Greco. She smelled the blood. “What did he say? Could you hear him?”
Greco sighed and nodded. He closed the man’s eyes with his fingertips. “You know what Teddy said about Friborg? CIA, FBI, IRS, all that?”
She nodded, trying not to look at the dead man.
“Well, Teddy was almost right. He just left out Psycho Branch.”
“What’s that? Sounds like a joke.”
“If it’s a joke, it’s the absolute worst. Psycho Branch works for all the alphabet agencies—the worst, the dirtiest jobs, the stuff other people won’t touch. When you start talking about bad dudes, you start with Psycho Branch. It doesn’t have a real name, it isn’t funded openly by anyone, it doesn’t even exist. The funding is hidden in twenty different budgets. It just is … it’s just Psycho Branch.”
“He just told you that?”
“Yeah.”
“Did he call you Pete?”
“That he did. I knew this guy a long time ago. Louie Manfredi. Mafioso. Hit man, general muscle, works mainly in the drug trade. Knew him from the undercover days … used to shoot a little pool with old Louie here.”
“The Mafia’s in my apartment,” she said weakly. Her voice trembled and she started to stand back up. Her legs weren’t all that steady.
“Seems so. Mafia here, Psycho Branch at Bassinetti’s.” He rolled his eyes and made a helpless gesture with his hands. “Slats, we’re up to our asses in alligators. We’re in the middle of a Hitchcock movie he never got around to making—‘The Woman Who Knew Too Much.’ You’re the woman.”
She pushed herself up on the back of the couch and felt her breath catch in her throat, her stomach drop away.
“Oh, no,” she whispered, “there’s another one. He’s right in the middle of Linda Thurston.”
Greco got up and looked across the couch at the body huddled against the cardboard boxes. He circled the couch and didn’t have to check to see if the guy was alive. Also, he wasn’t Mafia. He had the Friborg look, all that calm, neat, weird control that hallmarked Psycho Branch. “Well, he didn’t bleed on her…” He stared down into what had been a man’s face. The back of his head was all over the wall. He didn’t want Celia to see the mess. “Come here,” he said, taking her arm and leading her to a chair. She sat down with her back to the wall.
“You okay, Slats? You look a little peaked—”
“Oh, Peter, I don’t know.” She felt sick to her stomach. It was like finding Cunningham’s ear. Worse. Only now she had Peter. “I don’t understand any of this…” She couldn’t stop shivering. “Psycho Branch, the Mafia, I don’t know …”
He took her cold, clammy hand in his. “It all comes back to Palisades.”
“Hold me a minute, will you?”
He knelt in front of her. Her eyes were blank with shock.
“I want to be brave about this, like Linda Thurston, but I’ve got three corpses in my living room and I don’t know their names or why they were here, and I don’t know what Linda Thurston would have done because I’ve never actually written a book and they wouldn’t be scary like this anyway because she’s sophisticated and goes to opening night parties and this is all so horrible and I can smell the blood and—”
He took her face in his hands. “You want a kiss from a one-eyed tough guy?”
“Oh, God, I do, I do …”
He pressed his mouth against hers, his fingertips tracing the line of her jaw, willing her to be still, slowly pulling her to him.
She began to cry, but he didn’t stop kissing her and didn’t stop holding her. She’d been alone and on the road for so damn long, and all of a sudden she felt as if she were home. Real life, a real person kissing her. It wasn’t like being on stage. It wasn’t like being with an actor. It was just like being with a one-eyed tough guy. Peter Greco.
Chapter Twenty-one
“YOU’VE GOT TO LISTEN to me, Slats. We’re way out of bounds now, a couple of lost balls in the high weeds. We’ve got to get the police in here—you can’t just ignore the bodies in the apartment—”
“Peter! I’m not an idiot! I’m perfectly well aware they aren’t going to get up and go home when the curtain comes down!”
“You understand the implications of Psycho Branch and the Mafia? This is now a world where they make the laws—and they don’t tell us what they are. Got that?”
“And there’s also,” Celia said stubbornly, “a man about to be killed by his wife and her lover—I can’t see that that, which is where we started out yesterday, has changed at all. I don’t want to get in the way of these maniacs, I just want to keep this man from being killed.”
“Aw, Slats, get with it! Whether or not you want anything to do with the maniacs is totally irrelevant—they’re in it, they’re in your life, and you’d better accept it!” He turned in frustration and stared at someone who might be reasonable. “Right, Ed?” The intrusions into his apartment seemed to have left Ed jaded and content to stay in the safety of his cage.
“I’m not arguing, Peter. I’m just saying that the reason we got into this still holds.” She wasn’t trying to be difficult. She just didn’t want to leave a job undone. Neither she nor Linda Thurston could have done otherwise.
“This isn’t a nutty woman wanting to knock off her rich, crippled husband anymore—”
“Peter, I get the point. What it is, even I can see, is wholesale murder, and some crazy think tank that’s into God only knows what. I know all this—”
“Well, lemme tell you something else. If the Director gets killed at this point, I’m prepared to say his number was up and forget it.”
“Forget it! What are you talking about? Aren’t you just plain mad? Me, I’m goddamn mad!”
“Don’t tell me—‘And you’re not gonna take it anymore.’”
“Laugh if you will.” She drew herself primly to her full height. “But they’ve invaded my life, my house, I’m surrounded by corpses and mental cases, present company probably excepted—”
“Probably. That’s beautiful.”
“And I can still do my best to keep this man from being killed!”
“Sort of all-in-a-good-cause, don’t-tread-on-me. Is that about right?”
“Exactly! Now you’ve got it!”
“There’s something you haven’t thought of …”
“Oh?”
“The Director may be the innocent victim in the game Zoe Bassinetti is playing but … but there’s another game being played. The General, the Director, Friborg, these guys scattered all over your floor, the Psychos and the Mafia—they’re all playing a game, and the Director may be the bad guy…”
Celia gnawed at a hangnail, frowned. “But that’s a maybe,” she said, brightening, “and maybes are a dime a dozen. Anyway we cannot go this far, wading through bodies, and suddenly just turn our backs—”
“Ed, the girl has spirit. She has spunk. As Lou Grant used to say, I hate spunk.”
Celia laughed.
Greco looked at her appraisingly. “Is it you talking? Or is it Linda Thurston?”
“I don’t know, Peter, I really don’t know.”
“Maybe it doesn’t make any difference,” he said. “Maybe there isn’t any difference.”
In the end they decided not to run the risk of wasting time on a trip to the Palisades Center and having the Director be gone. Getting the telephone number was no problem, and Celia made the call, asking to speak with the Director’s office. Then she asked for the Director himself and gave her name. There was a pause and then a click.
“Miss Blandings, this is Emilio Bassinetti speaking.”
“You don’t know me,” she said, having to take a deep breath to calm her nerves, “and I don’t know how to say this, but there is something I must tell you—”
“Excuse me, Miss Blandings, but I know who you are and I have been expecting your call.”
“What?” she gasped. “You’ve been expecting—”
Greco turned away from the window, his eye glittering.
“I know a bit more than you imagine. I want to speak with you. But I cannot speak to you now about this matter. Do you understand what I am saying?”
“Well, I don’t know … look, what do you mean you know about me?”
Greco whispered: “You’re kidding! Damn, damn, damn!”
“Miss Blandings, I’m just leaving for my home. I most definitely want to hear what you have to say. In fact, it’s imperative that I do.”
“There isn’t much time—”
“Please, hear me out. We both understand how very serious this situation is. We must speak as soon as possible, I agree. Can you possibly come to my home?” The oily ease of his voice had developed a touch of urgency. “Let me assure you, you will be entirely safe and I will be … shall we say, deeply in your debt.”
“All right. I don’t know if you realize it, but people are getting killed—”
“Please. Not now. I’m aware of your present … inconvenience. We will speak of that when we meet.” He gave her the directions and she noted them on her pad. She handed the sheet to Greco. “I look forward to meeting you,” he said, and the line went dead.
The West Side Highway was slick with the blend of oil and rain, and even in the early afternoon the clouds hung low and claustrophobic over the Hudson, resting atop the thickening fog. There was a clinging shroud of darkness, as if the day had given up on itself. The wipers flicked steadily as Greco threaded his way toward the George Washington Bridge.
“I don’t like it one damn bit,” he groused, eyes on the road. “Everybody seems to know all kinds of things we don’t. I hate that.”
“So you’ve said.” Celia was trying not to think of all the unknowns in the various parts of the equation. Every time she did she got scared, and she couldn’t deal with any more fear than she already had.
“The Director,” Greco mused. “First I figured Z was at the center of things, but now I’m beginning to think she’s as far from the center as we are. She doesn’t know a damned bit more than we do—namely, that she’s engineering her husband’s death. Now I look at it and I think it’s the Director, he’s the spider at the center … he knows—and God only knows how—about you! I can’t figure that. You got into this yesterday. Well, you bought the book with the letter in it the day before, okay. And already the Director knows about you. How the hell can that be?” He shook his head with a tight, angry jerk. “And then he tells you he’s aware of your present inconvenience. Inconvenience! A living room full of bodies! Now how the hell does he know that, I ask you?”
“Two ways,” Celia said quietly.
“Oh, two ways, she says! Not one but two ways!” He was beating a tattoo on the steering wheel.
“Either he ordered the killings at my place—”
“Listen, two of those guys were mafiosi, the other one—well, the way it sounds from the late Louie, the other guy was Psycho Branch—”
“Or, two, a survivor told him what happened. Two ways.”
“Hmmm. A survivor …” He gave her a sidelong, perplexed glance. “That’s good. I hadn’t thought of that—somebody just might have gotten out of your place alive. But who? One of the Psychos? Or one of the Mafia lads? And who would be more likely to run to the phone and call the Director?”
“I’m trying to work that out.” She was following her instincts, letting the thing take shape as if it were a plot—a simple plot—for Linda Thurston. A simple plot made impenetrable by keeping certain pieces of the plot hidden and dribbling the others out piecemeal. The General … a manuscript … a Miles Warriner manuscript? That was the first question you’d ask, but then you’d ask why would someone called the General—as well as the Mafia, according to Louie—be so fascinated by an Inspector Littlechild novel? No, that made no sense at all. So, some other kind of manuscript …
A manuscript needed a writer … and there were two writers in the equation. Poor Charlie, who was just a pawn … and Zoe Bassinetti, but not as Miles Warriner. What might she write, not about Inspector Littlechild, that would interest the General and Psycho Branch and the Mafia?
Zoe Bassinetti. A writer. Also a wife. Wife of the Director of a think tank. And maybe the Director was connected in some way either to the Psycho Branch or the Mafia … since he already knew so much.
The plot was hanging together. It all meant something. The answer was in there somewhere…
She imagined her Linda Thurston notebooks, all the pages of tight, legible script, working out the plot lines of possible novels. Celia had done the same thing building a character for a play she’d been doing, fitting the character snugly into all the nuances of the role as written. It was different, of course, dealing with these violent, chaotic events. Different but the same. You had to get up high and see the whole picture, the pattern.
The murder letter had seemed impenetrable at first. How could you have expected to track it down to its source? But it had taken no time at all. The new puzzle would yield, too, she was sure.
But now there was literally almost no time left.
The bridge had materialized at the last moment out of the fog, and driving across it there was a time when they could no longer see where they had been or where they were going. The fog enveloped them, sealed them off, and Greco was gripping the wheel with both hands, checking the directions while she read them aloud.
The fog and rain intensified as they headed out into the countryside with its hints of velvety green glimpsed through holes blown in the soft grayness. Traffic thinned out as they passed through a couple of fogbound, dreamlike villages, and Greco turned off onto a secondary road with picturesque wooden fences running alongside the shoulders.
“Shouldn’t be too far now,” he said. “Two miles after the turn off. Damn fog …” He slowed as a thick blanket swept across them. When it lifted momentarily, there was a huge gray horse standing at the fence, staring at them as they rolled slowly past. “Horses,” he grunted. “An outmoded form of transportation.”
“Good in fog, though,” she said. “They’ve got a sense people don’t have.”
“You’re an expert on horses, I suppose.”
“No, but I’ve ridden them in California. I rode one in a TV movie once. I got killed—”
“Thrown off the horse, no doubt.”
“No, a sniper got me. I was the wife of this horsey millionaire, the horse got kidnapped and I found it but got shot—maybe you saw it?”
“Missed it.”
“Oh, well, lots of people miss TV movies,” she said.
“No. I missed the turnoff.” He managed to back the car around in the fog, and they weren’t killed by traffic. It was that kind of lonely road.
“There it is,” she said.
Two rows of poplars lined a narrow gravel driveway that ran off into the fog before it reached any sign of habitation. The trees were as Bassinetti had described them. The gate was supposed to be half a mile up the drive. Greco hung a sharp left and burrowed into the fog.
Slowly the outline of a high, dramatically arched iron gate took shape. It reminded Celia of the camera dolly up to the gate in C
itizen Kane. A nondescript brown sedan sat off to the right side of the road beside a formidable stone gatehouse.
“I feel like the Green Knight arriving at the portcullis.” Greco sighed. Celia looked over at him and grinned. You never knew what this guy was going to say next. “What are we supposed to do, climb over?”
He stopped ten feet short of the gate. The rain seeped out of the fog like a sponge being squeezed.
The door of the gatehouse swung open and the barrel of a shotgun came out, followed by a man. Celia watched him closely as he came toward them across the wet, crunching gravel. He was a medium man. Medium height and weight, a pleasant medium face with medium blue eyes. He looked like a prototype average man, a new generation of robotic, all except for the tiredness that showed. His blue eyes were red rimmed and sunk deep in sockets that had begun to discolor with the purple of exhaustion. He wore a business suit. There was mud on the cuffs and on his shoes. He carried an umbrella that looked like it had been hanging on a hook in the gatehouse since 1920. He cradled the incongruous shotgun in the crook of his right arm.
Greco rolled his window down. “We’re here to see the Director,” he said.
“Names, please.”
“Miss Blandings, Mr. Greco.”
Celia strained to see the man’s face. Something familiar …
“Of course, you’re expected. I’ll open the gates, but would you mind hanging on once you’re through? I’ll hitch a ride up to the house with you.” He used a button on a device like a garage door opener. The gates swung slowly open and Greco eased the car through, stopped. The man followed them and pressed the device again, waited for the gate to lock. He came to the car and got into the backseat.
“Straight on,” he said. “He wiped his damp face with a handkerchief. “My name’s Mason,” he said.
Chapter Twenty-two
THE HOUSE WAS A gray stone affair not as large as a football field but three stories high. It had all the majesty that went with the commercial barons of the early part of the century, who knew what they were doing when it came to erecting monuments to themselves. Greco brought the car all the way into the paving-stone courtyard between the house on one side, the horse barns on the far back side, and a vast greenhouse and garage on the third. He pulled to a stop where Mason pointed and cut the engine. The sudden quiet surrounded them like the fog. The snorting of horses came from the barn. A hay-strewn ramp led up from the court, into the barn’s darkness. Swallows and wrens darted through the fog. The smell of earth and rain and horses was everywhere.
The Woman Who Knew Too Much Page 14