The Woman Who Knew Too Much

by Thomas Gifford

  “Roger? You know this horse?”

  “His name’s on the gate. Good, Roger, nice, Roger … come on, climb up.”

  Greco climbed up. Roger gave him a slightly bemused nudge with his muzzle. “He doesn’t like me—”

  “He adores you.”

  Greco settled in behind her. “I’m gonna fall off the minute he moves.” Roger stamped one foot impatiently. “I’m too old, I’ve only got one eye, I’ll get another concussion—”

  “You all set back there? Put your arms around my waist, get down low, head on my back …”

  She leaned forward against the muscular neck, fingers of one hand laced into the mane. She stretched and lifted the latch, pushed the gate away. She coaxed Roger out of the stall, tugged the mane, pulling him to the left. Here, she thought, goes nothing. “Thatta boy, that’s a good Roger.” Roger ambled toward the rear ramp. Greco was clearly holding on for dear life.

  A man, indistinct in outline, appeared on the ramp, fog blowing past him in shredded wisps. He peered into the darkness of the barn and for an instant didn’t recognize the horse for what it was.

  Celia turned to Greco. “Don’t let go now.” To Roger she said: “Go, honey, go,” and jabbed her heels into his ribs.

  Roger liked the idea, a break in the day-to-day routine. With a blustery blowing of his nose and a shake of his head, he broke into a trot. Within a few strides he was bearing down on the man in the doorway at the top of the ramp.

  It was Mason, his face reddened and scorched on one side, a pad of gauze wrapped around one hand, his mouth skewed open in surprise and anger and fear as he stared up into Roger’s flaring nostrils and wide eyes.

  The shotgun swung up, almost in self-defense, and Roger pranced sideways to miss Mason, but Celia kept telling him to go, go, go, baby. Mason tried ducking sideways, tripped in the straw, and plunged off the side of the ramp, disappearing from view.

  The shotgun discharged as he fell.

  Wood splintered in the eaves of the barn.

  The air was suddenly filled with terrified birds, including a few bats roused from their day’s sleep.

  Someone else—it must have been Arnold—came pounding and thrashing out of the fog behind them. A pistol shot cracked and a bullet sizzled past Celia’s head.

  “Run, goddamnit!” Greco shouted. He, too, dug his heels into the ribs, massive as barrel staves, but Roger had already flicked his tail and taken off into the fog.

  Greco prayed old Roger came equipped with radar.

  Chapter Twenty-four

  EMILIO BASSINETTI’S SPECIALLY-EQUIPPED 1978 Mark V, which he firmly believed was the last of the truly distinguished domestic motorcars, nosed slowly through a world that had begun to remind him of his favorite gray cashmere muffler. Since his legs were useless, all the controls were hand operated, a fact that amused him, made him feel that his favorite car was an immense toy.

  He was generally amused at the moment, even with the fog and rain, because everything was taking shape so beautifully. Not too smoothly, but that had made it all the more amusing. When one lost the power to be amused, it was indeed time to rethink one’s priorities. This whole business was, indeed, amusing, had been so ever since he woke up in his hospital bed unable to walk or copulate and began planning a modicum of revenge. Ever since he’d fallen off one of Zoe’s goddamn, rotten, and malevolently stupid horses at one of her goddamn, rotten, malevolently stupid weekend “hunts.”

  Recuperating to the extent possible, going through the physical and attitudinal rehabilitation, he began to contemplate his future as a cripple … and his future with Zoe. He wasn’t going to be much use to her, certainly not in the only way that mattered to her, and he hated her for what she’d led him to, but there was no question in his mind that she’d manage to gut him in a divorce proceeding. He had a great deal to lose, but the only thing he really wanted to lose was Zoe. They had outlived their mutual usefulness. Now the trick became how to outlive Zoe…

  Of course, he could have had her killed, stuffed in an industrial grinder somewhere, then incinerated in the Jersey landfill—sure, no problem. A man in his position, at the top of Palisades, knew how to make people disappear without so much as a smidgen of dental bridgework left behind.

  But Emilio had another problem that needed solving.

  It wasn’t just Zoe. It was the General down in Virginia. It was Arturo Tavalini up in Scarsdale and the whole horrifying Tavalini “family.” It was all that money passing through his hands, figuratively speaking, and the thought that only a lousy million a year was sticking to him.

  The Director was no greedier than the next man. Which meant he’d have slain his sainted granny if there was enough in it for him. Granny, wife, it was all the same thing. A poor cripple wondering how to insure the future, the quality of life in his sunset years. Wondering how to buy the kind of restaurant to which he might retire in contemplation of life’s better, gentler, nobler pursuits.

  Zoe. The General. Tavalini. The money.

  Get rid of Zoe. Neutralize the General and Tavalini, and then squeeze. And come out with a little money. Ten, twenty million. Nothing too piggish. But there were bound to be certain risks.

  It was a lovely problem, and the solution had been in the works for two years. It was like a Bach fugue, building, repeating, turning in upon itself, growing, endlessly enriching itself. Everyone had cooperated so painlessly, all because Bassinetti knew them, understood how their minds worked. In a way it was simple. You figured out what each one would betray his own code for and then you went to work. They all operated the same way. Everybody, in Bassinetti’s view, operated the same way. Everybody was eager to practice the fine art of betrayal, if only they were given the proper opportunity.

  Zoe. Cunningham. The General. Mason. All of them.

  Which was where Celia Blandings came bumbling into the picture. She was the glitch in the program. She was what had made it all so interesting here at the climax. Only a couple of days, but it had been quite thrilling, actually. Having to improvise. He had known nothing could possibly go quite so smoothly as this had for two years. Somewhere there had to be a glitch. In this case it had come right at the end. There had to be a Celia Blandings, and she’d turned up at the last minute—the unknown quantity. He’d have been disappointed if she’d never materialized.

  Having turned Mason a couple years before, thus having his own man inside the General’s operation, had been his insurance. Now, with the Blandings woman almost wrecking the delicate balance, Mason had been the one he’d called on.

  And now it was all going to pop.

  He was smiling, listening to The Barber of Seville on his tape deck as he passed the great oak tree and slid beneath the porte cochere slates.

  Mason stood like a specter in the swirling fog and the blur of the Lincoln’s headlights. The Director pulled into his customary parking spot, swiveled the driver’s seat and pulled his collapsible wheelchair across from the passenger seat. But before he assembled it, Mason had come to stand before him, looking as if he’d just had an unpleasant encounter with the world’s largest exploding cigar. An alarm began going off in the back of the Director’s very large brain.

  “What has befallen you, Mason? And, more importantly, where is the Blandings woman?” He looked into Mason’s eyes and hoped very sincerely, for Mason’s sake as well as his own, that what he was seeing in them was neither fear nor defeat.

  “We had a little accident,” Mason began, and paused, searching for the proper approach.

  “Oh? I thought maybe you’d suddenly gone all punk.” Bassinetti fixed him with an increasingly steely stare. He began unfolding the wheelchair.

  “The library,” Mason said, waving his bandaged hand at the house.

  “The library—yes, I’m familiar with my library.”

  “The library caught fire.” Mason looked away, as if to disassociate himself from the sad story. “Here, let me help you with that.” He took the wheelchair and began locking its v
arious joints.

  “The library … my library … caught fire,” Bassinetti repeated.

  “I take full responsibility, sir—”

  “I daresay you do. Please explain yourself.” He grabbed the chair back from Mason. “Here, give me that, you don’t know what you’re doing.” He finished unfolding and making the wheelchair ready.

  “It was the burning logs that did it … the Blandings woman dragged them out onto the rug—”

  “You’re talking about the rug in my library?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “The rug in my library is worth forty thousand dollars—”

  “Not anymore, sir.”

  Bassinetti hoisted his immense bulk out of the driver’s seat and into the wheelchair, impatiently brushing Mason’s offer of help away. “And once my rug was nicely aflame, what happened?”

  “They got away while Arnold and I were putting the fire out.”

  “They?” The glitches were multiplying.

  “She has a man named Greco with her. Used to be a cop in New York. I disarmed him.”

  “I see. And where are they now, as we speak?”

  “We lost them in the fog. They got away on horseback.”

  “Horseback?” Bassinetti looked up at Mason from his wheelchair. “Forgive me if I find this all rather difficult to believe. You mean she and this man are still at liberty?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And still determined to save my life?”

  “I suppose so, sir. She’s a very resourceful woman.”

  “Well, take the Land Rovers and try to find them. We mustn’t have her barging in saving my life, Mason. You understand?”

  “Yes, sir. We’ve got the Rovers ready to go—”

  “Fine, fine. Keep track of the time too.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And Mason?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “You’re looking a little ragged. In pain, are you?”

  “I can handle it, sir.”

  “You’re looking rather the worse for wear—”

  “I am rather the worse for wear, sir.”

  “Yes, well, buck up. I’d better go in and look at my worthless rug. You know, Mason, if you didn’t look so ragged, I’d have to think about docking you the forty thousand.” He began rolling toward the doorway beneath the porte cochere, then turned back. “And Mason?”

  “Yes, sir?”

  “Don’t let that woman save my life.”

  “Right, sir.”

  “I kid you not, old man.” He’d reached the doorway with its little wheelchair ramp when he turned back and called to the limping, bandaged, and burned figure retreating in the light of the Rover’s fog lights like a man out in the middle of the twilight zone. “Oh, Mason?”

  The figure turned slowly and heaved a sigh worthy of Job. “Yes, sir?” The voice came weakly, muffled by fog.

  “Do keep things quiet, will you? My wife will be with us soon. I’d rather she didn’t know you were here. Understood?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Mason trudged away.

  The General was talking into the speakerphone on his desk in Virginia. The sun was setting in a brilliant red fireburst on the western horizon, and the shadows were long and soft, reaching across the lawn toward his study. The General was in a bad mood, even for him. His wife was giving a dinner party and he’d have to be on his good behavior, just a retired old crock farting away his life in the Virginia countryside. The man at the other end of the line was in his White House office, three minutes walk from the Oval Office itself.

  “We’ve got a situation, Ben. Whole damn thing’s out of control—”

  “Now, General, I’m sure it’s not so bad—”

  “Bullshit, Ben. It’s so bad I’ve taken all my calls in the bathroom since noon. I’m dealing with Tavalini’s crew and you know what that’s like. Manicotti with blood sauce. And the Admiral—he couldn’t find his asshole with both hands and a map. He’s at some goddamn tea dance with Gloria Vanderbilt and Calvin Klein. So—”

  “Now, General, let’s relax—”

  “You relax, sonny. That’s the trouble these days, everybody’s too goddamned relaxed and the world’s in the crapper. Now get this—I’ve lost Green completely. The NYPD found Friborg decorating a gravel pit just off the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway today. I figure that was Tavalini’s thugs, but I can’t get hold of Bassinetti, and he’s the only one who just might know… And, lessee, there’s something else—oh, Mason! He hasn’t checked in either, and he could be living at the bottom of the East River, the way things are going.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “Your damn right, hmmm. The Admiral calls and tells me about some idiot editor at Pegasus, of all places—you getting this, Ben? We own Pegasus. This editor brings him the manuscript that’s got everybody rending their goddamn flesh—can you believe it? This guy brings it to the Admiral to publish! I mean, what the hell’s going on? Not one of these shows is listed, Ben, not a damn one!”

  “But that’s swell, General. We control the manuscript now. We’re in luck—”

  “Sure … but how many copies of this damn thing are floating around? Maybe Random House and Putnam and the goddamn Literary Guild have all got copies. Hey? And how about the Russians? Maybe that numbnuts in the Kremlin is getting a big haw-haw now reading about what Palisades was created to do? Sure, relax, Ben, nothing to worry about … and we don’t even know who wrote the goddamn thing! Maybe he’s working on a sequel—you like that idea? Relax? Bullshit!”

  “Well, I don’t know what to say, General—”

  “How about you waltz into the Oval Office and tell the President we’re all about to get flushed down the Great Toilet? Tell him that Nixon’ll look like Abraham Lincoln next to him. If I were you, I’d make a tape of that little chat for posterity—”

  “General, it’s really my duty to point out to you that Palisades is your responsibility. We know nothing about it.”

  “Ha! You kill me, Ben, you really do! I knew you’d get to that eventually—gee, General, it’s all your fault. Well, maybe, but the Commander-in-Chief goes up against the wall too. Sleep well, Ben.”

  The Rovers were gone and the courtyard was quiet as the grave when the white Rolls-Royce convertible purred up the driveway, drew to a halt in the darkness beside the Director’s Mark V.

  Zoe Bassinetti was tense from fighting the fog all the way from the city. She sat quietly for a moment behind the wheel, then took a Valium from her pillbox and swallowed it without benefit of water. Nestled in her purse was a .22 caliber pistol for which she had a permit, registered in New Jersey. It was for self-protection at the country house which was, after all, remote and secluded and a perfect target for uninvited guests.

  She sighed, wondering if one four-grain Valium was enough for what promised to be an evening full of strains and constabulary and God only knew what else. The problem, of course, was that she was surrounded by men who were idiots, and she knew perfectly well that far too many variables had come sprawling into the picture. There were traps everywhere now, where two days ago there had been none. But it was too late to turn back. No matter what happened, she had to tough it out. Stick to her story. Stonewall it.

  She didn’t know what was going on with the Blandings woman and her one-eyed friend: she knew only that they never should have gotten involved, and it was entirely Charlie Cunningham’s fault. She didn’t know who Friborg was or what he’d thought he was doing. But he was gone now, out of sight, out of mind. Cunningham was an idiot, but she’d gotten him back in line a few hours before with a sexual performance that had been extravagant even for her. She had to get him ready for the night’s work and that was the best way to get him thinking straight. All he had to do was make it through the next hour…

  She got out of the car, patted the trunk as she went past, and entered the house.

  She went to the library, where lights were burning. Her nose was twitching at the unusual smell. Her husband was
in his wheelchair by the fireplace. It smelled terrible.

  “Darling,” she said, crossing the room and kissing him.

  He turned his reptilian smile on her. “My turtle dove.” His hand caressed her hip, squeezed her.

  “What in the world has been going on in here? Look at the rug! Oh, dear! What a mess!”

  “An accident, I’m afraid.” Bassinetti sighed. “The cleaning people were in … a fire carelessly laid … a log rolls out.” He shrugged. “One of those regrettable little things, eh?”

  Zoe Bassinetti shook her elegant head. “I suppose we should be glad we had a house to come home to and not a smoking ruin. Still, this rug is one of your favorites! Poor Emilio.” She rested a hand on his shoulder. “Well, we’ll have a nice quiet weekend.”

  “Indeed,” he said. “I’ve sent everyone home. We’re quite fogged in. I thought you might even decide to stay in New York with the driving so bad.”

  “Oh, no, I’ve been looking forward to this weekend. So cozy, just the two of us.”

  “Ah, so have I my dear.”

  She took a closer look at the burned rug and murmured more words of sympathy. Standing up, she said: “I have some typing I must do to put my mind at ease. I’ll join you after Dan Rather and we’ll find something for dinner in the kitchen. Does that suit you?”

  “By all means.”

  She kissed his forehead and he smiled, noticing that she smelled like sex. It was something she exuded after a lively session, and she couldn’t get rid of it for hours. How fitting, tonight of all nights …

  Chapter Twenty-five

  ROGER WAS FAMILIAR WITH the lay of the land, a fact of which Greco was particularly thankful. The ride was bumpier and more harrowing than he’d imagined any human could withstand, but he hung onto Celia, who kept saying it was going to be all right. Greco wasn’t sure if she was talking to him or to Roger, but as an article of faith he believed her. He hung onto Celia, closed his eyes, and figured it simply had to be over soon.

  Roger took them down a path that led into a thick stand of trees. The leaves and branches brushed them, water cascading down upon them, a deluge. The fog hung like ancient, forgotten bunting from the black branches. Roger slowed to a walk, glancing back for more pats of approval from Celia.