He wheeled over to the drinks table in the study and carefully prepared a double Tanqueray martini with two large green olives for sustenance. He took the first sip, wet his full lips with the gin, savoring it. He looked at his watch. Six forty-five.
The long windows that gave onto the same stone balustrade as the library windows were partly open because he hated stuffy rooms. But, like Richard Nixon, he also liked fires in fireplaces. With the breeze from the windows behind him, he wheeled across to the logs laid in the grate, lit the kindling with a long match, watched it catch fire. Damn, he was sorry about the rug in the library! It was so unlike Mason, screwing up such a rudimentary task as watching over, baby-sitting, a couple of peripheral individuals for a few hours. Instead they escape, the house is nearly burned down, and Mason himself is scorched in the process.
The fire crackled, flames darting, and his mind was elsewhere when a sound came from outside. But what? He listened again but heard nothing.
Where was Mason now? Where were the Rovers? And where were the woman and Greco?
He rolled across to the windows, swung one of the doors open, and looked out into the shuddering clouds of fog.
No one there.
The Director shook his head. It suddenly occurred to him that he didn’t know where anyone was, nor what the devil was going on out there.
He always knew what was going on. And the realization that came on him in a twinkling of an eye—that he was suddenly bereft of information—came as an unpleasant shock.
He petulantly swung the chair around, turned on the television with the remote control. As Dan Rather appeared at seven o’clock he heard another noise, a hesitant footfall perhaps, and he slowly turned to the door that led not to the foggy night, but to the inner hall.
A man with a gun was standing in the doorway.
Mason had seen a Psycho Branch man crack once. It had been an unforgettably ugly spectacle, one he’d tried to hide at the very back of his mind behind all the murders and beatings and interrogations, but he could never forget it. All that anger and fear and pressure blowing a guy apart at the seams …
When he saw the Rover speeding down on him, when he couldn’t make himself heard, when he thought he wasn’t going to get the hell out of the way, he began to wonder if he’d had enough, if he wasn’t about ready to come apart himself, like poor old Brown had done that time in Montevideo.
But somehow he grabbed a handful of grass and tugged his banged-up body out of the path as the Rover thundered past.
“Arnold!” he bellowed, and tried to cry out again but swallowed the name. He lay on his back, staring up at the fog with a dumb look on his face.
The Rover was empty.
His own goddamn Rover had come after him and tried to kill him. As if in revenge for being run into the stump.
Christalmighty!
Damn near got him too.
It took some doing, stacking up all his broken bones, but he got to his knees, then forced himself to his feet.
He was beginning to sound a little like old Brownie that night when the snakes in the booby trap got him in Montevideo. He wondered if old Brownie had known what was happening to him.
Mason wondered where the Rover had gone. His shotgun was probably still in it. Would it make another run at him?
He stood in the fog, trying to figure out where he was. He’d gotten all turned around.
He couldn’t see a goddamned thing.
Thing was, how would you know if you were cracking up if there wasn’t someone to see it happen? He wondered where Arnold was.
“Arnold?”
He waited.
“Arnold, you son of a bitch! Where are you?”
Charlie Cunningham was relieving himself in a darkened cubbyhole of a bathroom when he heard somebody sneeze right behind him. It had the effect of a bomb going off in his hip pocket. Reflexively he levitated about six inches and made rather a mess, which was hardly his fault.
He stood stock still, afraid even to zip his pants. Afraid to breathe.
There wasn’t supposed to be anyone in the back hallway. There was supposed to be one Director in the study, one lethal wife upstairs, and a Cunningham having a whiz.
There was no part for a sneezer in the hallway.
Nobody was moving. Charlie Cunningham wasn’t going to be first.
Finally he heard the faint creak of a floorboard, then another. Very slow. Moving away.
When he’d gone into the bathroom, Cunningham had been thankful for the mansion’s careful upkeep. No creaking hinges. He was even more thankful now as he eased it open. He stuck his head out into the hallway. He stopped breathing again.
Someone was standing about ten feet away. A little shorter than Cunningham, much wider, standing down the hallway and looking toward the end of the corridor where the light showed dimly.
Cunningham took the gun out of his windbreaker, holding it like a club. Could he get there and hit the guy from behind before his footsteps gave him away?
He was calculating his chances when the guy’s shoulders hunched, he grabbed for his face, and sneezed. His whole body shook and Charlie went for him.
They say you’re never closer to death than when you sneeze. Charlie figured he would never have a better shot.
He came down with the gun as hard as he could, smashing it into the back of the guy’s head.
The man grunted as if to say, Hey, some kinda sneeze! He turned a quarter of the way around and Charlie hit him another glancing blow, which floored him.
He was dragging the inert body toward the closest door, pulling him by the heels, when he saw the man’s face.
Holy Hannah! His mother, who thought he was writing a book about Yogi Berra, always said that. It was the same guy! The eye-patch guy!
The guy on Zoe’s terrace, the guy who hadn’t been there once they’d packed Friborg away in the trunk of the Rolls. The guy he’d already knocked out once, less than twenty-four hours before.
He couldn’t remember the name.
Friend of the damned Blandings woman …
For a moment he felt sincerely sorry for the poor unconscious jerk. How many times could a guy get knocked out and still keep waking up again?
He tried the door, and it opened.
He dragged the guy in and laid him out lengthwise on the floor. He didn’t want to feel around for a light switch. He could make out high shelves full of what looked like canned goods, jars. A long table in the middle. A pantry or something. He took a straight-backed chair from the table, went into the hall and closed the door. He jammed the chair up under the doorknob, tried to open the door, couldn’t.
He took the gun out of his pocket again.
It was time to find the Director.
Chapter Twenty-eight
CELIA PUT ALL HER faith in Roger, mainly because there was no one else to put any faith into at all. Also, because he was so big she couldn’t really control him—making faith a necessity. Any anyway, it took all her concentration just to stay aboard.
Once she’d ridden away from Greco, her spirits had begun to flag. She wasn’t in the least worried about herself: she had Roger and the fog and two goons in Land Rovers who couldn’t see past their front bumpers. But Greco was on his own. He was heading into the enemy camp. And he was unarmed.
At least one person in the mansion would have a gun: Charlie Cunningham was no doubt there by now, earning the pseudonym Mr. Mystery. He was crazy, she was absolutely convinced of that. His performance in her apartment, to say nothing of the condition he was in when he departed, left little doubt of his mental state. If he hadn’t been totally nuts before, Ed-the-Mean had certainly pushed him over the edge.
Creating a diversion wasn’t as easy as it had sounded when Greco suggested it. First she had to find the guys in the Rovers so she could divert them.
Roger bolted out of the thicket where they’d been hiding and headed toward the open meadow, where she got an occasional glimpse of the yellow fingers of light. Sh
e had to get closer, put herself in view somehow, and then lead them away into the fog. But how?
The rain kept getting in her eyes, blinding her, though it didn’t make all that much difference since she couldn’t see anything anyway.
But when things began to happen, it was all very fast, as if she’d pushed the fast-forward button on her VCR.
One moment she was alone and lost, the next she was suddenly caught in the crisscrossing yellow lights of both Rovers. Roger reared, and she thought she was slipping off, but her fingers held in the mane. Roger wheeled and got the idea that he was getting to stay up late and play games. He galloped away. Celia felt as if the lights were glued to her back, but it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. She thought she heard someone shouting, but the wind was at her ears and Roger was breathing hard and his hooves were whacking at the turf and she gasped with each roller-coaster bump.
She didn’t know where Roger was going, but he seemed unconcerned, taking a slow grade swiftly and with ease, the Rovers roaring behind her. She heard a sudden loud cracking sound behind her—not a gunshot, but something bigger and screeching and metallic, as if a Rover had sideswiped a wall—and glancing back she saw that there was only one of them left in the chase. It might have been gaining on her, she wasn’t sure. She was just getting into the rhythm of Roger’s stride when he began to slow and turn, almost at a walk.
“Roger, come on … please, Roger, what are you doing? Don’t stop now, come on, Roger…”
Which was when she heard some rocks and gravel slipping away underfoot, felt Roger step quickly. She strained to see what was going on, and saw that Roger was strolling along the edge of a great black abyss. She couldn’t tell where it ended, but it seemed free of the fog that floated above it. She tugged at the mane, pulling him farther away from the edge. Her mouth was too dry to speak or swallow. She kept tugging, and slowly he altered his course, moving a few feet away from the loose ground.
Then the Rover appeared again, churning up the hill at full speed, fifteen or twenty yards behind her. Before she was able to register what was happening, the Rover had crested the ridge and there was no time for it to slow down or turn. It flew over the rim of the pit, its lights picking out the fogless emptiness when it was too late to avoid entering it.
It landed a couple of car lengths down the steep side of the ravine, which appeared now to be a wide, deep gravel pit. When the front wheels hit, the driver must have reflexively stood on the brakes. The wheels dug in, there was a squealing of metal on metal, and it turned over headfirst, the lights flashing wildly in every direction at once. It bounced end over end, glass shattering, a tire flying off into space, what she thought was the body of the driver cartwheeling off in another direction, and then the lights were smashed and all was plunged back into darkness and silence but for the taunting whinnying of Roger.
She was quite lost and had to make a choice. One, possibly two Rovers were out of action, and all she could do now was head Roger back in what she guessed was the direction from which she’d come.
Roger, seeming to sense that most of the fun was over, began ambling back down the hill. She kept patting the huge neck, telling him he was a very good, very brave Roger.
Several minutes passed before she saw the yellow lights of the other Rover. It was moving erratically, as if the driver were drunk, swinging in a wide circle, cutting around in back of her without seeming to notice she was there. Then it ground to a halt with its lights behind her, pointing toward what she hoped was the house.
She was thinking about the strange behavior of the Rover and wondering if she was headed the right way. She should have been paying attention to Roger but instead kicked him in the ribs, wanting to get out of the light. When he quickened his pace, she realized too late she was slipping from his wet back.
She landed with a wet noise, half on her tail, half on an ankle that had gotten twisted beneath her.
“Damn,” she groaned.
Why wasn’t the man in the Rover doing anything? He must be able to see her. She was trapped in the light. But the Rover just sat there, staring at her.
Roger waited a few feet ahead, munching on some grass, standing beside a thick stump jutting up out of the soft meadow.
She stood up, gingerly testing her ankle, which wasn’t right at all, and limped after Roger.
The stump was a godsend. Without it there’d have been no way to remount.
She struggled to get atop the stump, which was badly and freshly scarred on one side, and was halfway onto Roger’s broad back when—
“Aaarrrrghhhhh!” It was a scream of anger, pain, frustration, hatred.
He’d come from nowhere. His face was distorted, a huge, angry red puffiness on one side, his hand grappling for one of her ankles.
She didn’t scream. She couldn’t. It was the nightmare of nightmares, a creature rising from the darkness of the underworld to pull her down…
She kicked out, dug her fingers deep into Roger’s mane, felt him beginning to pull away from her attacker. She yanked her leg but he wouldn’t let go, kept growling and chasing after her as Roger began dancing sideways. The man—it had to be Mason—surely, it had to be! But her mind had cut out, she was running on an atavistic fear she’d never even imagined before, pulling her leg away from the icy grip, willing herself not to give in. Roger was moving faster now and her body was being pulled off the horse, but she wouldn’t, couldn’t let go of the thick mane. Slowly the hand began to slide down her wet ankle. He was being dragged now as Roger circled away. He couldn’t keep his feet as he moved in and out of the awful yellow light, spinning with Roger, and he hooked his fingers into her sneaker. She pulled even harder, using reserves of strength and nerve never summoned before, and the sneaker began to give, her foot was sliding out, the heel almost free … and then Mason was hurtling sideways like the end man on a gigantic whip of skaters. Gravity pulled him away and he was flung backward, hung for a moment in the ghostly illumination, then slammed over the edge of the stump. He seemed to bend so far backward that he would break, but instead there was a howl of pain and he slumped off the stump and rolled out of sight, only his legs showing, which twitched slowly, unable to get him up.
Celia hung on, pulling herself back onto Roger’s reassuring bulk. She tried to say something to him but the words wouldn’t come, and she lay gasping, hugging his neck, nuzzling her face into the wet mane.
As soon as she was aware of what was going on, when she was able to breathe and wet her lips and sense that Roger must be heading back toward the house, she looked down at her watch.
Oh, my God! Dan Rather was just beginning!
When Greco came to, he couldn’t for several moments remember where he was. First he thought he was at home, waking from a bad dream. Then he thought he might be on Zoe Bassinetti’s terrace. No, he didn’t seem to be there either. He lifted his head and the fireworks began exploding behind his eyes and in his ears, but something told him he’d better not put his poor goddamn head back down and go to sleep. He’d better stay awake, and while he was trying to do that, he remembered where he was. More or less.
He didn’t know who’d hit him or what kind of place he’d been stuffed into. He didn’t know how long he’d been unconscious either, but when you got sapped you weren’t usually out all that long, if you were going to come out of it at all. He remembered that time was short. He forced himself to stand up.
Total darkness, except for all the lights strobing away inside his skull. He felt for a wall, found some shelves, followed the shelves until he came to a door frame, felt for the knob, turned it and pushed, then pushed harder. Nothing. It held tight. Next he felt along the wall next to the shelving. Behind something that felt like a can of Crisco he found the switch and flicked it. The light went on.
It was a can of Crisco. Several cans of Crisco. Enough Crisco to last a lifetime.
He’d been locked into a pantry the size of his own bedroom.
He squinted against the br
ight bulb overhead and squeezed his temples to stop the Gene Krupa concert. He didn’t really expect the squeezing to work—it never had—and sure enough, it didn’t.
There was a long table, food sufficient for a supermarket. He’d been sapped in the corridor, where presumably the deliveries of foodstuffs were made. It stood to reason that there had to be another door leading from the pantry to the kitchen. He found it wedged into the far corner of the pantry, between a ceiling-high shelf and a wall fixture that held every known kind of mop.
He tried the door. Naturally it was unlocked. Who locks the pantry door? It didn’t even have a lock. He went through the kitchen, moving cautiously so as not to knock over chairs, tables, and dishwashers. As it was, he wobbled a bit and bumped into the doorway on his way out into another hallway, this one carpeted and leading to the foyer with the portraits and the massive staircase, where Mason had relieved him of his gun earlier. He thought to look at his watch for the first time since waking up. Seven o’clock.
The foyer was empty, lit by the chandelier, which sparkled like diamonds strung on ropes. The sliding doors to the library were closed. The smell of smoke hung like fog in the foyer anyway. He stood listening, heard the ticking of a clock from somewhere in the shadows.
Slowly he picked out the murmur of voices. He passed the staircase and struck off down yet another hallway. The murmur became distinguishable as voices.
A light shone from a doorway.
Two men. No, three.
But one of them was Dan Rather.
Greco was trying to think just what he should do.
Well, something would come to him.
He moved along the wall, thankful for the thick carpeting.
At the edge of the doorway he stopped to listen.
He heard the clicking of glasses.
Someone said: “Confusion to our enemies …”
A toast.
Chapter Twenty-nine
EMILIO BASSINETTI LOOKED FROM the hand with the gun into the face of the man he’d been expecting. His wife’s lover.
The Woman Who Knew Too Much Page 18