by Peter Israel
Except for Grace Bashard. She caught me in the lobby on one of my rounds. Only Bud Fincher’s minions were there. Maybe she was headed for the ladies’ room, or maybe she was headed for me.
“You bastard!” she began. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Tell you what?”
“Tell me what! Didn’t I ask you if there was somebody else? Didn’t I?”
“Grace, I don’t know what you’re talking a—”
“He doesn’t know what I’m talking about!” she repeated, the decibels rising, “As if you’re not in love with her. It’s written all over your face, you crumb. Do you think everybody in there doesn’t see it?”
I could feel the anger now vibrating in her voice. I’d heard, seen it once before. Only this time, strange to say, it made her something to behold.
The woman-in-the-child, something like that.
Suffice to say that if nothing else happened that night, she still gave Bud Fincher’s three stakeouts in the lobby something to talk about.
“Nora Camelot,” she went on scornfully. “Nora Saroff. TV star. I can see what she sees in you all right, look at that disgusting old creep she’s married to. But you, Pablo. Only why did you have to make a fool of me? Why humiliate me? What have I ever done to you except fall in love with you? Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you have to sit across the table from me with that … with that TV star … and make me watch? You even danced with her!”
I tried to shut her up. Her hair had come loose from one of the combs, and I reached for her, and she swung at me, knocking my arm away with her evening bag, then ran away, in a swaying, sobbing dazzle of sequins, like I’d watched her run away from Bashard a few days before, and disappeared into the ladies’ room.
I watched her disappear.
Bud Fincher’s men were playing the three see-no-evils.
I started to explain to them, but how to explain?
“Never mind, guys,” I told them. “It’s not what it looks like. She’s a crazy kid, that’s all. Bashard’s daughter. It doesn’t have anything to do with why we’re here.”
They pretended to understand.
By the time I got back into the banquet room, the lights were dimming and the emcee was trying to quiet people down. This in itself was a compromise. The organizers had wanted nothing but candles on the table and the speaker’s light on the lectern in the center of the dais. I’d vetoed that, but because of the slide show had accepted the dims.
The emcee was none other than Ron—Randall Whitefield, Raul Bashard’s book publisher. He spoke with fairly heavy-handed wit but with surprising economy of words. His first task as cosponsor of the BashCon, he said, and the happiest, was to welcome one and all to the eightieth birthday celebration of one of the great literary figures of our time. Applause followed, and the audience rose in unison for Raul Bashard. His second task, the publisher said, was to introduce the six other honored guests and speakers on the podium.
These were, in the order he gave them:
George Varga, publisher and editor of The World of Science Fiction (“the most influential magazine in the field”);
Samuel Elliott Wright, “Mr. S. F. Con,” organizer and cosponsor of the BashCon and a noted collector and author in his own “right”;
Cyn Morgan, the most “awarded” and best-loved science-fiction artist in America and the remarkable illustrator of all Raul Bashard’s covers;
Richard Brinckerhoff, eminent bon vivant, collector and “the most generous friend and benefactor science fiction has ever had”;
Norman L. Hermatius, noted film producer and director, and the first to translate Raul Bashard’s work to the screen;
Oliver “Ollie” Latham, Raul Bashard’s old friend and accomplice, the “writer’s writer,” or the “science-fiction writer’s science-fiction writer” and one of the last of the legendary greats.
The speakers came and went, relieved finally by the slide show (a kind of This Is Your Life of Raul Bashard’s career) that Sam Wright, the organizer of the BashCon, had put together, and which showed on a large screen behind and above the dais. There were stills and film clips of Bashard at various times and places, including meeting with the astronauts I’d seen shots of before and sequences from the films that had been made of his books. There were interesting shots of him as a much younger man—an extraordinarily good-looking one, I’d have to say, but with that same determined, cold expression I knew—and a last one, a group photo, from the 1950s, that brought people to their feet once again because it was used to introduce Oliver Latham.
“Back in the fifties,” Ron Whitefield said into the microphone, “when science fiction was a little-respected genre read mostly in the pulp magazines and paperbacks, these six writers, obscure and hard-pressed to make a living, turned out many of the seminal works that are considered mainstream science-fiction classics today.” He named four of the writers. “Unfortunately these Titans are no longer among us, except through their works. But two of them remain, and to help us celebrate Raul’s birthday, it is a special treat for all of us to welcome Ollie …”
Whatever he went on to say was lost in the clamor. Latham stood, a tall figure with a mop of curly white hair—in his seventies, I learned later, but a man whose looks belied his years. He was the only one on the dais who didn’t wear conventional evening getup. He had on what used to be called a smoking jacket, a maroon affair with wide curving lapels, and a black string tie on a white shirt.
I knew him by name, but I realized a bit ruefully that I couldn’t name the title of any of his books.
It was around when Latham started to speak that the Counselor’s Wife showed up at my side. I’d been aware of her threading her way through the tables (headed for the ladies’ room, I’d thought) and now, hair tossing, there she was.
“I don’t know what you’re so tense about, Phil,” she said, linking her arm through mine and taking my hand. “Nothing’s going to happen tonight. It’s all Bashard’s fantasy. Can you imagine anybody up there killing him, or attempting to? They’re all too old!” She laughed, and I could smell wine on her breath, and I thought probably she was right. Then she said, teasingly: “But Phil, typical Phil, you never told me how gorgeous she is!”
I knew who she meant, but I said it anyway: “Who’s gorgeous?”
“Why, the daughter!” the Counselor’s Wife said. “And does she ever have a case for you!”
The Counselor’s Wife squeezed my hand.
“Does she?” I said, smiling a little. “You should’ve heard her just now. She thinks I’m in love with you.”
“Well …?” She stared at me. “And what’s so funny about that?”
“I didn’t say—”
I didn’t get to finish the sentence, though, because just then the one untoward incident of the banquet took place. Latham had been saying something about money, about the money Bashard had made, and the audience was laughing. Then suddenly, while I sparred with the Counselor’s Wife, there was a commotion on the dais. Bashard was standing. Latham seemed to teeter away from the speaker’s lectern. He looked bewildered. His arms flailed in the air, like he was drunk and off-balance, and I saw Bashard reach out for him. Latham, either because he was drunk or off-balance or angry, swept Bashard away from him with an outthrust of his arm.
Latham was shouting something that sounded like “Burro.”
The Counselor’s Wife had heard it, too.
“What’s Burro?” she said.
I didn’t know. I started forward, but by the time I got down to the dais it was all over. People had helped Latham back to his seat. He sat there docilely enough. Maybe he was drunk, I remembered thinking. I heard people saying it. Maybe Bashard was, too, to judge from his wandering speech afterward. But in between Randall Whitefield took matters in hand.
I saw him signal to the wing behind him. The lights went back on. The band struck up the tune and in wheeled about the largest birthday cake I’ve ever seen, with a full eighty candles burning
. Ron, the publisher, led the audience in “Happy Birthday Dear Raul.”
Nothing happened.
Like the Counselor’s Wife said, nothing would happen at the banquet. Nothing did.
Chalk it up to my excellent organization. Not that anybody congratulated me for it, least of all Raul Bashard. After all, that was what I’d been paid to do, see to it that nothing happened.
His speech, I thought, was surprisingly short, given the sheaf of papers in his hand. He thanked everybody, he read for a minute, then he got off into some slurred speculations about “continuity” and “breaks in the continuity”—things I’d heard before. It didn’t matter much, though, what he said. The audience interrupted with applause at every other word, and the special BashCon issue of The World of Science Fiction later printed the written version of it.
The World of Science Fiction, though, had a special motive by that time.
It took a while for Price, Bud Fincher and me to get him back to his suite after the banquet. The dignitaries had mostly left, and Grace, and the Counselor and the Counselor’s Wife, but Bashard stayed on, like he wanted to shake hands with everybody down to the waiters. Finally we got him outside. The air was thick with humidity and gnats, but the storm hadn’t broken yet and the BashCon complex seemed largely settled down for the night.
Bashard wobbled between us. Another one, I thought, who’d had too much to drink. He was also mad as hell about something, but it wasn’t clear what. The minute we were inside the suite, he turned on me, teeth clenched.
“Go ahead and ask it, Revere,” he said. “You can ask it till you’re blue in the face. The answer is no. I’m not going home tonight. I’m going to spend the night here and as much of tomorrow as I damn well feel like. Hell, maybe I’ll stay here forever. You’re still on duty, Revere, is that clear?”
I didn’t answer. In fact, given the lateness, I’d already assumed he was staying. But I didn’t like being treated like a servant either.
“Somebody … where’s Price? … make me another drink. And where’s my daughter? I’m surprised she’s not with you, Revere. Go find her.”
On this score I didn’t have to do anything. Just then Grace Bashard came into the suite. Her hair combs were gone, her face flushed, and something had gone awry in her makeup. She stalked between us without a word, eyes averted, and into her room, slamming the door behind her.
All present and accounted for.
Bashard looked like he wanted to talk some more, but I’d had enough. I took Bud Fincher with me, and together we toured the premises, upstairs and down, into the hotel lobby and once around for good measure. All present and accounted for, from the security standpoint. We checked the second-shift arrangements which would take place at three in the morning. Then Bud sent him to bed, putting him on call for seven.
When I got back to my end of the upstairs corridor Price was just coming out of the suite. Bashard, he said, was going to bed. I reviewed the security setup with him. Together we checked the suite double doors. Locked.
Then Price went to bed.
Then I went to bed.
But not to sleep.
Maybe it was the nothing-happened part. Maybe I’d been keyed up too long for nothing to happen. Maybe I’d had too much to drink myself. Or too much of Grace Bashard. Or the Counselor’s Wife. Or the Counselor. Or Bashard.
Or combinations of same.
I had the paperback of an old Elmore Leonard with me, my own answer to science fiction. I tried reading it in the king-size bed, but I couldn’t stay with it. I worked my way through the minibar’s supply of beers and played the TV dials by remote control till I found a rerun of Baretta. I always liked Baretta, particularly the parts with the cockatoo and Tom Ewell, but the commercials drove me away. For a while I lay there in the dark, listening for sounds I couldn’t hear.
I sleep, by the way—or don’t sleep—in the raw. I don’t own pajamas. I don’t even own a bathrobe.
At some point I got up and opened my door. I left it open. I hung up the rented tuxedo that I’d left sprawled on a chair. I turned off the air conditioner and opened the windows. Night sounds in the countryside, nothing untoward. Thunder was rumbling distantly across the mountains. I got back into bed and watched the rectangular shaft of light from the corridor through my narrow entrance. I watched the curtains begin to stir and listened to the thunder.
All right, say I was restless. Nothing happened.
A little after three I got up again, put on a pair of pants and went barefoot down the carpeted corridor to the ground floor. The members of the second shift were already in place. I told them—some joke—not to fall asleep. Then back upstairs to my room. All quiet, like a mouse without shoes.
I had the beginnings of a hangover. I took two aspirins.
I left my lights on this time. The door still open.
Sometime later, the big guns opened up on the battlefield. Tremendous bolts of lightning, like the flashes of giant cameras, lit up the sky, followed by explosions of thunder. Gales of wind blew the curtains to the ceiling and rain gusted through the windows. The temperature must have dropped ten degrees in seconds. I remember thinking about the hundreds camped out on the BashCon grounds. I remember thinking they at least weren’t my worry.
The big rain put me to sleep finally, with my lights on.
I dreamed a thousand and one dreams. I dreamed I woke up like a shot, knowing I’d be late for the office even if I ran all the way. I dreamed I saw the Counselor’s Wife and Muffin, the cocker bitch, being blown down a rainswept city street by a hundred-mile-an-hour hurricane. I dreamed one or more horny dreams. I dreamed I was in bed with some unbelievably luscious woman. God knows who the unbelievably luscious woman was, but I dreamed she was begging me to enter her. She kept saying she was sorry. I didn’t know what she was sorry about, but it excited me. I dreamed somebody turned out the lights and got into bed behind me and snuggled up against my back.
Only that part wasn’t a dream.
I awoke in a blur. I think my lights had just gone on. I had a terrific headache the minute I sat up. I saw everything through a colored filter.
The filter was red.
Raul Bashard was leaning forward against the wall of my narrow entrance hall. His face still had that weird ceramic grin, but it looked bashed, mashed, like his head had gone lopsided. He was wearing splattered pajamas. He was croaking something. It took a split second to register that he was calling my name.
Raul Bashard leaned, or slid, farther forward against the wall. His hand went up to his head. When he ran out of wall he simply fell forward on his face, on the carpet.
My feet were tangled in the covers. Somehow the covers had squeezed down to the bottom of the bed. I twisted to free myself and glimpsed her behind me.
Grace was lying on her side, facing where I’d just been. Her knees were up; her head lay in the pillow of her right hand.
She was wearing, I guess, what she said she’d brought for me, and there wasn’t much of it: a red and black lace teddy that looked like the next-to-last costume in a striptease.
She slept through it all though, in the bright light, while her grandfather died.
PART TWO
CHAPTER
6
“Why should I believe you?” Squilletti said. “How do I know?”
Squilletti was your quintessence of Catskill cop. All right, ask the question: What’s the quintessence of Catskill cop? Also: How many Catskill cops do I know? The answer to the second is: more now than I did before. The answer to the first is: Squilletti.
He was a sawed-off, chunky Italian-American, with black eyes, a black mustache, and a strutty way of walking. When we got to be buddies, I learned that his family owned a roadhouse-and-package-store combination where the local constabulary dined and boozed, on the cuff mostly. The family business wasn’t big enough to support all the Squillettis of Al’s generation, so one brother became a cop and another worked for a funeral parlor owned by a cousin. When we got
to be bigger buddies, I learned that Al Squilletti had a great-uncle who was in garbage collection in the city and had done time for extortion.
The great-uncle’s name wasn’t Squilletti.
My Squilletti wore plainclothes and had worked his way up to Detective Sergeant. You can find cops like him all around the metropolitan area where Italian-Americans have settled in—New Jersey, Brooklyn, Long Island, and so on. The more Italians in the community, the more you’ll find on the police force. They tend to be smart on their own turf, also smartass, also racist and sexist, also unhappy when outsiders come in and disturb the peace and the boat starts rocking.
Like the BashCon.
The BashCon itself may have been a nuisance to the Catskill constables, but except for traffic control on the local roads, they could pretty much look the other way and hope there weren’t too many complaints till the foreigners packed up and went home.
But the BashCon Murder, so-called, while it got Al Squilletti on the TV news and would make him a hero if he solved it, also put him on the line. To a degree he could hide behind his chief and the county sheriff’s office, even the state police (whom he summoned—too late—to try to seal off the “corporate campus”), not to mention the local district attorney. But he had to call in favors every step of the way, and he’d spend the rest of his Catskills career paying them back. Furthermore, with the media chasing his every move and enemies and obstacles popping up unexpectedly like targets on a firing range, there was no way he could keep the boat from rocking.
For instance, the minute the ambulance carried Raul Bashard’s body away that Sunday morning, siren wailing, and people realized that the BashCon was over, it would have taken the National Guard to hold those who wanted to leave on the premises. As it happened, a lot of people did hang around. But it didn’t prevent the media from claiming that the police might have let the murderer, or murderers, walk away scot-free without so much as questioning them or examining their belongings.