“Get Lee to put you up for the night,” I said.
She seemed to consider it a positive suggestion.
When I walked into my living room, Sam and Ray were playing cribbage and sharing a cup of hot chocolate.
“Oh, Daddy!” Sam said.
“Hi, man,” Ray said.
“Hello,” I said. “Goodbye.”
“Goodbye?” they asked.
“Are . . . are you going somewhere?” Sam asked.
“No,” I said. “You are.”
“I am?”
“Both of you,” I said.
“But where?” Sam asked.
“It doesn’t much matter. I feel like being alone tonight, so you’re off. Maybe Ray will put you up.”
“Mama would love that,” he said. But he was thinking about it.
Sam wasn’t. “Daddy, what’s the matter? Is something happening?” “Yes,” I said. “You’re both going out and you’re starting on your way now. Immediately. Tout de suite. Instantemente. If Ray won’t take you home to meet his mother, then you can go and sponge off my mother. Or go to a hotel. Why should I put you up when your rich stepfather has nothing better to do than earn money to give you?”
“He doesn’t earn it,” she said. “He inherited it.”
“A non-issue,” I said. “Go on. On your way.”
“Not until you tell me what’s going on,” Sam said, bluffing recalcitrance.
“If you’re not out of that door in thirty seconds flat, I’ll have your detective card back. And if you spend any more time anywhere near this office tonight, I’ll call your mother and tell her to come and take you home.”
“You’re serious,” she said.
“I’m serious.” She was hurt, which was too bad. “Someone is coming to call on me tonight,” I said. “And I don’t want any company.”
“Ahh,” Ray said.
“That’s right,” I said. “And she won’t wait outside much longer.”
Reluctantly, Sam conceded, “You’ll tell me about it in the morning?” she said.
“You’re too young,” Ray said.
“I’ll tell you about it in the morning,” I promised. And added, as I carefully closed the door behind them, “If there is a morning.”
The outer door to my office had no lock. Since Ray had worked on it, it barely closed. For the first time I regretted it.
I locked my inner door and spent twenty minutes summarizing the things I knew, had found out, and guessed. Then I hid the notes in Sam’s knapsack, and felt that justice was now slightly protected, even if I wasn’t.
I considered leaving the office myself, but opted against it. If I wasn’t there, my visitor would at least be likely to return until he caught up with me. I wanted that to happen when Sam wasn’t present.
But I wasn’t going to wait for him lying in bed holding a lily.
I started with a little furniture arrangement, moving my comfortable chair behind the door. I put my baseball bat next to it and then ran a remote-control cable to my cassette tape recorder.
It didn’t take long.
I didn’t think I had very long.
Seafield would have had only three options when he established, finally, that I had absconded with Marcia Merom. And I didn’t think waiting for her in her apartment would be one of them.
He could have come straight to my place. He could go to the Loftus lab. He could go talk to people like Rush and Dundree.
And I was pretty sure that even the second and third options led to me eventually.
But I made him a rash fellow. I expected him to come straight to me.
I went and looked down my stairs.
When I came back into the office, I had a flash of inspiration and went to my darkroom closet for my flashgun and a camera.
These I set up on the stove in my back room, which was against the wall on the side a visitor would have to turn to to see me behind the door. The idea was that if he turned toward me and I needed to delay him, I would trigger the flash, which would blind him momentarily and give me time to get to my bat rack. The flashgun is the only gun I own.
It took about twenty minutes to set it all up. I put film in the camera. I didn’t think a picture would be of any use, but it couldn’t hurt, and lining the lens up to catch the face of a six-foot-ten-inch assailant gave me something to do.
Still he didn’t come.
I sat in the chair and drew pictures for a while.
I got out of the chair and rifled Sam’s knapsack for money. I found some loose change.
I tried to read.
I tried to write a letter to Sam like I used to, about animals and objects that acted like people and people that acted like . . .
But it wasn’t any good.
I fell asleep in the chair. I dreamed about hitting a man hard on the jaw, but it was my jaw that hurt. I woke up. I dozed. I slept.
Chapter Thirty Four
There was an enormous crashing sound, somewhere near me. I was on an endless conveyor belt. No, I wasn’t; I was on a bed of hot coals. No, I wasn’t; I was inside a bass drum. No, I wasn’t; I was awake.
There was someone with me, someone in front of me. It was dark and I couldn’t see. I felt utterly desperate and hopeless. I felt teary and then I realized I had things I could do.
I reached out and touched a shirt. I grabbed for my bat. I dived for my remote switches. It was all going wrong. Then it went right. I found them. I switched them. The flashgun went off. I was momentarily blinded but I found my bat and I raised it and I swung it for all I was worth.
It crashed heavily into the soft part of my inner door. It bit deep. It went through.
“My God!” a voice said. “What the hell are you trying to do?”
My eyes and mind cleared simultaneously.
Lieutenant Miller stood in front of me. “Have you gone crazy?”
I blinked. “What the hell are you doing here at this time of night?” I asked.
“Night?” he said. “Twenty past eight may be night for softies like you but for me it’s just part of the working day.”
“Twenty past eight?” I asked. “Past eight?” I looked around. I saw light edges round the blind over the window. “I was asleep,” I said. “I must have fallen asleep.”
Miller looked at me like I was crazy. Then asked, “Don’t you usually sleep at night?”
I realized I was stiff and sore. “That chair isn’t very comfortable.”
I stepped toward the stove. “Want some coffee?” I tripped on the remote wire to the camera. It fell off the stove and hit the floor with a deadly thud. The flashgun shattered. I moved the pieces to one side with my foot, the least of my problems. “I’m making some anyway,” I said.
Miller watched without saying anything. I got water and the percolator and the makings. I brought the combination back to the stove.
Then I turned to him. “Why are you here?” I asked. “Not a social call, surely.”
“No,” he said as I turned the gas on.
“What, then?”
“I . . .” he began. Hesitated, struggled, inhaled, and spat it out. “I’m supposed to bring you in.”
“In?”
“To the department.”
“Oh?” I turned the gas off again. It had waked me up better than coffee ever could.
“Gartland wants to see you.”
“Is that all,” I said. “Well, I don’t want to see him.” I turned back to the stove.
“Don’t make life hard for me, Al,” Miller said plaintively. “They’ve been shitting on me right and left about this because you’re making trouble. Don’t you give me a hard time, too.”
“Nobody is making life easy for me,” I said, the plaintive one now. I turned the gas on again.
“He told you to stop working on the case,” Miller said quietly. “And you didn’t. You told me you would keep me informed if you did any work on it, and you didn’t.”
“What didn’t I?”
“What ab
out Pighee’s doctor last night?”
“I was going to call you, but I ran out of dimes. It’s the truth.”
Miller shrugged. “Gartland wants to see you.”
“Jerry,” I said, “I already said I didn’t want to see him. This thing doesn’t add up the way I’ve been told about it, and I’m going to keep working until I know at least a few more details.”
“Like what?”
“Like what kind of project these people are working on that’s supposed to be so important.”
He looked like he was about to say something. But he didn’t.
“Do you know?” I asked him.
Silence again, which this time I took as his not saying no.
“Well, what is it?”
“I’m not supposed to know,” he said.
“But you do.”
He was quiet for a moment again, but then it burst out. “Only that they’re setting up for a bust of just about every major drug distributor in the whole fucking country. That’s all. And I call that important.”
“How?” I asked. “How?”
He sighed heavily. “I don’t know, Albert, but they’ve been working up their contacts for years.”
I just stared at him. “When does the boom get lowered?”
“I don’t know,” he said. “But soon. And that’s why they’re so worried about you.”
I sat in my chair for a few moments. But then I said, “Is the F.B.I. allowed to break the law, Jerry?”
Exasperatedly he said, “They’re working with the heroin to set the real drug gangsters up!”
“I mean, are they allowed to kill people?”
“Kill people? Who?”
“John Pighee, for one. And that other guy, Rackey—I think him, too.”
“I didn’t know Pighee was dead. When was that?”
“He’s always been dead,” I said.
He didn’t like that. He didn’t understand it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Al, but you already know, more than you’re supposed to.”
“It’s my face. People just talk to it,” I said. “They can’t help themselves.”
“Come on, get your jacket,” he said.
“Why?”
“I already said. Gartland wants to see you.”
“And I already said I don’t want to see him.”
He stood up. “Come on, Al.”
“Are you arresting me?” I asked, more than a little surprised.
“Not unless I have to,” he said.
“On what charge?” I stood up to meet him.
“If I have to,” he said, “because you’ve been accused of abducting one Marcia Merom.” He read from his notebook. “She and a Mr. Seafield came last night late and made a preliminary statement that accuses you of having forcibly removed this Marcia Merom from her place of residence. They say she came to no harm while she was in your power and that you released her, but she is pressing charges. They said they’d come in today and make full statements.”
“Where is Seafield supposed to come into this?”
“He says he heard her protesting outside her front door as you removed her through the back.”
“Do you believe that crap?”
He smiled an icy policeman’s smile. “I believe that Captain Gartland wants to see you.”
I picked up my jacket from the chair I’d slept in and put it on. I scratched myself behind my ear. I really didn’t want to talk to Gartland; I didn’t have anything I wanted to say to him. He thought I was rash and unreasonable. There was certainly no chance of getting him to initiate a real investigation of the Loftus people. The prospect of seeing him made me sorely sad.
I took a step toward the door.
Then I did a rash thing.
I clobbered Miller on the chin with the biggest roundhouse right cross I’d ever in my wildest imagination hit anybody with.
He dropped like a stone. It must have been half the sheer surprise.
It surprised me. I looked at my fist as if it had a life of its own.
I left my office very quickly.
Chapter Thirty Five
I visualized Linn Pighee, pale in her hospital bed, as I walked to the corner on West Maryland and liberated my van from its parking space. But I concentrated soon enough on the problem I had set myself. Staying free for a while and using the time to answer my questions, once and for all.
I’d cooked my own goose, but I needed time to cook a few others and make it a gaggle.
I drove southeast on Virginia Avenue and pulled in at Bud’s Dugout. Breakfast is a busy time there. Mom was in full flow, doing everything, which is the way she likes it. Sam was there, too, hovering on the side with a pot of coffee for refills.
I walked straight into the back room, pausing only to drag my daughter with me.
“Daddy, I’m helping!” she said. Then had the presence of mind to look at my face. “Is something wrong?”
“Do you have your car here?”
“Yes. Of course.”
“Good. I want you to go into town to my office.”
“What’s happened?”
“Contrary to what you may be told by other sources, I have broken no laws. Not even resisting arrest, because he never said he was arresting me.”
“Daddy!”
I managed a smile. “I left the gas on underneath a pot of coffee. I’d appreciate it if you’d turn it off.”
“I don’t understand.”
“After stopping at the office, I want you to visit Linn. Pighee.”
“I was going to anyway,” Sam said. “After I’d finished helping Grandma wash up.”
“When you get back, I want you to call my lawyer.”
“You do?”
I gave her his name and phone number. “I want you to call him and tell him to keep awake today. I may need him. He should start checking with the police to see if they have me at two, if I haven’t checked in with him before then. O.K.?”
“Yes, Daddy.”
I moved toward the door. “I’ve got to go now.”
A good daughter. She asked no more questions.
I waved to my mother as I went by. She had time to scowl at me. Good daughter, perhaps. But bad father.
Miller had had time to think about what happened. His immediate impulse would be to put out a pickup on me. But he would have paused, thought about it. Controlled himself. He’d have gone to see whether my vehicle was in its parking place. He’d have noted its absence, then had the pickup put out. It was the only way he could protect himself.
I took back roads all the way to Beech Grove and didn’t encounter any police. I pulled up on the edge of the driveway at Linn Pighee’s house. Walked directly to the garage and fished around on the keys she’d given me till I found one for the door. I opened it, got in her car, and drove it out to the road. Then I pulled my van into the garage and closed the door again.
Only when I’d finished getting my vehicle out of sight did I notice that I had an audience.
“Hello, Mrs. Thomas,” I said. “How are you?”
“What do you think you’re doing here, Mr. Samson?”
“I’m picking up your sister-in-law’s car for her,” I said. I showed the keys.
“I hope you’re not expecting to collect the money for that extortionate bill you sent me, because I’m not going to pay it.”
“No, I didn’t come out for that,” I said. With relief that she was worrying about her preoccupations instead of mine. “I leave that sort of thing to my lawyer.”
“Lawyer?” she said with a trace of anxiety. “You’re not going to involve lawyers for a little bill like that, are you?”
“Mrs. Thomas, the bill is either big or little. It can’t be both.”
“Tell you what,” she said. “I’ll give you forty dollars right now and we’ll call it quits. How’s that?”
I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
Instead I said, “All right. As long as it’s cash.”
; “You drive a hard bargain, Mr. Samson,” she said, turning toward her trailer.
I followed her. It was little enough time to spend and I didn’t have any money on me.
She made me wait outside for a minute before inviting me in. “You’re very lucky,” she said, without totally convincing me. “Forty dollars is absolutely all the cash I have in the place.” That didn’t convince me, either.
She opened a cardboard shoe box, counted out four new tens, and showed me the cardboard was bare. She presented me with the bill Sam had prepared and sent to her. I altered the total figure, wrote in “Discount for cash promptly,” and signed it as “Paid.”
She put the receipted bill in the box and slipped it into a cupboard behind her.
“O.K.?” I asked. I stood up. The cupboard door swung open. She saw me stare. Beside the shoe box was a metal tube marked with a radiation symbol.
She stood up and closed the cupboard door firmly.
I sat down again. “Mrs. Thomas,” I said, “what are you doing with a tube of radioactive material?”
“What radioactive material?” she asked uneasily. She was an appallingly transparent person.
“Your brother gave it to you, I presume,” I said.
She narrowed her eyes and abandoned her first defense. “That’s right,” she said, “but it’s no business of yours.”
I thought about it for a minute. “No,” I said. “Of course it isn’t.” I stood again, facing her.
“Just a memento of his work. Of him. I’ve always kept little things from his work. From his first drawings in school.”
“I’ll be going now,” I said.
And I was as good as my word.
But only as far as the Pighees’ house. I wanted to use the phone.
I called Maude Simmons, my source of general information, who, in her spare time, works for the Star.
“Can you make it brief, Albert? Busy busy.”
“This is business, Maude.”
“Oh.”
“I need to know whatever you can find out about some people.”
“Go on.”
“P. Henry Rush,” I said. “Jay Dundree, Lee Seafield, Marcia Janet Merom.”
“I don’t know any of the names.”
“Probably you won’t be able to help on some of them. They’re fish of varying size at Loftus Pharmaceuticals. Rush is your best bet. He’s a director. In his sixties, I’d guess, and said he came to the company in security, after the war. Now he spends his time developing scientific personnel. Doesn’t sound like a full-time directorial job to me, but there it is. Dundree, Seafield, and Merom are part of the scientific personnel.”
The Silent Salesman Page 20