“That used ampoule I found on the floor, the one the cop wouldn’t let me finish picking up—it was bone dry, and it shouldn’t have been. It should have felt oily, Barbara tells me. You switched it while you were hanging around, getting in our way while we were doing CPR. After you dawdled in calling the ambulance, just in case we might pull off a miracle and save him. I don’t know when you planted the poison ampoule on your brother; I don’t suppose it matters. You didn’t plan on a doctor’s being present when he snapped the thing; I remember you were less than gracious about Barbara’s coming upstairs. In the end, I guess you decided it didn’t matter. Sometime soon, Robert would have an angina attack, and he would reach for the medicine, and he would get the poison, and he would die. Everybody would take it for a heart attack. It just had to happen before Faith had the baby.”
“Why?” Lucille demanded.
“Because Paul set things up so that his estate was distributed not when he died, but when the baby was born. If Robert was alive when that happened, he would come into his share; if he died after that, his money would go to you.”
I studied Peter. I wished I had a monocle or something to look at him through.
“You know,” I said, “I really wish I knew how much of this you planned. Did you know how close Faith was to having the baby? I mean, you just got Robert killed under the wire. How many phony ampoules did you gimmick up? I bet you fixed it so they were all poison. Did you work on your mother some more? Are you the one who’s been stoking her hatred of Faith from the beginning?”
No answer but a smile. But I could see sweat on his forehead. Somewhere in the universe, there existed a bunch of booby-trapped ampoules. Peter had been in the hospital all night; he hadn’t had a chance to destroy them.
“How sure were you that you wouldn’t kill yourself or Faith during the car chase you set up? Hanging around, clubbing a cop, stealing a police car—that was a lot of risk to go through just to keep the idea of Faith’s danger alive. But then, I guess you had to. You had to have the attention. I’m sure you like it. And you had to keep people thinking in terms of a threat to Faith. It didn’t much matter what they thought, as long as it kept their minds off the fact that you, by killing your brothers, had doubled your share of Paul’s money.
“And then tonight, you brought things to a close. You used the news of Robert’s death—news you had gone out of your way to get permission to give her—to drive your mother over the edge. What did you tell her? That Faith had killed Louis and Robert? It didn’t matter. Lucille let slip where they were, you set the hotel on fire with your little torch. You gave the poor, sick, old woman a hammer, helped her get away during the confusion, then disappeared for a couple of hours.
“And now,” I said, “it’s a clean sweep. Your mother is off the rails; you have every expectation of being appointed conservator. That means, between what you get in your own right, and what you control of your mother’s, you’ve got the whole thing. Four times the money you would have gotten in the first place.
“But there’s more, Peter, isn’t there. I haven’t known your family all that long, thank God, but it seems to me nobody ever took you too seriously. Paul had business genius; Robert had responsibility; Louis had charm. And women. You had glass animals. You were the baby. Never got any respect.”
“Do you expect this childish bullshit to make me confess, Ross?”
We’d been hoping for it. “Of course not,” I said.
“Well, here’s a get-well present. Better than glass animals. I did it.”
I thought Lucille was going to faint. “In front of witnesses,” she said.
“Some witnesses,” Peter said. “A man with an ax to grind against my family, and two women he sleeps with.”
Barbara blushed. I could hardly believe it. I thought of correcting him, since Barbara and I had not slept together. That, however, was a situation I planned to rectify as soon as practicable, so I let it go.
I corrected him about something else. “Not just us,” I said. He begged my pardon.
“You’ve been talking to more than just the three of us. You see, Dr. Metzenbaum opened the intercom from the nurses’ station to one of the rooms on this floor right after she went behind the counter. So other people have been listening.”
“Like Lieutenant Rogers,” Lucille said. “My God, he killed Robert. He killed Robert.” She said it all on one note. It was like being at a séance.
“Like Lieutenant Rogers,” I echoed. “Heard enough, Lieutenant?”
Rogers’s voice came from down the hall. “Plenty. Don’t try to go anywhere, Mr. Letron, all the exits are guarded.”
There was never a more unnecessary warning. Peter was paralyzed.
I spun my wheelchair around. “Here he comes now. There’s an audio technician with him, and a man who came up from downtown with a court order. And Peter?”
He turned to look at me.
“Peter, guess whose room they set up in?”
“No,” he said. “No.”
Alma Letron came out of her room and walked rapidly toward us. She went right around the cops, making Rogers 0-for-2 at stopping her, but somehow I don’t think he was trying too hard.
She walked up to her son and put her hands on his shoulders. “I never wanted to have you,” she said. “You were a mistake.”
Then she spat in his face.
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE
THE COPS FOUND THE ampoules; they had Peter’s fingerprints all over them, and the autopsy showed the same chemical in them and in Robert’s system. Peter wasn’t as brilliant as I thought—the way he ran things, the minute somebody suspected him, he was through. I guess they took that as proof of insanity, because he never stood trial. He was committed. His mother was committed. Lucille wound up controlling all the money. I hope it makes her happy.
My mother is dating Hi Marks, at last. I think I’m going to get the opportunity to give my mother away in a much nicer fashion than Peter Letron tried with his.
Sue has moved out of the dorm at Syracuse, and taken a house with Faith, The World’s Richest Infant, and a nurse. Faith is studying chemistry and business at SU. The idea is, if she’s going to hand over a cosmetics firm in good shape to the new owner, she’d better know something about it.
Barbara is now renting out the condo in Fort Lee and living in Manhattan with me. We’ll get married as soon as business lightens up a little. Bumper crop of Yuppie babies this year. Every man should sleep with a gynecologist (not this one). Not only do they know exactly what they want you to do, they know why.
I was not allowed to write up the Letron story for The Grayness. I was, however, the source of about a million stories, and I finally got to do a first person feature for the Sunday magazine. That led to a few others, and I now work for the magazine exclusively.
I am a very happy guy, these days. Sometimes I wonder if I should feel guilty about owing all the best things in my life to such a mess of fear and murder.
Then I think, to hell with it. I didn’t ask for it to happen. I did my best. I made one big mistake, but I didn’t deliberately hurt anybody who didn’t deserve to be hurt. I mention this to Rogers sometimes, and he tells me I’m nuts.
“You act like you’re the only one who came out of this happy. Hell, I got a lot of good press over it, and everybody else came out great except the dead, the nuts and the guilty. And you couldn’t have helped them, anyway.”
I hope he’s right, but I don’t go brooding about it; I think of how glad I’m going to be when work is over and I meet Barbara.
For the first time in a long time, I’ve got no complaints.
The End
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Copyright © 1986 by Philip DeGrave
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Keep the Baby, Faith Page 18