“I told you before that it doesn’t matter, Goodey,” Crenshaw said. “You can go now.”
I got the distinct impression that I was being dismissed. Crenshaw was less than embarrassing with his gratitude, but that’s one thing a cop learns to live without. “All right,” I said. “Nice working for you.” Nobody stood in my way, but before I could get through the door, Crenshaw said something that stopped me like a sheet of plate glass.
“Hugo,” I heard him say, “there is something I have to explain to you about the money due to you from Katie’s estate.”
I spun faster than the average tight end. “You what?” I said, none too quietly.
“I’m going to tell them what I’ve done with the three million dollars,” Crenshaw told me in a none-of-your-business tone of voice. He turned back toward Fischer as if I’d just left the room. “I—”
“Wait a minute,” I insisted. “Just hold on.” Crenshaw turned toward me, but he didn’t do it gladly.
“After all you’ve learned here tonight about Katie’s death,” I said, “you’re going to—” Then it dawned on me. “Hell, you’re going to give them that money, aren’t you, Mr. Crenshaw? With all that I found out for you, one of your good, crooked lawyers could tie that estate up for decades. But you, you’re going to make them a gift of it, aren’t you. I’ve just been wasting my time here.”
“You’ll be paid in full,” Crenshaw said coldly. “The rest of it is none—”
“Christ!” I said. “You’ve fallen for Fischer’s bullshit, too.” I shook my head. “Mr. Crenshaw—”
Fischer cut in. “Jack—” Gillette materialized at my side. “Please show Mr. Goodey to his room to change and then escort him to his automobile.” There was triumph in his voice.
Gillette moved through the open doorway and waited for me to follow. But I wasn’t quite ready. “Wait,” I said, and I turned back so that I could take in the entire group. They sat there in an unbroken circle, and I was on the outside. I noticed that one of the flunkies had even removed my cushion. Rachel and Aileen Moffitt had shifted closer together to fill the gap. Their eyes were turned in my direction, but nobody saw me. They were just waiting for the door to close. I couldn’t think of a thing to say.
“Fuck it,” I said, and walked through the doorway. With the click of it shutting, I heard Fischer’s voice, faintly but distinctly, begin to welcome Crenshaw to the fold.
20
Gillette was walking half a step behind my right shoulder, ostentatiously just seeing me off the premises.
“You know, Jack,” I said chummily, “for a man who did what he came here to do and accidentally figured out how J.B. died, somehow I don’t feel like a winner.”
“You’re not,” he said. “You never had a chance.”
“How do you figure it?” I asked. “How could Crenshaw fall for Fischer’s bullshit—after all he’s seen here?” Then it occurred to me that perhaps Gillette wasn’t the best person to ask. “Sorry. I mean, it could cost him at least three million dollars and probably a lot more.”
“The money doesn’t seem to have done a lot for him so far,” Gillette said. “Your guess is as good as mine. Everybody comes here for something different. Don’t overwork your brain.” We were walking up the broad staircase. “You’re not going to be around long enough to worry about it.”
He was right, but I couldn’t help wondering. Gillette waited in the doorway while I removed the flowing white robe. “I can’t say it hasn’t been a weekend full of surprises,” I said as I dressed. “There have been very few really dull moments.”
“We like to keep things lively.”
“By the way,” I said, tying my shoelaces, “I didn’t get a chance to thank you for getting me out of the sauna.”
“No problem,” he said. “I’m just sorry that I had to give Tommy a thick ear.”
“I’m not sorry,” I said. “As a figure of harmless fun, Tommy Carter leaves a lot to be desired.”
“He’s okay. Tommy’s just that little bit too eager to follow suggestions from a good friend. An old, good friend like Pops who—” Gillette looked at me sharply. “Hey, I’m not telling you anything you don’t know, am I?”
“Of course not,” I lied. “But maybe I ought to go tie a knot in that old bastard’s tail.” I stepped toward the door.
“Maybe you’d better not,” said Gillette, filling the doorway.
“But don’t you think I ought to be just a little bit sore?”
“Who at?” asked Gillette. “I told you this was a nut house.”
“Yeah. I forgot.” I looked around the little room. It no longer contained anything of mine, and I couldn’t work up any nostalgia about leaving it. I hadn’t had that many good times there.
“Come on,” I said to Gillette. “You were supposed to be throwing me out. Remember?”
“Oh, yeah. I nearly forgot.”
“How do you figure it will all work out?” I asked him as we walked down the stairs.
“What’s that?”
“Well, The Institute is okay on J.B. Grenby can go to town on that one, even if a few nigglers might think it odd that a millionaire had to hide out on his own estate and set booby-traps to ensure his privacy.”
“Let ‘em wonder,” Gillette said. “It’s good exercise.”
“But Katie Pierce is a different matter,” I said. “Whether or not he meant to, Pops did chase her off the roof. And she did get high on drugs provided by Carey. That could be a bit sticky, what with Grenby still wearing the sheriff’s uniform and all.”
“I don’t think so,” Gillette said blithely. “Grenby may still be a cop—technically—but he’s more Hugo’s man than he is Dominguez’s. And with Crenshaw not creating any more fuss, Katie’s death is going to stay a sad, unexplainable accident.”
“And Katie’s three million bucks?”
“Hugo will put that to good use,” Gillette said. “You can count on that.”
“And he’ll take Crenshaw along with it?”
“Always room for another old geezer—uh, elder statesman—at The Institute,” he said.
“Do you think Fischer will keep his word and start that new program he was selling to Crenshaw?”
“Probably. He’s been wanting to do something like that anyway. This way, he can name it after Crenshaw Junior, and everybody will be happy.”
“Especially Fischer.”
“Especially Hugo,” he said. “I believe you’re beginning to understand how this place works.”
“Just barely,” I said. “But what if some use for that money comes up that Fischer thinks is more important? Do you think he might change his mind a little bit?
Gillette cocked his head at me. “I’d better get you out of here before you understand too much.” We were then on the second floor landing.
“How about you, Jack?” I asked as we descended. “Do you plan to stay snug in the bosom of St. Hugo?”
“Until something better comes along. If something ever does.”
By then we were standing in the marble foyer under Rudy Verrein’s majestic portrait of Fischer. Gillette was about to open the door when Rachel Schute came out of the darkness toward us.
“Joe?” she said. She had a piece of paper in her hand. “It’s okay, Jack,” Rachel said. “You go back to the megathon. I want to say goodbye to—to our guest.”
“Okay, Rachel,” Gillette said, turning to walk into the darkness.
“So long, Jack,” I said, but he either didn’t hear me or didn’t bother to answer.
“Here,” said Rachel, shoving the piece of paper into my hand. “Emma asked me to give you this.”
I looked at the check. It had the right number of zeroes. I put it quickly into my pocket. “Thank her for me.”
“Do you think you earned it, Joe?”
“Did you earn yours?” I asked, perhaps a bit unkindly. Rachel flushed. That would always be her enemy. “Nobody asked Emma to offer the money,” I said. “Do you think she w
ants it back?”
“No.”
“Goodbye, Rachel,” I said, turning toward the door.
“Tell me something, Joe,” she said as if she hadn’t heard me. “Did J.B. really tell you that he’d seen Hugo and Katie on the terrace?”
“Does it matter?”
“It matters to me,” she said seriously.
“Can you keep a secret?”
“No,” she said, and I knew that she wouldn’t.
“J.B. didn’t tell me that he’d seen anything on the terrace,” I said. “In a careless moment, he did claim that Fischer had killed Katie, but that was just loose talk. I made the rest of it up.” I hoped that didn’t sound too much like bragging.
For a time, Rachel didn’t say anything. She just looked at me with somber eyes, a dark turquoise in the dim light. “Are you proud of yourself, Joe?” she said at last.
“I did the job I was hired to do,” I said. “Two jobs.”
“Do you think it was worth doing?” She obviously didn’t.
“Crenshaw had a right to know how his granddaughter died,” I said. “Or don’t you think it was important?”
“At what cost, Joe?” she asked. “At what cost? Would you do anything, say anything, just to do a job?”
There was no answer to that question. “I’ve got a long drive ahead of me, Rachel,” I said.
But she wasn’t ready to let me go. Not yet.
“Just like that?” she said, her usually soft voice getting shrill. “Don’t you even know what you tried to do here tonight? Thank God you failed.”
“You tell me.”
“You tried to destroy The Institute,” she said, “just to solve a murder that never was. Just to earn your blood money, you were willing to destroy all that Hugo has spent over ten years of his life building. Not that you could, of course. It would take a lot bigger man than you could ever be.”
“Then what are you complaining about?” I asked. “Goodey has shot his best shot, and The Institute remains in all its monolithic beauty.”
“What bothers me, Joe,” Rachel said seriously, “is what you tried to do. The despicable methods you used. You were like some digging animal turning up rocks to see what was under them, not caring what harm you might do in the process. For all you cared, all the lives The Institute has saved could have been lost. If Mike Grenby wasn’t…”
“In Fischer’s pocket?” I said, finishing her sentence in a way that I’m sure Rachel hadn’t intended. “Yeah, he could blow this place up with all he learned tonight. It’s a good thing for Fischer that Grenby is a good boy who has his priorities right.”
Rachel’s eyes were full of scorn. “Joe,” she began.
“No,” I said, deciding that I wasn’t too tired to get pissed off, “you’ve had a good time telling me what a rat I am, Rachel. Now, let me give you my version.”
Rachel started to turn away from me, but I got her arm in a strong grip and turned her around. “You just listen,’ I said, “then you can go back to your playmates.” Her eyes said they didn’t think much of me, but I let go of her arm anyway. She didn’t move.
“All right,” I said, “you don’t like my methods. But I was pretty sure that if I pushed Fisher hard enough, the right man would surface, especially if he was already carrying a heavy burden of guilt. And I was right, wasn’t I?
“Pops didn’t murder…”
“No,” I said, “that’s just the point. A jury might beg to differ, but Pops wasn’t responsible for Katie’s death. That responsibility belongs right up there in Hugo Fischer’s fat lap.”
“You’re—”
“Hear me,” I said, forcefully enough to make Rachel shut her mouth in a thin line. “The responsibility—and the guilt—has to ride with Fischer because he’s set himself up as God around here. He makes the rules and he breaks them if it suits his whim. There are no drugs allowed at The Institute—unless it suits his purpose. The Institute is a haven for disturbed young girls like Katie, unless God’s horny old right-hand man decides to prey on them. Everyone must bend to Fischer’s grand scheme or get out—even if it’s J. B. Carter, and he owns the place. It was just Fischer’s bad luck that this combination accidentally cost two lives. But I imagine that he—and the rest of you— figure that is a small price to pay for the survival of The Institute.”
I stopped to give Rachel a chance to butt in, but she stood there looking at me with alien eyes. Finally, she asked: “Are you finished?”
“Not quite. I’m not saying that Fischer isn’t a pretty good social mechanic with energy—and ego—to burn. In a tin-pot sort of way, he’s a real dazzler, and he’ll probably go on gathering followers like blue serge picks up lint. Look at the way he bundled up Crenshaw tonight. I still can’t believe it. If he wanted to, he could make you True Believers think that night was day and Jesus was a Dutchman.”
“You’re jealous,” Rachel shot, her eyes regaining some of their fire.
“Sure, I’m jealous. If I had some of Fischer’s talent, I wouldn’t have to do jobs like this one. Jobs where everyone wins but the Katie Pierces and other casualties of The Institute’s big meat grinder. Where everything comes out but the truth.”
“You could still go to the police yourself,” Rachel said.
“Sure I could, but that’s not my job. Don’t mistake me for a moralist, Rachel. You know better. I’m just an ex-cop scuffling after enough money to stay alive and operating. If some justice gets done in the process, that’s fine. It makes the client feel better about paying. But I won’t lose much sleep because the truth about Katie Pierce’s death will never come out. What is the truth? That she got chewed up and spat out in a minor malfunction of Hugo Fischer’s social movement? If Katie Pierce is remembered at all, it will be as a kooky pill head who brought Fred Crenshaw and a lot of money to The Institute. And what about J.B.? He’s just a casualty of progress, like the rabbit that gets buried under the concrete of a freeway. Nobody’s to blame; it just happened. Who was it that said that you can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs? Too true. But just once in a while, Rachel, you might want to take a good, close look at the omelet as you step over the broken eggshells.”
I’d said all I had to say, but Rachel didn’t respond. She was still standing there when I closed the big door behind me.
It was even darker in the parking lot when I climbed into the Morris, put the key in the ignition and pulled the starter. Nothing. I pulled again. Double nothing. I let my head fall forward and slumped in the seat. Opening my eyes, I thought about trying to push the car to a start. I thought about going back to the mansion and asking to use their telephone to call a garage, but somehow that didn’t appeal. I thought about picking the car up and carrying it over my shoulder.
Fishing my suitcase out of the back seat, I gave the fender of the old car a vicious kick and began trudging up the steep drive. About half way up to the tree line, I looked back at the mansion. One light at a corner of the big building was ablaze, and I tried to imagine what was happening in that room. It was too much work.
I didn’t know what had happened to the security guards, but there was nobody manning the mined barrier. It was just as well; we probably wouldn’t have had much to say to each other. When I got to the highway, I crossed over to the northbound lane. I sat my suitcase down, put what Ihoped was a confidence-inspiring expression on my face and stuck out my right thumb just as a set of high beams came barreling out of a turn about a hundred yards down the road.
Blinded by the light, nearly deafened by the roar of too much horsepower, I listened hopefully for the screech of tires. I didn’t hear it. When vision returned to my light-saturated eyes, all I could see was two ruby taillights doing their best to disappear in the first faint shadows of dawn.
I turned around and stuck my thumb out again. It was going to be a long morning.
The Final Word
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