by Jack Lynch
Below that was a written reply. From the breezy style of it I guessed it to be by Bill Lansky, one of the wire editors at the newspaper:
“Don’t know, Chief—is old.”
So Harry had the information but he didn’t know where it came from. That was interesting. So were another couple of items in the folder. These were yellow, lined pages from a legal-sized note pad, containing Harry’s handwriting and doodling. They must have been his worksheets when mentally reeling in the chess set. He’d composed a cornball little poem:
Days of the week, they number seven,
Mountains pour forth fifteen streams;
Abo watcher’s in sixth heaven,
Pipes of clay hold four more dreams
It was Harry’s cryptic little accounting of who held what of the chess set, or almost. I didn’t understand the days of the week business, but seven was the number of chess pieces held by himself and his brother-in-law, Polaski. Fifteen pieces were held by Catlin, who lived in the mountains of Washington. Four were held by the gray man, Bowman. The abo watcher, Battersea, was supposed to have six pieces, but at the time he wrote this, Harry must not have known the little Australian had given one of his to Kwalli.
On the other worksheet Harry seemed aware of the traveling man. He’d printed that appellation in small, bold letters, followed by a string of question marks. He’d written other things, also followed by question marks:
In house?
Wires?
File Remote?
And down toward the bottom of the page he’d somehow brought it all together and figured it out. He’d scrawled the Fourth of July and circled it with stars. Traveling Man was written again, this time heavily underscored and followed by an exclamation point. And then he’d written another little ditty that could have been sung to an old Stephen Foster melody.
He ain’t gonna travel no more, no more,
He ain’t gonna travel no more…
He’s in the honey, and we’re in the money,
He ain’t gonna travel no more.
I looked it all over again, but I didn’t get it. Harry had been privy to more information than I was. I couldn’t make whatever connection he had. I folded up the worksheets and computer printout and put them in my pocket and replaced the folder. Erica was right about another thing. Her husband had been a very curious fellow.
I closed up the house and drove back over the hill to my Sausalito apartment. Erica was off running her errands. I changed clothes and transferred both holstered guns to my new outfit. I thought a moment then went into the front room and unlocked the small steel cabinet drawer where I keep spare ammunition. Catlin’s body crumpled up in Erica’s shower with a hole in his forehead had made a profound impression on me. I put a couple of extra magazines for the .45 in my left jacket pocket and a handful of .38 caliber bullets in my right. I’m not a clotheshorse. The clothes I wear are generally rumpled enough so that a couple more bulges hardly matter. I dialed Minzer’s shop in the city. When he answered I asked if he’d like to clean the guck off the rest of the Mediterranean Chess Set. I tried to ask it in a casual manner but the prospect still staggered him. He sucked air through his teeth for a couple of minutes before he agreed to it. I told him I’d drop off the first batch inside the hour.
On the way out of town I drove by the Big G Supermarket and picked up an empty whiskey carton and a role of duct tape. I got a morning Chronicle out of the rack in front of the store and drove on over to the city.
I double-parked in front of Mr. Minzer’s shop in Chinatown just long enough to drop off the bundle of Catlin chessmen and the others that Polaski had owned. Mr. Minzer met me at the door, took the chessmen, pushed me back outside and locked the door. I drove on over to the parking garage. I wrapped Catlin’s rifle in the newspaper and slapped some duct tape around it. It wasn’t pretty but you couldn’t tell what was inside, either. I closed the flaps of the empty whiskey carton and sealed them with tape. Out on the street I carried the carton under one arm and leaned a little, as if the box had some weight in it. In the other hand I had Catlin’s rifle. I took my time and spent a while staring into shop windows. If anybody were looking for me I didn’t want them to miss me. And I figured that unless they’d been accidentally run over or something since the last time we’d met, Elmo and Fudge would be looking for me.
The streets were crowded. There still was a lull in the rain and people were trying to catch up on their Christmas shopping. Salvation Army women were ringing bells over metal pots. All seemed right with the world. There wasn’t any sign of Elmo or Fudge. I went on up to the office.
The phone was ringing when I let myself in. Neither Ceejay nor the counselors come in on Saturday. I had the place to myself. I crossed to Ceejay’s desk and picked up the receiver. It was Erica. There was tension in her voice. She spoke in little more than a whisper.
“Peter, I’m calling you from Harry’s old office at the Chronicle. You won’t believe this, but I just found the missing chess piece. It was in Harry’s desk.”
I held the receiver away from my ear and stared at it, the way they do in the movies.
“That sounds like a stupid place for him to have put it.”
“You didn’t know him, Peter. He was crazy the way he went about things. He kept those other chess pieces in an old fishing tackle box in a cabinet down in his studio. He used to keep a gun in the kitchen breadbox, for God’s sake. Don’t tell me about dumb places he kept things. The one I just discovered was in an old paper sack half-filled with rubber bands.”
“What are you doing at the Chronicle? I didn’t think anybody worked there on Saturdays.”
“They are today—on Harry’s murder. I told them I wanted to clean out his desk. Some of them tried to question me, in a rather nice way. I told them some fanciful lies. Oh, God, Peter, I’m so excited! This means we’ve done it, doesn’t it? Now we can finish it all.”
“It’s beginning to look that way. Though I wonder where Harry came upon the extra piece. And why he didn’t mention it to anybody.”
“What difference does it make? The important thing is I have it. Where should I take them?”
I gave her directions to Minzer’s shop. “I’ll phone ahead and let him know to expect you. Wait there while he’s cleaning them. When he’s finished with them and the ones I left earlier, bring them all back up to my office.”
I phoned Minzer, then tried calling Bowman at Port Costa. Nobody answered the phone. I hoped it meant they all were on their way into the city. I hung up the phone and sat staring at it for a moment. There was something wrong with Erica’s story. I didn’t know if she was deliberately lying to me or not. Maybe she was telling me what she thought was the truth. But there still was something wrong with it. I only prayed I would find out what before anybody else got hurt.
EIGHTEEN
I went over and locked the corridor door again. I suspected that Elmo and Fudge might have the building under surveillance. If so they might come loping on up any minute. I carried the rifle and carton into my office and transferred the money from the footlocker into the carton. I replaced the bricks and closed the locker, then sealed the carton with a strip of the tape. I left the carton on top of the locker.
I took Catlin’s rifle out of its newspaper wrapping and looked around for a handy hiding place. By now it seemed as if Elmo and Fudge wouldn’t be busting in right away again. That worried me some. I’d rather have them bully their way back into my office than be out there getting into mischief I didn’t know about. They couldn’t have just given up and gone back home already. I suspected that if they went back without the money they’d end up at the bottom of some river, or wherever it was those people back east left their bodies these days.
I wandered on out to the reception area. The drapes were pulled over the windows behind Ceejay’s desk. I didn’t see any need to open them and went over and stuck the rifle behind them. I crossed back to unlock the door to the corridor. I was as ready as I’d ever be. I wen
t on back into my own office but left the door into the reception area open. Then I waited.
I finally had a phone call from Bowman. He, the Duchess and Brandi had driven into town together. Battersea and his friend Jack had driven in earlier so that the little Australian could accompany his friend through the day on his beer route. I could just imagine the shape they’d be in when I saw them again. I told him Mrs. Shank had recovered the missing chessman and that all of the pieces were now accounted for. It made him drop the receiver. When he picked it up again he was babbling. I asked him to put the Duchess on the line. I suggested that she make contact with whoever was necessary to complete the sale and to try to set up a meeting in my office for as soon as possible.
“The sooner we get rid of these things the better I’ll like it.”
She called back a half hour later, saying the meeting was arranged for eight o’clock that evening. A local attorney named Lansberry would be there to represent the buyer, along with an appraiser. She said she and Bowman had decided to do a little shopping, the way people about to come into a lot of money are apt to do a little shopping. She wanted to know if it was all right to let Brandi take the chess pieces to wherever they had to be cleaned.
“Sure, I suggested that last night. Put her on the phone.”
I told Brandi how to find the shop in Chinatown. “And if you run into Mrs. Shank there, be civil, will you? She’s been under another big strain since last night.”
“Anything you had a hand in?”
“Of course not, Brandi, where do you get such ideas? Now watch your step. When the pieces have been cleaned bring them up to my office.”
“All right. Just a moment, Gretch has another question.”
I heard voices in the background, then Brandi was on the line again. “She wants to know whether Mr. Catlin has changed his mind about things yet.”
“Yeah, you can tell her Catlin won’t object any longer to an equal division of the proceeds. Now be careful, Brandi, I mean it. If you see anything or anyone you’re at all suspicious of, duck low and get away from wherever you’re at. This is very important. I don’t want anything happening to you.”
“Don’t worry. I can think quickly when I need to.”
I phoned Mr. Minzer and told him about Brandi. He complained that he was nearly overwhelmed by it all. He’d set up a little production line and the job was going quickly. Erica was there, and he’d nearly finished off the pieces in the shop. But he said he’d just cleaned off two of the queens and one of the kings from the set. Said he didn’t know whether to faint or go blind at their dazzle. After we hung up I did some more waiting, wondering where Elmo and Fudge could be.
Erica arrived an hour later. Mr. Minzer had wrapped the pieces in old blue paper and string. They looked like a bundle of laundry. Erica was wearing the jeans and boots and turtleneck sweater she’d put on the night before. She was radiant and excited.
“Oh, Peter, wait until you see them. I thought Mr. Minzer would have a stroke before he was finished. He’s such a dear, but he kept dropping them and spilling things. I don’t know how he can do that sort of work with the terrible tremble in his hands.”
“They didn’t tremble before he saw these things. Bring them in here.”
I led her into the conference room and locked the door from the inside. She carried them to the table and quickly untied the string. “Fondling these little devils is the next best thing to having sex,” she told me. She pulled off the last of the wrapping and began to remove the tissue paper Mr. Minzer had wrapped around each of them.
I began to help her. I unwrapped one of them and it turned out to be a bishop. I could only hold it in my hand and stare at it for several moments. Whoever had crafted this set was a master. If the little warrior I’d seen first projected a certain nobility, the bishop was the personification of arrogance. The figure’s face had long nostrils, slightly flared at their ends. It had a high forehead and strong chin. But the set of the eyes, formed by some deep blue gem, and the set of the mouth in a self-satisfied cast bespoke a man of great influence and wealth. The miter atop his head appeared to be of gold, banded with emeralds and diamonds. I had no way of identifying the multitude of other gems interwoven in his costume.
If the pieces gave me pause, they only heightened Erica’s arousal. She handled them deftly, like a teller handling money in a bank. But her breathing was ragged and she made little sounds in her throat from time to time.
“I can see why somebody would kill to get their hands on these, can’t you, Peter?”
“No, they don’t strike me that way, Erica. But then I’ve seen my share of killing.”
“Oh, God. Look at them. Is there a drink of any sort around here?”
“Sure, the attorneys have a pretty well-stocked bar over here. I steal from it regularly. What would you like?”
“I’d love a vodka tonic.”
I fixed it for her as she stood transfixed by the chess pieces. I took the drink over to her.
“Aren’t you having something?”
“No. I’m going to stay pretty straight through the rest of this.”
I set the pieces up as best I could in playing position. When we had the rest of the pieces and the set was complete, it would be devastating to behold. So far we had twenty-three of the set’s thirty-two pieces. They were breathtaking, but I found them disturbing, as well. All of them gave off that aura of raw power I’d felt with the first pawn Mr. Minzer had cleaned. We stood and stared silently at them for several moments. There was an added dimension to them somehow. Something not quite savory. I shook my head and looked away. “I get a funny feeling about those things.”
“Funny how?”
“I can’t really explain. Maybe evil. You know Mr. Minzer told me those things were created specifically to put an entire tribal nation into slavery a century or more ago. It worked, too.”
Erica turned away from the set with a queer smile on her face, looking at me. She put her hands around my neck, pressed the lower part of her body into me and threw back her head.
“That isn’t evil, darling. That’s erotic.”
“If it’s erotic, it isn’t nice erotic.”
“No, maybe not. Kiss me, Peter.”
I didn’t feel comfortable about it but I kissed her. She wanted to resume things where we’d left off the night before. I should have been flattered. Instead I was disturbed, and not in the way Erica wanted. I broke off the kiss.
“Let’s be nice, erotic with each other, Peter. Over there on the sofa, under the eyes of the little chessmen. We’d never have a chance for the rest of our lives to do it quite the same. I almost have flashes just thinking of it.”
“You’re out of your mind.”
“Why? The door is locked. Nobody will know. Oh please, darling. I want you to undress me.”
“Erica, there are just too many people apt to show up out in the next room at any moment. If those gunmen who killed your brother come through here again they won’t just stand around out there while we’re rutting over on the sofa.”
She let go of me and stepped back. Her face colored.
“You certainly have a way about you, Peter. That’s not terribly gallant. I was just suggesting something I thought we might both find memorable.”
“The timing isn’t right.”
“To hell with the timing. The timing is never right. Let me tell you something, Peter. Once this sale is completed, I’m not going to stay here a minute longer than is absolutely necessary, not once I get my hands on some real money. You can have your San Francisco with its fog and rain and street muggings and murder. I’m leaving, Peter. And I don’t know when I might ever be coming back.”
“Erica, it still will have to wait a little while. Look, the commission I stand to make from this thing isn’t going to be all that bad, either. I’d love to be able to see some other parts of the world. Maybe when this is cleaned up we can meet somewhere for a few days. I was thinking…”
She sho
ok her head slowly. “No, darling. I’ve made other arrangements.”
I guess it shouldn’t have surprised me about a woman like Erica. “I see. Well, it’ll be good for you to get away from all this.”
She just stared at me for a moment, then turned and picked up her purse. “I think I’ll go and have another drink somewhere, then do some shopping. I have so many things to do.”
I went to the door and opened it. Erica crossed the reception area and left without another word. I listened to her brisk steps recede down the corridor with conflicting emotions. Maybe someday I’d think back on that afternoon and consider myself a sap. But there were a lot of dark undercurrents to Erica that still bothered me.
I got calmed down later when Brandi came up to the office. After Erica, the kid’s fresh vitality was like opening the windows in a muggy room.
She was wearing a wool skirt, knee-high tartan stockings and a blue cashmere sweater. She had color in her cheeks and another pair of sensible flat shoes on her feet. And she had a wide grin on her face.
“I love walking your streets. These hills. Your women here must have fine calves.”
“It’s been said they have good legs. Come on in here.”
She followed me into the conference room. She spotted the set and walked to it slowly. She stopped several paces back, leaning forward slightly to peer at the little pieces.
“It’s an enormous bunch,” she said quietly.
“It’s all of that,” I agreed. I took the pieces she had brought up and finished arranging the set in playing position. They were all together now, for the first time in more than three decades.
“I don’t feel all that comfortable with them, though. Why should that be?”
“You feel it too, huh? I don’t know what it is. I observed to somebody they had a feel of evil to them. Of course that struck me after I’d learned they were used to broaden the slave trade some years back.”
“How awful.” She noticed the glass Erica had left on the table beside the set. “You been drinking, already?”