Mystery

by Peter Straub

  Tom moved through the door with what felt like the last of his energy and leaned against a file cabinet. The Shadow inserted a cigarette in his mouth, lit it, and squinted at Tom as he inhaled. “You look absolutely ragged, Tom. I’ll pour you a cup of coffee, and then I want you to tell me all about it.”

  Tom straightened up and rubbed his face. “Being here makes me feel better,” he said. “I heard so much today—listened to so much—and it’s all sort of spinning around in my head. I can’t figure it out—I can’t get it straight.”

  “I’d better take care of you,” von Heilitz said. “You sound a little overloaded.” He led Tom back through the enormous room to his kitchen, took out two cups and saucers, and poured coffee from an old black pot that had been bubbling on a gas range, also black, that must have belonged to his parents. Tom liked the entire kitchen, with its wainscoting, hanging lamps, and old-fashioned sinks and high wooden shelves and mellow, clean wooden floorboards.

  The old man said, “In honor of the occasion, I think we could add a little something to the coffee, don’t you?”

  He took a bottle of cognac from another shelf, and tipped a little into each cup.

  “What occasion?” Tom asked.

  “Your being here.” He handed Tom one of the cups, and smiled at him.

  Tom sipped the hot, delicious mixture, and felt the tension drain from him. “I didn’t know that you knew Hattie Bascombe.”

  “Hattie Bascombe is one of the most extraordinary people on this island. That you know about our friendship means that you must have seen her today! But I’m not going to keep you in the kitchen. Let’s go into the other room and hear about what has you so worked up.”

  Tom sprawled back on the old leather couch, and put his feet up on the coffee table covered with books. Von Heilitz said, “One minute,” and put a record on his gleaming stereo equipment. Tom braced himself for more Mahler, but a warm, smoky tenor saxophone began playing one of Miss Ellinghausen’s tunes, “But Not For Me,” and Tom thought that it sounded just like the way the coffee and brandy tasted: and then he recognized it.

  “That’s Blue Rose,” he said. “My mother has that record.”

  “Glenroy Breakstone’s best record. It’s what we ought to listen to, tonight.” Tom looked at him with a mixture of pain and confusion, and von Heilitz said, “This state you’re in—I know it’s a terrible condition, but I think it means you’re almost there. Events are almost moving by themselves now, and it’s because of you.” He sat down across from Tom, and drank from his cup. “Another man was murdered today—murdered because he talked too much, among other reasons.”

  “That policeman,” Tom said.

  “He was a loose end. They couldn’t trust him, so they got rid of him. They’d do the same to me, and to you too, if they knew about us. We have to be very careful from now on, you know.”

  “Did you know that my grandmother committed suicide?” Tom asked. Von Heilitz paused with his cup halfway to his mouth. “It’s like … it was a shock, but it wasn’t. And you lied to me!” Tom burst out. “My grandfather couldn’t have seen the Thielmans’ dock from his balcony! It doesn’t face the water, it faces the woods! So why did you say that? Why does everybody tell me so many lies? And why is my mother so helpless! How could my grandfather dump her at someone’s house and go back to Eagle Lake by himself?” Tom let out a long sigh that was nearly a sob. He covered his face with his hands, then lowered them. “I’m sorry. I’m thinking about four or five things at once.”

  “I didn’t lie to you. I just didn’t tell you everything—there are a couple of things I didn’t know then, and a few I still don’t know.” He waited a moment. “When do you go to Eagle Lake?”

  “The day after tomorrow.” When von Heilitz looked up sharply, he said, “It was just worked out. That’s why my grandfather called. I’m going on the Redwing plane.”

  “Well, well.” The old man crossed his legs and leaned back into his chair. “Tell me what happened to you today.”

  Tom looked across the table, and was met by a smile of pure understanding.

  He told him everything. About the hospital and David Natchez and the dead man and Dr. Milton; about his “excursion” to the old slave quarter and Maxwell’s Heaven; about seeing Fulton Bishop glide through the court like a hungry snake; about Nancy Vetiver and what Michael Mendenhall had said; Dr. Milton in the pony trap; his father’s drunken hostility and the visit from Ralph Redwing; about the call from his grandfather; his mother in her bedroom, remembering Eagle Lake and her childhood.

  “My God,” the old man said when Tom had finished. “Now I know why you were in such a state when you arrived. I think all that calls for some more brandy, without the coffee this time. Will you have some?”

  “I’d fall asleep if I had any more,” Tom said. “I’m only half done with this.” Putting it all into words had helped him. Despite what he said, he was tired but not at all sleepy, and he felt much calmer.

  The Shadow smiled at him, patted his knee, and took his cup out into his kitchen. He returned with a snifter of brandy and set it on the table, then turned over the Glenroy Breakstone record and filled the room with the confidential, passionate sounds that Tom would associate with both this moment and his mother for the rest of his life.

  He sat down again across from Tom and looked at him steadily—with what looked to the boy like steady unambiguous affection, as he swirled the brandy in his glass. “Just now, you told me two very useful bits of information, and confirmed something that I have always thought to be true—that you went out to the Goethe Park area seven years ago for the same reason that you made your English teacher drive you to Weasel Hollow. I saw you that day, and I knew that you saw me too. You didn’t recognize me, but you saw me.”

  Mr. von Heilitz seemed very excited, and his excitement infected Tom. “You were there? You told me—that first time I came here, you asked if I remembered the first time—”

  “And that was it, Tom! Think!”

  And then Tom did remember a gloomy Gothic house, and a face that had looked skull-like peering through the curtains. His mouth dropped open. Von Heilitz was grinning at him. “You were in that house on Calle Burleigh!”

  “I was in that house.” His eyes glowed at Tom from over the top of the snifter as he drank. “I saw you coming down the block, looking between the houses to see 44th Street.”

  “What were you doing there?”

  “I rent houses and apartments in various places on Mill Walk, and I use them when I have to keep an eye on things and stay out of sight. That place was as close as I could get to Wendell Hasek’s house on 44th Street. From the top floor, I could see that whole block of 44th Street.”

  “Wendell Hasek,” Tom said, and then saw him: a fat man with a crewcut leaning against a bay window in the brown and yellow house, and the same man appearing on its porch, signaling with his hand.

  “He was there,” he said. “He must have seen me. He sent out—” Tom stopped talking, seeing an older boy and a dark-haired girl in his memory. Jerry Fairy. And what are you gonna do now, Jerry Fairy? “He sent his children out to get me. Jerry and Robyn. They wanted to know—”

  You want to know what’s going on? Why don’t you tell me, huh? What are you doing here?

  “—what I was doing there. And then—”

  He saw two other older boys, a fat boy who already looked angry and a boy as thin as a skeleton, rounding the corner of a native house. The whole crowded, frightening scene of those few minutes came back to him in a rush: he remembered Jerry hitting him, and the sudden flash of pain, and how he had lashed out and broken Jerry’s nose—

  Nappy! Robbie! Get him!

  He remembered the knives. Running. Remembered seeing Wendell Hasek come out on his front steps and winding his hand in the air. The fear of it, and the sense of uncanniness: of being trapped in a movie, or a dream.

  “Jerry must have sent for his friends,” he said.

  Tom began to sh
ake. Now he could remember everything: the gleam bouncing off one of the knives, the insolent way the one called Robbie had lounged before he began running, the white street name in the purple air, AUER, the certainty that Robbie was going to shove his long knife into him, the traffic on Calle Burleigh suddenly dividing around him and a grey-haired man on a bicycle swooping toward the ground like a trick rider in a circus. He put his hands over his eyes. The mesh of a grille, and a face pointed toward him.

  “Nappy and Robbie,” he said.

  “Nappy LaBarre and Robbie Wintergreen. That’s right. The Cornerboys.”

  Tom’s shaking had gradually subsided, and he stared at von Heilitz.

  “That was what they called themselves,” the detective said. “They all dropped out of school at fourteen, and they did a few things for Wendell Hasek. They stole. They kept a lookout for police. In general, they got up to no good until they reached their early twenties, when they suddenly turned respectable and started working for the Redwing Holding Company.”

  “What do they do for the Redwings?” He remembered something Sarah had said that afternoon. “Oh—they’re bodyguards.”

  “I suppose that’s what they’re called.”

  “And what about Robyn?”

  Von Heilitz smiled and shook his head. “Robyn got a job taking care of a sick old woman. When the old woman died while they were on a trip to the mainland, Robyn inherited her entire estate. The family took her to court on the mainland, but Robyn won the case. Now she’s just spending her money.”

  “Hasek recognized me,” Tom said. “That’s why he sent for the Cornerboys. A few days before, he came to our house. He must have tracked down my grandfather—and he must have stopped at a couple of bars too, because he was smashed. Anyhow, he was shouting and throwing rocks, and my grandfather went outside to handle him. I followed him, and Hasek saw me. My grandfather ran him off, and I went back inside, and when Grand-Dad came back he went upstairs. They were all talking about it. I heard my mother screaming, Where did that man come from? What did he want? And my grandfather answered, He came from the general vicinity of 44th and Auer, if you’re interested. As for what he wants, what do you think he wants? He wants more money.”

  “And you overheard, and a few days later you went out there—across the island by yourself, at ten years of age. Because you’d heard enough to think that if you went to that place, you’d be able to understand everything. And instead you were almost killed, and wound up in the hospital.”

  “And that’s why everybody kept asking me what I was doing out there,” Tom said, and another level of confusion fell away from him. “Why were you at the hospital today?”

  “I wanted to see for myself what you learned from Nancy Vetiver. I knew that poor Michael Mendenhall couldn’t have much more time, and I spent a couple of hours a day in the lobby—in the disguise you saw—to see what would happen when he died. And I learned that my impression of David Natchez was correct—he’s a real force for good. That he’s stayed alive all this time means that he’s also a resourceful character. Someday, Tom, we’re going to need that man—and he is going to need us.”

  Von Heilitz stood up and pushed his hands into his pockets. He began pacing back and forth between his chair and the table. “Now let me ask you another one. What do you know about Wendell Hasek?”

  “He was wounded once,” Tom said. “In a payroll robbery from my grandfather’s company. The robbers were shot to death, but the money was never found.”

  Von Heilitz stopped pacing, and fixed his eyes on the Degas painting of a ballet dancer. He seemed to be listening very intently to the music. “And does that remind you of anything?”

  Tom nodded. “It reminds me of lots of stuff. Hasselgard. The Treasury money. But what—”

  Von Heilitz whipped around to face him. “Wendell Hasek, who was at Eagle Lake the summer Jeanine Thielman was murdered, came to your house looking for your grandfather. He wanted money, or so it seems. We can speculate that he felt he deserved more money for having been wounded in the payroll robbery, even though he had already been given enough to buy a house. When you turn up a short time later, he is anxious enough to send out his son, and to summon his son’s friends, to see what you’re doing there. Doesn’t that suggest that he is concealing something?” He fixed Tom with his eyes.

  “Maybe he organized the robbery,” Tom said. “Maybe he was getting money from my grandfather for a deliberate injury.”

  “Maybe.” Von Heilitz leaned against the back of his chair, and looked at Tom with the same excitement in his eyes. He was keeping something to himself, Tom understood: Maybe hid another possibility, one he wanted Tom to discover for himself. His next words seemed like a deliberate step away from the unspoken subject. “I want you to watch what is going on around you at Eagle Lake very carefully, and to write me whenever you see anything that strikes you. Don’t just put your letters in your grandfather’s mailbox. Give them to Joe Truehart—Minor’s son. He works for the Eagle Lake post office, and he remembers what I did for his father. But don’t let anybody see you talking to him. You can’t take any unnecessary risks.”

  “All right,” Tom said. “But what kind of risks could there be?”

  “Well, things are reaching a certain pitch,” von Heilitz said. “You may stir up something just by being there. At the very least, you have to expect that Jerry Hasek and his friends might recognize you. They’ll certainly recognize your name—they must have thought they killed you. If they were helping Wendell Hasek hide something seven years ago, it or its traces may still be hidden.”

  “The money?”

  “When I watched his house from the top floor of my place on Calle Burleigh, twice I saw a car pull up in front of Hasek’s. A man carrying a briefcase got out and was let into the house. The second time it was a different car, and a different man. Hasek went out his back door, unlocked a shed in his back garden, and came back with small packages in his hands. His visitors left, still carrying their briefcases.”

  “Why did he give the money away?”

  “Payoffs.” Von Heilitz raised his shoulders, as if to say: What else? “Certainly the police got some of that money, but who else did is a matter we can’t answer yet.”

  “He was protecting stolen money,” Tom said.

  “The payroll money.” And here again was the flavor of the unspoken subject. The old man lowered his head and seemed to examine his gloved hands, which rested on the curved back of the chair. “One thing you told me is very sinister, and another puts several crucial pieces into the whole puzzle of Eagle Lake. And do you know what I realized tonight? What only my vanity kept me from seeing before this?”

  Too agitated to remain seated, von Heilitz had jumped to his feet in the middle of this surprising announcement, and was now pacing behind the chair again.

  “What?” Tom said, alarmed.

  “That I need you more than you need me!” He stopped, whirled to face Tom, and threw out his arms. His handsome old face blazed with so many contradictory feelings—astonishment, outrage, self-conscious despair, also a sort of goofy pleasure—that Tom smiled at this display. “It’s true! It’s absolutely true!” He lowered his arms theatrically. “All of this—this immense case, absolutely depends on you, Tom. It’s probably the last, and certainly the most important, thing like it that I’ll ever work on, it’s the culmination of my life, and here it is the first real thing you’ve ever done, and without you I’d still be pasting clippings in my journals, wondering when I’d get what I needed to show my hand. I’m upstaged at my own final bow!” He laughed, and turned to the room, asking it to witness his comeuppance. He laughed again, with real happiness.

  Von Heilitz put his hands in the small of his back and arched himself backwards. He sighed, and his hair dripped over his collar. “Ah, what’s to become of us?”

  He moved slowly around the chair and the table and sat beside Tom on the couch. He patted him on the back, twice. “Well, if we knew that, there�
�d be no sense in going on, would there?”

  Von Heilitz propped his feet on the edge of the table, and Tom did the same. For a moment they sat in the identical posture, as relaxed as a pair of twins.

  “Can I ask you something?” Tom finally said.

  “Anything at all.”

  “What did I tell you that put another piece of the puzzle in place?”

  “That your grandfather took your mother to a house owned by Barbara Deane for a few days, immediately after Jeanine Thielman’s death. And that your mother saw a man running into the woods.”

  “She didn’t recognize him.”

  “No. Or she did, but didn’t want to, and told herself she didn’t. There would have been few men up there that your mother didn’t know.”

  “And what was the sinister thing I told you?”

  “That Ralph Redwing paid a flattering call on your father.” Von Heilitz lowered his legs and sat up straight. “I find that distressing, all things considered.” He stood up decisively, and Tom did the same, wondering what was coming next. Von Heilitz looked at him in a way that was brimming with unspoken speech: but unlike Victor Pasmore, he did not utter the words that had come to him.

  “You’d better be off,” von Heilitz said instead. “It’s getting late, and we don’t want you to have to answer any awkward questions.”

  They began to move through the files and other clutter to the door. For a moment, two months seemed almost dangerously long, and Tom wondered if he would ever see this room again.

  “What should I look for, up north?” he asked. “What should I do?”

  “Ask around about Jeanine Thielman. See if anyone else saw that man running into the woods.” Von Heilitz opened the door. “I want you to stir things up a little. See if you can make things happen, without actually putting yourself in danger. Be careful, Tom. Please.”

  Tom held out his hand, but von Heilitz surprised him again, and hugged him.

  PART SEVEN

  EAGLE LAKE