“I don’t want to sound weird about this, Mort, but look at it this way. What other reason is there for fumbling government production?”
I heard Mort whistle softly. “You mean the sympathies are with his mother’s adopted country? I’m afraid that won’t go, Gev. He’s been investigated nine ways from Sunday. Hell, I happen to know he had better than a full year at Oak Ridge before he left there to go with National Electronics. I don’t think we can twist this into a B movie plot. I think you ought to worry about that bundle of money. He’s been around. Maybe Dean Products is what he wanted all along, and he just found it. That money hasn’t shrunk any since his father died. Would ten million bucks at the right place at the right time buy control of Dean? Think along those lines.”
“Thanks, Mort. I’ll do that.”
“Watch him closely.”
“Mort, if he has that much, he wouldn’t have any reason to get tangled up in any crooked financial deals, would he?”
“He’s too smart for that. If it wasn’t for my instinctive dislike for the guy, I’d tell you to try to get him out of there. But I’m just prejudiced enough so that my advice may stink. Maybe he’s the right man for the job.”
I thanked him again and told him I didn’t know when I might be coming to New York, and parried his questions about my own future plans.
I hung up. Dusk had come and the rain had stopped, but I could hear yet another storm coming down the valley out of the north, like a black bowling ball rolling down an echoing valley. I stretched out on the bed with an ash tray beside me.
When a storm is on the way it does something to the animal part of you, to that very deep, dark place where all reasoning is based on instinct. I’ve heard and read the neat little explanations for that. All about variations in barometric pressure, and the charge of negative electricity that travels in advance of the thunderheads. But there’s something else too, something all tied up with our caves of long ago, and the wet rock, and trees crashing.
I remembered the feel of the air, the look of the sky, on that Sunday past when I had headed the “Vunderbar” back toward Indian Rocks.
Now there was the same storm feeling in Arland, in the air and among the people. Currents of personal emotional electricity. There had been Niki, the bereaved wife, and Dolson, the brusque colonel, and Mottling, the quiet executive. But I had seen a few gestures that didn’t seem quite right, heard a few words that seemed oddly timed, heard with the third ear the words that were not said, felt the tingle of unknown currents. And I had done a few small things that had turned two of them into imposter and thief. What would Mottling become? Imposter, thief — and what was needed to round out the circle: Murderer?
Not with his own hands. Not Mottling. Not when authority could be delegated. But that was one field where you were not permitted to delegate responsibility.
He might want me killed if I—
I punched my cigarette out in the ash tray beside me. It had been a big gray truck. It had been a new-looking truck. Trucks have horns. They bray like great monsters to clear the road ahead. And the truck had come barreling down the hill at me, had come silently, except for the roar of the straining motor. Instinct had been right. Logic had been wrong. It had been a miracle of timing, because it had been the apex of very careful planning. A truck far up the hill. A driver watching the house, seeing Niki’s signal that the victim had proved stubborn. Then the cigarette end slipped away, and the man climbing into the high cab, and idling the motor and waiting for the glint of my car as I turned out of the drive.
Instinct had been right. And it had probably been right when it had warned me that someone had been in my room, someone with motivations more devious than any hotel maid.
Perhaps Ken’s death had been the first hint of thunder beyond the horizon — or that first wind that riffles the water, dies into a weighted stillness. The hidden animal dreads the storm. I could feel the pricklings of warning pulling at my skin. It had been an area of suspicion, and now suspicion was confirmed as the gale warnings went up, as the cyclical winds gathered force.
My decision had placed the burden of action on Mottling. It was his move. He had made one move. He would make another. Something was up, and whatever it might be, he had too much at stake to withdraw tamely, defeated.
I listened to the thunder, and my thoughts were long, slow and tormented. Who was the blue-eyed woman who had taken the place of Niki Webb? Perhaps she too was lying down, listening to the storm sounds, and perhaps her thoughts were as twisted as my own. I could be there, with her. It would be easy to tell myself it would be in the interest of furthering my investigation. The need for scruple was gone. If she was not Niki Webb, there had been no legal marriage. If she had signaled for the attempt on my life, this could be a special sort of revenge — to take her, to dull the new edge of lust, and then tell her what filth she was.
The phone rang three times, insistently, before I could get to it. The sound brushed away the erotic images of Niki.
Chapter 14
It was Sergeant Portugal, calling from the lobby. He wanted to come up and I told him to come right ahead.
I splashed cold water on my face. He knocked and I let him in. He half-smiled and nodded at me, walked over to the chair by the windows and sat down heavily, dropped his hat on the floor beside the chair. I asked him if I could order a drink sent up. He said a beer would go pretty good. I phoned the order. I sat on the couch, conscious of his unhealthy look, his heavy breathing. He offered me a cigar which I refused. He slid the cellophane from one, bit off the end, spat it into his palm, and dropped it in the ash tray. He took his time getting the cigar to burn smoothly and evenly in the match flame.
“This,” he said quietly, “is just between you and me. Not the department. Just the two of us.” He acted ill at ease.
“How do you mean?”
“It all went too easy. I kept telling myself that sometimes the worst ones are easy. But I didn’t tell myself loud enough or something. I’ve been in this game a long time. I know any cop is a damn fool if he tries to keep looking around after the district attorney’s office is satisfied with the file. I should have stayed the hell out. I thought I’d take one more little look. Now I’m stuck with it. You didn’t buy Shennary, did you?”
“I wondered about him.”
“How about after you saw the girl?”
“After I saw her, I was sure he didn’t do it. She made sense.”
“You could have phoned me and told me about the gun. Would that have hurt anything?”
“You seemed sure it was Shennary. I didn’t think it would change anything, Sergeant.”
“After I cuffed it out of her, she showed me and told me she showed you, too. I leaned on everybody in that fleabag motel, one at a time. Finally I found a girl, another one of those car hoppers. She lives a few doors down from Shennary’s girl and she was walking home late that night your brother got it. She saw a trucker stop after midnight and walk up to the Genelli girl’s door and stand there and then go away. She remembered the name of the van line. I figured if I could get the guy to tell me nobody was at home a little after midnight in the Genelli girl’s place, then I could feel better about Shennary. The name of the line was Gobart Brothers. I find the home office is in Philly. They cooperate and look up the name of the fellow who would be tooling one of their rigs through here about that time Friday night. Turns out it is a guy named Joe Russo. I got him up here this morning. He said he used to run around with Lita. He told me he was going to knock and then he heard a guy inside yelling at Lita and she was yelling back. A hell of a scrap. He said he went away. I made him wait in an office. I brought in six guys, on the other side of a door, and made them talk loud. He picked out Shennary as the guy he heard. I mixed up the order and made him do it three times. He was right every time.