The howling made Kellum uneasy. He cleared his throat and pulled the car up toward Tolliver’s cut-stone mansion, guided by faint squares of yellow light which, as I recalled, were two living-room windows. He stopped the car, cleared his throat again, then lit a cigarette as Shamus howled at the moonless sky.
“Where the hell are we, Mr. Frey?”
“Gregory Tolliver lives here,” I grunted. “Mean anything to you?”
“Tolliver? The guy who owns, you mean the one who…?”
“Yeah, that’s who.” I was thinking, Gregory will take this hard. I don’t know what he saw in Allison, which may sound hypocritical, but there it is. He played games about everything, though, and maybe this was the biggest, toughest game of all. He’d married a nympho and now would discover her each and every breach of the moral code and confront her with the damning evidence. But Gregory had been blind in more ways than one. He plied Allison with jewels and furs and prestige, but she was running a thriving business of her own.
I stood up and stretched and checked the gun for the fifth time although I knew it was in fine shape. Shamus bayed again while I was squinting into the gloom for another car. I couldn’t see any, but that didn’t mean anything because Tolliver’s estate sported a three-car garage. It didn’t mean anything but it made me uneasy. I wanted to shout Karen’s name and hear her scream an answer. Brilliant. I shut up and headed for the house.
I turned around and barely could make out Kellum’s bulk in the night. “You stay-there,” I whispered. “If you just hear talking, stay put. If you hear a racket, come running.”
Shamus howled. Kellum’s bulk stirred uneasily. I knew I was taking a chance. Once I was out of sight he might decide to get back in the Buick and say goodbye to the North Shore. So I hissed, “I brought you along because I need help. Remember this, Kellum: you’re all through bootlegging. It’s just a question of time. The more you cooperate, the easier it will go on you.” Sure, Big Shot Frey talking. I had as much drag with the T-men as a counterfeiter passing a phony buck in Washington in payment for the guided tour of the Treasury Building. Only Kellum, I hoped, was scared.
“What kind of dog is it anyway, Mr. Frey?”
Kellum had an all-consuming interest. Well, I didn’t like the way Shamus was baying either, but it was nothing but nerves since I knew he wouldn’t sink his fangs into a slab of T-bone steak to help Allison.
“A toy poodle,” I said, “with a loud voice. Just shut up
and do what I told you.” I thumbed the revolver to full-cock and tried the door. Out here, they were expecting no one. The door opened in on well-oiled hinges, but I almost hit the ceiling when I saw my own image stalking grimly toward me in the hall mirror. Get a grip on yourself, Gideon Frey.
Up ahead, an oblong of yellow light flooded the hall from the living-room. I edged my way along the wall, back pressed against it, and peered around the door jamb. Three lamps were lighting the room partially, but unless someone were crouching in the shadows, it was empty.
I did some more exploring. The two guest bedrooms were dark. Someone had gathered wood for the dining-room fireplace, stacking it against the fieldstone wall on the hearth under a bank of recessed fluorescents which cast gaunt shadows of the heavy oak furniture. One small lamp atop a huge earthenware jug fought against darkness in the library. On the table next to it a braille book lay face up and opened.
The entire downstairs of Tolliver’s house was empty.
The wide stairs spiraled up and out of sight between the living-room and dining-room. They dissolved in darkness where they looped back toward their starting point but beyond that a vague yellow glow told of a lamp lit somewhere up ahead. Any minute I expected to hear Kellum’s car roaring away and I began to curse myself for not calling the police or the T-men or somebody before coming to Port Washington to make myself a hero.
The stairs creaked. It wasn’t me.
I was going to flatten myself against the wall and wait, then use my .38 as a club. Nerves. I chuckled. What’s the matter with you, Gideon Frey? The downstairs is empty and that noise came from below. Probably Kellum got a case of size fourteen cold feet outside, is all.
“Get back downstairs and wait,” I whispered. “What’s the matter with you?”
He didn’t whisper. He spoke in a normal conversational tone. He wasn’t Kellum.
“You’re silhouetted against the light, Frey. I can see you. You can’t see me. Drop it.”
I licked my lips and peered behind me. I squinted furiously and gazed upon a well of blackness. He sold pizza and he toted whiskey bottles. He was Vito Lucca.
“Drop it, Frey.”
I heard a click and wondered what the odds were of hitting him if I fired in that direction. The stairs creaked faintly again. He had changed his position.
“Be reasonable, Frey. How do you know I don’t have Karen with me?”
“Let her say something.”
He responded with a four-letter word and a second person pronoun. Then: “I’m dealing this hand, not you. I see you so good I can count the knuckles on your hand.”
Try locating a sound in pitch blackness sometime. All you wind up with is frustration.
“Go ahead, Frey. Drop it now.”
I had to. But I also wanted Kellum to know something was wrong. I was betting my life on the fact Vito could see me as clearly as he claimed and praying he wasn’t the nervous type. I squeezed the trigger, dropped the pistol, got deafened by the roar as it went off and hit the stairs on all fours myself. I waited for an answering explosion from Vito’s direction. When it finally came it was between my ears and not outside them. It shoved my teeth against the carpeted stairs and covered my brain, my eyes and everything with a thick black blanket. Good night, Gideon Frey.
When my own personal morning came around I was flat on my back. I was in a bedroom, small and square with the usual furniture and sailboats sailing up and down the walls. My watch told me I’d been out no more than half an hour, but someone was beating time to martial music inside my head.
Then I heard footsteps. John Philip Sousa switched from quick to double time. I got up fast and the band used my ear as a trumpet mute. My body called halt and I sat down again on the bed. When I looked up Karen was about to apply a dripping cloth to my head.
“Gid, I was so afraid. He dropped you in here all bloody, and didn’t say a word. I managed to drag you up on the bed and… how do you feel?”
“Lousy,” I said. “When I get that little slab of pizza I’m going to wring his neck.”
Karen did the wringing. She wrung the cloth out over my face and shoved me down on my back and placed the cloth against my temple.
“I think you need stitches.”
“It can wait.”
“It will have to. We’re locked in.”
“Listen,” I said. “Vito took you. Then what?”
“It was later on, after they let you see the cellar at Funland. I don’t know where we are. He just made me get in a car and drove off with me. He didn’t say anything.”
“How did he make you get in the car?”
“He said he was taking me to you. I believed him. After that he said nothing but kept on driving. It was dark by the time we reached here.”
“God, I was worried about you,” I said. “I still am. I don’t know. I wish I knew.”
“What are you talking about?”
“What’s going on at Tolliver’s. Where do you fit in?”