"So she stood here, I'd guess," Meyer said.
"Out in the early morning, looking for her pin," I said. "Yes. And so what?"
Meyer shrugged. "I don't know what. Every action we take, every thought we have, they are all based upon some form of information. We know more now than we did before. It is difficult, I think, and erroneous, to try to decide in advance whether additional facts will be useful."
"So if she stood here, and heard the motor and stepped out in this direction, okay, the car would pass close, and the passenger would be three feet away, as she said. And we could backtrack the vehicle to old Herm's house. Incidentally, coming around to the airstrip overland instead of on the road doesn't mean much. The people who own those four-wheel-drive brutes like to take them bouncing through the fields and woods. It does something for their glands. It could be preference instead of secretiveness. On the other hand, he did avoid meeting Mrs. Ladwigg, and the two men ate in the guest wing. Anyway, Meyer, where the hell are we going with all this?"
Roaring at Meyer seldom does any good. He
The Green Ripper gave me the mild smile, the bland nod. 'let's see where we've been. On the thirteenth of December, two days before Toomey and Kline paid a visit to you, a Mr. Ryan visited Bonnie Brae. I do not think the Federal Aviation gets into the business of tracking down small planes which endanger scheduled airline flights. I think that is the Civil Aeronautics Board's chore. And, whoever was looking into it, surely if there was danger of a collision, somebody would have picked up the idenffficaffon numbers of the small airplane. They are required to catty the numbers in very large con- trasting colors. Additionally, the customs people are monitoring all small planes in flight along this coast. And, finally, there seems to be a telltale monotony about the names of the three alleged offlcials Howard C., Robert A., and Richard EL. If any more turn up, we can expect William B. and Thomas D."
Meyer will never cease to astonish me. That heavy skull is loaded with microprocessors. Informaffon is subject to constant analysis, synthesis, storage and retrieval. But when this makes him seem too intellectual, too somber, I have but to recall him at Bailey's, our neighborhood disco, cavorting like a dancing bear with three blond chiclets who adore him, and who listen to him when he sits like a hairy Buddha, declaiming instant legends and inventing instant folk-song lyrics. The dancing Meyer, pelt gleaming under the disco lights, little blue eyes shining, is the antidote to the data-processing machine under the skull bones.
We moved over into the semishade of a young live oak. The shadows had no edges under that white fluorescent sky.
He leaned against the tree. I sat on my heels and poked at the hard dirt with a piece of branch.
"It's too much!" he said irritably.
"How do you mean?"
"Pretend for one moment that Gretel never told us about Brother Titus. She might not have said anything, you know. Then where would we be? You would have accepted their story that they were looking into something that might be going on at Bonnie Brae. Let's hope they accepted your state ment that Gretel had told you nothing. The Ryan person convinced them out at Bonnie Brae that he was what he said he was. Toomey, Kline, and Ryan were mopping up. There is no other answer. Ladwigg and Gretel were both lolled."
'Lao!"
"Yes, Travis. Both deaths were made to look routine. An accident and an illness. They would not make waves. It was somehow terribly important that no one be left alive who could talk about Brother Titus. The secrecy of the whole business indicates that there might be people who might possibly recognize him. It was a remote chance, but one that X could not accept. Remember, I am using X to indicate an individual or an organiza
The Green Ripper lion. of the emphasis on secrecy, I am assuming some link between Brother Titus and the twenty acres on which the Morgen Group made a down payment."
"But there wouldn't be any point in killing Gretel! What if she did recognize him? No matter what is going on, isn't that one hell of an overreaction to being recognized?"
"That's where I draw a blank, Travis. I have been trying to think of something big enough and bad enough and important enough for an organized group and believe me, they are organized to wipe out every possible trace of a vis* from an offlcial of an obscure religious sect. Eradication per se would not be difficult if one had the stomach for extreme measures. Float you out on the tide, and me also, to be totally safe. Eliminate Catherine Ladwigg, Stanley Broffski, Morse Slater, and anybody else Gretel worked with. Eradication of every trace without arousing suspicion is a lot tackier. It requires thought and organization and great care. If Gretel had not talked to you, it would have been successful. If you had been entirely truthful with Toomey and Kline, it would have been successful because they would have dealt with you."
"Melodrama."
Y l~now. I know. But fit the facts together in any other way and you get more nonsense instead of less."
"So the Morgen Group was going to build some kind of top~secret installation at Bonnie Brae. Or a heroin refinery. Or maybe Brother Titus was the fellow behind the grassy knoll in Dallas. Come on, Meyer. How many coincidences can we string to- gether?"
I stood up and headed back across the field to the new asphalt road. I saw something glint in the grass, and bent down and pushed the grass aside and picked it up. I had seen her wear that pin several times when we had gone ashore from The Busted Flush during our long slow trip back around the peninsula It was of Mexican silver, framing a three-dimensional Aztec face carved out of a mottled hard green stone. It was crudely made, and the clasp was not very secure.
How many coincidences can we string together? Sure. If, retracing her jogging route, she had found the pin before Ladwigg drove Titus back to his airplane if she and her ax-husband had not traced her sister-in-law to that California encampment if she had found a different job in Lauderdale...
Looking down at the primitive green face in the palm of my hand, I felt dizzy. The world was all tied together in some mysterious tangle of invisible web, single strands that reached impossible distances, glimpsed but rarely when the light caught them just right.
The biggest if of all. If she had never met me. Because I had brought her here.
If her mother had never met her father.
The Green Ripper
If her aunt had wheels.
An empty path to walk. It leads toward superstition and paranoia, two whistle stops on the road to incurable depression. Once upon a time I took a random walk across a field. I went hither and yon, ambling along, looking at the slay and the trees, nibbling grass, kicking rocks. The first jeep to start across that field blew up. So did the people who went to get the people who'd been in the jeep. And I stood right there, sweaty and safe, trembling inside, while the experts dug over ninety mines out of that field, defused them, stacked them, and took them away. That's the way it goes sometimes. Philosophy 401, with Professor McGee. Life is a minefield. Think that over and write a paper on it, class.