"Good grief, Mary," I said, hefting the plastic bag. "There must be enough music here for three or four albums. Talk about collectibles. I'll certainly enjoy listening to the tapes, but I'm going to be sure we're standing in Garth's apartment when I give these to him. He's going to lose control of his bodily functions when he hears what I've got here."
Mary Tree's smile grew even broader, warmer. "Also, I want you to bring him out for the day when this other business is behind you. We'll poke around the antique shops, have a picnic lunch up in the quarry, and maybe go sailing, if you'd like."
"I'd like. As for Garth, well, words cannot express."
"I've got everyone else lined up out in the foyer. They'd like to say hello. Okay with you?"
"Fine with me."
I followed her across the ballroom, stopped just before we reached the archway, and took her arm. She turned toward me, a puzzled expression on her face. "Mary," I continued quietly, "I don't want to frighten you, but I'd like you to be very careful for … a while. Until we get this matter of Michael's death cleared up, I want you to watch out for yourself. When you leave the house, even if it's just for a walk into town, always take somebody with you. Okay?"
She studied me for a few moments, and when she spoke her voice had grown slightly husky. "Mongo, you think Michael was murdered, don't you?"
"Yes," I said, feeling my stomach muscles flutter, "I do."
"You didn't seem so certain before."
"I got certain when you told me Michael had supposedly used the canoe without permission. There was a time when Michael loved boating and swimming, and I was willing to grant the possibility that he'd decided to celebrate the new life he was planning to start with you people by going back to doing the things he'd once enjoyed; if so, his being out in a canoe on the Hudson might be explainable. The river kicked up on him, he capsized and drowned."
"But now you don't believe that's what happened."
"No. What I'm not willing to grant is that he'd use somebody else's property-in this case a very special, handcrafted canoe- without asking permission. Michael was a gracious and rigorously courteous man, a stickler for respecting other people's privacy and property. He would never have taken that canoe without permission. I wasn't sure I wanted to tell you my suspicions, not only because I didn't want to frighten you but because somebody might think you know more than you do, and that could place you in danger. But then I realized that people are bound to find out that I've talked to you, and just that fact could be dangerous. That's why I want you to be careful. Yes, I believe Michael was murdered. Now the questions become who did it and why."
CHAPTER FOUR
I hung around in the huge foyer of the Community of Conciliation mansion for half an hour, chatting with Mary and fifteen other members of the pacifist organization, and then I was out the door and three quarters of the way down the driveway before I realized that I'd forgotten to call a taxi. I flexed my tender right knee, decided that I'd test it with the walk back into town and hope that it didn't stiffen up too badly on me.
I needn't have worried. I'd limped along only a half mile or so, occasionally reaching across my body to knead my throbbing left arm, when a white Cairn police car pulled up to the curb beside me and Dan Mosely rolled down the window.
"You look like you're hurting, Frederickson," Mosely said in his deep, resonant voice. "I think you need a lift."
I stopped, studied the impassive features of the man with the steel-colored hair and eyes. "Chief, that sounds to me like an official invitation."
"Semi-official. Get in, Frederickson. If you will."
I walked around to the other side of the car, got in, and fastened my seat belt, but Mosely didn't put the idling car into gear. He leaned forward, bowing his head slightly as he hooked his wrists over the steering wheel. "You must have hurt your leg while you were kicking the shit out of Gregory Trex again," Mosely said with a small sigh. "You really should be more careful; if you don't stop beating on that bonehead, you're going to cripple yourself."
"Pardon me?"
"It really is true what they say about you."
"What do they say about me, Chief)"
"That you're a goddamn holy terror."
"Who? Me? Wow. A goddamn holy terror. It has a ring to it."
"You might be interested in knowing that Gregory Trex is in the hospital with a concussion, a broken nose, lots of missing teeth, lots of abrasions, and a ruptured right eardrum. He may lose his hearing in that ear."
"Poor boy. Aside from my general concern for all humanity, why should I be interested in Trex's misfortune?"
"Because you did it to him. He was found virtually under your window."
"Who does Trex say did it to him?"
Mosely turned his head slightly to look at me, and his lips drew back in a thin smile that seemed to reflect respect along with his irritation. "He says he was coming around to talk to you and that he was mugged by four guvs. He says three guys held him while the fourth worked him over with nunchaku sticks."
"It sounds terrible," I said, wincing. "Did he happen to mention what he wanted to discuss with me?"
"He never got around to explaining that. What the hell happened, Frederickson? Did that shit-for-brains make the mistake of coming after you again?"
"Chief, if Trex told you he was beaten up by four muggers, who am I to call him a liar? He might take offense."
Mosely grunted with disgust, then abruptly straightened up and slammed the car into reverse. The tires spun and spewed gravel as he backed into a driveway, and then he shifted again and we speeded away in the opposite direction, away from town. A decidedly captive audience, I figured I would find out soon enough where we were going and what he wanted, and so I remained silent as we reached the end of Pave Avenue. He took the left branch of the Y that led up to the abandoned stone quarry, then took a sharp right after a hundred yards or so onto another road. The pavement had ended abruptly, and we were on a winding, pitted, dirt road that had been carved right through the side of the mountain. He shifted into four-wheel drive to slowly maneuver around a truck-eating pothole, and then we continued on our way up. Viewed from a distance, the remains of the quarrying operation that had systematically devoured a good portion of the mountain appeared like an ocher and mauve scar across the face of the sky; seen up close, the naked, machine-washed face of the rock was starkly beautiful, cut in irregular, fluted patterns of rock shelves that made it seem as if we were traveling through the innards of some gigantic, petrified pipe organ of the gods.
"The whole mountain is trap rock," Mosely said in an easy, conversational tone as we reached a large, grass-covered plateau about three quarters of the way up the mountain. He shifted back to two-wheel drive and drove into a small parking lot that was virtually at the edge of a precipice overlooking the Hudson. Adjacent to the parking lot were a concrete and steel barbecue pit, a picnic table, and an overflowing trash can. There was a huge yellow building set back on the plateau, connected to the face of the mountain by flat umbilical cords of rusted steel that had once been conveyor belts. Two other wide conveyor belts emerged from the front of the building and plunged underground, presumably leading down to the river's edge. "Sixty to seventy years ago, this quarry supplied more than half of the crushed stone used in construction projects in New York City. They'd chop and shave the rock off the side of the mountain onto those conveyor belts, which would carry it to a rock crusher that was inside that building, which is now used for storage. The crushed rock would come out on those other conveyor belts and be carried down to the river, where it would be loaded onto barges that would take it downriver."