“Let’s not get started on that one again,” Saunders told him wearily.
“Bet you dollars to dogshit, and you can hold the stakes in your mouth.”
“Come on, Russ. I’ll drop you off.”
Protesting, Mandarin let himself be led away.
“What’s the matter?”
Mandarin had paused with his hand on the door of Saunders’ Ford. He stared out across the parking lot. “Somebody’s following us. Just saw his shadow duck behind that old VW van. If it’s that son of a bitch Hamilton looking for more trouble…”
Saunders followed Mandarin’s gaze, saw nothing. “Oh hell, get in, Russ! Jesus, you’re starting to sound paranoid!”
“There’s somebody there,” Russ insisted. “Followed us from the Yardarm.”
“Some damn hippy afraid of a bust,” Saunders scoffed. “Will you just get in!”
His expression wounded, Mandarin complied.
Backing the Ford out of the parking place, Saunders turned down Forest Avenue. Mandarin took a last swig from the Rolling Rock he had carried with him from the bar, then struck his arm out and fired the green bottle in the general direction of his imagined skulker. From the darkness came the rattle of breaking glass. “Ka-pow!” echoed Russ.
Saunders winced and drove on in silence.
“Hey, you went past the clinic,” Russ protested several blocks later.
“Look, I’ll run you back down in the morning.”
“I can drive OK.”
“Will you let me do this as a favor?” Saunders asked, not making it clear whose favor he meant it to be.
Mandarin sighed and shrugged. “Home, James.”
Pressing his lips tightly, the detective turned onto Kingston Pike. After a while he said: “You know, Russ, there’s several on the force who’d really like to put your ass in a sling. Drunken driving is a really tough charge.”
When Mandarin started to argue, Saunders shouted him down. “Look, Russ. I know this is rough on you. It is on all of us who knew Curtiss. But damn it, this isn’t going to make it any better for you. I thought you finally learned that for yourself after Alicia…”
“Goddamn it, Ed! Don’t you start lecturing me now!”
“OK, Russ,” his friend subsided, remembering the hell Mandarin had gone through three years before. “Just wanted to remind you that you’d tried this blind alley once before.”
“Ed, I drink only socially these days.” He waited for the other to say something, finally added: “Except for an occasional binge, maybe.”
“Just trying to make a friendly suggestion.”
“Well, I can do without friendly suggestions.”
“OK, Russ.”
They drove the rest of the way in silence. Saunders expected the psychiatrist to drop off, but the other sat rigidly upright all the way. Too much adrenaline, Saunders decided.
He pulled into the long driveway of Mandarin’s Cherokee Hills estate. It was a rambling Tudor-style house of the 1920s, constructed when this had been the snob residential section of Knoxville. Although most of the new money had now moved into the suburbs, Cherokee Hills had resisted urban decay with stately aloofness.
“I’ll give you a ring in the morning,” Saunders promised.
“It’s all right; I’ll call a cab,” muttered Russ.
Saunders shrugged. “Good night, Russ.”
He climbed out of the car. “Sure.”
Saunders waited until he was in the front door before driving off.
The phone started to ring while Russ was dropping Alka-Seltzers into a highball glass. Holding the frothing glass carefully, he picked up the receiver.
“Hello.” He wondered if he could finish the conversation before the tablets finished their dancing disintegration.
“Dr Mandarin?”
“Speaking.” He didn’t recognize the voice.
“This is Morris Sheldon from the Frostfire Press. Been trying to get in touch with you this evening.”
“Yeah? Well, what can I do for you, Morris old buddy?”
“Well, I know you were close to poor Curtiss Stryker. I believe he mentioned to me that you were giving him some medical opinions relative to the research he was doing on this last book.”
“I was,” Russ acknowledged, taking time for a swallow of Alka-Seltzer.
“Do you know how far along he’d gotten before the accident?”
“Well now, you probably know better than I. All I’d seen were several of the early chapters.”
“I’d wondered if you perhaps had seen the rough draft of the chapters you were involved in.”
“The poltergeist house? No, didn’t know he’d had time to put that in rough draft yet.”
“Yes, he had. At least he said so in our last conversation.”
“Well, that’s news to me. I was out of town the last couple days.” Mandarin downed the last of the seltzer. “Why do you ask?”
Sheldon paused. “Well, frankly I’d hoped Curtiss might have passed a carbon of it on to you. He didn’t send me the typescript. And we’re rather afraid it was with his papers when the accident occurred. If so, I’m afraid his last chapter has been lost forever.”
“Probably so,” Russ agreed, his voice carefully civil. “But why are you concerned?”
“Well, as a friend of Curtiss’s you’ll be glad to know that Frostfire Press had decided not to let his last book go unfinished. We’ve approached his close friend and colleague, Brooke Hamilton…”
“Oh,” said Mandarin, revelation dawning in his voice. “Hey, you mean his confidant and bosom pal, Brooke Hamilton, hopes to use Stryker’s notes and all for a posthumous collaboration?”
“That’s right,” Sheldon agreed. “And naturally we want to locate as much of Stryker’s material as we can.”
“Well, then you’re in luck, Morris old buddy. Stryker’s dear friend, that critically acclaimed writer and all around bon vivant, Brooke Hamilton, was so overcome with grief at his mentor’s death that he wasted no time in breaking into Stryker’s office and stealing every shred of Stryker’s unpublished writing. Just give him time to sort through the wastebasket, and dear old Brooke will keep you in posthumous collaborations for the next ten years.”
“Now wait, Dr Mandarin! You mean you’re accusing Brooke Hamilton of…”
“Of following his natural talents. And may the pair of you be buggered in hell by ghouls! Good night, Morris old buddy.”
He slammed the receiver over Sheldon’s rejoinder, and swore for a while.
Returning to the sink, he carefully rinsed his glass, then added a few ice cubes. There was bourbon in the decanter.
Sipping his drink, he collapsed on the den couch and glared at the silent television screen. He didn’t feel like watching the idiot tube tonight. Nor did he care to go to bed, despite extended lack of sleep. His belly felt sour, his head ached. He was too damn mad and disgusted to relax.
Ghouls. All of them. Gathering for the feast. More Haunted Houses of the South, by Curtiss Stryker and Brooke Hamilton. Probably they’d already approached Stryker’s agent, set up a contract. Stryker would spin in his grave. If he ever reached his grave.
Mandarin wondered if he ought to phone Stryker’s agent and protest — then remembered that he had no idea who his agent had been. No, make that was, not had been. As a literary property, Curtiss Stryker was suddenly more alive than before.
Sheldon would know who the agent was. Maybe he should phone and ask. Russ discarded the idea. Who was he to protest, anyway? Just another obnoxious “friend of the deceased.”
His thoughts turned to Stryker’s unfinished book, to the missing last chapter. Curtiss had promised to give him the carbon. Probably Hamilton had made off with that along with his other tomb spoils.