Come Back Dead (21 page)

34

Nast was a convincing actor, at least when he was playing a heavy. He cursed me out of the place, to the visible gratification of the other customers. My friend Augie shook his head like a man who had backed the wrong horse.

I was tempted to cross the square to Gustin's office and arrange for some company, but I didn't want to be the last one to arrive at the rail yard. And I didn't want the trail to end at Nast. The loyal sheriff might be content to hang everything on him and call it an evening. I wanted more than a fall guy.

I'd driven past the yard on my way to the Traynor plant, but I hadn't taken much notice of it. There wasn't that much to notice, as it turned out, just a big open space next to the rail line with parallel sets of track connected by switches. Nast had picked a place where he'd have an easy time spotting a trap. I hoped I would, too. I could see only two potential trouble spots: the two-story switching tower at the center of the yard, where Nast and I were to meet, and a string of three boxcars parked back in one corner.

The sun had set while I'd interviewed Nast. It was going on full dark as I scouted the yard. I'd hidden the useless Liberator under the front seat of the coupé and moved my Colt to the pocket of my jacket, where I could keep my hand around it. I made the trek over to the parked boxcars, slipping and sliding on the clinkers that paved the place as I walked. The boxcars were closed up tight and sealed. I checked the switching tower next. It was a wooden structure, its siding protected by soot and little else. The tower was dark, and its single door was locked. Across the street, the factory was lit up like a ball diamond awaiting a night game. I could see the guard's shack at the main gate a hundred yards down the road. I could even see the guard himself. He'd hear a shot from there, asleep or no. And I'd hear anyone sneaking up behind me. The clinkers made a sound like glass being ground with every footstep.

I decided that I had nothing to fear except a rifleman lurking in the weeds at the edge of the yard. And an operative who worried about an invisible rifleman was no use to anyone. All the same, I kept close to the tower as I waited and shielded the burning end of my Lucky.

Nast showed up twenty minutes later. He parked his truck on the shoulder of the road, next to the rail line. I could just make him out as he crossed to the tower, scanning left and right as he came on. I did some scanning myself, watching the rest of the yard for any sign that Nast hadn't come alone. I didn't see so much as a cat.

When Nast neared the tower, he called out, “Hey! You there?”

I waited until he turned away from me before I stepped out, my gun drawn. “Don't move,” I said.

I patted him down and then stepped back toward the tower. “All right. Let's talk about the Klan.”

“There ain't no Klan around here,” Nast said. “I'd be the first one to sign up if there was. Those robes we had on the other night were hand-me-downs. They had so much moth ball in them I'm surprised you didn't smell it from the house.”

“Where did you get them?”

“A lady's attic. What do you say we talk on the other side of the tower, away from the road.”

“I like it here. What lady are we talking about?”

“You know the one–the lady who wants to keep her son away from you flimflammers.”

A train sounded its whistle at a crossing not far away. “Marvella Traynor?”

“Mrs. Traynor to you,” Nast said, showing his canines.

“What did Mrs. Traynor tell you to do?”

“‘Put the fear of God in them' was what she said. She had it all laid out. She even wrote down my speech for me herself on a little card.”

“Happen to have it on you?”

“Don't you wish. I used it to light the cross.”

The train whistle sounded again, much nearer. “That'll be the through freight on its way to Indianapolis,” Nast said. “You'll begin to feel the ground shake directly.”

I already could. “Why didn't you come back to the farm Saturday night and finish the job?”

“That was never part of the deal. It was one night only–scare you and get out. Fifty dollars a man and liquor. If it had been up to me, I would have burned you out on Friday night instead of standing there getting preached to by that Drury. I wanted to ram his big speech back down his throat so bad it hurt.”

“Why didn't you?”

“Mrs. Traynor doesn't like violence.” He was having to work at projecting the words, the sound of the approaching train having grown steadily. I could see its headlight flickering on the farthest pair of rails. “She thinks you can scare a person into damn near anything. Scare 'em or wear 'em down. She's wrong. It doesn't work on everybody.”

He kept on talking, but I couldn't hear him anymore. I couldn't hear anything but the freight train. The sound seemed to be everywhere in the yard, rising up through the ground beneath me, bouncing off the tower behind me. Cutting me off, I suddenly realized, flanking me.

I swung around in time to catch the first blow on my forehead. It wasn't hard enough to knock me out, but it made me a spectator for what happened next. My arms were grabbed, and I was hauled to my feet. Then I was dragged across the yard by two men. I measured our progress by the iron rails that struck out at my feet and ankles. I tried shouting, but the passing train was so loud I couldn't hear myself.

When we reached the parked boxcars, my escort steered me between two of them and dropped me onto the tracks. I was shoved and kicked beneath the locked couplers while I breathed in a dust that was half coal and half rust with old oil thrown in for body. Then I was seized by men waiting on the other side. They pulled me through, yanked me up onto my feet again, and banged me against the side of the car.

All the exercise had helped to clear my head. I struggled with the men holding my arms, but I couldn't shake them. They had plenty of help on hand if they needed it–three at least, besides Nast. He was standing in front of me, admiring my gun and lecturing. The sound of the passing train was muted by the wall of cars. I could hear Nast clearly. Overhear him, as he wasn't addressing me.

“‘Go check it out,' I said, ‘if you don't trust me.' So off he goes. I got Zack here on the phone before the bar door closed behind him. ‘Get your ass out of that factory and across the street,' I said. ‘Lock yourself in that switching shed and lie low. I'll have him there when the Indy freight comes through. You step out then and whack him. Whack, whack, whack.'”

This time his audience laughed genuinely. I had to admit it was better than the Noblesville pool hall story.

“You wide awake?” Nast asked me. “I'd hate for you not to feel what's coming.”

“Do it and get it over with,” the man holding my right arm said. “That train's going to be out of here and gone.”

“To hell with the train,” Nast said. “It's done its job. Gag the son of the bitch if you're worried about the noise.”

“You're just getting in deeper, Nast,” I said while I still had a chance to speak.

“That's me,” Nast said. “Never in but in all the way.” He handed my automatic to the man beside him. “Hold that, Zack, but don't get too fond of it.”

Zack stuck the gun in his belt.

“I told you scaring doesn't work with some people,” Nast said to me. “You gotta get right down to convincing. You gotta beat it into 'em. Beat 'em and beat 'em until they'll never again lift their heads or look a man in the eye or answer back. Till all they'll want to do with the rest of their lives is sit quiet and mind their own business.”

“What was that?” the man on my right asked.

“What's nothing,” Nast said and hit me in the stomach. I doubled over in spite of the best efforts of the pair holding my arms.

“Lift him up, goddamn you,” Nast said. “How'd you expect–”

He stopped speaking and left the ground. I had a glimpse of his wild expression and the bottoms of his boots, and then he was gone. His place was taken by a bigger man in a red cap: Clark. He held one of the onlookers by the shirt with his left hand and hit another across the throat with the edge of his right. Next to him I could see the man Nast had called Zack struggling to pull my gun from his belt. Before I could call out, Zack was struck down from behind.

The editing became choppy after that. I saw Clark tackle a man without letting go of the one he held by the shirt. Then my left arm was free. I pivoted toward the man who still held my right, taking hold of his ear and ramming his head against the side of the car. I had to repeat the message several times before it got through. He released my arm, and we grappled until our legs became tangled. We went down on the roadbed, me on the bottom. Before I could roll him off me, he went limp. I shoved him aside and sat up, still gasping from the only blow Nast had landed.

The battle had moved on. I could hear scuffling off by the edge of the field. Near the boxcars, all was peaceful. Only one man was on his feet. He stood before me, breathing as hard as I was and swinging something like a sawed-off ball bat in his hand.

“Still charging in where angels fear to tread,” he said between breaths.

It was Paddy Maguire. I knew it before he struck the kitchen match and held it to his cigar, the cigar he'd had in his teeth through the whole action, I was sure.

“What are you doing here?” I asked.

“Saving you from a beating, of course,” Paddy said. “And not for the first time, though I've never had to travel by airplane and train before to get the job done.” He helped me to my feet and handed me my gun. “Ever think of tying that to your wrist?”

“How did you track me down?”

“That was Mr. Clark's doing. Where is he, anyway?” The sounds of distant fighting had stopped, but there was no sign of Clark.

“I'd better go see,” I said.

“I'll go,” Paddy said. “You rest yourself.”

We were still playing Alphonse and Gaston over it when Clark loomed out of the darkness. He was carrying a man under his arm. He dropped him on top of a moaning figure at Paddy's feet.

“Nast got away,” he said. “My fault.”

“We'd better let Gustin know,” I said.

Clark nodded. “I'll call him from the guard shack at the factory.”

I started to say thanks, but Clark was already limping off. I thanked Paddy instead and asked him again how they'd found me.

“I just missed you at the farm,” Paddy said. He was fanning himself with his hat. It wasn't his usual homburg. Even in the dark I recognized the gray straw number that Paddy wore to the racetracks back in Los Angeles. It was his idea of an Indiana disguise, I realized. He'd be in bib overalls next–pin-striped ones, probably.

“Fortunately,” Paddy was saying, “I happened across Mr. Clark before I'd sent my cab away.” He looked off in the direction Clark had taken and dropped into his stage whisper. “Cost me a year's growth seeing him for the first time unprepared. You leave more out of your reports than you put in.”

“Sorry,” I said.

“Clark told me where you'd gone and what was likely to happen to you. He was feeling guilty over it, poor man, so he agreed to help. We went together to interview the owner of Augie's.”

“I notice he lent you his keg tapper,” I said, pointing to the club Paddy had tucked away in his jacket pocket.

“You might say that. Then again, you might say that Clark confiscated it after Augie tried to hit him over the head with it.”

“Why would he do that?”

“Maybe because Augie is Nast's brother-in-law. He knew all the details of Nast's plans for dealing with you. Shared them with us, too, after a bit of Clark's persuading. Augie will be pouring drinks with his feet for a while, I'm afraid.”

Nast's men were coming around, one by one. Paddy nudged them into a line, using the keg tapper as a prod.

“Sorry to have cut things so close,” he said. “I should have been out here yesterday. I started packing as soon as I heard about Shepard's murder, the investigation of which, I'm sure you'll agree, deserves the best brains in the firm. However, there were one or two loose ends to tie up before I could get away.”

“Such as kissing Joan Crawford good-bye?”

“Such as dropping by to see Ralph Lockard. I thought a general discussion of the murder might panic him into an indiscretion. Wishful thinking on my part. But that's enough of me reporting to you. Now you report to me.”

I described my day, laying on the details for once. As I finished, we spotted a flashlight bobbing around in the yard. It belonged to a Traynor guard.

“The sheriff's men are on the way,” he said after Paddy had whistled him over.

“Where's Clark?” I asked.

“He took off after he passed on his message. I don't know why.”

“He's like that Lone Ranger fellow,” Paddy said. “Doesn't hang about when his job is finished.”

The guard looked around the dark yard and shivered. “Anytime Clark wants to start wearing a mask,” he said, “it'll be okay by me.”

35

An hour later we were seated in Gustin's office sipping bourbon–the sheriff, Paddy, and I. Gustin had earned his drink. He'd spent most of the time since we'd arrived on his doorstep interrogating Nast's men, using the same hardball approach he'd tried on Casey Atherley the evening before. This time I hadn't interfered, which may have explained why I needed a drink. Or it may have been because all Gustin's squeezing had gotten us nothing. None of our guests–five local toughs, each at home in a courthouse cell–knew who had hired Nast to burn the cross at Riverbend. They only knew that Nast had hired them. So they couldn't confirm my story that the mastermind had been Marvella Traynor. They gave the sheriff the names of the other flunkies involved, and that was it.

It was the sheriff's bottle, but Paddy was doing the pouring out. Like any good bartender, he was also serving as a mediator, taking a reasonable line between Gustin's refusal to bother the Traynors and my insistence that we bust their door down. I'd seen Paddy work the same scam many times, but it still bothered me. I was way past playacting myself.

“While we're sitting here,” I said, “Nast is getting away.”

“I've put out a bulletin for my men and notified the state police,” Gustin said. “We're watching his house and Augie's. We'll get him.”

“He wouldn't go home,” I said in what seemed like the hundredth take of the same scene. “He'd go to Traynor House. He'd go there to get orders or traveling money or both.”

“We don't have anything but Nast's word–the word of a lying, trouble-making son of a bitch–to tie the Traynors in with him and his cross burning,” Gustin said. He was repeating himself, too, and tired of doing it. “We don't have anything at all to tie them in to the murder.”

“We have that.” I pointed to the gun on Gustin's desk, Gilbert's copy of the Liberator. “That ties the Traynors in and tight.”

“I'm grateful to you for bringing me this. Fifty to one, it's the murder weapon, or its brother is, I mean, the gun from Riverbend. But just because the Traynors made the thing doesn't mean one of them used it. Anyone who's been in that farmhouse could have found the gun. It's a better tie to Clark or Mr. Drury or you.”

I understood the threat folded into that casual observation. So did my boss. “More to the point,” Paddy said, “our friend Nast could easily have gotten his hands on that gun. We know he's been to the farm. And he worked at the Traynor plant. He surely heard all about the Liberator.”

“How is it you didn't know all about that gun, Sheriff?” I asked.

Gustin emptied his glass. “'Cause I was in the service when it was made, same as you. If any of them were dropped in Italy, they didn't land near me. I never laid eyes on one until you handed this over.”

Take it or leave it, he was saying. Believe me or go to hell.

Paddy poured another round. “Let's not lose sight of Mr. Nast,” he said, addressing Gustin. “You think he might be trying to make trouble for the Traynors, might even be a threat to them. My operative here thinks he might be working for one of them. It sounds to me as though, either way, Nast's trail points to Traynor House.”

Paddy had taken the right line as usual. I could see that in the sheriff's uncharacteristically mobile features. He sat staring into the gap between Paddy and me with his lips moving silently, like a grade-schooler lost in his times tables. He was obviously torn between protecting the Traynors from me and protecting them from Nast. The struggle I saw in his face made me feel better about Gustin. He had to sincerely believe that Marvella Traynor was innocent in order to buy any part of Paddy's suggestion that Nast was a threat to her.

Before the sheriff could decide which way to jump, his telephone rang. He answered it, his poker face slipping back into place automatically.

“Gustin.” He sat for a while listening. Then he said, “Right away” and hung up.

“Seems we're going to Traynor House after all, gentlemen. Mr. Drury's lost another assistant, name of Whitehead.”

Paddy swore. “Shot?”

“Vanished,” Gustin said.

Paddy and I slipped through the gateless pylons of Traynor House with the front bumper of our borrowed Studebaker almost touching the rear bumper of Gustin's official car. Linda's Speedster might have gotten us past the guards–doubled since my last visit–all by itself if it hadn't been for Paddy blowing our disguise. He rubber-necked out his open window and waved at the armed sentries like the grand marshal of a parade.

Greta opened the front door as we climbed the steps. She led us into the dance-hall living room, where Linda, Gilbert, and Drury were waiting.

Gustin introduced Paddy to Linda and Gilbert, not knowing that the two men had met briefly in California. Nothing in Gilbert's vague response tipped the sheriff to his mistake. The wariness I'd noticed in Gilbert earlier was still present, but it had taken on an out-of-focus quality because he'd been drinking.

The last time I saw Drury, he'd been enthroned in his hotel suite, playing the life of the party. He wasn't playing anything now, but sitting as he was, a little way from the light with his head bent and his eyes dark hollows, he reminded me of one of his famous Broadway roles, Abraham Lincoln.

Linda just looked tired. The dark green of her dress seemed to have drained the color from her skin, allowing the blue veins in her temples to stand out clearly. Her eyes were as sunken as Drury's. I remembered his image of Linda as a keystone, under constant pressure from opposing forces. She looked as if she'd taken all the squeezing she could bear.

The sight of me didn't help her. “Scotty, what happened to you?”

I had tried to dust the rail yard off my suit, but traces lingered. I couldn't do anything about the egg on my forehead, not even hide it. We hadn't been able to find my hat. Nast was wearing it, probably.

“I'd like your mother-in-law to hear that story,” I said. “Where is she?”

“Resting,” Gilbert said. “She hasn't been down this evening. She dined in her room. She knows nothing about Mr. Whitehead's disappearance.”

He was changing the subject, but that was fine by Gustin. “Suppose you tell us about it,” he said.

Gilbert collected himself with the aid of a quick pass at his brandy snifter. “We four had dinner, Carson and Mr. Whitehead and Linda and I. Afterward, Linda went up to check on my mother. I came in here to find us some port.”

He looked up at me on that line. The look told me that Gilbert had used the excuse of going out for port as a way of getting a few minutes alone with his bar, just as he had on the night I'd dined at Traynor House. Tonight's dinner hadn't gone well, either, for some reason.

“I left Carson and Mr. Whitehead in the dining room,” Gilbert continued. “When I came back, Mr. Whitehead was gone. Carson was concerned, so I went out and looked around. I couldn't find a trace of Mr. Whitehead. I'm sure he just took a walk. I don't know why we're bothering you with this, Sheriff.”

“We're bothering him, Gilbert,” Drury said in a voice that went from a whisper to the size of the room in a heartbeat, “because I insisted that we bother him. Because I don't intend to sit by while another member of my company is murdered just to save your family embarrassment.”

“Take it easy,” Gustin said. “Tell me what happened after Mr. Traynor left the dining room.”

“Nothing happened,” Drury said. “John and I sat there for a time. Then he stepped out for a breath of air. He wasn't feeling well.”

Gilbert snickered into his balloon glass.

“How did he leave?” Gustin asked. “What door did he use?”

“He went out through the French doors at the end of the dining room,” Drury said. “I heard him go through them. I didn't see him. My back was to the doors.” He slapped the arms of his wheelchair to explain why he hadn't turned to watch Whitehead's exit.

Linda said, “Those doors lead onto the terrace on the bluff that overlooks the river. There are steps from it down onto the grounds.”

“What time was this?” Paddy asked.

“Around nine,” Drury said.

“After dark, then,” Paddy said. “Not the best time for a tour of the gardens.”

“He wouldn't have seen much in any case,” Gilbert said to his drink.

“Why not?” Gustin asked.

“Because he'd had too much wine,” Drury said. “That was my mistake. I should have insisted that there be no wine at the table. John has a problem with alcohol, Sheriff. I knew of it, but I'd never actually seen him in that condition. I underestimated its hold over him. He'd been sober since coming to see me yesterday.”

“So what we have here,” Gustin said, “is an alcoholic who fell off the wagon and wandered away.” It was as close as he could come to saying that his beloved Traynors had bothered him over nothing.

“What we have here,” Drury fired back, “is a sick man who is missing at night in a town that sheds its skin at night. I'm sure you've noticed that, Scotty. You will, too, Maguire, if you don't catch a bullet first. Traynorville, this sweet, little, bucolic place, changes at sunset. Crosses are burned. People are killed or they just vanish. If a total stranger were driven out into that darkness, I'd raise hell until I knew he was safe. I won't do less for an old friend.”

“I haven't heard anything about anyone driving Whitehead out,” Gustin said.

In reply, Drury glared at the culprit. Not Gilbert–Linda.

She looked at each of us in turn without raising her head from the back of her chair. “I had to pass on some bad news at dinner. I had to tell Mr. Drury that I was withdrawing my offer of financial support for his film.

“It's our board of directors,” she said with a second glance at me. “I met with them this morning. They were very concerned about the negative publicity generated by the murder. It isn't just a case of not involving the company's funds. The board feels that any further investment by the Traynor family could be damaging as well.”

“I've already told you,” Drury said, “that I refuse to discuss any business matters until John is found.”

“You brought it up,” Gilbert snapped. “Linda's only explaining why Whitehead started drinking. It's true,” he said to Gustin. “Whitehead was fine up until that point. Wouldn't touch a drink. But after Linda gave us the board's decision, he started in. He was drunk from the first glass of wine. I've never seen anything like it.”

“However he got drunk,” Gustin said, “he got drunk. He's probably out there now, sleeping it off. I don't see any cause for alarm unless you think he might be a threat to himself.”

“There's another possibility,” I said. “If Nast came straight here from the rail yard, he would have arrived about nine o'clock. Whitehead could have blundered into him.”

“Nast?” Gilbert and Drury asked in chorus.

I answered Gilbert. “One of your top employees.”

“I know who he is. How does he figure in any of this?”

“Nast led the Klan raid at Riverbend. The raid was a sham, as I told you in your office this afternoon. And it was thrown together for the reason I gave you then. Your mother didn't want Carson Drury to get his hands on any Traynor money. The raid didn't get that job done, but it looks as though Hank Shepard's murder has.”

Gilbert turned to Gustin. It was almost a family reflex in times of stress. “Did Nast really say that my mother was involved in the cross burning?”

“Mr. Elliott claims that he did. Nast and some of his men jumped him over at the rail yard earlier this evening.”

“If it hadn't been for Mr. Maguire here and Clark, I'd still be there,” I said. “I'd be the one whose disappearance is no cause for alarm.”

“You think Nast may have come here?” Linda asked, alert now and all business.

“We don't know where he is,” Gustin said. “He got away from Clark at the rail yard.”

Drury literally pushed himself into the center of the conversation, ramming the gilt coffee table with his chair in the process. “If this Nast killed Hank as a way of ruining me, he could easily try again with John.”

“Wait one damn minute!” Gilbert shouted. “You're trying to implicate my mother in a murder!”

He and Drury started yelling at each other. The actor's golden larynx gave him the edge, but I could still make out Gilbert demanding that Drury leave his house. Paddy and Gustin stepped in at that point. The sheriff gently sat Gilbert back down on the sofa, while Paddy wheeled Drury into my neutral corner.

Through all of it, Linda remained in her chair. If her board of directors ever got this worked up, she surely sat it out with the same quiet dignity.

“It's clear we have to act, Sheriff,” she finally said. “We have to make certain as a first step that John Whitehead is safe.”

“Yes, ma'am,” Gustin said.

“Please see about organizing a search. Use any of the Traynor Company resources you need. I'll arrange for you to interview my mother-in-law tomorrow morning–or tonight, if you insist.”

“But not them,” Gilbert rasped, gesturing at Drury, Paddy, and me. “They leave this house right now.”

“I think that would be best,” Linda said. Looking me in the eye, she added, “It would be the best thing for everyone.”