He Huffed and He Puffed (19 page)

“We have to be careful,” I warned her. “The cameras are still out but we might run into some of the household staff.”

“A back way to the private wing?” she suggested, and then vetoed her own suggestion. “No, that's where the staff is most likely to be. We'll have to chance the main stairs. What about the suitcases?”

“Leave them here. Oh … here's your knife.”

She tried handling it, first with the blade pointing down, then up. “Which way looks more menacing?”

“Up. Here, hold it this way.”

When she felt comfortable with it, we crept up the stairs to the first floor and waited there a moment, listening. When we heard nothing, we made our way to the main staircase and from there to the private wing. We slipped into the library with no trouble. Then there was nothing to do but wait; the next part depended on Jack.

After what seemed an interminable length of time, the phone rang. Jack was pretending to be talking to one of the maids; he called me “dear” and asked me to bring a small case of papers from his room to the conference room. This was it.

Castleberry's face when Joanna and I walked into the conference room was like a bad actor's in a bad horror movie. Good; if he was starting out scared, that meant less work for me. He stood up; I pushed him back into his chair. Joanna was carrying her knife and I took out mine and showed it to Castleberry. He worked his mouth wordlessly and then he started to shrink. I don't know how he managed it, but he truly did get smaller as I watched.

“Where's mine?” Jack wanted to know.

I gave him his knife. Castleberry shrank some more. “Castleberry,” I said, “do you understand what's happening here? Do you understand we refuse to accept Strode's conditions?”

“Pink?” Jack said, looking at his knife. “You got me a
pink
knife?”

“Answer me, Castleberry.”

He nodded four or five times and stammered, “Wh-what are you going to do?”

“Well, now,” I said, “that depends on you, doesn't it? If you cooperate, we won't have to do anything to you. But if you don't …”

Joanna moved around behind Castleberry's chair and laid the blade of her knife along his cheek. “Oh, Castleberry's going to cooperate,” she purred, “aren't you, Castleberry? You know what we do to people who don't cooperate.”

He was making a
uhn-uhn-uhn
sound, too terrified to move, his eyes rolled in the direction of Joanna's knife. I said, “What we want you to do is turn over all the original evidence you and Strode have gathered against us. That's all. It's in his office, isn't it?”

“I can't do that!” he squeaked. “Mr. Strode would kill me!”

“And what do you think we're going to do if you don't?” I said slowly. “Don't you understand? The only way you're getting out of this alive is to hand us what we want.”

He groaned. Jack was jiggling his knife loosely in his hand and grinning. “I know! Let's take off his shoes and socks.”

It was exactly the right thing to say. Castleberry cried out and pulled his feet back under his chair.

“The evidence, Castleberry,” Joanna said. “Where is it?”

It took him a couple of tries, but he finally choked out, “In Mr. Strode's vault.”

“Can you open it?” I asked.

He nodded, unable to speak. Castleberry was in bad shape; Jack and I got him to his feet, but one look at the man would tell anyone who was interested that something was drastically wrong here. Jack said, “Come on, my man, you've got to do better than this! If anyone even suspects that anything's wrong, you're going to go home without any of your toes tonight. So shape up fast, old buddy, or there'll be no more marathons for you!” He emphasized his points by tapping the blade of his knife on Castleberry's chest; Jack was having a good time.

Castleberry made a supreme effort and managed to make himself appear slightly less terrified; he still didn't look composed, but it would have to do. Joanna led the way; Jack and I followed, one on each side of Castleberry. A repairman was hard at work in the monitor room; Strode's security firm hadn't wasted any time getting there. Both the inside and the outside guards were surprised at the sight of Joanna and me; they'd seen both of us go out but neither of us come back in.

We didn't stop to explain.

Castleberry had driven his car; we allowed him to chauffeur us to the office. Castleberry's presence got us through the rigmarole with the guards both downstairs and on Strode's floor. The vault we were looking for could be reached only from Strode's private office; it was a room-sized safe, much larger than the one in my office. Castleberry's hands were trembling, but he managed to turn off the various alarms and get the vault door open. Jack was sweating and Joanna was breathing shallowly. I pushed Castleberry into the vault ahead of us and told him to get the evidence.

And there it was. Detectives' reports. Harry Rankin's letter to his wife, Estelle, the envelope it had come in, and the statement Estelle Rankin had signed. And there were her new name and address; she was in Oregon. I slipped that piece of paper into my pocket and said, “Is everyone satisfied?”

“Yes,” said Joanna, reading from her own folder.

“It's all here,” Jack nodded.

“Then let's have a bonfire.” I went out into the office and grabbed the first metal wastebasket I saw. All three folders went in; Jack lit a match and dropped it on the papers. When the flame began to die down, Jack took the basket and went into Strode's private washroom to flush the ashes down the loo, remarking that ashes could be reconstructed.

Castleberry stood in the entrance to the vault watching us. “You can't get away with this,” he muttered. “What makes you think you can?” His courage was coming back.

“We've already gotten away with it!” Jack sang gleefully.

I looked over at Joanna and was rewarded with the very first full-hearted smile I'd ever seen from her. She was smiling with her whole body. “Richard, it worked,” she said happily. “You got the evidence back for us. You saved us.”

I was about to fling both arms around her when Jack stuck out a hand and said, “Put 'er there, Richard, old buddy! I owe you. Anytime you need a favor—
anytime
—all you have to do is say the word.” The odd thing about that was I believe he actually meant it.

Castleberry said, “Am I free to go now?”

“Oh no,” I said mildly. “For one thing, you're thinking you'll head for the nearest phone to call the police. Kidnapping, robbery, threats of bodily harm, all that. But consider a moment, Castleberry. The police will want to know why it was so important for us to get those three folders. To answer that, you'll have to tell them what was
in
the folders. That means your esteemed employer can be charged with withholding evidence and intent to blackmail. Do you think that will endear you to him?”

He conceded the point. “So what are you going to do with me?”

“Ah, your part in our little charade is not quite finished, Castleberry. You still have another job to do.”

“He does?” Jack said, surprised. “What?”

Instead of answering him I turned to Joanna. “Friday night you kept saying we needed to get something on Strode, that that was the only way we'd ever be free of him.”

“Yes,” she said, beginning to understand.

I smiled and gestured toward the open vault.

“Son of a gun,” Jack breathed, and then burst out laughing. “Son of a gun!”

I turned to him. “Jack, you've never seemed to understand that this weekend is … repeatable. Take your own case. The helicopter pilot—Billy is his name? You've destroyed the statement Billy signed, but you haven't destroyed Billy. As long as Strode has him under his thumb, you're not safe. Do you understand
that
?”

His lips tightened; he didn't answer.

“As I see it, you have three options,” I went on. “First, you can kill Billy—”

“Kill him? I told you, I didn't have anything to do with that helicopter crash!” Jack said darkly.

“Of course you did!” I snapped. “For god's sake, Jack, stop playing these stupid games. Your second option is to kill Strode.”

Castleberry gasped. Jack said, “You're getting carried away, Richard. Kill Strode? You're out of your mind.”

He really was the limit. “Will you stop being such a damned hypocrite, Jack! You were the one who first brought up the possibility of killing him—and then you pretended to be horrified when Joanna and I took you seriously. But there's a better way.”

“Oh, do tell us,” he said dryly. “I can hardly wait.”

I took a breath. “It's hard to believe that you and Joanna and I are the only three people Strode's ever put the squeeze on. That vault is probably full of folders like the ones we just burned. All we have to do is help ourselves. If Strode is withholding evidence in other cases and we can prove it, then we've got him. And who knows what else is in there? We have a veritable treasure house at our disposal!”

To the surprise of us all, none other than Myron Castleberry the Fearless suddenly swung into action. He was struggling to close the heavy door of the vault when Jack reached him and jerked him away. “Naughty, naughty!” Jack scolded. “Do you want us to make you stand in the corner for an hour?”

But it was more serious than that. I took out my knife again and went over to Castleberry. Without any warning I nicked his chin, and then held the blade up so he could see the drop of blood gleaming on the tip. “Do you think for one minute,” I said, not trying to hide my anger, “do you think that I will let a worthless little flunkey like you stand in my way? Do you think you are that important? You are
nothing
, Castleberry! A means to an end, that's all. You have some slight temporary value at most. You are … disposable. If you wish to come out of this unscathed, you will
do, as, you, are, told
. Is that quite clear? Is it?”

There was an uncomfortable silence that I did nothing to break. Then Castleberry said leadenly, “I'll do what you say. I'm not going to die for A. J. Strode.”

What a surprise. “Then start bringing files out of that vault. You know what we're looking for.”

Jack was staring at me with an expression I'd seen before, on the faces of other men. “I'll … keep an eye on him.” He went into the vault with Castleberry.

Joanna was watching me closely. “How very interesting.” She perched on the corner of Strode's desk and tapped at the side casually with one foot. “Tell me something. This is what it was all for, wasn't it, Richard?” she asked in a neutral voice. “All the plotting, the running around. It was all to get you into A. J. Strode's vault. The destroying of the evidence against us—that was just a way station on the road. It was the
vault
you were after all along.”

There are times when a lie just won't do the trick; this was one of them. “Do you forgive me?”

A sparkle appeared in her eye. “You're about to hand me the means of getting A. J. Strode off my back forever and you want to know if I forgive you. Well, yes, Richard. I forgive you.” She laughed. “Just don't ever get mad at
me.”

“Never,” I promised her.

Jack and Castleberry came out of the vault, each with an armload of folders. “He says these are the juiciest ones,” Jack announced, dumping his folders on the desk Joanna was sitting on, Strode's desk.

Once Castleberry accepted the fact that he wasn't going to be able to stop us, he set out to show how helpful he could be. “Start with this one,” he said, handing me a folder. “This man is a money manager who makes a practice of embezzling from his clients' retirement funds. Mr. Strode has been forcing him to invest client money in various enterprises—ones that are of interest to Mr. Strode, of course.”

“That's good for seven to ten right there,” Jack said gleefully. “Let's divvy these up.”

We pulled up chairs around Strode's desk and parceled out the folders among the three of us. We read and asked Castleberry questions, which he answered honestly as far as I could tell. A. J. Strode's reach extended far. In addition to competing businessmen, he also had the goods on a variety of politicians—in Washington as well as New York, all men and women sitting on committees or engaged in special projects that affected Strode's financial holdings in some way.

“Whew!” Jack said at one point. “I'm thinkin' maybe we ought to go into business for ourselves! Blackmailers Incorporated—we'd make a fortune! What do you think?”

“Shut up and read, Jack,” Joanna said tonelessly.

We read and made our selections; I kept a list of all the names on the folders we could use against Strode. I was about to bypass the folder of a professional basketball player with ostensible underworld connections when Castleberry stopped me. “I suggest you hold on to that one,” he said. “His father is a member of the board of governors of the Federal Reserve System.”

Ah. One of the seven men who controlled the nation's credit market. And Strode was using the son to get at the father. “I certainly shall hold on to it. Thank you.”

He looked at me slyly. “Perhaps not so worthless after all?”

I thought back; I had indeed called him worthless. “My mistake. You obviously have hidden talents, Castleberry.” That satisfied him; he leaned back in his chair and even smiled a little. The man was a natural-born toady. He should have been thinking of ways to hand my head on a platter to either the police or Strode or both. But instead he was more concerned with convincing me that I was wrong about him, that he was too an important person and a swell fellow to boot.

Joanna was starting to droop a little, so I asked her if she felt all right.

“Yes,” she said, “but it's three o'clock and I'm supposed to eat something.”