The Glendower Legacy (17 page)

“Man with pliers—”

“Precisely.”

“Even if the person deserves it and is a rotten shit. More or less.”

“Stop laughing at me and get dressed. If the goons aren’t in their car, then where the hell are they? On their way here? Think of that …”

But she was already gone into the bedroom.

What now? He started back to the window, stopped. You can look at a little red car only so many times. The point was, what next? They had to get out and there was no hope of getting away in the Jaguar without being seen. And they couldn’t make a run for it and run the risk of leading the red Pinto to Percy Davis in Kennebunkport.

When she came back, fully clothed in French patchwork jeans and a navy blue sweater with a v-neck and maroon piping, he took a lengthy, appraising look at her and whistled.

“You just do that to make me angry,” she said, heading for the kitchen. “And I refuse to notice—”

“You have got one great rear end, though.” He followed her, admiring. “Yes, sir, that’s what we say at Harvard when we wish we could leer like the simple folk do.”

“Well, you’re absolutely right about my ass,” she said. “It’s common knowledge.” She took a watering can from the cupboard, filled it, and began watering her plants.

“Now we’ve got to figure out how to get out of here,” he said. “And then to Kennebunkport. The Jaguar is useless … too obvious, too easy to follow, and we can’t just walk out the door.”

He followed her back to the kitchen. She put the watering can away in the cupboard with the blue door, removing at the same time a squat glass atomizer which she filled from the tap.

“Since they know where we are,” he went on, “but still haven’t burst in and tommy-gunned us, I suppose we can assume they have chosen to keep us under observation—”

“Maybe they’re waiting for me to leave so they can come in and tommy-gun you.” She spoke with a lilting brightness, pumping the atomizer and misting the fern. “It’s possible,” she continued, “though with their various injuries they’d probably prefer to torture you a bit first—”

“I knew I could count on you to see the situation for what it really is. However, since you’re coming with me to Maine, your scenario is purely academic. Do stop all this wetting and spraying. They are obviously intent on following us in the hope that I’ll lead them to the thing, the whazzio …”

“The macguffin,” she said.

“The macguffin,” he repeated. “Do you know why Hitchcock called his plot devices macguffins?”

“No, Professor, but I have the feeling I’m going to find out—”

“Not with that kind of attitude you’re not, not from me.” She put the atomizer down on the television set, said: “Please?”

“Not a chance.” She grabbed the atomizer and sprayed Ezzard out of sheer contrariness. Ezzard gave her a withering stare and sneezed. She went on past Chandler and sprayed him as well.

“Shit!” he cried. “All over my glasses—God, I hate that!”

“Good.” She put the atomizer away and leaned against the blue door and told him how they could escape from the apartment unseen.

Late in the afternoon after he’d called Brennan and made certain arrangements he found himself bundling up in his Burberry, wrapping one of her mufflers around his throat, carrying her canvas overnight duffel bag, and following her down a narrow dark stairway at the rear of the downstairs entryway where he’d been dropped off by the cabdriver. They had left lights burning in the kitchen and living room, the radio on at normal volume, and now they fumbled in the gloom of the hallway. There was a doorway cut into the underside of the stairs which creaked on seldom-used, never-oiled hinges. “The light burned out years ago and no one ever replaced it,” she said, producing a flashlight from her pocket, playing the beam across bare brick walls caked deep with dust, cobwebs, the sifting centuries of settling. The stairs were narrow and stone, solid but built it seemed for some tiny race no longer surviving. The steps ended not in a basement but in a small room, low-ceilinged and smelling of earth and musty growths which left the walls disconcertingly fuzzy when brushed against.

“What the hell is this?” he muttered, growling against his own impulse to claustrophobia. He swept at a dangling thread of cobweb which floated back in his wake, caressed his face.

“It is,” she called back over her shoulder, a loud whisper, “nothing less than a secret passageway. I discovered it on my own one day looking for a place to put trash cans. It’s not easily noticed, the door fits very flush and the latch is recessed into the wood and the hinges are on the inside …” She stopped: “Do you hear a squeaking noise? Like a rat?”

“Not really but then I’ve been busy with the hanging creepers—”

“Well, I’ll pretend I didn’t hear it, then.” She pointed the cone of light ahead into the darkness. “We’re underneath and between the’ buildings on Chestnut, which is to our right, and Beacon Street to our left. We’re going downhill … just before we get to the cross street there are some steps which go up into a brick courtyard behind some tall town houses, sort of hidden in behind a couple of garages—it’s all most unorthodox but I really don’t think anyone ever uses the passageway for anything.” She turned and pushed on in the wake of the torch. “It may have been a way servants and tradesmen moved from one dwelling to another a long time ago, or it may have been something else altogether, something quite ulterior … Anyway, it’s getting us out of trouble.”

They came out into the mossy brick cul-de-sac blinking, glad for the fresh cold air. The wind swirled in the trees above, carried a constant, clinging damp. The narrow street was quiet, traffic moving sluggishly on Beacon Street. They quickly headed off toward the Common, crossed Beacon and began the grassy descent. Out of breath they stopped at the bottom of the hill. The huge wading pool lay empty and gray like a concrete trap on a green, hilly golf course. Sheltering under a giant tree they looked nervously back up the hill: the red Pinto was, of course, nowhere in sight.

“Okay,” he panted. “You go to see Nora at the Parker House. I’ll go meet Hugh and pick you up at the Faneuil Hall flower stall … on the corner—”

“I know, I know.” She touched his arm: “Now be careful … Those guys are everywhere.” The irises of her eyes were large and almost black in the gray glow of afternoon. She gave him a squeeze and a tight smile.

“Don’t worry. And stay in crowds getting to the hotel. And have the doorman at the hotel get you a cab to Faneuil Hall and don’t take any bullshit from the cabbie. Give him five bucks, a buck a block—”

She was nodding: “I have been out on my own before. I’ll be fine.”

He watched her go, convinced she was safe: in less than ten minutes she’d be in Nora’s room. He turned, tightened his grip on the duffel bag and struck off toward the Ritz-Carlton far across the Public Garden. Crossing the arched bridge over the Frog Pond he thought briefly of the swan boats which would be gliding on the still glassy waters a few weeks from now. It had been a long time since he’d ridden a swan boat, watched the couples sprawling on the grass verges, enjoyed the ducks and the explosions of color in the flowerbeds. The innocence of such an afternoon’s occupation struck him as distressingly distant from the moment at hand. But Polly, he bet himself, would enjoy it.

The imposing equestrian statue of George Washington loomed gigantically ahead of him.

“George,” he said, “what’s your country coming to, baby?” He looked up into the noble, determined visage, farsighted, but sightless forever now. The statue was waterstained from the rain. He seemed to be the only one noticing George, surely the only pedestrian talking to him. His Rolex said three-fifty. He was meeting Hugh in forty minutes. “George,” he said, “I’m doing my best.”

He crossed Arlington, decided against waiting in line for a taxi at the Ritz-Carlton, and leaned into the wind, made his way across Newberry to the Boylston Street corner. No luck. He walked up Boylston, crossed at Trinity Church and damned near buckled in the gale whistling down from the open expanse of Copley Square. He waited beneath the icy upward thrust of the John Hancock Building; finally, at four-oh-seven he flagged down a taxi going in the right direction and settled back, sweating and cold and getting vaguely accustomed to the gnawing mixture of fear and anticipation which had come to live in his stomach. Polly would be with Nora by now.

The huge Indian, arms outspread, greeted him silently at the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. The taxi pulled away in a cloud of noxious fumes. A streetcar wheezed into view. “Hi,” he said to the Indian, wondering if there was a one-day record for speaking to equestrian statuary. “George says hi from the Public Garden …”

He paid and went through the turnstile and on up the long clicking stairway and on to the Egyptian collection.

Hugh was nowhere to be seen. Chandler moved on in the rooms he had almost to himself. A guard yawned, smiled wearily. The end of a slow Saturday. Chandler waited by Lady Sennuwy, the most beautiful woman in the world. Four thousand years and still the most beautiful …

It was fifteen minutes before Brennan lumbered through the door.

“Christ,” he puffed, wiping his nose. “I’m sorry I’m late. Foul-up at Avis. Fucking wizard blew a fuse, I don’t know … How the hell are you?”

“I’m fine. The car’s downstairs?”

“Ah, yeah. Look, Colin, were you talking to this?” He jerked a thumb at Lady Sennuwy.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Chandler said.

“I’m a nervous goddamn wreck,” Brennan announced with a stifled sneeze. “But it’s also fun in a sick sort of way. I got you a brown car, just a brown, dumb-looking car. I don’t even know what kind it is … Look, are you doing anything really stupid? I mean, dangerous?”

“What can I say?” Chandler shrugged: “I somehow found myself in this thing—I’m not looking for trouble, if that’s what you mean. But I can’t ignore Percy Davis, can I? It’s a legacy … two men have died and this is what they’ve left me, this thingummy on the kitchen table in Kennebunkport. I can’t just ignore it.”

Brennan nodded, glumly, apparently unconvinced.

“You haven’t noticed the guys in the red Pinto, have you?”

“Not since they passed my house—hell, it may have been another red Pinto—”

“If you believe that, you’ll believe anything … Right now they’re parked outside Polly’s place, waiting for God only knows what.”

Brennan fumbled for a veteran Kleenex, rubbed his reddening nose: “It’s hard to believe …”

“Well, we’ve shaken them now, thanks to you and the Wizard of Avis. Come on, let’s get out of here.”

They went out the main entrance. The darkness had fallen fast and there was a faint mist. Brennan produced the keys and led the way to the brown car. The parking lot was almost deserted, a curiously wet and dispiriting place. Water stood in puddles.

“Good luck,” Brennan said, coughing. His trilby was pulled down tight against the tops of his ears. His sinuses were clogged. He looked miserable. “Be careful.”

“Cheer up,” Chandler said, chucking the duffel bag into the back seat. “Go home and take something for your cold. I’ll be in touch.” They shook hands. “I’ll get this all straightened out and everything will be fine.”

As he eased the brown car out of the lot and into the street, he caught sight of the bulky, raincoated figure standing at the trolley stop. The headlights picked him out and he looked up like an enormous, primitive boar, his eyes reflecting red. Then Chandler turned and waved as he drove back toward downtown Boston, the stout figure of his friend fading quickly into the night’s gloom.

“Jeez, my face is fuckin’ killing me,” Ozzie whined, his chins wobbling, his fingers hooked and raking across the bandages covering the left side of his face. “Feels like my skin is all bubbled up.” He moaned softly, sucked on the last cherry-flavored Tiparillo which was doing his adenoidal condition no good at all. “Not that you give a shit.”

“I do give a shit,” Thorny wheezed, “but it’s hard for me to talk, you know that. So get offa me, okay? Besides, under the bandage your skin
is
all bubbled up … and your hair’s gonna fall out. So, fuck it.” He lay his battered, grease-stained copy of
The Final Days
on the dashboard and stared up at the light in the bay window of Polly Bishop’s apartment.

The gray day had wizened into a dark, wet evening and Thorny suspected that his chest and ribs were at least as painful as his partner’s burn. The cramped little car had become their torture chamber: it had been a long day. Worse: he was afraid Ozzie was going crazy …

“Fuck it yourself,” Ozzie muttered deep in his chest.

“Funny thing,” Thorny said. “I haven’t seen a shadow up there for the past couple hours.”

“Maybe they’re in the sack,” Ozzie groaned, shifting his huge bulk. The seat creaked. “Jeez, I’d like a crack at that broad … Wham.” His fingers crawled upwards yet again. His pale eyes flickered like trapped maddened things.

“But the Jag’s still there,” Thorny continued along his own track. “Now how the hell else could they get out? Why would they bother to sneak out anyway? They don’t know we’re here …” His fingers tapped on the steering wheel. He was doing his utmost to think it through without breathing. Breathing hurt like hell.

“I wouldn’t put nothing past that bastard,” Ozzie said. His face and scalp felt as if the bubbles were bursting, itching, peeling away. He took a final drag on the tiny cigar and dropped it out the window. “Maybe they spotted us. Why not? I’m so hungry I could puke.” He took a plastic bottle from his coat pocket and swallowed a pain-killer.

“If we lose them, the old man will have our nuts.” Thorny’s fingers drummed on. “If we confront them, he’ll have our ass.” He looked at the pained pudding of a face next to him, a few blisters bulging beyond the white bandage. He didn’t know which was worse, the smell of the cherry cigar or the grease applied to the coffee burns. The odors he’d spent the day inhaling forced his decision. He opened the car door and inhaled deeply. “Let’s go up and have a look.”

Ozzie lumbered up the stairway after Thorny picked the outside door lock. Thorny’s labored wheezing rasped like a mechanical device in the narrow hallway. They were pursuing action in an attempt to get their minds off the pain. Ozzie stood puffing at the top, staring dumbly down at Thorny’s crablike progress, his hand clutching his chest.