The Glendower Legacy (19 page)

“Yes, Dennis?” It had taken Sanger almost a year to get it clear in his mind that the fellow’s name was not Herman Dennis which somehow struck him as more appropriate.

“There’s a messenger in the library, sir.”

“I see. Elise, you must excuse me for a moment. Dennis will see to your glass, my dear.” He retired quickly to the dark-toned library where Harry Stevenson himself, his most immediate associate at the company, was waiting for him, smoking a pipe and reading the current
Playboy
which featured an interview with a radical terrorist they’d seriously considered having assassinated.

“Arden,” he said, blowing smoke and without looking up, “we should have snuffed this little shit when we had the chance. Now he’s a media hero, wants to be a senator for God’s sake.” He threw the magazine at a chair and missed, tearing the cover.

“I only look at the pictures,” Sanger said. He lowered his broad rear end into a cracked leather club chair and watched Stevenson from deep-set eyes, well padded with pouches of fat. In two weeks he was going in for a face-lift that would make his vision considerably clearer. But he could see Stevenson’s bony, sharp-edged face well enough. It was a mathematician’s face. Stevenson had come to the company fifteen years before from M.I.T. “So, what can I do for you?”

“Something funny is going on in Boston,” Stevenson said cryptically.

“Boston
is
funny. Tell me something I don’t know.”

“I’ve had a call from CRUSTACEAN.”

“Indeed?”

“He’s worried. He says Petrov’s got two gunsels up there killing people. He doesn’t much like it.”

“Gunsels?
I should hope not. Does he know why?”

“No, not really. It’s over a document of some kind … well, I ran a check and much to my surprise we’re not missing any plans for a sneak attack, nerve gas, germ warfare, flooding the market with unsalted popcorn. But our friend doesn’t bring us in on these things without good reason. Two innocent citizens shot dead strike him as good reasons, I guess.”

“I think you’d better go through this by the numbers, Harry.”

It took the better part of an hour. They sat quietly for a few minutes when the story, so far as Stevenson knew it, was finished.

“Nobody knows where the damn thing is, I take it,” Sanger said. “Or what the hell it is …”

“Check. Not a clue. Just dead people—”

“And a disappearing Harvard professor.”

“Check.”

“I suppose we’d better try to find out why the devil Petrov is so interested—”

“You know how it works, if he’s interested, we’re interested.” Stevenson cuffed his pipe against the side of a heavy glass ashtray, blew noisily through the stem.

“Well, find Chandler—that’s it, so far as I can tell.”

“Not quite all. CRUSTACEAN wants a go-ahead on terminating Petrov’s lads. On his own discretion.”

“If it seems the thing to do, you mean.”

Stevenson nodded.

“Oh, God,” Sanger sighed. “Only if they hurt somebody else.”

“I’ll try it on, I’m not sure he won’t just go ahead and do as he chooses. Old fart.”

Sanger laughed. “The question is, why would Max set his boys loose and run the risk of pissing me off?”

“Maybe it’s important …”

“Then why use a couple of garbagemen? Makes no sense.”

“We shall see what we shall see,” Stevenson said.

“As always.”

Stevenson had reached the double doors and was about to leave when Sanger had a thought.

“The trouble with Max is his goddamn sense of humor. He makes a joke in Moscow and I start hurting in Virginia.”

“This is no joke now,” Stevenson said bleakly, “if it ever was. Which I doubt:” But he went away knowing that if it wasn’t a joke, it was surely a game. Always was, always would be.

A purist at heart, a perfectionist even when faced with the impossible, the old man listened to the young pianist turn what should have been the wrist octaves of the “Waldstein” into a sliding, rakish glissando. Just because a thing was accepted didn’t make it right and the old man had a feeling that if Beethoven had wanted a glissando he’d have noted the fact as he’d done in the First Concerto. The fire in the grate at the far end of the Gardner Museum’s tapestry room, long and dark and low, cast a warm glow which reached him in the fourth row. The wind outside swept off the Back Bay Fens and rattled the glass in the French windows which overlooked the garden and the murky, inclement darkness beyond. Draughts crept along the floor and nipped at his ankles.

The concert provided a respite after having spent most of the Saturday’s late afternoon poking around his favorite corners of the Boston Museum of Fine Arts. Long ago he and his wife had enjoyed whiling away free hours at the museums, though they both actually preferred the Italianate Gardner with its courtyard of dripping, fragrant flowers, and the whimsical, capricious placement of the paintings. Each visit was still full of surprises for the old man who now came alone but almost as frequently.

His mother had been a friend of Isabella Gardner’s and as a boy he’d met the extraordinary woman whose creation this fifteenth-century Venetian palace was. Her only son had died, an infant of two, and by the time he’d met her she was past seventy and had taken a liking to him, a serious, knobby-kneed Beacon Hill boy of ten. Lately the old man had been thinking about Isabella Gardner because she was the first person he’d ever known who had died. What in God’s name would she have thought of him if she’d known what he’d gone on to do with his life?

The mind reeled at the prospect.

Well, he had music, too. Did he have young friends? It depended, so to speak, on the precision of your definitions. He looked at his watch as the music ended and the applause swelled hastily and chairs were scraped back. Did Liam and Andrew qualify as friends? On the whole, though he rather liked them, he thought not. The other two cretins he wanted killed.

Liam and Andrew were waiting for him in the North Cloister, a forlorn, wetted-down pair matching rather well the two fish fountains on the wall across the garden. Yellow and lavender flowers bloomed regardless of the weather outside and vines dangled from above.

“Good evening,” the old man said, being sure to stand clear of the wet raincoats. “I’ll be brief. The evening concludes with the ‘Moonlight’ which I do not intend to miss.” He paused long enough to fix them each, eye to eye. “I’m disappointed in your progress. You’ve gained no ground and you’re going to have to start doing so. I have learned who the homicidal maniacs are who have killed Bill Davis and Mr. Underhill.” He described them in detail, including their various bandages and infirmities and how they acquired them. “I also know that they have not yet achieved their goal—Chandler is at large and the document in question remains out of their reach, as well as ours. I want you to find them, check the Harvard Motor Lodge, check Brennan … but please do find them. Remember, you are at an advantage—you know about them, they are ignorant of your existence. Find them and they may lead you to Chandler and the document … they are working for the Russians, incidentally, and whatever it is they want, we obviously want it, too.”

He could see them grappling with the information and for a moment he felt a twinge of pity. Any complex situation was so much clearer when you knew both sides, or rather two sides of however many there might be. Andrew pried his wire-rimmed spectacles from behind his ears and began wiping off rainspots with a crumpled white handkerchief. Liam was hugging his arms across his chest, rocking back on his heels, watching the crowd out of habit.

“What the hell do you think it is?” Liam asked.

“It doesn’t make any difference. We can’t have them killing people. If we show that kind of weakness, well, who knows where it will lead?”

“What do we do when we find them and they find this document?”

“I’m not altogether certain. We will decide then. You
must
stay in touch with me. You know how.”

The crowd was eddying away, back toward the tapestry room. When Thorny and Ozzie found the damn thing and told him what the devil it was, then he’d decide whether or not to have them killed.

“I suggest you hop it to Cambridge. I realize that Brennan may have something less than full confidence in you following your music hall turn the other morning, but still … what else have we got? And you may run across Lum and Abner, don’t you see?”

The old man nodded and walked back toward the tapestry room. He didn’t look back and therefore missed Liam furtively sticking his tongue out at him.

Together, wearily, Liam and Andrew set off into the rain once again.

Getting home from the Museum was a major undertaking for Brennan. He had developed a nasty late winter-early spring cold with a fever, raspy throat, and fits of nasty chills. Of course, Chandler had to go pick up Polly right away, which left Brennan to cope with public transport. It never occurred to him to take a taxi: instead he waited in the cold and wet for a streetcar, switched at Kenmore Square and Park Street and an hour later emerged like a sick rat from the subway in Harvard Square. He loaded up on cold remedies and magazines and paperbacks at a drugstore, bought a six-pack of Tuborg, and waddled dispiritedly toward his house.

Colin was on his own now. Nothing more Hugh Brennan could do. He was anticipating an evening of total exhaustion, quaffing cold medicine, getting smashed on Tuborg, lusting for Mary Tyler Moore. Now that was a thought: Mary Tyler Moore …

He soaked in a steaming tub for half an hour, rubbed Vicks on his hairy chest in memory of his mother, tore open a new box of Kleenex, and with his beer and magazines and paperbacks got settled under a blanket on his couch. He was mixing beer and Excedrin and seeing two Mary Tyler Moores, when the doorbell rang. He didn’t recognize it for what it was at first, the bell taking some few seconds to penetrate the furriness all around him. It kept ringing. Eventually, swearing, tripping on the robe and blanket he wrapped around himself, he excused himself to Bob Newhart and his television family and went to the door.

He didn’t recognize them, didn’t make any connections which might have alerted him, cleared his brain. A small man in a flat, black-and-white checked hat and a large man with a white bandage partially obscuring his broad, swollen face.

He was farther gone than he’d thought possible, the beer and the Excedrin and the cold stuff whirring like tiny engines of destruction in his bloodstream and brain. Everything he saw, he saw twice, two outlines, and every sound was two sounds slightly out of sync. There was, he remembered vaguely, something he should know about these two men who had somehow gotten through the doorway, something … something …

Then, through the open doorway, under the streetlamp, he saw the little red car.

But by then it was too late. Strong hands had forced him back inside and he heard the door slam, the noise echoing in his head as if an echo were visible. The red car … He struggled to get out of his chair. No good, no strength. Bob Newhart said something and the idiotic pilot who lived down the hall said something and the audience roared and when he focused on the large man kneeling in front of him something bright and shining caught his eye.

“Professor,” the smaller one said, “calm down, just sit there … we have a question or two …”

It was—oh my God, it was a pliers …

And it all came back to him and he began to scream.

Too late, goddamn it, too late, too late …

“We don’t want to hurt you, Professor, but we need some help … Don’t make us hurt you …”

Halfway to Kennebunkport, taking the weatherswept coastal road, Chandler realized that Polly had fallen asleep, still holding his arm, her head of thick brown hair resting lightly against his shoulder. Watching her, his contentment was complete. His body was losing the aches and pains which had sprouted in the most peculiar places subsequent to the attack by the two goons. His mind felt clear now that he was on the track with Percy Davis the next stop: his curiosity was, of course, unabated, but he was full of anticipation rather than anxiety. He couldn’t have explained why he felt so buoyant but he hoped that he didn’t lose it.

He remembered Percy Davis’s voice reading Underhill’s letter.

… a document so curious and valuable that a human life was only a temporary obstacle to those bent on acquiring it … inevitably those who want it and are prepared to kill to get it will be confused, perplexed, and increasingly dangerous as they discover their quarry has disappeared. But I am a desperate man and I cannot send it directly to the one party who must see it sooner or later—Professor Colin Chandler at Harvard. I cannot send it directly to this gentleman out of respect for his safety …

Well, the point was, nobody knew where he’d gone. So he and Polly were safe.

Except, of course, Brennan. He wasn’t sure if he’d even actually told Hugh in so many words. But it had been obvious: Brennan surely would have known that Kennebunkport was his destination …

The thought crossed his mind like a cloud, threatening his euphoria, but he brushed it away. Hugh was safe, curled up with a good book and a stiff drink and a box of Kleenex.

The rain increased, the wind hurling itself against the side of the brown car, and Polly stirred, awoke. His stomach growled. They stopped for a hamburger in a lonely, invitingly lit diner, swilled the fries and the cole slaw down with hot coffee, and he watched her smoke a cigarette. He enjoyed watching her hands with the well-defined sinews and veins and bones, like fine translucent china. Her lips closed softly on the cigarette, delicately, as if it might break. She brushed her hair back over her ears, smiled at him with the parentheses curling at the corners of her mouth and the lines at the corners of her eyes radiating outward like the rays of a rising sun.

Kennebunkport was huddled dark and close to the ground in the lashing cold rain. They crossed the bridge that led into the small main square, the leatherworkers’ shop on the left alternately illuminated and darkened in shadow by a windblown streetlamp. The drugstore was closed. The café-and-grocery store sharing the same premises was closed. They turned their way through the square, following Percy Davis’s directions until they found the road that ran seaward with the harbor’s docks and antique shops and restaurants on the right. He watched for and saw, picked out by the car’s lights, the vivid blue sign for the Arundel Restaurant, swinging in the gale. Beyond and to the sides there was a pitchy darkness pricked only by the old, blurred light of a boat or a house or a backroom. Rain washed across the windshield. They were on the right road.