The Glendower Legacy (22 page)

Before they’d gotten the towel, when he still thought he had a chance, he’d begun a story. “Look, you guys, let’s lighten this up, whattaya say? Did you hear the one about the two Polacks and their pal the Swede? No? Okay, don’t talk to me—hey, what are you doing there? Look, the three of them been hanging out in this same bar for years, see, always together, the three of them … and, hey, Jesus, what are you doing there? Oh, no, come on, don’t be so serious … Ohhh, Jesus …” That was how they’d begun, ages ago.

The television had worked its way on into the second movie which meant it must be two o’clock Sunday morning, a calculation which proved to him that he still had his wits about him. He smelled the sweat pouring from his torturers, watched it collect above and then drip from the one exposed eyebrow of the huge man with the pliers, watched the bandage on the man’s face slip during his exertions, slip and pull away taking decomposing dead flesh and salve and hair with it. The man’s eyes shone and he licked his lips as he hunched over his work. The small man asked endless questions, the same ones over and over again, and no one paid any attention. Every so often the small man went out on the porch for fresh air. Sometimes he asked the big man to cut it out, lay off, but it never did any good … he was afraid of the big man … Brennan could see why.

The force of his vomiting, the desperation to keep from suffocating, had worked the soaked towel loose and he pushed it out of his mouth with his tongue. It fell down onto his chest and no one pushed it back into his mouth. He couldn’t scream: he could barely croak. “So one day,” he went on, not quite able to hear himself but going on against the pain, “the two Polacks came into the bar without the Swede … nobody had seen the Swede for days, see … he was a missing person, the Swede was, see. Well, the cops came to talk to the Polacks, asking about the Swede … oh, God, why don’t you stop?”

The first time Brennan threw up was when he looked down at his right hand and saw the bloody, frayed stubs of his fingers, where the nails had been, looking like they’d been chewed down to the bone … There was blood all over the chair and on his bathrobe and on the huge man’s raincoat, blood and strings of flesh, and the man’s hands and the pliers were smeared with blood, slippery: he had to keep wiping the pliers on his coat to get it dry enough to hold tightly … It was after they had finished with the one hand, before they’d begun on the other, that Brennan realized they were making a terrible mistake: they weren’t going to kill him.

They kept asking him where Chandler was and they were a long time accepting the fact that he wasn’t going to tell them where anybody was. After the right hand was done they stayed at it just for the hell of it, but he’d gone that far, he wasn’t going to tell now … The small man was having a lot of trouble talking and was losing interest, but the other one worked like a demon, exorcising his own frustrations, grunting, straining, pulling the nails loose by the roots …

“So, the cops kept asking for a description,” he said, trying to form the words distinctly, not knowing if he was succeeding. “And the Polacks told them what the Swede looked like and the cops wanted to know if the Swede had any peculiar identifying marks. Well, the Polacks remembered that he did—the Swede had two assholes. Two assholes! the cops say, amazed. Two assholes—how the hell did the two Polacks know that? Well, the Polacks laugh, it was easy … every time we went into the bar, us and the Swede, the bartender always said the same thing—’ Hey, here comes the Swede with the two assholes!’” Nobody laughed but Brennan didn’t care: he smiled by himself, thought about Mary Tyler Moore in a haze of fantasy and pain. Then the little man stuffed the towel back in his mouth.

Brennan wondered if his heart could hold out. Christ, what a time to die of a heart attack! The big man just kept groaning, the bandage dangling by a piece of tape from one ear, the hideous gray and pink rawness of the side of his face turning into view now and then. The hands hardly hurt anymore and Brennan waited patiently, trying to retain some control … Finally the huge man sank back and sat staring at the wall, as if he’d overdosed on the infliction of pain. Brennan watched him, then dared another look at his own hands and felt the vomit turning again in his stomach. The dry heaves beginning. Like a puppet master he raised his right arm, as if it were controlled by strings and had no life of its own, and began to try to loosen the towel from between his split, aching lips. The ends of his fingers didn’t so much hurt as feel mushy … mushy and warm. Not a sharp pain. But a constant throbbing fire. Pushing with his tongue he helped work the towel out, gagging as blood was forced out of the wet cloth. He made a faint rasping sound in his throat: there was no voice left, his throat felt like the results of an hour’s work with pitchfork and sandpaper. He sneezed and knew what it was like to die and come back to life. He touched his face. He was dripping with sweat, his robe was soaked through. He didn’t know what to do.

The smaller man called to the big one from the kitchen, asked the other to come out and hurry up. The big man struggled over onto all fours and staggered upright like an apparition from an
abattoir,
smeared with blood and his face running, melting on the side. He rumbled out of the room and Brennan sank onto the floor himself and crossed on his knees to the sideboard, reached out with the remains of his hands, and picked up the heavy blackthorn shillelagh. He felt nothing but had to wipe the palms of his hands to get a good grip. They should have killed me, he thought, the dumb bastards.

He levered himself into a standing position, passed a mirror on the way to his post in the shadow beside the archway. What looked back frightened him, blood-stained, godawful hands wrapped around the stick, robe lank and wet and hanging open, mouth a black hole. He waited with the patience of the damned until he heard them coming back.

They were walking quickly, talking urgently, but Brennan did not give a damn what they were saying.

He timed his swing perfectly as they came through the archway. He heard himself give a hideous banshee wail, saw the deathly expression of fear on the short one’s face, and felt the fat of the knobbed, gnarled stick catch the big one square in the middle of the face. One second the man was there, the next he wasn’t, and Brennan’s momentum carried him through the archway. As he went, robe half off, he collided with the falling body which was going down limp, the nose and eyes smashed together, the face collapsed inward. The body hit the floor and Brennan collapsed just past it with a red fog across his eyes, the cries of the small man’s terror in his ears.

Then he was gone, hearing nothing … feeling only an instantaneous stab of lightning in his chest …

The old man’s fluttering heart made sleep effectively impossible: at times, like tonight, he felt as if a couple of mice were scampering around his innards like happy, scuttling, anthropomorphic creatures by Walt Disney. He had enjoyed the concert, though the conversation with Liam and Andrew had been far from encouraging, and he had retired early with a Kenneth Roberts novel,
Arundel,
which had been signed for him years ago by the author and was growing tattered from rereadings. His sherry beside his bed, the thick novel in his lap, and
Die Fledermaus
on the FM band, the old man sat propped against several pillows trying to ignore the irritating commotion in his chest.

He had managed to shut out his international communications of recent days, had put flaps over the interchange with Sanger; he was losing himself in Roberts’s story of Benedict Arnold. His eyes grew heavy: the inevitable thought followed—go to sleep and you might not awake in the morning. He was so accustomed to it by now that he feared if the notion failed to cross his mind that would be the night without end. Fears. The fears of the old, the infirm … He drifted off but the fluttering woke him and, heavy-lidded, he fought his lonely way through the night.

It was just past three-thirty Sunday morning when the green telephone rang. He winced: those goddamned butchers from out of town! He licked sherry from his lower lip, set the glass down, and picked up the offending object.

“Yes,” he said coldly, his white moustache quivering as he clenched his jaw.

What followed pushed his credence to the limit. He listened earnestly: if his face had held any color in the first place it would have drained away as the recital continued.

“Shut
up,” he suggested forcefully. “Whom have you killed? Make it clear because I want to get it absolutely straight. It
matters …
now, pull yourself together.” In his mind he had already signed the death warrant for these two bunglers, just as he’d promised Sanger. His white eyebrows knitted as he waited for the second telling: “I see,” he said slowly.
“You
haven’t killed anyone … Ozzie is dead? What do you mean, dead? How?” He reached for a bottle of tiny white pills which, he was convinced, were placebos, though he took them anyway. They never seemed to have the slightest effect. “Professor Brennan killed him … with a
stick?”
He placed the tiny tablet under his tongue, letting it dissolve. “I don’t mean to seem unkind, you understand, but we must agree that Ozzie certainly ran afoul of higher education this week … No, of course, it’s not funny. But I’d have thought he’d have been able to hold his own with a pair of out-of-shape Harvard professors … Never mind, never mind … You ran, yes I appreciate your situation … You don’t know whether Brennan is alive or dead … This was Ozzie’s idea of an interview, I take it, a few hours of intense torture. I see … Let me say that he deserved killing, Mr. Thornhill. I only wish I could have had a hand in it …” He sipped sherry. “Calm yourself, for heaven’s sake. I know he was your partner but that doesn’t make him any less the homicidal maniac, if you see my point … Now, I want you to get to the safe house, do you understand? What? You know where Chandler’s gotten to? … All right, do nothing, I say,
do nothing …
no, do not go to Kennebunkport … Thornhill? Thornhill? …”

He replaced the telephone and shut his eyes, stroking the white moustache. “God damn you, Thornhill,” he whispered, wondering what in the name of God he was supposed to do now. He wished he knew how many bodies were cluttering up Brennan’s house in Cambridge. He supposed he would have to find out … And what about the elusive Chandler?

Andrew Fennerty’s tight little mouth had drooped open slightly and a small tobacco-stained chip of tooth showed through between his lips. Behind his round glasses his lids were closed; behind his lids his eyes were flickering rapidly as he slept. He had developed deep purple pouches which made him look like a sick man. He lay fully clothed but for his heavy brogans on his bed at the Ritz-Carlton; he had drawn a blanket up as far as his belt. On the other bed Liam McGonigle lay on his side with his back to Fennerty. His snores were hearty and rasping and may have been the cause for Fennerty’s rapid eye movement.

The telephone brought him awake like a kick in the ribs. The little ferret’s eyes clicked open like a doll’s and he struggled to sit up, further entangling himself in the blanket. An attacker would already have killed him by that time and Fennerty was well aware of it, proving to himself once again what he already knew: he was too old for this crap and belonged at his desk where they had put him until CRUSTACEAN had gotten the wind up and called for him.

He knew perfectly well that it would be the old man himself on the telephone.

“Andrew,” the distant voice said, free of emotion and sounding tired, “I want you to check Brennan’s house … I thought I had made that utterly clear.”

“But we’ve been there,” Fennerty said. His mouth was dry and he reached for the warm, dust-laden tooth glass full of water on the stand between the beds. “We used that miserable shotgun mike and believe me, Brennan was watching television and sneezing. Nothing else.”

“Don’t try me, Andrew. Do as I say. You will find that a somewhat different situation obtains. Don’t argue, just do as I say, and let me know precisely what you find. Do you understand? Precisely.”

“Yes, I understand.” Fennerty sensed a spasm or two of adrenalin; it wasn’t the quick business it once had been, though.

“Point two, then. I’ve discovered that Chandler may be holed up at a resort hostelry on the Kennebunk coast, the Seafoam Inn.” The old man sounded—what was
it?—nervous.
Fennerty couldn’t recall such an instance in the past. They were all getting older. “Lum and Abner may know—”

“Lum and Abner?”

“Wake up, Andrew. The two gentlemen we’ve been observing, or trying to observe. They may know where Chandler is and I think they’ve contracted bloodlust, like sharks, I sense a pink thrashing about … So, you’d better get a move on. Andrew?”

“Yes …”

“I’m not quite sure but I believe what I’m saying is this—if Chandler gets killed it will be your asses. Chandler and the TV woman, Polly Bishop, he’s got with him—I want them kept alive … and do what you can to relieve him of his package …”

“Which is more important at this point,” Fennerty said peevishly, “the people or the package? If I have to make a choice, that is?”

But he received no answer. The line was dead.

Fennerty lay rumpled and confused for several moments, wondering what the hell it was all about, what he was seriously supposed to do. It was so jumbled, chaotic, and in the field you never saw it all, but only the little funny-shaped pieces that gave no clue as to the whole. In the field you knew what you were working on, the rest was all a blur, and he supposed it had always been that way. Of course it had. And that was why he wanted to get the hell out of the field forever and into an office where you could feel like a grown-up. It was about time.

He had once known a man who played football for the Washington Redskins, an elderly man for a football player, nearly forty with a face that looked closer to fifty, particularly around and behind the large, vulnerable, hurt brown eyes. And the man had once told him what it was like out there on the field.

“Andy,” he’d said softly, peaceably, as they sat on the player’s town house patio in Georgetown, “you’re just a fart and you believe all that shit you read about football … the six hundred plays in the old playbook, the infinite variations, the blocking styles, the fine timing, the incredible finesse and skill, all the human chess game crap. Well, that’s all a load, Andy, the intellectualization of football, making it all respectable, so that assholes like Nixon can turn football slang into the words used to describe foreign policy …” He’d made a disgusted face but he never raised his voice, just kept the slow jock’s drawl coming, slippery with Wild Turkey. “Football is about one thing and only one thing, Andy. It’s about kicking ass.” He had chuckled softly to himself. It had been spring and he’d probably already known he was through, going to retire. “Nothing fancy. Just blood and pain and half of the guys foaming at the mouth from some kind of dope, eyes like pinheads … fuckin’ jungle, Andy, total chaos, and while we’re up there grubbing around in the dirt and piss with bloody crap dripping out of noses, we don’t know what the hell is going on in the game as you see it. And if we make sure they hurt more than we do, well, hell, about four o’clock on Sunday afternoon we wipe the shit out of our eyes and look up and people are standing and cheering and that means we won …”