Your Eyelids Are Growing Heavy (17 page)

“Who?”

“Sid Ziegler, the president of the company. But on an executive level, you're supposed to be able to handle everything that's thrown at you. If Mr. Ziegler found out I posed a danger to the company
for any reason whatsoever
, I'd be out so fast it'd make your head spin. But you know, Gus, if I went to him and said I'd just bumped off a man who was trying to get at Glickman through me, he'd probably give me a raise.”

“Oh, come on!”

“That's only a slight exaggeration. How do you think Ziegler got to be president? By being warm and loving? He's not going to go out on a limb for me.”

Gus had a sudden flash of insight. “You want Ziegler's job, don't you?”

“I want everything I can get,” Megan said bluntly. “If I'm good enough, yes, I want his job. And I'm damn well not going to apologize for it. And I'm not going to let some smarmy mind-messer named Harrison J. Algren stop me. It's him or me, Gus. And it sure as hell isn't going to be me.”

“All right, we handle it ourselves, since you're so sure calling in the police would spoil everything for you. But we ought to look for some way of taking care of Algren without killing him.”

“Like what?”

“Like I don't know what. But we ought to
look
for a way.”

“You've changed your mind, haven't you? About helping me kill him.”

“No, I haven't, Megan. If we're sure there's no other way out of this except by killing him, then I'm with you all the way. I just want to be sure we haven't overlooked some better way of handling it.”

Megan raised one eyebrow. “I'm open to suggestion.”

Gus jumped up and began to pace. “The trouble is, whatever we do, we're going to have to do it soon. We've
got
to be running out of time. It's been over two months now since you woke up in Schenley Park. Why would they hypnotize you so far in advance? Maybe something went wrong. But this marking time can't go on forever. What if we told Algren we knew? Would fear of exposure stop him?”

They both thought about that for a while. “It might,” Megan said. “Pretty risky, though.”

But Gus rejected his own suggestion. “All he'd have to do would be call you on the phone and say, ah, that line of poetry—and then tell you to forget his name. Then it would be just my word alone, and he could take care of that, too. If he could get you in an elevator without your knowing it, he could get me too.” Gus stopped his pacing and shivered. “How do you fight someone who has weapons like that?”

Megan stared at the revolver and said nothing.

“He's good, damn him,” Gus muttered. “He's really good. If we go around telling everybody what he's done, nothing'll come of it except maybe he'll sue us for slander. And collect, no doubt. How do you go about proving someone has been hypnotized? Do you remember what Snooks said about the law's attitude toward hypnotism? She said the law refuses to accept a plea of innocence based on a claim that the defendant was forced to perform a criminal act under hypnosis.”

“Maybe it's not a criminal act I've been programmed to perform,” Megan said suddenly. “We've all just been assuming it is—but what if it's not?”

“It has to be something illegal, Megan. Kidnapping you was an illegal act. Why run that risk if something even bigger isn't involved? No, there's some sort of crime in the works.”

“All right—but say I don't
know
that what I'm doing is criminal. That would explain my cooperation in the matter, wouldn't it?”

“Yes, it would. If you didn't know what you were doing would hurt Glickman—that must be it. It must be some part of your usual routine that they want to manipulate. They've given you a posthypnotic suggestion like the one that made you send those shipments of Lipan to the wrong place. Only next time it won't be Lipan, and it'll go somewhere they can get at it.”

“You still think it's hard drugs.”

“Has to be. Why else would anyone want to infiltrate a pharmaceuticals firm? Unless Glickman is doing research in plague virus and some foreign warmongers are after the secret formula.”

“Oh, Gus.”

“Just joking. Not funny, I know. I'm convinced it's drugs, Megan. You're going to start diverting drugs from their correct destinations to ones Algren has instructed you to substitute.”

“Then why haven't I started doing it? Why this delay?”

“Ah, yes. Why the delay.” Gus looked at her gloomily. “I don't know why the delay.”

“And what are we going to do about it?” she pressed. “How do we stop it?”

“Hard questions, Megan.” He didn't have answers.

“I think you're right about our not having much time left,” she said. “Algren could call me tomorrow and tell me to start messing with the drug shipments. But if he'll wait just two more days, we have a chance. If we're going to do anything, Gus, it's going to have to be Thursday night. I don't think we dare put it off any longer. He'll be waiting for me alone at a time when his building will be empty. Or almost empty. We'll never get another chance like that.”

“Two days.” Not much time. “I wish we had longer to look for an alternative.”

“We can spare another twenty-four hours for that,” Megan said tiredly. “Let's let it perk until tomorrow night. If neither one of us has thought of anything by then, then we stop pussyfooting around and sit down and
make plans
. How does that sound?”

“Right now it sounds pretty good.”
But I don't know how it'll sound tomorrow night
. “Twenty-four hours to come up with something.”

“One day,” she nodded. “That's all we can afford.”

CHAPTER 11

Snooks punched out an extension number and listened to the phone ring at the other end.

“Gerald Pierce.”

“Jerry, this is Henrietta Snooks. Got a minute?”

“Sure, Snooks. What's on your mind?”

“I want to find out something, but I'm having trouble wording it so I won't be asking you to betray a professional confidence. A young friend of mine came to see you the other day—a fellow named Gus Bilinski. Remember him?”

“Indeed I do,” Dr. Pierce answered dryly.

Snooks noted the tone and said, “I know he's got a problem and he's hesitant to come to me with it. I'm not asking you to reveal the problem—I just want to know if he's getting help.”

“Not from me, he isn't.”

“Did you give him some names?”

“I offered to, but he said he had plenty. It wasn't his problem anyway, Snooks—there's no professional confidence involved. He just wanted to find out if hypnosis could help in cases of memory loss. He has a friend who suffered a blackout and he wanted to know if I could help her.”

What the hell?
“What did you tell him?”

“I turned him down.” Dr. Pierce laughed ruefully. “It was the damnedest thing, Snooks. Ironic as hell. You see, I knew his friend. In fact, we almost married at one time.”

“Good lord.”
Megan Phillips and Jerry Pierce?

“It was an impossible situation. I had to say no.”

“Of course you did. Well, thanks, Jerry. I guess I don't need to worry about Gus after all.”

“Sure thing.”

Snooks hung up and sat staring at nothing for a minute. Those two
were
up to something—her first hunch had been right. But why were they zooming in on a nice, clean-cut young fellow like Jerry Pierce? Because he and Megan once had almost? But Gus hadn't been back after that one visit.

Snooks considered the possibility that they really were looking for another opinion, to see if someone else could succeed where Snooks herself had failed. She considered it, and she rejected it. Megan might look elsewhere for help, but she wouldn't do it behind Snooks's back. Not her style.

Besides, that was altogether too innocent an interpretation to put on it. They were looking for Megan's weekend hypnotist, that much was clear. Gus must be methodically working his way through all the hypnotists in town—god, what a chore. But how would they know if they'd found the right one?

Only Gus had gone to see Jerry Pierce, but Jerry had known about Megan. Gus must have mentioned her name or something. Was that all they had to go on? Gus would say Megan's name and then watch for some sort of facial reaction? Oh, those
children!
And poor Jerry Pierce who'd once been Megan's
inamorato
—Snooks doubted that he'd been able to keep his face expressionless.

Gus might think Jerry was the baddie he was so hotly pursuing. But Megan would know better—or would she suspect Jerry herself? No, she'd know what his reaction meant.

So they were still looking? But what did they plan on doing if they did find the right man? As in answer to a summons came a memory of Megan's voice, saying:
Then we kill him
.

Easy, now—that was a violent emotional reaction, partially purged by the very speaking of it. It certainly wasn't an announced plan of action. Megan had been thunderstruck at what she'd said—but then she'd turned on Snooks and
started a fight
. Sublimation, misdirection? Diversionary tactic?

The only way to eliminate the danger is to eliminate the hypnotist
, Megan's voice continued relentlessly in her head. Snooks was revolted by her own suspicions—but she'd been in the head business too long to dismiss them as impossible.

She had to find out what was going on. Megan Phillips wouldn't give away a thing she didn't want to, but maybe Snooks could get the truth out of Gus.

She reached for the phone.

But Gus wasn't home to take the call.

Because he had a tidy mind, he spent his time between classes that Wednesday tying up a couple of loose ends. He kept his appointments with the last two hypnotherapists on his list, and got exactly the reaction he'd expected: they both looked at Megan's picture, smiled politely, and handed it back. So that was that.

The only alternative to killing Algren that even occurred to him was bribery, but he rejected that idea almost before he finished thinking it. Even if Megan could come up with enough money to buy Algren off (which Gus doubted), that meant they'd have to trust the unscrupulous hypnotist to keep his word for the rest of their lives. And that, of course, was unthinkable.

For Megan, the day passed distressingly quickly. She was no busier than usual; but every time she tried to give some thought to alternatives to murder, something came along to distract her attention. Twice it was Bogert, stiffly requesting some change in Bethel Park's shipping arrangements. Megan still looked upon him with a jaundiced eye; she'd distrusted him too long to reclassify him as one of the good guys without a struggle. Bogert would have made such a good villain.

So when they met that night in Gus's apartment, neither Gus nor Megan had thought of anything. Their self-imposed twenty-four-hour limit was up. They looked at each other with something like awe when they realized they had committed themselves to the murder of Harrison J. Algren.

Gus was troubled. Visibly so.

Megan spoke briskly. “I think we ought to keep it as simple as we can. If we get too elaborate we might trip ourselves up. We're amateurs at this business.” She stopped; there was no ignoring Gus's distress. “Gus, are you having second thoughts?”

“No—no, I'm in.” He jumped to his feet and began pacing, as if the apartment had suddenly grown too small to hold him. He would have liked to be sitting outside in the concealing darkness of a balcony, but basement apartments don't have balconies. Megan lapsed into silence, waiting until he was ready to tell her what was on his mind.

Murder was on his mind, of course. Gus hadn't lied; he was not having second thoughts. He
wanted
to help dispose of Harrison J. Algren—but he just didn't know if he could take another man's life away from him, no matter how black-hearted a villain he might be. Megan Phillips would never be safe as long as Algren lived; therefore, Algren must die. That part of it was simple.

What was not so simple was the actual doing of the deed. Intellectually Gus was committed to Algren's death. But he knew himself well enough to know that an intellectual commitment might not be enough to carry him through the horror they were planning. Murder was the ultimate irreversible act. Snooks had said everyone was capable of killing under certain conditions. Gus wanted to find out, quite simply and rather morbidly, whether an undetected killer lurked inside the mind and body known as Gus Bilinski.

Whether Gus could go through with it or not was his problem and his alone. What was worrying him was the danger he might be putting Megan in. What if he folded at the crucial moment, the very time she was depending on him the most? What would happen to her then?

It was only fair to tell her. “Megan, neither one of us really knows how well we'll hold up when the actual time comes. I think I can go through with it—I
want
to go through with it. I really do want to get that guy. But you've got to take into consideration that I might turn out to be undependable in a crisis. I think I'm trustworthy. I just wish I could promise it.”

Megan sighed. “Gus, I don't even trust myself. If you want to pull out—”

“No, I didn't mean that—”

“I know, I understand. What I meant was that if any time tomorrow night you change your mind, that's all right with me. I'm going through with it, by myself if I have to. I have
got
to get out from under that man's control. If you could just come with me, though—that would help.”

Gus spoke with new resolution. “I told you I'd help you kill him, and I will. I don't know what I'm being so namby-pamby about. Snooks said everybody was capable of killing if they had to—I'm just as capable of it as you are,” he asserted stoutly, and immediately realized how young he sounded.