Mr. X (84 page)

My body shook from the inside out, and the smell of smoke clung to my clothes. I flattened my hands on the table. When they stopped trembling, I tugged Cordwainer Hatch’s bible out of my pocket. Like my clothes, it stank of destruction. I opened it at random and read the first sentence to meet my eye:

I threw the book on the table.

Feeble lamplight shone on the fountain in Veal Yard. Perhaps two hours of my time had brought me into the ordinary world’s night. I scrubbed my hands and face, shoved the photographs into their folders, and went down to the lobby.

The night clerk pretended not to smirk at my jacket. “Message for you, Mr. Dunstan. I was about to send it up this very second.”

“Read it to me,” I said.

Raising his eyebrows, he reached under the desk and unfolded a slip of paper. “ ‘Happy Birthday. I called Nettie to see if you were there, and she spilled the beans. Want a nice present? Come to my house. Laurie.’ ” The clerk managed to make every word sound obscene. He refolded the paper and offered it to me with elaborately ironic courtesy. “Would you care to keep this lovely memento, sir?”

Stewart Hatch’s 500SL slanted over the edge of Laurie’s driveway with its front wheels on the lawn. I swung around it, trotted to the front door, and let myself in.

Posy Fairbrother was holding Cobbie in her arms at the bottom of the staircase. He looked as rigid as a flagpole. Stewart shouted in the kitchen, but I could not make out his words. Cobbie reached for me, and I pulled him to my chest. I could feel his heart beating.

“Should I call 911?” Posy whispered.

A plate smashed against the kitchen wall. Stewart let out a drunken bellow. Another plate exploded. Cobbie began to cry. “I’ll take care of it,” I said. “Cobbie, can you go back to Posy?” His head nodded against my neck. “Here we go.” Posy folded him into an embrace and moved up the stairs.

I walked into the kitchen. Standing at the counter next to the alcove, Laurie looked at me and communicated that she was frightened but in charge of herself. Fragments of broken plates covered the floor between her and Stewart Hatch, who was beside the gaping china cabinets, his feet planted wide to keep himself steady. He had perspired through the back of a nice small-check Italian shirt. “Don’t you ever get sick of lying?” Stewart yelled. He grabbed another plate and fired it against the wall five feet to her left. Laurie glanced at me again, and Stewart turned to look over his shoulder. Sweat glued his executive hair to his forehead, and the whites of his eyes were blotched with red.

“Get the hell out of my house.” Then he brought his legs together and put his back against the counter, smiling. “Jesus, Dunstan, even you ought to know better than to wear a jacket like that.”

“Cobbie’s frightened,” I said. “Why don’t you go back to your place?”

“This isn’t about Cobbie! This bitch ruined my life.” He
wagged a finger at me. “But you know all about that, don’t you?” Stewart took an insinuating step forward. “Screw my wife, send me to jail, is that the deal?”

“Are you going to jail, Stewart?”

“I hate to say it, I
really
hate to say it, but I may be given that delightful honor. Ashton did the impossible, and we know how, don’t we? I’m a reasonable guy, I’d just like to hear the truth for a change.” Boozy rage darkened his flush.

He was getting close to losing control again, and he liked the idea. Losing control would make him feel better than he did now.

“This is what puzzles me,” Stewart said. “That Kentucky nobody tied me into deals she couldn’t have known about unless some underhanded piece of
shit
turned over the documentation. Which nobody knew I had, except Grennie, and he sure as hell didn’t do it.”

He grinned at me, looked down at half of a perfectly bisected plate, and kicked it aside with one of his tasseled, basket-weave loafers. He gave a demented Huckleberry Finn chuckle. “We have been requested to appear at Police Headquarters at nine o’clock tomorrow morning to undergo”—he raised his head and searched for the word—“the
formalities
before questioning on a number of criminal charges. Fraud, for example. Tax evasion. Embezzlement. Getting down and dirty with that glorious institution, the U.S. Post Office. Grennie is shitting porcupines. My guess is, he’ll eat a bullet. Won’t that make me look good?”

“I like your compassion,” I said.

“Yeah. I like yours, too.” Stewart wiped his hands over his face. “Be a stand-up guy, tell me how you did it. I’m in the dark here. Help me out.”

“Stewart,” I said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

He flattened a hand over his heart. “Did you break into my building after all? The rules of evidence say that’s a no-no.”

“You were a lousy criminal,” I said. “You didn’t even know enough to hire C. Clayton Creech.”

Stewart wheeled sideways and raised his arms. “
Creech!
My father would rather have crossed the street than say good morning to C. Clayton Creech.”

“Your father wasn’t a criminal,” I said. “Cordwainer took care of that for him.”

Stewart’s face took another incremental step toward purple. He looked at Laurie, who shook her head. “No? Well, no. I
suppose not.” He swung back to me, ticking toward eruption. “Now, little buddy, did I happen to tell you about my departed Uncle Cordwainer? Refresh my memory.”

“You told me about him,” I said.

“Did I happen to mention his name? I think not.”

“Cordwainer’s name is plastered all over town. But I understand why you’d prefer to keep quiet about him.”

He reared back. “Who have you been talking to?”

“All secrets come out in the end,” I said. “Even yours. Go home, Stewart.”

“You know? I think the Sesquicentennial was a really crummy idea.” He laughed, making a sound like a crow, dry, self-important, completely without humor. “Maybe this bitch with a cash register for a soul, and I speak of my dear wife, maybe she didn’t sell me out after all.”

“Don’t think I wouldn’t have,” Laurie said.

“And she’s
married
to me,” Hatch said. He laughed his ugly laugh,
caw caw caw
. “Does that tell you anything?” He was on the edge of the explosion he had wanted all along. “Tell me about secrets, Dunstan. I’m getting a better picture here, I’m getting, what’s the word, some perspective.”

“If you don’t get out, I’ll put you out.”

“Do you think I have anything to lose?” He stepped toward me. There was a tight grin on his face. “I don’t. But you do.” He threw a lazy punch at my head.

I dodged to the left and hit him in the stomach.

Laurie yelled, “Stop it!” Stewart staggered back. “Cute,” he said. “Know my golden rule?”

I shook my head.

“Never fight when you’re shitfaced.” Stewart dropped his hands and took a step toward the back door. When I moved closer, he pivoted on his heel and fired off a fast, hard left that would have broken my jaw if I hadn’t ducked. His fist rammed into my skull. My head rang. I saw Stewart move in to follow up with a right and punched him in the gut again, harder than the first time. He shuffled into the counter and said, “Uh-huh.” His eyes were almost entirely red. He reached behind his back, fumbled in a drawer, and came out with a paring knife.

“I was looking for something a little more imposing,” he said.

Laurie started to move toward the living room. Stewart pointed the knife at her and yelled, “You stay put!” She glanced at me.

“I’m sick of Hatches coming at me with knives,” I said. Too angry for common sense, I went straight at him. “Stick me, you white-bread, chicken-shit, overprivileged future convict.”

To keep me in my place, Stewart jabbed at nothing. He shifted to the side, went a hair off-balance, and tried to correct himself by leaning forward and taking another poke at me. I grabbed his wrist, yanked him forward, and kicked him in the ankle. He toppled facedown onto the kitchen tiles and the broken plates. In tribute to Lieutenant Rowley, I kicked Stewart in the ribs.

“Stop!”
Laurie shrieked.

I straddled him and dropped to my knees. He grunted. I took the paring knife out of his hand.

“Don’t kill him!” Laurie said.

“Be quiet, please, Laurie,” I muttered, and twisted Stewart’s right arm behind his back. Then I hauled on his arm and pulled him to his knees. Another pull got him upright. “Damn, Stewart,” I said. “You need a keeper.” I biffed him in the ear with my left hand. “Should we call the police, tell them how you tried to knife me?”

“Fuck you if you can’t take a joke,” Stewart said. “I’m under a little stress right now.”

I wrested his arm another two inches up his spine, and he cried out in pain. “I know you’re troubled, Stewart. But you pulled a knife on me, and I can’t say I dislike the idea of hurting you.”

Stewart kicked the heel of a tasseled loafer into my right shin and tried to break away. I rammed his arm toward the back of his neck and heard the tearing of ligaments and the loud pop of the ball detaching from his scapula.

Stewart groaned and staggered forward.

“You broke his arm!”

“Actually, what I did was, I pulled his shoulder out of joint,” I said. “After good old Stewart drives to Lawndale and checks into emergency, a nice doctor will pop it back into place right away. You can drive with your left arm, can’t you, Stewart?”

“They wouldn’t let you in the door at Lawndale,” Stewart said.

I whapped him in the shoulder. Stewart yelped, and his knees wandered.

“I can drive.”

I pushed him down the counter and told him to open the door. We went out to his Mercedes. “Where are your car keys?”

“Right pocket.”

I dipped into his pocket for the keys. Stewart collapsed onto the leather seat and dragged his legs under the wheel. I put the keys in his left hand. Sweating and grimacing, he managed to start the car. He twisted sideways to get his left hand on the shift lever. Whimpering, he put the car into reverse and backed into the driveway. The sound of crumpling metal and breaking glass told me he had also backed into the Taurus. The Mercedes shot down the driveway and rocketed into Blueberry Lane. One of its tail lights swung from a tangle of wires. The right rear panel of the Taurus looked like a used tissue. I took the folders off my passenger seat and looked over the top of the car to see Laurie gazing speculatively at me from the living room window.

122

She stepped outside and hugged me. “Thank you, thank you, thank you for coming. I don’t know what he would have done, he was so out of his mind.” I smelled a faint, not unpleasant trace of whiskey.