One Fearful Yellow Eye (15 page)

"You're repeating yourself. There's another question I Want to..."

He looked at his watch. "Okay. Come down to the apartment and ask it there. I'm expecting some people and I want to be there when they get there."

I got my coat from the attendant and we rode down to the sixteenth floor and got off. He explained that quite a few of the members kept an apartment in the building as a convenience, and if they were going to be away for six months or longer, the club management would arrange a sublet.

He unlocked it. It was as impersonal as a decorator's advertisement.

As soon as I had a chance I asked my question. "Mr. Trumbill, last year, in April or May or June, while you and Heidi were still together..."

"I moved out the last week in May."

"Okay. During those last two months did anything happen which seemed odd."

"Odd?"

"Any kind of accident which could have been dangerous, or any near-accident, where Heidi was involved?"

"Why?"

"It could be important and the reasons would take too long to explain."

"Important to whom, McGee?"

"Does it matter? Come on."

"There wasn't anything.. , unless you mean something like that damned candy."

"Candy?"

"Oh, there was a kind she was nuts about. Chocolate cherries. A lot of juice inside. She never bought them for herself. Her father would bring her a box or have them sent over on special occasions. Birthdays, anniversaries. Sometime in early May-we'd had a big scrap-I walked through the living room. She was watching the news on television. I was going out, and I knew she damned well wasn't going to say good-bye dear have a nice time. The Way she ate them, she didn't nibble. She'd lift one out of the box, pop it into her mouth, and mash it. The box was half gone. She was down to the second layer. Suddenly she began making the damnedest noises, gasping and whoofing and spitting pieces of chocolate all over. She went to the kitchen on a dead run, scaring the hell out of the maid. She kept rinsing her mouth in cold water. Her eyes were running and her nose was running. She couldn't say a word we could understand. Finally after she ate some crackers and rinsed her mouth out some more, she started chewing me out for pulling such a nasty trick. I finally convinced her I didn't know what the hell she was talking about. She had gotten a chocolate that instead of having a cherry and cherry juice inside had apparently been filled with about a quarter ounce of straight Tabasco. She was furious. I was running late, so I left."

"How did it happen?"

"She never found out. She opened all the ones left in the box. They were all perfect. She phoned her father and told him about it. He said it must have happened after the box was opened, because he had bought it one day, and brought it over to our place the next day in person, and the shop was certainly reliable. He said maybe it was some friend of mine who knew her habits. I guess you could classify that as an accident. It made her very uncomfortable, but I guess there are things you could put in candy that would do more than..."

The phone rang and he answered it, then hung up and told me his people were on the way up. I thanked him and said I'd run along. He said, "Meet the group, McGee. Highly talented people.

We're going to Guadeloupe and make a motion picture. Highly unusual script. Be released in France. Some of the crew is there now, picking locations."

There was a brisk rap on the door, and he went and let four of them in, two young women, two young men. They were laughing and gay and all a little tight. One was a Limey lass, the height of mod exhibitionism,. her little-girl skirt a good four inches above the kee, and a metallic golden serpent wrapped around her left leg just below the knee. While she was saying, with little chopping motions of her hands, "What a fantastically gawstly city Gadge darling, ectually!" he was introducing her as Pansy Perkins, certainly I'd heard of her.

"Certainly I haven't, sorry" I said. "I live a quiet life."

With a speculative glint she started appraising me, but Trumbill put a huge paw on her slender shoulder, and as he introduced a busty Italian girl whose name was vaguely familiar (she took a slender cigar out of the center of her considerable mouth to acknowledge the introduction) and then a Pierre something, talented director, all in black, even to little black onyx buttons in his pierced ears, and a Willy something, fat, pasty, scruffy, with too blatant an Irish accent, Gadge was at the same time stroking the throat of his Pansy with a spatulate thumb, an attention which unfocused her eyes, loosened her mouth, and sagged her head like a wilting poppy.

"We are going to go down there and do something true," Trumbill said. "We are going to work hard and we are going to work well, and get it all down the way it happens."

Suddenly I realized who he was trying to be. "For God's sake, Papa, don't forget the wineskins.

Catch a brave and true marlin. But if this curious quartet has conned you into backing some feelthy movies, why bother trying to snow me? I don't care who reels you in, Pansy or Pierre.

Papa never had that kind of problem."

Pierre hissed like a pooty tat, and the Italian gave an evil grin around her cigar, and Irish belched loudly, and Pansy murmured a few gutter words. Martin Hollinder Trumbill the Fourth gave a tight grin and rolled his big shoulders, clapped his hands like a gunshot, and came at me very Black Belt, springing and landing this way and that, paws in chopping position as he yelled,

"Huhh!" and "Haaah!"

His quartet backed out of the way, looking expectant. Their imitation Papa would defend the honor of the group and throw Bigmouth all over the place. I pointed beyond him at Pierre and yelled, "No knives, you!"

Gadge turned quickly to see the imaginary knife, and opened up his left side just enough. I screwed my heels down into his gunmetal carpeting, pivoted hips and shoulders like Palmer needing an eagle on a par five, and bombed him on the left side, just above the belt, slightly around to the rear, straight punch, hooking slightly at impact, good snap, lots of follow-through.

He groaned, arched, grabbed at the impact point with both hands, and stood with his face screwed up like a little brave boy on the playground trying not to cry.

As I headed for the door I said, "Get it looked at before you leave, Trumbill. I may have tore up that kidney some."

The four rushed to him with little coos and murmurings and cries of compassion. I left as they were leading him to a chair. As I was going down in the elevator I realized that my appraisal of the relationship was not quite accurate. Those four might be under the impression they had a captive placid beast and if they kept scratching it behind the ears, it would moo with joy and give milk indefinitely.

They would discover eventually that it was much more like the relationship of shark and remora fish. The four remora fish would suck hold of the shark for the ride. Sharks are messy eaters.

Remora are sustained by the bits of torn meat afloat when the shark feeds. But when any remora becomes too greedy and a little. careless, he becomes a part of the very meal he is trying to share, an accident seldom noticed by the shark.

I did know that I wanted no judo or karate games. The expert can whip you with no fuss, and the
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amateur can kill you without meaning to, if you give them a chance to play their Asiatic game.

The mystique of judo is based upon an irrationality. It supposes that the opponent is going to play by their rules. The way to meet it is with a hefty glass ashtray smacko in the chops, or knocking a kneecap loose with a leg off a chair or coffee table, or faking them out and giving them enough bright and sudden pain they forget their trick art. The gutsy dramas on the mass media tend to make us forget that the average urban male is so unaccustomed to sudden pain that if you mash his nose flat, he'll be nauseated for hours, spend two days in bed, and be shaky for the rest of the week.

The temperature had dropped. Snow was bounding like wedding rice off the pavements. It stung my tropical nose, and the wind yanked at my topcoat, congealed my blood, and made my bones feel like old icicles wrapped in freezer bags. Santas dinglejangled their street-corner appeals, hopping from foot to foot, changing the bell from hand to hand, saying thank you sir with a huff of frosty breath, and the department stores sang "Ave Maria" in stereo high-fidelity while stocky ladies whomped each other with purses and elbows as they competed for Bargain Gifts Galore, and the stone-faced virgins who staff the toy areas drove away the urchins who had come to play with the trains.

I found a warm and tranquil place where they put beef in the beef stew, and ground their own Colombian coffee beans, and even had a waiter who expressed a certain tender anxiety that I should be content with what he brought me. In the darkness of the afternoon when I left the car lights were on, the snow was horizontal, the girls hugged and scuttled, and I couldn't get my rental car started.

EIGHT

THE PHONE was ringing when I unlocked my room door at the Drake. It was Maurie Ragna phoning to see if I had talked to Smith and if he had been cooperative.

"I'd say he was very anxious to please, Maurie." "Good. Good. Kid, what I wanted to tell you, I suddenly have to make a little business trip. Three days, four days. But what I am going to do, I'm going to have somebody stand by this number with the word if you call for any help, you get it."

"Don't go to all that trouble."

"Right now I'd be dead a long time and he talks about trouble! Look, I worry about you. It's a big pieCe of money you're working on, sweetie. I can give you some top-quality walkaround muscle for as long as you want. Looks like a bond salesman. Drives like Phil Hill. Knows the fastest route from anywhere to anywhere. Licensed to carry. Quick as a cat, with a left hook you got to see to believe. Kid, I would feel a lot better about you, and I swear to God, which you should know anyway, it isn't a way of moving in on your action."

I assured him that such a thought would never enter my mind, and I managed to refuse the offer without hurting his feelings too much.

My full and rightful share of Chicago's pollution had fallen onto me all day, a Monday fallout, rimming my collar with gray, It was four in the afternoon, but from my hotel window it looked like midnight. I ordered up a jug of ice, broke out my travel-keg of Plymouth, and built a tall one. I showered first, then drew a tub as hot as I could stand it, and once I had made a gingerly descent into it, I reached and gathered up the icy glass and took one long draw upon it and put it
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back away from the steam.

Some of the small sybaritic enhancements of life are worth far more than they cost, and one of them is the very hot tub combined with a sup of dry and icy gin which goes freezing down the throat, bombs the gut, then spreads its inside warmth in pleasant counterpoint to the tub water.

To hell with all their hot rocks, whipping each other with greenery and diving into snowbanks.

McGee will take a hot hotel tub and a very cold gin.

This is when the mind works. There is a hairy chimp caged in the back of the mind. The bananas hang out of reach. If you can make him stop leaping and chittering and clacking his angry teeth, make him settle down and look around the cage, usually he can find some boxes which he can pile on top of each other, and some sticks, and some string to tie the sticks together. Then he can climb onto the top box and knock down some bananas.

The biggest box in my cage was the concept of how very busy that month of May had been, nineteen months ago. A singing fellow had snatched Branton Fortner Geis and let him go loose in a downtown park. Ethel the Cat had been skewered by a prowler and left in her blood puddle on the nurse's kitchen floor. Heidi, the snow virgin, had chomped tabasco candy and sprung into considerable activity.

Symbols of violence. Demonstration. Kindly note, Dr. Geis, that I could have strangled the kid instead of letting him loose. I could have skewered the nurse instead of the cat. The candy could have had the bland and deadly flavor of almonds instead of the heat of tabasco. So let us start negotiations, Doctor, sir, and you can give me six hundred thousand arguments as to why l should not ugly up your last year or so of life.

So I sipped of coolness again, and became Fort Geis. Okay, I have dealt in the very basic life-,anddeath business for many years. I have stuck my fingers into the brain-meat after lifting off the sawed lid of bone and laying it aside. Had I been hooked on money, I would have laid away a lot more. Now here is a crazy who wants to take away what I have put aside. Pay off, Doc, or you'll die absolutely alone, because everyone who loves you and whom you love will go first. I'll wear you out with funerals, man. Dying alone is a dreary bit.

But, I say, as the Doctor, how did you know I was dying? And, second question, how do you know how much I can come up with?

Drop that for the moment, chimp.. It won't hold your weight.

So as the good Doctor Geis, I look around. Nurse Stanyard can make it. Heidi is married to a lot of tax-free municipals. Roger is doing well. But what about the new wife? So negotiations are in order. Look here, old chap, I can't leave Glory without a bean. You'll have to cut the demand a bit so that I can leave some of the insurance intact so she'll have an income. Money is not important to her. It doesn't have to be much. A little security for the girl.

Then, as I have begun the payoff routine, I find my daughter Heidi is divorcing Trumbill. She will need money. She depends upon it. I find out she is going to let Gadge off lightly. But if she can't get it from me, she better get it from him, so I run in a legal team to pluck him pretty well.

So why did I send ten thousand to Janice Stanyard with such a vague note? Why did I refuse to talk about it to her when she came to the side of the deathbed? Who has Janice's name and address to use in case of emergency? The signs pointed to Susan, the daughter he had fathered
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by the housekeeper's daughter during his first wife's final fatal illness. Susan had been given a place to turn, but that had ended when the Doctor canceled his arrangement with Francisco Smith and Allied Services.