The Man Who Killed His Brother (15 page)

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Authors: Stephen R. Donaldson

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“I guess you did.” Sondra had just said the same thing. “He’s taking it out on his secretaries.”
“That’s their problem.” She was in no mood to sympathize. “If they don’t like it, let them stand up for themselves.”
For a minute we stood there scowling at each other—or
rather scowling past each other. Then she asked, “How about you?”
I shook myself, made an effort to haul my insides into some semblance of order. Then I told her about Mabel, Connie, and Joan—and Jon Gren.
She wasn’t as impressed as I’d expected by the news about Joan Phillips’ intern boyfriend. “You’re assuming that if somebody is leaking those files, they’re leaking to somebody they know personally. That doesn’t have to be true. It could be pure business. They’re just doing it for money.”
“At the moment, that doesn’t matter,” I countered. “The point is, it gives us a place to work.” She nodded, and I went on. “Anyway, our list is down to five; three secretaries, Kirke, and Greenling. And it isn’t even lunchtime yet.”
She looked at me sharply. “You’re feeling better.”
“I’m making a contribution.”
“Glad to hear it.”
Her tone was sardonic, but I Knew that it wasn’t aimed at me. Sardonic was just her way of keeping herself distant, objective. She was working. She didn’t have time to worry about my poor dismal ego. I wanted to kiss her again, but I knew better.
“Who do you want to tackle next?” she asked.
“We have an appointment with Mr. Greenling.” Axbrewder playing at formality.
“Let’s go.”
I opened the door for her, mainly to remind her I wasn’t Julian Kirke, and followed her back into the office.
Sondra’s face had that swollen almost-crying look, and she wasn’t willing to meet my eyes. But she came over to us right away and guided us down the back hall to Astin Greenling’s office. In a minute we were standing in a room that would’ve made a perfectly comfortable broom closet if it hadn’t been crammed to the ceiling with files and textbooks. In a tired voice, the curriculum vice-chairman offered us seats. When I sat down, my back was jammed against a bookcase and my knees were pushing the edge of his desk.
He looked vaguely more rumpled than he had the day before, but other than that he seemed pretty much the same.
He gave the impression that he was too obsessed with and exhausted by his work to get dressed in the morning without help. No matter what Dr. Sandoval said about him, he belonged on the list. He looked like a moral wreck. There aren’t very many people in the world so good that they wouldn’t sell their own mothers into slavery—if you got them tired enough and desperate enough. Especially if they needed the money for some “good” reason.
But he didn’t make any effort to put us off, didn’t tell us how busy he was. He didn’t say anything at all. He just sat behind his desk and looked at us with those exhausted eyes, waiting for us to let him know why we were there.
Ginny took a few moments deciding what approach to use. Then she said, “When Mr. Stretto showed you those notes yesterday, the only thing you had to contribute was an inane comment about ‘penmanship.’ Didn’t you understand what you were reading?”
Apparently she’d decided on the hard-headed approach.
Greenling made an aimless gesture with his hands. “It doesn’t have anything to do with me.” He didn’t sound hopeless. For him hopeless was so long ago that he didn’t remember what it felt like anymore.
“I disagree.” To hear her, you would’ve thought she’d already made up her mind about this case. “There are only five people in this entire school system who could’ve kidnapped those girls. You’re one of them.”
“Kid—?” If she’d suddenly ripped off her clothes and jumped him right then and there, he couldn’t have been more surprised. “Kid—?” He couldn’t even get the word out. Probably his reaction would’ve been the same if he were innocent or guilty. It’s amazing how hard it can be to tell the difference in this lousy world of ours.
“That’s not all,” she went on. “Of those five people, you’re the only one who has a motive.”
“Motive?” He was gaping like a fish. “I—? Motive?”
“You need the money. For your wife.”
Wife
was the magic word. It transformed him. Not all at once. He had to struggle with it for a minute. I watched with a kind of nauseated fascination while terrible things went
on inside him. He looked like an alcoholic going through withdrawal. Then it was over. His eyes burned, and all the lines of his face were sharper. In a tight voice, he said, “Get out. My wife is dying. Get out of here.”
Ginny didn’t flinch. “How are you paying for it, Mr. Greenling?”
But he didn’t flinch either. “We have security guards. I didn’t want them. The money for these things always seems to come out of curriculum. But now I’m glad we have them. Get out!”
Ginny studied him for a moment. Then she got to her feet. She’d done what we came for—she’d turned up the heat. There wasn’t any point in trying to call Greenling’s bluff. And right then he didn’t look like a bluffer.
“We’re going to find those girls, Mr. Greenling,” she said evenly. “Whoever kidnapped them we’re going to nail to the wall.”
Then she left the room.
I stayed where I was. Sometimes that works. Sometimes when people get mad at her they’re willing to talk to me. Innocent people, usually. When she was gone, I said, “Come on, Greenling. Save yourself some grief. Tell me how you pay for it.”
He picked up his phone, pushed a button. When a voice answered, he said, “Connie, get Security. Now.”
I didn’t argue with him. It was his play. He could call it any way he wanted. I wedged my way out of his closet and closed the door behind me.
Ginny was waiting for me in the hall. I said, “Nothing,” and she nodded. But she wasn’t really paying attention. She was on some other trail. She had a hunting look in her face.
After a moment she said, “Did you see it?”
“See what?”
“Over on the right side of his desk. A stack of paper. Probably for notes. White stuff. Half sheets.
“They looked like they’d been torn along one edge.”
I
said, “I don’t believe it. That man is as innocent as the day he was born. Even if he has something to be guilty about, he’s still innocent.”
She looked at me—not challenging, just questioning. “What makes you say that?”
I was about to answer,
Because I’ve been there and I ought to know.
But I couldn’t say that to her, not the way things were going today. So instead I said, “He’s got too much dignity.” It was lame, but I didn’t have anything better to offer at the moment.
Ginny said, “Dignity covers a multitude of sins. I’d rather have proof.”
“Yeah? I thought you were the one who said we didn’t need proof.”
She grinned quickly. “That’s true. But I wouldn’t turn it down if you offered it to me.”
I loved that grin. “What’re we waiting for? Let’s go find some.”
“Right.” She went about three steps down the hall, then knocked at a door with a sign on it saying:
MRS. MARTHA SCURVEY
BUDGET VICE-CHAIRMAN
From inside, a woman’s voice snapped. “Go away. I’m busy.”
Ginny opened the door, stuck her head in, then looked back at me with a sudden ferocity in her grin. She gestured for me to follow her.
“I told you to go away!” the woman said angrily.
When I got into the office—which was about the same
size as Greenling’s, but a hell of a lot neater—I found out why. The air was thick with sweet gray smoke. Martha Scurvey sat stiffly behind her desk with a hash pipe in her hands. Probably she didn’t want anyone to come in until the air-conditioning cleared the air. Or maybe until she smoked a cigar to cover the odor.
“I’ll tell you what, Ms. Scurvey,” Ginny offered. “You give us a little of your time, and we’ll forget what that stuff smells like.” I could hear the grin in her voice.
“That’s blackmail.” Martha Scurvey was angry enough to pluck chickens, but she was also under complete control. A dangerous combination. She must’ve had a lot of charm on tap, or she wouldn’t be sitting where she was. At the moment, however, it didn’t show. The only thing she showed was stainless steel. I wondered where she picked up the hash habit. Offhand, she didn’t look like the kind of woman who needed it.
“Not at all,” Ginny said smoothly. “Just persuasion. The only thing we’re interested in is a little talk.”
Ms. Scurvey didn’t want to talk. She wanted us to get the hell out of her life. But she knew how to concede without losing face. With a gesture that might’ve looked gracious if her eyes had backed it up, she offered us chairs. While we seated ourselves, she stashed her pipe, pouch, and matches in a briefcase, which she locked. Then she leaned her elbows on the desk and said, “I prefer Mrs., not Ms. I’m a married woman and proud of it.”
That sounded as phony as her graciousness. How she felt about her marriage was irrelevant. She was just trying to get on top of the situation.
Ginny let her try. “Certainly, Mrs. Scurvey. We’re not here to give you any trouble. As far as we know, you’re in the clear.”
I had to admire her. Ginny plays control games as well as anyone. Mrs. Scurvey had already been outmaneuvered, and she didn’t even know it. “In the clear?” she asked. “I don’t understand.”
After that I stopped listening for a minute. I was distracted.
In a neat stack off to one side of her desk, Mrs. Scurvey had a pile of white writing paper. A handy size for notes—full sheets torn neatly in half. From where I sat, the paper looked like good twenty-pound bond.
I felt a childish urge to nudge Ginny and point, but I resisted it. Instead I shifted my weight, sneaked a couple of deep breaths, and went back to paying attention.
Ginny was saying, “—your opinion of Mr. Greenling?”
Mrs. Scurvey looked at her hands, checked her fingernails. “He’s conscientious—very conscientious—but hopelessly out of date. His ideas of education have yet to reach the twentieth century. I’d love to do a strict cost analysis of his department, but he won’t let me touch it. I’m expected to take his word for everything. At present.” She made it clear that Astin Greenling wouldn’t have the power to turn her down much longer.
“Do you know about his wife?”
“He doesn’t talk about her, and I don’t ask. I’ve heard she’s ill. That’s more than I want to know.”
“What about Paul Stretto?”
“Paul is a forward-thinking educator with a keen appreciation for economic reality. He’s brought this school system a long way toward facing the facts of life and doing the job it’s supposed to do.”
I was glad Ginny didn’t ask what kind of job that was. The smugness in Mrs. Scurvey’s tone made my scalp itch. I didn’t like what it implied about her relationship with Stretto. Fortunately Ginny wasn’t interested in theories of education. Instead of pursuing Stretto, she asked, “How do you feel about Julian Kirke?”
“Personally, I think he’s odious. Professionally, he does great work. His new filing system will save us thousands of dollars a year—once he gets it into the computer.”
“Do you see him socially, know anything about him?”
Mrs. Scurvey gave Ginny a withering stare and said, “No.” Kirke was probably too low for her. He wasn’t chairman of anything.
“Who works on the files with him?”
“Three of his girls,” she said stiffly. “Mabel, Joan, and—and Connie? I think that’s her name.”
“What do you know about them?”
“What should I know about them? They’re his girls. Ask him.”
“Do they ever do any work for you?”
“Just routine typing.”
“They don’t help you with the files?”
“When I want something out of the files, I get it myself.” Mrs. Scurvey was running out of endurance. Her tone would’ve curdled milk. All of a sudden, I guessed that she didn’t smoke hash because she liked it. She smoked it because she needed it. She was brittle inside and didn’t want anybody to know.
Before I could think about it, I asked her, “How long has your husband been dead, Mrs. Scurvey?”
Milk, hell. She practically curdled me. “That’s none of your business.”
Which told me what I wanted to know. Now she made sense to me. Her high-pressure approach to her job, her relationship with Stretto, the hash—she was running away from grief. I half wanted to ask Ginny to leave her alone. A married woman, and proud of it. It’s a hard life when you lose everything that used to tell you who you are.
But Ginny was almost through anyway. “Just one practical question, Mrs. Scurvey. What’s the phone setup around here?”
“The phone—? I don’t understand.”
“If I wanted to call you, could I reach you directly, or would I have to go through one of the secretaries?”
“Through the secretaries.”
“And when you want to make a call?”
Mrs. Scurvey sighed. “Through the secretaries.”
“So they can make calls that you don’t know about, but you can’t make or receive any calls that they don’t know about. Right?”
Mrs. Scurvey was hugging herself with her arms. “Are you finished?”
“Yes, I’m finished,” Ginny said. “Just let me make a note
of that.” Before Mrs. Scurvey could stop her—if Mrs. Scurvey wanted to stop her—she reached over and took a sheet off the stack of white paper. She got a pen out of her purse, scribbled something on one end of the sheet, then put it and the pen back in her purse.
“Thanks for your time. We’re sorry we troubled you.
“Come on, Brew.” Thirty seconds later, we were out of the school board offices and walking down the halls of Central High.
I wanted to see that sheet of paper. But Ginny didn’t seem to be in any hurry to look at it, so I asked her, “What was all that about the phones?”
“Just fishing,” she said. “Whoever we’re looking for doesn’t work alone. One way or another, I think there have to be at least two of them. It’s hard for me to picture somebody who works here moonlighting as a pusher successfully. Too many things could go wrong. I figure we’re looking for somebody who gets the information, then passes it to somebody else. Somebody else who handles the girls.”
I stopped her. “They wouldn’t be stupid enough to call each other at work.”
“That depends.” She pushed open a door, and we went out into the glare of the parking lot. The asphalt swam with heat. “Greenling or Scurvey wouldn’t because their calls go through the secretaries. But that doesn’t apply to the secretaries.”
When we reached the Olds, she put her purse on the hood and took out the sheet of paper.
Sure enough, it was twenty-pound bond. Neatly torn along one edge. The watermark matched all the other notes.
“Damn it,” Ginny muttered under her breath.
“For sure.” I couldn’t figure out what Martha Scurvey was doing with paper like this. She wasn’t supposed to be one of our suspects. She’d only been on the board a year.
But Ginny was cursing something else. “I should’ve grabbed a sheet from Greenling, too. I wasn’t thinking.” She stuffed the note angrily back into her purse. “I swear to God, Brew,” she rasped, not looking at me, “some days I don’t know what I use for brains.”
The frustration in her voice surprised me. I tend to get so involved in my own inadequacies that I sometimes forget she’s human, too. Judging from the sound of things, finding this paper in Martha Scurvey’s office must’ve broken one of Ginny’s intricate logical chains. Ruined a theory or two and left her feeling stupid. “Don’t complain to me,” I said quietly. “I’m the guy who lost the notes, remember? I didn’t even see that paper on Greenling’s desk.”
“Yes, well,” she said, jerking open the door of the Olds, “that’s a big consolation.”
That crack irked me. But I didn’t snap back. Reciprocity—it was my turn to stay cool. I got into the passenger seat, watched her while she took us out of the parking lot in the direction of her office. When I got tired of looking at her scowl, I said, “So who cares about your brains? It’s your body I’m interested in.”
For a second there I thought she was going to let go of the wheel and clobber me. But then suddenly the scowl broke. She threw back her head and laughed.
“Ah, Brew,” she sighed after a minute, “if I ever figure out what to do with you, you’re going to be in big trouble.”
“Take your time,” I said. “I can wait.”
We chuckled together, and while it lasted I felt better.
About a mile from the Murchison Building we stopped for a quick lunch. As we ate, Ginny looked at me abruptly and asked, “How did you know Mrs. Scurvey’s husband was dead?”
“Intuition,” I said. “She doesn’t have any kids. She’s having an affair with Mr. Paul M. Stretto. I don’t know how I knew. It just came to me.”
“Are you sure you didn’t figure it out from the name on her door? It didn’t say, ‘Mrs. George-or-whatever Scurvey.’ It said, ‘Mrs. Martha.’”
“That,” I said flatly, “never occurred to me.”
She shook her head. “You’re not a well man. You ought to see a doctor. Maybe there’s a treatment for it.”
I didn’t try for a comeback. Her eyes were focused somewhere else, and her voice had an abstract sound. She wasn’t even listening to herself. Instead she was groping for something,
some kind of link that would tie this case together. I knew better than to distract her.
When we were finished eating, we went on to her office.
While she called her answering service, I started a pot of coffee. But after that I didn’t have anything to do except sit and watch her think some more. I didn’t mind at first. Ginny thinking is Ginny making progress. But after half an hour or so I started to get restless. I was just about to interrupt her when she reached a decision. Without warning, she came back from wherever it was she’d been and pulled the phone toward her. “The hell with him,” she muttered. “I can’t wait any longer.”
There was a kind of suppressed violence in the way she dialed, and when she started talking her face was knotted in a grimace, but she managed to keep her voice tolerably smooth. Once she got past the people who fronted for him to Smithsonian himself, she put the call on the speaker so that I could hear him too.
Even over that tinny amplifier he had the kind of voice that makes you want to wash your hands. Oily and sticky. You’d have to be a bank president to like it. “What’s the matter, Fistoulari?” he asked. “No patience? I told you I’d call at three. You can’t crack this case without me?”
Ginny picked up a metal letter opener, set the point in the blotter on her desk, and slowly twirled it with her fingers. “Of course not, Lawrence.” Somehow she kept the acid out of her tone. “You know I’m helpless without you.”
“That’s probably true.” He couldn’t have sounded more self-satisfied if he’d just been propositioned by Miss America. Ginny stopped twirling the letter opener and began slowly pushing it into the blotter. The expression on her face said,
Why am I talking to this asshole?
“Under the circumstances,” he went on, “I won’t keep you hanging. I have most of the information anyway. The only one I’m not satisfied about is this Stretto character.”

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