Mystery. Part 41

"Try it like that, and see how it looks," von Heilitz said.

On the same sheet of paper, Tom wrote: I KNOW WHAT YOU AREYOU MUST BE STOPPED.

THIS HAS GONE ON TOO LONGYOU WILL PAY FOR.

YOUR SINS.

"Does that look right?"

"I think so." Tom stared down at the page, trying to remember the words in rusty ink on the stiff yellow paper.

"I know what you are, and you have to be stopped," von Heilitz said.

"'I know what you are, and ...'" Tom looked up at von Heilitz's face, frowned, and added a comma and the word and and to the first note. Then crossed out to the first note. Then crossed out must must and wrote and wrote have to have to above it. above it.

I KNOW WHAT YOU ARE, AND YOU HAVE TO BE STOPPED.

"That's it," Tom said. "How did you know that?"

"You told me," von Heilitz said. "You said exactly those words, just now." He smiled. "Try to remember if there was anything special about the printing, and write out four or five separate copies. I have to make a couple of phone calls."

He stood up and left the room, closing the connecting door behind him. Tom tore another page off the pad and stared at it for a moment, then stood up and leaned on the window with his elbows, looking down at the curved necks of the saxophones and the intricate black shapes of the sewing machines in the p.a.w.nshop window. Tom closed his eyes and saw two yellow pieces of paper on the bottom of the inlaid wooden box.

He remembered taking them out, unfolding them, and putting them on top of the pile of clippings. He saw his hands holding the d.a.m.ning notes, the creamy yellow of the paper. The words leapt up at him. SIN SIN.

Tom crossed a capital T T with the curve in the neck of a tenor saxophone. with the curve in the neck of a tenor saxophone. SIN SIN, with an angular, slanting S S.

By the time Lamont von Heilitz came back Tom had written out four versions of each note on separate pieces of paper. The old man walked around the table to look down at what he had done. He laid a hand on Tom's shoulder. "You think you've done it?"

"They're as close as I can come."

"Then let's get the envelopes ready," von Heilitz said. He moved to the other chair, put the boxes of envelopes on the table, and took out eight envelopes in different colors. He dipped back into the bag for two ballpoint pens. "You address half, and I'll do the others. Print your grandfather's name and address on each, but vary the printing each time. We want him to open all these letters."

He took two versions of each note, and said, "The one about paying for his sin-it was sin, by the way, and not sins?"

"I'm sure it was."

"Good. I think that was the second one he got, don't you? We don't want to get them mixed up. He should get four of the first note today, and the other four tomorrow."

Tom addressed four envelopes to Mr. Glendenning Upshaw, Bobby Jones Trail, Founders Club, Mill Walk in varying styles of printing, inserted the notes, sealed them, and put them in separate piles. Von Heilitz added two envelopes to each pile, and looked at his watch. "Two minutes," he said.

"What happens in two minutes?"

"Our mailman arrives." Von Heilitz put his hands behind his head, stretched out his legs, and closed his eyes. Down on the street, a middle-aged man in sungla.s.ses and a white short-sleeved s.h.i.+rt walked past the p.a.w.nshop and leaned against the facade of The Home Plate. He slapped a cigarette from a pack and dipped his head toward the flame of a lilghter. He breathed out a cloud of smoke the color of milk and raised his head. Tom backed away from the window.

"See anything?" The old man's eyes were still closed.

"Just a guy looking at the front of the hotel."

Von Heilitz nodded. An Ostend's Market truck crept down Calle Drosselmayer behind half a dozen girls on bicycles. The back of the truck gradually moved past the shop window and The Home Plate. The woman in the yellow dress came out of the bar, dragging behind her a man in a plaid s.h.i.+rt. The man in the sungla.s.ses was gone.

Von Heilitz said, "Enter Andres," and a soft double knock came from the door.

Tom laughed.

"You doubt?" Von Heilitz drew in his legs, and stood up and went to the door. A second later, he ushered the driver into Tom's room.

Andres tossed him a roll of stamps in a cellophane wrapper. "So-want me to mail some letters for you?" He wandered over to the table, where the old man was removing the stamps from their container and sticking them on the letters.

Von Heilitz gave him a stack containing a red, a grey, and two white envelopes. "Here's what I need, Andres-these letters all have to be mailed today before ten, from different points around the island. Drop one in the Elm Cove post office, another one downtown here, one at the substation in Turtle Bay, and the last one out at Mill Key." Andres sketched a map in the air with his forefinger, nodded, and put the letters in the right-hand pocket of his ripped coat. Von Heilitz gave him the second batch of envelopes, and said, "Mail these in the same places after ten o'clock tonight. Is that all right?"

"Isn't everything always all right?" Andres said. He put the second batch of envelopes in his left pocket. Then he slapped his right pocket, and said, "These you want to arrive this afternoon." He slapped the left pocket. "These you want to arrive tomorrow. From all over the island. Easy."

He leaned over and peered into the shopping bags. "You want me to call you when I'm done? It doesn't look like you're going anywhere."

"Call me around one," von Heilitz said. "We'll want to take a little trip in the afternoon." He stood up and walked Andres back to the door. His hand went into his pocket, and a folded bill pa.s.sed into the driver's hand. Andres slapped his forehead, mumbled something to the old man, and took a paperback from his left pocket and pa.s.sed it to von Heilitz, who thrust it into a jacket pocket. He came back into the room, bent over the shopping bags, reached down, and pulled out a s.h.i.+ny gold and blue bag.

"What do we do now?" Tom asked.

Von Heilitz tore open the bag along its seam, pointed the open end at him, and said, "Have a potato chip."

Tom took a chip out of the bag. The old man set the bag on the table and walked around to the window.

"Was the man you saw looking at the front of the hotel an ordinary-looking fellow in his fifties with thinning black hair, a little portly around the middle, and wearing black boots, tan slacks, a white s.h.i.+rt, and sungla.s.ses?"

"That's him," Tom said, and nearly knocked over his chair to get to the window.

An immensely fat woman carrying a load of was.h.i.+ng on her head pa.s.sed the p.a.w.nshop.

"Well, he's not there now," von Heilitz said.

Tom squinted at him. This close, von Heilitz smelled of soap and some more personal odor that was faintly like the scent of a freshly opened apple. The wrinkles at the side of his eyes were as deep as furrows.

"I saw him outside the hotel this morning." Von Heilitz pushed himself back from the window. "Doesn't have to mean anything. There are two hundred people in the St. Alwyn, and nearly all of them deserve to be followed." He went back around the table, holding his sharp chin in his hand the way a child holds an ice cream cone. "Still, in the next couple of days we'd better go in and out through Sinbad's Cavern."

He fell into the other chair and placed his hand on the telephone, still clutching his chin. He looked up, said, "Hmm," and let go of his chin to dial a number. "h.e.l.lo, I'd like to speak to Mr. Thomas, please.... h.e.l.lo, Mr. Thomas? This is Mr. Cooper at the central post office, I'm the sub-manager for your region?...I'd like to inquire if you and your members at the Founders Club feel that the service you've been getting from us is satisfactory...I'm happy to hear that. As you know, our delivery hours are varied from time to time, and I wondered, as you are certainly one of our priority districts, whether you felt the members had a preference...Well, Mr. Thomas, everybody on the island would prefer that, but morning delivery would compromise the same-day service we're so proud of...I see. Well, I'll speak to the route manager, see if we can shuffle things around a bit, and get your members' mail to you closer to noon than four o'clock...Of course, Mr. Thomas. Goodbye."

He hung up and looked across at Tom. "We really do have an extraordinary postal system, you know. It's one of the best things about this island." He uncoiled from the chair, went to the window and looked down at the sidewalk, and walked to the connecting door, rubbing his hands together. "I think we might get Andres to take a spin out to the Founders Club around three-thirty. Wouldn't you like to see what happens when your grandfather reads his mail?"

Tom nodded cautiously.

"How do we get on the grounds without going past the guardhouse?

Von Heilitz pushed himself off the door frame and looked up in mock amazement. "Is it possible that you've never climbed a fence?"

Tom smiled at him, and said that he probably had, once or twice, in his childhood.

"Well, that's a relief. Oh, I got something for you to read. Here." He pulled the paperback out of his pocket and tossed it to Tom.

The cover ill.u.s.tration of The Divided Man The Divided Man, by Timothy Underhill, was a close-up of the face of a man who resembled a younger Victor Pasmore. He wore a grey hat and a trench coat with a turned-up collar, and deep shadow obliterated half his face.

"It's the book I told you about-a way of seeing those Blue Rose murders. We're going to be here for a long time, and I thought you'd like something to read, knowing you."

Tom turned the book over to read the blurb, and von Heilitz stretched out on the sofa against the wall. His feet protruded far over the sofa's armrest.

"I met Tim Underhill when he came to Mill Walk for a little while to do research for the book. He stayed here, in fact-a lot of that book is set in the St. Alwyn."

Von Heilitz closed his eyes and crossed his hands over his chest. "When we get hungry, we'll make some sandwiches."

Tom moved to the bed, and began reading Timothy Underbill's book. After thirty pages, he unlaced the sleek black shoes and dropped them on the floor; after seventy, he sat up and removed his jacket and vest and yanked down his necktie. Von Heilitz fell asleep on the sofa.

Tom had expected The Divided Man The Divided Man to be set on Mill Walk, but Underhill had located the murders in a gritty Midwestern industrial city of chain-link fences, inhuman winters, foundries, and a thousand bars. Its only real resemblance to Mill Walk was that the city's wealthiest citizens lived on the far east side, in great houses built on a bluff above the sh.o.r.e of an enormous lake. to be set on Mill Walk, but Underhill had located the murders in a gritty Midwestern industrial city of chain-link fences, inhuman winters, foundries, and a thousand bars. Its only real resemblance to Mill Walk was that the city's wealthiest citizens lived on the far east side, in great houses built on a bluff above the sh.o.r.e of an enormous lake.

At the start of the fifth chapter, the novel's main character, a homicide detective named Esterhaz, woke up in an unfamiliar apartment. The television set was on, and the air smelled like whiskey. So hung over that he felt on the verge of disappearance, Esterhaz wandered through the empty apartment, trying to figure out who lived in it and how he had come to wake up there. Men's and women's clothes hung in the closet, dirty dishes and milk bottles filled with green webs of mold covered the kitchen counters. He had a dim memory of fighting, of beating someone senseless, hitting already unconscious flesh again and again, of blood spattering on a wall...but there was no blood in the apartment, no blood on his clothes, and his hands ached with only a faint, tender ache, as if a demon had kissed them. A nearly empty whiskey bottle stood beside a bedroom door, and Esterhaz drank what was left in long swallows and went into the room. On the floor beside a mattress covered by a rumpled blanket, he found a note that said, One anguish-in a crowd-A minor thing-it sounds-Come back tonight.-G One anguish-in a crowd-A minor thing-it sounds-Come back tonight.-G. Who was G.? He stuffed the note into his jacket pocket. Esterhaz found his coat balled up in a corner of the room, and b.u.t.toned himself into it. He shuddered with nausea, and the thought came to him full-blown, as if he had just read and memorized it, that invisibility was more than a fantasy: invisibility was so real that most of the world had already slipped into a great invisible realm that accompanied and mocked the visible.

Esterhaz walked down a dark, clanging staircase and went outside into a bitter cold and a tearing wind. He saw that he was next door to a bar called The House of Correction and recognized where he was. Four blocks away stood the St. Alwyn Hotel, where two people he knew had been murdered. Esterhaz walked through a snowdrift to get to his car, took a pint bottle from the glove compartment, and let a little more reality into his system. It was some unearthly hour like six-thirty in the morning. A little anguish in a crowd A little anguish in a crowd, he thought, that b.i.t.c.h knew what she was talking about that b.i.t.c.h knew what she was talking about. He put the pint bottle between his knees, started his car, and drove to a deserted parking lot on the lakefront. Absolutely still curls and feathers of smoke clung to the grey surface of the lake, frozen into place.

"Pretty good, wouldn't you say?"

Tom looked up through the memory of smoke feathers tethered to the surface of Eagle Lake, and saw von Heilitz bending over the table, making sandwiches with chunks of cheddar cheese and slices of salami.

"The book," von Heilitz said.

Andres drove them past the tall white walls of the Redwing compound and through the old cane fields where rows of willows, the only trees that would grow in the tired soil, nearly hid all that was left on Mill Walk of the original island. Far ahead, a smooth cement riser took shape on the right side of the coastal highway, and swung to the right as it followed the curve of a blacktopped side road. This was the access road to the Founders Club, and the riser became the cement wall that ran down the southern end of the club property to the beach south of Bobby Jones Trail and Glendenning Upshaw's bungalow. An identical cement wall bordered the northern end of the club. The guardhouse was located just past the point where the two walls were closest. Past the guardhouse, the access road divided into Ben Hogan Way and Babe Ruth Way, each of which led past the clubhouse to the members' bungalows.

"Pull into the cane field and hide the car," von Heilitz said.

Andres said, "You bet, Lamont," and swerved across the road into the field. The old taxi jounced over the rough ground, snapping off dry bamboolike bristles, and pitched and rolled past the first row of willows. Andres patted the steering wheel.

"We should be back in two hours, maybe less," von Heilitz said.

"Take your time," Andres said. "Don't get hurt."

Tom and von Heilitz got out of the car and walked through the dry stubs of cane. They crossed the road. Ahead, the white cement wall curved toward them, then curved away to cut across an empty swath of sandy ground covered with broom gra.s.s, palms, and low bushes all the way down to the low flat plane of the water. Von Heilitz moved quickly through the long gra.s.s toward the fence, which was no more than an inch taller than the top of his head. "Tell me when you think we're about level with Glen's bungalow," he said.

"It's way down, on the first road off the beach."

"The last bungalow on its road?" He looked back over his shoulder at Tom without slackening his pace.

Tom nodded.

"That's good luck."

"Why?"

"We can just walk around the far end of the wall-down on the beach, where it comes to an end. This wall is more decorative than functional." He smiled back at Tom, who was hurrying to catch up.

"That's lucky for you, then," Tom said. "I think you'd have a hard time getting over this fence, anyhow."

Von Heilitz stopped moving. "Do you? Do you really?"

"Well, it's as tall as you are."

"Dear boy," von Heilitz said. He put his hands on the top of the wall, hopped, and effortlessly pulled himself up until his waist met the smooth top of the wall; then he swung one leg up. In a second, he had disappeared over the top. Tom heard him say, "n.o.body's looking. Your turn."

Tom reached up and grunted his upper body over the top of the wall. He felt his face turn red. The pad of the bandage slipped on the cement. Von Heilitz looked at him from beside a tall palm. Tom lowered his chest to the top of the wall and tried to swing his legs up. The tips of the glossy shoes struck the side of the wall. He leaned forward to get his hips over the top, lost his balance, and fell to the sandy ground like a downed bird.

"Not bad," von Heilitz said. "Any pain?"

Tom rubbed his shoulder. "You're not supposed to wear suits when you do things like that."

"Shoulder all right?"

"Fine." He grinned at the old man. "At least I got over the thing."

Von Heilitz looked down through the palm trees and sand dunes on this side of the wall to three rows of bungalows about a hundreds yards away. The last bungalow in the row closest to the beach protruded far beyond the others. They could see straight across the terrace into a high-windowed room with leather furniture and an ornate desk. "I suppose that's the one?"

"That's it," Tom said.

"Let's wait for the mailman's appearance behind the bunch of palms in front of the last set of bungalows." Von Heilitz pulled back his sleeve and looked at his watch. "It's about a quarter to four. He'll be along soon."

They worked their way through the sand, moving from one clump of palms to another, until they reached a group of four palms leaning and arching up out of a st.u.r.dy patch of long gra.s.s. Hairy coconuts lay around them like cannonb.a.l.l.s. Tom sat on the gra.s.s beside the old man. He could see the table where he and his mother had eaten lunch; through the high windows, he saw the dim books behind gla.s.s-fronted cases, and the lamps burning in the study. It was something like the view seen by the person who had shot at him.

A few minutes later, a red Mill Walk mail van pulled into the parking lot, and a mailman opened the door and stepped out into the sunlight. Blue water sparkled behind him. He dragged a heavy brown bag from the side of the van, and moved out of sight, going toward the bungalows.

"He'll go to Glen's first," von Heilitz said. "It's closest." His voice sounded different, and Tom turned to look at his profile. A pink line covered the top of his cheek, and his eyes had both narrowed and brightened. "Now-now we see." see."

Maybe he won't do anything at all, Tom thought. Maybe he'll shake his head and scratch his fingers in his hair. Maybe he'll shrug and toss the notes in the wastebasket.

Maybe we made it all up.

The mailman had to trudge across the parking lot, and then carry his bag across Bobby Jones Trail. Walk up the stairs and pa.s.s into the inner courtyard. Knock on the door, and wait for Kingsley to shuffle to the door. Kingsley had to go back to the sitting room and present the mail to his master. The master had to stroll toward the study, examining each letter as he went.

Finally the door at the back of the study opened. Glendenning Upshaw, a great white head atop a ma.s.sive blackness, appeared moving toward his desk. He was frowning down at a stack of letters in his hand-frowning simply from habit, not with anger or displeasure. As he came nearer the windows, Tom caught the red and grey of two of their envelopes.

"He got them," von Heilitz breathed.

Tom's grandfather stood behind his desk chair in his black suit, shuffling through eight or nine letters. Three of these he tossed immediately into the wastebasket beside the desk.

"Junk mail," von Heilitz said.

He pulled his chair out from behind the desk and sat. He took up one letter, slit the long white envelope with an opener, and pondered it for a moment. He set it down at the far end of the desk, took a pen from his pocket, and leaned over to make a note at the bottom of the page.

Next he took up the red envelope. He looked at the handwriting and examined the postmark. Then he slit the envelope open and pulled out the sheet of yellow paper. He unfolded it and read.