The Green Ripper Part 4

"Catherine didn't know from nothing," Broffski said. "She never saw the guy. She said Herm put him up in the guest wing and talked business in there from the time he arrived until late at night. Herm told her not to bother about dinner, and when she checked the guest wing after, the man had left, she found paper bags and cups from one of the fried chicken places down the Drive, so she thinks Herm went out and brought food back. The next morning early she heard Herm drive out in the Toyota. All Herm ever told her was that it was a big deal for a good-sized tract, and they were talking construction and deadlines. d.a.m.ned imposition for him to go bothering Catherine."

Morse Slater said, "Ryan said to me that he wanted to find out if the aircraft had flown in from the islands with a load of c.o.ke or gra.s.s. He said he wanted to get that pilot out of the air. He just couldn't understand why we didn't have some record of the identification number on the plane. I showed him the strip, of course. A gra.s.sy strip, an old shed, a wind sock, and a padlocked gas pump. There's n.o.body there to check anything in or out."

"We let Ryan look through Herm's desk notes and appointment calendar," Stanley Broffski said.

"He said he'd come back with a subpoena if we didn't. There wasn't a clue."

"When was Ryan here?" Meyer asked.

Slater stared at the ceiling for a moment. "Last Thursday, the thirteenth. He disrupted the day, most of it."

"Remember his whole name?" Meyer asked.

"Ryan, Howard C. In his forties. Pale, broad, soft. Very autocratic. An irritating fellow."

"I still don't understand why you two men are here," Broffski said. "Why should you give a s.h.i.+t who flew in and out in that airplane? What should it have to do with you?"

I reached into the deepest pocket in one of the old bags of tricks and came up with a useful inspiration. I leaned forward, adjusting my face to maximum leaden sincerity, and I secretly apologized to Gretel. "Mr. Broffski, I was able to be with Gretel for a little time every hour, while she was dying. Toward the end there, she came sort of half-awake, and she said, 'Blue airplane. Blue airplane.' I thought she was out of her head from the fever. If she wasn't, then she was trying to tell me something, I don't know what it was, and then when I heard from somebody at the funeral that a blue airplane had landed here the week before she died, I thought... well, it wouldn't be any harm in asking, because you were her friends."

"No harm! No harm at all!" Broffski said. "She was one terrific personality. She had star quality around here. Now I know why you're asking, but I still don't see what it has to do with anything. Herm knew who came in, and it seems as if whoever it was wanted to keep a real low profile."

"I wonder why?" Morse Slater said, frowning.

"Who knows?" Broffski said. "Maybe some kind of deal he wasn't ready to tell us about. So if somebody is still interested, they'll contact us. If they do, I hope it's better than that Brussels deal of his."

"Brussels?" Meyer asked politely.

"Twenty acres, undeveloped, on the west side of the property," Slater said. "We're holding a ten percent deposit in an escrow account. The purchaser is something called the Morgen Group. Morgen with an 'e.'"

"Fascinating name," Meyer said.

"What's so fascinating about it?" Broffski asked. "It's an obsolete land-measurement term which used to be used in Holland and in South Africa. A morgen is approximately two acres, and the translation, of course, is 'morning.' It derived from approximately how much land one man could plow with horses in a single morning."

Broffski stared at him. "You got a lot of stuff like that in your head? What line of work are you in?"

"I'm an economist. Semiretired."

"The address is a bank in Brussels. I tried to pick it up where Herm left off, and I made four phone calls to that bank. They deny any knowledge of the Morgen Group. All they would say is I should write to that name care of the bank, and if there was a Morgen Group, it would probably be delivered to them. I sent a cable, and the callback on it said it was undeliverable. I wrote, and we're waiting."

Meyer nodded and said, "The Morgen Group is probably equivalent in law to what we call a blind trust here. And Brussels is quietly taking the place of Switzerland. Their secrecy is guaranteed by Belgian law. They have number accounts and investment services and they have no reverse interest, as the Swiss do. Thus, with a blind trust, there is a double layer of legal confidentiality. Impenetrable."

"Why so secret?" Broffski said. "Herm told me that a bunch of Belgians wanted to build their own hotel-club on the twenty acres, so the members could come here on vacation."

"Maybe it was going to be a front for something," Slater said.

Broffski looked across the desk at Slater, a look of annoyance and derision. "Sure. Right here in our backyard they are going to build a ware house for the drug business. Or a studio to make p.o.r.n movies."

"Sorry." Slater said. But he didn't look sorry.

Broffski sighed. "Well, there isn't anything I can do about it. The land sits there. Eleven months from now we can take the money out of escrow and put the land on the market again. Or develop it. Whatever." He stood up and reached across the desk. "Sorry we can't give you any more help." He shook hands, and we went out with Morse Slater.

"Can we look around the property?" Meyer asked.

"Certainly." he said, and gave us a brochure with a map of Bonnie Brae, showing the existing roads and the ones to come later. He pointed to the area on the map where the Belgians had planned to buy-and maybe still would. We thanked him and went out into the silver daylight, squinting against the high hard dazzle of the sky.

Six.

WE WALKED across a field to the airstrip. We walked through a healthy growth of sand spurs and stopped and picked them off socks and pants cuffs when we got to a cleared s.p.a.ce. Meyer thumped the surface of the landing strip with his heel.

"Probably some kind of soil cement," I said. "You plow it up, mix the cement with the dirt, grade it, water it, roll it down. Quick and easy."

We could hear the unrhythmic whacking of a lot of hammers as workmen were framing a house a hundred yards away.

Meyer said, "If Ladwigg was coming over here to the strip from those houses there, crosscountry, he would have to pa.s.s that patch of bushes and palmetto over there."

We went over to look for tire tracks. They would be about three weeks old. There was a faint pattern in the heavy gra.s.s, a mark of rugged tread in dried mud, and some grease stains on the tallest gra.s.s.

"So she stood here, I'd guess," Meyer said.

"Out in the early morning, looking for her pin," I said. "Yes. And so what?"

Meyer shrugged. "I don't know what. Every action we take, every thought we have, they are all based upon some form of information. We know more now than we did before. It is difficult, I think, and erroneous, to try to decide in advance whether additional facts will be useful."

"So if she stood here, and heard the motor and stepped out in this direction, okay, the car would pa.s.s close, and the pa.s.senger would be three feet away, as she said. And we could backtrack the vehicle to old Herm's house. Incidentally, coming around to the airstrip overland instead of on the road doesn't mean much. The people who own those four-wheel-drive brutes like to take them bouncing through the fields and woods. It does something for their glands. It could be preference instead of secretiveness. On the other hand, he did avoid meeting Mrs. Ladwigg, and the two men ate in the guest wing. Anyway Meyer, where the h.e.l.l are we going with all this?"

Roaring at Meyer seldom does any good. He gave me the mild smile, the bland nod. "Let's see where we've been. On the thirteenth of December, two days before Toomey and Kline- paid a visit to you, a Mr. Ryan visited Bonnie Brae. I do not think the Federal Aviation Administration gets into the business of tracking down small planes which endanger scheduled airline flights. I think that is the Civil Aeronautics Board's ch.o.r.e. And, whoever was looking into it, surely if there was danger of a collision, somebody would have picked up the identification numbers of the small airplane. They are required to carry the numbers in very large contrasting colors. Additionally, the customs people are monitoring all small planes in flight along this coast. And, finally, there seems to be a telltale monotony about the names of the three alleged officials-Howard C., Robert A., and Richard E. If any more turn up, we can expect William B. and Thomas D."

Meyer will never cease to astonish me. That heavy skull is loaded with microprocessors. Information is subject to constant a.n.a.lysis, synthesis, storage and retrieval. But when this makes him seem too intellectual, too somber, I have but to recall him at Bailey's, our neighborhood disco, cavorting like a dancing bear with three blond chiclets who adore him, and who listen to him when he sits like a hairy Buddha, declaiming instant legends and inventing instant folk-song lyrics. The dancing Meyer, pelt gleaming under the disco lights, little blue eyes s.h.i.+ning, is the antidote to the data-processing machine under, the skull bones.

We moved over into the semishade of a young live oak. The shadows had no edges under that white fluorescent sky.

He leaned against the tree. I sat on my heels and poked at the hard dirt with a piece of branch.

"It's too much!" he said irritably.

"How do you mean?"

"Pretend for one moment that Gretel never told us about Brother t.i.tus. She might not have said anything, you know. Then where would we be? You would have accepted their story that they were looking into something that might be going on at Bonnie Brae. Let's hope they accepted your statement that Gretel had told you nothing. The Ryan person convinced them out at Bonnie Brae that he was what he said he was. Toomey Kline, and Ryan were mopping up. There is no other answer. Ladwigg and Gretel were both killed."

"No!"

"Yes, Travis. Both deaths were made to look routine. An accident and an illness. They would not make waves. It was somehow terribly important that no one be left alive who could talk about Brother t.i.tus. The secrecy of the whole business indicates that there might be people who might possibly recognize him. It was a remote chance, but one that X could not accept. Remember, I am using X to indicate an individual or an organization. Because of the emphasis on secrecy, I am a.s.suming some link between Brother t.i.tus and the twenty acres on which the Morgen Group made a down payment."

"But there wouldn't be any point in killing Gretel! What if she did recognize him? No matter what is going on, isn't that one h.e.l.l of an overreaction to being recognized?"

"That's where I draw a blank, Travis. I have been trying to think of something big enough and bad enough and important enough for an organized group-and believe me, they are organized-to wipe out every possible trace of a visit from an official of an obscure religious sect. Eradication per se would not be difficult if one had the stomach for extreme measures. Float you out on the tide, and me also, to be totally safe. Eliminate Catherine Ladwigg, Stanley Broffski, Morse Slater, and anybody else Gretel worked with. Eradication of every trace without arousing suspicion is a lot trickier. It requires thought and organization and great care. If Gretel had not talked to you, it would have been successful. If you had been entirely truthful with Toomey and Kline, it would have been successful, because they would have dealt with you."

"Melodrama."

"I know. I know. But fit the facts together in any other way and you get more nonsense instead of less."

"So the Morgen Group was going to build some kind of top-secret installation at Bonnie Brae. Or a heroin refinery. Or maybe Brother t.i.tus was the fellow behind the gra.s.sy knoll in Dallas. Come on, Meyer. How many coincidences can we string together?"

I stood up and headed back across the field to the new asphalt road. I saw something glint in the gra.s.s, and bent down and pushed the gra.s.s aside and picked it up. I had seen her wear that pin several times when we had gone ash.o.r.e from the Busted Flush during our long slow trip back around the peninsula. It was of Mexican silver, framing a three-dimensional Aztec face carved out of a mottled hard green stone. It was crudely made, and the clasp was not very secure.

How many coincidences can we string together? Sure. If, retracing her jogging route, she had found the pin before Ladwigg drove t.i.tus back to his airplane-if she and her ex-husband had not traced her sister-in-law to that California encampment-if she had found a different job in Lauderdale...

Looking down at the primitive green face in the palm of my hand, I felt dizzy. The world was all tied together in some mysterious tangle of invisible web, single strands that reached impossible distances, glimpsed but rarely when the light caught them just right.

The biggest if of all. If she had never met me. Because I had brought her here.

If her mother had never met her father. If her aunt had wheels.

If.

An empty path to walk. It leads toward superst.i.tion and paranoia, two whistle stops on the road to incurable depression. Once upon a time I took a random walk across a field. I went hither and yon, ambling along, looking at the sky and the trees, nibbling gra.s.s, kicking rocks. The first Jeep to start across that field blew up. So did the people who went to get the people who'd been in the Jeep. And I stood right there, sweaty and safe, trembling inside, while the experts dug over ninety mines out of that field, defused them, stacked them, and took them away. That's the way it goes sometimes. Philosophy 401, with Professor McGee. Life is a minefield. Think that over and write a paper on it, cla.s.s.

I put the pin in my pocket. Talisman of some kind. Rub the tiny green face with the ball of the thumb. Like a worry stone, to relieve executive tensions. The times I remembered seeing it, she had worn it on the left side, where the slope of the breast began. She had bought it, she said, at a craft shop in San. Francisco at Girardelli Square. I hadn't been there with her. All the places I hadn't been with her, I would never be with her. And at those unknown places, at unknown times, there would be less of me present. There can be few things worse than unconsciously saving things up to tell someone you will never see again.

"Coincidence," I told Meyer. "Maybe there was somebody thinking about hustling her on her way, but they didn't have to. She got sick. And antibiotics wouldn't touch it. And she died."

"Maybe," he said. "Maybe it was that way."

My phone aboard the Flush rang at eight fifteen the next morning, and when I answered it I heard the click of someone hanging up. Fifteen minutes later it rang again, and when I answered it, a voice said, "Remember this number, McGee. Seven-nine-two, oh-seven-oh-one. Go to a pay phone as soon as you can and call this number. Seven-nine-two, oh-seven-oh-one."

He hung up. The voice was soft. There was no regional accent. I wrote the number down and finished my coffee while I thought about it. Then I locked up and walked to a pay phone.

The same voice answered. "This is McGee," I said.

"What was your mother's maiden name?"

"Devlin. Mary Catherine Devlin."

"Drive to Pier Sixty-six and park in the marina lot. Walk to the hotel and go in one of the lowerlevel entrances that face toward the marina, the one nearest the water. Turn right and walk slowly down the corridor toward the main part of the hotel."

"Why?"

After a pause he said, "Because you want to know why somebody died."

"Who the h.e.l.l are you?"

"Can you remember what I told you to do?"

"Of course."

He hung up. I went to Meyer's stubby little cabin cruiser, The John Maynard Keynes, and roused him. He came out, blinking into the sunlight, carrying his coffee onto the fantail, looking grainy and whiskery. I repeated the two conversations as accurately as I could.

"Mother's maiden name. Standard security procedure. Not generally available."

"I know that. Somebody wants to tell me why Gretel died."

"You're going, of course."

"That's why I came over to tell you. So you'll be able to give somebody a lead if I don't show up back here. If somebody wants to take me out, forget the hotel. It will be the marina parking lot. Drop me there at long range, and untie the lines and take off."

"I'll come along."

"If you wouldn't mind. He didn't say to come alone. You could wait in the truck. Armed."

"But not very dangerous."

"What we will have are those stupid walkietalkies, the little ones you bought as a gag. With fresh batteries. The mysterious strangers are probably in one of those rooms. I am a.s.suming more than one. I can keep my unit in my pocket. Without my aerial up you should be able to read a signal from me based on Off-On. We can test them here."

With fresh batteries we found out that he would receive a definite alteration in the buzzing sound when my unit was turned on, even at a hundred yards. I could give him numbers. Short bursts for numbers from 1 to 9. A steady blast for a zero. Room 302 would be dit-dit-dit-daaaaah dit-dit.

"In a building with a steel frame?" he asked.

"Listen harder. They'll take it away from me pretty quick, I imagine. I'll give you the room number soon as I can."

There are a lot of trees in that parking lot, and it has a considerable depth. I circled around the back of it, walking swiftly through the open areas. Then I circled back to an arched entrance, went in, turned right, walked slowly. The rooms were on my right. So they could have watched me through a window.

I kept my hand in my pocket, finger on the switch, A door opened behind me and I spun around. Room 121. Very easy. A sallow young man, tall, with a lot of nose and a lot of neck, motioned to me to come in. He wore pale-blue trunks, and he had a bath towel around his neck. His hair was still wet from his morning swim.

The familiar voice was right behind me, and I had neither heard him nor sensed him. "Hand out of the pocket. That's nice. Move right on in. Fine. You're doing fine."

With the voice still behind me and the room door closed, the swimmer patted me down and took the little gadget out of my pocket. He read the label on it aloud. "Junior s.p.a.ce Cadet." He grinned and tossed it onto one of the double beds. "Clean," he said.

"Sit right down over there, in the straight chair by that countertop, Mr. McGee," the voice said. Large room. Two double beds. Pile carpeting.

Small refrigerator. Recently redecorated. Between the half-open draperies I could see beach chairs and a table on the tiny ground-level terrace outside sliding doors, and I could look out toward the marina parking lot.

When I sat down I got my first look at the voice. Like Swimmer, he seemed to be in his late twenties. Mid-height, with the shoulder meat of one who works out with weights. Glossy dark hair, square jaw, neck as broad as the jaw. Metalrimmed gla.s.ses with a slight amber tint. A pleasant smile.

"My name is McGee," I said.

"I think we'll try to get along without names." He took the toy off the bed, inspected it, pulled the sectional aerial to full length, and went over and opened the sliding door. "Dr. Meyer? Everything is in order here. Why don't you come on in?"

When there was no answer, he tossed the unit to me. I pushed the little piano key and said, "No reason why you shouldn't, Meyer."

"Okay." The voice was tinny and remote. "Shall I bring your hat?"

"No. Leave it in the car and lock up. Room One-two-one."