The Road To Ruin Read online

  48

  TINY WASN’T SUPPOSED TO be on duty till midnight, but now everything was out of whack. Chuck Yancey phoned him at two twenty-five and said, “We got an emergency here. Put on your uniform and come on down.”

  “I need transport.”

  Sigh. “Mort’ll be there in five minutes.”

  So five minutes later, when Mort Pessle arrived at Chester’s old house, Tiny was in the brown uniform, in which he looked mostly like a bungalow. He got into the backseat, and along the way Mort told him the situation: “They got Mr. Hall.”

  “Who got Mr. Hall?”

  “Don’t know yet. They were in a horse trailer.”

  Tiny wasn’t loving this conversation. “Who was in a horse trailer?”

  “Whoever took Mr. Hall,” Mort said. “That’s how they got him off the compound.”

  “In a horse trailer.”

  “Chuck’s really mad,” Mort said, meaning Chuck Yancey, the boss of security.

  And that was true enough. When Tiny walked into the office, Mort having gone back to duty on the gate, Heck Fiedler stood to one side, looking scared and trying to look invisible, while Chuck Yancey paced back and forth like a very irritated tiger. Glaring at Tiny, he said, “This happened on my watch.”

  Tiny nodded. “Mort says they used a horse trailer.”

  “Goddamn horse trailer.” Yancey punched the air and kept on pacing. “Nobody looked inside it.”

  Sounding as scared as he looked, Heck said, “There was a horse in it. You could see the horse.”

  “You could see the horse’s ass,” Chuck snarled at him. “You could see that, could you? Recognize that, did you? Old home week, huh? Like looking in a mirror, was it?”

  To maybe take a little heat off Heck, who probably shouldn’t have spoken up, Tiny said, “What’s a horse trailer doing in here?”

  Chuck turned his glare on Tiny, who didn’t mind. “Hall asked for it,” he announced. “Called down yesterday, says a horse is coming, in a trailer, with a guy named—” Glare at Heck again. “What was that name?”

  “Jay Gilly,” Heck said, and blinked a lot.

  “That’ll turn out to be a fake,” Chuck snarled, and said to Tiny, “Hall says it’s coming, let it through. It came, it was let through. It went back out again. Fifteen minutes later, Mrs. Hall calls down, ‘Where’s my husband?’ Nobody knows. Guess who didn’t look in the horse trailer, going in or out.”

  “We never search anything going out,” Heck said, not yet having learned the wisdom of silence.

  He got the full Yancey glare this time. “Some of us,” Chuck said, spacing his words, “don’t bother to search things going in either.”

  Tiny said, “What do you think they’d of found?”

  “Men,” Chuck said. “There had to be people hidden in the trailer, to grab Hall when he came out to look at the horse, and hold him down while they drove past Heck here. Did you wave, Heck?”

  Heck might actually have answered that question, but Tiny said, “Well, if they took him away, that means at least they didn’t wanna kill him.”

  “Or maybe,” Chuck said, “they wanted time to torture him first.”

  “That’s a possibility.”

  “On my watch,” Chuck said. “I thought I was better than that.”

  “You are, Chief,” the unquenchable Heck said. “It was my screw-up, and I feel awful about it.”

  Chuck gave him a long smoldering look. “I’m thinking,” he said, “of some way to make you feel worse.”

  Tiny said, “You wanted me down here. What am I supposed to do?”

  “We’re waiting,” Chuck told him, “for the cops to get here.”

  “Oh,” Tiny said. “You called the cops?”

  Chuck gave him the kind of look he’d been giving Heck. “Who else you gonna call?” he demanded. “Miss Marple?”

  “Not unless we find a body,” Tiny said, and Chuck could be seen to gather himself for an intemperate response when Kelp walked in.

  Which took Tiny a few seconds to realize. Somehow, this was a different Kelp. The suit and tie were part of it, but there was something in the stance as well, and the look in his eye. This was a Kelp who’d received a battlefield commission, who was suddenly an officer and a gentleman, and who was feeling pretty good about the fact.

  “Well, Captain Yancey,” Kelp said, “this is a fine mess, isn’t it?”

  “Not captain any more, Mr. Blanchard,” Chuck said, though it was clear he liked the title. “Those were my army days.”

  “You earned the rank, Captain,” Kelp assured him. “It’s yours forever.”

  “Well, thank you, Mr. Blanchard,” Chuck said. All his fury seemed to have drained away. Even Heck was looking less scared. “What’s the word from the main house?”

  “Well,” Kelp said, in his blandest and most deadpan manner, “it seems they took Rumsey, too.”

  Chuck looked quizzical. “Rumsey?”

  “The butler,” Kelp explained.

  Tiny couldn’t help it; he laughed. Everybody looked at him in surprise. Chuck, as though he might get angry again, said, “Swope? You find something funny?”

  “The butler,” Tiny said, and did not wipe the smirk off his face. “He’s gonna be mad,” he said.

  49

  “THE QUESTION IS,” Lieutenant Orville said, “is the butler in on it?”

  Lieutenant Wooster cocked his head, like a very bright spaniel: “You think the butler did it?”

  “It’s been known to happen.” Liking the phrase, Lieutenant Orville said it again: “Known to happen.”

  The two lieutenants had taken over the missing Monroe Hall’s office as their investigation HQ, since obviously Monroe Hall had no present need of it. Orville and Wooster were CID, Criminal Investigation Division, and this case was their baby, nor were they unmindful of the potential in it for themselves. Hall after all was a very famous man, some might even say a very infamous man. Clustered outside the compound already, partially blocking traffic on the county road, barely an hour after the event, were a dozen TV vans, just itching to broadcast Lieutenant Orville’s manly face and professional manner worldwide via satellite as he reported on progress in the case (Wooster was the sidekick, and knew it), which Orville would do just as soon as he had the merest sliver of progress, or something that could be made to look like progress, to report.

  In the meantime, forces were gathering, positions were being manned (or more likely personed), and the parameters of the situation were being—you know it—staked out. Lieutenant Orville was a fellow with a literary bent, which meant he’d read a lot of Sherlock Holmes and Perry Mason and 87th Precinct (damn, those boys were good), and which also meant he had trained himself to have a keen and analytical mind, and to leap on every anomaly that reared its head, of which, in the present case, the anomaly was the butler.

  Why kidnap Hall? That much was obvious. Hall was incredibly wealthy, and would be worth a lot in ransom. A fortune in ransom. But what the hell was the butler worth? Why snatch the butler?

  This question had led Lieutenant Orville to a further thought. What if the butler had not been snatched? What if the butler had gone willingly? What if, in fact, the butler had been a co-conspirator from the very beginning? What if he were not a victim but a perpetrator? That would put a different light on the situation, would it not? It would.

  “Mmm,” Lieutenant Orville said. “What do we know about this butler?”

  It is the sidekick’s job to assemble the data and lay it before his chief. Now Lieutenant Wooster withdrew his notebook from his jacket pocket, flipped a few pages, and read, “John Howard Rumsey. Hired day before yesterday.”

  “Oh ho. The plot,” Orville said, “thickens.”

  “There’s a funny little cluster of hiring two days ago, in fact,” Lieutenant Wooster said. “The butler. A chauffeur. A private secretary. A—”

  “Private secretary,” Lieutenant Orville said. “Is that the geek we threw outa this room?”
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  “Fredric Eustice Blanchard,” Lieutenant Wooster read. “Yep, that’s him. And the fourth one was a new guard for the security team here.”

  “Security, eh?” Lieutenant Orville permitted himself a little pitying smile. “And I suppose none of these people had ever laid eyes on one another before two days ago.”

  “Well, a couple of them,” Lieutenant Wooster agreed. “But the butler and the secretary, Blanchard, they’d both worked together at the Vostkojek embassy before this.”

  “At the what?”

  “Vostkojek embassy. It’s a country in Europe, it’s an embassy in Washington.”

  “Well, which is it?”

  Lieutenant Wooster thought that over. “An embassy in Washington.”

  “And these two worked there, did they? How come they left?”

  “The story is, the ambassador was assassinated.”

  Lieutenant Orville sat up straighter. “What? Murdered?”

  “That’s right.” Lieutenant Wooster consulted his notebook. “Apparently, the new ambassador fired everybody and brought all new people in. So Rumsey and Blanchard came to work here.”

  “Pretty long way from Washington.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “How’d they happen to wind up here, do we know?”

  “They were both sent over by an employment agency, Cooper Placement Services. In fact, all four were.”

  “Oh, were they? Bob, I think it might profit us to take a little look at this Cooper Placement Service.”

  “Check.”

  “Shake the tree a little,” Lieutenant Orville said, doing a tree-shaking gesture. “See what falls out.”

  “Check.”

  “In the meantime,” Lieutenant Orville said, “let’s bring this faggot Blanchard in, see what he’s got to say for himself and his pal the butler.”

  “Check.”

  •

  Lieutenant Orville had taken an instinctive dislike to the secretary, Blanchard. He trusted his instincts, mostly because they were all he had, and when Lieutenant Wooster brought the fellow in to be questioned, Orville felt it again, that immediate distrust.

  Look at him, in his natty suit and tie, that shit-eating grin, that politeness that was just a little too polite, so that it was more like an insult than real politeness. There were criminals Lieutenant Orville had met who had that same slick surface, smooth and oily, covering something completely different underneath. It was as though Fredric Eustace Blanchard were not Fredric Eustace Blanchard at all, not a private secretary, not in any way the person he seemed to be, as though there were another person hidden down inside there, who would be very interesting for Lieutenant Orville if he could only winkle him out.

  Well, that was unlikely, and probably not useful to the investigation at hand, so once Blanchard was settled at his ease beside Monroe Hall’s big double-sided desk, with Lieutenant Orville in Hall’s seat behind it and Lieutenant Wooster ready to take copious notes at what had been Blanchard’s desk, Orville went directly to what he thought was the point: “Tell me about the butler.”

  “John Rumsey,” Blanchard agreed, and smiled for no reason Lieutenant Orville could see, and said, “Worked with him down in D.C.”

  “Where your employer was murdered,” Lieutenant Orville pointed out. “Yours and Rumsey’s.”

  “That was sad,” Blanchard said, but went on grinning.

  “Were you and Rumsey questioned in the case?”

  “Not us,” Blanchard said.

  “Oh?” Lieutenant Orville registered surprise. “Why’s that?”

  “Well,” Blanchard said, “Ambassador Chk was killed in Novi Glad.”

  “And where,” Lieutenant Orville pursued, “is Novi Glad?”

  “It’s the capital of Vostkojek.” Blanchard waved a hand to indicate someplace far away. “About five thousand miles from D.C. Past an ocean, and most of Europe.”

  “And where were you when this ambassador was killed?”

  “In D.C.”

  Beginning to realize this was not after all going to be a fruitful line of inquiry, Lieutenant Orville segued out of it with one final question: “Did they ever catch the perpetrator?”

  “Oh, sure,” Blanchard said. “It was political. He was a Bigendian.”

  No. No deeper into that blind alley. “And where were you this morning,” Lieutenant Orville abruptly demanded, “when your latest employer was being kidnapped?”

  Blanchard pointed at Wooster. “At my desk there.”

  “And what were you doing?”

  “Arranging charitable affairs for Mr. Hall to take part in.”

  Unbelieving, Lieutenant Orville said, “Monroe Hall needs charity?”

  “Oh, no,” Blanchard said. “He gives charity. His reputation took a bad hit a little while ago, and we’ve started the rehabilitation.”

  Lieutenant Wooster mildly said, “My uncle lost everything in the SomniTech affair, everything.”

  Turning that bland smile toward Wooster, Blanchard said, “But I’m sure the family helped out.”

  Lieutenant Wooster’s mouth opened. He looked completely blank, as though the plug had been pulled on his brain.

  Lieutenant Orville said, “So you were arranging charity this morning. Who with, and where did that person go?”

  “A lot of people, by phone.” Blanchard pointed at the immobilized Wooster again. “The phone log is by your partner’s left hand there.”

  “Bob,” Lieutenant Orville said, “let’s see that phone log.”

  Popping back to life, Lieutenant Wooster picked up the black ledger book, carried it to Lieutenant Orville, and went back to his seat. Lieutenant Orville scowled at the book. When he leafed its pages, they were all there: names, numbers, times. There was no doubt it would all check out.

  Slippery son of a bitch, this Blanchard. If only I could get under the surface, Lieutenant Orville told himself. There’s something going on down in there. He said, “Until further notice, I don’t want you leaving the property.”

  Blanchard actually laughed. “Not me, “ he said. “I wouldn’t skip this for a million dollars.”

  50

  MARK TOLD HIMSELF THERE was no point in having the jitters, not now, not when it was all over. Or at least this part was all over. Monroe Hall had been successfully extricated from his compound—with butler, but never mind—and the two of them, freed of their blindfolds and ropes, were now snugly tucked into separate locked upstairs bedrooms with sheets of plywood over the windows. Mark and Os and the union men were gathered in the main living room, removing dustsheets from the sofas and chairs, making cozy. Os had already filled the refrigerator with beer, some of which had been brought out for a victory toast. So there was no reason any more, if there had ever been, for Mark to have the jitters. And yet, he did.

  This feeling of edginess, of nerves unstrung, had started just before the kidnapping. He’d been fine on the trip to borrow the horse and its carrier; he’d been fine getting into the carrier with the others to leave the driving to Mac; he’d even been fine when they’d made it past the guardshack.

  When it had started, the butterflies, the twitchiness, the body-out-of-control feeling, was when he put on the ski mask. That awful hot wool against his face had been a kind of shock, a reality check.

  This is real! he told himself. We aren’t just talking about this, we’re doing this. Looking around at the others, clustered in the swaying carrier in the semidark, looking at the ridiculous ways they’d chosen to conceal their faces, he’d suddenly thought, We’re crazy. People don’t do this sort of thing. Why don’t we just forget Monroe Hall? Why don’t we get over it, get on with our lives?

  Well, that was a hell of a moment to come up with such an idea, while driving from the guardshack to Monroe Hall’s home. Looking around the interior of the carrier, it had seemed to Mark that everybody else was calm, assured, confident, ready, knowing exactly the dangers and their own skills, like paratroopers clustered at the open doorway of the airplane.r />
  It was only when they’d dashed out of the carrier and laid hands on Hall himself—and the butler, but never mind—and the others had all started shouting like madmen, yelling orders at one another and so on, that he’d realized they were all having the jitters, too. It was not just him. And that knowledge, plus the success of the operation, had calmed him considerably, until Monroe Hall recognized his voice.

  That was the moment. That was the moment his mouth opened, his throat closed, his eyes bulged, his heart contracted, and his hands began to shake like fringe on a cowgirl. He had been a wreck ever since, silent except when he had to whisper something to Buddy to say to Hall, and not even Hall’s current residence in a locked room nor the presence in his own hand of a full and frosty beer had done much to make him calm.

  Recognized my voice!

  “Well,” Mac said, dropping into a sofa like a relief package without quite spilling beer, then drinking beer, “that was one hell of a drive.”

  “You did it great,” Buddy assured him.

  “We acted, I would say,” Os informed them all, very nearly smiling, “in the finest traditions of Mission: Impossible.”

  Mark had things he felt he could say at that moment, but somehow the words didn’t come. Somehow, his mouth didn’t open.

  Recognized my voice!

  Buddy said, “What’s the program now?”

  “We let Hall go without dinner,” Os said. “It’s four-thirty now. We’ll have our own dinner—”

  Ace said, “What about the butler?”

  Everybody looked at him. Os said, “What about the butler?”

  “Does he go without dinner, too?”

  “Oh. No, no,” Os said, “we’ll feed him. Soups and things, with plastic spoons and things, so he can’t get any ideas.”

  “He didn’t strike me,” Buddy said, “as a guy who’d get a lot of ideas.”

  “True,” Os said. “But one can never be too careful.”

  “Sure,” Buddy said. “But after we’ve had our dinner and the butler’s had his dinner and Hall hasn’t had his dinner, then what?”