The Road To Ruin Read online

  Mac and Buddy and Ace had seen that sight enough—in fact, too much. What they wanted to see, and so far had not seen, was the man himself at the wheel, Monroe Hall, come out to meet his judgment.

  Once or twice a week the wife emerged, usually in the Healey though sometimes in one of the other cars, the 1967 Lamborghini Miura or the 1955 Morgan Plus 4, for example, and in her automobile of choice she would drive apparently aimlessly around the rural back roads surrounding the compound.

  Mac and Buddy and Ace had discussed among themselves whether or not these trips actually were aimless, merely the random actions of a bored woman stuck in a gilded cage the size of Catalina Island, or if there were some purpose to them after all. So far as they knew, she’d never stopped anywhere on any of these jaunts, never met anybody, never did anything but drive around for an hour or so, and then back to the Monroe Hall compound.

  That was as far as they knew. Unfortunately, they didn’t know everything. From time to time, on these trips, on some particularly empty back road, the wife would floor it, apparently just for fun, and all at once the Taurus would be alone on the road, poking along, following nothing. That’s when Ace started calling the Taurus the tortoise, which Buddy, who owned the car, took offense at, not even cooling off after Mac pointed out that the tortoise had won that particular race.

  Something had to be done. They’d been staking out the Hall compound for weeks now, months, and except for the occasional gallop with the Mrs. they had nothing to show for it. They could only keep this stakeout going until their unemployment insurance ran out, which would be in just a very few weeks. Something had to be done.

  As they drove along the country road, well back from the gleaming white Healey, the wife taking her time today, so far not zipping off unexpectedly over some hillock and out of sight, Mac said, “Listen, something has to be done.”

  “We know,” Ace said.

  Mac said, “Okay. What if we kidnap her?”

  Ace shook his head. “He’ll never pay.”

  “She’s his wife.”

  “He won’t pay,” Ace said. “You know the guy as well as we do, and he won’t pay. We could send him her fingers, one at a time, and he wouldn’t pay.”

  Mac scrinched up his face. “I couldn’t send him her fingers.”

  “Neither could I,” Ace said. “Even if it would do any good. I’m just saying.”

  “Besides,” Buddy said, steering around curves, keeping the Healey just barely in sight, looking from time to time in the rearview mirror, “he’s what it’s all about. That was the agreement at the beginning.”

  “None of us,” Mac said, “thought it would take this long.”

  Ace said, “Sure. We thought he’d go out sometimes.”

  “There used to be all these pictures of him in the magazines,” Mac said, “at the opera, at charities—”

  “Hah,” Buddy said.

  “Who knew,” Mac said, “he’d suddenly turn into a hermit?”

  “It’s the publicity,” Ace said. “These days, he isn’t famous, he’s infamous, and he’s afraid to go out.”

  “I don’t know,” Mac said. “I don’t wanna give up, but what are we doing here?”

  “And it isn’t just for us,” Ace pointed out. “It’s for the whole local.”

  “Hold on,” Buddy said. “Come on, lady, stop, then go.”

  Up ahead, the Healey had reached an empty intersection, two minor roads crossing among evergreens, no houses or businesses around. The road they were on had the stop sign, and the Healey had stopped, but now it wasn’t moving on.

  Buddy had slowed, not wanting to get too close, not wanting her to make a note of the Taurus and maybe remember it some other time, but he was also looking in the mirror again. “I got a guy behind me,” he said, “so I can’t slow down too much.”

  Up ahead, a gasoline truck went slowly by, from left to right, explaining the wife’s delay, and once it cleared the road the Healey shot across the intersection and headed off around the next curve. Buddy accelerated to the stop sign, hit the brakes hard, the Taurus jolted to a stop that made Ace reach out to brace himself against the passenger air-bag compartment, and a black stretch limo crossed the intersection, also from left to right, very slowly.

  Well, no. It didn’t cross the intersection; it entered the intersection, filled the intersection, and stopped.

  “Now what?” Buddy said, and honked his horn. “Come on, Jack!”

  Twisting around, Ace looked past Mac out the rear window. “What’s going on?”

  Mac twisted around as well. Behind them was a big black Lincoln Navigator SUV, the most carnivorous vehicle on the road, the Minotaur of motoring. Both of its rear doors were open, and a man in a business suit and tie was getting out on each side. Both men wore sunglasses and were tall and thin and maybe forty.

  “Holy Christ!” Mac said.

  “God damn it!” Buddy cried. “They tipped to us!”

  “Following the wife too much,” Mac decided, watching the men walk forward, taking their time, in no hurry.

  “Lock the doors,” Ace said.

  “Oh, come on,” Buddy said. “We’re past that.” And he rolled his window down.

  The two men had reached their car now. The one on Buddy’s side bent down, hand on the Taurus roof as he smiled at Buddy and said, “Good afternoon.”

  “Afternoon,” Buddy agreed.

  “We thought maybe you’d like to join forces,” the man said. Across the way, the other man smiled at Ace through the window of his locked door.

  So, Mac thought, these guys aren’t goons from the compound after all. This was something else.

  Buddy said, “Join forces? Whadaya mean, join forces?”

  “Well,” the man said, “we’ve got a stratagem aimed at Monroe Hall that doesn’t appear to be working out, and I’d say you gents also have some sort of plan in mind involving Monroe Hall that also isn’t working out.”

  Buddy said, “Monroe who?”

  The man’s smile was kindly, you had to say that for it. “You three have been staking out Hall’s place for weeks,” he said. “We’ve got enough Polaroids of you to fill a bulletin board. We’ve traced the registration of this car, so we know who you are, Alfred ‘Buddy’ Meadle, and we can pretty well guess who your friends are. Former coworkers. Mrs. Hall isn’t going to do anything interesting, she never does. We’ve got a nice stretch here, why not come on over, get comfortable, we can discuss the situation.”

  “What situation?” Buddy asked him.

  “I think we should do it,” Mac said. He didn’t know who these people were, but they looked to him as though they just might be the something that had to be done.

  “The situation where we pool our resources,” the man said. His smile as he looked the Taurus up and down was pitying. “I believe we have more resources than you do. Your friend is right, you should do it. Why not leave your car on the side of the road here, and we’ll go for a spin in the stretch?”

  7

  IT WAS A WHILE before Alicia realized she’d lost the Taurus. She was just so used to it being there, in her rearview mirror, keeping its humble distance like a footman in a palace, that she hardly actually saw it any more, so it took a little while to realize she wasn’t seeing it. Her mirror was empty, like a vampire’s.

  Had they given up, after all this time? She couldn’t believe it. They were so faithful in their fashion, following her everywhere, except for those moments when, just for the fun of it, she took them out to some extremely remote part of the countryside, suddenly accelerated, and zip, left them there. Other than that, they were always with her, like old dog Tray.

  In fact, she mostly thought of them as the Three Stooges, bulky men hunched in their little tan Taurus. When the siege started—she supposed it had to be called a siege, however ineffective—they’d all worn plaid shirts, like lumberjacks on holiday, but as the weather had warmed they’d switched to T-shirts with words on them. She’d never been able to study
those shirts, but she supposed most of the words were about beer.

  The stop sign, that must be it, where she’d lost them. She’d had to wait for that gasoline truck to go by, but then she’d managed to dash across the intersection before that tasteless stretch limousine had arrived, and what was that thing doing in this neck of the woods?

  It must have been the limousine that had made them lose her. Lord knows how long a thing like that would take to cross an intersection, so by the time the Three Stooges could once again take up the chase, their quarry was gone. What a shame.

  Well, she’d been out and about long enough for today, anyway, so why not go back along the same route, have another look at the intersection? Wouldn’t it be funny if the Stooges were still there, stuck, lost, unable to decide which way to turn? She could sail on by, pretend not to notice them, but give them plenty of time to get back into position in her train. Of course they wouldn’t be there, but it was fun to think of them that way, and why not drive back past there in any case?

  She knew all these roads around here by now, knew them as well as she’d once known Madison Avenue, so she didn’t have to U-turn. A left here, and another left farther on, and so forth. The next thing you knew, she’d be at the intersection, and the next thing you knew, she’d be home again, home again, jiggety jig.

  Home. Not such fun, these days. If only Monroe didn’t have those travel restrictions on him, there were so many lively places they could go. Nowhere among old friends, of course, but still. Monroe could grow a beard, call himself something else. Almost anything else. Monroe Hall was a stupid name, anyway; Alicia had always thought it made him sound like a private school dormitory.

  Of course, she could go if she wanted, and anywhere she wanted. She could even go among their friends, who would sympathize with her, and press her for gossip, and offer their tin sympathy, and praise her for having left the monster, but she didn’t want to go by herself. She didn’t want to leave Monroe, unfortunately.

  Yes, that was it. She loved Monroe, unfortunately. Also, he’d covered for her, which had been very good of him. Back in the heady days of their massive rip-off of SomniTech she had been a willing, even eager, co-conspirator, using her remembered expertise from the world of advertising to help them gloss, shift attention, misdirect. Company reports, or at least the most fictitious ones, had been mostly written by her.

  And yet, through all his subsequent travail, Monroe had never once pointed a finger in her direction. Yes, it was true that bringing her down wouldn’t have been of any help to him, but apparently this was one instance where misery did not love company, and Monroe had faced the music all alone.

  For that, by itself, he deserved to have her stand by him. But even without that, the fact was, she loved him. She knew everything that was wrong with him, she knew he was a selfish, infantile, coldhearted monster, because, with absolute openness, he had let her see to the depths of his black heart. But she also knew that she was the one spot of color he was able to see in the world outside himself.

  What love he contained, Monroe had given to Alicia. He had made her rich and happy. They were still rich, and she could hope that some day they would once again be happy. And out of the compound, Lord, please.

  The intersection. Coming to it from the other direction, slowing for the stop sign, she was startled to see that the Taurus was parked just off the road over there. Good heavens, were they that lost?

  Behind the Taurus was another vehicle, a black Lincoln Navigator, like the bigger fish behind the smaller fish, mouth open to eat it. That car she’d never seen before.

  There was no other traffic. Slowly she drove across the intersection, frankly staring at the Taurus, and was further surprised to see it was empty. Its driver’s window was open.

  The Navigator was occupied, by a uniformed chauffeur at the wheel, reading a copy of Harper’s. He didn’t look up when Alicia drove by.

  There was something odd about all that. Driving on, frowning at her mirror, Alicia watched the empty Taurus and the chauffeured Navigator recede, then disappear around a bend in the road.

  What was that all about?

  8

  SEATED BESIDE HIS PARTNER Os in the forward seat of the stretch, just behind the driver beyond his soundproof partition, Mark Sterling surveyed the trio from the Taurus, now arrayed across the forward-facing rear seat as though they really should be doing see-no-evil-hear-no-evil-speak-no-evil. They were not an inspiring lot. Years of factory jobs interspersed with bowling had left them soft and paunchy, with blurred round faces. Their T-shirts were walking billboards for Miller Lite, Bud, and the Philadelphia Eagles football team. They did not, at first blush, look like anything a truly serious conspirator would want in his cabal.

  Well, this had been Mark’s idea to begin with, Os being on the fence vis-à-vis the proposal, leaning toward the negative. So now was the moment of truth, the plunge, the spin of the wheel.

  “I should begin,” Mark said, smiling in his clubby fashion at the trio, hoping to put them a bit more at their ease, since at the moment they couldn’t have looked less at their ease had they been seated in a tumbrel surrounded by people speaking French. “We should introduce ourselves,” he said, then gestured gracefully at Meadle, saying, “Well, Buddy, we’ve already introduced you. It is Buddy, isn’t it? You don’t use Alfred much?”

  “Not much,” Meadle admitted. Seated in the middle—hear-no-evil—he was blinking a lot.

  Time to move the process along. “Well, I’m Mark Sterling, Mark to my friends, of whom I hope to soon count yourselves, and this is Osbourne Faulk, known as Os to friend and foe alike.”

  “Mr. Os to foe,” Os said.

  “Yes, of course,” Mark agreed, bouncing his negotiator’s smile off Os’s prominent cheekbone. “If you’d like to introduce your friends, Buddy,” he went on, and spread his hands in a welcoming way, “even if only by nickname at this moment, it would certainly help us to move forward.”

  “I’m Mac,” said the fellow on the left: see-no-evil, of course.

  Buddy turned to look at the profile of his other friend, who now looked like a man in a swarm of gnats, intolerably pestered yet unwilling to open his mouth to complain. Buddy said, “You want me to innerduce you?”

  “I don’t know what this is all about,” cried speak-no-evil. “What are we doing here?”

  “Introducing ourselves, at the moment,” Mark told him, pleasantly enough. “What we are doing here in a larger sense, however, if I take that to be your question, I believe we have all been brought to this corner of the world by a desire for revenge against one Monroe Hall.”

  Mac gave him a skeptical look. “You didn’t work for Hall.”

  Oh, so that was it. Buddy was the driver, but Mac the natural leader. Mark remembered it had been Mac, from the rear seat of the Taurus, who’d said, “I think we should do it.” Therefore, addressing Mac more directly now, Mark said, “No, indeed, we didn’t work for Monroe Hall, at least we were spared that. However, we did invest with SomniTech.”

  To Mark’s left, Os made that little grr sound he’d often make when about to lose control at tennis. Patting that knee—it quivered a little—Mark went on, “It has been our hope, since pitching our tent outside the Hall compound, to, one way or another, recoup our losses.”

  “Us, too,” Buddy said.

  Surprised, Mark said, “You invested?”

  “Everything,” Buddy told him. “Life insurance. Health insurance. Pension plan.”

  Oh, those things. They hardly mattered in the grand scheme of existence, after all, but Mark could just see that Buddy and his friends might treasure them more than they were really worth. Symbolic value, and so on. Sympathy at full bore, he said, “So you see, we are in a similar situation.”

  “I’m Ace,” abruptly said speak-no-evil, sitting up straight like a drum major, frowning massively at Mark.

  Mark smiled upon him. “Welcome to the group, Ace. Have you something to add?”

  “
How do we know,” Ace demanded, “you aren’t a cop?”

  The limo, rented, like the Navigator, for its flash effect, traversed a climbing curve. The view outside, lovely enough, was sufficiently unchanging so as not to distract from the conversation within. His most open and boyish smile on his face, Mark said, “Ace, all I can tell you is, no one in my entire life has ever mistaken me for a policeman.”

  Mac said, “Ace, these aren’t cops. These are—whatchucallit—venture capitalists.” Raising a thick eyebrow at Mark, he said, “That right?”

  “Very good, Mac,” Mark said. “Yes, we are investors by trade, though at rather a low level, in comparison with some of the names you’ll read in the newspapers. We’ve had our wins and our losses, a nice win in a particular kind of rear window SUV windshield wiper, an unfortunate loss on a kind of nonflammable Christmas wreath available in every color except green—”

  Os grred again, and Mark moved smoothly on: “But rarely have we trusted any company as much as we trusted SomniTech, nor any smooth-talking son of a bitch as we trusted Monroe Hall—yes, Os, we know—and I’m afraid we severely overextended ourselves there, so that our little company at this moment is in ruins at our feet.”

  “Too bad,” Buddy said, though without what sounded like much real sympathy.

  “Yes, it is bad,” Mark agreed. “Os and I are living on relatives, an unpleasant alternative in any circumstance. To make capital, as everyone knows, you must start with capital, and capital is just what we don’t have at this moment. All sources, familial and institutional, had already been exhausted before the final blow fell. Long after Monroe Hall was taking money out of SomniTech, he was still urging us to put money in. Yes, Os.” Mark patted that quivering knee once more, then told the trio, “It is only here, with our hands on Monroe Hall—yes, Os, on Monroe Hall’s throat—that we can hope to recoup, to raise the capital that will finance a few extremely promising opportunities about which we have been made aware, but I’m sure you’ll understand if I refrain from discussing in this venue.”