The Fugitive Pigeon Page 9

  He was beautifully dressed, but in his case it was a mistake. Had he worn overalls, a dirty flannel shirt, it would have been better. But the tailored black suit, the crisp white shirt, the narrow dark tie, the gleaming black shoes, the golden cuff links and the broad plain wedding band and the large flat wristwatch with its gold expansion bracelet, all they did was emphasize the grossness and pallor and sickliness of the white parts that bulged out at collar and cuff.

  Stuck on that face like raisins on a cake were two expressionless eyes. They looked at me, the fat lips twitched, and out of them came a cracked soprano, a voice so high and foolish I inadvertently looked at the Three Stooges to see which was the ventriloquist. But it was Mr. Gross speaking, in his own voice:

  “What did you want in here? Are you a burglar?”

  “No, sir, Mr. Gross,” I said. I tried to keep looking him straight in the eye, to show him I was honest, but it was just impossible. He was so vile-looking it was embarrassing, I had to keep looking away.

  Falsetto, cracking, there-are-sharks-in-these-waters voice: “One thing I cannot stand is incompetence. Incompetence. How could you expect to break in with the house full of people?”

  “I wanted to see you, Mr. Gross,” I said. Looking everywhere at once, like Artie when he first sees you again, the way he did last night when I showed up at his party. And now doing the same thing myself, because Mr. Gross was as painful to the eye as a wrong piano chord is to the ear. Did I say he was bald? With a head that looked as though if you squeezed it, it would stay squeezed.

  He held up Tim’s gun in a tubby white hand. “With this?” What an idiotic voice. “You wanted to see me with this?”

  “For protection,” I explained.

  “I have little time,” he said. “I am dummy this hand. We have three tables tonight, all close personal friends. You are an embarrassment to me.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “If you want to see me—”

  “Her-bert!” A shout from downstairs.

  His face twitched. Indecision, and then the mind made up. “Keep watch,” he told the Three Stooges. To me he said, “I will return. When next I am dummy.”

  He went away, and the Three Stooges settled down to watch me. I told them, “I’m not going to try and get away. I want to talk to Mr. Gross.”

  But I don’t think they believed me.

  While they stood grouped near the shut door, I went back over to the window. Nothing had changed down below. I stood gazing, and all at once a shadow flitted, out at the end of the driveway, by the edge. I blinked, but it was gone.

  Behind me, the Three Stooges were talking together, deciding to send one of their number for a deck of cards. Larry, the butler, was the one to go.

  I watched and watched. Was that motion along the hedge, in the darkness? I couldn’t be sure.

  Moe, the chauffeur, said, “You.”

  He had to mean me. I turned and pointed at myself.

  He said, “You play bridge?”

  “A little,” I said. “I’m not very good.”

  “That’s all right,” he said. “We need a fourth.”

  “All right.”

  But Larry hadn’t yet returned with the cards. I turned and looked out the window again, and now I did see her, following my route exactly—Chloe, pussyfooting across the lawn toward the house.

  “You,” Moe said. “Come on, we got the cards.”

  Chapter 15

  It just so happened we were both dummy at the same time. When Mr. Gross came in I was sitting at the table with my arms folded, watching my partner, the cook—whose name was not Curly but Luke—take a perfectly sensible contract of five hearts and grind it beneath his heel. I had always thought I was one of the world’s worst bridge players, but now I knew three worse.

  Mr. Gross came in then, and I got to my feet. He said, “If you want to see me, why not merely ring the front doorbell?

  It struck me he’d picked up our conversation exactly where it had been interrupted last time. And this time, would it be interrupted the same way, or would the interruption be screams and crashings as Chloe was discovered? It had been ten minutes since I’d seen her out the window, and so far not a sound.

  Just as I had been forcing myself to concentrate on the cards, now I forced myself to concentrate on what I had to say to Mr. Gross. “I was afraid you wouldn’t talk to me. It’s a matter of life or death.”

  “Life or death?” His mouth twitched; a fastidious distaste for melodrama. But how on earth could such a face convey fastidiousness about anything? And that wedding band on his left hand—what sort of female horror did it imply downstairs?

  He said, in that voice again, “Whose life or death? Mine?”

  “No. Mine.”

  “Yours? But you came here with a gun.”

  “To defend myself.”

  “Rather than that,” he said, with twitching lips, “explain yourself.” The lips made a smile, in appreciation of the joke. His teeth looked soft, like bread.

  “My name is Poole,” I told him. “Charles Robert Poole. Two men came—”

  But he already knew the name. He took a step backward, his eyes widened, and if his face hadn’t already been as white as the belly of a fish, I think he would have blanched. “You killed the Farmer!”

  “No! No! I didn’t, Mr. Gross. I want to explain—”

  “And you came here to kill me!”

  “Mr. Gross—”

  “Damn!” said Luke. Our contract had just sunk without a trace, only a bit of oil skim on the water.

  Mr. Gross said, “What possible point can there be in these murders? Do you think you can kill the whole organization?”

  “Mr. Gross, I didn’t kill anybody. I swear I didn’t.”

  “Her-bert!” Again from downstairs.

  But this time he ignored it. “Of course it was you,” he said. “Who else would kill the Farmer? Who else would dare? Who else would want to?”

  “I didn’t want to. Why would I kill him? I didn’t even know him.”

  At the table, Luke was shuffling with unnecessary noise. The three of them sitting there were watching me with ill-concealed impatience. In any game, the worst players are always the ones most in a hurry to get at the next hand.

  Mr. Gross was saying, “You found out he was the one who had sent Trask and Slade to kill you. Foolishly, you thought you could save your own life by ending his.”

  “No, no. I just wanted to talk to him. I know better than that, Mr. Gross. I know it wouldn’t do any good to kill Mr. Agricola. Or those two men, either.”

  “Trask and Slade.”

  “Yes, sir, Trask and Slade. There would just be somebody else come after me, somebody else to send them, I know that.”

  Gross frowned, making creases in his cheeks that looked as though they’d never pop out again. He agreed with what I was saying, but if that was what I already believed, then something had to be wrong somewhere. He said, “And if you were to kill me? Do you think then you would be safe?”

  “No, sir. Even less safe. The whole organization would be out looking for the man who killed you.”

  This was heady flattery indeed. He preened before me. “That is very—”

  “Herbert!” Shouted this time from the doorway.

  We both turned to look, and the woman there was undoubtedly six foot three in her bare feet, but at the moment she was wearing four-inch heels. She looked to be in her late twenties, a statuesque blonde, leggy and magnificent, with the body of a somewhat slimmer Anita Ekberg: a Copacabana chorine if there ever strutted one. Facially she had a cold Scandinavian beauty; ice-blue eyes and hollow cheeks and wide mouth and smooth complexion. Just as Gross’s ugliness was embarrassing, making you turn away in spite of yourself, this woman’s beauty had the same effect. It was too much beauty, larger than life, overpowering. It would take a man with absolute confidence in himself to climb into bed with her.

  Or a fistful of money? Because this was surely the wom
an heralded by that wedding band.

  Gross himself seemed impressed by her. He waved flaccid hands helplessly, saying, “Something’s come up, my dear.”

  “I doubt that,” she said, with utter scorn.

  Had Gross had blood in his veins, I’m sure he would have blushed. As it was, his face turned just slightly green. Formaldehyde? He said, “You must carry on without me, this cannot wait.”

  “Bridge,” she told him, “is played with four players.”

  He looked around helplessly, and saw Luke and the other two sitting at the table in silent agreement of the lady’s observation. “Joseph,” he said. “Go down and take my place for the moment. I will return as soon as possible.”

  Joseph was the butler, whom I had initially thought of as Larry. And the chauffeur was not Moe but Harvey.

  The quick look I now caught between Joseph and the lady of the house led me to believe this was not the first time, nor the first circumstance, in which Joseph had taken Mr. Gross’s place for the moment. In fact, it seemed to me I saw a similar exchange of glances between the lady and Harvey. Luke, I noticed, resolutely watched his hands shuffle the cards.

  I had almost come to think of myself as invisible, the hidden observer, the one who sees everything but is himself unnoticed. I was, therefore, looking straight at the lady’s ice-blue eyes when they turned and looked straight back at me.

  It was like being hit in the forehead with a piece of cold pipe. The eyes saw me, catalogued me, weighed me, considered me, and set me aside as being, at least for the moment, not worth the trouble. She turned—did I say her gown was low-cut, floor-length and shimmering gold?—and strode out of the doorway, followed immediately by Joseph.

  Mr. Gross now sat down at the table at which we’d been playing cards. “You two,” he told Luke and Harvey, “stand over there by the door. If this young man tries anything, stop him.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “I won’t try anything,” I said.

  “Come over here and sit down,” he ordered.

  I went over and sat down, opposite him.

  He raised a finger like a white sausage. “Nothing,” he said, “is senseless. That I learned long ago. If a fact is presented which appears to be devoid of sense, it means only that we must look again.” He paused, as though wanting comment.

  I nodded and said, “Yes, sir.”

  He pointed the white sausage at me. “You,” he said, “are discovered in perfidy. Trask and Slade are sent to dispatch you. You escape. You appear at the Farmer’s place, and the Farmer is murdered. You appear here, with a pistol in your pocket. The conclusion seems inescapable—you killed the Farmer and you intended to kill me.”

  I shook my head vigorously. “No, I didn’t,” I said. “I didn’t—”

  “Wait.” Five white sausages raised up to halt me, with a gesture like a traffic cop. “I told you, nothing is senseless. And yet, from appearances, your behavior is utterly devoid of sense. You know that killing Farmer Agricola will not save you, that killing me will not save you. The obvious course of events, therefore, is not necessarily the true course of events. Some other, or some further, explanation will be required.”

  “That’s what I’m trying to—”

  “No, no.” The sausages waggled; I had the uneasy feeling his fingers would fall off, but they didn’t. He said, “Let me do this in my own way. Order out of chaos. Now, if you did not kill Farmer Agricola, then someone else must have. And you must have had some purpose for going to see him other than his murder. And you must have had some purpose for coming here other than my murder. Now, the question is, what other purpose? And who else would want to kill Farmer Agricola?”

  I’d always understood that big wheels in the organization were awash in enemies prepared to do them in, that violent ends were common among them and the practice of keeping bodyguards no mere affectation, but Mr. Gross seemed to think otherwise, and he was after all a big wheel in the organization himself and should know. So I let that question go, and tried the other one: “What I wanted to see—”

  But it wasn’t my turn yet. “Ah ah ah,” he said. “One moment. Allow me please to see if this problem can be worked out with no more information than that which I already possess.”

  I sat back and allowed him.

  He thought it over, pursing his lips, which was a disgusting sight. After a minute he said, “There is, of course, also the daughter, who aided your escape. Her name?”

  “Aided my—”

  He snapped his fingers. It sounded like hitting two pork chops together. “Her name,” he said.

  “Miss Althea,” I said. “But she—”

  “Yes. Althea. Is this the explanation?”

  I said, “She didn’t aid my escape, Mr. Gross. In fact, she tried to kill me. She thought I killed her father, and she came—”

  “Please,” he said. “If you must lie, do so intelligently. The Farmer’s bodyguard, who himself has questions to answer, locked you away for safekeeping. This Althea person, the daughter, released you and gave you a gun. Further, she went away with you. The only term for this is my lexicon is ‘aided your escape.’ Yes?”

  “No,” I said. “That’s all wrong. She—”

  “Is undoubtedly somewhere nearby,” he said, “waiting for you to dispatch me and return to her arms.”

  “But why?” I said. “Why would I do anything like that?”

  “That,” he told me, “is the question with which I am currently engaging myself. What has been done is clear and obvious. Why is more complex.”

  “Mr. Gross, I swear—”

  “Don’t. Be still.”

  I was still.

  The wait this time was a longer one. Mr. Gross sat there with hooded eyes, like a white frog waiting for some beauty’s kiss to turn him into a green prince, and thought and thought, while I sat all atremble with corrections and emendations I wanted to make to his misinformation and incorrect conclusions.

  Finally he spoke again: “Perhaps I begin to understand. The Farmer had tried always to keep the truth of his occupation from his daughter’s ear, which never ceased to strike me as snobbery. If a man’s own family cannot be taken into his confidence and be expected to spur him on in his professional endeavors, then God help us all. Be that as it may, to each his own, the Farmer wished his daughter to believe he was a farmer. An idiosyncrasy.”

  He looked at me expectantly, but so far he hadn’t said much of anything, so there was nothing for me to reply to. I kept my silence, waiting for him to get to the parts that counted.

  After a few seconds he nodded as though we’d come to agreement on something, and went on: “Somehow, the daughter learned the truth. Hearing it from outsiders, undoubtedly in a distorted and prejudiced manner, and at a highly impressionable age, the truth affected her badly. Particularly since the Farmer had given credence to the idea of his guilt and ill feelings by hiding this truth from his child so many years. A vigilante feeling came over the child. She must atone for her father’s sins by destroying the organization herself, with her own two hands.”

  Again he stopped, and this time I did have something to say. “That’s wrong, Mr. Gross. She still doesn’t believe the truth. I tried to tell her, but she wouldn’t listen to me.”

  He smiled, pityingly, which was horrible to see. “You are very young,” he said, “and inexperienced at lying. However, let us go on. This daughter, this child, this young girl, feeling herself helpless to destroy such a large and powerful organization, sought assistance in her scheme, and that’s where you came in.”

  “Mr. Gross! For—”

  “Be still! When I have done, you may speak, you may rebut, you will be given your chance.”

  All right then. I shrugged, and folded my arms, and sat back in the chair, all in an attempt to give the impression I was listening to utter nonsense and would be able to prove my case in a twinkling once my turn to speak had come. I wondered if I could.

  Mr. Gross said, “Somewhere you two had
met, the beautiful daughter of the gangland leader and the drifter, the ne’er-do-well, the useless nephew in his useless job. You understand, I mean nothing personal.”

  I shrugged. It wasn’t yet my turn to speak.

  “I am only,” he explained, “being vivid. In any case, you two met. She, purposeful, strong, beautiful. You, purposeless, weak, willing to be led. The two of you formed an alliance, and began your efforts to undermine the organization, and ultimately to destroy it.”

  I shook my head, but didn’t say anything.

  “At first,” he said, ignoring my shaking head, “you were content to be a informer, passing information on to the police, but after a—”

  “No! I didn’t, Mr. Gross, I did not! What infor—”

  “Be still! When I am done you may speak!”

  I subsided. “I’m sorry,” I said, more calmly. “That was just … I’m sorry.”

  “Very well.” He had himself become a bit ruffled. He smoothed his lapels—how astonishing that his hands didn’t leave a trail of white slime on the black cloth!—and took a deep breath. “After a while,” he said, “it became evident this was not enough. I cannot guess what your plans were before last night, but once you realized we were on to you, you suddenly intensified your program of attack. You attempted first to murder your own uncle, but were foiled. You then”—he gazed at me sternly till I stopped sputtering—“proceeded to Staten Island, murdered the Farmer, joined forces with your beautiful partner, and came here to kill me. That, as I see it, is the sum and essence of your activities.”