Stronghold Page 13

  “You arrange for that too?”

  “That too, Brother Shanklin.”

  “I’ll bet you did.” He remembers something. “Oh, Coco wants you up on top.”

  “Why?”

  “You’re asking me what’s on that crazy nigger’s mind? He just said send you up right away.”

  I am on my way out of the room when Harvey remembers something else. “Oh yeah, he told me about us being the July Group now. I like that.”

  “I thought you would.”

  I go up to the roof. The house, with the conditioner blasting away, is almost too cool. When I get my head above roof-level through the trapdoor, it is like being blasted with a heat ray. Coco, Uzi in hand, binoculars slung around his neck, is already dripping sweat. When he unslings the binoculars and hands them to me, they are wet to the touch. He points toward the road. “Take a look at that, man. There could be somebody coming along there very soon who is not either Mr. Hayworth or Mr. Duffy. Right there on the road beyond those yellow flowers.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “Take a look. Just beyond those flowers.”

  I focus the glasses on the flower bed and beyond it, and see what he is talking about. The mailbox, its metal flag down, waiting for the morning delivery. The commanding officer must never show that he may have missed a detail. I say, “It’s a mailbox. Country style. And odds are nobody’s hiding in it with a machine gun.”

  “Very funny, man. But you did not allow for it. You told Hayworth to keep those crazies down the road away from here, but you said nothing about mail delivery.”

  “I didn’t have to. He’ll make sure there’s no delivery today.”

  “If he remembers about it. You did not.”

  “Hubert, are you calling me a liar?”

  “All right, all right, I am not calling you anything. But do you know the man who makes mail deliveries here?”

  “Used to be a guy named Farrow. Still might be, the way they operate in these parts.”

  “I don’t think so. I think today it. might be the same car, but with a plainclothesman driving it.”

  “Then just blast anything that shows up. Why make a big deal out of it? Worried about damaging the U.S. mails?”

  “No, Mr. Flood. I am worried because from that car to me is exactly the same distance as from me to that car. Meaning that if I do not knock it out first round, and there is a sharpshooter laying low in the back of it—”

  “Baby, that is the name of the game.”

  “Not my game, Jimmy. Not yours either, if there is going to be phase three. So I want one of the women standing right here next to me. And if you want to paint a bull’s-eye on her tit for the benefit of anybody coming down that road, you can do it.”

  “Oh? I thought you were the one who was so much against wasting any of the women.”

  “None of them will be wasted that way, believe me. And none of us, either.”

  It is not a bad idea. I go down to the kitchen, and after telling the ladies the whys and wherefores of the matter, I cut Mamma Emily out of the herd, and she follows me up to the roof and goes on duty as docile as a cow being led to pasture.

  Eleven o’clock.

  Time for my turn on the sun deck.

  But I wait until I catch the hourly news roundup—three minutes and six commercials take care of the world—and there is still no flash about the action at Hayworth House.

  I go into the kitchen, where the transistor is blasting out the same shortage of news. Harvey and Lester are at the table, Harvey working on a sandwich, Lester lovingly shining up his Colt. The window of Sarah Frisch’s room is shuttered like all the others in the house, and through the doorway of the darkened room I can just make out the old lady propped up in bed and Deborah sitting beside her. Janet is standing at the window as if she can see through the closed shutters.

  Harvey says to me, “I took all the knives, anything sharp around here, and put them in a box on the top shelf. If they need something for cooking, they can ask for it.”

  “Good.”

  “And I caught that Deborah trying to untie the old lady when she thought I wasn’t looking. I told her to knock it off or she’d get tied up the same way.”

  “Only with her legs open,” Lester says. He looks happy at the idea.

  It turns out Deborah is taking this in. She walks out into the kitchen. “You don’t have to be so rotten about it,” she says to me furiously. “You can’t keep her tied up like that. It’s hurting her.”

  “That’s too bad. I told you I don’t want her wandering around if things start happening in here.”

  “How far can she wander?”

  She is picking the wrong time for this nonsense, after eleven o’clock and getting near deadline. I slam her across the cheek so hard that it whips her face sideways and sends her staggering back a couple of steps before she can get her balance. “You’re lucky,” I point out as she stands there, a hand pressed to her cheek, her expression showing she doesn’t really believe this can be happening to her. “If Harvey or Lester land on you, your head’ll go right through that wall.”

  Janet comes out of the bedroom. “I told you,” she says to Deborah, and there is no sympathy in her voice, only contempt. A hard-nosed piece, all right. She pulls a handful of ice cubes from the refrigerator, slaps them into a kitchen towel, and hands it to Deborah. “Use that. It’ll feel better.” She turns to me. “Isn’t it our turn to go hold hands up on the roof?”

  Cool. Even cooler than those ice cubes.

  We go up to the attic, and Janet climbs the ladder to the roof effortlessly as a cat going up a tree. Coco gives her a hand up to the sun deck, and when I follow her through the trapdoor, he says to me, “Anything on the radio yet?”

  “No.”

  “There should be.”

  “Not if Hayworth is getting his way. So far, that’s what it looks like.”

  Mamma Emily is sitting on the planking of the sun deck looking wilted. Janet helps her to her feet and says, “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, of course. Perfectly all right. How is Sarah Frisch?”

  “The same.” Janet gives me a dirty look. “Deborah will tell you how things are going.”

  Coco passes me the binoculars and then after going through the trapdoor he steers Emily down. Janet stands waiting for instructions. It strikes me that what Coco had up here with him was a pigeon; what I have is more in the falcon class. Comes trouble, she could be more menace than hostage.

  I point to the railing. “Over there.”

  Janet walks to it. When she sees me unbuckle the strap from the binoculars, she catches on fast. She says, “That won’t be necessary. I won’t try anything stupid.”

  “Sure you won’t.” She offers no resistance as I tie her wrists behind her back, then tie the other end of the strap to the railing. I move up against her, put an arm around her waist, studying the terrain beyond the road, trying to get the picture anybody on the ground would have of us. A sure bet, I can see, that while we’re as close together as this, nobody, whether from the front of the house or the back, would try to wing me.

  I realize that the waist I am gripping is flat and hard, the muscles rigid against my touch. I slide my hand over the sharpness of the hipbone, down and around, and I find that her small tight butt is surprisingly soft. “Jesus,” she suddenly says. “Right up here on the roof?”

  I pull my hand away, and too late, despise myself for doing it. What I should do is give her a real working-over, both hands, then take her right up here on the roof. But I don’t. I say, “Only by invitation, doll.”

  “That’ll be the day.”

  From the look on her face, if she had a mouthful of bullets she could spit them right through me. I move away from her a little to cool her down. “When does the mail get delivered here?” I ask.

  “It’s probably in the box now.”

  “It isn’t. Now what does that mean to you?”

  “It means my fa
ther is following instructions. Seeing to it nobody gets in the way while he’s putting your money together. Don’t worry. He’ll deliver on schedule.”

  “What makes you so sure?”

  “I know my father, Flood. You told him what, when, and how to deliver. As long as he works from the instruction book, he functions beautifully. No imagination, Flood. No doubts. No uncertainties. So you don’t have to worry he’ll come up with some brainstorm to unsettle your pretty plans. He won’t.”

  “I take it if you were in his spot right now, you would.”

  “You’re goddam right I would. The army, navy, and marines. Tanks, cannons, and bombers. Either you and your freaks would come out on demand with your hands up, Flood, or you wouldn’t last very long.”

  “Neither would your mother and sister, baby.”

  Janet shakes her head. “No, I don’t think so. Crazy as you are, you must know they’ll be just what you need, comes the crunch. Because they’re even more freaked out than you. They’re the ones who’ll get up in court and say that none of this is your fault. You came from a broken home, you never got the love you needed, the whole gorgeous bucket of whitewash is all yours when the time comes, Flood. Keep that in mind the next time you get ready to knock Deborah’s teeth out or aim that gun at my mother.”

  “I see.” What I see is that she is tough, she is smart, and she is impossible to figure out. I ask, really curious about it, “Did you ever stand up and give them that kind of message in meeting?”

  “Don’t push, Flood.”

  “I’m disappointed in you, baby. All this big talk up here, but the same sanctimonious crap down there where it counts.”

  “Be grateful for that sanctimonious crap, Flood. It’s the only thing that keeps cases like you from being stood up against a wall and shot the minute you get one inch out of line.”

  Holding the Uzi waist-high, I aim it at her. “But look who’s carrying the gun, baby.” She stares at it, all the fancy speeches drying up in her mouth. That old black magic. Unpredictability. She doesn’t know if I will pull that trigger or not. Hell, how can she if J. Flood himself doesn’t know whether or not he’ll do it. From a distance, I watch Flood’s finger tighten on the trigger. I have a feeling that maybe he is moving things too fast and in the wrong direction, fooling around with The Button this way, but he is on his own now, and there is nothing I can do about it, nothing I want to do about it.

  Suddenly Flood and I are together again.

  I say to Janet, “One thing you’ve made clear, baby. If it comes to a showdown—if it turns out one minute after deadline that daddy still needs persuasion—you are the disposable hostage. That doesn’t leave mamma and sister off the hook, but you are number one on the list. And do you know what? Watching you and daddy, I get the feeling he wouldn’t even mind if I finished you off right in front of him. Anybody else on the list, yes. Not you. What do you think of that?”

  She looks sick. She looks as if the dose of pills in her can’t carry her any more. She shakes her head. “You’re wrong, Flood,” she says. “He’d have to mind. That’s what the instruction book tells him. I’m the one who wouldn’t mind.”

  Coming on to twelve o’clock, a few big clouds move in from the west, so that there is a constant play of light and shade on the woods around the house. Logic or no logic, it gives the effect of something going on among those trees, so I work the binoculars hard. Nothing shows. Nothing at all. And I can even make out knotholes on the tree trunks. These glasses are the best. German-made, picked up in London by Coco, not so much for practical purposes as to square the count against the shopkeeper who had swindled him on the price of some camera film. Oxford Street, Coco said. Half of London is always out on Oxford Street. Just step out into that crowd, man, and you are lost for good.

  I am sighting the glasses on the woods when Coco shows up on the roof. Not looking for a slug through the head, he calls a warning from the trapdoor, then hauls himself up and comes over to me. “You see anything out there?”

  “No.”

  “And not a word about this on the radio yet. It is five minutes to twelve now. Do you think Hayworth is waiting for the exact second before he shows up?”

  “He might be.”

  “I don’t think so. Jimmy, are you sure you gave him enough time to get the money together?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then what happens if he does not show up in the next five minutes?”

  “I phone the bank. If he’s not there, I get hold of Duffy at police headquarters. Any other questions?”

  There goes that hand up again in pained protest. “I am not criticizing, Jimmy. I just do not like waiting for things to happen. I am a high-strung sort of fellow.”

  “Well, don’t take it out on me. Go on down and ask Harvey and Lester how to be low-strung.”

  “No, thank you. That is another thing. It is Lester’s turn up here again, but I want to take over for him now that it is getting close to the time. With one of the other women.”

  “All right,” I say, “take over for him. But not with one of the other women. This one will do fine.”

  He glances at Janet where she is leaning back against the railing, her head down. Then he walks over to get a closer look. He says to me with surprise, “You’ve got her tied up?”

  “Seems so, doesn’t it?”

  “She looks in bad shape, Jimmy. Take her down with you and bring up that Emily lady. She is a cool one.”

  “This is a cool one too.”

  Coco puts his hand under Janet’s chin and lifts her face. She is very white, her eyes are closed. He says to her, “Are you all right?”

  She doesn’t say anything, just makes a motion with her head, yes.

  “You see?” I say to Coco. “But if she wants her mamma to stand in for her, all she has to do is ask.”

  Janet motions with her head, no.

  I say to her, “It’s time for some happy pills, isn’t it? But you’ll have to come down with me to get them. In that case, mamma comes up here.”

  Janet opens her eyes and squints at me. She pulls her chin away from Coco’s hand. “Go to hell,” she says.

  “Tough, stringy meat,” I tell Coco. “She’ll have to cook some more before she softens up.” I hand him the Uzi. “I’m going down to phone now. Something can blow any minute, so keep your eyes open. If Hayworth forgets he’s supposed to park the wagon out on the road and not bring it up the driveway, remind him of it with the gun.”

  “No sweat,” Coco says. “But whatever you get on the phone, man, you let me know right away.”

  When I get down to the kitchen it looks like a family party there, Emily, Deborah, and both Shanklins around the table, and the transistor on it blasting out the end of the midday news. I motion at the transistor, and Harvey says, “Still nothing. Man, it’s like they don’t want anybody to know what’s going on here.”

  “And it’s after deadline,” Lester says. The news turns into a commercial, and he tunes down the volume. “You know what I’ve been thinking?” he says to me seriously. “I’ve been thinking there’s this Hayworth, and they load up his wagon with four million cash, and he says he is fetching it back here, but what the hell, four million cash, so he just takes off some other place. Like Canada. Maybe Mexico.”

  Emily says, “That’s ridiculous.”

  “You’re right,” I tell her. “What isn’t ridiculous is that it’s after deadline. I thought Marcus had more brains than to lay your necks on the block like this.”

  “Jimmy, it’s only a little after twelve. I’m sure there’s a reason for his being delayed.”

  “So am I. But I want to hear it from him personally.” I point at the phone. “Now you’ll call the bank. If it’s him, hand me the phone. If it’s anybody else and they say he’s out, just hang up.”

  Emily is not as much in control of herself as she’s putting on. She fumbles with the receiver, her hands shaking. She holds the receiver to her ear, but doesn’t dial, just stands the
re listening. To what?

  I say, “What the hell are you waiting for?” and she says, “There’s no dial tone. No sound at all.”

  I put the receiver to my ear. She’s right.

  I ask, “You have any trouble with these phones lately?” and she shakes her head. I shove her out into the hallway where there’s a phone on the small table next to the coatrack. “Go on,” I tell her, “try that one.”

  Same thing again. Dead phone. Room by room, we check out every phone in the house. No question, the service is completely out for the whole place. Why? Hayworth is smart to block off mail delivery here, but what oddball reason could he find to cut off phone service? One possible. With the phones working, reporters, neighbors, busybodies would be free to keep calling the house and maybe make waves.

  No waves. This has to be the answer.

  Which means that Hayworth is somehow keeping Duffy under tight control every which way.

  And should be pulling up here any minute now with the Company funds.

  I shove Emily back into the kitchen and give Harvey and Lester the news. Harvey doesn’t like it. He says to me, “What makes you so sure it was Hayworth cut off the phone? Suppose it was that police chief?”

  “Why would he?”

  “Because you told us he’d most likely try to do things his way and come charging right up that hill. He cuts off the phone, it means we can’t scare him out of that.”

  “Shit.”

  Harvey gets red in the face. “Well, that’s what you were trying to do just now, wasn’t it? Scare Hayworth into getting a move-on.”

  “He’s already been scared into it. He’s only fifteen minutes overdue anyhow. And if Duffy has his way and comes charging up that hill, he’ll find out fast enough we’re not playing games. Either way”—I motion at the two women—”we hold all the aces. Right?”

  “Right,” says Lester, but Harvey shakes his head. “I think—”

  “Don’t,” I tell him. “You think too hard, Mr. Shanklin, you are likely to get a hernia in those brain muscles.”