Mourner (9 page)

He was just across the border between North and South Carolina, and it was one o'clock in the afternoon. He had been driving steadily for eight hours. This automobile was the most comfortable he'd ever driven, but eight hours' driving in any car has to be tiring. All the way across North Carolina he'd been telling himself to stop, but the desire to increase the distance between himself and Washington had up till now been stronger than his need for food and rest. He had stopped only once, to fill the automobile's gas tank and empty his bladder. That had been over three hours ago.

It seemed like a pleasant little town, this one, small and somnolent. Except for the sunshine and the warmth, it could be a sleepy valley town in Klastrava. Sunshine and warmth. He had never in his life till now had enough sunshine and warmth. Klastrava was a mountainous country, in the heart of the Carpathians, and in mountainous lands the human settlements are always in the valleys. In mountainous lands the rain falls always in the valleys and mists and fogs lay there always. The summers are hazy, humid, muggy, the winters heavy with bronchial dampness.

Sunshine and warmth. And beautiful women. And one hundred thousand dollars.

He was far enough away from Washington. It was safe to stop in this little town. Ahead on the right, a sign hung out from a building that looked like a railroad car. It read DINER. He had decided to stop here, and that was when he heard the siren.

He looked in his rear-view mirror. The road was straight all the way through the little town, and almost empty. Behind him, two blocks away and coming on fast, was an automobile with a revolving red light on top.

Police.

He thought they'd caught up with him. He thought, for one panic-stricken instant, that somehow they had traced him. The police authorities had learned about the robbery and the killings, and they had traced him in some inexplicable fashion. They had caught up with him.

The problem was, he didn't have the background to understand what was happening. In all of Klastrava there isn't one single solitary speed trap. There isn't enough tourism to support one.

He thought: Run? Outrace him?

No good. The police car would be even faster than the one Menlo was driving. Besides, his reading of crime fiction had told him what to expect ahead. Roadblocks. Parker and McKay had talked about roadblocks too, so they were not entirely fictional. In his own work, at home, he had occasionally found the need to order roadblocks set up and trains searched, even the borders closed.

Could they, in this country, close the borders between states?

The police car had caught up with him, was now beside him. An angry-looking, wrinkle-faced old man in a cowboy hat waved to him to pull over to the kerb and stop.

One man? One wrinkle-faced old man? This couldn't be connected with what had happened in Washington. They would consider him, as the wording went, armed and dangerous. They would send more than one wrinkle-faced old man to apprehend him, if they were after him for what had happened in Washington.

He obeyed the old man's hand, and pulled to a stop at the kerb, wondering what it could be all about. There might be some sort of border checkpoint where he was supposed to stop and hadn't, or some such thing. He would have to wait and see, find out what the old man wanted. If worst came to worst, the derringer was reloaded and in his coat pocket.

The police car nosed in at an angle in front of him, its rear jutting out into the traffic lane in the approved method, to keep him from driving suddenly off as soon as the old man got out of his car. Menlo rolled down the window on his side, and waited.

The old man came back towards him, walking with an odd bowlegged rolling gait, as though it was a horse he'd just climbed down from instead of an automobile. He was wearing black boots and dark-blue breeches several sizes too large, which sported a yellow stripe up each seam. His dark-blue uniform coat looked like the jackets worn by Army officers in the First World War. A light-blue shirt, with a dark-blue tie, and a tan cowboy hat completed him. A broad black belt, studded with shiny cartridges, encircled his pudgy waist. A heavy black holster sat on his right hip.

He came over and stood glaring in at Menlo. "You in a hurry, bud?"

Menlo blinked. Police at home were always polite and courteous on the surface, whatever happened afterwards. He didn't know what to say. He just stared at the angry old man.

The old man said, "The posted speed limit in this village, in case you was in too much of a hurry to read the sign back there at the city line, happens to be twenty miles an hour. I just clocked you at thirty-two miles per hour, on our main street. I don't see no fire nowhere."

Menlo understood only half of it, and then half he didn't believe. "Twentymiles an hour?" He'd been going through cities and towns with thirty-mile-an-hour speed limits and occasionally twenty-five all day long.

"That's what the sign said, bud," the old man said.

"I saw no sign," Menlo protested.

"It's there. Let's have your licence and registration."

Impossible. He had neither.

The whole situation was ludicrous; all his high spirits and pleasant anticipations drained out of him. The United States was no different from Klastrava; no different from any other nation in the world. Mighty undertakings were blocked by petty bureaucratic insignificancies.

"Snap it up, bud. I ain't got all day."

There was no driver's licence in his pocket, no automobile registration. He had only two things there: a wad of money, and the derringer. He thought quickly, trying to decide which to use.

The money. The money first. If that failed, then the derringer.

Menlo reached into his pocket, peeled one bill free, and handed it to the old man. The old man looked at it, frowned suddenly like a thundercloud. "What's this?"

It was a fifty-dollar bill.

"My licence and registration," Menlo replied. He smiled tentatively.

The old man squinted, studying the bill, and then Menlo's face. He peered into the back seat, then looked the car over, front to back. "Now, what in hell have we got hold of here?" Then, with a surprisingly fast motion, his right hand snapped back, flipped open the holster flap, and dragged out an old.38-calibre Colt Police Positive Special. He took a quick step back away from the Pontiac. "Now you get on outa there, bud. You move slow and easy."

Menlo's hand started to inch towards the derringer, but the old man's trigger finger was white-knuckled with strain. The barrel of the pistol aimed at Menlo's head seemed as big as the entrance to a railroad tunnel. Meekly, cursing himself for a fool, Menlo clambered out of the Pontiac.

The old man said, "Fat one, ain't you? Turn around. Lean up against your car with your hands over your head."

Menlo did as he was told, knowing the posture the old man wanted. It was standard procedure the world around. Leaning forward off balance, the hands higher than the head, supporting the weight of the body. The position of the suspect when the police officer wants to search him for weapons. Which meant that now the derringer was to be taken from him.

How long would it be before this wretched old man took it into his head to open the two suitcases on the back seat?

And all this for driving thirty-two miles an hour on an empty street.

The old man was muttering, "I thought you was one for the judge, but now I ain't so sure. Might just be there's a poster out on you."

The old man began to pat him, searching him. The first thing he came to was the wallet in Menlo's hip pocket. He removed it, and stepped back. Menlo heard him whistle softly when he opened it; it contained money, nearly a thousand dollars in hundreds and fifties.

"Well, well, well," the old man said. "What do you know about that?" There was a pause and then a different tone. "Now, what the hell is this?"

Menlo wondered too. It hadn't, whatever it was, sounded like something the old man was pleased over. Menlo wondered where the people were. The sun was shining brightly, and this was the main street. Two cars had already gone by since he'd been stopped, both angling wide around them without stopping. But no crowd had gathered on the sidewalk. He couldn't understand it. He didn't know that in a speed-trap town, motorists often get angry at policemen and policewomen usually retaliate with a little extra humiliation such as a frisking, that in any such town, no matter how dreary, the sight of a policeman frisking a tourist is old stuff.

The old man kept mumbling to himself, and then all at once he shouted. "A Commie! A goddamn Commie!"

Then Menlo realized what the old man had found. He hadn't bothered to remove his official identification cards, and these were what the old man had been mumbling over, trying to decipher the foreign printing, until finally some sign or symbol had given the game away.

"Well, well, well!" cried the old man, growing excitement in his voice. "I guess maybe it's the Federal Bureau of Investigation that'd like you, bud. A big-shot Commie, no licence or registration, carrying around bribe money. I guess the Federal Bureau of Investigation won't mind seeing you one bit. So you just march, bud. Get on away from that car you stole, and march. To your right. The jail's just a block away. I'll come get your car and baggage after I got you locked up good."

Menlo marched ahead of him down the street to the jail, a one-storey frame structure with a blank faЮ, save for one small barred window and a door that had Police Headquarterslettered in gold on the glass.

Within, it looked like a set of a Western movie. There was a central corridor, with an office on the right containing, among other things, a roll-top desk. The door on the left was shut, and the old man had Menlo continue straight on down past it to the end, to a barred door.

It was while the old man was unlocking the door that he took his eyes off Menlo for just a second. It was then that Menlo sneaked the derringer from his pocket and fired both bullets into the old man's head.

First, he took back his wallet. Then he removed the Police Positive from the holster and tucked it inside his belt, on the left side, butt forward, where it was well concealed but he could get at it quickly. Finally, he dragged the old man's body through the barred doorway around to the other side of a desk to delay its discovery. The cells were back here, but they faced the other way. In one of them someone, probably a Negro, was singing softly and mournfully to himself about nothing in particular.

Menlo was feeling very strange. Until this moment all of his activities had been directed against the criminal elements of society, the outlaws. Kapor. The Outfit. Parker and McKay. He had been betraying his Ministry, true, but that hadn't bothered him particularly. His activity against the state had been, in a way, indirect, a sin of omission with the money. But now he had shot down a police officer in the performance of his duty. Suddenly the break with his past was total, complete, irrevocable, much broader and deeper than he had ever imagined. Tendrils of fear began tugging at his mind and making his knees unreliable.

He had to be strong. He had made his choice, and so far he had triumphed. Whatever the obstacles, he must continue to prevail. The rules were changed now, and so was he.

He was puffing from exertion by the time he'd finished. He closed the barred door again, paused to catch his breath, and forced himself to walk casually and unconcernedly out of the building. He would not be eating lunch at the diner just ahead. He would not be eating lunch at all today.

The next major city, according to the map, was Columbia, South Carolina. He could risk driving the car that far, but there he would abandon it. He would travel the rest of the way to Miami by train. It was unlikely there would be a plane.

He got into the Pontiac, feeling the bulge of the pistol against his left side as he sat down. He started the engine, backed the car, shifted, avoided the angle-parked police car, and drove sedately out of town at twenty miles an hour.

"I hate this lousy town," said the cab driver, waiting to take his turn at the canopied entrance.

Menlo, who did not answer, was glad of the delay. It gave him an opportunity to study the place, get used to it a little.

Everything was new, everything was different, Menlo's confidence had been shaken by the incident in the little South Carolina town, and in the back of his mind there was the growing suspicion that he wasn't going to make it. This was a whole new world in which he had no experience. He had no papers, no satisfactory explanation of who he was or where he came from. He had no real idea even where he was going.

There were too many things he hadn't thought of, too many things he couldn't foresee. Even in the mechanics of everyday living he was hampered by the fact that he was so brand new to the United States, and nothing here corresponded exactly with its counterpart in Klastrava. The trains he'd been on he'd had to change twice were unlike those at home; only one class of carriage an open, uncompartmented third-class type, but with upholstered seats of a first-class style. There had been no ticket booth at the entrance to the platform; tickets were taken by uniformed conductors on the train itself. From the important difference of language and currency down to the appearance and customs of restaurants, everything was subtly and jarringly strange. He had to feel his way, groping from one situation to the next, certain that everyone he met must know that he was a foreigner. In Klastrava a foreigner as obvious as he would have been under official surveillance long before this. He knew the United States was much more lax but he couldn't just blunder along this way for ever, carrying a suitcase full of unexplainable money and hoping for the best.

The currency was beginning to seem more real to him now, and he was beginning to understand why he'd had so much trouble with the old man. Most Americans were suspicious of fifty-dollar bills. He had managed with some difficulty to spend three of them, getting smaller bills in change, and he was using small bills and coins now, hoping they would last until he'd figured out what to do with the rest of the money. He realized, belatedly, that if he'd offered the old man a ten-dollar bill instead of a fifty, there might have been no trouble.

It all depended on whether or not he was given time to get his bearings. He needed it, and at least in the beginning he was going to need assistance. Which meant Bett Harrow, and the statue. Bett Harrow could help him if she chose, and the mourner should put him in the debt of Bett Harrow's rich and influential father. That was all he needed.

His taxi finally reached the canopy, and the rear door was jerked open. The cab driver was paid and tipped as was the doorman. A bellboy carried his suitcases the one on the left containing the money, the one on the right the mourner wrapped in clothing to the desk and he too was tipped. The respectful but haughty clerk looked him in the eye. "Your name, sir?"

Name?

In panic, Menlo heard himself saying, "Parker, Auguste Parker."

Why did they want his name, before he'd so much as asked for a room? And why had he said Parker? On the way over from the railroad station he had invented an alias to use in signing the hotel register, but the abruptness of the question had thrown the name right out of his mind. So he had blurted out Parker's without thinking, adding his own first name, and in the back of his mind the suspicion that he was going to fail loomed just a little larger.

The clerk had a drawer full of five-by-seven file cards. He looked at several and frowned. "I don't seem to find your reservation, Mr Parker."

Menlo was not that much of a traveller. His infrequent jaunts in the past had always been in an official capacity; such problems as hotel reservations had always been taken care of by the Ministry. Coming to the United States, he had been checked into a Washington hotel by the Klastravian embassy officials.

But now he was travelling on his own, and he was doing things all wrong. "I don't have a reservation. I only want a"

"No reservation?" The clerk seemed unable to believe it for a second or two. Then a sudden frost hit him. "I'm terribly sorry, but we're quite full up. You might try one of the hotels downtown; perhaps they could help you."

Menlo and his suitcases were shunted aside. The fat man's face reddened with anger, but there was nothing he could do. He was no longer Inspector Menlo. He was now merely a hunted refugee, alone and uncertain. Even a hotel clerk could treat him disdainfully with impunity.

After a minute he went back to the desk again, and caught the attention of the clerk. "Elizabeth Harrow," he asked, "what room?"

The clerk looked. "Twelve twenty-three."

"And I may call from where?"

"House telephones to your left, sir."

The minute he reached for his suitcases a bellboy materialized, but he shook his head angrily and the bellboy went away. There was a point at which hesitancy and confusion could no longer be borne, when what was needed was a sharp, sudden show of aggressive certainty. He had pussyfooted long enough; it was not his style. He would put up with it no longer.

He even took offence at the bored tone with which the switchboard operator responded. His own voice was authoritative and brisk as he gave Bett Harrow's room number. But there was no response; she was apparently not in her room.

He slammed the receiver down with annoyance, turned, caught the bellboy's eye. The boy hurried over, and Menlo pointed imperiously at his suitcases.

"I wish to check this luggage. Are there facilities?"

"Yes, sir. Right over there by"

"You may take the luggage, and bring me the claim check."

"Yes, sir."

He lit a cigarette. He had discovered a brand that combined the superior American tobacco with an adaptation of the Russian cardboard mouthpiece. There was an annoying wad of cotton or some foreign substance wedged down into the cardboard tube, but it didn't alter the taste much. It would do.

When the boy returned with a square of numbered red plastic, Menlo tipped him a quarter and asked for the restaurant. The boy pointed it out, and Menlo marched resolutely through the wide doorway. He had come into the hotel looking soft and fat and slump-shouldered, but now he was his formal self again, carrying his bulk with lithe dignity.

He had steak, an American specialty. His table was next to a huge glass window overlooking the beach, and as he ate he watched the hotel guests there. A few were swimming, but most were merely walking about aimlessly or lying on pneumatic mattresses. A depressing number of women, all in bright-coloured bathing suits, were stout and middle-aged and ugly, but here and there was a tall and beautiful one, and these he watched with pleasure and a feeling of anticipation.

He ate a leisurely meal, and lingered at the table afterwards to smoke a cigarette over a third cup of coffee. It was mid-afternoon, a slack time in the restaurant, so no effort was made to hurry him. When at last he paid his check, he took a chance and proffered one of the fifty-dollar bills. He was terrified of running short of the smaller bills, again, and surely here a fifty-dollar bill wouldn't seem unusual. The waiter didn't seem to react at all, but took the bill and soon returned with a little tray full of change. In this country, he noted, a waiter's tip was not automatically added on to the bill at home it was a standard 10 per cent but was left to the discretion of the diner. To be on the safe side he left a 15 per cent tip instead of 10, and strolled back out to the lobby.

Menlo crossed to the house phones and called Bett Harrow's room again, and this time she was there. "Good afternoon, my dear, this is Auguste."

He hoped she would recognize him by the first name alone. He didn't want to mention his full name, in case the switchboard operator was listening in.

There was the briefest of hesitations. "Well, I'll be damned. You did it."

"You expected less?"

"Where are you?"

"In the lobby. I would like to talk with you."

"Come on up."

"Thank you."

There was a bank of elevators across the way. He went over and was swooped up to the twelfth floor, where the corridor was uneasily reminiscent of Dr Caligari's cabinet, the walls and ceiling painted in bright primary colours, the carpeting wine red. He found the door marked 1223 and knocked.

She opened the door almost immediately, smiling at him in amusement. "Come in, come in. Tell me all about it."

"In due time. It is more than pleasant to see you again."

She was wearing form-fitting plaid slacks and a pale-blue halter. Her feet were bare, and the toenails were painted bright red. This struck him as ludicrous it was as though she were wearing a flowing moustache but he refrained from any comment. Still, it was unfortunate; the golden American goddess with scarlet toes. A bit of the glamour was destroyed for him for ever. Inside her shoes, had the airline stewardess too had scarlet toes? Sad.

She closed the door behind him. The room looked like a more expensive version of the motel room in Washington. There was the same cheap bright-plastic look to everything.

"To tell you the truth," she said, as they both sat down, "I didn't expect to see you again. I thought Chuck would eat you up."

"Chuck? Ah yes. Parker, you mean."

She shrugged. "He calls himself Chuck Willis sometimes. That's the way I think of him."

"Under any name," he replied, smiling, "he did not eat me up. As you can see."

"I hope you didn't leave him alive anywhere," she said. "I think he'd be a bad man to have for an enemy."

"We need have no fears in that respect."

She shook her head in slow amazement. "There's more to you than meets the eye, Auguste. Auguste? Don't you have a better name than that?"

"I am sorry. Only the one name."

"It's too ridiculous to call you Auguste. And you're no Augie."

"A minor problem," he said, feeling annoyance that she should find his name ridiculous. "I suggest we table it for the moment. I have the statue."

"I just can't get it through my head. You really did kill Chuck and take the statue? What about the other one, that friend of Chuck's?"

"Both of them. It is a closed issue. The past has no lasting fascination for me. It is the immediate future which now concerns me. I should like to meet your father."

"I know, you want to sell him the statue. Twenty-five thousand?"

"Perhaps not. Possibly there is something he can do for me that would be more valuable."

"Like what?" She seemed at once more alert.

He considered his words carefully. "In a sense," he said, "I am in this nation illegally. My visa was for a short time only, and good only in Washington. It is my intention to remain in this country, therefore I will need papers. Your father is a well-to-do and influential man. It is not impossible that among his contacts is someone who can furnish me with the appropriate forged papers."

"I don't know if he can help you. If he can, is that all you want?"

"One small matter in addition. I have in my possession a rather substantial sum in cash, American. I would prefer not to carry this around with me. Your father perhaps could aid me in placing it in a bank or some other safe repository?"

"How much is a large sum?"

"I have not counted it as yet, but I believe it is approximately one hundred thousand dollars."

Her eyes widened. "My God! Did you take that away from Chuck too?"

"If you mean was it his money no, it was not."

"All right. Anything else?"

"One more small matter. I had no reservation, and cannot obtain a room here."

"I'll see what I can do."

She went to the phone, spoke to someone at length, and finally hung up. She turned to Menlo. "All set. It's on the wrong side of the hotel no view of the ocean but it's a room. You can pick the key up downstairs. I told them your name was John Auguste, is that all right?"

"Perfectly."

"My father isn't in Miami now, but I will call him. He should be able to get here by tomorrow. I'll let you explain to him exactly what you want. I'll tell him Chuck Willis is dead, and that someone else has the statue and wants to sell it."

"Very good." Menlo got to his feet. "I do thank you."

"Where are you going?" She seemed displeased. "You're all business now, is that it?"

"I have been travelling, dear lady. I should like to shower, to rest, and to don fresh clothing. I had intended to ask you to dine with me this evening, to allow me to make some small gesture of appreciation for your assistance."

"You're a strange man," she said.

"Is eight o'clock acceptable?"

"Why not?"

He bowed. "I shall see you then."

She walked him to the door and even barefoot she was a good two inches taller than he. She opened the door and stood holding the knob. "You don't even try to kiss me."