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Authors: Frank M. Robinson

BOOK: Power, The
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“You’ve been very helpful, Miss. Thanks a lot.”
She looked disappointed.
“Aren’t you going to tell me something? I mean, this wouldn’t be perhaps a … divorce matter?”
“No,” he said quietly. “It’s much more serious than that. You might say it involves life and death.”
“Well,
really!”
And the funny thing, he thought outside, was that the old girl had the idea he was kidding.
He spent the rest of the afternoon interviewing other people in the neighborhood without too much success. The Van Zandts had kept pretty much to themselves. The shopkeepers were aware that they were spending a lot more money lately but most of them weren’t too talkative about it.
By nightfall he was back in the Loop. He had the evening to kill until Nordlund showed up and then they had to map out a campaign against Van Zandt. He had a hunch that with Van they were on the wrong trail, but there had to be some reason for Van’s sudden wealth. Would Adam Hart make such a suspicious move? Probably not, but then …
He ate in a little shoo-in restaurant on Washington and took in a movie. By the time he got out it was after ten and the streets were filled with the Thursday-night shift of joy seekers. He walked down Randolph past the public library and ducked into the IC station to buy a paper. He’d scan it and see what the news was and if there was anything on Karl and then it would be time to meet Nordlund.
The story about Grossman was buried on the inside, an inch and a half of type on page nine. It didn’t mention him by name; the body hadn’t been identified. A fat man, about forty, found dead in an alleyway just off Rush Street. He had been wearing an unpressed brown suit, black shoes, white shirt and regimental-striped tie. Cause of death was unknown but the police had found no marks of violence.
It didn’t
have
to be Grossman, Tanner thought, then realized he was kidding himself. A fat man who had wandered into an alley and died there. Like Olson had sat down in his room and died.
No marks of violence.
Of course not.
There would be nobody to mourn him. Nobody to claim the body. Nobody who would miss him. Karl’s own family didn’t even remember him.
He walked slowly out the entrance and recognized Nordlund standing in front of one of the library pillars. He handed him the paper. “Grossman’s dead.”
Nordlund read the squib in silence. For a moment Tanner was nettled, then knew there was really nothing that could be said. He dug his pipe out of his pocket and lit up, standing back in the shadows of the pillar and watching the people hurry by on the sidewalk a few feet away.
“I’ve checked up on Van Zandt. He’s spending too much money lately.”
“Where’d he get it?”
“I wish I knew.”
“It doesn’t sound like … Hart.”
“No, it doesn’t. But then it’d be a little difficult for us to second-guess Hart, wouldn’t it?” He paused. “What about DeFalco?”
Nordlund frowned. “I don’t know. His neighbors haven’t seen him around for the last week. I don’t know what the score is but he seems to have done a fairly complete fade-out.”
DeFalco. Hart. A fade-out didn’t make sense. It was suspicious and Adam wasn’t the type who would do anything obviously suspicious.
“If we last long enough,” Nordlund said, “I think we might be safe.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Somebody’s bound to start investigating.”
That was true, Tanner thought, but how soon? One member of the committee had been murdered—that was a local matter. One had been run over by a truck. Several had disappeared, if you counted Karl’s death as a disappearance in the eyes of the local police. The local police would be in an uproar. But the national government? No reports were being filed to Washington, but it was summer and the committee was comatose then anyway. Some department head might put two and two together in a few days and get worried. But not right now. Not today.
“You’re probably right, Commander. Somebody will probably start investigating. I figure in about a week. And we don’t have that long.”
“So what do we do? Just stand here?”
“We’ll go after Van Zandt tomorrow. There’s nothing more we can do tonight anyway.”
“Professor?”
“What?”
Nordlund sounded a little reluctant. “Do you think it’s such a wise idea to separate for the night again? If we had stayed together before, maybe Grossman would still be alive.”
“That’s right,” Tanner said dryly. “He might. And on the other hand, all three of us might be dead.”
Hesitantly: “I suppose that makes sense. Do we meet here again tomorrow?”
“Ten o’clock, same as today.”
Tanner watched Nordlund walk down the steps and disappear into the entranceway of the station. He couldn’t blame Nordlund for being scared, for wanting to stick together for the night. Everybody hates to die, he thought. But most of all they hate to die without friends and relatives around.
Everybody hates to die alone.
 
TANNER
walked down the library steps and lost himself in the crowd on the sidewalk. He hadn’t been quite truthful in saying there was nothing that could be done that night. But then, it wouldn’t have been very smart to reveal
all
his plans. What Nordlund didn’t know, Nordlund would never be able to tell … someone else.
It was risky, he thought. It was dangerous and foolhardy, but maybe tonight was the perfect time to pay the Van Zandts a visit.
He stole a car that was parked along a side street and drove out towards the Van Zandts, parking a good four blocks from their home. He checked his pistol, then left the car and cut through a backyard into an alley. He made a slow, cautious approach to the Van Zandt home, not wanting to stumble over tin cans or bottles or anything else that would make noise. When he was opposite the Van Zandt back yard, he moved quietly into the shadows of the garage and watched.
There was a light on in the kitchen, somebody was home. Midnight and perhaps the Van Zandts were taking a coffee break from their TV set. He glanced at the street. There were no cars parked in the driveway, the Van Zandts weren’t entertaining any company.
He silently lifted the latch on the fence gate and padded quietly up the walk. For a minute he was worried that the porch steps would creak or that the screen door would be locked. The door opened easily and he stepped quietly into the shadows of the porch. The noise he did make wasn’t very loud; he brushed against a skate and it rolled a little across the floor. There were footsteps inside and Susan Van Zandt opened the kitchen door wide, the yellow light flooding past her.
“I thought sure …”
He stepped out of the darkness and into the kitchen. Susan’s hand flew to her mouth and he could hear the scream gathering in her lungs.
He shoved the Beretta against her bathrobe—a new robe this time, black and shocking pink—and said, “Please be quiet, Susan. No screaming, no hysterics. Now call your husband. In your normal voice.”
She stood there a moment longer, her chest heaving as she muffled the screams that wanted to bubble out, then turned on her heel and walked back into the kitchen. New pink-silk mules, too, Tanner thought.
He had been in the kitchen once before. He didn’t recognize it now. The delivery boy had understated it. There was a new freezer and a new refrigerator. There were also new cabinets and a new range that had as many dials as the instrument panel of a jet plane. He could see part way into the hall. The worn carpeting had been replaced by a deep, carved-pile rug that stretched from wall to wall.
Susan didn’t have time to call her husband. Van Zandt came walking into the kitchen carrying the evening paper and holding a glass of milk. He was wearing a new wine-red smoking jacket that Tanner knew he couldn’t have touched for anything less than a few hundred dollars and probably more.
He didn’t see Tanner at first. “I thought I heard somebody out here, Sue. I …”
The glass slipped from his hand and shattered on the floor and warm milk ran all over the new linoleum.
Tanner motioned with his pistol. “Over there, Van. Sit at the table and put your hands on top.”
“I … don’t carry firearms.”
“Just do what I say, Van. You, too, Sue. Over there.”
“You’re making a mistake, Bill.” Her voice was low and throaty; she had recovered from the first shock of seeing him on the porch.
“I don’t think so.”
She sat down, her eyes watching him warily, and he knew she was the more dangerous of the two.
“All I want you to do, Van, is to answer some questions. For example: how did John Olson die?”
Van Zandt cleared his throat. “You ought to know. The police say you killed him.”
“You know better than that. I think you were there when it happened, maybe you even saw him the very moment life flickered out. Maybe that’s what did it, maybe you were scared. I’d rather think that than anything else.”
They didn’t say anything but just stared at him.
He waved the gun at them. “Oh, come on now. Don’t clam up—let’s hear the details. Or maybe I should tell them to you? I won’t fill you in on the background. You know all about Adam Hart, the gypsy boy from Brockton. Maybe you know too much about him. If I were you, I’d worry about that. You know how he kills and you know that he held John Olson in the palm of his hand and then just squeezed the life out of him. You had a head start on the rest of us, Van. Olson lived with you. You knew he was running downhill and you must have been curious as to why. You started your investigation early, long before that Saturday morning.” He paused. “You saw Olson die. You saw him sweat and squirm and you saw him clutch at his chest when his breathing stopped and you saw his life slip away when his heart beat ceased.”
Susan flinched and Tanner leaned towards her. “What’s the matter, am I getting too graphic? Offending your finer sensibilities? Come off it, Susan. You care a lot about your own family but you don’t give a damn for anybody else. When I talked to you about John ten days ago you showed as much emotion about his death as you would about a blade of grass that had been stepped on.”
Van Zandt had gained back some of his courage. “You’re rambling,” he said sarcastically.
Tanner turned the pistol slightly. “I don’t want any crap, Van. I mean it. What I’m driving at is that John Olson didn’t just curl up and die, like everybody thinks he did. Like you told the police he did—though that doesn’t matter now. But John Olson had been used by Adam Hart a hundred times before, and there’s nothing like fighting the devil you know. It wasn’t easy for Hart to control him this last time. Olson didn’t win his fight but I think he managed to get out one scream, didn’t he? Maybe two. Enough to waken you and Susan and maybe enough to bother the neighbors. But when they came over you told them it was nothing and a few days later they had forgotten all about it. Naturally. Isn’t that just about the size of it?”
Van Zandt’s voice was thick. “You’re guessing. It’s all guesses.”
Tanner nodded. “That’s right. It’s all guesses. And I make some bum ones. I even thought for a while that you might be Adam Hart. Silly, wasn’t it? Adam Hart is a monster but you two are something worse.” He ran his hand across his forehead; it was wet and it wasn’t all from heat and exhaustion. His breathing was ragged and he knew he was running a fever. “You saw Olson die, and you guessed how. It shouldn’t have been hard for you, Van. He lived here with you, you had already started investigating, and you were studying him at the meeting like he was a bug under glass. After the demonstration you put two and two together and you must have been a lot sharper at it than I was. Maybe you even helped Scott with his dossiers. You guessed who Adam Hart was and then you did something that turns my stomach.”
Susan wasn’t looking at him but was staring down at the table. Oddly enough, Van seemed more relaxed, not at all worried; the slight shadow of a smile was flickering over his face.
“You sold out,” Tanner said thinly. “For money. For the filthy green. And Adam Hart accepted because he realized that even he could use allies, that you might be valuable. He could have controlled you directly but that would have taken time and effort and unwilling servants are never as useful as those who are enthusiastic about their position. Maybe you fingered Professor Scott, maybe it was you who told Hart that Grossman’s weakest spot was his family. Maybe you even sicced him on to Marge, knowing what it would do to me. You’d be good at that, you’re a psychologist. You’d complement Hart.” He stopped, feeling lightheaded and exhausted. “You sold out everybody you knew, you sold out humanity. And for what?”
Van Zandt’s smile was broader now. “You’re a fool, Tanner. Always were and always will be. We didn’t invent Adam Hart, we didn’t make him like Frankenstein made his monster. But he’s here and anybody who knows it and doesn’t realize that the world will dance to his tune if he wants it to is stupid. You know it, I know it. That’s one of the things they teach you when you’re a military man. To know when your position is indefensible. And what’s the old saying? ‘When you can’t lick ’em jine ‘em.’ I jumped on the bandwagon. Maybe I’m a little ahead of the rest of the crowd but that’s my good fortune. Within a couple of months that bandwagon’s going to be pretty crowded.”
He shook his head and looked at Tanner sadly. “You value your fellowman too highly, William. They’re intelligent cattle, that’s all. I think that Adam wants to run the world and when he does, people will be a lot healthier, happier, and better cared for.”
“When Adam’s running the stockyard, the cattle will be watered and fed and sprayed every week to get rid of the bugs, that it, Van?”
Susan was still staring steadily at the table, a Mona Lisa expression on her face, and it bothered him. A table set for three. Some people set their table late at night so they wouldn’t have to worry about it early in the morning.
Then it hit him.
A table for three.
Why wasn’t it set for just the two of them, or if their children were going to be eating at the same time, four?
Three.
It had been set for that night, he thought suddenly. A table for three. For Susan and Harold and Adam. A snack before turning in, a little lighthearted conversation with a monster to prove to him over and over and over that they were really on his side. Maybe talk far into the night so they wouldn’t have to spend so much time lying in bed, alone with their consciences.
A table for three and they had been waiting for the other party when he had walked in.
He abruptly backed into the hallway leading to the front part of the house.
“Where’s he staying, Van?”
Van Zandt looked at him with grinning triumph playing peek-a-boo in his small, deep-set eyes. “Where’s who, William?”
“Eddy DeFalco, Van. You know—Adam Hart.”

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