Authors: Frank M. Robinson

Power, The (6 page)

BOOK: Power, The

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He sat in the stacks for half an hour before he got to his feet and walked outside. There was nothing to do but make plans to leave, to close down his bank account and get out of town. What he would do after that he didn’t know and didn’t care. But maybe now the waiting and the suspense was over. The Enemy had won and he was off the committee and in disgrace. No job, no source of income, no money coming in.

Down, but not quite out. At least, he wouldn’t starve.

The teller at the bank took his book and came back a moment later, looking puzzled.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Tanner, but there seems to be some sort of a mix-up. We have no records here of any account for you.”

The sun was shining and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, Tanner thought, but it was still going to be a lousy day. “Where do you think I got the book? Who do you think made out the entries?”

The teller fluttered his hands helplessly. “There’s no record sheet for you and no identification card that we ask all depositors to sign. I don’t know how this all happened. Really, I …”

Tanner’s voice was thick. “Why don’t you get the manager?”

The manager was a thin, balding man with steel-framed glasses and darting, suspicious eyes. He glanced at the bank book, frowned, and went to a rack of cards at the rear of the teller’s cage. When he came back he had another book like the one Tanner had been issued.

“This book you have—it’s yours?”

“It’s got my name on it.”

The manager gave him a nasty look and showed him the book he held in his hand. “It so happens we already have a book by the same number. The man to whom it was issued has held it for the last ten years. I don’t know how you got hold of this book and numbered it and I don’t know how you got it filled out but forgery is a criminal offense.”

He suddenly stopped and looked as if he wished he had called the police immediately.

Tanner left him standing there and walked out.

He had had close to a thousand dollars in the bank and now it was down the drain. Somebody had gotten there ahead of him. Somebody who had pulled his card and substituted another. Or, to be more exact, somebody had persuaded the teller to pull the card.

You can’t run very far without money.

Then he remembered and felt in his coat pocket. The check. He had never gotten around to cashing it at the bank. But there were half a dozen currency exchanges he knew of off-hand.

The first one he tried cashed it without question and he felt momentarily pleased at the small victory. Then he realized, at best, he had just postponed the situation.

He stopped in at a small restaurant and ordered coffee. He felt worn out, as if he had run a mile or had been sick for a long time. The noose was drawing tighter. Any day, any hour, somebody would yank on the rope and he’d be left dangling. The Enemy obviously wanted something more than just to get him off the committee.

Why him?

He looked at the restaurant clock. Twelve o’clock, and he had an appointment with the dentist for one.

He fumbled through his pockets for a dime. It had been only a cleaning job and that could be put off to another day. And probably another city, since he wasn’t going to be in this one too much longer.

He dialed the number, gave his name to the receptionist, and asked for a cancellation. There was a moment of silence.

“Would you repeat your name, sir?”

He did.

“I’m sorry, sir, but we have no appointment for anybody named Tanner.
”

“I made it a week ago,” he said slowly. “For one o’clock.”

Another pause.

“Dr. Landgraf doesn’t recall you, Mr. Tanner. However, if you wish to make an appointment …”

He hung up.

No mail since Monday. Because his name had somehow disappeared from all the lists? Because all the files that mentioned him had been yanked? And there was the case of the records in Wisconsin and the disappearance of his thesis from the library. And then the bank book and his appointment with the dentist …

He was being isolated, he thought. Anything in print that mentioned his name was disappearing. People were being conditioned to forget that he had ever existed. One by one his connections with people were being severed. It was like a dental surgeon blocking off the nerves with shots of Novocain.

Just before the tooth was pulled.

THEY
buried John Olson Friday morning.

It was in a little cemetery just outside the city limits, on a morning that was overcast and cloudy with a cold wind that blew off the choppy lake.

The priest stood at the head of the grave and said a few words, words that were tumbled and lost in the wind that flapped his vestments. Then the two gravediggers worked the small rollers that held the canvas straps supporting the coffin and it lurched and slowly disappeared into the raw gash of the earth.

Tanner watched it with a morbid fascination, then glanced at the small crowd gathered on the other side of the grave. There was Petey, in a long, black dress and a heavy veil, leaning on Marge’s arm. Karl Grossman, fat and thoughtful and neatly dressed for once. Harold Van Zandt and Susan and Eddy DeFalco. Professor Scott, wrapped in a muffler and a greatcoat and looking almost ready for the last rites himself. And Commander Nordlund, with an appropriately sorrowful expression on his face that was probably more because of a missed golf game than Olson’s death. Harry Connell and a few other faculty members.

None of Olson’s relatives, outside of Petey, were present.

The priest walked over and said something to Petey and they started for the line of cars on the road a few hundred feet away. The others followed, Tanner with them. Behind him he could hear the soft sound of shovels biting into the dirt.

There had been nine of them at the meeting on Saturday morning, he thought. And that had included one very frightened personality-cripple who had tried to convince the rest of them that the human race was living on borrowed time. Now there were only eight and that was counting another very frightened soul who was slated for elimination.

Himself.

The others hadn’t had much to say to him but he detected an uneasiness about them, a suspicion of each other. They had seemed unnaturally quiet and withdrawn.

He caught up with DeFalco.

“Ed, I want to talk to you a minute.”

DeFalco stopped and took a cigarette out of an ornate case and tapped it against the back of his hand. He didn’t meet Tanner’s eyes.

“Something wrong?”

“Has Connell been saying anything?”

DeFalco lit up and fanned out a stream of smoke from his nostrils, smoke that was shredded by the cold wind. “Sure he has. You knew he would.”

“Do you believe it?”

“No.”

Tanner’s voice shook. “I can’t disprove it. For the same reason that I can’t prove I have a bank account here or that I had a dental appointment yesterday afternoon or that every firm I’ve dealt with in the city no longer carries me on their books. Ed, I’m being isolated!”

DeFalco’s face went perfectly blank. “What do you want me to do about it?” Tanner stared at him. DeFalco’s face was cold and emotionless, the heavy black hair glistening in the dampness, strands of it moving slightly in the wind. A tense, powerful, handsome face—with the eyes of a man who was almost scared to death. “Sure, I believe you, Bill. Somebody’s pulled your records. But how can I help?” He thumbed towards the hill behind them from which came the steady sounds of falling dirt. His voice was jerky. “Olson was curious, he knew too much. And look what the payoff was for him. I don’t believe that a man just sits down and dies. Something got him. And something’s after you. I don’t want to be included in.”

He dropped the butt on the ground and heeled it into the soft earth. His face was distorted in the half-light of the cold, cloudy morning, crawling with the vague shadows of the trees that flickered over it.

“I like this life. I even like it when it’s cold and damp and when it rains. I want to live to be a very old man and sit before a fire and warm my feet and read the books in my library. I may hate your friend’s guts but I don’t want to fight him. I know I couldn’t win.” He stared off into the shadowed paths. “I wish you a lot of luck, Bill. I wish I had more guts but I don’t. And I don’t want to kid either you or me.”

“You’ve changed a lot since Sunday night, haven’t you?”

Something flared briefly in the dark eyes. “So I was sounding off. I was talking to hear myself talk. People do it all the time.” He paused and took a deep breath, like a diver does before hitting the water. “I don’t want to know too much about Olson. I don’t want to know too much about you. I don’t want to talk to you, I don’t even want to be seen with you. You’re a dead man, Tanner—and there’s nothing that you or I or anybody else can do about it.”

Tanner watched him get into his car and start off with a roar, the wheels throwing gravel. DeFalco wasn’t a coward. Sunday night he had been full of hatred and willing to eat fire.

But something had gotten to him.

He was driving the rented car back from the cemetery when he became gradually aware of somebody standing beneath an awning along the side of the street. He almost recognized the figure, yet couldn’t place him. Somewhere, some place …

He just barely saw the little girl. He had a brief glimpse that for a moment froze the entire scene. The man beneath the awning of the florist shop, the few people standing in front of the stores, the flag in front of the post office hanging limply in the dampness, the police car double-parked halfway up the block.

And the five-year-old in the bright yellow dress dashing out in front of his car.

He slammed on the brakes and twisted frantically at the wheel. Then there was a sudden silence and the smell of scorched rubber and the cold feeling of sweat trickling down the nape of his neck. A second later he was out in the street, kneeling by a little girl who was miraculously unhurt, the tears of fright just beginning to well in her eyes. A crowd quickly gathered and then parted to let two policemen through.

“I wasn’t going very fast, I was …”

They looked at him coldly.

“We hear that all the time, Mac. You guys drive through here like a bat out of hell and when somebody gets hurt—no, you weren’t going fast! Me, I’m getting damn’ sick and tired of it.”

The other policeman turned to the little girl and bent down. “Were you hurt, Mary Anne? Did the car knock you down?”

She shook her head and started to cry.
“I want my ball! I was p-playing and it b-bounced away and …”

The policeman made a face and put away his traffic book. “You’re real lucky. If anything had happened to her we would have gotten your hide and tacked it to the stop light. Now take off and take it easy.”

Tanner got back in his car and drove around the block and parked. He leaned his head on the wheel. He was still shaky, still confused as to what had happened. He had been driving down the street and the little girl had run out in front of his car. If he hadn’t been lucky, and if he hadn’t had quick reflexes …

But there was something more to it than that.

The man who had been standing beneath the florist-shop awning. A belted raincoat and a hat pulled low over his eyes so his face was in shadow. The same man who had been standing at the end of the pier when he had almost gone off?

Probably.

And the florist’s little girl who had been playing out in front. Playing out of doors on a cold, raw day. And then she had had a sudden desire to run out into the middle of the street because she thought her ball had gone out there. And if he had been a shade of a second slower, she would have been dead.

And it was a near certainty that he would’ve ended up in jail, to rot there the rest of his life because release papers would be lost and people would have forgotten all about one William Tanner. They would have forgotten that he had ever existed.

One thing he was sure of. Little girls ordinarily didn’t play outdoors on cold, raw days. And she hadn’t run out into the street because her ball had actually gone out there. She had run out at the volition of … something … that had been standing beneath the awning, watching her and watching the street and waiting.

But it doesn’t have to be any particular street,
he thought. It could be a different street on another day. Maybe an old lady would wander out in front of his car, or a boy on a bicycle. The end result would be the same. The courts would do the dirty work and pull the chestnuts out of the fire for the Enemy.

He was being hunted and so far he had acted like a sitting duck. He hadn’t fought back, he hadn’t really tried. He had accepted the idea, like DeFalco had, that fighting was impossible and that he didn’t have a chance.

But he wasn’t entirely helpless. He knew that the man who was after him was the same man who had, somehow, killed John Olson. That it was one of those who had been at the meeting that fateful Saturday morning.

Which one?

He didn’t know. But Olson had known. Somewhere in the past he had met the Enemy and had known him when he had seen him again. He hadn’t been able to speak outright, but he had done his best to point the finger.

The answer to who the Enemy was, he was suddenly convinced, lay in Olson’s own background.

And the place to begin was with Olson’s home town.

BOOK: Power, The

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