Stairway to Forever (15 page)

"Couldn't they seize my bank accounts and everything else I own if I'm not around to protect it, Pedro?"

The attorney shrugged, then, "Sure, they could freeze or seize the paltry sums you'll leave in your bank accounts, any safety deposit boxes that are held in your name, any of your money or property that Gus happens to be holding for you, your cars maybe, your house. But what kind of losses would those be? And besides, when your case gets to the tax courts, I am convinced that they'll have to give you most or all of it back."

"Hell, I don't give a shit about the money and the cars, Pedro," declared Fitz, '"but believe it or not, that property and the little house on it means more to me than you could imagine. If I deed it to somebody else, could they still seize it?"

Goldfarb frowned. "If you're thinking of Gus Tolliver, all I can say is: I wouldn't. After all, he's your agent for your gold coins, so you can bet they'll be after him with hammer and tongs, once they find you're not around to punish for the heinous crime of not only objecting to Blutegel's emotional

rubber hosing, but actually doing something to get his knuckles rapped."

"You don't think the summons to the regional office means that he'll be chewed out, maybe demoted then, Pedro?" asked Fitz.

"Oh, hell no," said Goldfarb. "Not him. He'll get his wrists slapped a bit, his superiors, too, but not because of what he did or tried to do to you, just because he did it in such a way, this time, that his chosen victim was able to raise a stink over their heads. No, he's effective in squeezing money out of people, and that's the bottom line, Fitz, that's all the I.R.S. honchos care about; how it's done, the methods the field personnel use to do it, couldn't matter less to them.

"But back to hanging on to your house and land . . . hmmm. I'll tell you what, deed it all—real property, motor vehicles, furniture, personal possessions, lock boxes and anything else you want to keep their sticky fingers and greedy hands off of—to Danna. I'll have Shirl draw up the proper documents, she's a notary, too. They'll say that you've transferred title to everything to Mrs. M. Dannon Dardrey for services rendered and to be rendered while you're out of the country. Then, let's see the bastards try to seize something.

"Of course," he smiled, "you're going to have to trust Danna one hell of a lot . . . me, too. Do you think you can trust us that far, Fitz?"

"I'd trust Danna with my life," stated Fitz, slowly and soberly, then he grinned. "You, I'll trust simply because I know where and how to find you and I think I could stomp you with no trouble . . . well, not much trouble."

Goldfarb matched the grin. "Oh, really? Be careful, Fitz, I was a Marine, too, a Fleet Marine."

Fitz laughed. "Well then, Mister Fancy Pants, we ought to be an even-money bout."

The drive back home was especially slow and tedious that afternoon, with heavy truck traffic clogging the two- and three- and sometimes four-lane secondary roads leading out, northeast, from the city. As he drove, stuck in no-passing areas in lines of cars and smaller trucks behind lumbering, gear-grinding, diesel-smoke-belching behemoths, at speeds that were frankly ridiculous for his powerful Mercedes, he had time to think through the happenings of the day and try to sort them out, lay firm plans for his foreign sojourn and grieve for the length of time said sojourn would keep him away from Danna, so new-found and already so dear to him.

No doubt the widely travelled Pedro Goldfarb knew whereof he spoke and the Union of South Africa was a lovely country, indeed, but still, Fitz had no desire to go there . . . not unless Danna could go along with him. But in order for the carefully worked out scheme to keep the minions of the I.R.S. off him until Pedro felt the time right to move in his defense, Danna had to remain here. Nor had he any faintest desire to ride or tramp about the countryside of South Africa or any other place shooting zebras, lions, elephants, buffalos or antelopes; to his way of thinking, there were only three reasonable excuses for killing any other living creature—for food, in self-protection or to put it down when it was incurable and suffering, which last was how he had been able to kill Kath, his daughter. His opinion of people who just ran around with firearms or any other weapon shooting anything that moved was that they should be disarmed in whatever way was easiest and then confined straitly in rooms with soft walls for the rest of their fives.

Pedro was insistent that he drop out of sight and out of reach of Blutegel and the rest for a few months, however; where he went did not seem to matter to the attorney. South Africa had been just a suggestion, a for instance, that had been made clear to him. So where could he go that he would not spend most of his waking hours missing Danna? Where, in all this world?

With a long, constant blaring of a held-down horn button, a middle-aged Cadillac whose driver either was in more of a hurry than Fitz and the rest or just plain of a suicidal bent, pulled out from somewhere far back in the creeping line of vehicles and sped up the inbound lane, solid double lines in the road center, be-damned.

"Dumbass bastard!" muttered Fitz aloud. "Mustve learned to drive in New Jersey ... or Florida."

So, where? Where in the world? Well, why this world, at all? Why not the sand world? Well, Fitz, why not? You want to cross the plain and explore those forested hills, don't you? Of course you do. That's why your subconscious keeps making you have those weird dreams about a dead cat talking to you. You know that, don't you? Do I? It seems so damned real . . .

Wait a minute, now. If I do go to the sand world, I don't have to stay there the entire time, do I? Of course not. I could set up some sort of schedule or signalling system so that Danna could be at the house and I could come back through the doorway in the sand world and be with her a few days and nights at a time, and no one the wiser. It's her house now, after all, so why shouldn't she spend some time in it whenever the mood strikes her? That sounds like a better bet to me than the trouble and expense and loneliness of some less than delightful months in some foreign country does.

Another thing, too: with this weird time distortion, it won't seem like so long . . . well, not to me, at least. The closest I've ever been able to figure it, two and a half days in the sand world works out to a bit over seven and a half days here. Therefore, if I spend forty or fifty days in the sand world, that'll work out to four or five months I'll be gone from this one, just about the amount of time Pedro wants me to be out of sight and reach.

But first 1*11 have to get in touch with Danna and get her to come out so I can explain it to her . . . well, so I can explain as much as I think she's ready for, right now. Pedro's probably right that I'd better stop saying anything I don't want heard and recorded by some stranger over my telephone, or writing and mailing anything I don't want opened and read by Blutegel. He says the I.R.S. and the USPOD are thick as thieves; stands to reason, I guess, since they both are composed of very uncivil servants—many of them; too many of them—of the same government.

So I'll drive into town, pick up the mail, and drop by the gun shop and the hardware store and the pay phone between them, before I go home. I might stop by the Yamaha place, too, and see if they have any new accessories that might prove helpful on a long, possibly rugged go in those hills beyond the plain.

Fitz could hear the loud, incessant fence alarms braying long before he reached his street or proximity of his house and, when his property came in sight around the curve of the street, it was seen to be the scene of a good bit of activity. Two sheriffs sedans were parked on the street in front and, as he drove up, a county rescue squad meat wagon was slowly negotiating its way through throngs of neighbors of all ages and both sexes standing singly, in pairs and

in bunches of varying sizes on the street and the neighboring lawns, shouting to make themselves heard above the cacophony of the alarms. Closer, he saw that a county pumper truck had driven up onto a lot to the left of his and was parked close to the fence, the behatted and booted and slickered firemen now draining and folding hoses and repacking them on the truck.

Fitz parked as close as he could to the chaos, pushed through the throng to his gate, unlocked it and his garage and flicked off the lights and the deafening alarms, before going back beyond the gate to seek out the sheriff or the deputy in charge and find out just what had happened now. One crisis after another, anymore, it seemed.

The roadside ditch was brimful of running, muddy water and he had to jump its width, his cordovan brogues sinking deeply enough into the soggy ground on the other side to give him a shoe full of water and a consequent squelching sound as he walked back along the fence line toward the fire truck and the knot of deputies and civilians just behind it.

He got a look at his backyard, early on. Where the green wall tent had stood was now the center of a bare area of blackened grass, some burst gas cans and other bits and pieces of fire-scarred debris. The strip of steel that had secured the stone slab had been pried up at one end and the slab itself stood up in the open position. The area of the entire mound was soaked, running water still, and those large weeds and shrubs that had not been charred completely away had all been either broken off or uprooted by the force of the streams from the fire hoses.

A tall, lanky, raw-boned man dressed in filthy, well-muddied jeans, a faded, also filthy denim shirt with the left arm of it torn and bloodstained, and a

pair of—of all things—new-looking, high-topped, cheap basketball shoes, stood beside Sheriff Vaughan, looking sullen. But immediately he spotted Fitz, the ill-kempt man pushed his way out of the knot of men and half-trotted to meet him.

"You gawdam richass bastid, you!" he shouted when still ten feet away. "My pore li'l boy, he's got a busted arm and nose, too, on account of you and yore gawdam fences and all! I'm gonna purely beat the shit out'n you, mistuh!"

But Vaughan and two of the deputies were on the man's very heels and before he could attempt to make good on his threat, he was on his knees on the wet ground, whining and sobbing in pain, his right arm twisted behind his back by one of the burly deputies.

"What the bloody hell has been going on here?" Fitz demanded of the sheriff. "Who the fuck burned down my wall tent?"

"The way it looks, Mister Fitzgilbert, sir," Vaughan replied, "it was that little JD, Calvin Mathews, as done it. Prob'ly, I'd say, his brother Bubba was in on it, too. Ain't no meanness the one of them gets into, the othern ain't just as deep into. But Calvin, he's the one we found down at the bottom of your fence when we got here. He's got a arm broke in three places and a broke nose and a concussion, prob'ly, too. Looks like he got scairt by the fire he set and tried to go back over the fence too fast and careless and fell off the top of it, is what I figger happened. His brother must of just run off and left him, 'cause we found him at home caterwaulin' about his brother being dead. While we was electing him, his paw, Yancy, here, come rolling up in his pick-up.

"But Mister Fitzgilbert, sir, it may not've just been the boys, see. When we first seen Yancy, he

had his shirtsleeve all tore up and his arm, too, it was bleeding like hell, afore the rescue squad bandaged it up. He had a pair of big wire cutters in his back pocket, too. Looky up there, and you'll see somebody done cut two strands of your bob-wire and the other'n is got a piece of what looks a lot to me like old blue denim stuck to it.

"What's that you got under your yard, there, anyhow, a fallout shelter?"

Fitz seized upon the subterfuge so generously and innocently offered him. "Yes, Sheriff, but it's nowhere near complete inside."

"Yeah, that's what I figgered it was. Well, it's chock fulla water now, but the way the wind was blowing in spurts when the firemen got out here, the chief, he was scared the fire might get to your house. But he said they could lend you a big sump pump if you want's to bail it out fast, like. He's a nice feller, he was a Gyrene, too, in Korea, like you and me. I'll interduce you to him in a few minutes.

"But back to your fallout shelter and the fire and all, I don't see how just no two kids could of bent up that steel strap and tore the hardware clean outen the masonry, like was done. It looks to me like Yancy Mathews, he was in on it, too. I means to send that crowbar we found in your yard and some other stuff to the State Police lab and see if the prints on that bar and some other things is Yancy Mathews' prints and if they is, I'm gonna see his bony ass racked like it ain't never been racked before in his life.

"Don't you worry none 'bout having to pr'fer charges or nothing, neither, Mister Fitzgilbert, sir. Whin thet fire was set, it passed plumb smack-dab into county jurisdiction, no particle of a private matter no more. Hell, wind been right, they could of burnt down half the damn neighborhood, the dumbbells, the house they rents, too!"

After they had made love and gotten dressed again, they had taken the Jeep and driven into the town for a new wall tent and replacement supplies and clothing for those lost in the fire and ruined in the flooding of the underground storage area. It was while two of Herbert Bates's grandsons were loading his purchases into the back of the Wagoneer that Sheriff Vaughan drove by, screeched to a halt, backed up his cruiser and greeted Fitz.

Eyeing Danna appreciatively, the lawman said, "Mister Fitzgilbert, sir, just thought you might like to know. We got us a free-will confession outen Yancy Mathews a'ready, so we won't have to go though all of the other, sending stuff to the State Police lab, and all that. You know, I knowed he'd been in on it all right from the start, too; he claimed when he drove up he'd just then got off work, but I knowed he's lying, see. If he'd been working—he does construction work—he'd of been wearing clodhoppers, not a brand-spanking-new pair of burglar shoes.

"Then, too, I knows that outfit he's working for just now and if he'd really tore his arm up on the job, they'd of at least of put a bandage and some merthilate on it, if they hadn't of run him over to the county hospital mergency room. Besides of, it was clear as spring water to a ol' country boy like me bob-wire had tore his arm and shirt and all up. But he says he didn' have nothing to do with setting yore tent and all on fire, and I b'lieves him on thet one."