Stairway to Forever (22 page)

Danna, hearing what sounded like a groan from

the other man, looked to see his scarred face twisted, his eyes both teary, one hand clasped tightly over his mouth and his body spasming.

"Now that that matter is settled, Mister Blutegel," Pedro went on, "I think that you owe Mrs. Dardrey an apology; I am sure that you do, in fact."

In still-angry frustration, the backed-down bully snapped, "I don't apologize to hooers, I never did, not even high-priced hooers, like her."

In milliseconds Danna was up, out of her chair, had strode over to confront the I.R.S. man and had delivered a ringing slap to his left cheek. "You slimy slug, no one calls me a whore!"

George Khoury, the other I.R.S. man, could not recall having ever seen anyone move as fast as Pedro Goldfarb did then, not even in the Nam. One of the attorney's arms swept Dannas body out of the way and the palm of the other took the blow of Blutegel's fist meant for her face. But Khoury himself arose fast enough to catch the stumbling, off-balance woman and steady her enough for her to regain her equilibrium.

With two of his skilled fingers applying unbearable pressure on certain nerve centers of Blutegel's body, pressure that caused so great a degree of agony that the beefy man could not even cry out, Pedro had no difficulty in easing him back into a seated position on the leather couch.

"Any more of that rough stuff, Mister Blutegel," he admonished, "and I'll feel compelled to hurt you, perhaps injure you severely. Is that clear?

"Very well. Now, what possessed you to hurl so egregious an insult at my associate, Mrs. Dardrey? Have you never heard of the word slander?"

"It's not slander if you can prove it, Goldfarb," the fat man gasped, hugging himself, his face still pale

and lined with pain. To Danna, then, he said, "Okay, sister, you asked for it.

"Goldfarb, I've had a team watching this house and Tolliver's shop and house, too, ever since a man from another department tipped me off some time back that the two of them was up to something damned fishy and was probably tax cheats, too. I sent word out here to Fitzgilbert that he had an appointment with me, but he never kept it, didn't even phone so I could tell him another time to come in. He didn't answer his phone for over a week and didn't pick up his mail, either. When he finally did pick up his phone one day, he got right uppity with me for no good reason and told me when he'd come into the city to see me."

"I know about that conversation, I've heard the tape he made of it, but do go on, Mister Blutegel, please," said Pedro.

"Well, I got real busy that day, and forgot to call the team had been doing surveillance out here off. And that night, that Friday night, real late, a sports car comes up the street and stops here and Mizz Goody-Twoshoes, over there, gets out and rings that gate bell. Then Fitzgilbert comes out and lets her drive her car in and locks the gate back up and the two of them go inside here and don't come out again until Sunday night. I don't think they were just playing Parcheesi all weekend, either, because the logs say that all the lights were out a whole lot at night.

"Then, when we came to find out he'd signed his house and cars and furniture and all over to her . . . well, I just figured it was for services rendered, you know. Yeah, I think she's a hooer and I think it's lots of people would agree with me, too."

Pedro nodded wearily, "Yes, with a mind like

yours, I can see how you would think just so. YouVe a real Grade-A scuzz, aren't you, Mister Blutegel? All right, if you already know who the new owner of record was, why were you so insistent on meeting said owner out here, rather than in my office ... or in yours, for that matter?"

The fat man shrugged, then winced. "What the heird you do to me, anyway?"

"Not one tenth of what Id have done if you had actually managed to punch Mrs. Dardrey, Mister Blutegel. Now, answer my last question."

"Well, dammit," Blutegel almost whined, "she stomped over here and slapped me first—hard, too. I can still feel it where she hit me."

"Good!" snapped Danna, but said no more after a brief wave of Pedro's hand.

"The question, Mister Blutegel," prompted Pedro, with a grim undertone in his voice, and a hard-eyed stare accompanying the words.

"Huh?" was Blutegel's reply.

Pedro sighed disgustedly and said, "Why, if you already knew just who was the new owner of record of this property, did you insist on meeting said owner out here, rather than at an office in the city? But wait, you don't need to answer, I know your reasoning already: You thought that you could get her out here and pour on your accustomed tactics full throttle—threaten, bully, and possibly, in this case, use the information given you by your team of snoopers along with a few judiciously placed threats of public disclosure to extort some privileged information out of her. Am I correct, Mister Blutegel? Of course I am."

The chunky man had gone pasty white. He abruptly rose to his feet, grabbed his briefcase and headed for the door. "Come on, Khoury, you damn, dumb Ay-rab, we're getting out of here."

But the man addressed remained seated after the front door had slammed behind his associate. "Mister Goldfarb," he said, "there's no need to try to cause trouble for Mister Blutegel, he's already in more than enough hot water. The only reason he's still working at all is that certain supervisory types, who've known him for years, are trying to help him make sure he gets his pension."

Pedro laughed harshly. "Now there's a misuse of taxpayers' money if ever there was one."

"Speaking only and briefly for myself, sir, I agree," said the younger man, "but then I haven't been at this for very long, either, and I just follow my orders, just like in the army, you know. Anyhow, he works under close supervision in the office and he's never allowed to do any sort of field work alone anymore, that's why I was with him today, you see.

"Please accept my apologies for the way he behaved here today. I know you know his behavior is not the policy of the Internal Revenue Service. He's a sick, aging, emotionally disturbed man with a severe alcohol problem, but in another year he will have put twenty-five years into government service, almost as long as he's been a citizen of this country."

"Blutegel's not native-born, then?" demanded Danna, surprisedly.

Khoury shook his head. "No, he's from Czechoslovakia, I believe; he came here just after World War Two. But with his lack of a foreign accent, even I didn't know he was an immigrant until a guy in the office told me.

"Look, I've got to go." The scarred young man stood up. "I've got the only set of keys to the car. I say again: I'm deeply sorry for all he said here today, but just let him fade away, huh? Don't go after his job . . . you just might get it jerked out from under him."

When the two in the house heard the doors slam, the engine start and the automobile drive off up the street, Pedro arose and carefully poured the cognac out of the snifter and back into its decanter, saying, "What I did with this, when first he came in, it was cruel, heartless to torment the man like that. But damn it, Danna, when I think of the relatively blameless men and women, the ones I actually know about, whom that fat bastard has bullied, terrorized, intimidated, made to crawl to him abjectly, torn every shred of dignity and self-respect from, my blood boils. He and people like him, they're examples of the savage barbarism that lies just below the surface of 'civilized' humanity. And I get even madder to think that he's being allowed to continue to practice his particular brand of sadism on helpless victims, despite all that the Powers That Be obviously know about him, simply so that he can qualify to draw a pension until he drinks himself to death. That Khoury chap can beg all he wants, but I'm going after Blutegel."

"Since I first met that man, Pedro," said Danna, speaking slowly, thoughtfully, "I've always thought that life and birth had miscast him, that he should have been a Nazi, Schutzstaffel or Gestapo. I just don't think he's a Czech; Blutegel is a German word."

Pedro replied, "Well, Danna, Germans live in Czechoslovakia, too, you know. That was why Hitler claimed he had a right to the first half of that country, back in the thirties, the Sudeten Germans, whom he said were being persecuted."

"Yes, yes, I know all that, Pedro, I was around then, too. But . . . but I've just got this . . . this very strong feeling, too." She sat with her forehead resting on her hands for a moment, then looked up and asked, "Pedro, would you mind if I spent a few days collecting photos and background on Blutegel?"

"Not at all," he answered, then asked, "But what do you intend to do with such a file when you get it all assembled, Danna?"

She took a deep breath. "Stick my neck out, probably. There's a man in Vienna, I read about him, he hunts hide-out Nazis. Maybe if he could see pictures of Blutegel—and I mean to get all I can, from just as far back as I can, too, and get his fingerprints, if that's possible—he might remember him from somewhere? Do I sound looney, Pedro?"

His elbows on the leather-topped table, his fingers steepled before his chin, with his full lower lip resting lightly on the two forefingers, he regarded her for a long moment, then said, "No, I don't think you irrational:, Danna. It's a possibility, of course, that Blutegel's a ringer. There were just so many displaced persons let into this country in the wake of that war that any number of snafus could conceivably have occurred . . . probably did occur, if not in this case, then in many others. But what makes you think this of him, Danna? You say only that you have a feeling. Well, what kind of feeling? Tell me about it."

"If I do, then you will think I'm nuts," said Danna, then shrugged, "All right, then, here goes. Shortly after you accepted me into the firm, when I was working with Hiram and Myrna Page—remember? The couple who owned the small florist shop? The woman who suicided for no apparent reason. Well, I first went over to the Federal Building with them to see Blutegel, when I first walked into his office, Pedro, I ... I could see what he really looked like, of course, but . . . but I could also see another him, standing in the same place, a younger him, dressed in a black uniform with shiny black boots almost up to his knees, black gloves on his hands and them flexing a black leather riding crop. And Pedro, that

was my first meeting with BlutegeL I didn't know a bit of what a bastard he is, not then.

"I saw almost that same picture of him again, here, today, and I've seen it other times over the years. I've always had reliable intuition, Pedro, and I've more than once had good reason to regret it when I didn't respect and follow that intuition. I want to follow this one up. I feel that I need to, that if I don't, then no one else ever will. Do you understand?"

Pedro Goldfarb nodded. "I think so, Danna. You do whatever seems to you the right thing to do, and don't hesitate to call on me or any of the rest of our staff for help. You see, I, too, believe in obeying intuition."

Then he frowned. "But back to current matters: do you know where Fitz really is? Could you easily reach him if there was pressing need to do so, Danna?"

"Yes," she replied. "It might take a few days, but yes, I think I could reach him if it was necessarv. Why?"

He used his hands to rub briskly at his forearms under his sleeves. "I can't say now, not in so many words, but there just might be a good and sufficient reason for a speedy return someday soon, so I needed to know. But that aside, you're developing a really nice tan, Danna. New kind of sunlamp?"

She smiled. "Thank you. Yes, you might say a new kind of sunlamp."

"You'll have to show it to me some time." said Pedro. "Look at me, I'm getting fish-belly white. The ones at my club aren't worth a damn. Sometimes I feel that cities were designed as a punishment for all humanity, Danna . . . and sometimes I get the feeling that humanity deserves even* erg of that punishment, too.

"But back to you, Danna, have you gotten an overdose ofCHiPS on television?"

She wrinkled her brows and asked, "What in the world are you talking about, Pedro? I hardly ever have time to watch any television, except the news sometimes."

"Buying guns and enrolling in firearms courses, buying a motorcycle and conning the salesman into teaching you how to ride it. I hear things, Danna, they come back to me from all over. Why these sudden interests in guns and motorcycles?" He snapped his fingers and grinned. "I've got it! You're going to organize a group of feminist motorcycle outlaws, right?"

"If you must know, and it would seem that you must," said Danna, "Fitz suggested that I learn both skills ... for reasons that are really no one's business but ours, his and mine."

"Ooowwwl" Pedro yelped, grasping his wrist and mock-wincing. "Okay, I won't pry again, I promise. But let me make a suggestion.

"Guns are not always the answer, or the best answer, in a given situation. Remind me on Monday and I'll take you to a place I know, it's called a dojo. An elderly oriental runs it and it's far from your common run of karate halls; he's well off and doesn't need to work for a living, so he only accepts students who appeal to him in some way."

"And you think that I, a fifty-five-year-old widow, will appeal to him?" she grinned maliciously. "Are you deciding you'd really rather be a flesh-peddler, Pedro?"

But he did not rise to the joke. In a serious tone he said, "No kidding, Danna. I think Master Hara will like you and I know you'll like him. Stick with him, and he'll teach you a lot—not just the self-defense and fighting skills, but the depths of philosophy that are the firm foundation of those skills. That

philosophy can help you to awaken and develop within yourself powers that you never even suspected you had before. I know, my instructor was this very man, some years back, of course. Prior to my years with him, I wasn't even as much as half what I am now, today."

Later, after Pedro had left and she had locked up the gates, the front of the house and activated all the alarm systems, Danna packed a small cooler chest with ice, food, and a couple of long, green bottles of a Moselle. Cinching her waist with the gunbelt, she holstered her new Ruger Security-Six revolver and went out onto the back porch. At the foot of the steps, she filled a brace of gallon jugs with water from the tap and used them to balance the weight of the cooler as she crossed the yard, ascended the mound and entered the wall tent. It took two trips to get the items down the stairs safely, even with the new safety ropes Fitz had strung before he left.