Stairway to Forever (7 page)

Gus nodded. "Yeah, Fitz, that's what Hurz thinks, too. So I called up the A.D.T. folks this morning, while he was still there so he could talk at some other guy over there use to be in the Air Force with him. That outfit's gonna be working night and day, this weekend, 'til they gets my shop and my house wired up proper and all. The damn system's gonna be wired every which way from Sunday into their security office and the police station and from the shop into my house, too. It's gonna have the biggest, loud-assest alarms anybody makes, boxes and wires can't nobody get into or cut or nothing, and silent alarm buttons all over the place in both places, even in the crappers and the shower stall.

"I bought me some more guns, too, and put them around in diff rent places easy to get to when I needs to, see. Loaded for bear, one up the fucking spout on ever one of the fuckers, office and home. It's a pure blessing I don't have no kids around, is all I got to say. My old lady, she's a better shot than a lot of men, too.

"Fitz, you might be smart to get you some more firepower, 'cause if a man didn't care how much of a racket he made, he could put a truck, even a big car,

right through your fence or the gate either, you know."

"Oh, no!" Fitz shook his head vehemently and held up both hands, palms toward his friend, as if fending him off "Oh no, Gus, no more guns for me! Hell, thanks to you, my friend, this place is already more like an arsenal than a home. In addition to all the collector guns youve conned me into buying ..."

Tolliver looked a trifle hurt. "But Fitz, boy, them's a investment, a damn sound one, too."

"Yeah?" remarked Fitz, deliberately sounding skeptical. "If they are such a damned good investment, how come you didn't buy the damn things, huh?"

Gus looked and sounded a little sheepish. "Well . . . well, Fitz, it was this way, see: Sary opined that if I brought even one more old antique gun that you couldn't shoot into the house . . . Well, anyway, Fitz, she's been a dang good wife to me and I tries to keep her happy and all, but ..."

"But, as I was saying," Fitz interjected, not caring to again hear extolled the many virtues and few but onerous failings of the widow Gus had met and wooed and won soon after his retirement from the army, "plus all those damned muzzle loaders, the Lugers— all nineteen of the things!—some hunting rifles and shotguns I've picked up on my own, the Garand and a twelve-gauge riot gun, I've got two magnum revolvers, two automatic pistols and a Ruger carbine. Oh, and not to forget that damned undernourished howitzer you brought out here two weeks ago, either. Tell me, have you ever fired that monstrosity, Gus?

"No? Well, I did . . . just once, on the day after you left it here. Gus, it was Monday night before I could hear normally again. And it was Wednesday before I was dead certain my shoulder and my clavi-

cle were both still intact. You can have that booby trap back, any time, take it home with you tonight/'

"Fitz, boy," Tolliver hastily expostulated, "that gun's a real collector's item, cased and all like it is. Holland and Holland, what made it, didn't never make no kind of cheap guns, ever. That eight-bore double rifle was custom-made, by hand, and ..."

"And made on order for an avowed masochist, no doubt," commented Fitz, ruefully, rubbing his right shoulder in painful memory of the elephant gun's punishing recoil.

Gus ignored him and talked on: "I allowed that feller owned it only just about fifteen hundred dollars towards a bezant he was plumb dying to have. Fifteen hundred dollars, Fitz, for the rifle, the tools, the spare parts and everything in a fitted, velvet-lined, solid mahogany case, plus ten rounds of ammo for it! And hell, boy, I give you odds that gun cost that much new, way back when. Even the cartridges had to be custom-made for that gun, and just one of the fuckers will stop a bull elephant cold—drop him where he stands."

Fitz smiled. "Well, since I haven't seen any elephants wandering around this neighborhood, not in recent months, anyway, if you can locate a sucker . . . er, a collector, rather, who can be persuaded in any legal way to pay you what you put into that cannon, by all means grab him before his keepers find him and take him back to the State Home for the Bewildered."

Later that night, after Fitz had walked Gus out to his car and was about to go down and unlock the gate, the older man looked up at his friend and host from the driver's seat and spoke in a lowered voice, his brow crinkled, his words tinged with worry and concern.

"Another thing's been bothering me, Fitz. Feller owes me a few favors at the bank tells me there's been a whole lot of folks trying to pry into my accounts lately; yours, too, he says. Some of them, they could just flat out refuse to show the bastards anything . . . but some of the others, they had to show them anything and everything they wanted to see . . . if you gets my drift."

"Government?" queried Fitz incredulously. "What the hell about? I, we're not breaking any laws that I know of. . . are we?"

Gus shrugged, his meaty shoulders rising and falling under the fine wool of his coat. "Maybe, maybe not. The way the fucking laws is wrote out, it's a 'heads, they wins; tails, you loses' propersition. If the Guvamint is really out to get you, boy, they'll sure-Lawd find them a way or something to get you on, and you can make book on that, too. And, too, you can figger anytime a little man starts making money in big chunks, the prick-ears of all them I.R.S. boys is gonna perk up like a coon hound what just spotted a ringtail."

"Well, good God, Gus," Fitz burst out, louder than he had really intended, but a little angry at the thought of the intrusion of utter strangers into his personal accounts and affairs, "I've been leaving all the business end of this, the promotion and advertising and sales, to you and you alone, just as we both agreed in the very beginning of it all. You've got a lawyer, a good one, I hear tell. So, what does he say about all this government mess?"

Gus nodded. "I talked to Hamill, and he said exactly whatall I just told you, 'cept he said it better'n me, of course. He said he'd give me, you, too, all the pertection the law allows him to. But he said, too, to

make damn sure we didn't have us nothing to hide, that our business was all legal and on the up and up.

"So, how 'bout it, Fitz? Have we . . . you, got something to hide? Something you couldn't tell nobody in a court, under oath?"

Suddenly, he grabbed Fitz's shirt collar and pulled his head down to his own, seated level, locking his eyes in an unwavering gaze with those of his friend.

"Tell me, Fitz! Tell me one more time that that gold ain't hot. Tell me that you come by it all legal and proper. Tell me, misterl"

It was not in any way, shape or form a request. The long years of command—in peace and in war, in garrison and in combat—were conveyed in that steely stare, in the suddenly unequivocal tone that demanded an answer—a thoroughly truthful answer.

"Gus," said Fitz, "you have my solemn word of honor that each and every one of the gold coins I've entrusted to you have been a part of the legacy of a man long dead that passed to me and that, so far as I know, my possession of them was and is entirely legal."

Tolliver showed every yellowed tooth in a wide grin then, and unclasped his powerful hands from Fitz's shirt. "That's all I needs to hear, Fitz, boy. Let them sticky-fingered Guvamint mammyjammers pry 'round all they wants to, then, if that's what it takes to help the frigging bastards to get their rocks offl

"G'night, Fitz."

The coin dealer had sounded more than mollified, but Fitz himself slept little and poorly the rest of that night, and on many a succeeding night. His mind churned through the hours of darkness with scores of discomfiting "What ifs?" Were someone to really pin him down on the

identity and death date of the "uncle" from whom he supposedly had inherited the golden coins, he knew that he would be deep in the shit, for he had had no uncles . . . not so far as he knew, at least.

Although neither his mother or his father ever had even once broached upon the subject, Fitz—who always had differed in so very many ways, both physically and emotionally, from his parents and from all his siblings, as well—-had for most of his life felt certain that die man and the woman who had reared him as their own, firstborn son had actually, in truth, been his adoptive parents, had both lived and died hiding that truth from him ... for whatever reasons.

"Hell!" he muttered, savagely pounding a pillow into a shape hopefully comfortable, then sinking bade upon it. "I could have, could conceivably have umpteen zillion uncles and aunts, if only I knew, could ever find a way to find out for sure just who I really am. But I've just got to face it: I started out lying to Gus ToUiver and I have no way of ever proving that falsehood true, now or ever.

"As for trying to back up, at this late date, and tell them all—Gus, his lawyer, those Government types, the folks whove bought pieces of the gold—the real, unvarnished truth . . .? Nobody, not a one of them, would ever believe it, because, hell, I don't believe it myself, sometimes. So I'd be well advised to start getting myself a bolt hole ready for the day that will certainly come—the day that those eager-beaver, bloodsucking, Government busybodies finally run me to ground, for keeps."

But affairs proceeded very tranquilly for the next six weeks. No more break-ins were attempted or accomplished, either at his house or Gus's or the coin shop, nor did Gus's banker friend report any further government inquiries on his level. However,

Gus took the elementary precaution of moving the bulk of their profits—by now grown to quite a considerable sum—out of the United States of America, informing Fitz well after the fact.

"Switzerland?" asked Fitz.

"Aw, naw." Gus shook his head. "Fellers I talked to said the Swiss ain't too reliable no more, these days. Not for the kind of game we're having to play here, they're not. Naw, Fitz, boy, all the smart money's either going to the West Indies or to South Africa, anymore. We, you and me, got some in both places now, mostly thanks to one of our bestest customers, feller what goes by the name of Piet Bijl. . . though I got some reasons to suspect that's not the name he was christened with ... if you get my drift."

With a raised eyebrow and a tilted head, Fitz eyed Gus Tolliver as the paunchy old soldier sat and swigged his beer. "Question, Gus: just how many of our local merchants are likely to honor a check drawn against an account in a South African bank, do you think; or a West Indian one even, for that matter?"

The older man grinned expansively, chiding, "Aw, now don't you fret yourself none, Fitz, boy. I made damn sure it was enough left in your account and at least two of mine to handle things day to day here."

But Fitz still frowned, saying hesitantly, "I still don't know. I'm still not sure that I like the idea of having so much of my money so far away. It's not as if we—you and I—were living under some kind of totalitarian dictatorship with confiscatory tax laws and tactics."

Gus lowered his voice to conspiratorial levels and leaned forward in his chair. "Fitz, most folks don't have them no idea just how damn close to broke the Guvamint of the U.S. of A. really is these days. It's a

goddamn shame, too, when half or more of the other countries in the whole damn world owes the U.S. of A. money they ain't never even made a try at paying back, some the fuckers sincet World War One. And it seems it ain't been one frigging pres'dint or congress we's had is ever had them the guts to get up on they hind legs and get as hardnose with all these furrin deadbeats as they all of the time gets with they own hardworking, taxed to death folks here in the U.S. of A., neither.

"But, enyhow, cain't nobody—individuals or guva-mints—keep living on next year's money for too long at time. If you don't b'lieve that, just look at how them dumbasses runs New York City has fucked they selfs up trying to run a fucking welfare state and tax all the businesses to death to give the money to bums that mostly won't even try to work for a living and has got so broke now they can't even pay salaries to the folks he works for them. Naw, Fitz, if you or me or enybody elst tried running their affairs like the Guvamint's been doing, off and on, for the last near-forty years, sincet Roosevelt started it all, we'd be bankrupted and most likely in jail, to boot.

This here shit they calls deficit financing' has done brought a country that was the biggest and bestest and strongest and richest in this whole wide world less then twenny year ago damn near into the fucking poorhouse. So whin them Treasury boys sees a way they can maybe lean down hard on some little feller, who ain't incorporated and with a whole damn pisspot full of high-priced lawyers hired on just to keep guys like the I.R.S. off of him, well then, they just gets as hard and horny as a quarn'tined stud bull. Their hot little hands gets to itching and their sticky fingers gets to twitching, and they swallers

whole bottles full of nasty pills three times a day, too.

"And whin that time comes for you and me, Fitz— and I got me this here feeling that it's damn close to that time for us!—unless you's made up some way to perfect what's really yours and not really theirs or the frigging Guvamint's to take, all you can do is just lay down and spread your legs whin the legal-robbers tells you to, because eny way you turn, your ass is gonna be grass and the I.R.S. is gonna be the fucking lawn mower, see. If it's enything that crew really hates and despises, Fitz, it's folks that is self-employed and don't work for somebody elst what will take chunks out their pay ever month and send it off to Washin'ton to keep the fat-cat politicians and all the perfessional leeches they calls bewreaucrats stocked up on plenty of French cheese and wine and Russian caviar and all." The coin dealer sounded exceedingly bitter.

He drained off the last of his liter of dark beer and demanded, "You got you a passport, Fitz, a current one?" At a nodded silent answer, he went on, "Well, you keep her on you all the time, hear? What money is left in this country, aside from the penny-ante local funds, I've done got spread out in four diffrent banks—one in New York, one in Frisco, one in Illinois and one more in Texas—that ought to keep the bloodsuckers busy long enough for you and me to get out and away, when it comes down to that, see. Oh, and keep a suitcase packed up, too. Chances is good that whin you has to move, you gonna have to move some kind of damn fast, for sure."