Stairway to Forever (9 page)

Fitz had been back in his bungalow for less than an hour when the telephone jangled.

"Fitz?" said Tolliver's voice, sounding agitated. "Fitz, where the hell you been? I been trying to get your ass for two weeks now. Naw, don't you talk yet, just listen, then talk, tell me you ain't been lying to me all along.

"Fitz, way things has turned out, I don't think now

it was real mob what broke into my place; yours neither, prob'ly. You know what Interpol is? Well, two of them and some Customs Service fellers come to call on me more'n two weeks back. They're all some kinda mad, too. They say you been illegally importing into the U.S. antiquities what was stole from either Turkish or Greek or Eyetalian or Syrian tombs and then smuggled out of wherever.

"When I told them whatall youve done told me, boy, they said it just wont wash because, for one thing, your pa, he didn't have no brothers and for another thing, it was more what they called artifacts than just the gold coins involved here. So what do you say to that?"

Fitz nodded grimly. "I say, to begin, that now I know who broke in here to take only a big, rusty old knife and a little copper cup, both of which came to me with the coins."

"And where did the whole lot come to you from, Fitz? For the love of God, boy, tell me the truth, huh?" pled Tolliver.

Hating himself for having to be so evasive with his friend, Fitz said, "For one thing, Gus, no, my father didn't have any brothers, but I had a mother, too, you know. As for the coins, the knife and the cup, hell, I didn't even know they were Byzantine, Greek and Italian until you told me so. Remember? I brought the first batch in to you to sell just for the gold content, remember that, too. Exactly where they came from, or when or how they were imported, I have no foggiest sort of an idea, though I do recall some talk of a shipwreck many years ago on some beach somewhere."

"Fitz, boy, I wants to believe you, you don't know just how bad I wants to. But Fitz, one the fellers was in here—the big, nasty one, the Greek, I think

it was—he said them there artifacts was a good thousand years old, maybe more. He said the both of them done been analyzed by experts and it ain't no question they's the real McCoy, not just cheap copies of old ones. So, what you got to say now, Fitz?"

He sighed. "Gus, I can say nothing I've not already said. Either you and those types believe me or you and they don't. That's it."

There was a pause, then Gus asked, "You got anymore of those so-called artifacts, Fitz? Like the knife or the cup, I mean?"

"Why, yes, come to think of it, Gus. I've got a copper bowl. It was soaking in a mop bucket that I guess they never thought to look in the last time they Visited' my home. But I've got all the verdigris off now and I'm using it for an ashtray," Fitz answered, then asked, now a bit suspicious but concealing it, "Why do you ask, my friend?"

"Oh, no pertic'ler reason, Fitz," replied Gus, too nonchalantly to suit Fitz.

"I'll tell you what, Gus." Fitz spurted out the fruits of a sudden brainstorm. "When you come out here Friday night, I'll give you that bowl and you can give it to your friends there. Okay?"

Fitz had had the old bowl of hammererd-out sheet copper since his post-war college days and had, indeed, used it for an ashtray back when he still had smoked. He took it off his bureau as soon as he hung up from talking to Gus and whoever else had been on the line with the coin dealer.

After treating the thing with a copper cleaner, Fitz dug out a steel scriber and an English-Greek/Greek-English dictionary which had once been the property of his dead son. By the time that Friday rolled around, the bowl had been inscribed with shaky Greek alphabetical characters all the way around it, then suffi-

ciently buffed to remove the sharp edges and impart a look of long handling and use.

Gus Tolliver rolled up to the gate about an hour earlier than usual and, when he had been admitted and had wheeled his sedan around so that he could drive rather than back out, he took his underarm case and trailed Fitz into the bungalow, with only a mumbled word or two of bare greeting.

Once inside, he hurriedly drew the drapes over the big front window and said, "Fitz, where the hell were you gone off to for so long, boy?" But then, when Fitz opened his mouth to speak, the old soldier shook his head forcefully from side to side, stuck a forefinger up to his own lips and, with the other hand, beckoned his host to come closer. When Fitz was less than arm's length away, Gus took both his wrists and placed the hands upon his own chest, that Fitz might himself feel the trails of wiring and the lumps and bumps to which they were connected.

Then he said, "Naw, boy, never mind the beer, just tell me where you went off to for two weeks? Not Vegas again, I hope."

Fitz caught on fast. "No, not Vegas. This time I went to Reno to try their tables."

Gus sighed. "You win or lose this time?"

"About broke even, for a change," Fitz replied. "Now, you ready for a beer?"

Gus nodded. "A gallon of it, boy. This has been a rough fucking two weeks for me, I tell you!"

It was Wednesday of the following week before Fitz again heard from Gus. The loud traffic noises at once announced that the paunchy man was not phoning from either his shop or his home. Though still with a note of agitation in his voice, he sounded more like the old, friendly Gus.

"Fitz, boy, I cain't talk long, I'm on a pay phone

on the comer of the bank. All I can say is, you got all them fuckers mad enough to chew up twenny-penny nails and spit out carpet tacks, is all. They says that copper bowl ain't no artifact at all, ain't more'n forty years old, if that, and that what them squiggles says is dirty and plumb insulting. Did you do it?"

Fitz chuckled. "Damn right I did, Gus. Insulting, it may be, but it's not dirty. It says 'Go copulate yourself in Modern Greek; I copied the words out of a dictionary I have. As for it upsetting the fuckers, it was intended to do just that. I'm overjoyed that it succeeded. I don't like being accused of theft, and that's just what this business all boils down to, you know.

"And another thing, Gus. How come the bastards are just leaning on you? Why haven't they come to me?"

"They say they've tried and ain't never been able to catch you at home," replied Tolliver.

"I guess they don't believe in burglary anymore, huh?" snapped Fitz.

Gus chuckled. "I hear tell they tried that once, after you put ever thing in and they damn near got to see the inside of the county jail out there, afore they could get on the horn to somebody in Washin'ton to haul their little asses outen the fire your county sheriff was toasting 'em with. Then, too, they seem to think you got you a hardsite out there, a fucking fort, with heavy machine guns and everything. What'd you get, anyway? Browning fifties? They're the best, alius was."

Fitz sighed. "Gus, I do not own any machine gun, heavy, fight or sub. The last time I even fired a full-auto weapon was in Korea, some twenty-odd years ago. Somebody probably saw me bringing a

Lahti anti-tank rifle into the house. But it's not here now. All I've got is the guns you know about, many of which can't even be fired.

"I'll tell you, Gus, give them a message for me. Tell them that I will be willing to meet with them, one at a time, here, by appointment. But you can also tell them that the next time somebody breaks into my home ... or even tries to do it, I'm going to start installing some very nasty, deadly burglar traps, legal or not, and maybe scattering a few land mines between the house and the fence, and not because I have anything to hide, either; simply because I get furious at the thought of a bunch of strangers pawing through my effects whenever the mood strikes them to do it."

"I'll sure to God do er!" Gus assured him fervently, then said, "And Fitz, boy, whinever you get ready to put in mines, you let me know, hear? I know a feller's got him two, three cases of U.S. Army anti-personnel mines, M-8s, with primers and fuses and everything you needs. And how 'bout grenades, Fitz? You and me, we could rig up some grenades in place of some them trip flares you got 'round of your perimeter out there and ..."

Now it was Fitz's turn to chuckle. "What do you want to help me do, Gus, start a full-scale war out here? And all along, I'd thought you were just a coin dealer, not a gun runner. Or are you a secret stockholder in Interarms Corporation, on the side?"

"Naw, Fitz, boy, I just knows some folks, some of 'em old friends from the Army and all. Fitz, I gotta cut this all short, but let me just say this: you be damn careful who you talks to and what you says on a telephone, 'less it's a pay phone, like this one here. And if you talks to me at the shop or my house, either one, don't say one fucking thing you don't

want somebody elst to hear, hear? They done got my lines all bugged twenny ways from Sunday ... for all you knows, yours is too, see."

"Well, all I can say, Gus, is that this bunch behave more like mobsters than anything else. Are you certain they're who they say they are?"

"Yeah." Gus sighed gustily. "I checked up on the fuckers, the U.S. ones, leastways, and they're legit, so I guess them fiirrin Interpol bastards is, too, and it's three of them now. One Turk, one Greek—and you look out for him, he's big and mean and ornery as hell; he ain't got no use for no Americans and he don't give a fuck who knows it, neither—and one Eye-talian. Him and the Turk don't seem to be too bad fellers, as cops of eny kind goes, though neither one them two talks as good English as the Greek geek.

"Look, Fitz, I really gotta go now, 'fore them fuckers comes looking for me, hear?"

Immediately the line went dead, Fitz took another load into the sand world, bringing back a couple of the cracked, chipped earthenware bowls from off the wrecked ship. He had not earlier brought up any of them because, partially, they were not very estheti-cally pleasing—being wrought roughly of thick clay with an uneven, blackish glaze and no decorations or even lettering of any kind—and partially because he didn't know what he would use the ugly things for in his home. They most resembled handleless teacups that the potter had all at once decided to flatten slightly, giving less depth and more width. But now he thought he might have a use for them. If he could actually catch those bastards in the very fucking act of a completely illegal burglary, then maybe they'd crawl down off poor old Gus's back. He also, therefore, brought back one of the rust-pitted, wrought-

iron bolts he had removed from one of the cabin doors when he had refurbished it, and a finger ring of bronze or some similar alloy he had found while cleaning up the sternmost cabin.

The telephone rang about an hour after his return from the sand world. He gave it three full rings, then picked it up. "Fitzgilbert speaking."

The voice on the other end bore the slightly nasal quality, the clipped speech patterns of the northeastern United States. "Mister Fitzgilbert, my name is G. Rowland Biscuitt, I represent the U.S. Customs Service, and it is most urgent that I talk with you immediately, concerning certain antiquities from the Eastern Mediterranean area. We have a legal right to know if they were legally acquired by you, Mister Fitzgilbert. If they were, if you can prove to my satisfaction that they were, why, then, you will have nothing to worry about, sir. When may we come to call upon you, Mister Fitzgilbert? We have Mister Tolliver with us."

The Ford sedan that drove up to the gate had a driver and four other passengers in it. But Fitz adamantly stood close by his original terms and refused to so much as crack the gate until they had sorted out amongst themselves just which two—and two only—would come onto the property with Gus Tolliver. When once this had been accomplished, with no little bad grace and acrimony and hard, mean looks at him, he proceeded to anger them even more.

"And leave your guns in the car, both of you. Otherwise, you can just sit out there until hell freezes over solid ... or you manage to come up with a legal search warrant. Come on, I'm not stupid, you know. You're both armed and I know it."

The Customs man, Biscuitt, shrugged and, reach-

ing under his suit jacket, withdrew a hammerless .38 caliber revolver and passed it into the car. The other man, however, just stood there, glaring at Fitz, a near snarl showing some of his teeth.

Fitz returned the glare with an icy stare of his own, then slouched against one of the steel fence posts and began to affect to contemplate the conditions of his fingernails, while a heated conversation couched in some foreign language took place between the snarly man and two of the men still within the car.

After a few minutes of this, the man—with a full-fledged snarl of frustration and some grated-out words whose language Fitz did not need to understand in order to identify them as utter crudities, probably very profane—flung open his coat, pulled from its shoulder holster a big Browning P35 automatic and passed it through the open window to one of the other men.

At this point, Gus said, "Fitz, he's got anothern, in a ankle holster, and a knife on his right leg and another knife on his left arm, just above of the wrist. And it's something damn funny 'bout one his so-called pens, too; it either shoots a bullet or throws gas, I think. Mister Biscuitt, he's got one in his pocket, too, 'long with a flat blackjack in his right hip pocket."

By the time that the two visitors had been persuaded to relinquish the totalities of their extensive personal arsenals, Fitz could almost see steam arising from the big, black-haired foreigner, whose dark-olive complexion was also become a good bit darker. Nor did Gus's short, mock-sympathetic comments, chuckles and grins seem to be helping to smooth down the man's very ruffled feathers.

Comfortable for two, the small parlor was less so

for four. Fitz and Gus took their accustomed overstuffed leather arm chairs, leaving the visitors to choose between standing and occupying a short leather couch backed against the wide window. On the table between the two chairs, Fitz had carefully arranged a stack of assorted mail held down with the big wrought-iron bolt and with the two ugly little bowls on either side of a cigarette box. The bronze ring was on his right thumb, having proven itself to be too big for any of his fingers, and he had already noticed both of the visitors staring at it.