The Crossroads (20 page)

He parked his car on the west side of his cabin, and locked himself in with the money. He stripped down to his shorts. It took him fifteen minutes to count the money, seal it in Pliofilm bags, pack it neatly into the inner tube and seal the long slit he had made. He put on his work clothes. He walked to the well, making certain he was not observed. He dropped the dispatch case and the keys to the Chevrolet and the torn fragments of the claim check down the well. He suspended the inner tube on the length of wire he had prepared. He put the rotten boards back in place and tugged at the vines until they looked undisturbed. He went back to the cabin, pulled
and chewed the strips of liquid cement from his finger tips. It was five minutes after two.

At three o’clock he was at work at the diner, grease on his apron, white hat cocked low over one dark eyebrow, his hands fast and efficient, his narrow face expressionless as he worked.

“What you think of this pie, Brodey?” the boss said.

“It was half stale when it got here. Now I wouldn’t feed it to a dog.”

“So? Now this is the Ritz? One day old and we throw everything away? Push the pie, Brodey. I’m just a dumb Greek. Who’s poisoning somebody? You say to the people, wanta nice piece cherry pie? Push the pie.”

“Okay, Gus.”

“Maybe you’re too fancy for this place, eh? All the time off you need.”

“I had to see a doctor. I told you.”

“Maybe you’re too sick to work, eh?”

Brodey straightened up from slicing an onion. “Look, Gus. I’ll push the pie. Okay?”

“Okay,” Gus said. They glared at each other and then went back to work.

NINE

At three o’clock the four children of Papa Drovek were gathered in a small waiting room on the third floor of the Walterburg Memorial Hospital. Leo’s wife, Betty, was there too. She punctuated the stillness with a damp snuffle at readily predictable intervals. Joan’s eyes were red and swollen. Pete was restless. Chip had a look of somber, heavy, dreadful anger. The operating room was two hundred feet away. The furniture in the small waiting room was of expensively cheerless stainless steel, upholstered in aqua plastic. Jack Paris was out of town, playing in the State Amateur. Pete had been unable to find Sylvia.

“It sure takes a long time,” Pete said.

“You’ve got someplace to go?” Chip asked harshly.

“Please,” Joan said.

“I was just …” Pete said.

“I know,” Chip said. “I’m sorry.”

A wide solid man suddenly appeared in the doorway, wearing a light gray suit, a gray sports shirt, holding a straw hat in big freckled hands. He had cropped gray-red hair, and brows and lashes so colorless his face had a curiously blunt and naked look. They all looked at him.

“Mr. Charles Drovek?” he asked in a surprising tenor voice.

“I’m sorry but we have no statement to make to …”

“Police, Mr. Drovek. Could I talk to you, please?”

Chip got up and went out into the corridor. They moved a few feet down the corridor from the waiting-room door. “I’m Detective-Lieutenant Bill Sharry, Mr. Drovek. This is Sergeant Lew Gold.” Chip shook hands with them. Gold was young and lean with a smooth Byzantine face, quiet dark eyes. Chip took the measure of Sharry, liked him at once.

“I talked to Milt Quinn about this, Lieutenant.”

“I know. It’s my baby right now, with all the men on it I can use.”

“I thought you were more reporters. They’ve been giving me fits.”

“That can happen. What’s the word on your father?”

Chip shrugged and looked away. “They’re still working on him. He’s an old man. Depressed fracture, they said.”

“They can do wonderful things these days. I said this is my baby. I’m not clear on the jurisdictional thing here, whether the FBI can come in. I’m inclined to think they will. It happened in a bank. They interpret the law pretty broad. You don’t mind if I ask more questions?”

Chip smiled wryly. “It’s better than sitting and waiting.”

“You gave the Chief an estimate of how much money was involved.”

“That’s right. It has to be a guess. Between two hundred and three hundred thousand, I would say.”

“That’s the figure the papers got hold of. That’s what’s making them so eager. Now I don’t like to ask this, but I got to. About this money. It’s entirely clean?”

“What the hell do you mean?”

“I mean it’s not unreported income or anything like that?”

“Every damn dime of tax was paid on that money, Lieutenant. Call it an eccentricity to keep it in cash. Okay? And why did you ask?”

“Suppose you couldn’t report it missing. And the old … your father got a little tap on the head. Money you can’t report missing is the safest kind to steal. So maybe he was hit a little harder than he wanted. And if it was money you weren’t talking about, it would narrow it down to those people who had some way of finding out about it.”

“It wasn’t any secret. I guess a lot of people knew about it. It was … sort of a joke. Papa’s money. You know.”

“But people in your organization would be most likely to know about it?”

“Of course.”

“We’ve got a lead, maybe. That Packer woman isn’t what I’d call an ideal source. But here it is. On the second of July a man rented a box. Since then he’s visited the vaults ten times. Today was the eleventh. That’s pretty frequent. Stayed inside quite a while every time. Carried an oblong leather case, like a big briefcase with square corners. Dispatch case I guess you call them. Today he arrived before your father did, and left maybe eight to ten minutes after your father arrived. Big husky-looking fella about twenty-five. Tan, well dressed in a dark gray or dark brown suit, felt hat. Long sideburns. According to the vault records he was the only one who arrived before your father did and left after he arrived. Two other people arrived shortly after he did and left before your father was found, but we’ve checked them out. The one we want is six foot or a little more, probably about one ninety. Dark-brown hair. Clean-cut looking,
except for the long hair style. We checked out the address he gave. It’s a phony. Now I want to ask you about the name he gave, see if it means anything to you. Mark Brodey.”

Chip stared at him. “Mark Brodey! He worked for us five years. Bartender. We fired him this year. Maybe three months ago. He had his hand in the till.”

“Fit the description?”

“No. Brodey is about forty, a smallish wiry man. Black hair. Narrow face. Pale. Heavy black eyebrows.”

“Know where he is now?”

“Somebody saw him a few weeks ago. I forget who mentioned him. I remember it surprised me he was still in the area.”

Gold spoke for the first time. “Somebody who didn’t like Brodey, Bill. Or wanted to smoke-screen the deal and knew he’d been fired.”

“Did many people know why Brodey was fired?”

“We didn’t keep it a secret, exactly.”

“So we go on the basis somebody used Brodey’s name. And we’ve got the handwriting. Next step is to have our expert check the handwriting against the handwriting of all your employees out there, including any who, like Brodey, have left you recently. Who do we see?”

“Myra Miles, in my office.”

“I won’t bother you any more right now, Mr. Drovek. I have a hunch we’ll be able to unwind this ball of yarn.”

They left. Chip went back into the waiting room. Ten minutes later the neurosurgeon, a Dr. Towsey, came in still in his green operating uniform, the green mask pulled down around his throat, a cigarette in the corner of his mouth and a look of exhaustion on his face.

He sat on the arm of an unused chair and said, “We’ve just sent him to the recovery room. If you want any odds right now, I’d say fifty-fifty. Two hours ago I’d have said eighty-twenty. He’s an old man. But he’s got a heart like a rock. Now we just wait.”

“Just what did you have to do … in simple language?” Joan asked.

“Incision in the scalp, from here around to here. Lay
the flap back. Saw out a piece of skull this big around. Lift it out. Lift a clot. Dig bone splinters out of the brain tissue. Suture small blood vessels. Repair the dura. Fix a plate over the hole and sew the scalp back over the plate. Somebody hammered on him like a man driving stakes, with a sledge.”

“Will there be … mental effects if he recovers?” Leo asked solemnly.

“You mean will he be an idiot? The brain is a remarkable thing, to coin a tired phrase. Other parts, in an amazingly short time, pick up the functions of injured portions. The splinters were in the left prefrontal lobe. If he comes out of it he’ll be confused. Memory may be in bits and pieces. He may be incontinent for a little while. But he’ll fit himself back together again.”

“When will we know?” Chip asked.

The surgeon stood up. “By ten tonight I can have a better estimate of his chances.”

“Can we see him?” Joan asked.

“No. I’ve given orders for him to be kept in recovery until I can check him at ten. If it looks okay, he can be moved into a private room then. I’ve set you up for nurses around the clock.”

Every employee of the Crossroads Corporation knew about it long before the afternoon papers arrived. There were quick conversations in the corners of the kitchens, in the motel offices, beside the grease racks, on green lawns where the maintenance crew worked. A few, a very few, felt a sneaking delight. One of those Droveks had gotten it, but good. And somebody had grabbed some Drovek money. But most of the staff were upset and indignant. Slugging an old man that way. Chip had established profit-sharing plans that reached down through the organization to the lowliest dishwasher. So most of the Crossroads people felt they were a part of the organization. And they wanted to express, to the Droveks, their concern and their willingness to do anything possible to help.

At six o’clock that evening, Chip and Nancy were sitting
in the kitchen of Chip’s house when Joan came in. Nancy poured her a cup of coffee.

“I keep feeling we should be at the hospital,” Joan said.

“Nothing we can do there. They’ll phone here if there’s any change. We’ll all go in at ten. Hear from Jack?”

“Twenty minutes ago.” She made a small face. “He won his match. Tomorrow morning the quarter finals. He said it was a terrible thing and he said he was all upset about it. And he said that of course he would leave right away and drive back and be with the family. I knew just what he wanted me to say, so I said it. There’s nothing he can do here, really. He said he was having trouble with his wedge. And a tough match coming up tomorrow. I wished him luck.” She sipped her coffee. “How did Clara react?”

Chip shrugged. “I don’t know if I got through to her.”

“Where’s Pete?” Joan asked.

“Still hunting for Sylvia, I guess.”

At that moment Pete came into the kitchen. He had such a strange expression on his face that both Joan and Nancy said, simultaneously, “What’s the matter?”

He moistened his lips. “The damnedest thing. I figured I might feel better if I showered and shaved. I … this was in the medicine cabinet.”

He started to give Chip the note, then turned and handed it to Joan. Nancy went over to read over her shoulder. Joan gasped audibly, and Nancy said, “Golly!”

“What is it?” Chip demanded. Joan handed him the brief note.

“She’s acted funny lately,” Pete said. “Not like herself. I don’t feel mad, exactly. I don’t know how the hell I feel. Confused, I guess. Sort of a swing and a miss feeling. I didn’t have any idea she was lining up something like this.”

“You gave her every chance in the world,” Chip said harshly.

“Now wait a minute!”

“You’ve had your own special blueprint for togetherness. You dealt her out of about half your life, Pete.”

“Maybe you can remember I didn’t give the marriage a hell of a lot of thought,” Pete said sullenly.

“So you felt a little trapped, and you took it out on her. Another evasion of responsibility, Pete. Typical. So she took off.”

Pete smiled suddenly. “Okay. So she took off,” he said blithely. But the smile he wore was not a very good fit. It faded. “So who’s the clown who seduced my bride?”

“I know who he is,” Joan said.

They all stared at her. “What?” Chip said, astonished.

Joan told them about the phone call she had overheard. She spoke in a low, controlled voice, her face quite pale. She tried to explain why she had told no one, why she had made no determined attempt to talk to Sylvia.

“With Lawrenz?” Pete said insistently, incredulously. “She went away with that Lawrenz type? My God!”

Chip said in an odd voice, “Joan, is he the one I think he is? Describe him.”

“Oh, he’s a tall, husky animal. Dark-brown hair. One of those intricate hairdos. A big, wholesome, clean-cut smile, but …” And quite suddenly her voice trailed away as she realized what Chip was thinking. She looked at Pete and saw from his expression that he had realized it too.

“Oh, no!” Pete said softly, shaking his head. “Not Sylvia. No!”

“What’s going on?” Nancy asked plaintively. “What’s happening?”

Chip stood up suddenly. “They’re still working over there in the office. Phone me there if the hospital calls.” He walked out, his expression wooden.

Nancy looked at Joan, her eyes wide and round. “Do you mean that maybe, before they left …”

Joan looked at her with compassion. “I hope not, darling. It’s nasty enough as it is. I hope it isn’t that nasty. I hope it isn’t that … horrible. Where are you going, Pete?”

He turned in the doorway. “They’ll want the description of her car and the license number, I think.”

The handwriting expert was a stooped old man with an audible wheeze in his breathing, sunken eyes and an air of inexhaustible patience. It seemed to exasperate him to have Chip upset his orderly inspection of handwriting and take one of the personnel forms out of order. Myra took out Lawrenz’ form and placed it on the desk. The old man studied it with an oblong reading glass, examining the form and the vault card alternately.

“Umm. Seems to be it. No particular attempt to disguise it. Uh … characteristic ‘a.’ Same terminal loop. A blowup would make it positive. Guess this does it.” He seemed regretful that the careful search had ended.