Gascoyne Read online

  But I still haven’t got any idea of where I am. I thought I knew the Roughah grounds pretty damn well since last year I went over them when Roughah got into a financial bind and sold me an option on the whole place. I guess I missed this part and think that there’s going to have to be a lot of clearing and filling in if that time ever comes.

  I keep on wading for awhile and all of a sudden the bottom drops out and in I go over the head, mouth full of algae and dead leaves. I grab ahold of a bush trunk and pull myself to the surface. This is a fine fix because the bush trunks are too close together to swim, not to mention the vines, and the water’s too deep to walk in. But at least now I’m fairly certain I’m not going in a circle. The only thing to do is pull myself along with my arms and bush trunks which I do, but very slowly. This turns out to be kind of painful since for some reason half the bush trunks are covered with a sticky saplike substance and the other half with a hard rough bark. Perhaps the bushes are divided into males and females, but in any case the going is rough and sticky and the skin of my hands is getting very irritated and threatening to come off, not to speak of the dangers of infection. Still I keep on in what I hope is a straight line.

  After awhile the vine growth starts to thicken in a discouraging way, first high up in the bushes and then progressively lower toward the water, finally leaving a clear space above the water of only six inches. This means I’m up to my neck in water because it’s out of the question pulling vines out of the way as long as I have to support my body with my hands on the sticky and rough bush trunks. However, horizontal visibility in that six-inch space above the water is greatly increased and I estimate I can see about twenty feet ahead. This is reassuring except that suddenly I can see something moving in the water ahead. What it is I can’t see well enough, but whatever it is starts thrashing around and making unfortunately large waves which make further progress impossible. In order to avoid the creature, which is about seven feet long with a wet and matted furry back. I change my course slightly to the right but am forced to stop because the waves are getting too damn high. There is in fact nothing I can do but thrust my head up into the thick network of vines, which turns out to be right into what you might call a lizard run. At least land must be near. This lizard run is a sort of tunnel through the vine network reinforced at the bottom for heavier lizards by dead leaves and lizard shit, and the traffic’s quite heavy. For some reason the lizards don’t seem to mind my head sticking through the bottom of their road, some of them just go over me and others around.

  After awhile the furry-backed creature stops bouncing up and down in the water and I’m able to go on ahead. The vines begin to thin out some and suddenly my feet touch land under water and pretty soon I’m treading on completely dry land, able to dry out some. About now I begin to fear again that perhaps I have gone in a circle because the bushes and vines are exactly like they were on the other side of the water. But I keep on going and suddenly run into a stone wall with a stairway cut into it and so I climb up it and am greatly relieved to find myself at the rear of Roughah’s mansion, near the kitchen with nobody looking out any windows at me.

  The best place to observe the house is from the tennis shed which is at the tip of the prong of the woods, because from there you can see the whole sweep of the driveway up the hill and the side of the house that’s got Roughah’s second-story study and most of the downstairs living room through two plate-glass windows. I’ve got a key to a little room in the tennis shed that’s got a window out on all this view and I slip into there without being observed, I hope. But of course I run around the place quite a lot anyway so chances are somebody who sees me won’t really stop to think about it.

  I sit down in a chair in front of the window mainly to rest a little from all that exercise which I’m not used to and before I can bat both eyes O’Mallollolly comes charging out the side entrance chewing on the stub of one of his Hong Kong Havanas. Something’s shook him up because the red veins of his face are more bulging and prominent than usual and he’s giving shifty looks to both sides. He stops and tries to wipe something off his left hand with a monogrammed handkerchief. He looks at his watch and then back at the house. Finally he tears off into the woods I suppose down the path I got separated from.

  But before I can chew this around at all, Nadine Roughah, Rufus’s wife, steps out the front door in a slinky black evening gown, diamonds dripping everywhere, all told weighing around a pound I’d say. She looks around nervously behind her and up at Roughah’s study and then at her watch and down the driveway. Suddenly Roughah’s fire-engine-red Rolls whips around the gate and up the gravel driveway which makes a white S-curve against the grass, and it comes to a very disrespectful stop in front of Nadine. The chauffeur Dmitri jumps out and they passionately embrace with Dmitri sticking his hand down the back of her gown, damn low-cut there to begin with. Finally she gets in the back and they drive away.

  I figure the show is over for today and am about to get up when all of a sudden Roughah’s latest, a blond large-eyed number by the name of Nancy, comes running around from the rear of the house with not even a banana peel on. All I can say it’s a bad day for somebody. She’s running like the grass’s tickling her bare feet but that’s about the only sign of emotion I can read on her bouncing face. She goes in the front door and crosses the living room and that’s all I see of her.

  I figure now the show’ll be complete if Roughah himself puts in an appearance, but I spend a long time just sitting and wishing the chair had a cushion on it and I’m about to pull out of there when all at once the window to Roughah’s study upstairs swings open and a coil of rope with knots tied in it every yard is thrown out. Something’s on fire, I’m thinking, but then a furry leg with big sharp claws is slowly stuck out, followed by another just like it and the furry rear of some creature about the size of a man, a little fatter. By the time the whole thing gets itself hooked onto the rope and starts to descend, which gives me a good view of its greenish fur and pointed head, I come to the conclusion the thing’s a giant tree sloth, or rather a man dressed up as a giant tree sloth because it’s smoking a filter tip cigarette. Why is one question I’d sure like to know, and what it was doing up in Roughah’s study is another.

  Down it comes to the ground where it gets its left rear claw caught in a rosebush and so has to take off its front claws, which go on like gloves, to get its foot out of the rosebush. The foot comes free easy and then it puts its front claws back on and looks up at the rope still hanging from the window. It grabs the rope and pulls at it but of course it won’t give since it was secured well enough in the first place to have supported the fake sloth’s weight. Then the creature gives the rope a whiplike motion which has the effect of snapping a windowpane above. The sloth runs out of the way of the falling glass and walks around in circles with its hands on its hips and making a humming sound. It goes back to the rope and swings on it awhile but the rope won’t come loose, as he ought to know.

  Finally it stamps its feet on the ground and walks around to the front door and goes in across the living room and disappears. In a minute it sticks its head out of the window above and disappears again, reappearing in the living room below and coming out the front door around to the rope which it looks up at. It starts pulling at the rope again and at last the rope gives and comes piling down on top of the fake sloth, which knocks the cigarette from its lips into the matted greenish hair of its chest which instantaneously ignites in a burst of orange flames and thick black smoke.

  However the fake sloth doesn’t seem to notice the fire right away and begins to coil up the rope. Then it stands up straight with a jerk and starts beating its chest, its head twisting around wildly at the same time. I’m wondering whether I ought to run out and turn a hose on the thing when it dashes down the hill toward the swimming pool, pounding its chest madly and leaving a trail of thick black smoke behind.

  It jumps into the shallow end of the pool and sinks right to the bottom, turning the water blac
k and green. It stays down under for what seems like a couple of minutes and I start trying to remember all that artificial respiration stuff, but then it struggles to the surface and climbs out of the pool acting like it weighs a ton, which it probably does with all that water stuck inside the fake sloth suit and fur, probably none of it water-repellent. It stands at the edge of the pool draining itself with water pouring out the foot and hand joints and a long zipper joint going down its front, and after awhile it tries to shake itself dry like a wet dog but the long fur is too heavy with water and all it can do is swing slowly back and forth like an old washing machine, and even then it loses its balance and almost falls right back into the water. Then it takes off its hand-claws and puts them on the ground and with its human’s hands bunches up the fur on its body and squeezes it and wrings it out, getting rid of a good deal of water that way.

  It’s still pretty heavy when it starts back up the hill and has to stop every few steps to catch its breath. As it gets closer I can see where the fire burned through the fake sloth skin, and underneath the man is wearing a white T-shirt with HARVARD written on it in crimson. It takes about fifteen minutes to get back to the house, where it coils up the rope and slings it over its shoulder. Finally it limps slowly out the way O’Mallollolly went.

  I sit there a long time trying to make out the meaning of all this and thoroughly expecting to see some more action, but nothing happens and the place is as quiet as a tomb so I slip out of the shed and walk over to the side of the house to see if the tree sloth dropped anything. All I find is the charred remains of a cigarette butt with enough lettering on it to make it identifiable as a Marlboro, not much but I keep it as a clue or for evidence, as the case may dictate.

  The coast seems clear so I head down the direction O’Mallollolly and the animal went, down the lawn a ways to a break in the woods made by a path I always thought went only to the aviaries. I slip through as quiet as I can, gun ready, and pass the aviaries with three thousand birds screaming their heads off and then go on into the woods. I get to the clearing without incident but get a little scare when from a distance I see O’Mallollolly’s limousine is still there. However as I get closer I can see nobody’s there for one and for another Maxie the chauffeur must have knocked his pipe into the pool of gasoline because there’s nothing left of that Cadillac but a black and brown rusty burnt-out hulk. I get close and look around a little—another car’s been here to judge from the tracks, and I suppose Maxie called for help on the radio-telephone after I left.

  I follow the tracks into the woods and after awhile come out onto Mangoldia Street about a hundred yards down from the bulldozers and my Nash. I cross the road and walk into the fruit grove and then walk through that so as not to be so readily seen, and am I glad to get back to the car and sit down again on something soft. I start her up and shove it in low and wheel around over the dirt and bounce back onto the street in the direction of Mirindaranda Road. Then I dial Chester.

  “Hi Chester, what’s up?”

  “Just got a call from MacGanymede at Police Tower and he says that Roughah has been bumped off and that O’Mallollolly is over at the Roughah place now filling out the forms.”

  “Goddamn. I’ll call you back in awhile Chester.”

  “Right boss.”

  I slam the accelerator to the floor and bring it up to sixty, about the fastest I can let the old Nash go on Mangoldia. Well, so Roughah’s dead, no great loss as everybody will agree, but what I want to know is what’s O’Mallollolly doing so big in the picture? Roughah was bound to get it sooner or later because he didn’t know the fine art of stepping on people’s toes hard without them feeling a thing until it’s too late to complain, but I also thought he was smart enough not to tangle with O’Mallollolly. I don’t give a damn if O’Mallollolly did it, but I sure do want to know why I’ve been kept in the dark for so goddamn long. Also I’ve got to watch that this sort of thing doesn’t go to O’Mallollolly’s head.

  Mangoldia twists up toward the front of the Roughah digs and I shoot up the front past the garage, and what do you know if the red Rolls isn’t back in the garage, and then turn in the main gate with quite a lot of gravel flying around. I barrel up the half-mile drive and pull the Nash into the parking slot next to another black police limousine, which must be the one O’Mallollolly has come in.

  I rev the engine up and shut off the ignition at the peak to keep the detonations down because the temperature needle is pretty far right, and slip out of the car and walk in the front door of the Roughah palace into the enormous living room. O’Mallollolly’s down at the far end standing beside the laid-out body which is mostly covered by a large sealskin rug, and Lt. Pestings and Maxie are pocketing souvenirs from the hermaphrodite collection on the mantel over the fireplace. I walk down to the body scene for a closer look and except for his hands and feet Roughah’s all covered up and you can see the body’s been moved some because there’s a bat-shaped bloodstain on the purple rug about two feet from his head. O’Mallollolly’s working on a crossword puzzle cut out from yesterday evening’s Herald.

  “Well?” I ask.

  “Suicide,” he says. “Simple as that.”

  “Why?”

  He looks at the sealskin rug a moment and chews at his cigar and says, “I just want things simple at the moment, GASCOYNE. Any objections?”

  “Yeah,” I say, “I just might want to know who did it.”

  “Don’t. As they say, it doesn’t really matter because it was either you or me.” He laughs himself at that one.

  “So you’re going to put it out that Rufus Roughah, prominent citizen and big crook, just couldn’t take it anymore and pulled the trigger?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Not going to sell many papers, that one.”

  “Not my worry,” he says. “Hey Pestings, take this thing away and shove it in the trunk of the car.”

  Lt. Pestings and Maxie come over and bunch up the sealskin around the body and haul it out.

  “Okay O’Mallollolly, what are you up to?”

  “Nothing, it’s simple,” he says with a smile I can’t quite believe in. “Roughah’s dead, nobody liked Roughah, so let’s not hurt anybody’s feelings with a lot of personal questions.”

  “That simple, huh?”

  “Sure.”

  We head toward the door and find Roughah’s butler Grant standing in the portico with O’Mallollolly’s fedora and gold-headed cane. O’Mallollolly leans over to me and says in a loud whisper just as Grant swings the door open, “Psst, maybe the butler did it.”

  Grant goes suddenly stiff and his eyes grow wide and then he just keels over.

  “No,” O’Mallollolly says looking down at the body, “suicide’s a lot easier for everyone concerned. Except for the autopsy, that pretty well closes the case, doesn’t it?”

  Without answering that one I bend down and feel Grant’s pulse. I guess he hasn’t got any, dead of a heart attack, strange indeed.

  Maxie’s got the police limousine out on the drive and O’Mallollolly climbs in the back and as they drive off I notice they couldn’t get all of Roughah in the trunk because one foot’s hanging out and the trunk lid’s held down with a piece of yellow twine.

  I climb in the Nash and try to figure out what the hell O’Mallollolly’s trying to pull. Roughah out of the way’s going to make things a lot easier for him, but not so much easier that it was worth bumping him himself which rather looks the case at the moment because of all those people in the house before the murder, Police Commissioner O’Mallollolly’s the prime suspect, if there’s really a big fat motive floating around somewhere. But whatever the reasons, I should have been consulted. O’Mallollolly’s playing games, and I don’t exactly like it.

  I start the engine up and point the Nash down the drive and dial Chester.

  “What’s up boss?”

  “It’s murder all right but O’Mallollolly likes the way suicide sounds. I think something stinks, Chester.”

/>   “I’ll say.”

  “Well I’m going to wait a bit and see if O’Mallollolly comes up with any other bright ideas.”

  “Right boss. Say, I called Mark and you’re in for two thirds on the real estate deal, just in the nick of time.”

  “How’s that?” I ask.

  “He’s getting the land today, surveying starts tomorrow, construction in three or four days.”

  “And does he know when the freeway’s coming through?”

  “Two months the state’ll start buying the right-of-way and Mark’s even got the demolition contract all set up in advance so nobody’ll ever know what kind of crap the houses are made of.”

  “Good,” I say.

  “And boss, Jennings walked right into the bridal suite of the THUNDERBOLT MOTEL without suspecting a thing. We’ve got beautiful pictures and boy is she a dish.”

  “Good, and Mrs.?”

  “I think maybe she’s got bitten before.”

  “Well keep at it Chester. And are you still working on the soybean oil?”

  “I’m afraid we’re going to have to dump it in the sea, not much choice.”

  “That’s all right, you know I’m willing to take a loss there.”

  “Yeah boss. Say, Marty called a few minutes ago and wants to know if you could use seven out-of-state Lincoln Continentals that are on the way into town now.”