Gascoyne Page 5

  Suddenly and without a sound all four solid brick walls are rent with tiny cracks that grow into fissures and crevasses. The walls buckle and begin to drop to the ground in huge chunks and all of a sudden the second floor collapses onto the first with a breathtaking and very dusty whomp and instantly the first floor crashes flat to the ground and lastly the whole shooting match drops into the very deep basement. Not one piece of house stands more than six inches above ground level. Only the thin cable up to the tip of the crane.

  The crowd bursts into wild cheers and throngs around the crane operator who gives a sweating hand minus three fingers to his admirers and judging from the shouting and gestures he’s turning down offers to wreck houses all over the neighborhood. He’s a pretty damn good operator, there’s no denying that, but it’s also pretty damn clear he was smart enough to take a gander at the floor plan of the house beforehand and spot that furnace and central heating network which gave out the ultrasonic sounds that made the walls fall down in such a tidy way.

  In a minute an excavating shovel rumbles over the lawn and starts scooping up the debris and dropping it into a dump truck and when they fill it up another one takes its place, and as I take down the license numbers of them all I find out that there are seven dump trucks. They take the rubble to a place forty-five minutes away, round trip, I calculate.

  When they get the basement as clean as they can with the shovel, a crew of twenty workmen goes down and carries the rest out in wheelbarrows while another crew goes around outside and picks up the stuff that’s fallen off the house. All this takes a couple of hours, and I can’t figure out why they brought the bulldozer since they never use it.

  I’m getting damn hungry in the tree house and am glad to see everybody go at last so I can get down. Also the joint’s not very spacious and I’m feeling more than a little cramped besides the pain from not sitting on something padded. I turn to climb out and notice a small rusty Pet Milk can in the corner and I reach over to see what’s in it when all of a sudden there’s a sharp and loud crack and the tree house shudders and flips over on its back or roof and plummets to the ground twenty feet below, all of me inside. We hit the ground with an awful racket and the tree house folds up and blows apart under the weight of the very heavy branch which narrowly misses squashing me. I pull myself out of the wreckage with a few curses for the little bastards who built the thing and look around for the Pet Milk can and find it driven into the ground under the branch. I pull it out and stick my fingers inside and take them right back out again when I feel something move. A peek inside reveals a very large and deadly black widow spider which I force out with a stick and then blend into the landscape with a twist of my heel. Back inside the can I find a layer of unidentifiable goo, brownish and bad-smelling, and by stirring my index finger around in it I contact an object a little smoother than you’d expect the bottom of an old tin can to be. Inserting another finger I’m able to retrieve the object which is a shiny gold disk with a small hole punched in it near the edge and the number 95400329 etched in funny large old numbers. The other side is blank.

  I conclude that this is what they were looking for in the house. Worth anywhere from a hundred and fifty grand to a million—or more. But how? That’s the question to think about.

  I stick the gold disk in my pocket and head toward the street and am crossing the lawn when Nancy drives up in her Lancia. She gets out and fumbles for something in her purse and then looks up at where the house used to be and turns around as if to make sure she’s at the right address and then at me. Suddenly she rushes up to where the front door used to be and screams, “Where’s my house?” Then she turns to me and adds, “All right GASCOYNE where’s my house? What did you do with my house?”

  “I didn’t do anything with your house. Dmitri tore it down and carted it away.”

  “The bastard. What did he do a silly thing like that for?” she asks.

  “He was searching for something he wanted very badly.”

  “What?” she demands with her cool blue eyes.

  “Beats me.” I shrug.

  “Well is he going to bring it back?”

  “The house?”

  “Yes.”

  “I doubt it. Was it insured for theft?”

  “Hell no,” she says.

  “Tsk, tsk.”

  “Shut up GASCOYNE.”

  She hitches up her skirt and sits down on the front stoop exposing a good part of her lower thigh.

  “What a silly thing to do,” she says. “Never did trust that Dmitri. Just wait till I see him. What do you suppose he was looking for?”

  “Do you know if Roughah ever hid anything in the house?”

  “He’d never have told me.”

  “Think Nancy.”

  “I’m trying.”

  “Think hard. It’s very important.”

  I’m trying for God’s sake GASCOYNE.”

  “You must remember something, some little thing.”

  “Well,” she says, “it seems to me now there was something.”

  “Try and remember.”

  “Yes, yes, of course,” she cries, “I remember now!”

  “What?”

  “I remember!”

  “Good! What?”

  “Yes! Of course!” she says almost shouting.

  “Tell me!”

  “One day about three years ago,” she says, “Roughah came to me here at the house and said, ‘Go, I must be alone a couple of hours.’ ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Because I have something to do in that time. None of your business what.’ Then he beat me and I left for a couple of hours. I have no idea what he did in that time.”

  “Is that all?” I ask.

  “No. About two weeks ago I happened to remember this and mentioned it to Dmitri.”

  “And?”

  “Dmitri asked me all sorts of questions.”

  “And?”

  “I didn’t understand what he was driving at until a little later and then I concluded that Roughah had hidden something here in those couple of hours.”

  “Which Dmitri also guessed,” I add.

  “Precisely,” she says.

  “And so he’s torn down the house and carted it away.”

  “The bastard.”

  “Well I’ve got to be going Nancy, see you later,” I say.

  “What should I do GASCOYNE?” she asks.

  “Wait awhile. Be patient. Things will work out.”

  I squeeze in the car and start her up and make a U-turn to head back the way I came. Then I dial Chester.

  “Chester take this number down, memorize it and burn the paper.”

  I give him the number minus one subtracted from the last digit and also the license numbers I’ve collected in the last couple of hours.

  “What’s the first number you gave me boss?” he asks.

  “That’s what I want you to find out Chester. It may be worth one hell of a lot to somebody, maybe us.”

  “I’ll start work on it right away.”

  “Good. What have you heard?” I ask.

  “First, Gifford tailed O’Mallollolly up to an address on Rantananta Road in Betsy Hills where he mingled with a crowd to watch a house being demolished. He’s now driving down the Arthur F. Stravinsky Thruway. Second, Johnny tailed Dmitri to the same address where he started demolishing the house before the rest of the crew got there.”

  “Where’s he now?”

  “Out in an industrial suburb called Volts where they’ve dumped the rubble in an old aircraft factory. He paid over nineteen thousand bucks to UNIVERSAL DESTRUCTION DEMOLISHERS to have the house torn down and carried there.”

  “How’d you find that out?” I ask.

  “Oh I thought you knew.”

  “What?”

  “We bought out UNIVERSAL DESTRUCTION DEMOLISHERS three weeks ago because they’ve got the freeway clearing contract with Mark.”

  “Damn that’s right, bad memory I’m getting. What else’s up?”

  “Ros
coe followed Nancy to the beach where she still is, sunbathing.”

  “What? Hell she is! I was talking to her two minutes ago. When Roscoe calls next Chester, ring me and switch the call over. I’ll fix him.”

  “Roger boss. Now Nadine Roughah’s still at the estate, which takes care of everybody. About this tax man Robinson, it’s sure now boss that he’s teaming up with the state bank auditors to go through the WESTBINDER BRANCH BANK with a fine-tooth comb and I think we ought to do something about it.”

  “Hmm,” I say. “See what sort of robbery-fire angle you can cook up, Chester.”

  “Will do boss.”

  I hang up and the phone rings right back and it’s Marge.

  “Hello dear,” I say, “how are things?”

  “Awful,” she says.

  “Oh? Where are you?”

  “At the gas station at the summit of Crankcase Grade.”

  “What are you doing there?” I ask.

  “Well this new car Ralph brought up blew a head basket or gasket or something like that.”

  “Oh no.”

  “Oh it’s nothing serious. The nice man at the garage told me it would be ready in about seven hours. Oh it’s nothing serious. Only seven hours. Just a little wait. What’s seven—”

  “Calm down Marge, you should be able to borrow a book from someone or something. Don’t they have a TV set?”

  “No,” she says, “I think they don’t even have a radio. The telephone’s ancient, you know the kind with things on wires you press to various parts of your body.”

  “Well is there a café around?” I ask.

  “No just a bar with four red stools in it. That’s where I am now, just having a few drinks for the road. So’s the nice cowpoke on the next stool. What’s seven hours?”

  “Now Marge calm down. Why don’t you take a nice walk through the woods and get a little exercise and fresh air, the sort of thing you can’t do very well in town?” I say.

  “Dear there aren’t any woods here. It’s ten thousand feet up in the air. The trees are all dead. That’s what happens when you try to exercise up here. You die.”

  “Calm down Marge calm down.”

  “What do you think I’m having a drink for, to calm down.”

  “Well you sound a little better already. Call back when you get—”

  “Dear I forgot to tell you,” she says suddenly.

  “What?”

  “I’m still being followed.”

  “Who by?” I ask.

  “The same car.”

  “Well don’t worry dear, he probably just wants to see where you’re going.”

  “Gimme another beer.”

  “What Marge?” I ask.

  “I was just asking this nice boy behind the bar for another beer.”

  “Well all right Marge don’t drink too much and call me when you get bored.”

  I hang up and the phone rings right back, busy day.

  “Mr. GASCOYNE?”

  It’s Roscoe.

  “What time is it Roscoe?”

  “Beg your pardon sir?”

  “I said, what time is it?”

  “About twenty after four, I’d say sir.”

  “Good. You’re fired now Roscoe but I’ll pay you up to four-thirty. This will give you a little time to plan your trip. Try looking for work up north. I just don’t think you’ll find a damn thing down here.”

  I head down Nuvappian Boulevard taking my time and thinking about the little gold disk with the number on it and wondering what the number means. Some sort of key to some door, but good only if you know what door it fits. Dmitri, I’m thinking, obviously knows more about the gold disk than some people since he went to the trouble to tear down the house, and so the sensible thing to do is go pay a visit to Dmitri.

  I turn left at the SOUR GRAPES COCKTAIL LOUNGE and wheel onto the Urban Circle Uptown Turnpike Tollroad on-ramp and get her up to sixty-five by the time I hit the right lane, and all’s clear so I whip over to the fast lane and crank it up to eighty-five. A state trooper suddenly sweeps out of nowhere and tails me for awhile all hot and bothered until he catches the license number and backs off.

  I look at myself in the rearview mirror and notice I could use a shave so I pull the Schick out of the glove compartment and plug it into the cigarette-lighter socket and shave away, pulling down the sunvisor for the mirror behind it which is a little better for some angles. Mostly though I use my own reflection in the windshield since that way I can see where I’m going. And now as a matter of fact the Tollroad tollgates are coming up damn fast, twenty of them with little signals above each gate, and so I quickly shut off the razor and ring up the central phone and say, “It’s me GASCOYNE and I’m coming through number one.”

  “Roger, GASCOYNE,” what’s-his-name says.

  The signal light above gate one goes green and I turn the razor back on and have a go at my chin as I shoot through the gate at a little less than eighty, then resume speed. Traffic’s beginning to get thick at this hour but mostly in the four slow lanes, though from time to time I have to pass some idiot on the right because he thinks he’s the only one in this world going over the speed limit. I’ve got an air horn in the Nash that can be heard ten miles away on a clear windless night but I’ve got to be careful when I use it because people just sort of shrivel up and die when they hear it and there’s no telling what they’ll do, some slam on their brakes right there and others run right off the road and some try to open the door and jump out, no telling what.

  The Mirindaranda off-ramp pops up and I head for that and give a quick call to Chester.

  “Chester do you have any idea where Dmitri and O’Mallollolly are now?”

  “Dmitri seems to be on his way back to the Roughah place but we’ve lost track of O’Mallollolly.”

  “What? How?”

  “I was talking to Gifford a minute ago on the phone and he was about to tell me where he was and something happened and he was cut off.”

  “Hmm. Wasn’t his phone went on the fritz, was it?”

  “No, don’t think so. He said ‘Hey!’ in a funny way just before we were cut off.”

  “Well keep the switchboard open for him, that’s all we can do now. Say’s the copter been fixed yet?”

  “Not yet, tomorrow they say,” he says.

  “Let’s hope.”

  I hang up and speed up a little to forty-three to get well set in the Mirindaranda Road signal sequence, more important now because traffic’s really messy and I have to change lanes about every two seconds just because of the ridiculous number of crazy fools on the road who don’t know a fast lane from a slow one and who are so damn anxious to get ahead they’d try to slip in the space between bumper and fender if there were only just a little more room, what a mess. Well if I have to stop for three signals on Mirindaranda Road in a day, then it’s really a bad day and I can see it coming up with the next signal, and wham I’m right. I stop but behind a row of imported windup cars and when the signal turns green I’m thinking I would be doing them a real service to give the little red Fiat in front of me for example a real push to get the thing on the move. BLAH! you’re dead, I’m strongly tempted to go with my big air horn since there’s no way to get around the insect, and there are times like this when I think they really do power these things with rabbits and rubber bands and aerosol bombs, they go so damn slow.

  So slow in fact that we hit the next signal red and the cars are bumper to bumper and nobody can wiggle out of this one, and so when the light turns green and the little red Fiat inches away from the signal like a constipated snail I think I might as well put it out of its misery. I inch up right behind it as close as I can get, and I can see some secretary is trying to drive the thing, and then I just lean gently on the air horn, BLAAOUUK!, and I can see her go stiff and I don’t know what she does but I think she must be slamming her feet down on the clutch and gas pedal at the same time because she slows up some and there’s a tremendous roar up front and white
smoke and then black shoots out of her exhaust and then the roar gets like somebody shaking a can full of marbles and it all ends in a loud crackling—booming and smoke pouring out every end of that little Fiat. The secretary’s still hanging on to the steering wheel like she’s been glued there and the car’s slowly drifting into the lane right so I slip past her on the left side and as I drive by I can see her with her mouth wide open and her eyes rather glassy, her head shaking a little.

  I get out of that mess in the nick of time because I can see out the rearview cars piling up right and left and hot damn if I don’t make the next signal, enough to make me feel good for the next ten miles.

  Pretty soon I get to the Mirindaranda split and go straight and then turn right into the last alley before the Roughah digs, where I park and climb out. I round the corner on foot and come out across from the Roughah garage, doors open and the Rolls and Cad and Avanti still there as usual. I cross the street and go around to the side and climb the wooden stairs to Dmitri’s apartment above the garage. A good swift kick springs the door and I step inside and close it behind me. I take a rough survey of the place and think it too well kept for a bachelor. What’s more, the toothbrush in the bathroom’s never been used and there isn’t any toothpaste. Dmitri really lives somewhere else but tries to give the impression he lives here. Why? And where’s his other place?

  Suddenly I have an uncanny feeling which I mistake for that feeling that at last things are fitting together. Well I’m wrong, because I hear a rustling sound behind me and just as I turn around I get it clang right on the head. Then everything goes blackish.

  I begin to come to with this sort of nightmare thing where I’m a pedestrian on roller skates trying to cross a twenty- or thirty-lane freeway jammed with cars and the DON’T WALK light blinking on and off, but all that stops when somebody pours water over my head and starts talking.