Бретт Холлидей - Count Backwards to Zero

“You make him sound pretty helpless.”

“He can’t even tie his own bootlaces. He got on the wrong train one day last year and ended up in Scotland.”

“Are you planning to live here with him?”

“In Georgia? Thank you very much. I’ve read Erskine Caldwell and Tennessee Williams. No, he said he wouldn’t set foot out of England unless somebody went with him for a bit so he wouldn’t have to look at all those strange faces. Mum wouldn’t. I don’t say she won’t come over if it works out, but she doesn’t think he’ll have the job long because of all the drinking. So I was elected. I’ll settle him in, get somebody to char for him, and then I’ll kiss him goodbye and get on the bus. I’ll make a little tour of the United States while I’m here. Las Vegas. Hollywood.”

She waved at the smoke. “But where is he? What if he started right off—”

“The Highway Patrol is looking for his car. He was in bad shape when I saw him. How long has he been drinking like this?”

“Oh, it sneaked up on him. He and our Mum — the less said about that the better. He reads his scientific journals or goes to the pub and she watches the telly or goes to the pub.”

“He says you’ve been riding him about his job.”

“He said that?” she asked indignantly. “Dad told you that? It’s been Stan, mainly, my brother. Not that I don’t agree with a lot of it. Dad went into science because he wanted to, quote, penetrate the mysteries of matter, unquote, and what did it amount to, after all? Looking for gruesome ways to murder people. Stan’s a wild Maoist, much wilder than me. I’ve tried to save Dad from the worst of it, and frankly I’ve told Stan to shut up more times than once. I’m going to try to make it up to him. Maybe he’ll meet somebody over here, some brainy bird who likes to talk about neutrons and protons and electrons. Aren’t there more females in America than males? I read that somewhere. Of course he’s a little — funny-looking?”

She corrected herself. “Which is not for me to say. People that age are always getting married again, and it could happen, couldn’t it?”

“Do you know somebody named Pierre Dessau?”

“I should guess I do!” She jerked around. “Is he here? Does he have anything to do with this?”

“According to the story your father told me. Can you imagine any circumstances in which your father would agree to smuggle something into the United States?”

The cigarette flew out of her fingers. She retrieved it from the floor and stubbed it out in the dashboard ashtray.

“I knew that lunatic was mixed up in something. Sure, it’s a possibility. It’s also possible he swam the Atlantic towing the Queen Elizabeth. You must have something to go on or you wouldn’t say that, but why would he? We’ve always been pretty stony, but this American company is paying him a fortune, isn’t it? All I know is what he told me.” She added. “Unless it’s political?”

“How do you mean?”

“Oh — pamphlets. Guns and ammunition. I don’t know. The way Stan kept nackering at him got under his skin, finally, and he went slightly bonkers. He’s been going to marches and demonstrations and joining committees. He put his name on every manifesto that came in the mail — sign one of those things and you get on all the lists. I thought it was a leg-pull at first, to get a bit of his own back with Stan. Because it’s ridiculous! He’s too old for it. He’d show up for a picketing or a deputation three sheets to the wind. Everybody was delighted to start with — top-drawer government scientist and all — but he overstayed. It did him good, in my opinion. He’d never read a word of Marx or Lenin — he hardly looked at the newspaper — and it opened his eyes to what’s going on in the world.”

“Does Dessau have radical connections?”

“Pierre, my God, no. I’m sure he votes Conservative if he votes, and I doubt if he takes the trouble. Now can I ask a question? How did you and Dad — I mean, how did you get together?”

“He hired me to get him into the country without being arrested or shot. I don’t have time to tell you about it. I’m expecting a phone call, and when it comes in I’ll have to move. It won’t be from your father — he doesn’t know I use a car phone. If he calls the number in the book he can leave a message on the recorder. I think it’s possible that he forgot you were supposed to meet him — he’s had other things on his mind. When the phone rings, I want you to get out and wait for another fifteen or twenty minutes. Then if he hasn’t showed up, take a cab to the Flamingo Springs Motel. It’s a couple of miles north on Biscayne. I want to know where I can reach you. Tell the desk Michael Shayne sent you, and I’ll be calling. Stay in your room. Read the Bible or try to find something on television.”

“That’s not my idea of a grand evening. But if you say so.”

“The Flamingo Springs, on Biscayne. Now tell me what you know about Dessau.”

“Well, not all that much, really — one of those doughy blokes who trip over their own shoes all the time. A real pain in the arse, forgive the expression. A tongue like a clapper, always going. You have people over here like that, too, I’m sure.”

“What’s he do for a living?”

“Nothing strenuous, I know that. He knows what a prison looks like from the inside, I shouldn’t wonder. He’s always talking about business arrangements with this one or that one, but my feeling is that it’s about ninety percent air.”

“How’d you meet him?”

“He helped Dad home a few times when he had a drop too many. He arranged for the Bentley. It was supposed to be such a wonderful buy, but when you consider all the work Dad put in on it—”

“Did Dessau give the impression there was money coming in?”

“He gave the impression. But he lives in this awful hole with no inside plumbing and no springs on the bed, just a mattress on a piece of plywood. Ghastly.” She picked another cigarette out of the pack between them. “He’s definitely kinky, that one. I had one date with him. That was more than enough. He put on a pair of cloth gloves and bashed me a good one. Just like that. Then he had the gall to ask me to have sex with him — disgusting. I got out of there so fast. I lost a tooth out of it and I had a gorgeous eye for a few days.”

“I heard another version of that from your father.”

The phone rang. She jumped again, her hands flying, and lost another cigarette.

“That’s loud. All right — the Flamingo Springs. But don’t forget me. I’ll be dying out there. When I think of my poor old Dad on the loose in a strange town—”

She sniffed sharply twice, and got out of the car.

Gentry’s voice said, “I just got a call from the Patrol. No Oldsmobile answering that description at the Holiday Inn in North Miami, and there’s no Daniel Slattery registered at the motel.”

Shayne swore. He told Gentry to hold on, brought in his operator and asked her to put through a call to Tim Rourke’s Chevrolet.

“No answer, Mike,” she reported.

Shayne’s grip on the phone tightened. For a moment he said nothing, thinking.

“Try again every few minutes. Now let me have Gentry.”

When the police chief was on the line: “That makes one more car we’re looking for, Tim Rourke’s Chevy. He’s been following the Olds. Something screwy is going on, Will. I planted a homing device in the Olds, and we’d better get a helicopter up right away. It’s standard lifeboat gear, a beep every thirty seconds. The Coast Guard choppers can pick it up.”

Gentry groaned. “They’ll want an explanation. I don’t want to give them any.”