Уильям Макгиверн: Summitt

“No, and I don’t want to press him.”

“That’s considerate. It was a sad business, prowlers or drunken fool kids. Maybe he wants to put it behind him.”

The sergeant’s profile was rigidly outlined against the dusk, the jutting nose and high, bronzed cheekbones shadowed in dying light, again the stillness in his expression.

“I spoke to you about my grandfather, Mr. Selby,” he said, his voice soft in the rising winds. “I don’t think of him much, I try not to, you want the truth, the way he sat making the spittoon ring with tobacco juice, and hate spilling out of him like red ants pouring from a cracked log. I’m better for not thinking of him, Mr. Selby. Better putting it behind me. That’s what Jarrell’s done, I think, and maybe that would be best for all of us, to put the past behind us and forget about it. I’ll see you, Mr. Selby.”

Surrounded by the visual hush of twilight, Selby watched the sergeant striding off along the gravel path, his figure merging with the shadows.

Glowing lights began to wink on in the homes of Summitt City, yellow rectangles appearing in orderly unison against the settling darkness.

At Summitt’s headquarters building, Sergeant Ledge inserted an identi-disc in the console slot of a limited access elevator.

Like certain other areas in Summitt — the film lab, the master greenhouses and specific hospital wards — the central Harlequin headquarters were restricted to classified security grades.

When the elevator reached the third floor, Ledge placed his card in an unlocking slot and kept his fingertips on the metallic edge to provide the computer with an identity-reading of his skin chemicals. A tracking hum sounded as he turned his profile to the scanning machines. With the ID check completed, the elevator doors opened and Ledge was allowed to enter a communications center lined with banks of electronic machines and walls of TV monitors.

Snapping on a row of sets, Ledge tracked Harry Selby along a graveled walk through the dusk toward his brother’s house. On other monitors, he picked up Jarrell Selby as he answered the door and the blond girl entering the living room with a tray of drinks.

Ledge listened to their casual conversation, Jennifer’s laughter, the clink of ice in raised glasses. He heard Harry Selby say, “Jarrell, is there something about the old man’s death you haven’t told me about, or don’t want to?”

“Didn’t Breck give you all the details?”

“Hey, quel dismal! This is supposed to be a party.” It was the blond girl. “Harry, how’s your drink?”

“It’s fine, Jennifer,” he said, but went on. “I was out walking and met your neighbor, Hank Ledge. He shut up when I mentioned it. Breck’s letter didn’t really tell me a damn thing. Wasn’t there a police investigation? Didn’t they check to see if the old man had been involved in a local feud or hassle?”

“There wasn’t anything like that,” Jarrell told him.

“What about somebody with a grudge? A business deal that went sour, did he have any enemies around there?”

“He never mentioned anything like that to me.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course, Harry...” Sergeant Ledge watched Jarrell shrug uncertainly. “I’d have known if he was in trouble... I can’t think of anything.”

“Well, it strikes me as odd his death seems to have an off-limits sign on it.”

“If I could think of any reason for the whole thing I’d be the first to tell you, Harry...”

Jennifer turned up the music. A high jazz saxophone muted the rest of what Selby was saying. She linked her arm through his. “Let’s have our drinks on the terrace,” she said. “Come on, Jarrell. The lake is lovely now.”

The door opened and Clem Stoltzer entered the communications room. Ledge snapped off the TV monitors. “We got ourselves a problem, Clem. That sonofabitch Harry Selby is just like his old man. I soldiered with Jonas in Korea, remember. A rockhead. Same goddamn bulldog streak, hit him with a club and he comes back for more.”

Stoltzer said, “This Harry Selby’s no rockhead, Sergeant. I watched him when we toured the plant and grounds. He doesn’t just look, he sees .”

Ledge rubbed his jaw with the calloused web formed between this thumb and forefinger. “What’d Jarrell tell you about the girl?”

“That she’s just a casual friend.”

“Where’d they meet? How come she arrived without notice?”

“Some party, I guess. I’m not sure.” Stoltzer shrugged. “I don’t think Jarrell is, either. She drove over from Memphis yesterday morning. He wants her here, he’s entitled to a normal sex life, what could I say?”

“I don’t like any of it,” Ledge said. “It’s Thursday and the green light’s on. They can’t scrub it now.”

“Can’t or won’t. It’s the same thing,” Stoltzer said.

Ledge stared at the dark monitors, frowning. “We can’t make any decisions on this. Not yet. I’ll try to get in touch with the major. Mr. Thomson should know. And, Clem, you call General Taggart direct, put him in the picture.”

Returning to his office on the first floor, Sergeant Ledge placed a call to George Thomson’s private number at his home in Wahasset, Pennsylvania, an estate that lay just across the state line from Harlequin’s offices in Wilmington, Delaware.

The call was answered by Thomson’s son, Earl, whom Ledge knew from the summers the young man had worked in the film lab at Summitt. An athlete, Ledge recalled, handsome but reserved, kept pretty much to himself...

Earl Thomson explained that his father was still in Europe, Belgium, he believed, but would be back in the States that weekend for a business golf tournament in New Jersey.

“We got a problem down here at Summitt, Earl,” Ledge told him, “and I need your father’s advice. Will he be checking in by tomorrow? This is urgent.”

“That’s a flip of the coin, sir.” Earl’s voice was smooth and assured. “Father sets his own schedules, of course. Sometimes he calls to let me know his plans, sometimes he contacts Mr. Lorso. Is there any way I can help, Sergeant?”

“If you can give him my message by tomorrow, yes,” Ledge said. “Tell your father Harry Selby came down here from Muhlenburg. He’s asking the wrong questions. He’ll understand that. Advise him we need Selby out of here before the operation. He’ll understand that too. Anything to get him off our backs before Saturday. You got that now?”

“Yes. A Mr. Harry Selby. Are you suggesting a ruse de guerre, a feint to divert the enemy away from the attack?”

Ledge remembered then that Earl had attended a military college in the east, never regular army, and had a habit of using this rookie bullshit, even with the major.

“Look, Earl,” he said, “just give your dad my message, okay? He’ll know what to do?”

“Aren’t you suggesting, Sergeant, that you’d like some pressure to get this Mr. Selby out of Summitt City?”

“That’s up to your father.”

“Then if I can’t reach him, this conversation is irrelevant, I’d say. Wouldn’t you prefer me to make it operational?”

“Just see that he gets my message, Earl. I don’t have the authority to suggest anything else.”

Replacing the phone on his father’s desk, Earl Thomson stared through the terrace windows at the lawn shining smoothly in the last cool sunlight. He sat in his father’s leather chair and stretched his long legs under the desk, putting his head back and listening to the sounds in the busy house. By concentrating, he could track and imagine the activities, maids chatting in the distant kitchen, Santos’s footsteps padding above him in his mother’s suite. Time for her shoulder rub, her tea tray and the evening news. In the kennel run the Dobermans were barking.