The Demolishers (25 page)

“Mr. Helm?”

I looked up to see the headwaiter. At the moment he wasn’t looking at me but at Sandra, checking up; clearly he’d been told to look for a gent escorting a young lady with a damaged scalp.

“Yes?” I said.

He turned his attention on me. “You’re Mr. Helm?

There’s a phone call for you. You can take it at the desk.”

“Thanks.” I went over there and accepted the phone the cashier offered me. “Helm.”

A voice I didn’t recognize gave me a code word I did. Then it said, “Call Control. Repeat, call Control.” “Check.” I gave the phone back to the cashier, thanked her, and returned to the table. I put down some money, not knowing whether or not Elliot had taken care of the tip. “We’re on our way,” I said.

“Trouble?” Sandra asked, rising.

“Probably. I’ve got to find a pay phone. Let’s go see what the man has to say.”

Ten minutes later I was standing in a comer of the lobby of a motel just outside town listening to Trask’s voice giving me the latest news: There had been a violent explosion in a small house in Old Saybrook, Connecticut. Listening, I had a view of the motel parking lot through a nearby window, but I couldn’t see the shady comer where the Porsche was parked.

“I suppose it’s the house I think it is.”

“That’s right.”

“Damage?”

“Total. Fire helped. The police are trying to determine whether or not the dead bodies found in the debris are those of the owners of record, a certain Matthew Helm, Junior, and his wife Cassandra. Washington says we’d better straighten them out before they put out too much wrong publicity.”

“How many dead bodies?” I asked.

“At present they’ve only got enough pieces to tell it wasn’t dogs or cats and that there were more than one of them since few people come with two left hands. It was quite a blast. A long Ford van, black or navy, with the dark windows you can see out of but not into, has been hanging around; the neighbors had seen it several times and thought about calling the police. It was parked half a block away before the explosion; it wasn’t there afterwards. A witness thinks it had an out-of-state license plate, but she’s uncertain how far out of state. In other words, all we know is it wasn’t Connecticut, and I wouldn’t be too sure about that. You know how witnesses are.”

I said, “We drove by that house yesterday.”

“Yes, I read the report of the agent covering you.”

“We didn’t go inside. Officially, if the cops ask, we didn’t go in because it was getting late and we had about sixty miles left to go to Newport to pick up our hotel reservation. Unofficially, just between us, we stayed clear because we’d just headed over there on the spur of the moment, without giving you a chance to have the place checked out. Maybe we were smart; maybe the house was already boobytrapped at that time. Or maybe, seeing that we’d only had a quick look at the outside, the CLL figured Sandra was bound to have us go back for a thorough inspection tour, later. After all, it was her honeymoon cottage, more or less; and she’d been away for weeks. So they sent somebody to leave her a belated wedding present, but he got careless with it and blew himself up, along with a friend. Or she did; it could have been Angelita Johansen again. That blonde gets around. That’s one possibility. Another is that, regardless of when the whiz-bang was put there for us, presumably by the CLL, it was set off by unauthorized visitors of some kind, maybe just unlucky burglars. After all, a house left standing empty that long, these lawless days, is asking for a break-in. A van would be just what they’d be driving to carry away the televisions and microwave ovens.”

Trask said, “Well, it’ll take the authorities a while to put the human jigsaw puzzles together and make the identifications, assuming that they can find enough pieces. Meanwhile, Washington feels that, since she’s in the area, Mrs. Helm should make an appearance, terribly distressed by the destruction of her home, of course, giving you a chance to find out more about it. ’’

“Check,” I said. “In the meantime, keep an eye on our Newport hotel room; we don’t want that to go up in smoke and flames when we get back tonight and open the door.”

When I returned to the Porsche, Sandra had the windows open and her seat reclined; she seemed to be asleep, but her purse was on her lap. She reached for it when she heard me come up, slipping her hand inside. In spite of the nonviolent attitude she tried to maintain, the kid displayed a nice sense of self-preservation, unlike the movie heroines who never dream of reaching for a weapon even when they’re being chased around a haunted house by a slobbering maniac with a cleaver in his hand and murder on his mind.

“Oh, it’s you,” she said, closing the purse and raising the back of her seat. “This business of hush-hush phone calls is making me jumpy. . . . What’s the matter?” *

I hesitated, not knowing how much the Old Saybrook house had meant to her. Then I told her. She was silent for a long time. At last she gave me a crooked little smile.

“Well, that’s one way of getting out of a housecleaning,” she said. “I suppose I do have to look at it. What’s left of it. Let’s go.”

Pretty soon we were off the Rhode Island islands and back on the Rhode Island mainland. We picked up good old 1-95, the highway that had brought us clear up from Florida. It took us back into Connecticut, where we drove past Mystic where they keep the tall ships and New London where they keep the submarines. Connecticut has a weird law: You can’t pass on the right on a four-lane highway. Any slow jerk who feels like holding up all traffic in one direction can just amble down the left lane, legally blocking that half of the highway; and lots of them do. Approaching the Connecticut River with Old Saybrook, on the far bank, almost in sight, we ran into a traffic jam: The bridge was under repair. We were pretty well hardened to highway-construction zones by this time, but this was a prize specimen and held us up for twenty minutes.

As we picked up speed again west of the river, Sandra looked up abruptly and said, “Oh, you should have taken that exit!”

I said, “I know but—don’t look around—we have a big black van with dark windows about four cars back. ” She glanced at me sharply. “The one you told me about? The one they told you about?”

I shrugged. “The world is full of black vans, but let’s check him out. I guess all roads to the left here just go south a few miles to Long Island Sound. We need more room. You’ve lived here, think hard. Give me a nice little twisty road to the right without too many towns and houses on it. Preferably one you remember pretty well so you can call the turns.”

“Twisty little secondary roads are what Connecticut does best.” She thought for a moment. “Three exits up the line ... no, two, now. There’s a stretch of little suburbia near the turnpike, but then you get into some fairly empty woods for a while. . . . There, up ahead.” “I see it. Don’t worry about the guy behind unless I tell you; I’ve got him in the mirrors. Just watch the road ahead, and try to remember what’s coming next, and keep me posted.”

“Take it easy going down the ramp; there’s a stop sign at the bottom. It’s a blind intersection and they come through fast.”

“Check. Here we go.”

I did it by the book, using the turn signal and slowing down cautiously in the deceleration lane before heading down the ramp to a complete halt at the stop sign. The driver of the van, following, had no choice but to pull up behind us. I kept an eye on the mirrors, but no windows rolled down back there and no weapons appeared. The dark glass gave the vehicle a blind look, as if there really wasn’t anybody inside, as if it were just a piece of malevolent machinery tracking us of its own evil volition. I used my turn signal again like a good boy, waited for a pickup truck with local plates to pass, and headed north along the two-lane asphalt road behind it. The van followed.

I said, “Looks as if he’s our man. He’s coming right along with us.”

“How did he pick us up?”

“He must have figured we’d be called to the scene once the house went bang. There’s only the one bridge we’d be likely to use across the Connecticut River, coming from Newport; the next one’s way upstream. All he had to do was wait somewhere along the approaches for a flashy little sports car to come zipping by.”

“Watch out for kids and dogs along here. . . . Okay, now you can goose it a bit if you like.”

It was a scrubby little hardwood forest with a few houses spotted along the road here and there. The asphalt seemed to have been laid right on the original wagon track winding through the trees. I took the speed up a little. The van followed suit. The pickup ahead turned off into a narrow lane, leaving the road to us.

I said, watching the mirrors, “Brace yourself for the old movie routine. You know, the one where the car behind goes bang into the car ahead. . . . Here he comes, hang on now.”

I watched the square black front of the van coming up fast in the mirrors. Double clutching out of old habit, I

dropped down a gear and waited until his heavy bumper was almost into us before I hit the accelerator. The Porsche squatted under the surge of power, the tires chirped, and we jumped clear with a few inches to spare. I made it look jerky and panicky, with a lot of fishtailing. I eased off as soon as possible as if those high speeds—I guess we hit all of sixty at one point—frightened me terribly on that narrow road.

Sandra asked calmly, “Who do you think it is, Matt?” I shrugged. “I’d say somebody who doesn’t like us.” “Funny!”

The guy behind, whoever he was, started gaining once more, really pushing the heavy van after us. It was angry driving and it was bad driving; he was abusing the tires, brakes, and drivetrain unnecessarily. In the bends he had the big truck heeling over like a sailboat in a high wind. I knew that in his mind he was seeing the way it always worked on TV: the car astern charging repeatedly into the bumper of the car ahead until the victim up there lost control and went flying off the road, bursting into flame in midair. Just what’s going to set a car on fire before it even hits the ground, I’ve never figured out, but they do it all the time on the screen. Why the helpless victim never puts his foot to the firewall and gets the hell out of there, or at least gives his pursuer as good a race as he can, is another riddle I’ve never solved. Those movie heroes always just sit there, passive and despairing, waiting for the next big bump behind.

“What’s coming up?” I asked, watching him gaining in the mirrors, letting him gain. “Cue me in.”

“Wiggly stuff like this for another mile or so, then a sharp left turn at the lake. . . . Well, it’s just another swampy pond, they’ve got dozens of them around here, but I remember this one because there are usually a couple of swans on it.”

“I don’t think we’re going to have time for much birdwatching today. . . . Oops, here he comes again!”

We went through the routine a second time. I was kind of slow in the head, it appeared, it wasn’t until the last moment that I discovered, surprise, surprise, that the nasty man was still trying to hit us. Desperately, I crashed some gears and pumped the gas pedal and got out from under, swerving all over the road in my panic. Then the gradual deceleration again as I retreated from those fearful speeds. . . .

‘‘How far to the lake?”

‘‘I can see the curve sign now.”

‘‘Hold tight. I’m going to try to dump him up there. . . . Come on, baby!” I whispered, watching the van grow larger in the mirrors once more. ‘‘Come to Papa, that’s a good boy!”

‘‘I can see the lake through the trees. It’s a
very
sharp curve, Matt.”

‘‘Let’s hope your car is as good as you say.” I spoke to the image in the mirrors: ‘‘Come on, come
on,
what are you waiting for back there? Don’t chicken out now!” He came in straight and true, like a young Canada goose to a good caller with a convincing spread of decoys. I crossed my fingers, mentally; if we met traffic on the road at the wrong moment, it could get awkward. I could now see the gleam of water through the trees ahead. The curve-warning sign flashed past.

"Now
you look back!” I said. “I’m going to be too busy to keep an eye on him. Call it out: Tell me how close he is and how fast he’s gaining.”

She turned in her seat. “He’s coming up fast. . . . that’s better,” she said as I fed more gas to the Porsche mill. “But he’s still gaining. Three car lengths. Two. He’s getting very close, Matt. ...”

The curve was a sharp one, all right. I held my speed as long as I dared, still praying for a clear road.

"Matt!''

I was already well down in the gears. I hit the throttle hard and cut the wheel over. The rear tires broke loose and the little car swung sharply left like an opening gate, leaving the van nothing to hit, although I thought I heard or felt a slight bumper-to-bumper contact as it plunged past us. Then the road was full of Porsche, but we were lucky, nothing came the other way as I brought it back from the left-hand ditch, and got it under control beyond the curve.

I pulled
off onto the shoulder
of
the road and braked to a halt. We sat there for a minute or two catching our breaths, although I don’t know why we should have needed to. The car had done all the work.

“He went right out into the pond,” she said.

“Frightening the swans all to hell, no doubt.”