On the other hand,death ds-2 Read online

  On the other hand,death

  ( Donald Strachey - 2 )

  Richadr Stevenson

  Richadr Stevenson

  On the other hand,death

  1

  Trefusis was going on about a case of

  "Mandelstam" or "Handelschism," which made no sense.

  "Hang on a minute," I yelled into the mouthpiece. "I can't make out what you're saying."

  "I'll hold, of course, Mr. Strachey."

  I set the sweat-slick receiver on my desk, reached around, and whacked the top of the clanking and gurgling air conditioner with a slat from the wooden swivel chair that had collapsed back in January. The only effect was a slight shift by the machine in its rotten moorings. The 200 pound Airtemp now threatened to plummet out the window onto Central Avenue two stories below, crushing the shins of the winos who lounged in my entryway. I reached down and yanked out the plug. A distant thunk was followed by a diminishing whine, a sputtering sound, and then hot wet silence.

  "Sorry," I said into the phone again, "but I couldn't hear you over the racket my pilot was making up on the helipad. You were saying …"

  "What I've got for you," Crane Trefusis went on, holding no interest in self-deprecating humor,

  "is a case of vandalism. Now before you tune out, Mr. Strachey, I'd like you to hear my pitch, because, believe me, this is not your usual run-of-the-mill type of vandalism. It will interest you.

  I don't want to go into it over the phone, so I'd appreciate your stopping by the office, if you don't mind, where I can lay it all out for you." A little pause. "Under certain conditions our fee could go as high as ten."

  Ten. Ten hundred? No, Trefusis would call that a thousand. Or "one."

  I hedged anyway. "I've never handled a case of vandalism," I told him. "But with the scale your outfit operates on, I'd expect you to use the term to describe the firebombing of Dresden. Are you sure you wouldn't be better off using an agency with more resources than I've got? Helicopter jokes aside, Mr. Trefusis, I'm just me and a couple of friends who help me out once in a while whenever they haven't got something better to do, like reading Proust in Tagalog or sponsoring disco benefits for the Eritrean Liberation Front. You might want to shop around."

  Trefusis was unfazed by either false modesty or fact. "I'm told you're a very solid type," he said,

  "and the word that comes back to me is that you are definitely the man for this job, Mr. Strachey.

  I feel strongly that this situation is rather… well, special. And when you hear about it I'm confident you'll agree. Can you drop by around four? I can fit you in then."

  I hesitated. I'd never met Trefusis, but I'd read a lot in the Times Union about both him and his company, and I wasn't overwhelmed with warmth for either. The origins of Millpond Plaza's capital were reported to be murky and its operating methods, under Trefusis, harsh. I was curi-2 ous, though, about what made a vandalism case "special" for me, and of course there was the

  "ten." On the one hand this, on the other hand that.

  I said, "I doubt that this is a job for me, Mr. Trefusis, but I'll drive out there and you can fill me in. I'm not promising that I'll want to handle it, though. Just so you understand that."

  "That's a fair enough arrangement, Mr. Strachey. I'll look forward to seeing you at four."

  Arrangement? What arrangement?

  I phoned Timmy at his office and said, "It's hot."

  "Say, look, I've got important business to transact for the people of the State of New York. If you want to report heat, call the weather bureau. Is this a crank call?"

  "I'm cranky and this is a call, so describe it however you want. Anyway, this is a semi-official crank call. What do you know about Crane Trefusis? Anything good?"

  "No."

  "Bad, then."

  "When the Millpond company wants to build a shopping mall, it gets built. Cows, chickens, ducks, geese, grass, people-they'd all better scurry. Millpond is slick, fast, fat, and vicious.

  Crane Trefusis is their point man. He makes it happen. Something's holding him up on the new project Millpond's planning for west Albany, but I'd guess not for long."

  "I've read all that in the papers. Any problems with the law?"

  "Probably, but not with the people who enforce the law. Millpond makes friends, one way or another, in the places where friends count. Why are you asking me these easy questions?"

  "Trefusis has a job for me, he says. A case of vandalism."

  "To solve it or initiate it?"

  "I'll find out in a couple of hours when I meet him. I doubt whether we'll find a way to do business, so it shouldn't take long. See you at the apartment around six?"

  "Sure. Or six-thirty. Oh-seven, better make it seven. Yeah, seven or so."

  What was this? "Or how about eight? Or nine? Or eleven-thirty-five? Aren't you going to the center to meet

  Fenton McWhirter? The reception's at seven. What's up?"

  "Guess who's in Albany that I'm having a drink with?"

  "Happy Rockefeller." "Uhn-uhn."

  "Averell Harriman?"

  "Not even close." I could tell he was grinning. "It's Boyd. Boyd's in town."

  So. "Oh-ho! Boyd-boy. The return of the native."

  "Yep."

  "He just called you up and said let's have a drink? Just like that? No intermediaries making preliminary inquiries to find out if you carried a pistol?"

  "Ten years is a long time, Don. Wounds heal. He said he was a little worried that I might hang up on him. But he took a chance, and he was right. I felt nothing. It might as well have been my Uncle Fergus calling."

  "Yeah, well, my regards to Aunt Nell. And to Boyd-boy, even though I've never had the pleasure.

  So I'll see you later-where? Up the avenue?"

  "No, no, I'll meet you at the center for the McWhirter thing. I mean, for chrissakes, Don, we're just having a drink. "

  He said drink as if I had moronically failed to understand that the word really stood for bran muffin. I said, "I'm just giving you a hard time because my brain is melting like frogurt in this heat. In fact, I wish you and Boyd a moderately happy reunion. See you later, lover."

  "Moderately happy sounds about right, with the emphasis on the first part. See you at the center.

  Watch your step with Crane Trefusis, unless you're planning on getting heavily into S and M."

  "No chance. You can take the boy out of the presbytery, but you can't take the Presbyterian out of the boy. You'd know about that."

  He laughed and hung up.

  So. Boyd-boy was back. So? So nothing. Maybe. On the one hand this, on the other hand that.

  Droplets of sweat dribbled off my chin onto the copy of Memoirs of Hadrian I'd been reading since midmorning. I stripped off my sodden T-shirt, used it to wipe up the lunch-hour sub bun crumbs from my desk, and flung the reeking shmateh into the wastebasket.

  I checked my watch. Still time for two or three more chapters of Hadrian before I stopped by the apartment for a quick shower and drove out to Trefusis's office. I opened the book and looked at a page, which contained a picture of Boyd-or, more precisely, a picture of what I imagined the famously azure-eyed diving coach looked like. I re-focused and he was gone. I laughed, restrainedly, then reached down and jammed the balky air conditioner's plug back into the wall socket. Something popped. A plume of smoke erupted, and the lights went out from Ontario Street to Northern Boulevard.

  I drove home. end user

  2

  At four o'clock, Albany still lay blistering under a savage August sun, but the headquarters of Millpond Plaza Associates remained untouched by mere climate. From the outside, the five-story cube of black glass on outer Western Avenue was as a
ustere and inward-looking as the company's two dozen or so suburban shopping malls. Past the revolving door I half expected to find crowds of young matrons toting G. Fox shopping bags and glassy-eyed kids in game arcades, but the airport-departure-gate-functional lobby was deserted except for a uniformed security guard hunched uncomfortably on a high stool. Bouncy music came out of holes in the ceiling, with no consumers to dance to it.

  The temperature in the building couldn't have been above sixty and there was a faint odor of synthetic carpeting and cleaning fluids, as in the loan office at a branch bank or the cabin of a DC-10. Coming in from the steaming heat in chinos and a light cotton sport shirt, I wanted to wrap myself in a blanket. Getting on the elevator, I sneezed.

  On the more expensively done up and equally well refrigerated fifth floor Crane Trefusis's secretary was seated in a funnel of brightness behind a kidney-shaped slab of white marble. The sleek blonde was groomed as elegantly as a transvestite I knew who once worked briefly behind the LeVonne Beauty Products counter at Macy's, and she wore a big amber bow around her neck, like a TV anchor-woman.

  She flashed a rictus of corporate welcome. "Hi, I'm Marlene Compton. May we help you?"

  I didn't know whether the "we" was corporate, imperial, or referred to the small television camera mounted halfway up the polished black granite wall and aimed at me. "Donald Strachey to see Crane Trefusis. He phoned." I sneezed again.

  The woman mentioned amiably that her sister-in-law was bothered by the August pollen too, then conversed briefly on an intercom.

  "Mr. Trefusis will be able to see you right away," she said smiling, as if I'd petitioned for this audience, then ushered me past an unmarked white metal door.

  Trefusis's office was a long rectangle of rusts and buff with track lighting and Star Trek furniture upholstered in orange velvet. The sunlight was molasses-colored pouring through the tinted floor-to-ceiling windows; and Trefusis,

  moving around from behind his desk with a kind of pained jauntiness, like an athletic man with a bad back, or chronic hemorrhoids, sported deep brown aviator shades. I was afraid he might stumble over something, but he seemed to know his way around the office.

  "Good to meet you, Mr. Strachey," he said with a restrained but not uncordial smile. "Your reputation precedes you." His cool hand gave mine a tight squeeze.

  "Thank you. Yours too."

  He removed the shades and gave me a drolly appraising look. "Sit down and we'll get to know one another," he said, moving back behind the desk. "I'm really quite grateful for your taking the trouble to drive out here. I picked up the impression during our phone conversation that you're somewhat reluctant to work for Millpond- that we are not one of your favorite capitalistic enterprises. Or am I reading something into your manner and tone that wasn't there?"

  He was unexpectedly un-ogreish and benign-looking, short and compact in a well-cut chocolate brown silk suit and pale orange tie, with thinning red hair streaked with gray, and sun-bleached eyebrows. His bright china blue eyes were the only objects of their color in the room, which might have meant nothing, or could as easily have been some goofy device with a vaguely manipulative purpose he'd picked up in Robert J. Ringer. I decided that if I ever again visited Trefusis's office I'd bring along six old ladies with aqua anklets and blue hair, just for fun, to see if it affected his powers.

  I said, "No, I'm not sure I do want to take on this job for you, Mr. Trefusis-whatever it is. But you asked me to hear you out, and it's no trouble for me to do that much. What's the problem?"

  An amiably sly look. "I'm guessing that it was partly your curiosity that brought you out here, Mr. Strachey, am I right? Plus, of course, the large fee I mentioned must also have tempted you enormously," he added, the creep. "But I'm curious too. I'm told you've done work in recent years for other large Albany corporations. Naturally I've gone into that. You evidently are not anti-business to the point of turning away a fat fee when one is offered. I'm sure you could not do that constantly and survive. So, tell me. What exactly is it about Millpond-about me-that makes you so unenthusiastic? I'd really like to know. Be candid."

  I'd been in his office for two minutes and the man almost, but not quite, had me feeling sorry for him. I said, "I've been reading in the papers about the way Millpond keeps pushing people around and ripping up the countryside in order to build the kind of shopping malls we've already got enough of. That's really about all there is to it, Mr. Trefusis. See my problem? I'm one of those ecofreaks. If I worked for you, it'd be a sort of conflict of interest."

  Having heard all this before, he laughed lightly, knowingly. "Well, maybe one day we can have a drink and I can convince you that, on balance, our way of doing business ultimately benefits everyone, ecologically minded Americans

  like yourself included. Ever been to the GUM department store in Moscow, Mr. Strachey? It's a memorably depressing experience. A Soviet citizen once visited our mall in East Greenbush and told me confidentially he thought he had died and gone to heaven. I was impressed by that too."

  "You miss the point. It's not retail outlets run by the Bureau of Mines I advocate, Mr. Trefusis.

  It's a sense of proportion."

  "That's a nice catchy phrase. How about a 'Sense of Proportion Liberation Front'? You should put it on a bumper sticker." He waited for me to chuckle along with him.

  I said, "You're planning a five-department-store mall in one of the few unspoiled areas left in west Albany, when we've already got Stuyvesant, Latham Circle, Colonie, Mohawk, Pyramid's mammoth going up in Guilder-land, and dozens of other smaller shopping centers all over the 5 place. Who needs another one?"

  "The hundreds of thousands of people who will shop there need it, Mr. Strachey. They need it and they want it."

  "Has there been a referendum? I hadn't heard."

  He grinned. "They'll vote when the mall opens, my friend. With their K-cars and Toyotas."

  I couldn't argue with that, and I hated his being right. And the smaller shopping centers that would turn into plywood-covered eyesores surrounded by twelve acres of littered tarmac when Millpond opened its new mall were of no importance to anyone except the several hundred people who worked in them or lived around them. The throngs en route to Millpond's consumers'

  Utopia could carefully avert their eyes.

  I said, "On the phone you mentioned a case of vandalism. I guess that's a subject you'd know something about."

  The anomalous blue eyes hardened for just an instant, but he caught himself-We Do What Works. "I think you'll find, Mr. Strachey, that in this instance Millpond is on the side of the angels. Your angels," he added brightly. Then, like a TV anchorperson shifting abruptly from a story on the White House Easter egg hunt to a subway station decapitation, Trefusis looked suddenly, and a little phonily, grave. He said, "Now I'm going to show you something that will make you angry, Mr. Strachey." He shoved a file folder across his Maserati of a desk. "Open it," he said darkly.

  I opened it. Trefusis watched me while I leafed through a series of eight-by-ten color photographs. They showed, from various angles, a large well-kept white Victorian farmhouse.

  The place was surrounded by flowers and flowering shrubs and trees, and was abutted by a smaller white carriage house on which three slogans had been crudely spray-painted in large red letters. One said, DIKES GET OUT; another, LEZIES SUCKS; the third, LEAVE OR DIE! Additionally, a row of pink, white, and deep red hollyhocks along the side of the building had been slashed and mangled.

  I closed the folder and slid it back toward him. I said, "Whose house?"

  "The owner's name is Dorothy Fisher. Her friend's name is Edith Stout. The house is on Moon Road, off Central Avenue, in west Albany."

  Now it was starting to come clear. "I met Dorothy Fisher once," I said. "But I didn't know where she lived."

  "It's a vicious act," Trefusis said, shaking his head in disgust. "I hate this kind of intolerance."

  "Right. Intolerance is no good. When did this happen?"

/>   "Last night, late."

  "You called it a case of vandalism. It's more than that. There's a death threat involved. 'Leave or die!'"

  "I don't take that entirely seriously," he said, looking thoughtful. "My guess is, someone's just trying to frighten the… ladies. Wouldn't you say?"

  "Could be. And you want me to find out who. Is that it?"

  He nodded. "Yes. I do. I'll pay you five now and the other five after an arrest has been made. I'm sure your customary fee is a good deal less than that, but I want to be certain that this business is taken care of quickly, and I also want to demonstrate just how important the matter is to me."

  Crane Trefusis, humanitarian. I said, "I guess you know that I know why this is so important to you, Mr. Trefusis."

  A little snort of laughter. "No, I hadn't really supposed, Mr. Strachey, that you were just back from a month at the seashore." He looked mildly insulted. "No, I had no illusions about that. No, 6 indeed."

  I'd read about it in the Times Union. Millpond had received the necessary environmental and zoning approvals for its proposed west Albany mall and had put together its land package-with one critical exception. There was a lone holdout among the landowners. A Mrs. Dorothy Fisher, whose eight acres were smack in the center of the site, was refusing to sell. She loved her old family home, she said, and planned on living in it until she died. Mrs. Fisher was sixty-eight years old but came from a hearty strain and expected to be around for another twenty or twenty-five years. Millpond had offered her three times the market value of the property, then four times, then five. But money was not the point, Mrs. Fisher insisted. No deal. Millpond was reported to be deeply frustrated and becoming desperate as its delaying costs accelerated.

  "So you want to earn Mrs. Fisher's goodwill," I said. "Smite the vicious homophobes and loosen the old dyke up a little so that she'll be more inclined to look favorably on your next offer."

  He nodded, poker-faced.

  "And by hiring a gay detective to do the job, you further encourage Mrs. Fisher and her friends to concede that Millpond is in the vanguard of enlightened social thought, and to wonder how could she possibly continue to be so stubborn and unreasonable. Why should she refuse to do business with such a nice right-thinking guy like you?"