A Child's Garden of Death (18 page)

“Nothing confidential about Houston. I've known him for years. I grew up in this plant. What do you want to know?”

“What kind of man is he?”

“Hell on wheels,” Graves said. “Works hard, plays hard. In the old days he could drink any man in the plant under the table. Mean as a Goddamn snake when drunk, but always able to put in a sixteen-hour day.”

“He told me about the drinking problem.”

“No secret, but that's ancient history. Asa hasn't had a drink in fifteen years. Gave it up one day and that was that. Wouldn't be surprised if his wife wasn't the one who was instrumental in that.”

“She's a lovely woman,” Lyon said.

“Cool as they come and smarter than most. They met here, you know.”

“No, I didn't know.”

“Yep, Helen was the first woman engineer we ever hired. I was against it in those days. Hell, I never knew they had women engineers then, but she was good. Maybe that's why Asa decided to give her special treatment and then fell for her.”

Graves carefully rolled up a large sheaf of blueprints and tucked them under his arm. “Anything else, Wentworth? I think I've found the answer to an engineering bug over at the automated plant that's been bothering me for days.” He reverently ran his fingers along the edges of the prints.

“No, thank you very much.”

Lyon started down the hallway toward Houston's office and on impulse stepped into the adjoining board room. It was as he recalled. There was a door from the board room directly into Houston's private office.

The door closed silently behind him, and he moved quickly through the room. Floor-length windows, shuttered by heavy drapes, ran along two walls. The remaining walls, paneled in heavy oak were lined with built-in bookshelves, a bar, and doors to the board-room secretaries' office, and a third door to a private bath and sauna.

At the apex of the room, near the window corner, sat a massive desk with three side chairs. Away from the desk and arranged in a comfortable semi-circle were divans and easy chairs separated by a glass-topped coffee table. It was a tasteful and masculine room; silver-plated parts manufactured by the company were set at odd angles on sculpture stanchions and gave the appearance of modernistic art. The room was an extension of power, decorated in a calculated manner to exhibit success, with the furnishings staged so that the desk's occupant would dominate the setting.

There were only a few items on the broad desk top: a gold pen and an appointment calendar at the front, with a copy of the company's financial statement placed next to a legal pad. A row of buttons, inlaid in the desk top, were easily accessible to whoever occupied the chair.

He picked up the annotated appointment calendar. His own name was down for 4
P.M.,
a Roger Hackman at 4:45. Lyon flipped through the pages containing appointments for the next two weeks, and then replaced the calendar in its proper place.

He pressed one of the inlaid buttons and the drapes behind him began to open. Pressing the button's counterpart, the drapes shut on noiseless runners. The second button in line caused a quiet click from the office doors, and he realized that they had automatically locked. He unlocked the doors by depressing the next button.

In actuality the room revealed little about its occupant. That it had been consciously designed and staged was obvious. It would be here that Houston would deal with his company officers, bankers and investors. The books in the shelves were bound in uniform expensive leather and appeared unread. The objects and the artifacts were impersonal.

He knew little about this man and earlier in the day had gone to the library to read old newspaper files. Last year, after a particularly large gift to the orchestra, the paper had run a Sunday feature article on Asa Houston. Asa Houston: wealthy industrialist and philanthropist. Born to a poor family, he was a self-educated and self-made man of the old school. Starting as an apprentice tool and diemaker, he had started the Houston Company in 1940 on three thousand dollars of borrowed capital. The war, government loans for expansion, and a shrewd talent for negotiating cost-plus contracts had made him a wealthy man.

Lyon sat behind the desk and slowly opened the center drawer. The drawer's contents were as neat as the remainder of the room. A few file folders with typed headings, a slide rule, sharpened pencils. Resting on a clean white cloth was a 38-caliber Smith and Wesson revolver.

“Do you like my toys, Mr. Wentworth?”

Asa Houston stood by the door with a half-smile curling one side of his face. The door slammed behind him as he strode toward Lyon and took the revolver from the drawer.

“This is a gun, Mr. Wentworth. This gun is not for plinking; it is not for shooting snakes. It is kept for the specific purpose for which it was designed … to shoot people.”

Lyon stood up, his face flushed, and mumbled, “Sorry.”

“You should be. There are unpleasant names for what you have been doing. Now, will you sit down or would you prefer my desk?”

Lyon came out from behind the desk and sat in a side chair. Houston replaced the revolver in the drawer, seated himself at the desk and looked expectantly at Lyon. “You should have stayed behind the desk, Mr. Wentworth. The man behind the desk has a decided advantage.”

“I didn't come for advantage.”

“Perhaps you came to thank me for the small honorarium the company sent you … or wasn't it enough for your services?”

Their eyes met. “Exactly why are you here?” Houston continued.

“I've just returned from Florida. As I explained on the phone, I was able to develop some information that might be of interest to you.”

“Yes?”

How do you start? Lyon thought. How do you tell a man you think he killed three people? Houston leaned forward, not tense, not nervous …

“Yes, Mr. Wentworth?”

Lyon told him about the Florida trip, the breakfast on the boat with Jonathan Coop, and Coop's admission regarding the passing of inferior parts. Houston listened without comment, making no inquiries, asking for no additional details. His eyes and posture revealed nothing to Lyon. When Lyon finished there was a pause between them.

“I take it,” Houston said, “that you're here to accuse me of bribing a government official.”

“And more.”

“That I had a motive for killing the Meyerson family?”

“Yes.” Lyon handed Coop's affidavit across the desk. Houston read it and looked up.

“This paper isn't notarized or witnessed,” he said. “It's a worthless document.”

“It's in his handwriting. I can witness.”

“I'm afraid that's not quite adequate.” Asa Houston slowly tore the affidavit into neat squares and dropped them into the waste basket. Both men watched them flutter into the container.

“That's only a copy,” Lyon said.

“Of course. My gesture was symbolic. What do you want, Wentworth? Like Coop—money? Not that it really matters.”

“I want to know about the Meyersons.”

“You conveniently shot Bull Martin. That should be satisfaction enough for you.”

“Bull didn't kill them, at least all of them. I'm sure of that.”

“You seem to operate on some sort of mystical process of elimination. In other words, if Bull didn't kill them, I did?”

“You had a motive.”

“You have absolutely nothing. There isn't a particle of evidence in anything you say or hint.”

“There's always something somewhere, Mr. Houston. Even thirty years after, there's something that can fill in the details, and I will find it. I have a few leads, and I promise you I will find it.”

Houston regarded him reflectively. “You might at that. You've done very well so far.”

“If that shipment of parts in 1943 had been rejected by the Army, you would have gone under. I am sure we can reconstruct that.”

“You might. I'm not sure how long certain records are retained by banks, or by the government. Knowing the government, I'm sure they have purchase requisitions going back to the Revolutionary War. That part is true, Wentworth. Houston Company in 1943 was on shaky ground. Everything we had or could beg, borrow or steal had gone into expansion and purchase of material. The rejection of that shipment would have toppled the house of cards. Yes, I did pay off Coop. Yes, I did bribe a government official. I'll deny that, out of this room and forever, I'll deny that. And I might point out that the statute of limitations has run out.”

“So I've been told.”

“In those days our quality control was primitive. It was a bad batch and Meyerson knew it.”

“And you killed him.”

“I intended to reach him in other ways. He was a stubborn little guy, but I would have found a way. There's always a way.”

“I don't think he would have taken your money.”

“Oh, no. I tried that first. No, he was quite stubborn about that, had this thing about the Nazis, a just war and all that sort of thing. But I had found a way. He had relatives in a concentration camp. I was working out a method to obtain their release and smuggle them to Switzerland.”

“Is that possible?”

“Anything is possible with enough money. I would have taken care of Meyerson in my own manner.”

“What about his family?”

“I had nothing to do with that.”

“Someone did,” Lyon said.

Asa Houston got up from the desk and crossed the room to where the silver parts stood. He ran a hand along the edge of one of the finely machined pieces. “Yes, someone did,” he said.

“The information on the pay-off is enough to ruin you,” Lyon said.

“My word carries a bit of weight in this community, in the whole state in fact. My record is excellent, a career without blemish. We don't manufacture poor parts anymore. We're quite good. I don't make the same mistake twice. In 1943 I had to. It was a question of simple survival.”

“For you. Not the others.”

“Would you believe me if I said I didn't kill them?”

“No.”

“Because there's no statute of limitations on murder?”

“Partially.”

“Nevertheless, I would prefer that none of this … this unpleasantness were publicized. I can make life awfully difficult for you, Mr. Wentworth.”

“I am sure you can.”

“Much more than you can possibly dream. Shall we start with your wife's political career? Hardly difficult to stop that. The refusal by the State Committee to endorse her, the refusal of her own district to renominate her, the extensive backing of a counter candidate.”

“I know you can do that.”

“And your publishers. How will they take to having a children's author who's arrested for indecent exposure?”

“I will tie you directly into this.”

“I prefer to handle it my own way.”

“Three people are dead.…”

“I said drop it!”

“No.”

“Then I will neutralize you, Wentworth. Do you understand that?” Asa Houston returned to the desk. “Let me spell it out. Even if I didn't kill them, even if I can't be prosecuted for pay-offs made thirty years ago, I have no intention of having the slightest smear against the Houston name. I've spent too many years building a reputation in this state to have you destroy it. I made millions and I gave millions and no old ghosts are going to take that from me.”

Lyon leaned over the desk, fingers clenched on the smooth surface. The musculature of his arms and legs seemed to have dissolved as an all-pervasive weakness surrounded him, the immediate forerunner of large doses of adrenalin coursing through his body.

“What about the little girl?” Lyon yelled.

“The hell with the little girl,” Houston said impatiently.

Lyon's fist glanced off the other man's cheekbone. His clawing hands reached across the desk and grasped the lapels of Houston's coat. The immediate leverage pulled Houston halfway across the desk before he regained his balance and backed away.

Houston's hands reached for the buttons, and Lyon dimly heard the sound of an alarm, and then Houston's fist smashed into his nose and he fell back. They were in the center of the room grappling as the guards rushed through the door.

The secretary stood with hands at her face ready to scream as the two security guards grabbed Lyon and pulled him away from Asa Houston.

“Get that Goddamn idiot out of here,” Houston screamed. “Get him out and keep him out!”

“You want the police, Mr. Houston?” the guard asked as he pinned Lyon's arms.

“No. Just throw him out!”

“Come on, duck butter,” the large guard said as they dragged Lyon from the office.

In the hallway, out of sight of the secretaries, they pushed Lyon against the wall. A billy-club dug into his stomach and a knee into his groin, and then he felt another crack against his nose. He heard them dimly as they dragged him to the parking lot.

“Come on, sweetheart, let's go bye-bye.”

Lyon lay, his head against the steering wheel, miles from the Houston factory. Blood dripped from his nose and formed a small pool on his pants leg and then ran in a small rivulet down to the car mat.

He held his handkerchief against the nose and blinked his eyes to clear the tearing. He climbed slowly from the car and began to walk up the hill.

Nine

He sat on top of the hill with his back propped against his daughter's tombstone and thought about what sort of person he was becoming.

The cemetery was in Middleburg, only a few miles from the house. Perhaps because of the difficult struggle for life in the early days, the first settlers had picked a large hill in the center of town, truly the choicest location, as the site for their burial ground. It must have been a yearning on their parts, an expression of faith that the hereafter would be preferable to the mortal coil, and therefore deserved the most scenic area in the town limits. His daughter was buried here for that reason, and also because Wentworths had been buried here for 150 years.