Over Her Dear Body (17 page)

He broke it off, eyes widening in surprise, but his features quickly resumed their normal appearance. After a pause of perhaps three long seconds, he said calmly, “How did you find me?”

He was the one, all right.

Chapter Fourteen

This was the tall, slim, smooth-faced man from the
Srinagar.
He wore a hip-length maroon smoking jacket, white shirt showing beneath it, open at the collar. His wavy white hair was smoothly combed, close to his head. A cigarette was held casually between his long thin fingers, smoke curling up from it, and his eyes burned into my face, almost as if smoke might start curling up from them, too.

His voice was level, though, calm, as he repeated, “How did you find me?”

“It took some doing.”

He puffed on the cigarette. “Pardon me, Mr. Scott. Come in. I was ... taken aback when I saw you. And that is stating the fact mildly.”

He stepped aside and I walked in past him. A wide stairway on my right led up to the next floor, curving gracefully as it ascended. Near me on a stand stood a two-foot-high carved-ivory idol that looked Asian. It was of a graceful, almost feminine male figure, four-armed, one foot raised in the movement of a dance. The ivory had yellowed now with age; it could well have been a thousand years old, or more.

As I looked at it Silverman said, “Lovely, isn't it? One of the Hindu Trinity. Shiva Nataraja, dancing in the hall of Chidambaram.”

“Well,” I said, “...uh, yeah.”

Beneath our feet was a colorful carpet, thick, rich in appearance, with an intricate design in it that appeared to be Oriental, maybe Persian. On the walls were large framed oil paintings, softly lighted. Doors were closed on our left and right. A lacy potted palm inside the door almost brushed my arm.

Silverman placed one hand easily against my elbow and said, “Let's go into the library. We can talk there. I...” He hesitated. “It may surprise you to know that I'm rather glad you came.”

“It does surprise me.”

He guided me ahead, past the foot of the stairway and along its left side to another closed door near the back of the house. He opened it, and we went in.

It wasn't a very big room but three walls were lined from floor to ceiling with books, some in shiny wrappers, others bound in buckram, silk, smooth and rough leathers, even some stuff which looked like fur. Several complete shelves were devoted to volumes which must have been quite old, probably, I guessed, rare and first editions. In one corner were two heavy chairs. Before the chairs was a small mosaic-topped chest. On its surface was a silver tray with a bottle of liquor upon it. At the opposite side of the room squatted a wide, low divan, a beige phone on a stand at one end.

We walked to the chairs and Silverman said, “Please sit down. Brandy?”

“Thank you.”

He opened a door in the side of the chest facing the chairs, took out two big brandy glasses and poured each of us a slug from the bottle. “Armagnac, Manoir St. Vivant,” he said with satisfaction.

Well, that sure meant a lot to me. But I sipped the brandy and wiggled my lips. He didn't do anything so wild as to swallow the stuff, but his nostrils quivered in ecstasy. “My favorite cognac, Mr. Scott,” he said dreamily. “This Armagnac is thirty years old.”

The stuff had been born about when I was. Somehow, that made it taste better. This Silverman puzzled me, the whole setup puzzled me. He was being as charming as he could be, and if he was nervous, or at all afraid that I could give him a bad time, he didn't show a trace of it. He really did seem almost relieved to see me.

He settled back into the deep chair, snifter cradled in his hands, swirling the liquor slowly. Then he said, “Perhaps it would be best if you started by telling me why you came here.”

“I just found out tonight who you were. I've been anxious to see you ever since we met on the
Srinagar.
”

“That is an incorrect statement, Mr. Scott. I was not on board the
Srinagar.
”

“Mr. Silverman, don't start this out by giving me any fast—”

He held up one hand, palm out, smiling slightly. “Oh, of course I was aboard her. You know it. I know it. But I wish to make it clear at the outset of this friendly discussion—I choose to think it
is
a friendly discussion—that nobody else must know it. Naturally, if you repeat to anybody else your ridiculous accusation, I shall deny it most emphatically.”

There was steel in that voice, when he wanted to shove it in. Normally it was soft, carefully tended, almost as loaded with the breath of culture as the voice of a British duke chewing caramels, but it could change. When he had said, “I choose to think it
is
a friendly discussion,” the words had rolled along a girder, almost clanging.

I said, “That's what I'd expect from a man with plenty to hide.”

“In a way, you're correct.” He smelled his Armagnac as if tempted to drink it through his nose. “What I have to hide is the fact that I was in conversation with Craig Belden on the night he was murdered. I'd never seen the man before, nor, it goes without saying, since. But a man in my...” He paused. “I really don't mean to sound stuffy, Mr. Scott, but for the sake of clarity I'll risk it. A man in my position, well known to the—the leaders in the community, cannot afford even a breath of scandal. Not even the mildest censure should be associated with my name. My friends, my associates, the opera—oh, it's simply impossible. Consequently I can't afford to let it be known that I was aboard the
Srinagar
on the night in question.”

He was fluent, charming, almost hypnotic. His words washed over me. But maybe it was eye-wash.

I said, “That night is sure in question, all right, Mr. Silverman. I hope you'll forgive me if I push this a bit, but it seems that not only your departure from the yacht is a big secret, but even the fact that you boarded the tub. I can understand your reluctance to have it known that you were on the yacht,
after
you heard of Belden's sudden death, but why would you
board
the
Srinagar
in such an apparently surreptitious fashion?”

Silverman smiled sadly, as if I were going down in the quicksand at last, my nose barely bubbling, and he was powerless to do anything about it—since he was standing on my head.

“Please, Mr. Scott. I'm sure you have no desire completely to destroy our already tenuous rapport. I did not conceal my movements, nor act in a surreptitious manner at any time. I boarded the
Srinagar
early only because I had no desire to take part in the somewhat abandoned festivities planned. Mr. Goss has for long been an acquaintance—you might say a friend—of mine, and I wished to visit with him. I did. During the evening this chap Belden and a man named Navarro came in to see Bob—Mr. Goss—about some matter of which I knew nothing and still know nothing. It was at that point that you burst so precipitately in upon us. Soon afterwards we all went our separate ways. I spent a short time with Mr. Goss and left. By that time, I realized, the guests had all departed, but that was merely a coincidence.” He inhaled a few molecules of his brandy. “The next day I learned that the chap, Belden, had been killed. Naturally I communicated immediately with Mr. Goss and explained that I couldn't afford to become involved in any manner, and it would be best if my presence aboard the
Srinagar
were forgotten by all.”

He made his rather long explanation with an air of boredom, as if explaining something very simple to a lad who couldn't really be expected to grasp it. It was just about the way I would have expected him to act if everything he said was true. And it could all be true; there was conviction in his words, and especially in his tone and relaxed manner. Even so, I didn't believe him.

And suddenly this guy seemed perhaps more dangerous than Goss—than Goss and Navarro and the rest of the men who'd given me a bad time, all rolled together. If Silverman was lying, and yet could be so pleasant, controlled, almost convincing, then he was a man who could stand on the pieces of corpses he had dismembered, happily paraphrasing Hamlet to one of the heads. “Alas, poor Scott!...”

I said, “There are still a few things that bother me.”

He nodded. “Go on.”

“Four of you were in that stateroom. Beside yourself, there were Belden, Navarro, and Goss. Belden was murdered that night. That night Navarro tried twice to beat my brains out—once immediately after you sent him with me to find a ladder. The next day, Goss tried to bribe me with five thousand dollars, to forget everything I saw on the
Srinagar.
More than once since then, mugs have tried to kill me.” I paused. “For an innocent meeting, there are an astounding number of guilty reactions arising from it.”

“That's no concern of mine. My part was—innocent. I have no control over, or concern with, the actions of others.”

His sentences had become shorter, more clipped. Now the words were sharper, as if he honed them on his teeth and sliced them at my throat. The steel was showing again, in his tone—and at last in his face. Just a little in his face, but more than enough to make him look like a different man. It was the face of a man who would wear down everyone else around a bargaining table, who would deliver the message to Garcia, who would climb the hangman's rope and get in one last kick at the executioner.

He went on, his voice slowly becoming even sharper as he continued. “These will be my final words on this subject. As for Navarro, I don't have all the facts. But I have been led to understand that he bore a grudge against you because of some female in whom he is interested. That is between you and him, I presume—but it is utterly devoid of interest to me. As for Belden, I have indicated already that I never saw him before or since. Certainly Mr. Goss offered you money—he knew I wished no inquiry concerning me, and assumed on his own initiative, erroneously, that money would satisfy you. If—if mugs, in your quaint word, have been attempting to kill you, that is perhaps unfortunate, but it has not the remotest relationship to me. In fact my lack of interest in their success or failure would probably depress you.” He paused, his eyes not quite smoking. “I might add that, from the little I already know of you, Mr. Scott, I am not at all astonished that great masses of people might desire to kill you.”

“Don't hemorrhage.”

His voice had been getting nastier and nastier, and toward the end had become a bit too weighted on the side of master addressing slave. As far as I'm concerned, each man I meet is just another disguised nudist shipwrecked on the same island with me, no worse and sure as hell no better. At least, until he proves me wrong, one way or the other.

Silverman moved back a little, the corners of his mouth turning down as his eyes widened in surprise. “What did you say?”

“I said, ‘don't hemorrhage.' You were getting all excited, and I merely—”

“How dare you...” He let it sputter out.

I grinned at him and went on, “I merely gave you some facts of life—my life. Which I mean to hang onto. Look, I rang your bell, and you invited me in. I didn't break the door down. We've talked—and that was also your suggestion. I neglected to mention that Goss, in addition to trying to bribe me, promised to kill me. And I've got a nasty streak in me that comes out when mugs—like Robert Goss, or anybody else—threaten me, or send punks to shoot me in the back.”

He began to say something, leaning forward with his eyes narrowing, but I finished what I'd started. “Consequently, I've made and will continue to make it my business to check up on anybody who might possibly be involved. You'll have to admit you sure seemed involved. If you're as pure as Little Orphan Annie, okay. I'll apologize and send you a bottle of thirty-year-old Armagnac. If not—well, I guess I just wouldn't apologize.”

He let me finish, put his glass down on the mosaic-topped chest. Then he said slowly, and there was no longer the slightest warmth in his tone, “You mentioned persons threatening you, Mr. Scott. I wouldn't presume to do anything so—so melodramatic. Let us, then, think of what I'm about to say as advice.”

I didn't say anything.

He went on, “Have you any conception of how much money I have? How much influence, how much power? Money is, of course, power. But I refer also to that power which comes from control over men; friendship with men; the indebtedness to me of extremely powerful men. I could mention a dozen names, and you would not even have heard of them, but a word from me to any
one
of them and you would be unable to continue in your profession, unable to live without unbearable harassment, unable perhaps even to live at all.” He smiled thinly. “My advice to you is simply that you leave this house and conduct your life in any manner you choose—so long as it in no ways impinges upon my activities or interests.”

“Or you'll squash me like a bug, huh?”

He hesitated only a moment, then smiled oddly, his lips pressed together. It was the smile a man might wear to cover teeth filed to points. “If we must speak in your language, yes. I'll squash you like a bug.”

I'd had a couple swallows from the brandy, but now I put the glass down on the chest. He said, as if we'd been discussing first editions, “Aren't you going to finish your drink, Mr. Scott?”

“Not now. Anyway, I don't really like it without Coca Cola.” He winced. That seemed to pain him more than anything else I'd said.

I stood up. Neither of us extended our hands. I said, “Good night.”

“Good night.”

There was a chill finality to the words, and I turned to go. But then Silverman spoke again, as if he had suddenly thought, after the conversation was over, of something else he wanted to tell me. “Oh—just a moment, Mr. Scott.”

I turned toward him.

He said, “You've barely glanced at my library. I'm extremely proud of it.”

I wondered what he was getting at.

He went on, “This collection couldn't be duplicated anywhere in the world. I would be embarrassed to tell you the value of the books here.” He walked to the wall, ran his hand over a shelf of large books, folio and quarto size, most of them bound in sun-faded leather, others in strange bindings.