The Dead Man's Brother (16 page)

"I wish I had something to give you," I said, "but I don’t."

He sighed again.

"You are not a stupid man. Why do you cause yourself so much difficulty?"

"I wish that I had something to give you," I repeated. "Since you do not believe me, I fear you will maim me or kill me. I do not want either one, but I see no alternatives. Do you not have some truth drugs—amytal, pentothal—or a polygraph? They will show you I am telling

the truth."

"Drugs are not dependable," he said, "and we do not have a lie detector. But do not talk of death or of maiming. We are not like that. All that we want is the truth."

I said nothing. I finished the cigarette and added it to the mess on the floor.

"You have nothing more to say?"

I shook my head.

"Very well."

He rose and departed again.

I felt a hand upon my shoulder.

*

I awakened sore and weakened. I was lying face down on the cot in my lockup. My thoughts were a jumble, and I didn’t try to order them. I just let them go by like figures on a dance floor at 3 a.m. during a drunken masquerade as the ship slowly sank.

After a time, I moaned and the band quit playing. I rolled over and pressed the back of my hand against my forehead. This was a mistake.

When I was able, I sat up and took a long drink of water, waited, took another one. Then I cleaned myself as best I could. The smell was nauseating and I felt filthy. I went to the window and stared outside, trying to figure how much time had passed. The air was cleaner there, though the day was hot and getting hotter.

I reviewed my earlier thinking of forced confessions. I realized that a willingness to confess to anything was not the answer here. They wanted something that could be verified locally, quickly. If I constructed a tale, it had better be a good one. I considered and rejected one where I had broken in and stolen some papers, precise nature unknown, and mailed them to a person in, say, Santiago, Chile. I didn’t think they would buy it—and if they did, it might land me in prison. I knew nothing of their penal system and wanted to postpone learning about it until I could read something on the subject in the New York Public Library.

If they were really cops, as they claimed to be, I had a feeling they would have informed our State Department by now that they were holding me. Someone should have been around to see me. If they were not cops, their reasons for wanting whatever might have been taken from Emil’s place were doubtless illicit. This being the case, an unverifiable story on my part might result in something even more unpleasant than prison.

Whichever, they seemed to want it awfully badly.

Since Emil Bretagne seemed party to his late brother’s financial doings, it seemed safe to assume that his disappearing act had to do with their discovery. The rifling of his safe and the zealous investigation of this act could be seen as connected with the missing three million.

Which meant there was absolutely nothing I could say that would get me off the hook, and poor Maria was in the same canoe up the same smelly creek, watching our paddle disappear behind us.

Doubting that there would be any help coming from his direction, I damned Collins for the thousandth time and decided that I would have to try to escape. It would have to be soon, too. A few more questioning sessions and I’d be unable to leave if they left the doors open.

I reexamined the bars on the window, but they were too firmly set in place. The walls were solid, the ceiling out of reach, the floor firmly nailed where it belonged. That left me the door, one way or another.

I needed a weapon. Perhaps one of the legs of the cot could be worked loose…

I tried them and got one to the point where I could remove it in a hurry.

If I could manipulate the lock properly, say late at night, I might be able to take someone by surprise. I wanted a gun. None of my jailers bore any visible arms, but there had to be a weapon somewhere about. I wished I had an idea how many people there were about the place.

A little later, they brought me some stew and a piece of bread. As usual, one man brought it in while the other waited at the door. They were the same two who had worked me over. We said nothing to one another.

I stretched out then and watched a spider begin a design in the window. Before very long, I fell asleep.

*

I was awakened, not for dinner but for a repeat performance.

The questions were unchanged, as were my answers. I didn’t get a cigarette this time, and I congratulated myself on being able to pass out more quickly than I had on the previous occasion. One of them explained that this was the last time things would go easily for me. I believed him.

Back on my cot. Darkness all about me. Pain inside.

It had to be tonight.

I couldn’t move, though.

I drifted in and out of sleep—briefly, I think—several times.

I grew a bit stronger and ordered my muscles to move

me.

Protesting, they obeyed. This brought me wide awake, and I sat on the edge of my bed and drank water. It tasted terrible.

I rose and fetched my wires from behind the baseboard.

Through the small opening set at eye-level in the door, I could see that the hall was empty. A bulb of low wattage burned in the ceiling a few yards off to my left. I knelt and began working on the lock.

I was interrupted once by approaching footsteps, and returned to my cot. Whoever it was seemed simply to have taken a stroll up the hall and back again, however. The steps approached, passed, turned, retreated.

I took up my position again and began fumbling with the too-soft wires. Perspiration collected in my eyebrows and small, flitting things came to bug me. Then the lock moved and clicked softly.

Shaking, I returned to my cot and waited to see whether the sound had carried and been noted. Somewhere between five and ten minutes later, I decided that it hadn’t.

I stuffed my shoes as far down into my hip pocket as they would go, then returned to the door and checked the hallway.

Nobody.

I removed the leg from the cot, held it in my right hand and edged the door open, slowly and quietly. Stepping through, I closed it behind me and moved up the hall.

I passed several closed doors with dark eyeslits like my own. I glanced through each as I went by. Two of them contained sleeping forms on cots not unlike mine. I thought the second one was Maria.

I passed the interrogation room. It was dark and empty, its door open.

I moved through silence and took it as a good sign. While I had no idea as to the time, it seemed late. I was headed toward the room where they had received me initially. If more than one man were on duty, it would seem there might be some conversation going on. Of course, there could be others—bored, reading, asleep.

I approached the door. It was open, and light flooded the hall around it. About twenty-five feet beyond was the front door to the building. I edged my way along the wall on that side of the corridor until I stood directly beside the puddle of light. Then I stood still and listened.

Perhaps ten minutes passed. I heard small movements, a sigh, the scratch of a match, a belch, the rustling of paper, the squeak of a chair. I shifted my weight slowly, preparing to rush in and start bashing.

I almost gave myself away when the telephone rang.

It was taken before the second ring. A gruff voice answered, spoke briefly, then said, "It’s for you."

I heard a grunt, the
bang
of what might have been a chair leaned against a wall as it came forward, then footsteps.

I did not stay to eavesdrop. I turned and hurried back in the direction from which I had come. I was not about to try jumping two of them.

I made it back to the door of my room without being discovered, continued on past it and entered a dark, open room that appeared to be something other than a cell. It was packed with old furniture—dressers, beds, chairs—and smelled of must, dust and urine. I worked my way through it, for there were two unbarred windows in its far wall.

Neither was nailed shut, but both were stuck. I went to work on the one that had yielded a bit. I managed to raise it a few inches, and stopped short of a major noise when it began to bind again. Cursing, I worked it slowly. There was a mass of unkempt shrubbery beyond it and an incline that looked to descend six or eight feet fairly rapidly.

I was certain there was a rear entrance farther back. But it would doubtless be locked and possibly guarded. I knew nothing of the layout at that end of the building, so I would be risking too much to try there what I had planned doing up front. I had wanted to take Maria with me, but now I would settle for just getting out myself and bringing our embassies into the picture.

I eased the window past the tight spot and got it up another eight inches before it stuck again. Then I began working it from side to side, gaining perhaps an eighth of an inch each time. The growing things outside smelled sweet. The night air was cool and delicious.

When the opening was wide enough I slipped my shoes back on and went through it. I hung a moment by my hands, then dropped a couple of feet to the ground.

The stuff was thick and a bit thorny, but I worked my way down through it, keeping low. Then I moved a good distance away from the building and headed toward its rear. I wanted to circle the place, to get a better idea what it looked like.

There was a rear door, but it was boarded shut. I passed on, eventually locating my own window. I drew nearer. It was still dark and silent within. Good. I counted down then and found the one I thought to be Maria’s. It, too, was dark and silent, but I worked my way to a position beneath it and tossed a pebble inside.

After a long wait, I tossed another.

Six stones later, I heard soft sounds and a figure appeared behind the bars. I studied it and remained silent until I had satisfied myself.

"Maria?" I whispered.

"Ovid?"

"Yes. Have they hurt you?"

"Not—much," she said. "But they have made me tell them—things."

"Don’t worry. Tell them anything that makes them happy."

"But they ask things we do not know."

"Keep telling them that—and keep asking to see the Italian ambassador. I’m going to call for help from the first phone I can reach. I’m going to try to steal a car now."

"Did you get a guard or did you pick the lock?"

"The lock."

"Oh."

"Why?"

"I was hoping you got the small one with the moustache."

"I’ll be back," I said. "He’ll get his. You hold tight and stall. Start pretending to faint."

"I already have. Be careful."

"Yes. Goodbye, Maria."

"Goodbye, Ovid."

I retreated then and moved on toward the front, the metal tube clenched tightly in my fist. I began hoping for someone to hit.

I still wore my money belt. Strange that they had not thought to check for that. Things would have been so much easier if I’d had my lock picks in it.

I hated leaving her that way, but it was the only out available.

I slowed, dropped to the ground and began to crawl as I neared the front of the building.

There was no one in sight, and two cars were parked beneath the trees. There were two outside lights on the building and one on a pole about a hundred-fifty feet up the driveway. There was also light from the office, coming through the window to the left of the doorway.

Keeping low in the high weeds, I headed toward the vehicles, frightening myself and a rabbit in unequal proportions.

I reached the cars, moved between them, trying to decide which one was going to get its ignition jumped. This was quickly settled. Neither was. They were both Fords and the one on my left was newer, but the one to my right had a key in the ignition. I released the air from the tires of the one on the left, using my lock-pick wire.

Too good, it seemed. But with all the lousy breaks I had been getting recently, I was not about to look a good one in the carburetor. I eased the door open and slid inside, pulling rather than slamming it shut. It was not completely closed, but the latch had caught. That would have to do.

With a quick glance at the building, I started the engine, backed up, shifted gears and headed for the long, narrow driveway that led to the road. There was a brick retaining wall to my left and a tree-filled gully on the right.

I switched on the headlights and fed it gas. I entered the driveway, took a turn and passed through a small clump of trees. Something—either a bird or a bat—dislodged itself from a tree and fled by me. Then the world came to an end as I took another turn.

A pair of headlights was coming straight toward me.

I wanted to tear out the steering wheel column by the roots and throw it at them. Instead, I gripped the wheel and pushed the gas pedal to the floor.

There was no place for me to pull off on the side. If I stopped, they had me; if I backed up, they had me.

I stayed as close to the wall as I could, hoping that the driver’s reflexes would cause him to swerve away toward the gully. My hitting him then might help him along in that direction, leaving me room enough to get by.

It didn’t work that way, of course.

He leaned on his horn and began slowing as soon as he saw me. I didn’t want it to be a head-on collision, but I was ready for one. I leaned on my own horn and kept going.

The distance between us narrowed rapidly, and he finally swerved. But it was too late.

We hit. He was partly off the driveway and I pushed him farther, but not far enough.

I scraped along the wall, pushed partway past him and came to a halt. I tried plowing through. I tried backing out. But I was wedged in place.

I seized my cot leg club from where it lay on the seat to my right. A glance at the other car showed me that it contained three occupants. The door on my side was jammed against the wall; the one on their side would only open a few inches before it bound against their vehicle. Without hesitating, I covered my eyes with my left hand and swung my club against the windshield.