The Demolishers (24 page)

Her savagery startled me; it was out of character. She saw me looking at her and closed one eye minutely. I realized that she was playing her hunch. Something about the dead Linda Anson or the live Jerry Elliot made this approach seem promising to her.

I gave him a sharper scrutiny. He looked pretty stock to me, right off the young-executive shelf. There was quite a bit of hair, so meticulously arranged it made me remember Tallman’s tough, no-nonsense crew cut with nostalgia. It was light brown with chestnut glints that might or might not be real. The face it framed so carefully was boyish with a cute little cleft in the chin and a slightly upturned nose. Whatever the origin of the hair color, the freckles were genuine. If he could have played a guitar, he’d have made his fortune as a rock-and-roll idol of the wholesome, as opposed to the degenerate, variety. But the hazel eyes were uneasy, he was a little too hasty with his Scotch or whatever, and his response was a little slow.

“Hate? Well, naturally I hate those SOBs; but you’ve got it wrong about Linda. She wasn’t my girl. I mean ...” Elliot grimaced. “We used to go together, certainly. But that was back when we were all kids together. That night at the Silver Conch was, well, just a friendly date for old times’ sake. I was getting married the next month.” He made another wry face. “Hell, the way everybody acted afterwards, you’d think getting blown up with a girl was the same as being caught in bed with her!”

“What happened?” Sandra asked. “About the wedding, I mean.”

“Oh, it went through on schedule.” He gave his boyish grimace again. “Rally around the flag, boys and girls, even if the groom’s picture just hit the front pages alongside that of the town tramp and he has to march up the aisle with his arm in a sling to remind everybody of his indiscretion. Janet is a very loyal girl.”

“That’s your wife?” Sandra asked.

“Yes. Janet Whiteley as was. Very fine family, the Whiteleys, but the old Puritan blood pumps strongly through their arteries.” He took a sip of his drink and looked down at the glass and shook his head ruefully. “I’ll have to do penance for this, I’m supposed to have rejected the Demon Rum, but I couldn’t face talking about . . . about it cold sober.”

“About the bombing?” Sandra asked.

“That’s what you came here to hear about, wasn’t it?” His voice was a little sulky. “Well, I’ve told everybody else, why not you? As far as I was concerned, the whole thing took only a second or two. We were sitting there talking and sipping what was left of our wine, waiting for dessert, when something hit me in the back and right shoulder. There was a kind of wave of heat and sound, not really a noise, if you know what I mean, just a great, deafening, numbing shock.”

He glanced at Sandra and she said, “I know.”

“It was like a nightmare,” Elliot went on. ‘‘I mean, it was
unreal.
One moment we were talking politely over our wine; the next, I was feeling my shoulder and back blasted by this incredible force and watching bug-eyed as Linda’s face and dress . . . well, they were simply ripped right off her. At least that was the way it seemed: shreds of flesh and rags of cloth—and blood, lots of blood—kind of streaming away from her like when one of those creatures disintegrates in a horror movie. And glass, lots of glass. I remembered wondering where all that glass was coming from, even as I was being hurled on top of her along with the table and everything on it. The next thing I knew, I was in the hospital.” He glanced at Sandra. ‘‘Well, you know what it’s like. You’ve been through it.”

She said, ‘‘Yes. I try not to remember.”

He shrugged. “Why bother to try? It’s there like the scars. It may fade a bit, but we’ll never get rid of it completely. I can still see ...” He stopped and gulped down the last of his drink and signaled a waiter for a refill. He went on: “What really happened was, there was one of those serving stands behind me and a little to the right, you know, one of the folding jobs with a tray on it. There were some dirty dishes and stuff on the tray, and a big glass pitcher of water. Well, the explosion picked it all up and threw it at us. I got chopped up by the flying china and they tell me I had a fork sticking into my shoulder like a spear. Linda took the heavy water pitcher right in the face; it kind of exploded when it hit.

It fractured her skull in addition to all the superficial damage, if you want to call
that
superficial. They kept her alive for a couple of days, but she never regained consciousness. Perhaps it was just as well she never knew what had been done to her.” He was silent for a moment; then he shivered slightly and reached out for the fresh drink that had been placed in front of him. He tasted it and set it down. “Maybe we’d better order. I’ve got to see somebody at the office at one. They have chowder, chowder, and more chowder. Oyster, clam, fish, you name it. Very substantial; one bowl is a meal and a half. But if you can’t take chowder, they serve a pretty good hamburger.”

Everybody settled for clam chowder. It turned out to be very good, the creamy New England product rather than the thinner Manhattan variety; and we didn’t talk much as we shoveled it out of the outsized bowls.

“Reminds me of picnics on the beach when I was a kid,” Elliot said at last, sitting back with a sigh of satisfaction. “We’d dig the clams ourselves at low tide and steam them in seaweed.”

“Was Linda a picnic girl?” Sandra asked.

Elliot laughed shortly. “Not so you’d notice. Janet was—we all grew up together—but Linda! Gripe, gripe, gripe. Sand in her shoes. Bugs in her hair. But, God, she was pretty even way back then!”

Sandra spoke carefully: “If somebody showed you how to get a crack at this outfit, the Caribbean Legion, to pay them back for what they did to her ...”

He laughed again, short and sharp. “You don’t know how ridiculous that suggestion is!” Then he realized that he’d betrayed more than he’d intended, and he went on hastily: “I mean ...”

“You mean she was blackmailing you, don’t you?” Sandra said.

There was a long silence. At last Elliot licked his lips and asked, “How did you know?”

“I saw her pictures at her parents’ house. Lovely, but quite immoral and unscrupulous. Ordinary standards of human behavior were not for her.” Sandra shrugged. “Besides, why else would you jeopardize your impending marriage by allowing yourself to be seen in public with a woman you yourself just called the town tramp? You wouldn’t have called her that if you were still fond of her, so it could hardly have been the friendly farewell date you claimed. She must have twisted your arm in some way to make you buy her a dinner in one of the best restaurants in town.”

Elliot shook his head. “You’re a smart girl, Sandra, and you’ve got the basic idea all right, but you missed a little on the details. Linda actually wanted us to meet at a shabby little roadhouse she knew; but with my wedding only a month away I wasn’t going to get involved in any sneaky, back alley assignations with a girl Janet detested. If I had to see Linda—and she made it sound imperative—it was safest doing it right out in the open in the Silver Conch.”

Sandra said dryly, “Not so safe after all, as it turned out; but you couldn’t know that a gang of Caribbean fanatics would join the party. ’’

Elliot ignored that. He said, “You’ve done some pretty good guessing; you might as well hear the rest. It was something that happened a good many years ago. Linda got pregnant. It could have been mine. She said it was. I hit my folks for enough money to pay for the abortion without telling them why I needed it. I went with her to where it was easy and legal, never mind where. Linda had the evidence, all the bills with my name on them. And Janet is pretty straitlaced—I told you about those puritanical Whiteleys—and she’s always felt strongly about all that right-to-life stuff, even before they started calling it that. She knew about Linda and me, of course, it must have been pretty obvious at the time; but a long-ago love affair was one thing. A secret pregnancy and abortion might have been harder for her to accept. At least Linda thought I’d be willing to pay to have the information suppressed.”

‘‘What did she want the money for?”

‘‘Thirty-five thousand was the figure,” Elliot said. He glanced at me when I whistled, and smiled thinly. ‘‘Yes, Linda was never a piker. She didn’t say why she needed it, exactly, but I got the impression that she’d played one of her gold-digger games with a gentleman in New York who wasn’t a true gentleman. Few of them are, in New York. Just what he’d been buying and she’d been selling wasn’t quite clear—beautiful as she was, I can’t see anybody paying thirty-five grand just to sleep with her, but she’d held out on him in some way, and he wanted his money back, the cheapskate.”

‘‘Could it have been a gambling debt?” Sandra asked. Elliot shrugged. ‘‘I suppose so. It wasn’t one of her vices back when I was going with her, but she picked them up fast.” His voice was bitter, the disillusioned voice of a man remembering an angel with shop-soiled wings. He went on: ‘‘Of course she’d already spent the money. The man apparently told her that if she didn’t pay up by a certain date, he’d send some of his friends around to see her with brass knuckles. That’s why she fled from New York and came back here hoping he couldn’t find her. However, he tracked her down; she’d just got a call from him reminding her that her time was almost up. So thirty-five grand, please, or Janet learns the worst about the man she’s about to marry.” He grimaced. “Of course, with Linda, you never knew. That menacing gentleman in New York, who was no gentle
man, could have been quite imaginary. She could just have developed a compulsive desire for a sable coat.”

He swallowed the last of his second drink and looked around for a waiter, but changed his mind and shoved the glass away from him. People were leaving now, finished with their meals.

‘‘I’ve got to get back,” Elliot said with a glance at his watch. ‘‘I told her no deal, of course. I mean, I couldn’t let it get to be a habit. That long-ago abortion I paid for was all right; she’d been entitled to all the help she needed under those circumstances. But now ... I couldn’t have her thinking she had something on me and coming around with her hand out every time she wanted a fur coat, or more gambling money, or whatever. Anyway, I said no. I told her I’d see Janet myself that very night and tell her all about it; and Miss Linda Anson would be smart to settle for a good dinner and forget the whole thing.”

“I bet she didn’t like that,” Sandra said.

‘‘She didn’t.” Elliot’s voice was grim. ‘‘I hadn’t realized what kind of a person ... I think she must have been on something. She hadn’t drunk very much, just the wine, but maybe it reacted with something she’d taken earlier to prepare her for the interview. Anyway, she started in on me in a nice, low voice, smiling at me fondly across the table, and telling me things about myself and herself. . . . She made it all dirty, everything we’d shared when we were younger. I’d been very much in love with her, and she told me what a prize sap she’d thought me, mooning around her like an affectionate puppy. Then she got to work on Janet. I suppose she was jealous, she never liked losing a man to another woman even if she didn’t want him anymore; and she said some pretty vicious things. By the time she was through . . . well, as far as I was concerned, that New York hoodlum could have her if he made it quick; otherwise I’d do the job for him.”

“Really?” Sandra asked.

He stared at her for a moment; then he grinned boyishly. “Well, probably not really. But I was pretty angry; angry enough to tell myself I’d like to kill her. And she knew I was thinking it. She was laughing at me because she knew I’d never have the guts. I can still see her sitting there with her head thrown back, laughing, when the blast . . . happened. She must have died thinking that in some weird way, angry as I was, I’d managed to do it after all. Get Elliot mad enough and he blows right up like a bomb. Unreal!” He shook his head. “But you can see why I’m not burning to join your crusade against this Legion outfit. Somehow, that bomb of theirs straightened out my life and blew away the secrets that could have wrecked my marriage—I told Janet everything after I woke up in the hospital. She didn’t like it, of course, but she got over it, and we’re getting along fine.” He rose and started buttoning his vest. “Well, it’s been nice talking to someone who’s been through the same violent experience, even if she’s too damn good at worming secrets out of people. Good-bye, Sandra . . . Matt.”

We watched him go, pulling on his jacket and settling his tie as he crossed the restaurant to the desk, paid, and disappeared out the door. I apologized silently for my earlier thoughts about stingy New Englanders.

Sandra
sipped her coffee thoughtfully, still watching the door through which Elliot had vanished. “Poor guy,” she said. “He’s still in love with her.” I stared at her. “Then I’d hate to hear him talking about a girl he hated. Considering that the wench is dead, he sure didn’t pull many punches.”

“That’s what I mean. He’s trying to prove to everybody, including himself, that she never really meant a thing to him. But he’s not doing a very good job, at least not on himself.” She finished her coffee and set down the cup. “Well, aren’t you going to tell me what a great interrogator I turned out to be?”

“You were terrific. All you need now is to be checked out on the rack and thumbscrews, and the needle full of scopolamine or whatever they use nowadays.”

She made a face at me. “Who do we tackle next?”

“I don’t know. I was hoping somebody’d make a move that would give us a lead to follow. ...”