Pandora by Holly Hollander

How Blue Helped Me Figure Things Out

I took a deep breath, maybe two or three. Then I said, “Well, that’s over with.”

Blue shrugged. “I hope so.”

“Did you really call my father in New York? That was nice of you.”

“I was angling for a job. I still am, because I need the money. Anyway, everything I told Lieutenant Sandoz was true. A safe and lock company should have a criminologist on its staff, or at least have a criminological consultant to call in at need. I am a Hollander employee—you’re a Hollander, and you’ve asked me to help you and offered to pay me. I accept.”

“What did he say?”

“Your father? He was concerned about you and your mother. Your mother had called him at his hotel last night, and he had watched a morning news show—”

“My God, you’re right! We must’ve been on TV. How do you turn that thing on?”

Blue looked as though he was disappointed in me, which I suppose he had a right to. “There won’t be anything now until six. You’ve got plenty of time.”

“Just the same, I want to know.”

We hunted around and finally found a remote that had fallen down behind the table. When I had tested it out, I asked Blue again about my father.

“He wanted to know if I had seen your mother; he was afraid she had been concealing something when she had assured him that she was not injured. I told him I had not, but that she wasn’t hospitalized. We talked for some time about the extent of your injuries. I’m certain he’s spoken with your doctor by now. He expressed the opinion that the bombing—that, at least, was what we called it—had been the act of radical terrorists. I believe that was all.”

“How did you know where to call him, anyway?”

“I telephoned your housekeeper and inquired. He had wisely left the name of his hotel with her in case of emergencies, and I was able to catch him in his room this morning before he left for his meeting.”

“I’m surprised Mrs. Maas gave it to you.”

“I think she did so under the impression that I was calling in an official capacity, although I did not say I was.”

“What a shock when she thought so, I’ll bet. I wonder how she ever got a wild idea like that! You’re pretty slick, aren’t you?”

Blue shook his head. “I used to think I was, but I’ve been disabused of that idea. I know a few tricks, and occasionally I invent a new one. That’s all. With the right backdrop and the right lighting, I can fool most of the audience on a good night. Not without them, and not all the audience—not ever.”

“Modest, too.”

“Are you in much pain?”

“A little. I guess being so hungry took my mind off it, or maybe they gave me some kind of dope and it’s getting weaker now. I imagine I’ll be going around like you, with a cane, for a while.”

As soon as I was finished, I was sorry. I could see the hurt in his eyes. He said, “You are wondering whether my own trouble is permanent or temporary. It is permanent.”

“How’d it happen?”

“That doesn’t matter now.”

He was getting set to stand up, so I yelled at him. “Hey, don’t go, I promise not to talk about it anymore. I thought you wouldn’t mind, since I’ve paid dues myself.” All the time I was feeling around inside my head for something that would keep him where he was and not make him mad. “Where do you live?”

He stopped pushing on the handle of his stick. “In South Barton. I own an old farmhouse.”

“A farm, huh? That’s nice.”

“Most of the land has been sold off, but there are still a few acres of woods left. The house was built during the Civil War, and I suppose nine out of ten people who see it think it abandoned.”

I said, “I’d like to come by and take a look, when I’m up and around again. Listen, I’m not keeping you from anything, am I? It’s just that I like your company.”

“You’re afraid of your uncle. That’s very understandable, but I’ll have to go soon.”

Those blue Blue eyes could see right through me; that was scarier, almost, than thinking about Uncle Herbert.

Blue continued, “If it’s of any comfort to you, I think you tend to exaggerate the threat posed by your uncle. As I’ve told you before, psychotics rarely harm anyone except themselves; and from what the judge has passed along to me, it’s been ten years or more since Herbert Hollander posed a problem to the staff at Garden Meadow.”

“Going over the wall isn’t a problem?”

“It certainly doesn’t indicate a propensity for violence.”

“Let’s change the subject. Do you know Megan Lief? Was she hurt? Nobody’ll tell me.”

“I don’t believe so,” Blue said. He reeled off the names of the other casualties. I didn’t recognize any of them.

I said, “I sort of expected that Uncle Dee would come up to see me.”

“I didn’t know you had another uncle.”

“Not a real uncle. Uncle Dee is De Witte Sinclair—do you know him?”

Blue was smiling. “I’ve scouted books for him a few times.”

“Scouted?”

“A book scout is to a rare-book dealer what a jackal is to a tiger. He buys books cheaply and sells them to the dealer for what they’re worth. Then the dealer locates a customer willing to pay a great deal more than they’re worth, and resells them to him. That, at least, is the way we book scouts tell it. Have you considered that if De Witte tried to see you they wouldn’t let him come up? At least, not unless he told the kind of fib I did.”

That made me feel better. “No,” I said, “I hadn’t thought of that. Maybe he came after all, huh? But you know, I’ll bet he’s too busy trying to straighten up the book sale—that would be just like him. What do you suppose they’ll do with all those books now?”

“I have no idea.”

“Save them for next year, I guess—if there’s a Fair next year at all. Do you think it was those guys who were bothering Larry?”

Blue shook his head.

“Why not? That Lieutenant Sandoz did. Don’t you think he’s a good cop?”

“Yes,” Blue answered slowly. “Yes, I think he’s a good cop.”

“You’re holding something back.” (Sometimes I’m damned insightful myself.)

Blue said, “Holly, you have to understand that, at least in nine cases out of ten, the police are not actually interested in arresting the guilty party. Under the law, the determination of guilt isn’t even their responsibility. What they want and need is someone who can plausibly be brought before a judge. A good cop—and I agree, I think Sandoz is probably one—still has that urge, sometimes at least, to discover what really happened. But even a good cop cannot help being influenced by his training and pressure exerted by his superiors.”

“So the people who were phoning Larry could just be babies to throw to the wolves? How do you know?”

“You heard me tell Sandoz that I knew him. That was how I came to meet him. A mutual friend suggested I might be able to help him.”

“Who were they? Did he give you their names?”

“I think he knew more than he told me. But I learned that they objected—if that is the word—to something he had done in Vietnam. When Larry applied for a loan to set up his business, they had sent an anonymous letter to one of the officers of the bank, accusing Lief of unspecified crimes against humanity. If their objective was to sour the loan, as I suppose it was, they failed. I would not imagine that an unsigned letter would have much effect on a bank unless its accusations concerned financial malfeasance. The officers are not generally the sort of men who view crimes against humanity with severity. I spent some time trying to locate that letter—it was the only tangible clue in sight—but it had been destroyed. Then this happened.”

“In other words, they got him.” My leg was hurting pretty bad by then, and I was feeling sorry for myself.

“I doubt it. That’s why I didn’t tell my little story to Lieutenant Sandoz.”

“Maybe you doubt it, but nobody else would.”

Blue stood up, looking grim. “Then isn’t that all the more reason for me to do what I can to keep the investigation on the right path? What are war crimes? Torturing prisoners, perhaps, or multiplying civilian deaths. Professional dissidents might use those accusations to extenuate any actions of their own, and in fact apologists for the American policy in Vietnam used the very real war crimes of the North Vietnamese to excuse ours. But these people appeared to be anything but professional; they struck me as consciencestricken blunderers. They might, just conceivably, have been carried to the point of destroying the object of their hatred. But would they do that by detonating an infernal device that not only might, but actually did, kill or mutilate a dozen blameless people? I suppose you’re too young to remember the comic strip Pogo, but there was a character called Deacon Mushrat who urged the others to ‘Kill the warmongers! Bomb them off the face of the earth!’ That was a comicstrip pacifist, however.”

“But Larry’s dead, so it could have been them. Only you don’t think it was. Who do you think?”

“I don’t think. I need more facts.” He had gone over to the window, and was looking out. It wasn’t dark yet—in fact it was only the middle of the afternoon—but I had the feeling that for him it was night out, that he was staring into blackness.

I said, “Sandoz sounded like he thought it might be Elaine. Did you buy that?”

“No.” Blue turned to face me. “Did you?”

“Maybe a little.”

“Why?”

“Oh, just because he made it sound so good. Fixing the drawing, finding out what ticket Munroe had. All that.”

“Yes, it was beautifully logical. However, you followed it to the place Sandoz wanted you to go, and not to the place where it had led Sandoz. I’m still not quite certain why, but Sandoz wanted you to believe he might accuse your mother. What all of that really meant was that unless Mrs. Hollander was the killer, Munroe was not the target. Anyone might have learned his ticket number, just as Sandoz said. But only your mother could have arranged for that number to be the winner. Besides, if someone had merely wanted to kill Munroe, and wasn’t concerned about the possible deaths of others, why not put a bomb in his car in the parking lot? The Mob does such things all the time. Why bother with so much folderol?”

I had been thinking, a bad habit my teachers hadn’t quite knocked out of me. “Wait a minute! There’s another way someone could’ve fixed the numbers. Suppose it was somebody that little girl—What was her name? Nancy Noonan? Suppose it was somebody Nancy trusted, and somehow he got hold of Munroe’s ticket. I took tickets for a while, and I was just dropping them into a box. He could have pretended he had to tie his shoe or scratch his ankle, or if it was a woman maybe pull up a heel strap, just after Munroe went in. Later, he’d give the ticket to Nancy and tell her they were going play a joke or something, and she was only supposed to pretend to reach into the drum.”

Blue said, “He could never rely on a child that age to keep his secret.”

“Maybe he figured she’d be killed too when the bomb went off—only Sandoz says it wasn’t a bomb. Well, whatever it was. He probably thought Munroe’d be right there in the crowd watching the drawing instead of inside at the book sale with us. If he’d been outside, there wouldn’t have been time for her to get down off the platform. Anyway, the murderer would think that even if he missed her, he could—”

I broke off because all of a sudden the chocolate in my stomach had turned to vinegar ice. Besides, there wasn’t any use in going on with it. Blue’s face doesn’t give away much, but it’s nowhere near as expressionless as Sandoz’s, and I was learning to read it; it was blank now, just no expression at all, and that meant he had pulled into himself and was thinking so hard that he didn’t have any attention to spare for it. “She should be under guard,” he said. “And of course the police must speak with her as soon as possible. When it becomes known that they have, she’ll be out of danger.” He checked out my bedside table. “I must find a telephone.”

That was when a nurse I hadn’t seen before came bustling in. “There are public telephones in an alcove off the lobby, sir. The receptionist can show you, but you’ll have to go now. Visiting hours are over.”

Then to me: “Have you heard about the murder?” Her eyes were shining. What a treat!

“It wasn’t a little girl … .”

“Oh, no. An old man. They found him by the parking lot, right here at our hospital!”

She bustled out again, this time with Blue after her like a lame hound that can still run when a bunny jumps under its nose. I head the thump of his cane out in the corridor, and then the murmur of their voices; the only words I could make out, though, were what he said last: “I’d better go down and talk to them. I think I may be able to identify him.”