Contract Null & Void

Chapter Thirty-seven

A car turned in at the driveway. Headlights swept across the room, ended up shining out between the trees flanking the cabin toward the waves breaking on the beach. When the lights and engine were cut, the thudding of the surf was very clear.

The cabin door was jerked open and in strode Griffin Paris as if he owned the place. He would always own wherever he was, thought Bart Heslip. Why hadn’t he realized it was Paris right away? King of the Tenderloin. He would have heard about Local 3’s plans to put up a new building funded from the sort of public and private monies it is always easy to dig into, would have started picking out corruptibles in the union. And quickly would have found Morris Brett and Burnett Sebastian.

“You made good time, Mr. Paris,” said Sebastian.

“The Ace Corporation,” said Ballard, belatedly getting it.

Sure! He’d seen Griffin Paris at Mood Indigo Tuesday evening, and again later that same night just disappearing into the counting room at Ace in the Hole. Bart had told him all about Griffin Paris later that same night, but Larry, not knowing who he was, had made no connection with the tall, all-in-black man with the piercing eyes of a riverboat gambler.

A car went by in the road. Paris closed the blinds, then hooked a hip over the edge of the table under the front window.

“We should have figured, huh?” said Bart, turning to look at Larry. “Man owns Ace in the Hole, Mood Indigo — hell, half the Tenderloin.” He looked back at Paris. “Bet you sort of felt out Petrock and Kiely as the smartest, strongest men in the union, got a little clumsy, got them to thinking...”

Griffin Paris smiled lazily.

“Yes, I assumed they were corruptible, but they weren’t, and they became suspicious. First they went to Morrie and Burnett here.” He chuckled. “Who came to me immediately, of course.” He looked at Danny. “But by then they had the nosy frog here snooping around. Croak for me, frog. Where are the specs and the contracts that you took?”

“You’ll never find them,” said Danny.

Paris looked over at Sebastian. “Make these fools hurt.”

Kearny couldn’t believe it. A goddamned flat tire. He could call Triple A, but on a Saturday night in the deserted financial district they’d be forever. Besides, cars were his business. He sighed and threw his suit jacket across the front seat and went to get the jack from the trunk.

Giselle’s worries about the banquet, nipping at him all day, suddenly bit deep: he hoped that something bad wouldn’t go down at the Officers Club before he got there.

In the kitchen at the Officers Club, Dieter Konrad, head chef, was so aghast that German consonants corrupted his excellent English.

“You vish to do vat?” he shrieked.

Antoine said in a très reasonable voice, “I do not wish to do it, Dieter. I am doing it.”

Dieter Konrad looked to his left. A phalanx of grim-faced pastry sous-chefs was wheeling the Viennese windtorte out from behind its concealing drapes. It was gorgeous, but Gott in Himmel, it could not just be wheeled into the dining room before the meal had even begun!

He turned back to Antoine, but the fat little fool was already striding — as well as a man of his considerable girth could stride — toward the service door to the dining room. Dieter shook his clenched fists to the heavens. He should not have been surprised. Pastry chefs were always fools.

He went in search of the sommelier for a glass of liebfraumilch to settle his nerves.

The disguised and resplendent Eddie Graff, who had left the kitchen during the argument, went up the three wooden steps to the narrow porch and back into the Officers Club. The reception area was high-ceilinged, wide, handsome: straight ahead was a huge fireplace with comfortable couches flanking it, facing one another. He paused by the maître d’s table in the doorway beyond the fireplace to peek into the dining room.

Yes. Inga was at the head table with her mother and Paul. Antoine, the pastry chef, was standing in the middle of the room, tapping on a crystal glass with a silver fork.

“Mesdames et messieurs,” he called. The dining room noise gradually abated. “Merci. Bon. I have for you a special surprise tonight.” He beamed at them. “I shall return avec a creation to be enjoyed in sweet anticipation through the meal.”

Graff turned away and crossed the reception area to take the narrow stairway down to the men’s room and pay phones, dropped his dimes, tapped out a number.

Overhead, the maître d’ said, “Fort Mason Officers Club.”

“I need to speak with Mrs. Inga Rochemont on a matter of the utmost urgency. She’s at the head table.”

The phone was put down. He could hear crowd noises, a minute later heard the man’s voice coming back into range.

“...this phone right here, Mrs. Rochemont.”

Inga’s childish voice was in Graff’s ear. He said to her: “You know who this is, so no names.”

“Yes, Ed... uh, yes.”

“Remember when I told you Paul would be murdered by someone if you didn’t drug those detectives’ coffee and kill the alarm on one of the windows for me?”

“Y... yes, but—”

“It still isn’t over, Inga. Once again, Paul is going to die unless you do exactly as I tell you. Hang up the phone, walk straight out of the club, get in your car, and drive away. Don’t say anything to anyone, understand?”

“No, I don’t, darn it! Why can’t you just explain—”

“There isn’t time if I’m going to save Paul’s life. Drive around for exactly twenty minutes, then wait for me in the parking lot by Basic Pascal. Paul will be safe by then, and I’ll bring him to you. Just do as I say.”

He hung up before she could raise further objection.

Giselle and Frank Nugent, still bound back-to-back and panting, were on their feet, Giselle still fighting hysterical giggles. They hopped sideways, tiny hops they had to coordinate so as not to lose their balance and fall.

They paused at the sideboard. “You have to knock the purse on the floor with an elbow,” said Giselle.

Nugent started to whine, caught himself, instead began his contortions that finally knocked the purse to the floor.

“Okay,” said Giselle, hope actually starting to ignite in her breast, “let’s fall down together. One... two... three...”

They fell down.

Ballard had a broken nose and Heslip was missing two teeth. Danny had fainted from a kick to the ribs, was coming around again. Sebastian looked like a Doberman on a leash. Brett looked like he might throw up, but he was still holding the Luger. Paris surveyed the wreckage thoughtfully.

“Okay,” said Danny in that tired voice of his. “You win.”

“I always do,” said Paris. “Now — what have I won?”

“Everything I had was lashed on the back of my bicycle. It went over the cliff with me when these two ran me off the road.”

Giselle and Frank Nugent had maneuvered the purse between them so it was wedged where Nugent’s fingers could worry it open. Giselle’s half-numb hands started digging around inside, trying to identify her lighter by feel alone. She found it surprisingly difficult because her fingers had almost no feeling in them.

“Who did you tell about what you found out?”

“Nobody.” Danny’s voice was weak, his face gray; he was sweating. “I was going to call Kiely from here, but...”

When he fell silent, Paris turned to Heslip.

“We figured you were just dumb enough to make a good fall guy for Kiely, but you were even dumber; you set yourself up for Petrock by staging a fight with him on the same night we killed him. When the cops find you, they’ll close out both murders.”

No response, so he switched to Ballard.

“How much have you found out, and who have you told?”

Ballard was silent also. If Bart could take it, he could. Paris turned to Sebastian with an exasperated look.

“Which of them will you most enjoy killing first?”

In the kitchen at the Officers Club, Eddie Graff said, “I’ll serve the head table.”

Nobody demurred. Bernardine had already shown herself to be a shrieker if things weren’t exactly right, and besides, all was confusion; the magnificent windtorte was just being rolled toward the dining room under the pastry chef’s excited directions. Dieter Konrad was nowhere around.

Graff slipped the grenade from the cummerbund, put the ring around his thumb, and immersed the grenade in a huge tureen of green-turtle soup. His thumb gripping the inside edge of the big ceramic oval so only the ring was visible, he picked up the tureen and followed the windtorte through the service door.

Ballard, on his knees with his hands still interlaced behind his head, had been forced downward by the muzzle of the sawed-off shotgun against the back of his neck until the side of his face was pressed against the floor.

“Now, Mr. Paris?” asked Sebastian in a voice thick with an excitement almost sexual.

Now that the moment had come, Larry Ballard felt a strange calmness. Since it was the last thing he was going to get to do, he wanted to wipe the sneer off Paris’s face.

“You don’t get it, do you, Paris? All those sub-rosa plans and contracts and papers you’ve been so worried about — they’re all null and void anyway.”

Paris had lost his lazy pose. He was standing over Larry. “Go into that a little more, Ballard, or I’ll have Burnett crush your testicles with his gun butt.”

Larry was winging it. “We’re private detectives with a big outfit hired by Kiely to find out what was going on. The retainer he paid was so hefty that the firm’s assignment didn’t end with his death. It won’t end with ours, either.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“Ask Sebastian if there wasn’t a Chicano said he was my friend asking questions at the union the same day I was.”

By Sebastian’s sudden tense silence, Ballard knew he had scored. He kept talking, desperately...

“Stop talking and light the goddamned lighter,” said Giselle hoarsely. She couldn’t do it herself. Her hands were too numb. She had just enough feeling to hold it upright on the floor between them. Nugent did nothing. Jesus. “Feel the little cog?” she asked in her most rational voice. “Just flick it with your thumb.”

Finally, he did. She heard it rasp. But — nothing. He did it again. Again, nothing happened. Flint gone? Out of butane? Again. Nothing. Again.

Giselle felt sudden heat scorching the backs of her hands. She braced herself for Nugent’s screams, his frenzied attempts to twist away from the pain. But after an initial violent jerk he was silent. Fainted, maybe?

The pain was searing, the smell of scorched flesh sickening. Was it G. Gordon Liddy who had held his arm over a lighted candle every night as a young man to discipline himself?

She felt the ropes part. Her hands were free! Frank Nugent was suddenly crying and babbling behind her, but—

The light went on at the foot of the companionway.

No! Giselle cried inside herself. Not now! Not yet! Her hands were free but they were still tied together, her ankles were still tied. She was still helpless.

“Oh my God!” exclaimed Inga Rochemont’s voice.

The guests were standing, craning, commenting as the Viennese windtorte was wheeled into the exact center of the dining room, right next to Bernardine’s table. Antoine, beaming, removed the lid of baked meringue to show the treasures within the torte. There were ooohs and ahhhs of appreciation.

Dieter burst through the service door howling. “You cannot do this! The Officers Club view is famous! You have put that... that... monstrosity right in front of...”

Antoine carefully replaced the lid before rushing him. White-clad chefs and sous-chefs got between the two men, managed to get them back through the service door and into the kitchen.

Muffled shouts, cries, the clatter of thrown pots came through the closed service door — but the Viennese windtorte remained where it was. Shamefaced waiters hurriedly began serving big oval white ceramic tureens full of green-turtle soup to each table. Some degree of normalcy was returning.

“Where did your wife disappear to?” demanded Bernardine testily. The party was not going to her liking at all. First, that upsetting fuss over the dessert; then Paul acting oddly; and finally, Ken had twice removed her hand from his knee, the second time with unmistakable intent to discourage.

“She probably went to the ladies’ room, mother,” said Paul in a remarkably soothing voice; but he made “mother” lowercase.

“And where is Ms. Marc?”

Where indeed? And Ken was sure Inga wasn’t in the ladies’ room, either. Just the three of them, isolated at this table.

So he kept looking around the room, alert for danger. That hassle over the big cake thing could have been a cover for some attack on Paul, and without Giselle here all the security worries fell on him. But everything looked okay.

His busy eyes took in the gray-haired waiter approaching their table with his tureen, slid away, dismissing him as he began filling the soup bowl at Inga’s empty place.

But wait a minute! The water was sweating. Tinted aviator glasses hid his eyes. Why? Mustache and grayed hair without a strand out of place in the midst of all his running and scurrying? High heels on his shoes — elevators that added three inches to his height. The ring glinting on his thumb...

On his thumb? Hey, Ken had seen that sort of ring before.

He shoved back his chair and sprang to his feet as Eddie Graff overturned the soup tureen in Paul’s lap and pulled the pin. The live grenade fell on the floor and bounced around.

“Hngrenaydwe!” yelled Ken.

Eddie Graff was already lost among a dozen other men dressed exactly like him.

Ken scooped up the grenade like a shortstop fielding a one-hopper between second and third, while, as if they had rehearsed it, a soup-stained Paul Rochemont sprang forward to jerk the lid off the windtorte. Ken flipped the grenade underhand like he was making a double play at second. The grenade caromed off the lid and into the magnificent windtorte. The strawberry whipped cream creme-glace shuddered in all its perfection as the deadly oval disappeared into its rosy depths.

The grenade exploded. Perfect pale meringue shell, pink whipped cream, plump strawberry segments were blown all over everybody. Bernardine, Paul, and Ken were covered from head to foot with the biggest blast of harmless sweets, because they were closest to the windtorte.

“Aha!” cried Paul, “ ’tis an ill windtorte that blows no one good!”

The media people, first under the tables, were emerging to join the rest of the cowering, standing, screaming, laughing, cursing, craning guests as Eddie Graff burst through the swinging doors into the kitchen, caromed off Antoine, and yelled “Terrorists!” to create more confusion.

He ran unimpeded for the outside door and the millions of dollars soon to be his. With both Paul and the old lady gone, that left only Inga... Stupid, malleable little Inga.

Dan Kearny, grease on his hands and a smudge on his nose from changing the tire, was crossing the sidewalk in front of the Officers Club when the grenade went off. Two waiters in black tuxes and red bow ties and red cummerbunds, outside the kitchen grabbing a smoke, were momentarily frozen in place like headlight-startled deer by the explosion.

Gray-haired, gray-mustachioed Eddie Graff came skittering out of the kitchen door beyond them like a car trying to take a sharp corner at high speed. He saw Kearny. His mouth flew open.

Kearny closed it: he grabbed a heavy round silver tray from under the arm of one of the waiters and slammed it full force into Eddie’s face. Graff’s nose flattened, his lips mashed, blood spurted, teeth flew.

Down. And out.