Twenty Plus Two

Chapter 26

The cabin door was open.

Alder killed the motor. “I don’t think he is here.”

Nevertheless, he reached for the shotgun. He got out, looked at Nikki. She nodded and opened the door on her side.

As they turned toward the cabin, the father of Auguste and Jacques Pleschette filled the doorway. He had obviously been an enormous man in his younger years, but now he was stooped. The skin hung from his face and jowls in folds, and his hair was white. He wore overalls with a bib, a flannel shirt, and old work shoes without laces.

He was a very old man, easily eighty-five, but the years had not taken all the fierceness out of his eyes.

“You goddam leave me ’lone,” he said, as Alder and Nikki approached.

“We are here because of your sons,” Alder said.

“Me, I got no goddam son,” Old Frenchy spat at him. “You get back in that goddam car.”

“Old man,” said Alder, “your goddams are wasted on me. I’ve met your son, Auguste, and I have met Jacques. I am coming into your house.”

“You step through door, I break your goddam head!”

Alder walked up to Pleschette. “Break!”

The fierce old eyes glared at him a moment, then he backed into the house. Alder followed him closely, giving him very little room. Nikki waited outside a moment, then followed.

The interior of the cabin was about what Alder had expected after seeing the exterior. Old Frenchy had lived alone for many years. The furniture remained from the days when his wife had been alive. It was simple, plain.

Everything had been neglected for years. Old Frenchy may have used a broom on the floor, once every several weeks, but he had never used mop and water. Not since the time of his wife. Torn clothing was littered on chairs. The round table, covered by battered oilcloth, was littered with everything, including dirty dishes and spoiled food. Pots and pans stood on the sheet-iron stove. Near the stove, facing an old-fashioned rocking chair, was the television set. It was a once-handsome 21-inch screen, expensive brand.

A door led to the bedroom, another to the kitchen. Alder could look into both rooms. They were on a par with the living room in which he stood.

He emptied a straight-backed chair by the simple expedient of sweeping off everything with a single motion of his hand. Alder nodded to Nikki to take the chair.

Old Frenchy stood with his back to the stove, glaring at Alder. “You goddam lousy millionaire,” he growled, “you come my goddam house you hold your nose like you come in pigpen.”

The French accent was barely noticeable in his regular speech but he hit the d’s in “goddam” so that they sounded almost like t’s.

Alder said, “Has Auguste been here?”

“Auguste! Who Auguste?”

“Your son.”

“Got no goddam son.”

“You said that outside, but you’re wasting your time, old man. We are going to stay here until we get what we came for. You might as well understand that.”

“I would like to see your photograph album,” Nikki said suddenly. Her eyes were on a Shelf that was attached to the wall behind the television set.

“Got no goddam album,” mumbled the old man.

Alder walked to the shelf, shoved articles aside so that several fell to the floor. He took down the album and carried it to Nikki.

“You leave my goddam t’ing alone!” snarled Old Frenchy. He took a tentative step toward Alder, but stopped as Alder’s cold eyes met his. It was eagle versus eagle, and Alder was the younger eagle.

Nikki opened the volume, turned the brittle pages and looked at the faded old photographs, glued to the pages. Alder stood near her, now looking as she turned the pages, now staring down Old Frenchy.

She came to a page, where she paused a moment, before continuing on.

Old Frenchy spat. “Want burn that goddam thing when the Old Woman die. She say, Jacques, they your son. They come home when they got no other home to go to.”

Nikki stopped at a faded snapshot of a boy of about ten. He wore a patched flannel shirt that seemed to be much too big for him, probably cut down from Old Frenchy’s discard. He wore a bib overall that was faded from much washing. His black hair was long, uncombed. His sullen face reminded Alder of a ferret he had once caught in a trap.

There was one more picture of Auguste Pleschette. This one must have been taken shortly before he too left his home. He was already quite tall. He wore a mail-order suit, a shirt with long lapels, and a knitted tie. His hair was slicked down with Vaseline or axle grease.

He was staring at the camera, his eyes slitted.

Nikki looked up at Alder. “The picture is not—”

“I know,” said Alder.

“What you goddam talk about?” rasped Old Frenchy.

“Auguste.”

“I show you Gus,” said Old Frenchy. He started for the kitchen door.

Alder hesitated an instant, then brought up the shotgun and followed. Nikki rose, put the album on the chair and went after them.

The old man led the way through the littered kitchen, out through the back door. Outside, he started toward the barn, but swerved before he reached it and went around the building.

Alder closed up the gap between him and the old man, signaled for Nikki to follow, not too closely.

Fifty feet from the barn were two rectangular mounds. One had a weathered crosspiece stuck into the ground. On it, in faded black paint, was the name: Antoinette. There were only scattered weeds growing on the mound; it had received attention not too many months ago.

The other mound was completely covered with weeds. There was no wooden crosspiece.

“Gus,” said Old Frenchy, pointing down at the grave “They send him here in 1938. I bury him ’cause ’Toinette want him here. I tell her, goddam, he no son of mine, but she say he is her son if not mine and she want him bury here. Poof!” Old Frenchy spat at the weed-covered grave. “You get shovel, you dig.”

Alder shook his head. Old Frenchy snorted and turned back toward the barn. Nikki touched Alder’s arm briefly, then fell in behind him.

In single file they started back. Old Frenchy again skirted the barn, but walked closer to it. Alder followed. Old Frenchy continued past the front of the barn, continued toward the house without looking to the right or the left.

It was that which gulled Alder. He stepped out from the protection of the barn wall and the poised whippletree swished down at his head. Only the instantaneous, split-second reflex of his arm, thrown up, saved his head from being crushed.

The arm deflected the force. The whippletree struck the very back of his head, ricocheted down his back.

Alder fell forward on his face.

Nikki did not scream. She stooped, looked at the man who had struck down Alder.

Leroy Dane grinned wickedly at her.

“Hello,” he said.

Old Frenchy turned and came back. “You kill him, you bury him.”

Leroy Dane tossed aside the whippletree, scooped up Alder’s shotgun and then worked the toe of his handmade Italian shoe under Alder’s stomach. He raised him on his side, used his heel to roll him over onto his back.

“Now that’s a dead one!” he said.

Nikki came forward. She dropped to her knees and cupped her hands about Alder’s face. She said, “He’s alive!”

“Too damn bad,” said Dane callously. “Move aside.”

He pumped a shell into the breech of the shotgun.

Nikki looked up, over her left shoulder. “Are you going to kill me before or after him?”

“You don’t think I’m going to let you walk away from here and spill your guts? Don’t you know who I am?”

“I know who you are, but—” She stared at him. “You don’t know who I am?”

“Yeah, sure, you’re the Collinson woman. Your soft-headed husband’s got about fifty million, maybe a hundred.” He sized her up. “I like ’em younger, but you’re a good-looking piece. You’d come around, I’d have given you a tumble. Might, anyway—”

“You gave me a tumble,” said Nikki, “twenty-two years ago.”

He looked at her curiously. Then suddenly shock came into his eyes.

“Doris Delaney,” Nikki said.

“Be goddamned!” cried Leroy Dane thickly. He stared at her. “I saw you the other night in Beverly Hills. I couldn’t place you. So many women chase me. Rich women, too. Hell, they give me diamond rings, watches. They want to pay me. Stud fees, I call em. You looked familiar. No, you didn’t. The kid was a tow-headed punk.” He stared at her again. “Maybe I made a mistake. I thought you’d look like this after twenty-some years. All that money. I couldda done worse. I should have married you.”

“That you could never have done.”

“Hell, I knocked you up. Whatever happened to...?”

“I killed it,” said Nikki. “I didn’t want that filth in me. I killed it, like I thought I killed you.”

“Yeah, that’s right. You shot me with my own gun. Hell, that little hunk a lead bounced off my skull. I was on my feet before you were out of the door.”

“And then you killed the man who called himself Danny Koenig.”

“Seemed like a good idea at the time. I was a punk and your old man had about fifty million dollars. The boss wouldn’t protect his people if he had to go against fifty million dollars. I put my stuff in his pockets and beat it.

“Nobody looked for me. Danny Koenig was a cheap punk. He’d never been seen around a girl named Doris Delaney. The school kids and the people in the ice cream place wouldn’t tie up a hood name of Koenig—”

“The paper printed your picture.”

“Only break I ever got in my life. All the rest I had to get for myself. The cops bust in on a bookie joint once. Some photographer took our pictures and some drunk newspaper man mixed up the names. They had me down as Koenig, Koenig as me. Any other little thing you want to know before...?”

“Before your brother gets here?”

Leroy Dane looked down at her for the beat of a second. “My big brother?”

“He’s in Bismarck.”

Leroy’s eyes went to his father. “You know?”

“I don’t know a goddam thing, Gus. I don’t hear from your brother longer’n I hear from you.”

Dane turned back to Nikki. She got to her feet.

“You’re lying.”

“Who sent the clipping to your fan secretary?”

“That blackmailing old hag! She got what she was asking for.”

“She was Big Frenchy’s accomplice,” Nikki said clearly. “From ’way back. Her record was blackmail right down the line. Tom told me.”

“This Tom fella was a busy little beaver,” sneered Dane, kicking the unconscious form of Alder. “I got rid of Julia and then he had to stick his nose into it.”

Leroy Dane scowled. His fans would not have recognized it, for he never scowled on the screen or in his pictures. He smiled, he looked into the camera with his honest blue eyes. He smiled when he wasn’t pensive or moody. He never scowled or sneered. Only villains did those things and Dane was a hero.

He said, “I can’t take the chance with that brother of mine. What I’ve heard, he doesn’t think like other people. Drag him in the house, Pop.”

He kicked Alder again.