“N-Now what?”
I took her out and we found his photo files. It was an extensive and complex system, with thousands of negatives cross indexed to proof sheets and print files. There was another complete filing system for color, and a third for movies both black and white. It wasn’t a collection you could burn in a wastebasket. Connie was fascinated by the files of finished prints. She kept dipping into them, looking for familiar faces, gasping with a mixture of horror and delight when she found them.
I set her to work emptying all the files, dumping everything into a pile in the middle of that small room which adjoined the photo lab. I went back out into the museum part. The glass covering the gold statue niches was set permanently in place. I could see no clue that the niches were hooked up to any alarm system. It took three solid blows with the pipe to open up each niche, one to shatter the glass, two more to hammer shards out of the way so I could pull the heavy images out.
I remembered the two big cushions on the couch and went back to the little studio. I ripped the covers off, and had two sizeable sacks. I divided the statues evenly between the two sacks. I took the whole thirty-four. The Menterez collection had grown. The sacks weighed close to a hundred pounds each, though the contents were not bulky. They were all jumbled in there, like jacks in a child’s game. I bound them with twine. Little Santy Claus packs for good children. I lifted them carefully, one in each hand. The stitches held. I put them back down again.
I went back to the file office. Connie had finished her work. It was spilled wall to wall in the middle of the room, about three feet high at the peak. She was pawing through it, still looking at things.
“You have no idea!” she said. “My God, some of these people are so proper! How in the world did he ever…”
“Listen to me. I’ve got Tomberlin’s keys here. Take them. I think this one unlocks the museum door. I’ve got things to carry. Now get the sequence. We take Tomberlin and the little guy out into the museum. I unwrap Tomberlin. I come back and get this stuff burning. We’ll have to wait a few minutes to be certain it is going real good. Then we unlock the door and go out, yelling fire. Because there is going to be a nice fire, there is going to be considerable confusion. You head for the car as fast as you can. I’ll be right behind you. We go to your place and split up. My car is there. You are going to pack quickly and get out quickly and take a little vacation.”
I saw fifty questions in her eyes, and then she straightened her shoulders and said, “Yes dear.”
It nearly worked. It came within inches and seconds of working. She was trotting ahead of me, the ends of the big stole flying out behind her, a rather hippy and bovine trot but she was making good time. We were almost at the car when the voice of authority called “Halt!” I risked a glance. It was George Wolcott, of the little leaden eyes and the large damp mouth.
“Keep going!” I ordered Connie.
“Halt in the name of the law!” he yelled with stentorian dignity and precision, fired once in the air as the book says, and fired the second one into my back, without a suitable pause. I was fire-hot-wet in back, and fire-hot-wet in front, without pain but suddenly weakened. I wavered and stumbled and got the gold into the car with a vast effort, ordering her to take the wheel and get us out of there. I clawed my way in.
She had it in motion the instant the engine caught, and she slewed it between and among the few cars left, then straightened and headed for the gate. The man there jumped out and then back, like a matador changing his mind about a bull. We went over a hump, screeched down the long curve of drive and onto Stone Canyon Drive, accelerating all the time. She slammed into curves, downshifting, shifting back, keeping the rpm well up toward the red, showing off, laughing aloud.
“Okay,” I said. “Ease off. You’re great.”
She slowed it down. “My God, it’s too much!” she said. “What a change in a dull evening! My God, that couch for a frolic, and those cameras clucking like a circle of hens, and those dirty pictures curling and steaming in that lovely fire. And the great Tomberlin with his mouth full of wig. And a lovely lovely madman smashing glass and stealing gold. And shots in the night. For God’s sweet sake, I haven’t felt so alive in a year. Darling, wasn’t that that dull fellow, actually shooting?”
“That was that dull fellow.”
“But why?”
“It didn’t seem a very good time to ask. I’m glad it was a fun evening for you. There’s a pretty little girl back there with the top of her pretty head blown off. And Claude Boody is dead. He’s always good for laughs.”
The edge of delight was gone from her voice. “So there is going to be a big and classic stink about all this?”
“Yes.”
“But then I don’t think it would be so very smart for me to go away, do you? I don’t know very much. The little I do know, I can lie about. I think you had a little gun in my back. You forced me to do things. I don’t know who you are or where you went.”
“That’s fine, if it’s police questions. But Tomberlin will have some questions. He won’t ask them himself. He might send some people who wouldn’t be polite.”
She thought that over as we waited for a light. “But if I am just… absent, there’ll be a stink about that, officially. I think the best thing is to… report this myself. As an injured party. I can make a statement, whatever they want, and tell them I am going away, and be very careful and go quickly”
“That probably makes more sense.”
“How will I ever find you again?”
“Maybe you won’t.”
“But isn’t that a horrible waste? Don’t you feel that way about it?”
“I can’t guarantee the same kind of evening every time, Connie.”
“Are you sleepy? You sound sleepy. It’s a reaction, I guess.”
“I parked around in that back street, the same as before.”
She spotted the little English Ford and pulled up behind it. I was assembling myself to get out. No pain yet. Just numb-hot on the right side, from armpit to hip. I had the feeling I was carrying myself in a frail basket. As with my care with the stitching on the pillow covers, I felt I had to stand up very slowly and carefully. I opened the car door. She put her hand on my knee. “Will you be all right now?” she asked. “You have everything all planned?”
“Nearly everything.”
I got out, feeling as if I moved in separate parts and pieces. I felt as if the left side would work better than the right. I got one sack in my left hand and took the strain of it as I swung it out. Nothing seemed to tear, in the sack or in me. The sack weighed a mere thousand pounds. I marched slowly to the rear of the little car, put the sack down, found the keys, opened the trunk. I was cleverly constructed of corn flakes and library paste.
Her car lights were bright on the trunk of the little car. I got the sack in and floated back to her car and got the other sack. I had dry teeth and a fixed grin. I put the second sack in and when I closed the back lid I folded against it for a moment, then pushed myself back up to my dangerous height. Her car lights went off and suddenly she was with me, a strong arm around me.
“You’re hit!” she said.
“There’s probably some blood in your car. Wipe it off. Go home. Make your statement. Get the hell out of this, Connie.”
“I’ll get you to a hospital.”
“Thanks a lot. That’s a great idea.”
“What else?”
“Anything else. Because they’ll nail me with some of the trouble back there. And make it stick. And I’d rather be dead than caged. So would you, woman.”