"It won't happen."
Eddie Dandy laughed again, a flat, sour laugh that ended in a sob. "Mike, you're mad."
I turned around and looked at him perched on the edge of the drawer, muscles tightened with near hysteria bunching in his jaw. I grinned at him, then picked up the phone. It was five minutes before they located Pat Chambers and I let him take me apart in sections before I said, "You should have gone with me, friend. It wouldn't have taken all this time."
"What are you talking about?"
"You can buy next year's calendar, Pat. You'll be able to use it."
For ten seconds there was a long silence on the other end of the line. He knew what I was talking about, and his voice came back with a tone of such absolute consternation that I barely heard him say, "Mike . .."
"It was all wrapped up in Lippy Sullivan," I told him. "Handle this gentry, Pat. And Pat ... you'd better pass the word that the President doesn't have to have a heart attack tomorrow. There'll be plenty of news for everybody to chew on ... and when you're passing the word, pass it high up where it counts and none of those eager lads with all that political ambition will be able to get their teeth in my ass for what's going to happen. Tell the thinkers to get a good story ready, because there's going to be the damndest cover-up happening tomorrow you ever saw in your life, and while it's happening I'm going to be walking around with a big grin, spitting in their eyes."
Before he could answer I told him where I was and hung up. Eddie Dandy was watching me like I had gone out of my mind. I handed him the sheet of onionskin paper.
"What's this?"
"The exact location of every one of those containers. You have the manpower already alerted and placed, the experts from Fort Derrick on hand to decontaminate them and the biggest scoop of your whole career. Too bad you'll never really be able to tell about it." I looked at him and felt my face pull into a nasty grin, "Or the rest of it."
I tried one more call, but my party wasn't at home, which confirmed what I already knew. I took the two last photos of Beaver out of my pocket, looked at them and threw them down beside the body. He didn't look like that any more.
Spud Henry didn't know how to say it, the white lies not
quite fitting his mouth. Finally he said, "Oh, hell, Mikey boy, it's just that I got orders. He gimme special orders on the house phone. Nobody goes up. It's an important business meeting."
"How many are up there?"
"Maybe six."
"When'd the last one come in?"
"Oh, an hour ago. It was then I got the call. Nobody else."
"Look, Spud ..."
"Mike, it won't make no difference. They got the elevator locked up on that floor and there ain't no other way. All the elevators stop the next floor down. There's a fire door, but it only opens from the inside and you can't even walk up. Come on, Mike, forget it."
"Sorry, Spud."
"Buddy, it's my job you got in your hands."
"Not if you didn't see me."
'There's no way in that I can't see you! Look, four of them TV's cover the other exits and I got this one. How the hell can I explain?"
"You won't have to."
"Oh boy, will I catch hell. No more tips for old Spud. It's gonna be real dry around here for a while. Maybe that longhaired relief kid will get my job."
"Don't worry," I said.
"So go ahead. Not even a monkey can get there anyway."
The elevator stopped at the top, the doors sliding open noiselessly. It was a bright blue foyer, decorated with modem sculpture and wildly colorful oil paintings in gold frames. The single door at the end was surrealistically decorated with a big eye painted around the peephole and I wondered how long ago it was that I was watched by another painted eye.
I touched the bell and waited. I touched it again, holding it in for a full minute, then let go and waited some more. I wasn't about to try to batter down three inches of oak, so I took out the .45 and blew each of the three locks out of their sockets. The noise of the shots was deafening in that confined space, but the door swung inward limply. I wasn't worried about the sound. It wasn't going to reach anyplace else. The tenants here were paying for absolute privacy that included soundproofing. Tomorrow the shattered door would even be an asset when the explanations started.
I walked through the rooms to the back of the building and into the bedroom that faced the fire escape, covered the catch with my sleeve, twisted it open, then raised the window the same way. All around me New York was staring, watching me with curious yellow eyes in the darker faces of the other buildings, seeing just one more thing to store away in memories that could never be tapped.
Gusts of wind whipped around the corner, driving the ram in angular sheets. I grinned again and started up the perforated steel steps to that other window and leaned against it with my shoulder, putting pressure to it gradually until the small pane cracked almost noiselessly. The pieces came out easily and I got my hand through the opening, undid the lock and shoved the window up. A swipe at the catch wiped out any prints and I was inside.
When I eased the door open I heard the subdued murmur of voices, the words indistinguishable. I was in a small office of some type, functional and modern, the kind a dedicated businessman whose work never stopped would have.
Maybe there would be things in there, I thought, but let somebody else find it.
I leaned on the ornate handle of the latch and tugged the door open.
The maid heard me, but never had time to see me. I laid a fast chop across her jaw as she turned around and she went down without a sound. I pulled her into the little office and closed the door on her. And I was in a dining area with the voices a little louder now because they were right behind the one more door I had to go through.
One of the voices smashed a hand on a table hard and in choked-up anger said, "How many times do I have to tell you? There was nothing! I looked everywhere!"
"It had to be there!" I recognized that voice.
"Don't tell me my job! It was not in the room. It was like all the other places. Maybe he did not have it at all. To him, what would it mean? Nothing, that's what. A single piece of paper with names of places written down. Why would he have kept that?"
Then there was another voice I recognized too, a cold, calm voice that could be jocular and friendly at other times. "He didn't have to know what it meant. It was something that came from the wallet of an important person who would keep only important things on that person. It would have a certain value. Why else would he have made those calls?" The voice paused a moment, then
added. "You know, it would have been easier to have paid his price."
The other one said, "A blackmailer could have photostated it. If it were valuable to me, it would have been equally as valuable to someone else."
"To whom would he sell?" the cold voice asked.
"Who knows how a mind like his would work? Perhaps a newspaperman, or by now he might have even suspected just what he did hold. You realize what it would be worth then, the price he could demand for it? That's all it would take to smash everything we have built. We couldn't take the chance."
"I'm afraid the chance has already been taken," the flat voice stated. "Now there is no time for any alternative. We simply have to wait. At this point there is little possibility that we will fail. If the document is hidden or destroyed, it will stay hidden or destroyed. There is not enough time left for anyone to pursue the matter further. I suggest you ring for that maid again and inquire about our drinks so we can conclude this affair."