“About you and your uncle. They said that you and your uncle had Mix kidnapped. It was quite a story.”
“Did you believe it?”
“Part of it. So I went home and got my gun and came out here with them.”
“Just like that?”
“Lemme show you something,” Murfin said. “Lemme show you who fed me the story and then maybe you’ll understand why I came.”
He went over to the Plymouth. “I wantcha to see this,” he said. He opened the rear door. Lying on the back seat on his side with his knees drawn up to his chest and his thumb in his mouth was Roger Vullo. His eyes were open and staring. When I went closer I could smell the urine. Roger Vullo had wet his pants.
“Hey, Vullo,” Murfin said.
Vullo didn’t move. His eyes blinked once, but I don’t think he really heard anything.
We stared at him for a moment and then Murfin slammed the rear door shut. “Well, at least he’s not biting his fingernails anymore.”
“They’re going to have to get some auditors,” I said.
“For the Foundation?”
I nodded. “My uncle said that they’d thought up a way to channel the money. They used the Foundation. He and Vullo must have set it up that way.”
“It was phony, wasn’t it? I’ve figured that out,” Murfin said. “The whole fuckin’ thing was phony, right from the start.”
“Right from the start,” I said.
Murfin thought about it for a moment and then he looked at me and smiled one of those terrible smiles of his that almost made me want to turn away. “You know something?”
“What?”
“It damn near worked. Shit, I bet if they’d come to me, I could’ve figured out how to’ve made it work.”
We heard the sirens then. It sounded as if they were drawing near, so we stood there and waited and listened to the sirens. When the sheriff’s cars turned into the lane I could tell that they were going far too fast. But The Proper Villain slowed them down. He always did.
Chapter Twenty-Five
It was the first Saturday in September and Senator Corsing and I were sitting on my porch, drinking gin and watching the sweet-voiced Jenny as she grasped the rope of the swing.
She looked back. “Like this?” she said.
“Like that,” the Senator said.
She pushed off the rail of the porch and sailed out over the pond and when she let go she screamed just a little as she fell and her yellow bikini seemed to flash in the hot afternoon sun. She came up spouting and laughing and swam over to where Ruth was lying on the new raft that I had built.
The Senator took a swallow of his iced gin. “They held a meeting,” he said.
“Who?”
“The candidates.”
“Both of them?”
“Uh-huh. I put it together.”
“What’d they meet about?”
“How to cover it up.”
“Everything?”
“Almost everything.”
“I didn’t think anybody was going to do that anymore.”
“Are you trying to be funny?”
“Just a little,” I said.
“One of the problems was the money that your uncle raised.”
“What about it?”
“They’ve managed to trace some of it. Where it came from. It went to the Foundation, of course, and then some of it went to the union. It helped pay the salaries of those two hundred guys they sent out. It’s a real mess. If they disclosed where the money came from, then they’d have to tell where it wound up, so they decided that it was a no-win deal. Neither of the candidates would have an advantage and that’s why they decided to put the lid on it.”
“I suppose it makes sense.”
“It does to a politician.”
“Where’d the money come from?”
The Senator looked at me. “Where does big money always come from?” He took another swallow of his drink. “Your uncle had a lot of big-shot friends.”
“Eight hundred,” I said.
“Did he count them?”
“That’s how many Christmas cards he sent out.”
“He got to Vullo.”
“Slick?”
“Yes. He got to Vullo with the idea of the Foundation. I don’t know whether he knew Vullo was a little nuts or not. Anyway, it wasn’t a bad idea. All that big corporate money going into a foundation that supposedly was set up to find out who really shot Jack Kennedy, et al. It was really rather clever, if you like that sort of thing.”
“It sounds like Slick,” I said. “He must have been the one who had Vullo bring me into it.”
“Why?”
“Why was I brought in?”
“Yes.”
“To poke holes, I guess.”
“So that they could cover them up, if need be.”
“Yes.”
“Well, you did poke a few, didn’t you?” the Senator said.
“And they almost covered them up, too.”
“Yes,” he said, “they did.” He took another swallow of his drink. “It was really quite a scheme, wasn’t it? First, they set up the Foundation. Then your uncle and Vullo had Mix kidnapped. After that they went to Gallops.”
“What’d they offer him?”
“The two million in ransom. That was the carrot. The stick was that if he didn’t go along with the strikes, the same thing could happen to him that happened to Mix. Or worse. He believed them. I’m not sure that I blame him.”
“You think they’ll ever find him?”
“Gallops?”
I nodded.
“I’m not even sure that they’re looking for him too hard. The Candidate told me that they’ve heard rumors that he’s somewhere down in the Caribbean. Spending the money, I guess. It should take him a while to spend two million.”
“What’s the diagnosis on Vullo?”
The Senator shrugged. “They’ve got him in this sanitarium in upstate New York. He’s catatonic — just like my wife. Did I tell you I’m going to divorce her?”
I shook my head.
“I filed for it two days ago when I was back in St. Louis. If the voters don’t like it, fuck ’em. I can always open a diner. While I was out there I also saw Freddie Koontz. He got his old job back.”
“That’s good,” I said.
“He told me about you and Murfin at that meeting. Does Murfin always carry a blackjack?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, the Candidate put him on the payroll as you suggested so maybe somebody should tell him to leave the blackjack home.”
“Why?” I said. “The campaign’s still got two months to go. Maybe it’ll come in handy.”
“You may be right,” he said. “The Candidate also asked me to find out what you want. I told him I’d ask.”
I took a swallow of my gin and got up. “I don’t want anything,” I said.
“Nothing at all?”
“Not anything that anybody can give me,” I said and used the bamboo pole to pull the swing in. The Senator put down his drink and stood up, remembering to suck in his stomach so that it wouldn’t bulge out over his trunks. He climbed up on to the porch rail, grasped the rope, and pushed off. As I watched the Senator fall, I wondered what the weather would be like in Dubrovnik.