Читать книгу Mysteries Unlimited Ltd. - Donald Ph.D. Ladew - Страница 7

Sydney looked out the dormer window at the garden, shimmering softly as a Japanese water-color through the sheets of rain.

“May fourth,” he noted the date on a well thumbed Gary Larson desk calendar. “I guess this is what the weather dorks call unseasonable. Miss Spote...”

She appeared at the door miraculously: Radar O’Reilly reincarnated as Attila the Hun.

“Mr. Lee?”

“Miss Spotea, ask Koban to bring the Rolls around front.”

“Yes, sir.” Her voice reeked disapproval.

“What’s the problem, Miss Spotea, does Jesus also disapprove of my Rolls Royce, or is it just me?”

“Egregious displays of wealth are an offense in the eyes of the Lord.”

“Hmmm, and what is God’s choice this year? A Ford? A Chevrolet? A Volvo? No, something more functional I suppose.”

Her bloodless lips drooped at the corners. “It is not patriotic to mock American products.”

“Right! Obviously God doesn’t think much of Volvos. I’m not sure I understand, Miss Spotea. Has God chosen you as arbiter of good taste in automobiles, along with everything else?”

“The Grace of God is alike unto patriotism.”

Sydney grunted. Stupidity and dogma affected him like a straight right to the gut. He felt a strange numbness creep over him as he tried to follow the tortured maze of her logic.

“Ask a foolish question,” he muttered, “proving once again you get what you ask for.”

Sydney Lee had long since concluded that as a rule he did not welcome the conversation of bigots, and trying to talk to Miss Spotea hadn’t done anything to change his mind.

“Ask Koban to bring the Rolls, Miss Spotea, without the drama or disapproval if you please.” Sydney put more snap into the second request.

She left the office abruptly, but not without the⎯see how wrong you are, and right I am⎯long-suffering sigh of the unfulfilled martyr.

Sydney Lee didn’t drive. He knew how, but if anyone asked, he said he didn’t. He had loved Rolls Royce automobiles since boyhood, especially if someone else drove. As soon as he could afford a driver, he bought an old gun-metal gray Rolls Royce Phaeton as big as a mobile home; some would say the steering wheel was on the wrong side.

Koban Mitsunaga, Lepidopterist and gardener, liked driving the Rolls almost as much as Sydney liked being driven.

Koban was Sydney’s expert on gardens, butterflies, insects, birds. A couple years before, Sydney hired him to write a report for a lazy Professor of Botany at UCLA. Doing research and writing reports was a staple of Mysteries Unlimited Ltd., the business establishment of which he was CEO, President and owner. There is an over abundance of lazy professors in the California university system.

“Tenure encourages sloth, stupidity and undeserved arrogance. Write that a thousand times on the board, please,” Sydney murmured.

In the two weeks during which Mitsunaga was supposed to write the report he pestered Sydney constantly about the gardens.

Koban was bad tempered and opinionated. He watched the Mexican gardeners constantly. Every time they stopped working, he screamed curses in Japanese, and to get his point across, beat the ground with a large ebony walking stick. They smiled cheerfully and in Spanish, suggested he perform anatomically and athletically impossible acts with a variety of farm animals.

When they came the next day, Koban ran them off and went to work on the gardens himself. He finished the report in an evening, and then hollered at Sydney in atrocious English.

“I am butterfry person,” he shouted. “You tlap me into Amellican steleotype. You sink all Japanese are gardeners.”

Sydney didn’t mind. He knew eccentric like Jack Nicklaus knows the power fade.

“How much money you make in butterflies?” He almost said butterfries.

“You sink I do this for money?”

“I don’t know. Answer the question.”

Koban grunted something in Japanese, and then looked at Sydney slyly. “Not much.”

“I didn’t think so. Okay, here’s the deal. I pay you two thousand a month and bonuses. You can be my resident flower and insect man, write papers, do research, whatever. The rest of the time you’re the gardener. I’ll even throw in a place to live if you don’t give me a lot of shit.”

“What is, give shit?”

“Trouble.”

“Hah! I don’t give shit. I am Zen Master, always selene.”

“Selene like a moon beam. Sure you are. What’s your answer?”

“I will take job, but don’t try to exproit me, I know Bill of Lights.”

“Pardon me? Look, just go mow the lawn or something. Try being inscrutable. Say Richard writes Roger Rabbit rapidly over and over.”

It was fine. Sydney ignored his tantrums when people, mostly himself, dropped cigar wrappers in the garden, and when he needed someone to drive the Rolls, Koban volunteered.

Life, Sydney thought with satisfaction, is filled with the unexpected.

He waited on the steps while Koban put their overnight bags and a large picnic basket in the boot. Koban insisted on calling it the tlunk. Sydney couldn’t even say the word.

“Koban, I hate to say this old pal, but you are giving ethnicity a bad name.”

Sydney’s daughter, Charlie Lee, joined him on the steps.

“Don’t do anything silly at that prison, Daddy. They might not let you go.”

“Might not be so bad. A couple years in jail with a thousand sex-starved women.”

“I estimate three hundred and fifty five, Daddy. The rest don’t like men very much, and probably have more body hair than you do.”

Sydney laughed. “You’ve ruined a perfectly workable fantasy, Charlie Lee.”

As the Rolls glided down Franklin Avenue to the Hollywood Freeway, he thought about Charlie Lee and smiled.

“The Gods give and the Gods take away.”

On the drive north to the Mojave he put his attention on the new project. Before he decided to interview the erudite Miss Heely, he made a few discreet inquiries, called in a few favors.

“It doesn’t make sense, Koban.” He thumbed through a growing file. “She was in excellent financial shape before the ‘May Day Massacre’. That’s what the newspapers called the theft.”

Koban sucked his breath in, and hissed.

“Hisssss, So ka.”

“Ninety million, Jesus! How in hell do you steal that much?”

“Carefully.” Koban said with perfect diction.

Sydney looked up at Koban who didn’t change expression.

“Cute, you’re probably not even Japanese. Matter of fact I’ve noticed a certain Korean caste to your face.”

Koban grunted enigmatically and did not rise to the bait.

Sydney went back to the file. “She had a good securities portfolio, stock in the bank and more every year; salary seventy-seven thousand, bound to go higher. It’s crazy. She made it in a profession where she’d have to be twice as bright as every man who wanted her job. Articulate, outspoken and obviously competent; definitely on the fast track.”

He thumbed through his notes and pulled out Miss Heely’s vital statistics.

“Zippedy do dah, Zippedy hey....mmmm, thirty two, never married, I wonder why?”

Attached to the page were several pictures: one from a book dust-cover, another from a newspaper Sunday supplement, titled: Executive Women on the Rise.

“Dresses like a woman; nice figure.”

He continued to sort through the data. There was another picture taken at the trial. She looked puzzled; the wounded puppy look.

“Well, Jean, it looks like you got your first taste of the real and sometimes ugly world.”

Because it was a first offense, the Judge sent her to a minimum security facility in the mountains west of the Mojave Desert.

It hadn’t been easy to arrange the interview. The Warden blathered like a man with a secret. He said Miss Heely couldn’t receive any visitors.

Why so nervous, Sydney wondered?

When Sydney suggested that the newspapers might be interested in how an ordinary prisoner wasn’t allowed visitors, the Warden backed off in a hurry: Peculiar.

The entrance to the prison was in a bone dry canyon that could have passed for a western movie set. After going through three layers of ten foot fences, he filled out forms and answered rude questions from a female warder with bad breath and worse teeth, which she sucked constantly, creating truly disgusting noises.

After that he was finally ushered into a small outdoor area with cement benches and picnic tables covered with brightly colored Cinzano awnings. Several prisoners were there with family, and men friends.

Two butch guards banged long oak sticks on a nearby fence and screamed every time some desperate husband or boyfriend tried to touch that which human frailty and the law had put beyond reach.

The guards at the gate went over Sydney and his hamper like an airport security team. While he waited for Miss Heely, he laid out a checkered table cloth, two sets of silver, two crystal goblets, and linen napery. Next came cheeses, a selection of fruit, fresh French bread, creamery butter, and an assortment of finely sliced meats.

Lastly he produced a bottle labeled Dom Perignon ‘75’. It didn’t contain champagne. Apple juice was as close as he could get to champagne.

Two guards escorted Miss Heely across the yard. At first he didn’t recognize her. Her hair was cut short and she wore a shapeless cotton dress in faded institution blue. In the book jacket picture she appeared to be carrying ten pounds extra. Since then she’d lost fifteen.

Her expression was closed, wary. Sydney stood and indicated the bench across from him. The two guards moved in and stationed themselves menacingly on either side of her.

“You can leave.” Sydney waited, but they didn’t move.

“Fine.” He walked over to the nearest one with notepad in hand. The guard had a name plate and a numbered badge like a policeman. Sydney wrote the number and name down carefully. Then he looked at his watch and noted the time.

Sydney turned to Miss Heely. “Excuse me for moment.” He walked over to the other guard and repeated the procedure. Then he moved to the nearest picnic table and spoke to one of visitors.

One of the female warders got nervous, ran after him and grabbed his arm. Sydney turned into the woman and snarled. She backed up so fast she fell down. Her hand went to a large walnut-gripped pistol worn forward like a gunfighter.

“Put your hand on me again you Nazi bitch and I’ll see you wearing a uniform the color of hers.”

Jean, who had been observing nervously, watched Sydney undergo a remarkable change. Easy going, eccentric, middle-aged, disappeared, to be replaced by something visibly dangerous.

“I’ll explain this just once, Miss.” His voice was filled with disbelief at her gender. “I am here as a legal aide to Miss Heely. You are hindering me in that pursuit. The Penal code is very clear regarding my rights and Miss Heely’s rights. I want to consult with my client privately. I will ask this gentleman to be a witness that you are preventing me from doing that.”

Sydney took another step forward and the Incredible Hulkess scrambled to her feet and backed up again.

To Miss Heely he seemed to have grown a foot taller. The guard blanched, kept backing up and said nothing. He turned and walked to the other guard standing next to Miss Heely.

“You too, beautiful.”

For a moment an ugly look began to form on her face. She thought about it, then walked away. Sydney took a breath, shrugged his shoulders like the boxer he had once been and sat down across from Jean.

The closed expression was gone from her face. She looked stunned and slightly hopeful.

“One wonders what they dream of, what peculiar fantasy occupies their thoughts. Miss Heely, I apologize for the fuss, and the bad language, but I had to be certain I was communicating. In these circumstances I find short tuetonic words to be most effective. This is going to take some time, and I don’t want those Neanderthals breathing on our food.

“Oh, I’m sorry.” He stood up and held out his hand. “I am Sydney Constant Lee, Mysteries Unlimited Ltd.”

She took his hand and murmured. “I am so pleased that you could come.” Very formal, very proper. A hint of a smile formed at the corners of her mouth.

“Constant?”

She’s really quite pretty, Sydney thought, even now. “The less said about my middle name the better. It’s one of those things over which one has no control until it’s too late.”

She started to speak. Sydney held up his hand. “I know, you have a lot to tell me, but first we eat. You’re too thin.”

The tentative smile, more an attitude than a physical fact, poked through again.

“Before I came to this place I struggled, unsuccessfully for this look.”

Sydney shook his head. “For what it’s worth, I liked your figure the way it was. C’mon, let’s eat.”

She winced, unable to have the compliment. A half hour later she sat back, sighed and looked down at her waist.

“God, I haven’t eaten like this since before the trial.”

“Good. I have tea in the thermos or more ‘champagne’,” he pointed to the bottle of apple juice.

As he leaned forward to pour the juice he felt something under the table.

“Damn!”

She looked alarmed. “What is it?”

He reached under the table, felt around, then jerked his hand toward his body. It was the size of his thumb nail and metallic with a matte black case.

“A bug, a listening device. Hummph! Someone’s either very worried about you,” he looked toward the administration buildings across the picnic area, “or me. This is very illegal by the way.” He turned it over and over, examining it closely. “It’s a Cony. Nice equipment, and relatively inexpensive.

“I’ve got an idea.” Sydney stood up and spoke in a loud voice. “Any lawyers here?”

Two guys at two separate tables looked up and nodded. “I just found this little goodie under my table. If there’s one under mine...”

There was a mad scramble as the lawyers and everyone else began searching under their tables. Sure enough there was one under every table. Someone wanted to be very sure.

There was a lot of cursing and threats to sue. The guards watched nervously but were afraid to take them away from the lawyers.

Sydney held it over his cup of tea, gave her an exaggerated wink and let it drop. “Clumsy ole me. Probably the FBI installed them, or the States Attorney.

“Miss Heely, you write a nice letter. Pretty handwriting too. Don’t see the Palmer Method much any more. I did quite a bit of checking before I came. I understand why the FBI is hanging on. Ninety million recovered would mean happy faces on the wall and promotions all around. So tell me, where do you think it went?”

“Hell, I don’t know, into the electronic woodwork, I suppose.”

Her voice held despair. It was obviously a question she had asked herself every day since her arrest and trial.

“Miss Heely, that’s got to stop. You had enough hope to write the letter. You’ve got to be sharp, angry. You aren’t dead, so if you don’t mind, start acting alive.”

“I said, I don’t know!” There was a fine executive snap to her voice.

“That’s better. I bet that tone struck terror into your juniors. Remember it. You were the youngest Vice President of a major bank in the United States. You may not know the specifics, but I’ll bet you know the possibilities. That was your business. You know computers and you know banks.

“Oh, by the way, I took the liberty of checking out that investigating firm you tried to hire, the one you said backed off. Guess who their bank is?” He nodded at her surprise.

“Right. Bad luck. No way you could have known. They were in the middle of an expansion and short of capital. But the real question isn’t why, but who told them to stay clear.”

“You really have been digging, haven’t you,” her surprise was obvious.

Sydney frowned.

She went on quickly. “Oh, I’m sorry. Please don’t be upset with me. I read this article about a company called MYSTERIES UNLIMITED LTD. in the Sunday Times. It was very tongue in cheek. The woman who wrote it said she never met a more bizarre bunch of loonies in her entire life...and how many companies have a Yellow Brick Road leading to their place of business? I’m sorry, I’ve told my story so many times I have a hard time believing it myself.”

“I understand, but that’s over. I want you to do several things right away.” He ticked them off on his fingers.

“First, write a letter telling your lawyer to give me a complete transcript of the trial. Everything, every scrap of paper they accumulated before, during and after. As soon as you’ve done that, write another letter officially firing them. Second, I want you to write a bio of every executive at the bank.”

Her eyebrows went up.

“That’s right, everyone. I don’t care if that means a hundred people. You have time. Be chatty, personal. I want opinion, gut feel, anecdotes, things overheard at company picnics; the good, the bad and the ugly. Any personal details, and I mean personal. If someone was having an affair; anyone too familiar with modern chemistry, or sleeping with members of their own sex, include it. Although that may not be germane in San Francisco.”

Sydney stopped for a moment and read from a notebook. “I also need all the technical stuff, what their responsibilities are. Third, write a description of your job. Do you know how to make a flow chart? If you do, make one showing every step of your job, and every person you came in contact with while performing that job. Detail, Miss Heely, detail. Make it as technical as you like. In a week I’ll have an expert on board who knows as much about your job as you do.”

As he continued a light began to appear in her eyes. She sat up straighter. When he stopped she laughed out loud for the first time.

Sydney smiled. “I like that, Miss Heely. You have a nice generous laugh.”

“You really believe I didn’t do it, don’t you!”

He nodded. “Uh huh. I wasn’t sure when I came up here. I had a feeling, a hunch. I was pretty sure there was more to it than came out at the trial. And by the way, for a major crime, that was the fastest piece of ‘justice’ ever to come out of the California Courts system. Usually they can’t handle a contested parking ticket in less than a year.

“A friend of mine in Sacramento who follows legal things said your lawyers were as close to incompetent as they could get without being disbarred on the spot. And who authorized your case to be jumped ahead of three first-degree murders, an aggravated rape, a long standing oil/land use suit, and so on?

“It smacks of what the newspapers call, the flagrant abuse of power. I’ll have the whole legal process looked at very carefully. He’s as smart as they were stupid.”

“Wow!” She let her breath out in a rush of relief.

“You take it easy. Don’t get so excited you can’t think. We don’t spend the money until we see the numbers on the Lotto ticket. This is going to take time. I hope you have money, I can’t fund this whole thing on my own.”

This wasn’t entirely true. Sydney had a lot of money, but he was a firm believer in the theory that people should invest in their own survival.

“Well, there’s the two million in the Banco de Belgique,” Jean tried to smile. “Sorry, a little joke. Yes, I have some, though those shysters who defended me got most of it. I think there’s a hundred thousand left in stocks and bonds. I’ll give you a letter to my accountant. He’s one of the few who still think I’m innocent.”

Jean looked away, deep in thought for a long moment.

“You know, Mr. Lee, the insurers must have paid plenty, and they wouldn’t pay a dime if they could avoid it. Might they not give you a finders fee if you discovered where the money went, and were able to recover it?”

Sydney smiled, looked startled. “I’ll be damned. I hadn’t thought of that. My, my, my...what a happy thought. I confess a few million dollars interests me.”

“Much more than that,” she said.

“All right, Miss Heely. That’s enough for now. We have a lot to do. There’ll be hard times before it’s over. One of the reasons I took this case is that you don’t complain. I like that. Eat well and take care of yourself, that’s an order. You’re a beautiful woman. Don’t let yourself go.”

She looked down at her body and the tears started to come.

“I’m sorry. I didn’t expect anyone ever to say that to me again. This,” she indicated herself and the surroundings, “makes me feel ugly.” She pulled at the faded blue prison uniform.

“I know. Hold this thought. Before long you’ll be wearing beautiful clothes again. When you leave this place, men will see you and walk into parked cars, women will destroy their mirrors in the thousands, and little girls will put iconic pictures of you over their beds.”

Jean giggled like a little girl. “You are really outrageous. Has any woman ever said no, to you?”

“More than I care to count. In the mean time I’ll see that you get some new things to wear. This is a minimum security prison. You’re allowed to wear civilian clothing.”

“Thank you, Mr. Lee.” She held up her hand as he started to rise. “Before you go, I better tell you something. I think someone wants me hurt or dead.”

She said it in such a matter of fact way it took a moment to register.

“Christ! What happened?”

“Well, a rattlesnake was thrown into my cell about a month after I got here. If I had panicked it would very likely have struck, but I like snakes and just stood there and admired it until it got bored and left. Right after that, a guard, that one,” she nodded toward one of the female warders, “appeared out of nowhere and got the snake. She got there too fast for it to have been an accident.

“The next time, this butch type picked a fight with me on a work detail. I didn’t believe it was for real until she came after me with a knife.”

Sydney waited for her to go on. “Well, goddamn it, what happened?”

“Oh, I kicked her...you know, down there. It works pretty near as well as it does with a man.”

Sydney slapped his thighs with a bang. “Lady, I like your style. Keep your eyes open. I’ll definitely do something about that. Before I’m finished they’ll protect you like the crown jewels.”

He stood up and shook her hand gently. She tried not to cry again.

“You take it easy, Miss. We may have a funny sounding name, but we know what we’re doing. I’ll be back in two weeks. You’re allowed to use the phone. Use it. I have call forwarding so you can reach me wherever I am.”

He motioned to the guards. Before they took her away he gave them a little message.

“Listen to me, both of you. I have your names and badge numbers. I’m filing a formal complaint with the state prison oversight board, and with the State Attorney General’s Office. You will be named. If Miss Heely comes to any harm, receives any treatment other than what is proper under the law, you two won’t be able to find a hole deep enough to hide. My next stop is the Warden, where everything I’ve heard today will also be reported.”

He patted Jean on the shoulder. “You remember what I said, I want to see those ten pounds back where they belong.”

He looked at the places he wanted to see those pounds very pointedly.

Jean’s pale skin blushed deep pink.