Читать книгу Shock! - Donald Ph.D. Ladew - Страница 6

Gilbert collapsed, like a man who all his life believes in the laws of gravity and suddenly finds himself floating off the surface of the planet.

"This is wrong! It cannot be!"

The site manager, a French NATO appointee, Robert Beaumanier, having read the telegram before he gave it to Gilbert, didn't know how to respond.

Since Gilbert's arrival he'd seen the work of a resolute, highly skilled engineer, one who never raised his voice.

"Mr. Piers?"

Gilbert looked at him for some time before Beaumanier realized Gilbert didn't see him at all. He looked at something far removed from the small office.

Finally, Beaumanier, not very bright under the best of circumstances, realized Gilbert was in shock, took his arm and gently led him to a worn couch covered with frayed damask. From a sideboard near the desk, he took a bottle of American whiskey, poured a generous amount into a heavy tumbler and placed it directly into Gilbert's hand. He led him to drink like a child.

"Here, drink this, Gilbert..." He pronounced his name in the French way. "Drink it, mon vieux. Je suis désolé. I am very sorry."

Gilbert drank, shuddering convulsively. His expression of disbelief hadn't changed. Tears came, but his features were frozen. He hadn't drunk twenty glasses of whiskey in his whole life, yet it was as though the body, apart from the spirit, wasn't affected by the powerful liquid.

The body weeps, the spirit is numb. After more than a half hour sitting thus, the glass clutched forgotten in his hand, he let go of whatever thought he clung to. His body sagged, the glass fell to the floor and he made a face as though having tasted something bitter. His hands, gripped and twisted in his lap

He looked up at the plump manager, aware of him for the first time since reading the telegram.

"I saw her...four months ago, Robert. A little murmur," Gilbert touched his chest, "otherwise her health was fine. She looked forward to..." He coughed, "expanding the garden. There were commissions from several magazines, other activities, which plus her investigative work would have taken years to complete. It is ridiculous!" He did not shout, but it was, never the less, a plea.

It took a day to arrange transport to Ankara and then to the United States. Before the trip, before the telegram, he seldom slept more than five hours a night. He didn't feel a need for more, and in fact resented the five hours as wasteful. Later, thinking back on this time, he would remember little of the flights.

On the longest segment from London to Los Angeles he slept for nine hours despite a worried stewardess's attempts to wake him for meals.

When he arrived in Los Angeles this strange bout of lethargy ended abruptly. It came and went without explanation. Those few hours when he was awake he knew only one thing with certainty; there was something strange, and something very wrong about his mother's death.

He knew nothing about how or why she died, but he was certain of the wrongness.

By the time he arrived in LA and caught a taxi to his family's home in the Los Feliz district, he had his grief under control.

Although he'd lived and worked all over the world for the past ten years, he considered his relationship with his mother close and affectionate. They wrote often. His letters and hers in return were more than duty between mother and son. They were the natural extension of education, temperament and affection.

Much of his education had come from his parents and their friends. Their spiritual home was the world of books: the quiet halls of academe, their natural environment.

In her letters she talked of her ups and downs, her wins and losses. Nothing in her letters suggested any sort of physical problem or personal difficulty. It had been very bad when Gilbert's father died, but even that had passed.

His mind began to work. Trained to sift fact from supposition, the real from the hopeful, his thoughts went to the telegram.

It said, 'your mother is dead'. It did not say how or why. He would start there.

He told the taxi driver he changed his mind and gave him an address in Century City.

"I'll have a little chat with the lawyer, Mr. Eavers."

The offices occupied one whole floor of the Occidental Building. They were plush, real wood paneling, not the usual pressed fiber and plastic. The receptionist was pretty in a superficial way.

"May I help you, Mr.?" she asked.

"Piers, Gilbert Austin Piers. Yes, I want to see Mr. Eavers, please."

She frowned. "Do you have an appointment?" She obviously didn't approve of this gaunt-faced, unshaven stranger.

"No, miss, I don't. I've just arrived from Turkey. Just give him my name please; I'm sure he'll see me." His voice was soft, polite, and distant.

"I'm sorry, Mr. Piers. If you haven't an appointment...he really is a very busy man." She thumbed through an appointment book. "I think I can fit you in next week? If you'd care to tell me what it's about?"

Gilbert looked at her patiently for a long minute while she became increasingly uncomfortable.

"Is there anything else I can do for you?"

"Miss," he looked at her more directly. "Go and tell Mr. Eavers that Mr. Piers is here to see him. Don't use the phone. You go and tell him personally. Do it now!" He hadn't raised his voice, but tone and intention were unmistakable.

She hesitated only an instant, got up and hurried out of the reception area toward a large door with a brass plaque that said, Partners.

It didn't take long. He came through the door like a fullback charging the line. Gilbert knew the type: USC, athlete, the right fraternities. Now he drank too much, claimed to be on a first name basis with Hollywood producers, had a mistress and a mortgage that were slowly killing him.

He had short, dark-blonde hair combed to hide male-pattern baldness, a pulpy, rounded nose damaged by whiskey and he smiled as though Gilbert was his best friend.

"So glad to meet you, Gil, may I call you Gil? I feel like a member of the family. Awfully sorry to meet under these circumstances, fella." His handshake was pure Hollywood, like his smile, as sincere as a mortician. Still gripping Gilbert's hand, he moved toward the door to his office.

Gilbert didn't move and though Eavers outweighed him by seventy-five pounds and stood six inches taller, he had the sudden sensation of having grabbed hold of a large block of cement. He let go of Gilbert's hand and made sounds of confusion.

Gilbert looked at him as something diseased that had crawled from beneath a wet rock. He set aside his decision to question the man. Better to have someone less...involved handle it.

"Before you do or say anything, Mr. Eavers, let's be clear about a few things. You may not call me Gil. You will call me Mr. Piers. You are not a member of my family nor are you ever likely to become one. You are obviously not the slightest bit sorry about my mother; your telegram made that plain. I want nothing from you except to get a set of keys to my mother's house. My own were misplaced."

Eavers began to speak and Gilbert held up his hand. "No, Eavers, you're not listening. Get me a set of keys to the house."

"Well, I don't know if I can do that, Mr. Piers, after all..."

Gilbert raised a tired eyebrow and walked over to the secretary's desk.

"Excuse me." She backed away from the desk.

He took bills from his pocket and without looking at them and tossed them on her desk.

"For a telephone call," he said, looking steadily at Eavers.

He called an old friend from his university days at Cal Tech. They'd been engineering students together, and then his friend had gone on to study patent law.

It rang for a moment while Gilbert stared at Eavers whose mouth worked like a trout thrown up on the sand. A secretary put him through right away.

"George, this is Gilbert Piers. I've just got in from Turkey, no, hold on, George, just listen! My mother died, I don't know anything about it yet. I don't want to keep the firm that has been taking care of things. I am not pleased with their attitude.

"Yes, this is a formal request. I'll send a retainer tomorrow. I want you to get every piece of paper having to do with my family from this office today: Everything, George. If there is any suggestion that anything, even a note scribbled on a pad of paper is missing, let me know and we'll take steps to acquire it. You'll have access to the accountant's files that should help. I have asked Mr. Eavers for a set of keys to the house and he seems reluctant to give them to me. Will you straighten him out?"

Gilbert handed the phone to Eavers, who stood through the whole conversation trying to figure out how things could have gotten so far out of control. He just wanted to make sure he was in charge of things, like he'd been with the old woman. This wasn't supposed to happen.

The lawyer on the other end of the line made a few suggestions, which made Eaver’s fingers twitch and a fine sheen of alcoholic sweat pop out on the bridge of his nose and upper lip. He handed the phone back.

"Gilbert? Good, he'll get you the keys. I take it you think something's rotten down there?" George said.

"Yes, very rotten." Gilbert, looking directly at Eavers, didn't elaborate.

"Okay, you go along to the house, I'll be by in an hour or so with some papers which will give me the authority I need. I've told Eavers to have everything ready by the end of the day. Do you want me to do an audit of his work and the finances?" George asked.

"Yes, George," he glanced at the sweating lawyer, "yes, you do a very thorough audit; legal and financial."

"Got it: See you soon, Gilbert." He handed the phone to the secretary. "It never hurts to be nice, Miss. If the money doesn't cover the phone, send me a bill."

"Look, please, Mr. Piers, surely this is all a mistake. I'm sure this can all be sorted out..." Eavers was falling apart.

"The keys, Mr. Eavers, now, please. I'm tired, I want to go home and have a bath. Any future conversation between you and me will be through my lawyer. Do not make any mistakes about what I want."

Eavers wasn't charging the line when he went back to his office for the keys. It had been a bad day for USC. He brought out the keys. Gilbert took them and left the office without a word.