Stairway to Forever Page 5

  One result of this anomaly had been that he hardly ever saw his friend Bartlett anymore, since he had felt obliged to arrange with the postmaster to not any longer trouble the carrier with trying to make route delivery of his mail, but rather to drive to the post office, when and as he "got back from his frequent trips" and pick up the mail.

  As the aft cabin of the wrecked bireme was wider, longer and higher than either of the other two, Fitz had there established his sand world pied-a-terre. With a folding canvas cot, air mattress, light sleeping bag, a chemical toilet and camp stove, in addition to the gas lanterns and the table, chair and stools dragged in from the next-largest cabin, he made it quite a comfortable home away from home.

  In the largest of the two side cabins he stored his bike, along with necessary tools and parts, lubricants and gasoline for it and for the stove and lanterns. In the smaller, he stored hardware, weapons and ammunition, canned and freeze-dried foodstuffs, liquor and water. He had as yet to come across any save salty sea water in his extensive explorations of the sand world, though he felt certain that there must be some somewhere, for the ponies and birds must surely drink.

  Although he often felt a bit silly lugging carbine, revolver and weighty ammo in this empty country, still a nagging, frequent sensation that he was being watched, observed by some unseen sentience led him to strap on his weapons whenever he set out on any exploratory trip.

  He could not tag time or place to the first time he had felt the invisible presence, save that he was sure that it had been at some time after he had begun to actually live, off and on, in the sand world. Not that it was really a new feeling for Fitz to experience; he,

  along with his siblings and both his parents had all their lives had the ability—often a singularly unpleasant ability—to feel, to sense the presence of noncorporeal entities and influences in buildings and places; therefore, he knew that his sensory awareness of this something as yet unseen was of more merit than merely an active, Celtic imagination playing upon his mind in the loneliness and mystery of the sand world.

  No, he knew He knew that some thing—or things? —were out there trailing him, if not somehow pacing him in his journeyings, watching and observing, though careful to remain unseen, never seen, by him. While out in the vast reaches of sand on the bike, he could sometimes almost—but not quite— see a presence atop the next dune—or the one closest to left or to right ... or on the one just behind him.

  True, he could not sense anything threatening or malicious about the presence, this watcher in lonely places, even when he was become terrifyingly aware of occasional nights that the . . . whatever had somehow passed soundlessly through barred doors or bolted gun ports to share with him his very cabin. Nonetheless, he always felt a bit better for the pull of the canvas-webbing sling on his shoulder, the sagging weight of the big-bore revolver at his belt.

  Earlier on this Friday evening, shortly after his arrival on his regular weekly business-and-social visit, Gus had at long last pinned Fitz down on the exact origin of the hoard of golden coins, asking such shrewd, probing questions that Fitz had at last given up prevarication and subterfuge, feeling compelled to level with his friend and finally reveal the source of their wealth.

  Out the back door and down the brick steps, he had led the way, a way by now well-lit by floodlights mounted on the eaves and along the high fence. They had crossed the manicured ten yards of lawn, then up the new, short flight of brick steps to the top of the low mound and so into the green canvas wall-tent.

  Inside the tent, he had lit the two gas lanterns, hung one from a hook screwed into the ridgepole immediately above the rectangular slab of greyish granite, and then, from out his pocket, taken a key ring and selected the two keys that fitted the two big padlocks that secured a wide, thick strip of mild steel across the slab. After he had raised that slab and cautioned Gus to be very careful of his footing on the steep and shallow treads, he had led the way down to the crypt.

  In the stone-walled chamber, Fitz had first set down the lantern and then, with a cheery, "J us t follow me, Gus," he had with all the relaxed naturalness that reflected his own long, intimate experience, half-bent at his waist and passed through the portal and into the bright, sunlit and untenanted sand world.

  He had stood on the marked driftwood log waiting for Gus, but Gus had never emerged from the unseen doorway that somehow existed in the empty air there. So Fitz had at last stepped back through,

  i

  into the chamber and had, for a quarter hour or more, tried to persuade his stunned friend to, if not immediately pass through the section of wall, at least thrust an arm or a leg through the seemingly nonexistent opening in the stonework. Once he knew it was really there, Gus would surely follow him through it.

  Tolliver, however, had stoutly and most profanely, finally, refused to even attempt the—to his mind— impossible and, when it became more than obvious to Fitz that the balding man's self-control was fast slipping away, that indeed he was teetering upon the edge of real hysteria, he had ushered his friend back up the stone stairs, through the tent and the yard, and so on back into the bungalow to his chair and his beer.

  Himself ensconced in a matching chair, facing his guest across the width of a leather-topped, cherrywood table, Fitz had been still trying ever since their return aboveground to convince his shaken pal that the sudden disappearance and equally sudden reappearance had been no sleight-of-hand exercise of stage magic, that it had not been a strange hallucinatory experience, but had really happened. His efforts had been all in vain. He was become convinced that, no matter what he said or did, Tolliver would not, could not, would never allow himself to believe what he had seen that night.

  Gus went through his liter in silence and was well into a second one before he again spoke. "Fitz, boy, I . . . I'm sorry. But . . . but I just can't handle things like down there in that place; nothing that weird. You know? Maybe . . . maybe if I's to think on it for a week or a month or so . . . ? But look, let's us talk about something else tonight, huh?"

  "You had any more prowlers or break-ins here that you knows of, Fitz?"

  Fitz took a pull at his stein, wiped the flecks of amber foam from his upper lip with the back of his thumb, and shook his head. "No, Gus, not since I had the place fenced and the house hardened up and put in the lights and alarms and all, I haven't. I guess all that high-priced gadgetry and locks and chain link and barbed wire finally just discouraged the little bastards."

  "You stillVe of the opinion it was just neighborhood kids, huh?" asked Gus.

  Fitz shrugged. "Hell, Gus, I'm no detective, you know. Sheriff Vaughan seems to think it was those two hell-raising hillbilly boys from a couple of blocks up the road. He knows crime and his county a hell of a lot better than I do, so who am I to question his reasoned-out suspicions, huh?"

  Fitz's blue eyes took on a hard, cold expression. "Besides, it'd really do my soul good to be able to drag that pair of little bastards into a court of law. I'm dead certain it was them who shot my cat Tom last year. Gut-shot him, Gus, and then just left the poor old thing to die of pain and shock and blood loss. So, yeah, I like Sheriff Vaughan's ideas in that regard; I like them a lot."

  Gus nodded. "Yeah, I can unnerstand, Fitz. But I tell you, it sure as hell won't no kids what broke into my shop last night, though."

  Fitz sat up straight, on hearing that. "Oh, hell, no, Gus! How much did they get?"

  Gus just shook his near-bald head slowly, in unre-pressed wonderment at what he was about to relate. "Damn it all, Fitz, that's the funny part of it . . . and I ain't the only one thinks so, neither. It was two, three thousand dollars worth of silver—cartwheels,

  halfs, quarters, dimes, half-dimes, World War II nickels and three-cent pieces, plus a couple dozen Mexican pesos—five peso and ten peso pieces—not to even mention the nickels and the pennies and all in the display cases. Fitz, boy, them cases won't even touched, none of them—the cash register, neither. Now, ain't that something?"

/>   "How about your safe, Gus?" probed Fitz, while mentally picturing the tall, wide, massive ton or more of Victorian steel-laminate, with its once-colorful, now much-faded curlicues of pseudo-baroque decorations, wide, steel wheels and multiplicity of thick doors, set behind set.

  "Now that had been opened." Gus grinned, slyly. "The bastards tried hard to make it look like it hadn't been . . . but it had. I knowed that right after come in to open up, this morning—knowed it first thing. But . . . but Fitz, they opened it and then didn't take one damn thing out of it. And there was gold in it, too, Fitz."

  Fitz felt a cold chill course the length of his spine. "My gold?" he demanded.

  Gus chuckled once. "Aw, naw, Fitz, boy, my mamma didn't raise up no stupid chilluns. The safe had a half a dozen Canadian Centennial sets, them an' some low-grade U.S. gold pieces and a few new-minted bullion coins, too. I keeps just enough in it so your average, run-of-the-mill burglar ain't gonna be inclined to take the time to look no further, see.

  "Your stuff and all the other really valuable pieces is either in the real safe or elst stowed in my box in the bank vault, 'round the corner, on Ash Street."

  With a sigh of relief, Fitz cracked a wide smile. "I never knew, never even suspected that you had more than the one safe in the shop, Gus."

  "Heh, heh, heh," chuckled Tolliver. "Damn few

  as does know, Fitz. Like I done said, I been around for a while. But they knowed it, boy, the bastards as broke into my shop last night, they knowed it, and that's for damn sure! They cut and tore up the holy living hell out of the carpets, all over the damn shop, front and back, trying to find a floor safe . . . which they didn't. Then the fuckers even chopped loose and tore down the wood panelling in my private office, looking for a wall safe, I guess. But they looked in all the wrong places and come up empty, damn motherfuckers. I checked, and the real safe hadn't been touched, much less opened."

  'What do the cops have to say about it all, Gus?" inquired Fitz.

  Tolliver shrugged, took a short pull at his beer, and answered, 'They say it was a perfessional job, of course. But, hell, Fitz, I could of told them that much. Hadn't of been for them sliced-up rugs and tore down panelling and all, the average man wouldn't even of knowed anybody'd been in there. They won't no prints, nowhere, and they still is in the dark—and me, with them, too—about just how the damn cocksuckers got in. It won't no particle of damage to neither one of the doors or the locks on them, the bars is still set in place over the washroom window and the office window's got that big old bulky air-conditioner, you remember, mounted permanent, and not enough room for nobody to get over it, even was they to break out the reinforced glass . . . which they didn't.

  "The detective, name of Hurz—and he's a pretty good old boy, I come to find out, too; he pulled him eight years in the Air Police—he don't think it was no locals broke in, he thinks they was prob'ly down from New York or New Jersey or Deetroit or Boston

  or like that. He was thinking and talking about maybe Mafiosos done it"

  Fitz nodded. "Well, honey does attract flies . . . and other vermin. And God knows, if we've managed to attract the full attention of most of the serious coin collectors in the world, as we seen to have done, it just stands to reason we might've attracted the attention of some greedy mobster, too. God forbid! But if we have, you can bet on it that you'll be getting more nocturnal visitors of a similar stripe . . . and possibly diurnal, as well. You could well be in some danger, there in that shop alone, Gus."

  Gus nodded. "Yeah, Fitz, that's what Hurz thinks, too. So I called up the A.D.T. folks this morning, while he was still there so he could talk at some other guy over there use to be in the Air Force with him. That outfit's gonna be working night and day, this weekend, 'til they gets my shop and my house wired up proper and all. The damn system's gonna be wired every which way from Sunday into their security office and the police station and from the shop into my house, too. It's gonna have the biggest, loud-assest alarms anybody makes, boxes and wires can't nobody get into or cut or nothing, and silent alarm buttons all over the place in both places, even in the crappers and the shower stall.

  "I bought me some more guns, too, and put them around in diff rent places easy to get to when I needs to, see. Loaded for bear, one up the fucking spout on ever one of the fuckers, office and home. It's a pure blessing I don't have no kids around, is all I got to say. My old lady, she's a better shot than a lot of men, too.

  "Fitz, you might be smart to get you some more firepower, 'cause if a man didn't care how much of a racket he made, he could put a truck, even a big car,

  right through your fence or the gate either, you know."

  "Oh, no!" Fitz shook his head vehemently and held up both hands, palms toward his friend, as if fending him off "Oh no, Gus, no more guns for me! Hell, thanks to you, my friend, this place is already more like an arsenal than a home. In addition to all the collector guns youve conned me into buying ..."

  Tolliver looked a trifle hurt. "But Fitz, boy, them's a investment, a damn sound one, too."

  "Yeah?" remarked Fitz, deliberately sounding skeptical. "If they are such a damned good investment, how come you didn't buy the damn things, huh?"

  Gus looked and sounded a little sheepish. "Well . . . well, Fitz, it was this way, see: Sary opined that if I brought even one more old antique gun that you couldn't shoot into the house . . . Well, anyway, Fitz, she's been a dang good wife to me and I tries to keep her happy and all, but ..."

  "But, as I was saying," Fitz interjected, not caring to again hear extolled the many virtues and few but onerous failings of the widow Gus had met and wooed and won soon after his retirement from the army, "plus all those damned muzzle loaders, the Lugers— all nineteen of the things!—some hunting rifles and shotguns I've picked up on my own, the Garand and a twelve-gauge riot gun, I've got two magnum revolvers, two automatic pistols and a Ruger carbine. Oh, and not to forget that damned undernourished howitzer you brought out here two weeks ago, either. Tell me, have you ever fired that monstrosity, Gus?

  "No? Well, I did . . . just once, on the day after you left it here. Gus, it was Monday night before I could hear normally again. And it was Wednesday before I was dead certain my shoulder and my clavi-

  cle were both still intact. You can have that booby trap back, any time, take it home with you tonight/'

  "Fitz, boy," Tolliver hastily expostulated, "that gun's a real collector's item, cased and all like it is. Holland and Holland, what made it, didn't never make no kind of cheap guns, ever. That eight-bore double rifle was custom-made, by hand, and ..."

  "And made on order for an avowed masochist, no doubt," commented Fitz, ruefully, rubbing his right shoulder in painful memory of the elephant gun's punishing recoil.

  Gus ignored him and talked on: "I allowed that feller owned it only just about fifteen hundred dollars towards a bezant he was plumb dying to have. Fifteen hundred dollars, Fitz, for the rifle, the tools, the spare parts and everything in a fitted, velvet-lined, solid mahogany case, plus ten rounds of ammo for it! And hell, boy, I give you odds that gun cost that much new, way back when. Even the cartridges had to be custom-made for that gun, and just one of the fuckers will stop a bull elephant cold—drop him where he stands."

  Fitz smiled. "Well, since I haven't seen any elephants wandering around this neighborhood, not in recent months, anyway, if you can locate a sucker . . . er, a collector, rather, who can be persuaded in any legal way to pay you what you put into that cannon, by all means grab him before his keepers find him and take him back to the State Home for the Bewildered."

  Later that night, after Fitz had walked Gus out to his car and was about to go down and unlock the gate, the older man looked up at his friend and host from the driver's seat and spoke in a lowered voice, his brow crinkled, his words tinged with worry and concern.

  "Another thing's been bothering me, Fitz. Feller owes me a few favors at the bank tells me there's been a whole lot of folks trying to pry into my accounts lately;
yours, too, he says. Some of them, they could just flat out refuse to show the bastards anything . . . but some of the others, they had to show them anything and everything they wanted to see . . . if you gets my drift."

  "Government?" queried Fitz incredulously. "What the hell about? I, we're not breaking any laws that I know of. . . are we?"

  Gus shrugged, his meaty shoulders rising and falling under the fine wool of his coat. "Maybe, maybe not. The way the fucking laws is wrote out, it's a 'heads, they wins; tails, you loses' propersition. If the Guvamint is really out to get you, boy, they'll sure-Lawd find them a way or something to get you on, and you can make book on that, too. And, too, you can figger anytime a little man starts making money in big chunks, the prick-ears of all them I.R.S. boys is gonna perk up like a coon hound what just spotted a ringtail."

  "Well, good God, Gus," Fitz burst out, louder than he had really intended, but a little angry at the thought of the intrusion of utter strangers into his personal accounts and affairs, "I've been leaving all the business end of this, the promotion and advertising and sales, to you and you alone, just as we both agreed in the very beginning of it all. You've got a lawyer, a good one, I hear tell. So, what does he say about all this government mess?"

  Gus nodded. "I talked to Hamill, and he said exactly whatall I just told you, 'cept he said it better'n me, of course. He said he'd give me, you, too, all the pertection the law allows him to. But he said, too, to

  make damn sure we didn't have us nothing to hide, that our business was all legal and on the up and up.

  "So, how 'bout it, Fitz? Have we . . . you, got something to hide? Something you couldn't tell nobody in a court, under oath?"

  Suddenly, he grabbed Fitz's shirt collar and pulled his head down to his own, seated level, locking his eyes in an unwavering gaze with those of his friend.