'Damned unjust to let the weasel go after all the misery he caused, but no use making a stink, the war's over. On the other hand, no harm in using it to squeeze Hornburgh's nuts, is there? Because if what I'm thinking is true, the nervousness and all that eagerness to sell the base makes a lot of sense. However, I didn't choose to spring it on him today. Just filed it away for use.'
'Ever hear of this Kaltenblud?' asked Milo. I shook my head. He thought for a moment.
'The Simon Wiesenthal Centre keeps tabs on those assholes. I'll give them a call soon as I finish this.' He returned to the diary. 'Oh, shit, another digression. Now he's into a land swap with a bunch of Indians from Palm Springs. Old Blackjack was everywhere.' He flipped pages impatiently.
'Okay,' he said several minutes later, 'this sounds like the showdown. November twenty-ninth: 'Over lunch at my office, I sprang Kaltenblud on Hornburgh. Told him if the weasel was at the base, I knew what kind of dirty work had been going on and understood damn well why they wanted to dump the place. At first he hemmed and hawed, but when I told him we could either cut a fair deal or let the newspapers dig around, he fessed up. Just as I thought, they'd saved the bastard's neck, brought him over on a private military transport, and set him up with a lab at the base. Little weasel didn't care who he did his dirty deeds for - U. Sam or Schicklgruber. Just went on his merry way and left behind tons of poisonous garbage - which, after I leaned on him for a while, Hornburgh admitted they buried underground. He insisted it was done safely, in metal canisters, supervised by the Corps of Engineers, but I've got no confidence in those yahoos, having seen plenty of messes they've created. So, as far as I'm concerned, the place is sitting on a land mine. One earthquake or Lord knows what else, and the poison could leak out into the lake or plume underground. A sucker deal if I ever heard of one! I figure they picked me for the sucker because I was buying more and faster than anyone and they thought I'd
snap it up, no questions asked. Ha! By the time I left that office, it was they who were the suckers and I got everything I asked for:
A. The land, at a price so cheap it borders on free. Every damned square foot except I set aside a little for Skaggs, because his wife's a damned good cook and he does a fine job on the Bugatti. B. They furnish me with signed and certified geological reports stating the place is virgin-clean. C. All documentation of Kaltenblud's dirty work destroyed clear to Washington. D. The weasel himself must be eliminated in some sanitary fashion in case he gets big ideas, and starts yapping. Hornburgh claimed that had been their idea all along, he'd outlived his usefulness, but I won't be satisfied until I see a photo of him with pennies on his eyelids.
'So as soon as all that goes through, I'll own Bitter Canyon free and clear. Doesn't look like there's much I can do with it for the time being, but it was a gift, so I can afford to wait. Maybe someday I'll find a way to clean it up, or maybe it can be exploited in some other way, like for storage or dumping. If not, I can just hold on to it, use it as a private getaway. Toinette's behaviour is forcing me out more and more, and despite all the rottenness underneath, there's a kind of bleak beauty to the place - kind of like Toinette herself! Anyway, for what I paid, I can afford to let it go fallow, and after all, isn't being wasteful a sure sign a man's really made it?' '
'Poisoned earth,' I said. 'Plumes. Jamey was making sense all along.'
'Too much sense for his own good,' said Milo, standing. 'I'm gonna make that call.'
He left and returned a quarter of an hour later, holding a scrap of paper between thumb and forefinger.
'The folks at Wiesenthal knew him right away. Herr Doktor Professor Werner Kaltenblud. Head of the Nazis' chemical warfare section, posion gas expert. He was supposed to be indicted at Nuremberg but disappeared and was never heard from again. Which could make sense if the army kept its bargain with Blackjack.'
'Blackjack would have demanded it.'
'True. So the prick's definitely dead. The researcher I spoke to said he's still on the active file, considered one of the big ones who got away. He pressed me for what I knew but I stonewalled him with vague promises. If this thing ever resolves, maybe I can keep them.'
He began to circle the room.
'A power plant built on tons of poison gas,' I said. 'Now you've got your motive.'
'Oh, yeah. Seventy-five million dollars' worth. Wonder how the kid got hold of the diary.'
'It could easily have been by accident. He was a voracious reader, liked to go rummaging around old books. The night he was committed to Canyon Oaks he tore apart his uncle's library, which could indicate he'd found something there before and was looking again.'
'Buried for forty years among the limited editions?'
'Why not? After Peter died, Dwight was Black Jack's primary heir. Suppose he inherited the old man's books but never bothered to look at them? He didn't impress me as a bibliophile type. If he and Heather had come across the diary, they would have destroyed it. It was undisturbed because no one knew it existed. Until Jamey found it and realised how explosive it was. Chancellor had got him interested in business and finance, put him to work doing securities research. He had to know how heavily Beverly Hills Trust had invested in the Bitter Canyon issue, and he went straight to Chancellor and told him he'd bought a lot of potentially useless paper - twenty million dollars' worth that couldn't be unloaded without attracting unwanted attention.'
Milo had stopped pacing to listen. Now he stood with one palm pressed against the tabletop, the other rubbing his eyes, digesting.
'Your basic extortion/elimination scenario,' he said softly. 'With a bunch of extra zeroes tacked on. Chancellor confronts Uncle Dwight with what he's learned from the diary. Maybe Uncle knew about the gas, maybe not. In either case, Chancellor's chafing to get rid of those bonds
and demands that Uncle buy them back. Uncle baulks; Chancellor threatens to go public. So they arrange a buyout. It would have to be gradual, under the table, to avoid scrutiny. Maybe Chancellor even tacks on interest to compensate for pain and suffering.'
'Or demands a premium price.'
'Right.' He thought for a while, then said:
'Fast Talker told you there's been some slow selling of the bond, which could mean Uncle's letting a little trickle back onto the market, but just like Chancellor, a little's all he can afford to let go of. That leaves him doubly at risk -building a plant on all that gas and paying for it himself.'
'Tight squeeze,' I said.
Milo nodded. 'Time pressure, too. Uncle can't keep buying those bonds back without the corporate ledgers eventually starting to smell bad. He searches for a way out, finds himself thinking how nice life would be if Chancellor -and the kid - were out of the picture. Tells his troubles to wifey-poo, who's an expert on blitzing people out with herbs, and they cook up a plan that will eliminate all their problems: Cut up Chancellor and set the kid up for the murder.'
He stopped, thought, continued:
'You realise, that this doesn't mean the kid didn't kill anyone. Only that he might have been under the influence when he did it.'
'True. But it does say something about culpability. He was set up, Milo. A disturbed kid pushed over the edge slowly, with exquisite care, until he was ready for a locked ward. After hospitalisation the poisoning continued; the Cadmuses found themselves a doctor who'd do anything for a buck, including breaking his own rules to allow a private nurse to work there. Ten to one, Surtees's real job was administering the daily dose. Under Mainwaring's supervision.'
'Surtees,' he murmured, writing in his notepad. 'What was her first name?'
'Marthe, with an e. If that's her name at all. None of the nursing registries have ever heard of her. She vanished the
day after he broke out. Just like Vann, who just happened to have stepped away from her desk. The whole thing stinks, Milo. He was allowed to break out, then taken to Chancellor's house and . . . '
'And?'
'I don't know.' Translation: I don't want to think about it.
He put the notepad down and said he'd put a trace on both the nurses. 'Maybe we'll even get lucky.'
'Maybe,' I said gloomily.
'Hey, don't overwork your empathy glands.' Gently: 'What's the problem, still thinking about guilt and innocence?'
'Don't you?'
'Not when I can avoid it. Gets in the way of doing the job.' He smiled. 'Course, that doesn't mean you civilised types shouldn't.'
