Chapter 2
The MacWillies, building the house near the mesa almost twenty years earlier, had been remarkably quiet about the bomb shelter included in its plans.
This secrecy was prompted by the moral question that accompanied such a structure: Who would they let in, if the shelter should actually be called into use, and who exclude? How would it be possible to say, “Sorry, no more,” in the face of frantic entreaties? Because word would certainly spread.
As such places went, it was commodious, with bunk beds for the MacWillies and their two teenaged children, toilet, sink, shelves for a projected three weeks of supplies, an air filter system, a hydraulic jack as a hedge against entombment, and enough floor space for exercises. It was reached by means of a fixed fourteen-foot steel ladder under the floor just beyond the entrance to the kitchen.
Earl MacWillie, a building contractor who had designed the shelter and done much of the work himself, had amused himself by making its access as invisible as possible, countersinking the ring in the trapdoor and cutting a flap for it of wood veneer that matched the surrounding floor. This also served to placate his wife, who had a mortal fear of the ladder and liked to forget that it existed at all.
Both son and daughter married and departed, variously to Maryland and New Jersey. As a thirtieth anniversary present to themselves the MacWillies had the house carpeted in deep-piled gray-blue, and a week later, the other part of their celebration, boarded a plane to visit their second New Jersey grandchild. The plane ran out of runway. There were no survivors.
Their children assumed, erroneously, that the bomb shelter was a matter of record. The bank’s appraiser, attention on square footage and depreciation, did not notice—even Mrs. Mac Willie had not noticed—the L cut with a razor in the fleecy new carpeting outside the kitchen. It was not a traffic area; it was simply a small stub extending off the dining room.
For all MacWillie’s building expertise, the law required a plumber where there were pipes. The plumber in question had long since moved to another part of the state, but his helper had not. His helper remembered the bomb shelter very well, and, even before it became a refuge for his hunted half brother, had been using it for purposes of his own.
There was little that was not grist to Harvey Sweet’s mill. A born opportunist who stole as naturally as he breathed, he did a little of everything—roofing, electrical work, furnace repair, drug-running from Mexico— and at thirty-seven would no more have dreamed of taking an eight-to-five job than of taking Holy Orders. Managing to parlay a piccolo confiscated from the high-school music room into a broken-down secondhand car at the age of fifteen had left its mark.
Nature had equipped him well for his type of life. His features were regular and handsome, his clear blue eyes looked disarmingly candid, his very white teeth flashed frequently in his short woolly brown beard. Even while sliding someone else’s money into his back pocket, he had something of the air of a Robin Hood.
In July he had brought back from Mexico not marijuana but brown heroin, the security of which, until he could arrange to sell it without danger to himself, posed a problem. His own house wasn’t safe for long. His wife worked; so did he, quite often; he had a number of friends who suspected his activities and to whom he owed money.
The bomb shelter on which he had worked years ago presented itself as the ideal cache, if only he could get into it—but the MacWillies had been killed in a plane crash and the house was on the market, with viewers coming and going unpredictably. To break in would only focus police attention on the place. Sweet waited, unable to dismiss the shelter from his mind, and one September day when he drove by the real estate sign was gone, there was a car in the drive and the living room draperies were open, a great fringy golden dog was bounding about on the sandy rise against which the house was built.
Further surveillance showed him that a white-haired old lady was the only occupant. The dog looked valuable. As a kind of throw-away gift Sweet was good with animals and he had no difficulty in kidnapping it, overcoming its timidity by throwing sticks for it well out of sight of the house and finally offering it a beef bone.
His wife, Teresa, strikingly pretty and startlingly ill-natured, said when he arrived with his cargo, “Fin not going to have that thing in here.”
“Yes, you are.” Sweet was pleasant, but this tone had more than once preceded the infliction of a black eye.
“Where did it come from?
“I’m keeping it for a friend. Don’t let it out, I’ll take it for a walk later.”
Sweet watched the newspapers, and was pleased but unsurprised when, two days later, a reward was offered for the return of “Golden Afghan female, purple suede collar, lost vicinity west mesa.” He telephoned the number given, and, with the dog at the other end of a piece of clothesline, presented himself half an hour later at the door of the MacWillie house.
The woman who let him in, and introduced herself as Mrs. Balsam when she had extricated herself from the dog’s standing, full-stretch caress, was as overjoyed as he had hoped. “I can’t tell you how glad I am to have her back. I suppose I ought to pen her, but she does love to run so, don’t you, bad Apple? Where on earth did you find her, Mr. —?”
“Sweet. Harvey Sweet. She was wandering around in a trailer court near my house late last night, and I could tell she was lost. I was about to call the animal shelter to see if anybody had been asking about her when I saw your ad. Oh,” said
