38

WHAT STAN MURCH HAD been looking forward to driving was, maybe, a 1958 Studebaker Golden Hawk two-door roadster, or another two-door, the 1932 Packard model 900, or a 1955 Mercedes Gullwing Custom, in which the doors swing out and upward, or a four-door 1937 twelve-cylinder Pierce-Arrow limousine, all of which he happened to know were in Monroe Hall’s antique car collection, because he’d researched this job with loving care. He’d gotten lists of Hall’s holdings from newspaper reports and then discussed them with Chester who, after all, was also a driver, though privately Stan thought probably not of the very highest rank.

What he hadn’t expected was to be making supermarket runs at the wheel of a black Suzuki Vitara, a kind of pocket SUV that drove like a jeep; the original jeep, that is, from World War Two, and probably under fire. Nor was that the worst of it, because he really hadn’t expected to be steering a no-pedigree wire-cage shopping cart up and down supermarket aisles in the wake of a harridan named Mrs. Parsons.

Mrs. Parsons was some piece of work. She was to the manner born, and she wanted you to know it. When, at the post-breakfast meeting in Monroe Hall’s office at the main house, Hall had said, “Here’s your cap, Gillette, and I hope you have a tie and a dark jacket to wear on duty. Good. Get them, and then you’ll drive the cook to the supermarket,” Stan had thought he understood all the words in that last sentence, including “cook,” but apparently he’d been wrong.

This was Stan’s first experience as a member of the servant class, and already he could see why it had been necessary to invent electricity, so you wouldn’t need so many servants as before, and that way you might be able to hold them off when they turned on you. Hall himself was enough of a pain in the ass, calling him “Gillette” all the time. He’d never been addressed in quite that last-name style before, and the fact that it wasn’t actually his own last name only took the sting out a little.

And there was also the other fact that the chauffeur’s cap he was supposed to wear dropped down to block his eyes unless he padded the inner rim with newspaper, so that what he looked mostly like, with this black-beaked oversize hat on his head, was a ventriloquist’s dummy. And not one of the smart ones.

But then, there’s Mrs. Parsons! Apparently, the way it worked, not all servants were born equal, and definitely chauffeurs weren’t born equal to cooks. Or at least this chauffeur, this Gillette here, wasn’t born equal to Mrs. Parsons, who even got an honorific in front of her name.

And who, when Stan stopped the bucking Vitara at the side door per Hall’s instructions, came out from the house there, marched over to the vehicle, and stopped next to the left rear door. Stan waited for her to get in, but she didn’t; she simply stood there, a stout old woman with a face like a bald eagle with a headache, wearing a black cloth coat, black beret-type hat on iron-gray curls, and black lace-up boots. In her left claw she clutched the black leather handle of a black leather handbag.

When she didn’t move, and didn’t move, he finally got the idea, and stepped out to open her door for her, with an ironic bow she either didn’t see or didn’t choose to see. “Thank you, Gillette,” she said. “I am Mrs. Parsons.”

“Think of that,” Stan said, as she climbed in. Already he hated her, though not quite enough to slam the door on her ankle.

Later, he would be sorry he’d missed that chance. The entire drive to the supermarket, between her barked directions to the place, she told him in great detail and with much repetition just how dreadful a marriage her poor “Miss Alicia” had made with “that man.” Not having a name at all, Stan supposed, was even worse than being Gillette all the time.

At the supermarket, he’d assumed he would sit at the wheel with a newspaper while she did her thing. First, of course, as he already knew, he would have to get out and open the door for her. But then, having done so, he was not pleased to hear her say, “Well, come along, Gillette.”

He went along. It turned out to be his job to push the shopping cart along behind her and fetch the items from the grocery list she’d dragged out of her purse. Up and down the aisles they went, him with his funny-ha-ha hat, her with her imperious manner and her list.

At the end, he was to follow her—she definitely was to go first—out of the store and across the parking lot. He considered speeding up, as though it were an accident, but how much damage can you do with a shopping cart?

Later, Stan promised himself: Before we’re done around here.

39

FLIP MET HIS NEW co-conspirators at his office-gym, a deep narrow storefront in a suburban mall between nowhere and nothing. Almost all of his contacts with his clients were in their own residences or, occasionally, offices, but every once in a while it was necessary to provide a place for the sessions, as when a client’s marriage had ended with more than the usual fallout and flak, and it would be some time before he would have his own exercise mat again. Also, Flip needed his own gym, to keep himself in peak condition. Therefore, Flip’s Hustle House, which consisted of an ordinary office in front, a gym almost as extensive as Monroe Hall’s behind it, and a smallish changing room and shower behind that, all at the rear of this Meandering Bypaths Mall, tucked away where only the most determined could find it.

Which included this new group of five. Although, as Flip had noticed from the very beginning, they weren’t a group of five after all, were they? They were a group of two, a pair of snotty silver-spoon-in-the-mouth sorts, supplemented by a group of three, baggy out-of-shape heart-attack-to-come working stiffs. It was amazing, Flip reflected, as he watched his new team troop into the office, how Monroe Hall could bring disparate people together.

The snot called Mark seemed to be the spokesman. Once they were all seated, either comfortably on one of the three chairs or uncomfortably on the floor, Mark said, “Let me put our cards on the table,” which, in Flip’s experience, meant wool was now headed toward one’s eyes. “We have reasons,” Mark went on, “to feel that Monroe Hall owes us something.”

“So do we!” announced the sack of guts introduced as Ace.

Mark nodded at him patiently, as though he’d learned a long time ago to make the nodding patiently at Ace an automatic reaction to the sound of the man’s voice. “I was including you in us,” he said.

Mac, the brains of the sagging team, said, “Ace, we’re all in this together.”

At the moment, Flip thought, and watched and listened.

Mark, the interruption over, went back to laying his cards on the table. “We’ve studied Monroe Hall’s estate,” he said, “all of us,” with a glance at Ace, “for some time. His defenses unfortunately are excellent.”

Flip nodded. “All that money can buy,” he said.

Os, the usually quiet one, growled. It was an actual growl, the sort of thing that usually emanates from something on a leash. While Flip looked at him in some surprise, Mark patted Os’s knee—Os was chaired, Mark floored near him—and said, “Yes, Os, we know, some of that money is ours.”

“And some,” the jack-in-the-box, Ace, also on the floor, put in, “belongs to the ACWFFA.”

“Agreed,” Mark told him, leaving Flip in the dark, and turned back to say, “We had all noticed that the only person in this wide world with unquestioned access to that compound, apart from Hall’s wife, is yourself.”

“He needs a personal trainer,” Flip explained. “Stuck in that place, he gets no exercise at all.”

“We studied you,” Mark said. “I admit it. We even broke in and entered your house.”