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  The Man Who Heard Too Much

  Richard Forrest writing as Stockton Woods

  MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

  Chapter One

  “Is it on?”

  The uniformed chauffeur held the limousine’s rear door open with one hand and touched the brim of his cap in a military gesture with the other.

  Senator Rutledge Galation Baxter nodded affirmatively and slid into the rear of the vehicle. He immediately picked up a neatly folded copy of that day’s Washington Post. “Proceed as planned. Anyone around?”

  The chauffeur slid behind the wheel and swiveled to face his passenger. “One of Sperry’s legmen is in that blue Volkswagen parked down the street.”

  Rutledge cursed under his breath. “That figures. The goddamn gossip monger spends half his time having me followed. Make sure I’m protected at the transfer point.”

  “Yes, sir.” The engine throttled to life and the long car swept from the curb in front of the Senate Office Building. Rutledge opened the newspaper wide until it obscured his face.

  The man in the VW turned his ignition key and heard the engine cough and die. He tried again, praying that he hadn’t flooded it. He had the small car moving by the time the black limousine passed, and he slid into the line of traffic two cars behind the senator’s vehicle.

  They were moving slowly down Connecticut Avenue, caught in rush hour traffic, when a green Porsche pulled into the lane next to the limousine. Rutledge looked over the top edge of the newspaper and nodded at the driver of the car running parallel to them. “I’ll go when we’re in position,” he said to his driver and immediately hunched lower in the wide seat. He opened a compartment on the rear of the driver’s seat and took out a checkered sport coat and a small flat cap. Slipping out of his own jacket, he donned the sport coat and held the cap in his hand.

  The chauffeur kept checking the rearview mirror until a district bus interspersed itself between them and the trailing VW. “Now!” he said over his shoulder as he braked at a traffic light.

  Rutledge quickly slipped from the limousine while the driver of the Porsche did the same. Both men passed each other wordlessly, the senator getting behind the wheel of the sports car and donning the cap while the other man got into the limousine, put on the senator’s suit jacket and pulled up the newspaper to hide his face.

  The two cars separated at the next corner when the Porsche turned right. The VW continued dutifully following the limousine.

  They lay side by side on the wide bed with their limbs intertwined. The senator ran his fingers lightly over her cheek. “You are some woman,” he whispered.

  “Uh huh,” she replied with a half smile. “That’s always a preamble. What god-awful place are you sending me to? Where is it this time?”

  “A little town called Horton. It’s in upper New York State, surrounded by the Adirondack Mountains.”

  “I hope they have a decent motel.”

  “One and it’s nearly decent.”

  She shrugged. “Will I be working with anyone?”

  “There’re two of them. Both good men that I’ve used before. Your usual method of contact. They’re already up there in unit sixteen.”

  “Sixteen. I’ll remember.”

  He ran his hand over the curve of her hip and down the firmness of her thigh. There was good muscle tone. She kept herself in shape and he liked that. He leaned over and kissed her.

  He elbowed himself into a sitting position and looked down at her vivid red hair which was now splayed across the pillow. Her skin was milk white, her eyes violet gray. She was a stunning woman.

  “Don’t look so damn ravishing while you’re up there.”

  “I’ll tone down and wear a granny dress.”

  They had been lovers for six years. She had other men, he knew that, just as she knew about his wife Martha at his home in the rolling Virginia hills. She didn’t pressure him about it, and he liked that also.

  They had met when he was a freshman congressman. She was a highly recommended research assistant, and at their first meeting not only had a charged spark of physical attraction been apparent, but he had also discerned her deeper feeling—an affinity toward power and those who possessed it.

  As their affair continued and her duties took on more of a confidential nature, he removed her from his governmental payroll and paid her with secret discretionary funds.

  She was effective in her highly personal assignments and seemed to thrive on the danger involved.

  Under different circumstances their love affair might have been superficial and soon ended. But the dual attraction of power and danger created a bond that kept them together. As an experienced Washington hand, Althea Remington knew the extent of power—where it lay, who possessed it and how. She knew that Rutledge Baxter was one of the new breed who would succeed at any cost … and from her vantage point, she would aid him in any manner she could.

  “What’s my assignment?” she asked as he continued looking down at her.

  “There’s a man up there who is very dangerous to me.”

  She pursed her lips. “And?”

  “His name is Martin Fowler and I want him eliminated. It’s extremely important.” Rutledge paused. “You will find him a bit unusual, Althea.”

  “In what way?”

  “He’s mentally retarded.”

  Martin Fowler rode the bicycle badly, but he enjoyed the small bell attached to the right handlebar. He kept pushing the lever rapidly to the side and listening to it ring. It reminded him of the white ice-cream truck that passed the school at two in the afternoon each day of the spring and summer.

  Occasionally one of the attendants would buy Popsicles if too many children weren’t in the yard at the time.

  Martin was twenty-eight and had dark hair, a shock of which seemed to constantly protrude over his forehead. He was six feet tall with a medium stocky build. His arms, revealed beneath the short sleeves of the yellow tee shirt he wore, were well muscled with bulging biceps. During his adult years at the training school, he had been assigned to heavy maintenance work on the grounds, and consequently he was tanned and in good physical shape.

  A rather expressionless face marred Martin’s otherwise pleasing features, and he spoke in a monotone devoid of feeling. He walked with a slight stoop and a barely perceptible shuffle.

  Two days earlier, he had been driven from the school to a large Victorian mansion which was a halfway house. Yesterday he had discovered the bicycle in a dim corner of the barn, webbed and nearly hidden within the intricate framework of an industrious spider.

  Martin had removed most of the cobwebs by making great arcs in the air with a broken hoe handle that destroyed the webs. When the bike was relatively clean, he had wheeled it gently out into the bright sunlight of the yard in front of the barn. The tires were flat but held air as he filled them with a hand pump. Carefully, he had dusted the remainder of the frame with an old rag.

  The mansion’s driveway, which ran from the barn to the house, was unpaved, and he had used its relatively soft surface to learn to ride the two-wheeled vehicle.

  Miss Bucknell, the halfway house resident director, had watched him through the kitchen window. He could tell by the way her forehead wrinkled that she was concerned over his safety, but she didn’t leave the building to stop his painful riding lessons.

  He had spent most of the afternoon at it, but finally he could ride a wobbly straight line without falling. Today the bike would save him the long walk from the house to his new job at Dunn’s Service Station.

  Hor
ton, New York, depended upon tourists, both winter and summer, and resented it. There was little tillable farmland, and the seasonal influx of hunters, campers, skiers, and sightseers kept the town alive.

  The town’s small business district was built along two streets that formed an X. Dunn’s Service Station—three pumps on the island and two bays—was located on a corner at the center of the X.

  Martin immediately sensed hostility in Dunn Junior as Dunn Senior gathered them in the small office adjacent to the service bays. Senior, a grizzled older man with three days’ growth of stubbly white beard, worn coveralls, and arthritically gnarled hands, seemed to have difficulty walking and ensconced himself behind a battered desk. Junior was sullen, as unattractive as his father, and filled with the Dunn resentment of being small-town men caught in life’s bypass.

  “I got two lubes and a bunch of tires to fix,” Junior snarled. “I got no time to teach him how to work a goddamn pump.”

  “You’ll show the boy how to use the goddamn pumps or you’ll get a knuckleful.”

  Junior waved a deprecating hand at his father in a gesture that he obviously had used countless times before.

  Martin wasn’t sure that he would be able to like these two men.

  “What about oil?” Junior asked belligerently, as if it were an affront to the OPEC nations.

  “What about oil?” Senior snapped.

  “He ain’t going to know where to put it.”

  “Then you’ll show him where to put it.”

  “What about my lube jobs?”

  Dunn Senior gestured toward a large pushbroom in the corner of the crowded office. “Sweep it down, Martin.”

  Martin nodded and went out into the warm morning. The door closed behind him, but he could still hear the two men quarreling.

  “I could get Haney down here and he’d work minimum and goddamn know where to put the goddamn oil,” Junior yelled at his father.

  “The dummy works minimum, but the state of New York pays us a buck an hour for him, idiot.”

  Martin moved to the far end of the macadam near the street entrance and began to sweep. He hoped that he was far enough from the bitter men arguing in the office so that their remarks wouldn’t reach him.

  He was used to it. All the kids got used to it after a while. In the beginning you thought you were like everyone else … you were just a kid in the home and everyone seemed to be about the same, although some were worse than others. Then you would hear the remarks when they took a group into town to see a movie: “Look at all the retards.”—You got used to it. He kept sweeping.

  A compact car, with two adults in the front seat and two small children in the rear, swept into the station and braked to a fast halt at the pump island. A woman and the children broke from the car as if it were afire and ran for the restrooms. The driver, dressed in Bermuda shorts and a Rod Laver sport shirt, lounged outside the car with one hand resting on the roof.

  “Fill her up?” Martin asked.

  The man nodded and looked over the town toward the hills rising in the distance. Martin was confused. There were three pumps on the island: regular, no lead, and diesel. He glanced at the office, but the Dunns were still engaged in their dispute. The driver continued looking toward the hills.

  There were small letters over the car’s fuel tank cover which read, “Use No Lead Fuel Only.” Martin smiled and took down the hose from the no lead. He threw the lever and inserted the nozzle into the tank.

  “Check under the hood, will ya?” the driver said without averting his gaze from the distant mountains.

  Martin took his hand off the trigger of the gas hose and the pumping immediately stopped. How could he fill the tank and also check under the hood? He remembered past trips to town that the school had arranged. Once in a while the van would have to stop for gas. The service station attendant would leave the hose in the tank while he checked under the hood. He looked down at the hose device clenched tightly in his right hand. There was a bracket ring near the trigger. He flipped the ring forward and saw that it engaged the trigger and kept the gas pumping.

  With a sigh of relief he walked toward the front of the car. Now he had to figure out how to raise the hood.

  By mid-morning Martin had the rhythm of the job and did not have to call Dunn Junior from his work in the service bays. When a car pulled up to the service island, if he wasn’t there already, he ran to meet it. When he had the order he would start the gas pumping, wash the windows, and check under the hood.

  Martin took a fifteen-minute break for lunch. Dunn Senior gave him a free Coke from the machine, and Martin squatted in the shade by the side of the building to eat the peanut butter sandwich he had brought from the home.

  By mid-afternoon he was enjoying the work. It felt good to be useful again—almost as good as he had felt those days at the club, but that was before …

  The only unpleasant incident of the afternoon was the misunderstanding over the money.

  He had inserted the nozzle back in the pump, squinted at the dollar register, and hurried to the front of the car. “Twelve dollars, ma’am.”

  The woman handed him two bills. They were marked as a ten and a five, but they didn’t look right. He stared at the money in the palm of his hand and wondered how to handle the situation.

  “Something wrong?” The woman’s voice from the car interior was astringent and irritable.

  Martin looked up into her argumentative eyes. He knew he had to be polite to the customers, but he also knew that they had to pay their money … either in cash or with a credit card that he would rush to Mr. Dunn in the office.

  “Can I have my change!”

  He looked from the money to the woman’s face. “This isn’t real money,” he finally mumbled.

  “What do you mean, not real? Of course it’s real.”

  “Doesn’t look real to me.”

  “It’s Canadian. We came across the border this morning. I suppose you’ll want to discount it or something, but hurry. We want to check into our motel.”

  “I need real money.” He feared the wrath of the Dunns senior and junior. They might fire him, and he wouldn’t be able to come back tomorrow. They wouldn’t let him stay at the halfway house and he would have to return to the school. “I got to have real money.” It was nearly a desperate plea.

  “Let me speak to the manager.”

  “He’s in the office, over there.” He pointed to Dunn Senior, who by this time had risen to his feet behind the desk and was peering at them through the window.

  The woman slammed from the car and grabbed the money from his palm. “Idiot!” She strode briskly into the office and the door shut behind her.

  Martin saw Mr. Dunn give change, point to Martin, and talk to the woman. She had a look of chagrin on her face when she returned to the car.

  “I didn’t know,” she said to Martin and gave his arm a pat.

  The car drove away from the station, and he looked after it with the knowledge that something had passed between normal people that he was not a party to. He experienced a surge of sadness that he had felt before and would feel again.

  Around four in the afternoon, two motorcycles entered the station and stopped in a line abreast a few feet before the pump island. Both riders wore jeans, bulky leather jackets, and plastic crash helmets that completely covered their heads. The frontpieces of the helmets were of opaque reflecting Plexiglas that hid their features.

  Martin hurried toward them. “Can I get you something?”

  The smaller of the two pushed up a visor, and Martin found himself looking directly into a woman’s violet gray eyes. A few strands of red hair coursed down her forehead. “Are you Martin Fowler?” she asked.

  “Uh huh.”

  The visor was flipped back and the bikes were thrown into gear. Both machines quickly turned and left the macadam with a roar.

  Dunn Junior came out of a service bay with a small sledgehammer dangling in his hand. “What was that all about?”
<
br />   Martin shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  Chapter Two

  “A man don’t get paid for cleaning the place after he’s finished work. You understand that, don’tcha, boy?”

  Martin Fowler wasn’t so sure he did, since Dunn Junior had departed half an hour before and left the service bays where he worked in the same mess they had been that morning. Parts, tools, and partially repaired tires were strewn throughout the service area. But Martin had rubbed down the pumps, swept his area twice, and even washed the plate glass window in front of the office.

  “I understand,” he answered.

  Dunn Senior took a timecard from its rack and, using a stub of a pencil, wrote in eight hours for the day. “Be here early tomorrow.” He cocked his head. “I think you’ll catch on in a coupla three weeks.”

  Martin shook his head in acknowledgment and left the small office. The high school student who had arrived to relieve him was slouched in a paint-encrusted captain’s chair that was tilted back against the side of the building on two legs. A large cowboy hat was pulled down over his eyes. As Martin retrieved his bike from behind the station he wondered how the boy could give the good service that Mr. Dunn required, since he appeared to be sound asleep.

  There was a lot to learn, he thought as he mounted the bike.

  The man by her side had a length of chain wrapped around his left wrist with the other end clenched in his right hand. He kept whomping the end of the chain into a gloved palm.

  “Stop doing that!” Althea said.

  He looked at her with what she assumed was an attempt at a wry smile, but which actually appeared as an almost obscene grimace. “You sure you want to do it this way?”

  “Damn sure.” She took off the crash helmet and wiped her brow. No wonder so many bikers objected to using them. They not only cut down on visibility, but were also damn hot.

  “Why?”

  She shook her head to let her hair fall free before she gave her companion a look of contempt. “You want out?”

  “No.”

  “Then we do it this way.”