The Matlock Paper (39 page)

“You’re
making
it bleed!” Matlock screamed. There was nothing left; the spring had sprung.

“On the contrary! You pompous, self-righteous
ass!
Sealfont’s eyes stared at him in cold fury, his voice scathing. “Who gave you the right to make pronouncements? Where were you when men like myself—in
every institution
—faced the very real prospects of closing our doors! You were safe; we
sheltered
you.… And our appeals went unanswered. There wasn’t room for our needs …”

“You didn’t try! Not hard enough …”

“Liar! Fool!” Sealfont roared now. He was a man possessed, thought Matlock, Or a man tormented. “What was
left?
Endowments? Dwindling! There are other, more
viable tax incentives!
… Foundations? Small-minded tyrants—smaller allocations!… The Government?
Blind! Obscene!
Its priorities are bought! Or returned in kind at the ballot box! We had no funds; we bought no votes! For us, the system had collapsed! It was finished!… And no one knew
it better than I did. For years … begging, pleading; palms outstretched to the ignorant men and their pompous
committees
.… It was hopeless; we were killing ourselves. Still no one listened. And always … 
always
—behind the excuses and the delays—there was the snickering, the veiled reference to our common God-given frailty. After all … we were
teachers
. Not
doers
.…”

Sealfont’s voice was suddenly low. And hard. And utterly convincing as he finished. “Well, young man, we’re
doers now
. The system’s damned and rightly so. The leaders never learn. Look to the children. They saw. They understood.… And we’ve enrolled them. Our alliance is no coincidence.”

Matlock could do no more than stare at Sealfont. Sealfont had said it:
Look to the children.… Look, and behold. Look and beware
. The leaders never learn.… Oh, God! Was it so? Was it really the way things were? The Nimrods and the Dunoises. The “federations,” the “elite guards.” Was it happening all over again?

“Now James. Where is the letter you spoke of? Who has it?”

“Letter? What?”

“The letter that is to be mailed this morning. We’ll stop it now, won’t we?”

“I don’t understand.” Matlock was trying, trying
desperately
to make contact with his senses.

“Who has the letter!”

“The letter?” Matlock knew as he spoke that he was saying the wrong words, but he couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t stop to think, for he was incapable of thought.

“The letter!… There is no
letter, is there?!
There’s … no ‘incriminating statement’ typed and ready to
be mailed at ten o’clock in the morning! You were lying!”

“I was lying.… Lying.” His reserves had been used up. There was nothing now but what was so.

Sealfont laughed softly. It wasn’t the laugh Matlock was used to hearing from him. There was a cruelty he’d not heard before.

“Weren’t you clever? But you’re ultimately weak. I knew that from the beginning. You were the government’s perfect choice, for you have no really firm commitments. They called it mobility. I knew it to be unconcerned flexibility. You talk but that’s all you do. It’s meaningless.… You’re very representative, you know.” Sealfont spoke over his shoulder toward the paths. “All right,
all
of you! Dr. Matlock won’t be in a position to reveal any names, any identities. Come out of your hutches, you rabbits!”

“Augh …”

The guttural cry was short, punctuating the stillness. Sealfont whipped around.

Then there was another gasp, this the unmistakable sound of a human windpipe expunging its last draft of air.

And another, this coupled with the beginnings of a scream.

“Who is it? Who’s up there?” Sealfont rushed to the path from which the last cry came.

He was stopped by the sound of a terrifying shout—cut short—from another part of the sanctuary. He raced back; the beginnings of panic were jarring his control.

“Who’s up there?! Where are all of you?
Come down here!
”

The silence returned. Sealfont stared at Matlock.

“What have you done? What have you done, you
unimportant little man? Whom have you brought with you?
Who is up there? Answer me!
”

Even if he’d been capable, there was no need for Matlock to reply. From a path at the far end of the garden, Julian Dunois walked into view.

“Good morning, Nimrod.”

Sealfont’s eyes bulged. “Who
are
you? Where are my men?!”

“The name is Jacques Devereaux, Heysoú Daumier, Julian Dunois—take your choice. You were no match for us. You had a complement of ten, I had eight. No match. Your men are dead and how their bodies are disposed of is no concern of yours.”

“Who
are you?
”

“Your enemy.”

Sealfont ripped open his coat with his left hand, plunging his right inside. Dunois shouted a warning. Matlock found himself lurching forward toward the man he’d revered for a decade. Lunging at him with only one thought, one final objective, if it had to be the end of his own life.

To kill.

The face was next to his. The Lincoln-like face now contorted with fear and panic. He brought his right hand down on it like the claw of a terrified animal. He ripped into the flesh and felt the blood spew out of the distorted mouth.

He heard the shattering explosion and felt a sharp, electric pain in his left shoulder. But still he couldn’t stop.

“Get off, Matlock! For God’s sake, get off!”

He was being pulled away. Pulled away by huge black muscular arms. He was thrown to the ground, the heavy arms holding him down. And through it all he heard the cries, the terrible cries of pain and his
name being repeated over and over again.

“Jamie … Jamie … Jamie …”

He lurched upward, using every ounce of strength his violence could summon. The muscular black arms were taken by surprise; he brought his legs up in crushing blows against the ribs and spines above him.

For a few brief seconds, he was free.

He threw himself forward on the hard surface, pounding his arms and knees against the stone. Whatever had happened to him, whatever was meant by the stinging pain, now spreading throughout the whole left side of his body, he had to reach the girl on the ground. The girl who had been through such terror for him.

“Pat!”

The pain was more than he could bear. He fell once more, but he had reached her hand. They held each other’s hands, each trying desperately to give comfort to the other, fully aware that both might die at that moment.

Suddenly Matlock’s hand went limp.

All was darkness for him.

He opened his eyes and saw the large black kneeling in front of him. He had been propped up into a sitting position at the side of a marble bench. His shirt had been removed; his left shoulder throbbed.

“The pain, I’m sure, is far more serious than the wound,” said the black. “The upper left section of your body was badly bruised in the automobile, and the bullet penetrated below your left shoulder cartilage. Compounded that way, the pain would be severe.”

“We gave you a local anesthetic. It should help.” The speaker was Julian Dunois, standing to his right.
“Miss Ballantyne has been taken to a doctor. He’ll remove the tapes. He’s black and sympathetic, but not so much so to treat a man with a bullet wound. We’ve radioed our own doctor in Torrington. He should be here in twenty minutes.”

“Why didn’t you wait for him to help Pat?”

“Frankly, we have to talk. Briefly, but in confidence. Secondly, for her own sake, those tapes had to be removed as quickly as possible.”

“Where’s Sealfont?”

“He’s disappeared. That’s all you know, all you’ll ever know. It’s important that you understand that. Because, you see, if we must, we will carry out our threat against you and Miss Ballantyne. We don’t wish to do that.… You and I, we are not enemies.”

“You’re wrong. We are.”

“Ultimately, perhaps. That would seem inevitable. Right now, however, we’ve served each other in a moment of great need. We acknowledge it. We trust you do also.”

“I do.”

“Perhaps we’ve even learned from each other.”

Matlock looked into the eyes of the black revolutionary. “I understand things better. I don’t know what you could have learned from me.”

The revolutionary laughed gently. “That an individual, by his actions—his courage, if you like—rises above the stigma of labels.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Ponder it. It’ll come to you.”

“What happens now? To Pat? To me? I’ll be arrested the minute I’m seen.”

“I doubt that sincerely. Within the hour, Greenberg will be reading a document prepared by my organization. By me, to be precise. I suspect the contents will
become part of a file buried in the archives. It’s most embarrassing. Morally, legally, and certainly politically. Too many profound errors were made.… We’ll act this morning as your intermediary. Perhaps it would be a good time for you to use some of your well-advertised money and go with Miss Ballantyne on a long, recuperative journey.… I believe that will be agreed upon with alacrity. I’m sure it will.”

“And Sealfont? What happens to him. Are you going to kill him?”

“Does Nimrod deserve to die? Don’t bother to answer; we’ll not discuss the subject. Suffice it to say he’ll remain alive until certain questions are answered.”

“Have you any idea what’s going to happen when he’s found to be missing?”

“There will be explosions, ugly rumors. About a great many things. When icons are shattered, the believers panic. So be it. Carlyle will have to live with it.… Rest, now. The doctor will be here soon.” Dunois turned his attention to a uniformed Negro who had come up to him and spoken softly. The kneeling black who had bandaged his wound stood up. Matlock watched the tall, slender figure of Julian Dunois, quietly, confidently issuing his instructions, and felt the pain of gratitude. It was made worse because Dunois suddenly took on another image.

It was the figure of death.

“Dunois?”

“Yes?”

“Be careful.”

The blue-green waters of the Caribbean mirrored the hot afternoon sun in countless thousands of swelling, blinding reflections. The sand was warm to the touch, soft under the feet. This isolated stretch of the island was at peace with itself and with a world beyond that it did not really acknowledge.

Matlock walked down to the edge of the water and let the miniature waves wash over his ankles. Like the sand on the beach, the water was warm.

He carried a newspaper sent to him by Greenberg. Part of a newspaper, actually.

There followed a cold recitation of identities, short summaries of police file associations.

Julian Dunois was among them.

The specter of death had not been false; Dunois hadn’t escaped. The violence he engendered had to be the violence that would take his life.

The remainder of the article contained complicated speculations on the meaning and the motives of the massacre’s strange cast of characters. And the possible connection to the disappearance of Adrian Sealfont.

Speculations only. No mention of Nimrod, nothing of himself; no word of any long-standing federal investigation. Not the truth; nothing of the truth.

Matlock heard his cottage door open, and he turned around. Pat was standing on the small veranda fifty yards away over the dune. She waved and started down the steps toward him.

She was dressed in shorts and a light silk blouse; she was barefoot and smiling. The bandages had been removed from her legs and arms, and the Caribbean sun had tanned her skin to a lovely bronze. She had devised a wide orange headband to cover the wounds above her forehead.

She would not marry him. She said there would be no marriage out of pity, out of debt—real or imagined. But Matlock knew there would be a marriage. Or there would be no marriages for either of them. Julian Dunois had made it so.

“Did you bring cigarettes?” he asked.

“No. No cigarettes,” she replied. “I brought matches.”

“That’s cryptic.”

“I used that word—cryptic—with Jason. Do you remember?”

“I do. You were mad as hell.”

“You were spaced out … In hen. Let’s walk down to the jetty.”

“Why did you bring matches?” He took her hand, putting the newspaper under his arm.

“A funeral pyre. Archeologists place great significance in funeral pyres.”

“What?”

“You’ve been carrying around that damned paper all day. I want to burn it.” She smiled at him, gently.

“Burning it won’t change what’s in it.”

Pat ignored his observation. “Why do you think Jason sent it to you? I thought the whole idea was several weeks of nothing. No newspapers, no radios, no contact with anything but warm water and white sand. He made the rules and he broke them.”

“He
recommended
the rules and knew they were difficult to live by.”

“He should have let someone else break them. He’s not as good a friend as I thought he was.”

“Maybe he’s a better one.”

“That’s sophistry.” She squeezed his hand. A single, overextended wave lapped across their bare feet. A silent gull swooped down from the sky into the water offshore; its wings flapped against the surface, its neck shook violently. The bird ascended screeching, no quarry in its beak.

“Greenberg knows I’ve got a very unpleasant decision to make.”

“You’ve made it. He knows that, too.”

Matlock looked at her. Of course Greenberg knew; she knew, too, he thought. “There’ll be a lot more pain; perhaps more than justified.”