Cut and Run

Eleven

“S tark-shit, man, I was hoping you wouldn’t be in.” Weasel’s voice was low and nervous over the telephone. “Thought maybe you’d be a step ahead of me, you know?”

Matthew held the phone with one hand, his forehead with the other. He’d drunk a few too many beers last night during the last period of the hockey game, trying to figure out what the hell to do about his promise to Weasel. What did he have to work with? A gorgeous flake of a piano player. A diamond that maybe existed, and then again maybe didn’t. A screwup of a United States senator that only some warped sense of obligation to Weasel kept Matthew from going to see and ask some questions. A Dutchman who might already have exited the scene. A dead Hollywood agent. A couple of Peperkamps.

And Weasel himself. A half-dead former door gunner who’d been able to hit eighty-four targets with ninety-six bullets but still didn’t know that the Sam Ryders of the world didn’t need his help.

What he had to work with, Stark had decided, was zip. But some ingrained, persistent item in his code of honor had flipped on, and he knew he couldn’t walk away and just let events take their course. He’d tried to call Juliana Fall late, after the hockey game, to say he was sorry for needling her and charm her into telling him whatever it was she wasn’t telling him. He’d gotten her goddamn message machine, the golden voice saying she couldn’t come to the phone right now. Drinking his final beer, he’d wondered what she was doing, who she was with tonight. He’d conjured up an image of her, pale blond hair flowing over her raccoon coat, a delicious mix of J.J. Pepper, jazz pianist, and Juliana Fall, concert pianist. A mix that didn’t exist. She was one or the other, not both, maybe not either.

He hadn’t left a message.

Now he was back at the Gazette, avoiding Feldie and wondering if maybe the best way to keep Otis Raymond alive was to do nothing. Tell the little jackass to crawl back into his hole and stay there. To live, dammit.

“You know I’m never a step ahead of you,” Matthew said now, aware Weasel would love that. “What’s up?”

“You make any progress on the diamond?”

“No.”

“Shit, Stark, maybe you have lost it.”

Matthew took no offense. “Whoever said I had anything to lose?”

“I do, buddy,” Otis Raymond replied, confidence creeping back into his voice. One thing he knew: he could count on Matt Stark. Hadn’t they survived as a scout pilot and scout gunner, part of a “pink team,” when so damn few did? “Hey-I ain’t got time for bullshit. Got a pencil? Jot this one down: Johannes Peperkamp, diamond cutter, Antwerp. I don’t have the spelling.”

“I don’t need it,” Matthew said, swearing to himself. “Where’d you hear that name?”

“Things starting to hang together, huh, Stark?”

“No, things are not starting to hang together, goddamnit.” His head was pounding; from now on, he’d limit himself to two beers. “Where the hell are you getting your information? Damn it, Weaze, level with me. I can’t get a handle on this business if you don’t give me everything you’ve got. Who’s behind all this, who-”

“I can’t talk, man.” Weasel’s voice dropped even lower. “Folks know I’ve given you this much, I’m dead.”

Matthew sat very still. He’d stopped breathing. His headache had vanished. His thinking was clear and ice-cold. Otis Raymond never exaggerated the danger he was in. Never. Vietnam had taught him that. If Weaze said over his CVC that there were a half-dozen NVA regulars firing up at him, then there were a half-dozen NVA regulars firing up at him. Not three. Not ten. Six.

Stark felt something clamp down in his gut. “Get out,” he said, his voice like stone. “Don’t get yourself killed over Ryder. Wherever you are, Weaze, get the fuck out. Come to Washington. I’ll put you up.”

“I don’t know if I can get out.”

“Do it.”

“Man, if I can…”

“Do it, goddamn you.”

“Jeez, Stark, I-” Weasel stopped, and the nervousness turned to panic as he went on rapidly, “Shit, oh shit, I got a guy bird-dogging me!”

Matthew jumped to his feet, but he didn’t lose control. He couldn’t. It was a self-indulgence that wasn’t going to do Otis Raymond a damn bit of good. “Weasel, where are you? I’ll come for you myself.”

The line went dead, and Stark lost his control because now nothing that he did mattered.

“Goddamnit, Weaze!”

The only answer was the patient hum of the dial tone.

Stark’s teeth were ground together so tightly his jaw ached, but he took a breath, sucking in his emotions with the stale air of the overheated newsroom. Weasel was going to let himself go down because of Sam Ryder, and there wasn’t a damn thing Stark could do about it-except keep plugging away at all the fucking crazy leads. The Minstrel’s Rough, more damned Peperkamps. I told you, I don’t know anything about diamonds…

Bullshit, toots.

Slowly he became aware of Alice Feldon at his side. He had no idea how long she’d been standing there. “Are you all right?” she asked, more curious than worried. He understood-no one had better rein on himself than Matthew Stark.

He nodded and cradled the receiver.

“This buddy of yours is in trouble,” she said.

“Nothing he thinks he can’t handle.”

“What do you think?”

He looked at her without expression, but the despair was eating away at him. “Life expectancy zero.”

“What does that mean?”

“It’s what the grunts used to say about door gunners.”

“Weasel?”

“Yeah. He was a door gunner, and he lived. He was twenty-one years old when he left Vietnam. You might say the rest of his life has been anticlimactic.” Matthew pulled his leather jacket off the back of his chair. His arms and legs were rigid; he moved without grace. “If the Weaze calls again, find out where he is. Don’t let him hang up until you do.”

“I’ll try.”

He looked at her, the black eyes remote. “Don’t try, Feldie. Do it.”

Anybody else would have nodded her head and kept her damn mouth shut, but that wasn’t the kind of smart Feldie was. She put out a hand and touched Stark’s elbow. “Hey, there, slow down.”

He took a breath. “I’m sorry.”

His voice was tight and sandpapery, and none of the tension went out of him, but Feldie nodded, satisfied. “At least now you don’t look like you’re going to go off and kill somebody.”

He tried to smile. “Who me?”

“Yeah, now what aren’t you telling me?”

“Feldie, Weasel’s got to get out of there. Make him understand that.”

“I’ll try, okay? But what-”

“When I’ve got anything that makes sense, we’ll talk.”

“All right, fine. Look, I’ve got a guy on hold. The call came through on my line. You want to take it?”

“Who is it?” He was thinking of Juliana.

“Some guy. Wouldn’t give his name.”

Ryder? Stark headed over to Feldie’s desk and picked up the phone; she hung in there right beside him, glasses on the end of her nose. He scowled at her. “You mind?”

“Hell, yes,” she said, and remained rooted to her spot.

He ignored her and punched the button on the phone. “Yeah?”

“You always did have a winning way with people, sir.”

The voice on the other end was deep and precise, the sarcasm just hinted at, all of it disturbingly familiar. Matthew sat down, tense and alert.

“Lucky your competence made up for your personality.”

“Who is this?”

“You don’t remember?”

There was a short, spasmodic laugh, and then Stark did remember. He didn’t move; he didn’t breathe. He sat very still and listened, hoping he was wrong, knowing he wasn’t.

“And here I’ve been thinking I was the basis for the villain in that book of yours,” the voice went on. “I read it, you know. I forget what cesspool I was sitting in at the time but sure did get some chuckles out of that one. At least you didn’t whine. Christ, I get sick of all the whining.”

Matthew reached for a pencil and a scrap of paper, just to have something to grip, to keep him anchored in the present. His mind-his very soul-had begun to drift back.

In heavy black letters, oblivious to Alice Feldon, he wrote: Bloch.

Sergeant Phillip Bloch. He’d been a platoon sergeant in Vietnam, a hard-bitten, ritualistic man on nobody’s side but his own. He’d saved people, and he’d killed people. It didn’t matter to him which or who.

“I’d heard you were dead, Sergeant.”

“Did you have a party?’

“No. I didn’t do a damn thing.”

The laugh came again, a laugh of nightmares and ghosts. “You’re a cold bastard, sir, but that’s okay. Wouldn’t have made it out of ’Nam two times as a chopper pilot if you weren’t. I kinda was counting on you not making it out, you know, but you and me-we’re a lot alike. We know how to survive.”

Matthew made no comment. There was no need. Bloch knew what Stark thought of him.

“How’s the newspaper business?” Bloch asked, his tone deceptively jovial.

“I do my job.”

He glanced at Feldie, who didn’t even roll her eyes.

“Working on a big story?”

“You didn’t call to chitchat.”

“That’s right, buddy.” The jovial tone disappeared. “I’m calling to warn your ass off a story. Whatever you got, drop it. You hear? That way, nobody gets hurt. Our paths just ain’t meant to cross, you know? Shit happens every time. So you just bow out now, and we’ll go our separate ways.”

Stark pressed the pencil hard into the paper. The point snapped. He kept pressing. So Bloch was in it. From the moment Matthew had first seen Otis Raymond’s thin, yellowing, bug-bitten body in the Gazette newsroom, he’d guessed, deep down in a place inside him he didn’t like to go, that Phil Bloch’s name would come into it, sooner or later.

Bloch went on smoothly, “You know what story I’m talking about.”

“No,” Stark said, although he knew lying would be pointless. Yet he had to try. For Weasel’s sake, maybe even for Ryder’s-and maybe even for his own, although he didn’t care to think so. He preferred to think he could handle Phillip Bloch. If necessary, beat him.

“Then let me refresh your memory-Otis Raymond.”

The pencil snapped in half, the sharpened end skidding across the desk onto the floor. Behind him, Feldie jumped, startled. But Matthew remained very still. He had no room in which to maneuver. Right now Bloch was in control. He knew what was going on; Matthew didn’t.

He had to listen. Play the sergeant’s game. Buy time.

“Ya’ll used to call him Weasel,” Bloch said. “That help?”

Matthew set the eraser end of the pencil down on the pad; his hands were rock steady. “I haven’t seen the Weaze in ages. He checks in every so often and lets me know he’s alive.”

“He check in last week? He drop in, Stark?”

Bloch’s tone was smug, knowing. If he’d been within reach, Stark would have strangled him. But that, too, was Phillip Bloch: he always managed to stay just out of reach.

“Why should I tell you, Bloch?”

“I know about the calls, sir.” The sarcasm wasn’t as subtle now. “You can quit protecting him; the sonofabitch tipped you off. Now I gotta deal with you, and no use pretending I don’t, that right?”

Matthew maintained rigid control. “Ninety-nine percent of the time Weaze talks bullshit. I know that.”

“Forget it, Stark. I know, you hear me?” There was that curt, terrible laugh again. “I fucking know. Whatever Raymond told you, you ain’t treating it like bullshit. I suggest you start doing so, right now.”

“Let me talk to Weasel,” Matthew said stonily.

“I don’t give warnings twice. Remember that.”

Bloch hung up.

Stark slammed down the receiver, but there was no satisfaction in that, so, lunging to his feet, he picked up the whole damn phone and hurled it to the floor. Fellow reporters glanced up, saw it was Matthew Stark, and resumed working, looking nervous.

Feldie simply said, “Jesus Christ.”

Without a word, Matthew picked the phone up off the floor and set it back on the desk. It wasn’t broken. Given the often volatile nature of reporters, newsrooms were generally equipped with sturdy telephones.

“You want to tell me what that was all about?” Feldie asked. “No.”

“I’m your editor-”

“I know what you are, Feldie, and I respect that.” He looked at her, trying to get some warmth back into him. “But the answer’s still no.”

She sighed, hesitating as she pushed her glasses up on top of her head, but finally she nodded. “Okay-for now. You play this the way you have to. I’ll cut you some slack.”

“Thanks. Look, I need a favor.”

“Jesus, I don’t believe you. What?”

“A ticket to Antwerp.”

“What do you think this is, the fucking Post?”

“I’ll be at Kennedy Airport tonight. I’m heading for New York right now.” He gave her a strained smile as he slung his jacket over one shoulder. “Want me to say thanks again?”

“Twice in one morning? I don’t think I could stand it. Get out of here, Stark. Bring me back a story.”

Hendrik de Geer vomited once more into the sharp, cold wind. He made no sound as his guts twisted in agony. There was nothing left anymore to come up. He had filled the harbor with his jenever and his bile. Dutch gin, now just another of his enemies. When he was younger, he could stay drunk for days when he chose to, and there was never any vomiting or pain. Oblivion had come more easily then. Once he’d thought it was because he had less to forget, but now he knew that to be untrue. Another lie he’d told himself. It was because he’d had more years ahead of him, and he’d fancied that he’d have plenty of time to make up for the bad he’d done. When he’d envisioned himself as an old man, he assumed he would look back at his youth and see himself as well-intentioned but, at times, in over his head. Outmatched. But the good he’d done would outweigh the bad. He’d been convinced of that.

No longer. Now he had few years ahead, many behind. There was little time left to make up for the bad. He had no delusions. They were gone, with the laughter of his friends, with their trust. Perhaps he’d meant well then, as now. Perhaps not. What difference did it make? Only consequences mattered.

There was no more gin.

He collapsed on the deck and slept, in the wind.

It was late afternoon before Matthew caught up with Juliana Fall. He’d taken the shuttle into LaGuardia, then hustled a cab straight to the Upper West Side. The doorman at the Beresford said she wasn’t in. Had he seen a woman in a raccoon coat and red vinyl boots leave? Yes, he had, but that wasn’t Juliana Fall.

No, it wasn’t. It was J.J. Pepper.

She was sitting at the baby grand in the Club Aquarian, playing Mose Allison, her hair tinted pink, her emerald velvet dress something out of an old Greta Garbo movie. The long bell sleeves were trimmed in mink. She had her shoes on, and her red lips were pursed in concentration.

Stark walked past Len Wetherall at the bar and right up onto the stage. Juliana didn’t look up. She seemed unaware of his approach, of anything but what she was doing. The dim light caught the gleam of perspiration on her forehead and upper lip, and he could see the hair matted at the nape of her neck, where it was still more blond than pink. The effect was outrageously sexy. But Matthew told himself he couldn’t care.

She finished her tune and took a breath, ready to begin the next, but Stark tapped her on the shoulder. She jumped and nearly fell off the bench. He felt himself going for her, but she caught her balance before he could help and looked around, dazed.

As she focused on him, the clouds disappeared from her dark eyes. She brushed away the glistening drops of sweat on her upper lip and didn’t smile. “Stark-what do you want?”

“If I’m going to get tossed,” he said in a grinding, tight voice, still hearing Weasel’s panicked cry, “I want to make it worthwhile.”

Her hand dropped to the middle of her gaudy rhinestone necklace, but she looked more excited than nervous. Not so glazed, not at all bored. She gave him a half smile that made his heart race. “What’re you going to do,” she said in that liquid voice, “torture me for information?”

Jesus, he thought. “Don’t tempt me.”

She lifted her round shoulders in a little shrug and picked up a glass of water off the piano, took a sip, deliberate and unintimidated, and set the glass back down. Pink-haired, purple-haired or pale blond, Matthew thought, the woman was breathtaking-and irritating as hell. He had to rock her.

He stared down at her, a hard, ugly stare that had no discernible effect on her. She just blinked at him.

“The name Peperkamp keeps turning up,” he told her. “Catharina Peperkamp Fall, J.J. Pepper-got that from Peperkamp, didn’t you? Now I’m on my way to Antwerp to check out another goddamn Peperkamp. Johannes Peperkamp. I’ll wager anything you want that he’s related to you. And you know what else? He’s a diamond cutter. Imagine. Think he knows something about the world’s largest uncut diamond?”

He watched her swallow and turn white under the apple-blossom cheeks. The regal calm had vanished, but he had to admire her control. She didn’t try to get away, and she didn’t yell for Len Wetherall. She said, “Johannes Peperkamp is my uncle.”

“Lo and behold, the lady does know something.”

“He’s an old man.” One pale, slender hand reached back and gripped the keyboard, as if anchoring her in a world she knew and wanted to believe in. “Leave him alone.”

“I’m not going to leave anybody alone, including you, sweet cheeks. An old buddy just may get killed because you think this is a goddamn game, like painting your hair pink and wearing funny clothes. Well, darling, it’s not a game.”

Juliana was shaking all over now, white-faced, angry, humiliated. Stark fought the impulse to lift her into his arms. He wanted to kiss her, to make the shaking stop. But he didn’t relent. He wasn’t going to let Weasel go down because some bored piano player wouldn’t talk; she was, however, hanging in there better than most people did when he got going.

“Tell me more about your uncle,” he said.

“No.”

Straight up and to the point. He liked that.

“You’re crazy,” she said.

“Just wild. Diamond cutters, bakers, piano players, chickenshit politicians.” His voice was low and deep and dark, and he knew he had her scared. She’d have been a damn fool if she weren’t. “You all can have a party when you get my buddy killed.”

Juliana breathed in sharply but said nothing.

“Where’s your uncle live in Antwerp?”

“I won’t tell you.”

“That’s okay. I’m a reporter. I’ll find out.”

“Stop it!” She balled her hands into tight fists, looking as if she were going to hit him. “Damn you, you have no right to-”

“I have every right to help a friend in trouble, and if I have to make you feel bad to do it, tough shit, lady. What do you know about the Minstrel’s Rough?”

“Stop!”

“Hell, no, I’m not going to stop.”

“Oh, yes you are, bub.”

The voice behind Stark was bass-pitched and menacing. Matthew hadn’t forgotten about Len Wetherall. He just didn’t give a damn. He didn’t turn around but looked straight into the wide, terrified, curious, pissed-off eyes of Juliana Fall, gorgeous eyes, and he had to stop his heart from melting and his brain from telling him to lay off her. But then he heard Bloch’s laugh and one of Weasel’s pathetic sniffles, and he felt himself hardening, drawing up his resolve inside himself, accepting the need to do what had to be done.

“If the Weaze ends up on a board because you wouldn’t talk, darling, count on seeing me again.” Without giving her a chance to answer, he turned around and looked up at Len Wetherall. “I wouldn’t fuck with me if I were you.”

He walked out. No one said a word, no one laid a hand on him. No one did a damn thing but let him go.

One piece flowed into the next. Juliana didn’t care; she had to play. Wanted to. Len had said, “Dude’s in a bad mood,” and she’d only nodded, unable to speak. He’d asked her what she was doing messing around with Matt Stark; he’d said himself he wouldn’t want to mess with a guy in a mood like that, with a face like that. When she still didn’t talk, he told her to get a drink and calm down, then play. She couldn’t drink, she couldn’t calm down.

But she could play. Had to.

As she played she thought not about the music but about the old man backstage in the little Delftshaven church seven years ago with his crumpled paper bag holding the Minstrel’s Rough, which she hadn’t known what to do with and so didn’t do anything with it except take it home with her, and her mother’s trembling hands and the quick dark eyes of Rachel Stein and the dreamy baby blue eyes of Samuel Ryder and Matthew Stark who, yes, was a mean-looking sonofabitch. But the hell with that. To hell with him. She wasn’t afraid.

Something touched her shoulder, and she screamed, leaping up, disoriented.

Len caught her around the middle before she could collapse. “It’s okay, babe,” he said tenderly, taking he weight. “I think you’d better head on home.”

“Why-what-” She looked up at him as he lifted her off the bench and stood her up, like a limp doll. “What was I playing?”

“You don’t know?”

She shook her head, still holding on to him. Her heart was beating rapidly; she felt dazed and unsteady.

“You started out with jazz,” Len said, “but then you went into some kind of hairy-assed shit.”

Chopin. She remembered a nocturne. The Nocturne in B Major, Opus 62, No. 1. She’d been playing it for years. But she remembered some Liszt, too, and some Bach and Bartók. Not whole pieces, but phrases here and there.

She remembered hearing them, not playing them.

“Oh, hell,” she said.

“You played that stuff from memory.”

“I know I-” She licked her lips, but her tongue was as dry as her mouth. “I think I’ll go home.”

Len got her raccoon coat and helped her on with it. She was dripping with sweat, and her big eyes were still glazed. He’d seen it happen before, that daze, when musicians were totally absorbed in what they were doing, and it took a while before they came to. He’d experienced that level of concentration himself on the court. He’d be unaware of the crowd, and even afterward, when he watched a tape of a play, he’d know exactly what he’d done, why he’d done it, how, but he wouldn’t be able to remember how it had all come together at that precise moment. He’d just done it. It was organic, a part of him.

Just as what had poured out of J.J.-as he’d stood at the bar in stunned silence and folks around him just held their breath-had to be a part of her.

“Watch out you don’t freeze, babe,” he told her.

“I will. Thank you.”

He put her in a cab himself. Insisted on it. The lady was on the edge, he thought, and in trouble.

It was dark and cold on upper Madison Avenue but crowded, the restaurants filling up. Catharina’s Bake Shop was closed. Even Catharina herself had gone home. Juliana considered heading down to Park Avenue, to her parents’ apartment, and battling it out with her mother. Maybe even her father would get in on it and demand that his wife be more forthcoming, although that had never happened in the past. There was no man in the world more understanding and loving than Adrian Fall. But his sympathy to his wife’s feelings, his acceptance that there were things about her past he would never know, had contributed to a conspiracy of silence-and Juliana’s frustration. How could a father argue with a mother’s desire for their child to be happy?

A couple passed her on the street, dragging a Christmas tree behind them. They were laughing together and singing “Deck the Halls,” and for no reason at all, Juliana thought of Matthew Stark. He was a difficult man, to say the least. Remote, confident, unpredictable. He didn’t exactly tiptoe around her. Myself, I wouldn’t want to mess with him, Len had said. Yes, she could understand that. The changeable nature of his eyes, the scars on his hands and face, and the dark, gravelly voice suggested a certain toughness-but also, in her opinion, an intriguing vulnerability.

Suddenly she imagined herself dragging a Christmas tree along Madison Avenue with him, maybe even singing, and it was strange that the image didn’t seem wrong, impossible, absurd.

You’re in trouble, she thought, and hailed another cab.