Cut and Run

Twenty-One

D uring the past few days, Wilhelmina had discovered she hated to fly. In her mind, it was unnatural. God meant for birds to fly, not people-and, besides, the motion, the unnatural motion, upset her stomach. The plane she’d taken across the Atlantic Ocean had been her first, and she’d considered the entire experience oppressive. It had been one of those monstrous things with an upstairs and innumerable comforts to make the passengers forget they were in the air when they weren’t supposed to be. Think of yourself as an eagle, the man sitting next to her had advised, seeing her look of distaste and mistaking it for fear. She’d felt more like one of the fat pigeons in the park who never looked as if they’d get very far when they tried to fly.

As unpleasant as that trip had been, it was more like a stroll to her neighborhood grocery compared to the flight to which she and Catharina were now being subjected. They bumped along in the air like a bad driver on a rocky road, and there were many strange noises and creakings that Wilhelmina refused to tell herself were normal. Catharina had told her the plane was small and that was why the flight was so much rougher. Wilhelmina had responded yes, that was exactly her point.

Bloch had separated them in the passenger compartment, putting a man with a gun on each of them and telling the one on her to “watch the fat ass, she’s a sneaky bitch.”

Wilhelmina held her tongue, but only because she thought her pretended ignorance of English might still be useful. Had it not been for the danger Catharina was in, Wilhelmina would have slit the coward’s throat when she’d had the opportunity and damned the consequences. If he shot her with his filthy gun, so be it. She was too old to take him as a hostage, not that that would have produced an acceptable outcome. Given the looks of this man, Wilhelmina had suspected his men wouldn’t be terribly loyal and would likely enough have simply let her have him and cut their losses, which could have proved disastrous for Catharina.

She glanced at Catharina, who smiled wanly. She was holding up well-better than Wilhelmina would have expected. Juliana was not with them. That was something to bolster the spirit. Wilhelmina remembered during the war, when she’d sat in the dank, horrible Gestapo prison listening to them torture her father, how she would think of her little sister and be thankful that at least she was still free.

The plane landed with a series of bumps and rattles, and she and Catharina were herded out into a ridiculously small airfield that smelled like gasoline and rotting vegetables. The air was moist and warmer than in New York, although by no means summerlike.

With her good hand, Catharina pulled on the arm of the sergeant. “Why don’t we go directly to Switzerland and get this over with?”

Wilhelmina admired how clear and strong her sister’s voice sounded, in spite of the pain she suffered. She’d gathered Catharina was trying to get him to believe she had the Minstrel in a safe-deposit box in a Swiss bank. It was a gamble, but better than putting him onto Juliana.

“Just do as I say,” Bloch replied.

Nazi, Wilhelmina thought. He was too accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed. Expecting people to be afraid of him.

He ordered them to get into a helicopter. He called it a bird.

Wilhelmina looked around with a sense of foreboding she hoped she masked, but in the eerie light of the airfield she saw the silhouette of a helicopter. To her it looked nothing like a bird, but more a dead spider on its back. When the propellers began to twirl, it looked like a dying spider on its back, which in Wilhelmina’s opinion wasn’t any better at all.

Whispering in Dutch, Catharina explained she thought they were in Florida or southern Georgia, near a swamp, that’s what the smell was, and did Willie think they should continue to cooperate? Dag, she whispered. Yes. For now.

The man Bloch told them to shut up and get in the chopper, the fat ass first.

Wilhelmina got the idea.

Matthew awoke at dawn, the light streaming through the window as pale as the soft hair spilled across his chest. He had willed himself to awaken before Juliana. She was lying on her side in a dead sleep, her smooth back to him, snuggled up close, the quilts pulled up to her chin. He could feel his own warmth on her skin. A part of him told him to kiss her and love her and maybe later call the police and let them handle everything while they just stayed in bed together.

But then he saw the bruise along her jaw, and he stopped the wishful thinking. He knew Phil Bloch. The sergeant would get the Minstrel on his own terms, not anyone else’s.

Taking care not to let the cold in under the covers, Matthew extricated himself from the bed. The room was freezing. He could see his breath in front of his mouth, and the last thing he wanted was to wander around buck naked. He gathered up his clothes and his boots and tiptoed out of the room, cursing silently as the goosebumps sprang up all over him. For no reason at all he thought of the Weasel and how he’d laugh his ass off right now, seeing Matt Stark tiptoeing out of a warm bed, with a woman in it no less, turning purple, all so he could go finish up what Otis Raymond had started him on. A piano player, the Weaze’d say, grinning that ugly, yellowed grin, Jeez’m, Matt.

Jeez’m indeed. He got down the stairs and jumped into his clothes and rubbed his hands together, trying to get warm. He checked the thermostat: fifty-five degrees. Good Christ. And it was colder than that upstairs. With a growl, he turned the heat up to all of sixty-two. He wouldn’t be around to enjoy it, but what the hell.

Juliana would. She could afford the damn oil bill.

He snuck around in the kitchen and got the keys to the Mercedes. The keys to her Audi were already in his pocket. Then he went outside. It was cold out but breathtakingly beautiful. Three inches of snow-a mere dusting around here-had fallen during the night, and the view was as picturesque as any he’d ever seen. He could understand Juliana’s attraction to this place. But he didn’t linger. The Batten Kill River, with snow-covered branches hanging low on its banks and its clear, cold waters running past patches of ice, wasn’t going anywhere. He’d be back to see it. He glanced up to the side window and in his mind saw Juliana snuggled up under the blankets, and he thought, damn right I’ll be back.

Unless after this she didn’t want him. But that was a chance he’d have to take.

He opened up the hood of the Audi and pulled out the spark plug wires, just in case she had a spare set of keys in the house or in her purse. Then he got in the Mercedes. It started right up and handled the snow in the driveway with hardly any trouble at all.

But, apparently, the noise was just enough to awaken his sleeping beauty.

Juliana leaped out the front door with nothing but a ratty quilt over her and yelled, “You sonofabitch,” as she pounded through the snow after him. Good thing there weren’t any neighbors, Stark thought somewhat grimly, or they’d talk. World-famous pianist trots naked through snow after has-been reporter. Well, not quite naked. But that’d kill her reputation a hell of a lot quicker than J.J. Pepper could.

As the Mercedes hit the plowed and sanded main road, he left her standing there, cursing him. He took some consolation in knowing he’d turned up the heat. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about that lovely behind of hers getting frostbite.

He doubted she’d see it that way.

Bloch pulled the phone toward him in the handsome study of Senator Samuel Ryder’s fishing lodge on the western edge of the Dead Lakes. As a military compound, it worked out okay, but not great. He and a couple of his most trusted men occupied the lodge, while the others were tucked into the fishing shacks around the perimeter. Ryder had been properly horrified when Bloch had called him up and said, hey, Sammy-boy, guess where I’m hanging out? But it was only a temporary arrangement. Bloch had himself a real camp in the works.

He nibbled on a handful of sunflower seeds and carob chips. If he ate any more than that, he’d feel too full, and then he’d want to sleep. Couldn’t afford to sleep right now. He’d blown it. An A-plus shitass job he’d done. The two women were stashed in one of the unoccupied shacks. The old one still wasn’t saying anything, and the young one was still saying the Minstrel was in Switzerland. Christ! How stupid could he be? Ryder must be rubbing off, he thought, dialing the senator’s Washington number with a steady hand.

The aunt hadn’t slit his throat, which he had deserved to have slit for letting a goddamn seventy-year-old woman get in that kind of position over him. She’d only let him off because she wanted to be with her sister.

The mother was protecting the daughter. Jesus, did it piss him off for forgetting how sentimental and dumb people could be about their relations. He had a brother; hadn’t seen him since before Vietnam. He hadn’t wanted to sign up. “I don’t believe in this war,” he’d said. Bloch felt a war was a war, and one was pretty much the same as another. When you were a soldier, you were paid to kill, not to think.

Yeah, he thought with a spasmodic laugh, you leave the thinking up to idiots like Sam Ryder.

The senator answered on the twelfth ring. Bloch kept count. “Knew it was me, didn’t you?” he said.

He could hear Ryder’s fear just in the way he breathed. “What do you want?”

“Juliana Fall.”

“What?”

“She has the diamond.”

“That’s ridiculous, Sergeant, she’s a concert pianist! She knows nothing about diamonds, I’m sure. Why would she have it? Look, why don’t you just give it up? I’ll see what I can do about getting you some stop-gap funds to help you vacate the camp and start over elsewhere-”

Bloch ignored him. “The Dutchman helped her get out yesterday. Sammy, Sammy, you’re not helping me. Why don’t you go and find out where she went.”

“Sergeant, I can’t help you! Don’t you understand?”

“Yeah, I do.” Bloch ate some more sunflower seeds. “I understand I’m sitting down here in your goddamn fishing camp with a couple tons of illegal weapons and ten men who probably ought to be in jail and how sweet that’d look splashed across the front page of every goddamn newspaper in this country.”

Ryder coughed, spitting with anger, but that, Bloch knew, was the most he could ever do with his anger-just spit and sputter with it. Made a good politician, Sammy-boy did. “Where am I supposed to find Juliana Fall?”

“Don’t whine, Lieutenant. You’ll think of something.”

“Sergeant-”

“And keep an eye out for Stark, let me know if he comes your way. I don’t like it that he’s messing around out there and I don’t know where he is. I’ve got a man at his house, but he hasn’t showed. You keep in touch, Lieutenant. And Sammy? I can use you in Washington.”

Ryder sputtered, and Bloch laughed, hanging up.

Then he got his number-two man into the office and told him to start packing up. “When I give the word,” he said, “I want to be able to abandon camp within thirty minutes.”

“Will do,” his man said.

Bloch grinned. Now that was what he liked to hear.

Juliana had put on clothes-heavy corduroys, turtleneck wool sweater, socks, boots, deerskin gloves with her spare keys, and parka-before trying her car. It didn’t start. She didn’t know a damn thing about engines, but she opened up the hood anyway and had a look.

She knew enough to spot pulled wires.

“That bastard.”

He’d made damn sure she couldn’t follow him-not that she had the slightest idea where he was. Going after Phillip Bloch, undoubtedly, but where was he? If she had a telephone, she’d call the police and have Matthew Stark arrested for stealing Shuji’s car. But she didn’t have a telephone. She couldn’t even call a damn garage to come fix her car.

“Aunt Willie would say I’m soft,” she told herself aloud.

Aunt Willie, she thought, would be right.

Slamming the hood shut, she went inside for a scarf. Cashmere. It was softer on her neck and mouth. Then she went into the kitchen and looked on the pine shelf where she kept her jam recipes.

The Minstrel’s Rough sat there collecting dust.

Why hadn’t Matthew swiped it along with Shuji’s car?

“Because,” she said, “he knows Bloch is going to get rid of everybody whether he gets the Minstrel or not.”

Get rid of everybody. What a quaint little euphemism. Phillip Bloch would kill everybody whether or not he got the diamond. Matthew knew this, and so hadn’t bothered with it.

But maybe she could use it as a bargaining chip, if not to make a deal, at least to buy some time-for her mother, her aunt, even for Matthew.

She snatched up the huge rough, shoved it into her inner coat pocket, and headed back outside. Her head was pounding, and she was stiff and sore and hungry, but she trudged outside. The sun was blinding on the snow, and the wind had picked up; it was bitterly cold. Walking was difficult and, because she couldn’t see the patches of ice under the freshly fallen snow, treacherous. If she fell and broke a wrist or her hands got badly frostbitten, her career would be over.

Some things, she told herself, you just had to chance.

The nearest house was a mile down the road and belonged to a dairy farmer who brought her surplus tomatoes and summer squash during the summer and sometimes fresh, raw milk that tasted wonderfully unlike anything she’d ever bought in New York. His son was outside shoveling the walk. She explained her problem, and he put down his shovel and drove her back over to her place in his truck. He said it’d take some time to fix her Audi, he wasn’t used to working on foreign cars, would she like to ride someplace?

“Yes, the airport, if possible. There’s-there’s been a family emergency.”

“Albany?”

She nodded. Albany was about forty miles away, but it had regular flights to New York-and probably Washington, too. She was thinking Washington might be her best bet. Senator Samuel Ryder, Jr., was a part of this mess. He was to have met Hendrik de Geer at Lincoln Center, she remembered from what Matthew had told her, and he had been in Vietnam with Bloch and Otis Raymond and Matthew Stark. Perhaps, with proper motivation, he could tell her where to find Phillip Bloch. She was ready to kick ass and take names; she’d give him proper motivation all right.

“Albany’s fine,” she said.

“Okay, get in.”

Matthew spotted the skinny man who’d held the gun on Juliana sitting across from his townhouse in a rented Pontiac and had his cab drive around the block and back again, letting him off below his house. He’d left the Mercedes at the Albany airport and taken a flight to Washington, all very quick and clean. Discipline had helped him put Juliana Fall out of his mind. Helped him, he thought, but without a whole lot of success.

The guy flipped to the sports section. Even at a distance, Matthew recognized the four-inch bold type of the Gazette. He might just be watching his place-or waiting for Matthew to return so he could take him out, although in that case he’d have expected to find him inside rather than out and sure as hell not reading the damn paper. Knowing Bloch as he did, Stark knew killing him wasn’t something the sergeant would want to delegate. He’d prefer to save the pleasure for himself.

But best not to take chances.

Taking the direct approach, Stark tore open the driver’s side door, grabbed the guy by his shoulder and wrist, and ripped him out of the car, shoving him down on the hood and twisting his arm behind his back. He’d left a Colt.45 on the console next to his Styrofoam mug of coffee. He was curly-haired, rail-thin, and probably twenty years younger. Stark felt like an old man.

“You’re Bloch’s man?” Stark asked quietly.

“No.”

“Your orders?”

A woman with a baby in backpack halted fifteen yards down the brick sidewalk, turned white, and quickly crossed to the other side of the street.

Stark jerked the guy up and slammed the car door shut with him. “Talk.”

“Bloch’ll kill me-”

“Bloch isn’t here. I am.”

“Jesus Christ, I knew I didn’t want this job. Look, man, I’m just supposed to keep an eye on the house, ’case you or the girl shows. If I’d known that was her yesterday-” He seemed to realize it wasn’t a good idea to finish his thought and shut up.

The girl. Juliana. Not a girl, he thought, remembering last night. “Then what?”

“She shows, I grab her-not hurt her, okay? Man, I got special orders not to hurt her, so you don’t have to worry about that. You I’m supposed to report back where you go, what you do, stuff like that, take you out if I can but not get killed trying to do it. I been warned about you. I mean, Weaze-”

“Weaze’s got a big mouth.”

“Yeah, right.”

Stark could see the kid idolized Otis Raymond. Weaze must love that, he thought, and loosened up his grip. “What’s your name?”

“Kovak. Roger Kovak.”

“You’re a stupid shit, Roger Kovak. Weasel and Bloch go back to a day before you were even born. Weaze has got an excuse for being dumb. You don’t. You want excitement, go climb Mount Everest. All Bloch’s going to do for you is get you killed or jailed.”

Roger Kovak looked terrified. He was the kind of kid, Stark thought, who would have gone to Vietnam thinking he was going to come home John Wayne and found out way too late all he was going to do was come home dead. Matthew opened up the car door. He got out the Colt, then shoved Roger Kovak back in the front seat and left him there with his newspaper and his cup of cold coffee. He could call Bloch if he wanted. Stark didn’t care.

Bloch already knew he was coming.

The Pontiac roared to a start and screeched down the street. Stark didn’t even glance back as he went inside. His house was toasty warm. He remembered his cold walk down Juliana Fall’s steep stairs, how warm it was under the stack of quilts with her, warmer, he thought, than he’d ever been. She shows, I grab her. He wondered if leaving her in the middle of goddamn nowhere with a disabled car and no telephone had convinced her to stay the hell out. Something cold and empty inside him told him it hadn’t.

He tucked the Colt in his waistband and headed upstairs, where he got out the SIG-Sauer P-226 9mm automatic he kept around because he knew people like Phillip Bloch. He strapped on the hip holster and then put on his leather jacket and went back downstairs. He didn’t feel good, and he didn’t feel confident. He just felt armed.

The light was blinking on his message machine. He pressed the button and played back the messages. There were two. One was from a buddy who wanted him to go to the Caps game that night. The other was from Alice Feldon.

“Otis Raymond is dead,” she said. “Call me.”