Peril

STARK

He ate in the garden at Gascogne, surrounded on three sides by high brick walls laced with vines. Within a week the garden would be closed, and so he lingered over a final glass of brandy until nearly midnight.

After that he walked to his apartment on West Nineteenth Street. He’d bought the first-floor apartment nearly twenty years before, and bit by bit he’d turned it into a home that suited him, the walls decorated with carefully chosen oils, the floors draped with large Oriental carpets.

Once inside, he poured a glass of port, sat down in a high-back leather chair, and drew a book from the small mahogany table beside it. In his youth, reading had been his passion. He’d pored over the classics, devouring the Greeks, Shakespeare, scores of nineteenth-century novels, but now he read only for business-travel guides, catalogues filled with the latest high-tech surveillance equipment, computer manuals, private publications from the field, tips of the trade exchanged by the few people who’d made it to the top of his precarious profession.

He knew why this radical shift had occurred, and as he drank, he revisited the grim reason in a series of ghastly mental photographs-a body strewn in a Madrid alleyway, another floating in the shallow currents of the nearby river, and finally a dark-haired beauty tied to a chair, her body drooping forward, mercifully dead after what had been done to her.

Marisol.

At just past midnight, the buzzer signaled someone at the door.

He opened it to find Mortimer swiping droplets of rain from his jacket and stamping his rubber galoshes on the mat outside the door.

“Fucking wet,” Mortimer said morosely. He drew an envelope from his jacket pocket and handed it to Stark. “From Brandenberg. Payment in full.”

Stark took the envelope. “Would you like a drink?”

Mortimer nodded, then followed Stark inside and took a seat on the leather sofa.

Stark poured Mortimer a scotch and handed it to him. “You look a little rumpled.”

“It ain’t been a great day,” Mortimer said. He took a long pull on the scotch, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand.

Stark watched Mortimer silently, now recalling how, after the murders, he’d had to create a new identity, find a go-between he trusted, and so had gone to Mortimer, the platoon sergeant he’d commanded through countless bloody days. Even now Stark was not exactly sure why he’d chosen Mortimer to assist him in his shadowy profession, save that there was a melancholy ponderousness to him that went well with the weighty confidences he was expected to hold. On a cold, snowy night, Stark had told Mortimer about Marisol’s murder, along with the brutal penalty he had exacted from the men who’d committed it. He’d never forgotten Mortimer’s reply, Guys like that, nobody’s gonna miss ’em. He’d known at that moment that Mortimer was a man for whom moral subtlety amounted to mindless abstraction. Only the clearest lines appeared in his field of vision. On the confidence of that insight, he’d hired him immediately.

“Something bothering you?” Stark asked now.

“Me?” Mortimer laughed nervously. “Nothing.”

Stark peered at him intently. “Something’s bothering you, Mortimer.”

Mortimer shifted uncomfortably in his seat. “Well, there is this.. other job… but I don’t know if you’d want to do it.”

Stark eased himself into the chair opposite Mortimer. “Brandenberg again?”

“No. He had this Arab, but I know you don’t want no foreigners.” He took a sip from the glass. “But this other thing come in.”

“What is it?”

Mortimer seemed hesitant to go on. “It’s kind of personal,” he said. “A friend from the old days. He called me a couple hours ago.” He took another sip. “The thing is, his wife run out on him.”

“That’s hardly new in life,” Stark said. “I’m sure you told him that in most cases the woman returns.”

“Yeah, I did,” Mortimer said. “But the thing is, he’s set on tracking her down. He figured I might be able to help him.”

“Why would he figure that?”

“He figures I know people,” Mortimer answered. “I mean, not you. Just people who… do things.”

“What do you know about the woman?”

“Nothing. And the thing is, it’s embarrassing, you know? To my friend. He don’t want nobody to know about it. The neighbors, relatives, people like that. So what information I get, it’s got to come from him. He don’t want no asking around.”

“How much information can he give me?”

“I don’t know. He’s getting a few things together.”

“I can’t work on thin air,” Stark said.

“I know,” Mortimer said. “Believe me, I know that. And there’s something else. This guy, he ain’t got much money. I mean, fifteen grand at the most. I know you don’t work for less than thirty but.. ”

“You said he was a friend of yours.”

“Yeah,” Mortimer answered. “But like I said, we’re talking fifteen

…”

“I’ll take it,” Stark said. “As a favor to you.” He waited for Mortimer to finish his drink, then escorted him to the door.

“Good night,” Mortimer said as he stepped into the corridor.

Stark nodded. “This friend of yours, you vouch for him, right?”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Okay,” Stark said.

“Well, good night, then,” Mortimer said, returning his hat to his head.

“Good night,” Stark said, and closed the door and returned to his chair as well as to his thoughts of Marisol.