The Blackbird

Fourteen

A Chinaman with a rifle in his hands smiled cozily at Grofield and said, “Say something,” but Grofield knew if he opened his mouth and said something in English the Chinaman would shoot him. But he didn’t know any other languages, so he just stood there, helpless. “You must speak before the bell sounds,” the Chinaman said, and almost immediately the bell sounded, and Grofield’s panic woke him up. He sat up and grabbed frantically at the telephone to make the bell stop, but when he held the receiver to his ear he was afraid to speak because if he said something in English that rotten Chinaman would shoot him.

There was silence against his ear, and his mind was full of confusion and contradictions. Hotel room, hotel room. He was forgetting something.

A hesitant voice said, “Grofield?”

“Mm,” he said, to make a sound, but not yet speaking in English. There was still too much confusion in his head, he didn’t want to take the chance and turn out to have been wrong.

The voice said, “I’m sorry, did I wake you?”

“Mm.”

“This is Marba. Would you prefer me to call back later?”

“Oh!” The name had done it, readjusting him to the waking dream, and now that the confusion was cleared from his head he also recognized the voice. “Hello, Marba,” he said. “No, I’m all right now. What is it?”

“My superiors want to meet you. But not in the hotel, you can understand why.”

“Sure.” He shifted the phone to the other ear, got himself more comfortable against the headboard. “Do I get escorted someplace again?”

“Not exactly. Can you be ready to leave at ten o’clock?”

“What time is it now?”

“Twenty minutes before nine.”

“Ten o’clock? Sure.”

“Can someone come by your room now? To bring you something.”

“That’ll be okay.”

“Good, then. I’ll see you later.”

“Right.”

Grofield cradled the telephone and got shakily out of bed. The nervousness caused by the dream was still in him, making his movements a little shaky and uncertain, but as he moved around the room the reaction faded.

Despite his tiredness, it had been difficult for him to get to sleep last night, and after Ken left he’d wound up lying in bed, head propped on both pillows, watching The Big Sleep with dubbed-in French. Bogart would open that cynical sidewinder mouth of his and some portly nasal Frenchman’s voice would issue forth. The girls were served better by the French substitution, which was in some ways an improvement on the original, the liquid language combining more naturally with the artificial come-on appearance than had the actresses’ own flat, awkward delivery. Most of the commercial interruptions touted Canadian National Railways, also in French, and were nicely scenic. Loving shots of mountains and waterfalls are soporific anyway, and so is an endless dialogue in a language you don’t understand, so by the end of The Big Sleep Grofield was ready for some sleep of his own, and he’d switched off the set, the lights and himself, until the Chinaman and the telephone had conspired to bring him shakily back to a world that might or might not be real.

He dressed quickly and was brushing his teeth when a knock sounded at the door. He walked across the room with the brush sticking out of his mouth to the right side and foam on his mouth like an imitation of rabies. He opened the door and a smiling bellboy was there with an envelope on a tray.

Grofield took the envelope, and while he rooted in his pockets for a quarter he tried to say thank you through a mouthful of toothpaste and toothbrush, but it didn’t work. He found a quarter, which speaks louder than words anyway, put it on the tray, shut the door, and opened the envelope. Inside was a claim check, with a brief note: “The car will be waiting out front at ten.” No signature, no heading.

Grofield put the claim check in his wallet and threw the envelope and note in the wastebasket. Then he went back to brush his teeth, but while he was rinsing he had second thoughts and went back to fish the note out of the wastebasket again. Eat it? A boy had to draw the line somewhere. Burn it? Somehow too melodramatic; he would feel foolish watching himself do it. So he carried it into the bathroom and flushed it away. The envelope happily had nothing on it but his name and room number, typed, so that could stay in the wastebasket.

He had breakfast in the hotel, seeing no familiar faces, and at ten o’clock went out the main door and gave the captain the claim check. “Just one moment, sir.”

It was more like five, and then a green Dodge Polara was driven up by a scruffy man in blue work clothes who presented Grofield with a parking bill of two dollars. Grofield rooted in his wallet and came up with a pinkish Canadian two dollar bill — the Canadians not subscribing to the American notion of that denomination’s bad luck qualities — which he turned over for the car keys. Then he got behind the wheel and drove through the arch and out of the courtyard.

He stopped in the first parking space he came to and looked around, but Marba was nowhere to be seen. Not Marba nor anyone else he recognized.

Now what?

He sat there a minute or so before it occurred to him to look in the glove compartment, and there he found a medium-sized manila envelope with a capital G written on it in ink. G for Grofield, no doubt. He opened the envelope and removed a roadmap of the city and a small piece of paper on which was typed, “Stop for the man in orange.”

Oh, yeah? Grofield opened the roadmap and saw an ink line on it, meticulously marking his route from the Chateau Frontenac out of the city. It involved his driving through the old walled city, down to the harbor, and across Pont Sainte Anne on Route 54. The ink line then continued on Route 54 on up to the top of the map, where it ended in a little arrow pointing upward. So he was to take Route 54 out of town, that was all, and watch for a man in orange.

Quebec is one of those odd North American cities — New Orleans is another — in which a picturesque old section has been preserved in the middle of square miles of standard, dull city. Grofield now drove half a dozen blocks and was abruptly out of what he thought of as Quebec. From this point on he might just as well have been in Cleveland or Houston or Seattle. The anonymous urbs sprawled away on all sides, dressed in its undershirt.

The traffic was the standard fare, too. No longer was it a matter of nosing your car slowly through curving ancient streets, now there was the usual heavy flow of vaguely distracted housewives, making abrupt left turns and having to be honked at when the light turned green. Grofield drove among them, waiting them out, and by the time he’d reached the northern limit of his map most of the traffic was left behind.

This was the main road into the Laurentians, the mountain chain above the city, extending northward toward the Canadian woods. The road was four lanes for a while, leaving the city, but about ten miles north it narrowed to two.

It was a sunny morning, bright and cold, with clean snow packed thick on both sides of the road. Occasionally a city-bound truck, red or steel gray, the sun sparking from its windshield, passed Grofield, but mostly he was alone on the road now. Twice, cars full of men in hunting jackets tore by him, heading north for the moose, but he saw none coming back with their trophies tied to the fender.

He was about twenty miles north of the city when he saw a truck pulled off to the right of the road, facing the same way he was going. It was steel-sided and very dirty, with green canvas draped over the rear opening. Grofield paid little attention to it until he saw the man in the bright orange jacket step down from the cab and walk back toward the rear of the truck.

Was this the one? Or was it just a wary hunter, determined not to be mistaken for a moose? Grofield slowed down, and as he got closer the man in the orange jacket motioned to him to pull in behind the truck.

He did, and sat in the car with the motor running. The man in orange came over, and Grofield lowered the window. The man had a round face, a bushy mustache, and a Latin American accent: “Meester Marba ees in the truck.”

“Where in the truck?”

“You suspicious? You wait.”

He nodded, and walked heavily away to the rear of the truck and agitated the green cloth there. Grofield kept one hand on the gear lever, ready to leave if something went wrong.

Someone he didn’t recognize stuck his head out through the green cloth, and he and the man in orange spoke briefly. The one in the truck glanced over at Grofield, nodded, and disappeared. A minute later Marba himself appeared there, and motioned to Grofield to come over.

“Okay,” Grofield said, even though no one would be able to hear him. He switched off the engine and got out of the car. He walked over to the truck, and the man in orange said as he passed, “That’s good. Suspicious, that’s good.”

“Thank you,” Grofield said, and gave him a little bow, and went on to the truck.

Marba said, “Just a moment, we have a stepladder,” and disappeared behind the green canvas again. A few seconds later a ladder was stuck through and leaned against the ground, and Grofield went up and through the opening in the canvas into the truck.

A light was on in the ceiling, but it wasn’t very bright and the interior was full of people and things, causing multiple shadows. Still, it was bright enough for Grofield to see Marba’s slightly sad, apologetic smile and the guns being pointed at him by two of the others.

Grofield showed his empty hands, and made no sudden movements. “What’s the need for this?” he said.

“A small precaution,” Marba said. “A minor inconvenience. Take your clothing off, please.”

“Do what?”

“We have others here for you,” Marba said, and motioned at a card table in the middle of the truck interior. A pile of clothing was laid out there, with socks and underwear on top.

Grofield looked around. Besides the two Latin American-looking guys holding guns on him, and their brother outside, there was an Oriental to his left, between him and the way out. Four others of various races were up toward the other end of the truck, uncrating machine guns.

Marba said softly, “You’re more intelligent than that, Grofield. Don’t even consider it.”

“Why do you want my clothes?”

“It took us quite a while to understand what you meant when you told Carlson you were going to put your radio on. Not turn your radio on, put your radio on. And of course no radio went on no sound of it.”

“Oh,” Grofield said. “That’s right, you’ve been listening in haven’t you?”

“Quite profitably,” Marba said. “We’re in something of a hurry by the way, so if you’d start changing while we talk I’d appreciate it.”

“I don’t have anything to say right now,” Grofield told him, and reluctantly stripped and put on the new clothes. Everything fit except the shoes, which were too tight. “Those were my own shoes,” he told Marba. “They weren’t given to me by Carlson’s people.”

“We’d rather not take the chance,” Marba said. “I’m sorry.”

“These are too tight.”

“Perhaps they’ll stretch as you wear them.”

“You aren’t making me happy,” Grofield said, and tied the shoes. In the meantime a bundle had been made of his old clothing and handed out through the green canvas to someone outside Grofield said, “They’ll go for a ride now, huh?”

“And so will we,” Marba said. “This plank along the side here is, I’m sorry to say, the best I can offer you for seating arrangements.”

“It’ll be better than standing in these shoes.”

“We tried to get your size. I am sorry.”

“So am I,” Grofield said, and sat down on the plank extending along the side of the truck. Marba sat down beside him and nodded to one of the men at the other end of the truck, who rapped a gun butt against the wall, and a few seconds later the truck jolted forward.

Grofield said, “I don’t suppose there’s any point asking where we’re going.”

“Why not? We’re going north, up into the North Woods.” Marba smiled thinly. “Don’t look discouraged, Grofield,” he said, “We aren’t taking you away to murder you.”

“What then?”

“It was decided the best thing to do with you was hold you until we finished our business here. On Monday you will be released.”

“You’re going to hold me for three days?”

“Yes.”

“In the North Woods, in the middle of winter, with shoes that pinch my feet.”

Marba smiled and patted Grofield’s knee. “I knew your sense of humor would see you through,” he said.