The Green And The Gray

8

Roger had been heading southeast toward the West 4th Street station near Washington Square. Now, with his new friend in charge, they angled off in a more easterly direction. "Where are we going?"

Roger asked.

"MacDougal Alley," the squat man said, guiding him around a knot of chattering schoolkids. "And we really do just want to talk."

"Yeah," Roger muttered. "Do I get to know who 'we' is?"

"Who 'we' are," the man corrected. "For starters, I'm Wolfe."

"Nice to meet you," Roger said. "I'm Roger."

They continued on in silence to Sixth Avenue. A block to the south was the subway station Roger had been making for, and for a brief moment he considered trying to make a break for it. With his longer legs, he ought to be able to outrun Wolfe in a flat-out sprint.

But Wolfe was apparently thinking along the same lines. Even as they stepped to the curb his grip tightened on Roger's arm, not enough to hurt but more than enough to make his point.

MacDougal Alley was a half block of two- to four-story walk-ups, with an iron gate at one end and a cul-de-sac at the other. Another of the squat men was loitering by the gate, fiddling restlessly with a small pocketknife. He opened the gate as they approached, falling in behind them as they passed through. Wolfe took them to a building midway down the short block and led the way up the stairs to a door on the top floor. He knocked, and a moment later the door was opened by a middle-aged woman built along the same lines as his escorts, though not nearly as wide. "This is him?" she asked, looking Roger up and down.

"This is him," Wolfe confirmed. "His name's Roger."

"Hello, Roger," the woman said. "I'm Kirsten. Please come in."

They filed inside. To Roger's mild surprise, the place wasn't a standard apartment, but rather a single large room laid out as an artist's studio. A few paintings, framed and unframed, rested at various places against the walls, with an easel holding a work in progress. Across by one of the windows, two children sat at a long table working with various colors of modeling clay. An old man wearing a stained smock leaned over them, watching their progress and occasionally making a comment in a low voice.

"Father?" Kirsten called. "Wolfe and Roger are here."

The older man straightened up. He was, to Roger's complete lack of surprise, short and rather wide.

"You're sure it's him?" he called back.

"Very sure," Wolfe said. "Derek saw him leave Aleksander's place. And," he added, his voice deepening significantly, "he has Melantha's trassk with him."

"Has he, now," the old man said. Patting one of the children on the shoulder, he started across the room, limping noticeably as he walked. "Roger, was it?" he asked, stopping a couple of paces in front of him.

"Yes," Roger confirmed.

"My name's Torvald." He held out his hand. "May I see the trassk?"

"I'm sorry," Roger said, frowning as he looked down at the broad palm lifted toward him. The loose sleeve of the smock had fallen away with the movement, and he could see that Torvald was wearing a wide bracelet around his right wrist, snug-fitting and made of tooled metal. Some sort of artsy watchband, perhaps? "But I really don't know what you're talking about."

"You want me to search him?" the man with the pocketknife asked darkly.

"Patience, Garth," Torvald said, his blue eyes steady on Roger. "I'm sure Roger isn't being difficult on purpose." His eyebrows lifted. "Are you?"

"Not at all," Roger assured him, trying to keep his voice from trembling. Torvald didn't have Sylvia's grace or half-buried beauty, but in his own massive way he was just as intimidating. "I don't know anything about a—what did you call it?"

"A trassk," Torvald repeated, frowning slightly. "Did Derek see it up close, Wolfe?"

"No, from across the subway car," Wolfe said. "But it was definitely silver with a purple stone, just like the one—"

"Wait a second," Roger interrupted. Silver with a purple stone... "Are you talking about this?"

Digging into his pocket, he pulled out the brooch Caroline had found in the junk drawer.

"There," Wolfe said, jabbing a finger at it. The motion pulled the sleeve away from his wrist, and Roger saw that he, too, was wearing a metal wristband like Torvald's.

"That's the one," Garth seconded. Shifting his pocketknife to his other hand, he plucked the brooch out of Roger's hand and held it out to Torvald.

"Yes, I see," Torvald said. He made no move to take it, but merely gazed thoughtfully at it. "What exactly is your role in this, Roger?"

Roger shook his head. "I'm just an innocent bystander."

"Yet you carry Melantha's trassk," Torvald pointed out. "That implies a rather closer relationship."

"Only peripherally," Roger said. "I'm just trying to look out for Melantha's interests."

"Melantha has no interests anymore," Wolfe insisted. "The bargain's been made."

"Of course, not everyone agreed with it," Garth said, fingering the brooch restlessly. "And he did come out of Aleksander's just now."

"It wasn't Aleksander," Torvald told him. "I was specifically watching him, and he was still there after all the commotion settled down."

"But he could have gotten her out of the circle and passed her to someone who'd been primed for the occasion," Garth argued. He gestured at Roger. "Someone like him, maybe."

"Pretty risky," Wolfe said doubtfully. "Especially with Cyril standing right there."

"Unless Cyril was cooperating with him," Kirsten offered. "Maybe he had second thoughts about the agreement."

"Or never intended to go through with it in the first place," Torvald said, studying Roger's face.

"How about it, Roger?"

Roger shook his head. "I'm just trying to help Melantha," he said, fighting to keep his voice steady.

"I don't know anything about the rest of it."

"Maybe we need to ask him a little harder," Wolfe suggested ominously, his eyes steady on Roger.

"Don't be crude," Torvald admonished him. "Roger is our guest."

"Or he's a Green agent," Wolfe countered. "What do we do with him?"

Torvald pursed his lips. Roger held his breath.... "We let him go," the old man said.

"You sure that's wise?" Wolfe asked.

Torvald didn't say anything, but merely lifted his eyebrows. "Fine," Wolfe said with a sigh. "What about the trassk?."

Torvald looked at Garth and inclined his head toward Roger. "Give it back to him."

Wordlessly, Garth stepped back to Roger and dropped the brooch into his hand. "But tell this to your Green friends," Torvald continued, his voice suddenly ominous. "Matters cannot and will not remain as they are. They have five days, until Wednesday night, to decide what they're going to do. After that... well, there will be consequences."

The room suddenly felt very cold. "I'll tell them," Roger promised. "Assuming I ever see any of them again."

"I'm sure you will," Torvald said, digging into a pocket of his smock and pulling out a business card.

"If you should want to discuss this further, give me a call," he added, sliding the card into Roger's breast pocket. "Or feel free to drop by any time."

"Thank you," Roger managed.

Torvald nodded gravely. "Good-bye, Roger."

Two minutes later, Roger found himself back on the street, walking again amid the sunshine and the determinedly oblivious New York pedestrians.

His whole body shaking like a leaf.

It was ridiculous, he told himself over and over as he retraced his steps back toward the West 4th Street subway station. They hadn't pulled a gun on him, the way Porfirio had at the Greens' building.

They hadn't twisted his arm, or threatened him, or even talked especially roughly to him.

And yet, even more than when he'd left the Central Park West building, entering the sunlight here felt like escaping from something dark and oppressive.

But why? Torvald's loft had been well lit, soaked in the same sunshine pouring down on him right now. And there certainly hadn't been anything mysterious or eerie about the furnishings or decor.

The matching jewelry? Hardly. In an island as steeped in artsy ethnic stuff as Manhattan, Torvald's wristband wouldn't even rate a raised eyebrow.

No, it had to be the people themselves. But what? Their common physique, the fact that all of them seemed built like wrestlers? Unlikely.

So it wasn't the place, the conversation, or the people. Which meant there was no logical reason for Roger to feel the way he did.

But the feeling remained.

He'd made it a block from Torvald's loft when his phone rang. He jumped at the sound, dropping Melantha's brooch into his coat pocket as he pulled out the phone and punched the button. "Hello?"

"Roger?" Caroline's voice came tentatively.

He felt his muscles relax a bit. "Yeah, it's me. Why, didn't I sound like me?"

"No, you didn't," she said, her own voice a little odd. "Are you all right?"

"Oh, I'm fine," he growled. "I just got strong-armed into a guided tour of another of New York's finest mystery houses, that's all."

"You what?"

Roger shook his head irritably at himself. There was no reason to dump his frustrations on Caroline.

"Sorry," he apologized. "Let's just say I was encouraged to meet another player in this crazy game we seem to have gotten ourselves into." He dug the card out of his pocket. "A gentleman named Torvald Gray. You settled in yet?"

"Actually, we're at Lee's," she said, naming the little market on 96th Street kitty-corner from their apartment building. "Don't worry, no one can hear us—I'm using the phone in the back room.

Melantha's lost something, apparently at the apartment, and won't leave without it. We compromised by coming here until we could talk to you."

"Whatever it is, you're not going back for it," Roger insisted. "The whole idea of this exercise was to get out before anyone came looking for you."

"I understand that," Caroline said, a little shortly. "But she's very upset, and I promised her we'd try to work something out."

Roger glowered at the skyline. Terrific. "What exactly is she missing?"

"I'm not really sure," Caroline said. "She called it a task, or something like that."

"Not task; trassk," Roger corrected, feeling his lip twist. "Tell her to relax—I've got it."

"You do? What is it?"

"It's that brooch you found in the junk drawer," Roger said. "Torvald and his friends were kind enough to tell me its name."

There was a moment of silence from the other end. "You're talking about the brooch that might have once been a gun, right?" Caroline asked. "And this Torvald knows about it?"

"He knows more than we do," Roger said. "But never mind that now. Get going, okay? And call me right away if there are any more problems."

"I'll try," Caroline said. "Good-b—"

"Wait a second," Roger cut her off. "What do you mean, you'll try? You call, period."

"I can only call if you've got the phone on," Caroline said patiently.

"It is on," Roger said, pulling the phone from his ear for a quick check of the battery indicator. "Has been, ever since I left the office this morning."

"Then you must have been under a pile of metal," Caroline said. "I tried calling you fifteen minutes ago and got the 'out of range' message each time."

"That's crazy," Roger protested. "Fifteen minutes ago I was—"

He broke off. "I was in Torvald's," he went on slowly. "A small, old building without any metal structure to it. No reason a cell shouldn't have worked perfectly."

"Like there was no reason for a group of streetlights to go dim the way they did two nights ago?"

Caroline asked quietly.

Roger winced. "Yeah," he agreed. "You be careful, okay? No telling how many other players there are in this game."

"I'll bet Melantha knows," Caroline said. "Maybe I can get her to talk."

"After you get to Paul and Janet's," Roger warned.

"Yes, of course," Caroline said with a half-audible sigh. "We'll see you later."

Roger clicked off the phone, glancing around as he put it away. Sylvia probably still had someone following him, hoping he would lead them to Melantha. Now, more than likely, Torvald had added a tail of his own. Two very different groups of people, both of them desperate to get hold of Melantha.

And he still didn't have the faintest idea why.

But Caroline was right: Melantha knew. He could see it in her eyes, in her evasiveness, in her fear.

She knew.

And tonight, one way or another, he was going to get some answers out of her.