The Judas Goat

15

I went out of the Sheraton and turned left on Vester Stogade. Most of the buildings along the street were low apartment buildings, relatively new, and middle-class or better. Number 36 was hers. Brick, with a small open porch on the front. Before I got there I crossed the street and lingered inconspicuously near some bushes in the park. A lot of people must walk their dogs, I noticed, ‘along a narrow path that skirted the lake. A light blue Simca cruised by with one man at the wheel. I stayed where I was. I didn’t see Hawk. In a few minutes the Simca was back. A little one, square and boxy. It went past me gqing the other way and parked a half block up toward the hotel. I stood. It sat.

After another ten minutes a black Saab station wagon pulled up in front of Kathie’s apartment. Three men got out and two of them began to walk toward me, the third went into Kathie’s. I looked in the other direction toward the Simca. A tall, dark, stoop-shouldered man with a big nose and a gray crew-cut was getting out. Behind me was the lake. One of us was sort of cornered. The two men from the Saab fanned out a little as they came so that if I had wanted to I couldn’t run straight ahead and split the defense and get away. I didn’t want to. I stood still with my feet about a foot apart, my hands clasped loosely in front of me, slightly below my belt buckle. The three men reached me and spread out in a little circle around me. The tall guy with the nose stood behind me. The two men from the Saab looked like brothers. Young and ruddy-cheeked. One of them had a scar that ran from the corner of his mouth halfway across his cheek. The other had very small eyes and very light eyebrows. Both were wearing loud sport shirts hanging outside their pants. I guessed why. The one with the scar took a .38 automatic out of his waistband and pointed it at me. He said something in German. “I speak English,” I said. “Put your hands on top of your head,” he said. “Wow,” I said, “you hardly have an accent.” He gestured with the gun barrel. I rested my hands loosely on my head. “That seems dumb to me,” I said. “Should ein cop come by he might notice that I was standing here with my hands on my head. He might pause to ask why, nein?”

“Put your hands down at your sides.” I put them down. “Which of you is Hans?” The guy with the gun ignored me. He said something in German to the big-nosed guy behind me. “I’ll bet you’re Hans,” I said to Scarface. “And you’re Fritz.” Big Nose patted me down, found my gun, and took it. He slipped it into his belt under his shirt. “That’s the Captain behind me.” They didn’t seem to be fans of the Katzenjammer Kids. They didn’t seem to be fans of me either. The guy with the small eyes said, “Come.” And we walked across the street from the park and into the apartment building. I was careful not to look for Hawk. Kathie’s anartment was first floor right, looking out on the park. She was there when we went in, sitting on the couch, half turned so she could look out the window. She was wearing a white corduroy jumpsuit with a black chain for a belt. The man in the room with her was small and wiry with a wide, strong nose and a harsh mouth. He had a big gray mustache that extended beyond his lips, and he wore wire-rimmed glasses. He was nearly bald, probably, but he had let what little hair he had grow very long on the left side and then combed it up and across. Thus his part started just above his left ear. To keep it in place he seemed to have lacquered it with hair spray. He was wearing work shoes and tight-legged corduroy jeans. His white shirt was frayed at the collar. The sleeves were rolled up and his forearms looked strong. He was dark, like Big Nose, and middle-aged. He didn’t look like a German, or a crazy. He looked like a mean grownup. He spoke in German to Scarface. Scarface said, “English.”

“Why are you following this young woman?” the guy said to me. He had an accent, but I couldn’t say what kind. “Why do you want to know?” I said. He took two steps across the room and punched me in the jaw with his right hand. He was a strong little man and the punch hurt. Hans and Fritz both had their guns out. Fritz’s was a Luger. Big Nose stayed behind me. “At least you gave me a straight answer,” I said. “Why are you following this young woman?”

“She and a number of her associates blew up the family of a rich and vengeful American,” I said. “He hired me to get even. ”

“Then why did you simply not kill her when you found her?”

“One, I’m too nice a guy. Two, she was the only one I had contact with. I wanted her for a Judas goat. I wanted her to lead me to the others.”

“And you think she has?”

“Some. You’re new, but the guy with the big bazoo here and Hans and Fritz, they look about right.”

“How many people are involved?”

“Nine.”

“You have killed or captured three. You have located four more, and it has not taken you very long. You are good at your work.” I tried to look modest. “Someone that good at his work should not have been so easy to catch standing there in the park like a statue.” I tried to look embarrassed. “You were armed and you look dangerous. In the past you have killed two men lying in ambush for you.” He looked out the window. “Have we followed her down the slaughter chute as well?” Big Nose said something in a language I didn’t know. The little guy answered him. Big Nose went out the front door, moving with a kind of shambling lope. “We shall see,” the little guy said. “What’s your part in all of this?” I said. “I have the misfortune to have this collection of thugs and terrorists in my organization. I do not admire them. They are childish amateurs. I have business a good deal more serious to conduct than blowing up tourists in London. But I also have need of bodies and I cannot always choose the best.”

“It’s hard to get good help,” I said. “It is that,” he said. “You would be good help, I think. I have knocked men down with punches no harder than I gave you.”

“You might try it sometime when your thugs and terrorists were not around to support you.”

“I am not big, but I am quick and I know many tricks,” he said. “But we’re going to kill you so you and I will never know.”

“You are when your friend Nose-o comes back and says there’s no one waiting outside with an antitank gun.” The little guy smiled. “You are not an amateur either,” he said. “We’ll kill you whether there is someone there or not. But it is best to know. Perhaps you would serve as a hostage. We shall see.”

“What’s this important work you’re doing?” I said. “It is freedom’s work. Africa does not belong to the Nigras or the Communists.”

“Who does it belong to?”

“It belongs to us.”

“Us?”

“You and me, the white race. The race that brought it out of the cesspool of tribalism and savagery in the nineteenth century. The race that can make Africa a civilization.”

“You aren’t Cecil Rhodes, are you?”

“My name is Paul.”

“All your people share this goal?”

“We are pro-white and anticommunist,” Paul said. “That is common ground enough.”

“Let me ask you a question, Kathie,” I said. “You speak English, I assume.”

“I speak five languages,” she said. She was on the couch in the same spot she’d been in when I came in. She was very still. When she spoke only her mouth moved. “How do you wear white pants like that without the French bikinis showing through?” Kathie’s face turned a slow red. “You are filthy,” she said. Paul hit me again, with his left hand this time, evening up the bruises. “Do not speak so to her,” he said. Kathie got up and left the room. Paul went after her. Hans and Fritz pointed their guns at me. A key turned in the door behind me and Big Nose stepped in. “No one,” he said. Hawk stepped in right behind him with two shotgun shells in his teeth and, firing past his ear with a cutdown shotgun, blew most of Fritz’s head off. I dove behind a lounge chair. Hans fired at Hawk and hit Big Nose in the middle of the forehead. Hawk fired the second barrel at Hans as Big Nose was going down. It folded him over and he was dead by the time he fell. Hawk broke open the shotgun. The spent shells popped in the air. Hawk took the fresh shells from his mouth and slid them into the breech and snapped the shotgun closed by the time the spent shells hit the floor. I was on my feet. “Through there,” I said, and pointed toward the door where Kathie and Paul had left the room. Hawk reached it while I dug my gun out of Big Nose’s belt. “Door’s locked,” Hawk said. I kicked it open and Hawk went through in a low crouch, the shotgun held in his right hand, and I went behind him. It was a bedroom and bath with sliding doors that opened onto a courtyard. The doors were open. Paul and Kathie were gone. “Goddamn,” Hawk said. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said. We did.