You Bet Your Life

11

Fleming opened the door with an amused smile on his face, a drink in one hand, and his pearl cigarette holder in the other. He wore a dark smoking jacket that looked as if it were made of velvet. The only other time I had seen anything like it was in a Ricardo Cortez movie a good ten years earlier.

“Mr. Peters,” he said genially. “To what do I owe this pleasure? Another attempt on your life?”

He stepped back to let me in, and in I went to a large, carpeted room with plenty of soft furniture and a tall, black-haired woman in a black dress. She looked like an ad for expensive perfume. She didn’t look soft like the furniture.

“Were you followed?” Fleming asked matter-of-factly.

“Maybe,” I said, looking at the woman, who raised a drink to her mouth as if she were in a fashion show. The mouth pouted and the face did not show signs of pleasure in my company.

Fleming turned off the hall light behind us and moved quickly to switch off the overhead light in the room, leaving only the light of a table lamp in the corner and the silhouette of the woman.

“I always take rooms on this floor in the Ambassador when I’m in Chicago,” Fleming explained. “Someone was overzealous on the doors, and there is a distinct gap between floor and door.”

I looked at the door and could see the light from the hall spreading evenly onto the carpet.

“If someone approaches,” he explained, “no matter how softly, their shadow will show. Learned that from a Japanese diplomat I was following in New York City last year. Formidable group, the Japanese.”

He sat comfortably in the chair after smoothing his smoking jacket behind him and asked me if I wanted a drink. I passed, and tried not to look at the tall woman. Fleming acted as if she were not there and might have gone on ignoring her had she not cleared her throat.

“Ah, yes, Mr. Peters, this is Prosephone Fabrikant, a not very old and not yet a dear friend.”

The woman winced at both the phoney name and the comment, but said nothing.

“I’m sorry to-”

“Don’t apologize,” Fleming said quickly. “Our last meeting was the most exhilarating event of recent years. Perhaps our second can evoke the memory.”

“Are you going to be tied up long?” sighed Prosephone Fabrikant in an accent distinctly cultured and distinctly American, probably Boston.

Fleming looked at me with an eyebrow raised.

“I was hoping you could put me up for the night,” I said.

Prosephone Fabrikant’s irritation reverberated from the walls and shot right through me.

“Of course,” said Fleming. “Prosephone and I can continue our discussion tomorrow.” He looked at her with confidence coming dangerously close to indifference. She tried to stare him down icily, but she was no match for a man who had practiced that look for long hours before a mirror, or else was just born to it. If I tried it, I’d look like a punch-drunk middleweight who heard bells when there were no bells.

“Of course,” she said, finally putting down her drink and stalking to the door. Fleming rose to follow her, but he didn’t hurry and he was right. She hesitated with her hand on the knob, and I retreated as discreetly as I could to the window to look out at the lights of downtown Chicago.

I couldn’t make out the words, but her voice sounded hurt and weak-a voice that seemed out of place in that cool body. His voice was firm but soft. He kissed her for a long time, but without frenzy or fire. Then he opened the door, guided her out, and closed it behind her.

“Met her in the bar downstairs,” Fleming said, returning to the room. “Don’t really remember her name, but have the distinct impression from her ring that she is married. Toby, women are not to be trusted-but American women, for all their deceit, are a distinctly superior lot to Englishwomen. Englishwomen simply do not wash and scrub enough.”

I shrugged and told my tale. When I was about to tell him about Servi’s body in the park waiting for sunrise, he rose and put his finger to his lips. He nodded to the door, and I could see a distinct shadow blocking out a chunk of light in the hall. Fleming made an opening and closing motion with his hand to indicate that I should continue talking. I did while he made his way slowly to the door. He was within a foot of the door when an ancient floorboard under the carpeting gave him away with a distinct creak. The shadow snapped away from the door and footsteps clopped down the hall. Fleming jerked the door open and disappeared. I was a few feet behind him.

Fleming had ten years on me and I remembered him telling me something about having been an athlete. He made a strange looking sprinter in his velvet smoking jacket and slippers, but he was a fast son-of-a-bitch. I couldn’t keep up with him. He went through an exit door and I followed about fifteen feet behind. When I went through the door I stopped to listen for footsteps. My heavy breathing got in the way, but I managed to control it long enough to determine that people were running up the stairs, not down. I went up. Down would have been more fun.

About four flights up I heard a metal door open and close with a clang. Then it opened and closed again. A second or two later I thought I heard a shot. By the time I reached the metal door at the top of the stairway, I hoped there was no one beyond it waiting for me. I needed a week or two to get my legs back and inhale enough air to stay alive. It was either age or the flu or both, or maybe just good sense, but I was tired. I was also responsible for a partly mad Englishman who might be getting shot at by a guy who knew how to shoot.

I pushed the door open and got hit in the face by a blast of wind from the lake. I waited for the wind to pass, but it didn’t. The roof of the Ambassador in the winter was not the ideal place for shelter.

The moon was partially out and I could make out the shapes of chimneys and air ducts, but I couldn’t see any people. I did hear the shot that tore up a spray of snow at my feet. I jumped into the darkness behind a chimney and tripped over a body.

“Fleming?”

“Fleming the fool, at your service,” he said tightly. “I have a very neat little Barretta in my suitcase — oiled, clean, dying to be used.”

“Sorry,” I said, waiting for the man we had trapped to figure out we were unarmed and come looking for us. My eyes adjusted to the near light and I looked at Fleming who, in spite of the thin jacket, didn’t look in the least cold. The only effect of the last ten minutes had been to mess up his hair. As if sensing this, he reached up and patted it neatly in place.

“I wonder,” he said, “if there is another way down from here.”

“I don’t want to try it,” I said.

“No, no old chum, I wasn’t worried about our escape. I don’t want our elusive friend to scamper.”

Something crunched in the snow about twenty feet away. The howl of the wind mixed with the sound, but both Fleming and I heard it. We looked at each other. I’m sure the fear was clear in my eyes. He looked positively happy.

“Good, now we know where he is,” he whispered, and pointed to the right while he slipped away into the darkness on the left. I crawled where he had indicated as quietly as I could, but it wasn’t good enough. Another shot hit too close to me to be luck. I crawled fast, rolling for cover behind a ridge of brick. Both my heart and the footsteps were about equal in volume and both were getting louder. He couldn’t have been more than a dozen feet from me when whoever it was let out a pained grunt. Less then a second later the footsteps retreated. I peered over the ridge of bricks cautiously and saw the faint outline of a man about thirty feet away. He took two more shots into the darkness, and I screwed up my courage and stood up.

“This is the police,” I shouted, making my voice as deep and as loud as I could. “Step out here with your hands over your head. Murphy,” I said in a stage whisper, “if anyone comes in view with a gun in his hand, start shooting and ask questions later.”

Not having thought out the consequences of this move, I wondered what I would do if someone did step forward with a gun in hand and saw me unarmed. I hurried in a crouch to a metal air duct and was rewarded by the sound of hurrying feet and the slam of the metal door. Just in case it might be a trick, I sat for another shivering minute or two and then made a circle to the door. I pulled it open and found nothing.

Then I began to search for Fleming’s velvet-clad body. By leaning forward, I managed to follow a maze of foot prints in the snow in a variety of circles. One set of prints, however, led to a nauseating end at the edge of the building. I didn’t want to look over and down. A few months earlier, in Los Angeles, I had seen a midget take an enforced dive out of a high window-and one sight like that in a man’s life is one more than he needs. I rubbed a ball of snow in my face and leaned over into the blast of wind.

The fingers of a pair of hands stood out distinctly no more than two feet below, clinging to a concrete design in the hotel.

“Fleming?” I called into the wind though it didn’t take much to realize it couldn’t be anyone else.

“Peters,” he said somewhat faintly, but without fear-at least without fear I could detect. “Glad you found me. It’s rather difficult to hold on and I really don’t see how I can scramble up.”

I leaned over with one hand on the brick ridge of the roof and watched while one of Fleming’s slippers dropped from his foot and went sailing down into the night, flickering past lighted windows to disappear far below. Fleming’s face was hidden by the jutting of concrete, but I could see his body literally swaying in the stiff wind. I eased my way out, trying not to lose my frosty grip with my left hand while my not-long-enough right arm inched down to Fleming’s fingers.

“Don’t let go till I have a grip on your wrist,” I shouted.

He responded, but I couldn’t make out the words. I did manage to get a reasonably good grip on his left wrist, but the whole operation was full of potential failure. My hands were cold and so were his, and I didn’t know if I had the strength to pull him up even if I could hold my grip.

“Don’t try to pull,” he shouted. “Just get a firm grip and let me try to get up on your arm.”

He let go with both hands and my left arm pulled painfully in the socket, but I held my grip. His right hand reached up to get a grasp on my sleeve and he threw his legs up agilely over the same concrete outcropping to which he had been clinging. Just as my right hand lost its hold on the moist wrist, Fleming’s left hand grabbed the brick along the roof and he pulled himself up and over.

We lay there panting and enjoying the firmness beneath us for a minute or two without speaking.

“Do things like this happen to you often?” he finally gasped.

“Sometimes,” I said.

“Fascinating,” he came back with a grin. He pulled himself up and helped me to my feet. “I hope you don’t resent my saying this Toby, but aren’t you getting a bit long of tooth for this sort of thing?”

I shrugged and he nodded in understanding.

As we made our way down the stairs back to his room, Fleming explained that he had heard the man with the gun take a shot at me and had, in turn, thrown a snowball with a rock in it at the carrier of certain doom. The man, whom he did not get a decent look at, had turned and taken a few shots at him, and Fleming had scrambled over the side of the roof to avoid the bullets.

“I don’t think anyone heard the shots with the wind blowing like this,” I said, as we went into the room and Fleming closed the door behind us.

He kicked off his remaining slipper, finished off his bourbon and branch water while humming a tune I didn’t recognize, and went into the bedroom to get his gun.

“We must stay in touch,” he said, turning an armchair to face the door. “Now I suggest you lie down on the sofa and get a few hours sleep while I tell you my life’s story.”

I was too tired to argue so I kicked my shoes off and stretched out. The last thing I remembered him saying was that he had either studied under a psychiatrist in Austria or been studied by one. Either possibility seemed reasonable to me at that point.

In my dream, Cincinnati was undergoing a massive reconstruction and I kept having to move from house to house to stay out of the way. I’d had the dream before and I didn’t like it. When I woke up in the morning, Fleming was sipping a cup of coffee. He wore a fresh suit and was clean shaven.

“Sleep well?” he said.

“O.K.,” I said.

Fleming looked at his watch. “I have an appointment or two,” he said, “and I think you have a crime to get on with.”

We shook hands.

“If you ever get to L.A., look me up,” I said. “I’m in the phone book.”

“And if you ever get to England after this damned war of ours, look me up.”

I went out the door without looking back, made it to the lobby without being shot, let the doorman get me a cab, and told the cabbie Merle’s address.