A Shroud for Jesso (6 page)

“So don’t miss the tide, Kator.” The head was nodding. “You’re out in half an hour or hell breaks loose.”

First the silk wrinkled a little and then the foot began to tap. It had the same precision as Kator’s voice.

“I must delay, Mr. Gluck. I must. Your arrangements for my ship’s departure could be the same tomorrow as they are today.”

“Too risky I can’t buy off twice in a row. You leave now, tonight, or you take your chances with the officials.”

“I’ll pay you, Mr. Gluck.”

“You’ve paid me. You’re dumping Jesso for me. Besides, you’ve found your man. He even kicked off for you from natural causes and you’re covered.”

“That is the point, Mr. Gluck. As it turns out, the information I collected is incomplete. With Joseph Snell dead, I must delay departure in order to complete my mission by consulting other sources. You see, Snell’s death is really a complication, Mr. Gluck.”

“Sorry,” Gluck said. “The ship leaves now.”

“If I could stay behind, Mr. Gluck, our difficulties would not exist, but my presence is required in—in Europe. Without being familiar with the details of my business, Mr. Gluck, you must try to appreciate the importance—“

“Sorry.”

That was Gluck all over. When it came right down to it, Gluck never budged; he made everything simple that way. What in hell was Kator selling?

“Twenty thousand, Mr. Gluck.”

Gluck barely laughed.

“Forty thousand.”

Kator’s foot had stopped tapping.

“Fifty thousand.”

“Pretty important, huh, Kator?”

“Fifty thousand, Mr. Gluck, for the privilege—”

“Look, you got half an hour. Call up somebody you know, tell them what you need, explain what’s eating you, and don’t waste your time arguing with me.”

This time Kator laughed. “You underestimate the complexity of my business with Joseph Snell.”

“I didn’t ask you to tell me about it.”

What didn’t concern Gluck he didn’t want to know. He was through with Kator and that’s where his interest ended. But Jesso’s interest was just picking up. He wasn’t through with Kator, he was just starting. Nothing was clear to him yet, but what he had heard meant one thing for sure. Jesso’s knuckles ached where he held the rim of the porthole with a hard, still grip, holding on as if the words from the pier were his salvation. One thing was sure: Kator hadn’t got all he wanted. Joe Snell was dead when they got to him and all he could give them was the thing under his toupé. A piece of paper, most likely, a piece of paper with part of a message, and the rest had died with him. Kator was strapped.

Then Jesso’s hands relaxed on the metal rim and he moved his shoulders the way a boxer does, limbering up. Kator was strapped. And nobody had seen Joe Snell before he died—except Jesso.

He wasn’t interested any more in what else went on up on the pier. Kator would jack up his price and Gluck wouldn’t take it. Gluck would have his way, which meant that the ship would go out with the tide. Jesso could hear the rumble of the engines somewhere nearby. He closed the porthole, stretched, and sat down where the bulkhead curved up. A nap might be good now. He leaned back, feeling the small, hard vibrations of the hull as the engines turned faster. The massage gave him a tickle around his nose and he squirmed his face to kill the itch. He smiled and settled against the steel. Once they’d cleared port and the tugs had cast off and the pilot had left, there’d be a clanking of feet and the door opening, because Kator would be ready to finish his business with him.

And that’s when Jesso would be ready to start business with Kator.

They came earlier than he had expected. The door clanked, waking Jesso, and he struggled against his stiffness, trying to get up. Jesso remembered the tall one by the door from the time in Gluck’s office. He stayed by the door, holding a Luger in his hand, while the other one came into the compartment. Before Jesso was up, a heavy boot caught his ribs and he fell hard to the side. He stayed there, fighting for breath, while the tall one stood by with his Luger. The other one closed a solid cover that darkened the porthole. He clicked a lock on it. Then they both left and Jesso was alone in the dark.

When the pain had simmered down, he got off the floor and tapped along the wall, trying to find the porthole. It was locked, all right. There wasn’t even a crack of light. If they had been far out to sea, they wouldn’t have bothered to close it. Instead they would have come for him to finish Kator’s end of the bargain.

The ship rumbled with a rhythmic thump. They cleared the islands, at any rate.

Jesso sat down again and waited. He tried to sleep a few times, but sleep wouldn’t come. His head ached, his legs were sore from the rawness where the skin had been scraped, and with each breath a shooting pain ran up the side of his ribs. After a while he tried to think of other things, how he would handle Kator, if there was time to handle Kator, and if perhaps his whole new hope was just the crazy wish of a man the night before his death.

A thousand times he went over it in his mind. After a while a slow rage started to boil in him, and if someone had opened the door right then Jesso would have jumped up and killed him.

But nobody came. For a long while there was nothing but the steady rumble of the ship, swaying now.

Jesso was crouching by the slanting bulkhead when he heard the steps. He had been crouching for an eternity, not moving, but his breath came fast and hard. And when the door swung open there was an outlined shape standing there, but Jesso was up like a cat, out through the door, and then his balled knuckles made contact until the shape was down and moaning.

Jesso stood blinking in the dim light from the companionway. He felt all right. He rubbed his knuckles, feeling nothing but the pleasant burn where his fists had hit.

The other guy had stood back. He came out of the shadows now, first the Luger, then his long shape.

“Don’t move,” he said, and his voice meant that he wished he would.

Jesso waited. He put his hands in his pockets and stood still. “Bean Pole,” he said. “I want to see your master.”

Bean Pole maneuvered around so he had Jesso against the light. “First you’re going to die,” he said.

Jesso laughed. “Like hell. Show me Kator, Bean Pole. I got something to sell.”

He couldn’t tell whether Bean Pole was taking his word for it, because all he said was, “Up the stairs.”

Before Jesso went, he turned to look at the man on the floor. It was the one that had kicked him in the ribs. Jesso went up the stairs feeling better than ever.

It was blowing strong and steady on deck, but except for the wind-ripped tips of the waves, the water seemed to move slowly; big glassy mountains of water that stood for a moment with foam like marble along their sides, and then slowly sank into themselves, becoming the dark floor of a valley.

After the airless hold, Jesso felt suddenly cold and uncomfortable. When he stopped, the gun spiked him from behind and pushed.

“Turn left,” said Bean Pole, “and walk as far as you can.”

Jesso was out in the wind now. He felt his trouser legs whip back against his shins.

“As far as you can,” Bean Pole had said. Fifty feet ahead was the round stern of the ship, with a low railing that sank below the black line of the horizon with a lazy dip, then climbed up again to stick out into the sky.

Kator was there with two sailors. They looked very solemn at the stern of the ship.

“There’s Mr. Kator,” said Bean Pole, “and just on the other side is where you go. Move.”

Bean Pole needn’t have done that. The jab of his gun almost missed, because Jesso was already leaning against the wind and going toward Kator. When he got there the two men in pea jackets grabbed his arms as if they thought he might jump.

Kator pursed his lips, but otherwise he made no movement. Only his black overcoat flapped at the bottom.

“This is to finish my end of the bargain,” he said, and he nodded to the white water behind the ship.

With the wind tearing at his words, Jesso leaned forward. “I got something for you.”

Kator took an involuntary step backward. The two men held Jesso’s arms more tightly.

“Since there is nothing personal in this, Jesso, you can save your breath. All right,” and he nodded at the two sailors.

It wasn’t much of a heave, and they were several feet from the railing, but Jesso bucked hard.

“Kator,” he yelled, “it’s about Snell.”

But Kator hadn’t understood. They had Jesso off the floor, legs thrashing, and the low railing was almost under him.

With a powerful concentration his leg whipped out and caught one man behind the knee. The guy buckled and fell.

“About Snell!” Jesso roared. “The rest of the stuff, Kator—from Snell!”

This time Kator heard. He moved forward and opened his mouth, but the two sailors didn’t catch his words. With an angry push they flung Jesso forward. He caught himself on the railing with a painful thud and balanced there until one more short push at his leg made him slant forward and down.

Suddenly the wind had stopped. Close behind the stern there was no wind, no rushing noise, just the dull hissing of the foam below, and then Jesso flailed, tossed down, and hit.

The water, cut and churned, dragged at him, twisted him, and not until moments later did he feel the icy wash of the ocean sucking at his body from all sides.

How long it took for him to surface, how hard he screamed, none of this was ever clear to him. At first there was just the great panic when he heard the murderous roar of the big screw close by, and then his head was out of water with foam bursting around him, and the tall shape of the ship sliding away in slow dips made him feel as small as a black speck.

He was fighting the water. Then, when the large swells came and the white water had died away, the ship kept him from thinking. He had to see the ship, draw it back with his last will, hold it there, hold it before the panic came back and everything was over. Then the ship was gone behind the slow mountain of a wave while Jesso seemed suddenly to fall with terrible speed. The water sucked him back and up, higher in a continuous sweep, until the ship was there again, black, and smaller.

Details meant nothing to him then, and when he saw the ship the next time, partly sideways now, it never meant a thing. The next time it was still the same, and he slid down again into the cold valley of the wave.

He started to die then. He was past the panic and ready to die, except that it came to him like a strength instead of like a weakness. He would fight the suck and push of the water until he was dead, which meant that he could fight no longer. He would never be dead until he was empty of that.

So when the boat came alongside and they tried to pull him out, he was kicking and slashing at them so hard that he almost choked in the process. When he started to sink, they heaved him up and over the side of the boat.

Jesso woke with a strong shiver, and when he felt the warmth around him he was surprised. Then there was a cup of coffee. It was black, hot, strong: smelling strong. Right then heaven could have been that cup of coffee. It was a pleasure that gave him time to come alive again. He sipped it slowly, he remembered what he could, and he looked around without talking.

Kator was a patient man. He sat at the other end of the cabin and watched Jesso come alive. Let the man have his coffee. It was small payment for what Kator hoped to gain.

When Jesso put his cup down and sat up on the bunk, he first hit his head on the bunk above and then he saw he was naked. The blankets had fallen back. He got up carefully, cursed with concentration, then sat down again. He stopped cursing suddenly, because now was the time for the pay-off.

“You mentioned Snell,” Kator said. “Did you have something to tell me, or was it all a maneuver?”

Jesso picked up a blanket and made a toga. “I got something.”

“Go ahead, please.”

Kator picked up a cut-glass bottle and poured red liqueur into two pony glasses. He gave one to Jesso.

“How about some clothes?”

“You won’t need any, Jesso. You will tell me what you know and that will be the end of it.”

Except for the queer position of Kator’s eyes, which gave him a fixed stare, he might have looked bored. He sounded bored.

It took a while before Jesso caught it.

“You mean I take another dive?” It came out calmly, because Jesso didn’t believe it. “You mean I tell you what I know and then hop-skip-jump back into the water?”

“Certainly. More liqueur?”

Jesso nodded automatically. His mouth moved but he didn’t quite know what to do with his voice.

“I can make you talk, Jesso. One way or another. And if it doesn’t work the first time—” Kator shrugged. “We have nine days before making port.”

They looked at each other. Kator went on. “I rarely make bargains, Jesso, except in extremities, and I grant you that I am anxious to hear what you have to say. So I will bargain. You give me the information willingly and your death will be simple; unwillingly, Jesso, and it will be complicated. There is your choice.”

The blanket had dropped off his shoulders and Jesso sat bare, but the sweat stood on his skin like hot glue. He stared at the man across the table without seeing him, thinking furiously, weighing his chance. He had only one advantage. Kator wanted something and wanted it bad. A dead man was no use to him, and that’s how Jesso meant to stay alive.

“Kator, I want some clothes.”

It surprised Kator, and he stopped his glass halfway to his mouth.

“Bravado, Jesso, will get you nowhere.” He finished his drink.

Jesso moved suddenly. He slapped Kator’s hand out of the way and for good measure he grabbed the bottle and threw it across the cabin. It crashed against the bulkhead. The sound of glass breaking was just the overture. Jesso’s neck started to swell, and when he talked it wasn’t politely.

“Now you hear this, you bastard. I know what little Joe said and you know nothing. You pitch me in the drink or run a bullet through my head and you know nothing. You rig it up so I get scared maybe and start yelling uncle, there again you don’t know from Adam. I’ve had my scare, Kator, back there in the white water with the screw sucking me down. That was my scare and it cured me. You scare me like that again and you won’t get the time of day from me. Maybe you got some fancy notions on how to make a man remember things, a trick or two you picked up in a concentration camp maybe—“