Mourner (8 page)

He knocked softly at the door of room 512 and after a few seconds he heard a bed creak and then her soft call: "It's unlocked."

He went in. The table lamp beside the bed offered the only light, amber and intimate. She was lying supine on the bed, the covers outlining her incredibly long body, her face framed by the blonde hair on her pillow. She looked up at him with surprise. "Oh, it's you."

"You expected our friend again?" The prospect of Parker coming down the hallway now did not please him.

"That son of a bitch!" She seemed very angry with Parker. "Get me a cigarette, will you? Over on the dresser there."

"Most certainly. I will, if I may, join you."

"Be my guest."

The tendency to goggle and giggle, as it had on the jetliner, was growing stronger and stronger. He fought it away, retaining an urbane and practised exterior as he carried her cigarettes over to the bed and leaned over to offer her a light. Her eyes were hazel, and deep, and knowing, and they gazed up unblinking into his own. He held her gaze, and smiled pleasantly.

"Thanks," she said, and blew smoke, but not towards his face. She patted the bed next to her mounding hip. "Sit down."

"You are most kind." His weight sagged the mattress, and she slid just slightly towards him.

"What are you to Parker?" she asked suddenly.

"Ah," he said. "How coincidental. Much the same question I had in my mind to ask you, though of course since you are a lady I would have phrased it somewhat differently."

"Parker's a pain in the ass," she said. "Sorry if I shocked you."

She had. Women at home did not speak in such a manner. He smiled to cover the instant of shock. "Precision in all things, my dear. And that phrase has admirable precision. My name, which our mutual friend neglected to tell you, is Auguste Menlo."

"You told me yourself, remember?"

"Ah, yes, so I did."

"What are you so nervous about?"

"I am most sorry. I hadn't realized I was."

"Parker won't be back, if that's it," she replied.

That was, of course, part of it.

He said, "As to Parker, my own connection with him is most transitory, and for convenience only."

"I could say the same thing," she said bitterly. "I'd like to push the bastard off a cliff."

"Dear lady, how rapidly we have come to a meeting of minds."

She didn't get it at first. She frowned slightly at him as she sorted out the words, and then all at once she responded to his smile with a dazzling smile of her own. "I'm Bett Harrow," she said.

"I am charmed." And he meant it. He leaned forward to stub his cigarette in an ashtray. "Parker has told me of the statuette."

"I didn't know Parker ever told anybody anything."

"He is not a blabbermouth, no. But he did tell me of the statuette. It was, you might say, a mutual sharing of confidences. My own is irrelevant at the moment, really. We might speak of it another time perhaps."

To have a woman like this, and in her company to spend one hundred thousand dollars. What a glorious dream! What a more glorious reality! "If I understand aright, your father has paid for this statuette in advance? Fifty thousand dollars?"

"Cash in advance," she replied. "We've got something else Parker wants too. He gets that later."

"Anything of, uh, value?"

"Not to anybody else."

"Ah. Alas. My dear, I would like to ask you a hypothetical question."

"He would," she said.

"I beg your pardon?"

"My father would pay again. If Parker didn't have the statue, and you did, and you wanted to sell, he'd pay again."

"Another fifty thousand?"

"He might not go that high. But you could probably get twenty-five."

Menlo shrugged. "I am not greedy."

"I bet you're not."

He leaned over closer to her. "Another question, my dear."

"What this time?"

"In my country," he said, "women go to bed wearing great white sacks made of cotton. In the United States what do women wear when they go to bed?"

"Depends on the woman."

"Well, you, for instance?"

"Skin."

"Skin? You mean, no garment at all?"

"That's exactly what I mean."

"Incredible," he said.

"You don't believe me?" There was a mock challenge in her eyes, and her hands gripped the top edge of the covers.

"If you endeavour to prove that statement to me," he replied, "I wish you to be warned that I can take no responsibility for whatever might transpire thereafter."

"Is that right?" She flicked her arms, and the covers shot back, baring her to the knee.

He'd never undressed so quickly in his life. One sock was still half on when he lumbered into the bed, loomin over her like a dirigible. Her hazel eyes darkened, her body seemed to grow firmer and more taut, and all at once he found himself in congress with a panther. He said a lot of things in his native tongue, until he no longer had breath to spare on talk, and from then on he merely clung.

When it was over, and they'd smoked a cigarette together and talked a bit more, he got up and began to get dressed. "I will see you in Miami. Very soon, I hope. And with the statuette."

"You'll remember the hotel?"

"It is imprinted firmly upon my memory." He took one last cigarette from her pack, and lit it. "It might be best were you to leave in the morning, as Parker requested. He is taciturn and unpredictable, and I would want nothing to go wrong."

"All right," she answered.

"Until Miami, then."

"I'll be seeing you."

He returned to Parker's room and fell into pleasantly exhausted sleep, garlanded with sweet dreams…

Watching Parker and Handy at work, those last two days, he had grown more and more impressed with the way they handled themselves. He had originally planned to remain with them throughout the robbery and the getaway, letting them handle all the details, and double-crossing them only after the operation was completed. But as the time grew shorter, he revised his plans and decided to do away with them before they left Kapor's house. Through some careful and judicious questioning, he had learned enough about the getaway route and the theories behind it to be able to handle it alone when the time came. But still, he was in a strange country and involved in an operation that was unfamiliar to him, besides being aligned with a pair of the most lupine of wolves. That last day, Friday, his nervousness and excitement grew and grew until he was afraid he would explode. It was more and more difficult to hold himself in check as the day wore on towards night.

They had not found the derringer stowed away beneath the false bottom of his leather toilet kit. It was more of a toy than a gun, especially in comparison with the weapons that Parker and McKay carried, but it was small enough and light enough to be safely hidden and it held two bullets. If he was careful, that should be sufficient.

Friday evening, when Parker and Handy left to steal the second car, he transferred the derringer to his coat pocket, hoping they would not think to search him again before entering Kapor's house.

McKay came back at the appointed time, and Menlo carried the empty suitcase they'd bought that day out to the car. He climbed in, saying, "Have you had good fortune?"

"Good enough."

McKay, too, had his moments of taciturnity.

From this point, when he actually entered the automobile and sat down next to McKay, until the operation was complete, he was in such a state of high excitement that he scarcely knew his name. The operation went like clockwork, and the delight bubbled up in him, mixed deliciously with terror, in a heady combination that was almost like a drug. They drove to the house in the stolen Cadillac, they entered, they found the room containing Kapor's pitiful collection of bric-a-brac. And there for the first time Menlo saw the white mourner. In his state of heightened sensibilities he saw the mourner as being deeply meaningful and symbolic; in some convoluted way it expressed to him the end of mourning. Now at last all was within his grasp.

The head came off the Apollo, just as Clara had said it would, and inside was the money. It wasn't really money to him yet when he thought of money, he still thought of his native currency but he knew he would have no difficulty in getting used to these unfamiliar green bills, with their Presidents and public buildings. The money poured out of the hollow Apollo, filling the suitcase and more, like a cornucopia. In excitement and dread and anticipation and pleasure so intermingled and intense that he came very close to fainting, he stuffed into his pockets the fingers caressing the crisp green bills, and then pulled his hand from his right pocket again, the fingers now gripping instead the small deadly black derringer.

Both tried to escape him, flinging themselves about, knocking statues down, but the excitement ended at his wrist. His hand was calm and steady. He fired twice, and each went down. They hadto go down. In one lightning bolt of time, Auguste Menlo had become invincible. His finger twitched twice; his adversaries ceased to exist. Their husks, their empty shells, lay broken at his feet.

He stowed the derringer back in his pocket, hearing the crisp crinkle of the bills again, and hurried over to pick up the spoils. The statuette under his left arm, the suitcase heavier now, much heavier hanging from his right hand. He was flushed, feverish, victorious. He didn't even remember turning the lights off on his way out.

First, there was a beach. There were great round beach umbrellas, and crowds of people swimming and splashing in the shallow water. Women wearing wool bathing suits and big floppy hats shading their eyes looked out over the water, and men and other women lay face down on blankets, sunbathing. There was a steady roar of sound, shouting and splashing and laughing, ebbing and flowing like the waves that trickled up the flat beach and down again. And children running, people hurrying this way and that. But it was all muted, all slowed down. The shouting and splashing sounded far off as if under water, and all the running and scurrying was like a moving picture run in slow motion.

A woman came walking towards Menlo across the beach. She was tall and golden and blonde and slender, with pleasing fullnesses where they should be, and she was totally nude. But no one else paid her any attention. She came closer and closer to him, smiling with a smile that offered everything, and he recognized her, but he couldn't remember her name. He stared at her, trying to remember, and wondering why no one at the beach was alarmed by her nudity. Then the sun got into his eyes, making them sting and water, and he closed them for relief. When he opened them again the woman was closer, but now she was wearing Parker's face.

"No!" Menlo screamed, and in a sudden great gout of flame and smoke she disappeared. He looked out over the water, and a huge ship with tremendous white sails was racing towards him, bombarding the beach. The gouts of flame and smoke roared up all around him. People were screaming, and running every which way.

He dropped to his knees and began scrabbling in the sand, digging a hole to hide in, when a voice said, "Why not just clamp down hard on the capsule, my friend, and save all that digging?"

He looked up, there was Spannick, sitting on a kitchen chair and smiling at him. The kitchen chair was very slowly sinking into the sand under Spannick's weight.

"You're dead," he shouted, and Spannick's face changed to Parker's. He closed his eyes, knowing he was doomed. He opened them again, and he was in a motel room with one green wall and one white wall and one yellow and one wall of glass covered by draperies of the three colours all combined, and he was alone.

He sat up, and slowly the realization came to him that this was truth, that he was awake and the nightmare was over. His elbows were trembling, and his mouth hung open. He tried to close it, but his jaw immediately fell slack again. He tried again, and it fell slack again. He kept trying, sitting mounded in the middle of the bed like a squat pink fish, his elbows trembling and his mouth closing and falling open, closing and falling open. But reality was returning to him, and in a minute he got up from the bed and stood in the middle of the room. He was naked, in honour of the United States and Bett Harrow.

Nightmares did come to him from time to time, particularly when he had been working too hard, or an assignment was unusually difficult, like the purging of an old friend. He knew nightmares, and he knew what to do about them, how to pull their teeth and lay them to rest. The trick was to go over the nightmare detail by detail, remembering it as fully and completely as possible, discovering what part of his past experience had produced each distortion.

Still shaky, he lit a cigarette, and discovered that even American cigarettes taste foul immediately after one wakes up. Still, it should help calm the nerves. He made a face, and dragged deep.

The nightmare then. First, the beach. That was easy. It was one of the tourist beaches on the Caspian Sea; he had never been there, but he had seen such beaches in motion pictures. And in this instance it was meant to symbolize Miami Beach, which he had never seen, even in films.

The nude woman. Bett Harrow, of course. Odd he couldn't remember her name in the dream. Perhaps that meant she was not an individual to him. She, and the airline stewardess, and all the women in the American magazines were simply an erotic goal, with interchangeable bodies and faces and names. One would do as well as another. He was somewhat surprised and pleased to find his subconscious so smug about his interlude with Bett Harrow.

Next, Parker's face. It had cropped up twice, each time attached to another's body. He had met the Harrow woman through Parker, of course, but with Parker's face on Spannick's body as well, there had to be a different answer.

It could be that Parker had no body any more, Menlo having murdered it. Was some essence of Parker after him, seeking vengeance? Friends of Parker? It was hard to imagine the man havingany friends. Besides, even if he did, what did they know of Menlo? Nothing. Only the Harrow woman, and she was already aware that he intended to kill Parker, and approved. So the double appearance of Parker's face was simply an oversensitive reaction of having eliminated such a formidable opponent.

Next, the ship with the white sails. He had to think about that for a few minutes, pacing back and forth in front of the bed, and at last it came to him. Jenny's song, from Dreigo-schenoper.The pirate ship. He had been in mortal danger from the pirates first the Outfit, and later Parker and McKay and this was simply a recording of that fact. And the same was true of Spannick's appearance, saying exactly what he had said in the cellar that night.

He understood the dream now, and its terror was washed away. He went over to the nightstand, picked up his watch, and saw that it was ten minutes to four. He had slept six hours, having fallen deeply asleep immediately after returning here from Kapor's house, feeling after the high-pitched excitement of the robbery and killings a lethargy unlike any drowsiness or exhaustion he had ever known before. So he had slept, purging his mind of all residual terrors through this nightmare, and now he was rested and calm.

It was time to be going. According to the getaway theory explained to him by McKay, now was the time to get started.

He showered, calm and relaxed, taking his time. He dressed in fresh clothing from the skin out, packed his suitcase, gathered up the other suitcase, with all the money in it, and tiptoed out of the motel room.

The Pontiac was there, waiting. He stowed both suitcases on the back seat, got behind the wheel, and took the road map from the glove compartment.

He wanted to travel south from here, but he was north of the city. Northeast. Was there any way to skirt the city to the east? He studied the unfamiliar map, following thin lines on roads with the tip of one stubby finger, and finally found a way to get over to the Capital Beltway. That would take him south into Virginia, where he could pick up a route numbered 350 which would take him to a route numbered 1, which ran all the way down the coast to Miami.

He laid the map on the seat beside him, and started the engine. He was not used to so large and soft an automobile, and he drove cautiously at first, barely touching the accelerator as he brought the car up the slope to the street. He underestimated and made far too wide a right turn, but Wisconsin Avenue at this point was four lanes wide, and at this hour in the morning there was no other car in sight anyway.

His progress at first was agonizingly slow. The automobile was unfamiliar to him, as were the street signs. The standard pictographic signs common throughout Europe were not used here. Instead of the usual white background and red frame and black pictorial silhouette, there were dull yellow diamonds, some bearing words and some deformed arrows. Stop signs were red hexagons with the word STOP in white, unless they were yellow hexagons with the word STOP in black. It was confusing, and a little frightening. He couldn't afford to have an accident now, not with one hundred thousand dollars in a suitcase on the back seat.

By the time he finally got to the Capital Beltway he was perspiring freely, despite the November chill, and there was pain in his head from creasing his brow and squinting through the windshield.

But the Capital Beltway was a superhighway, like the German Autobahn. Menlo relaxed at once, sat back more comfortably, held the steering wheel less tightly. He also pressed more firmly on the accelerator. The car, bulky and soft as a heavyweight boxer out of condition, was nevertheless an eager sprinter. The car roared down the empty highway, as dawn slowly spread over the sky to his left. He was on his way.