The Death Instinct (4 page)

    'Any dental offices in the hotel?' Littlemore asked the manager while the latter waited for his telephone call to be answered.

    'Certainly not,' said the manager. 'The lines are engaged, I'm afraid. Perhaps you'd like to take a seat?'

    'I got a better idea,' said Littlemore, dangling a set of handcuffs over the counter. 'You hand over the key or I take you downtown for obstructing a police investigation. That way you can confirm my identity in person.'

    The manager handed over the key.

    Inside a plush elevator car, the detective and doctor ascended in silence. When the doors finally opened, Younger exited so precipitously he knocked the hat off a man who had been waiting for the car. Younger noticed the man's profuse beard and teeming mustache. But he didn't notice the peculiar way the man's dingy striped jacket tugged down at his shoulders - as if his pockets were loaded with shot.

    Younger apologized, reaching for the hat on the carpet. Drobac got to it first.

    'Going down,' said the elevator operator.

    Whatever Younger hoped or feared to find in Colette's hotel room, he didn't find it. Instead, at the end of an endless corridor, he and Littlemore found - a hotel room. The bed was made. The cot was made. The suitcases were undisturbed. On a coffee table, sprays of burnt matchsticks fanned out in tidy semicircles: the boy's handiwork.

    Only Colette's lead-lined laboratory case, lying open and empty in front of her closet, testified to a trespass. Cigarette odor hung in the stifled air.

    'That's what they came for,' said Younger grimly. 'That case.'

    'Nope,' said the detective, opening closets and checking behind curtains. 'They left the case.'

    Younger looked at Littlemore with incredulity and vexation. He took a step toward the open laboratory box.

    'Don't touch it, Doc,' the detective added, glancing into the bathroom. 'We'll want to dust it for prints. What was inside?'

    'Rare elements,' said Younger. 'For a lecture she was supposed to give. The radium alone was worth ten thousand dollars.'

    The detective whistled: 'Who knew?'

    'Besides a professor in New Haven, I can think of only one person, and she's no kidnapper.'

    Littlemore, checking under the bed, replied: 'The old lady you and Colette visited this morning?'

    'That's right.'

    With his magnifying glass and a tweezer, the detective began examining, on hands and knees, the carpet surrounding Colette's laboratory case. 'Wait a second. Wait a second.'

    'What?' asked Younger.

    Littlemore, having pried a bit of cigarette ash from the thick pile of the carpet, was rubbing it between thumb and forefinger. 'This is still warm,' he said. 'Somebody just left.'

    Littlemore bolted back into the hall, heading for the elevators. Younger didn't follow. Instead he went to Colette's balcony door and stepped out into the night. Far below, in the light flooding out of the hotel's front doors, Younger saw the man he somehow knew he would see, standing by the curb in his striped suit.

    Younger called out: 'You!'

    No one heard. Younger was too high up, and the street noise was too great. A car skidded up next to the striped suit, its rear door opening from within. The sudden, swerving halt threw a small body - a little boys body - half out of the car. A moment later, the boy was snatched back inside by invisible hands.

    'No,' said Younger. Then he called out at the top of his lungs: 'Stop that car!'

    This time Drobac hesitated. He looked up, searching but not finding the source of the cry. No one else took notice. Younger shouted the same futile words again as the man climbed into the backseat, and again as the car sped down Park Avenue, its headlamps and taillamps going suddenly dark, disappearing into the night. Two drops of Younger's blood, flung from his hair as he cried out, drifted downward and broke on the sidewalk not far from where the man had stood.

    By the time the echo of Younger's voice had died, Littlemore was back in the room, having heard the doctor's shouts.

    'It was the man at the elevator,' said Younger.

    'The guy with the hair,' replied Littlemore, 'and the bulging pockets? Are you sure?'

    Younger looked at the detective. Then he slowly lifted the coffee table - the one with Luc's matches on it - off the floor and hurled it into a mirrored closet door. There was no satisfying explosion of glass. The mirror only cracked, as did the coffee table. Burnt match- sticks spun in the air, like maple seedpods spiraling down in autumn.

    'Jesus, Doc,' said Littlemore.

    'You saw something in his pockets,' Younger replied quietly. 'Why didn't you stop him?'

    'For having something in his pockets?'

    'If you had stationed a single man in front of the hotel,' said Younger, 'we could have caught him.'

    'I doubt it,' said Littlemore. 'You know you're bleeding pretty good.'

    'What do you mean you doubt it?'

    'If I put a uniform outside the front door,' the detective explained, 'the guy doesn't use the front door. He goes out a side door. Or a back door. We would have needed six men minimum.'

    'Then why didn't you bring six men?' asked Younger, advancing toward Littlemore.

    'Easy, Doc.'

    'Why didn't you?'

    'You want to know why? Besides the fact that I had no reason to,

    I couldn't have gotten six men if I had tried. I couldn't have gotten one. The force is a little busy tonight, in case you hadn't noticed. I'm not even supposed to be here.'

    Instead of responding, Younger shoved Littlemore in the chest. 'Go back then.'

    "What's the matter with you?' asked Littlemore.

    'I'll tell you why you didn't stop him. You weren't paying any goddamned attention.'

    'Me? Who waited four hours before noticing that his girlfriend had disappeared when she was supposed to be gone for half an hour?'

    'Because
you
took her,' shouted Younger, taking a straight left jab at Littlemore's head. The detective ducked this blow, but Younger, who know how to fight, had thrown a punch designed to make Littlemore tin just that Younger followed it with a clean right, putting Littlemore on the carpet and taking a lamp down with him.

    'Son of a gun,' said Littlemore from the floor, his lip bloody.

    He sprang toward Younger, charging low and driving him backward all the way across the room. Younger's head snapped back against the wall. When they came to a standstill, Littlemore had his right fist raised and ready, but Younger was staring blankly over his shoulder.

    'How many died today?' asked Younger. 'Thirty?'

    'Thirty-six,' said Littlemore, fist still raised.

    ' Thirty-six,' repeated Younger contemptuously. 'And the whole city's paralyzed. I hate the dead.'

    Neither man spoke. Younger sank to a sitting position on the floor. Littlemore sat down near him.

    'I'm taking you to a hospital,' said Littlemore.

'Try it.'

    'You know I outrank you,' said the detective.

    Younger raised an eyebrow.

    'Captain beats lieutenant,' added Littlemore.

    A police captain doesn't outrank a doughboy in boot camp.'

    'Captain beats lieutenant,' repeated Littlemore.

    A silence.

    'What do you mean you hate the dead?' asked Littlemore.

    'Luc wrote that to me - Colette's brother. He doesn't talk. I was - what was I doing? I was reading a book he'd given me. Then he handed me a note that said, "I hate the dead."' Younger looked at the detective. 'Sorry about - about-'

    'Slugging me in the jaw?'

    'Blaming you,' said Younger. 'It's my fault. My fault they're in America. My fault she went off by herself.'

    'We'll get them back,' said Littlemore.

    Younger described what he'd witnessed from the balcony. Littlemore asked him what kind of car he had seen. Younger couldn't say. He'd been too far overhead. He couldn't even be sure of the color.

    'We'll get them back,' Littlemore repeated.

    'How?' asked Younger.

    'Here's what we do. I go to headquarters and put out a bulletin. We'll have the whole force looking for this guy by tomorrow. You wait here in case they send a ransom note. Meantime I question the old lady you met with. What's her name?'

    'Mrs William B. Meloney. Thirty-one West Twelfth.'

    'Maybe she told some other people about the samples Colette brought with her.'

    'It's possible,' said Younger.

    'So maybe the wrong kind of person found out.' At the doorway, Littlemore added: 'Do me a favor. Patch up your head.'

Chapter Four

    Liberty, equality, fraternity - terrorist: the word comes from the French Revolution. The Reign of Terror was the name given to Robespierre's ferocious rule. Hundreds of thousands of men and women were branded 'enemies of the state,' jailed, starved, deported, tortured. Forty thousand were executed. 'Virtue and terror,' proclaimed Robespierre, were the two imperatives of the revolution, for 'terror is nothing other than justice prompt, severe, inflexible justice.' Those who supported him were called
Terroristes
.

    A century later, another revolutionary took a similar stand. 'We cannot reject terror,' wrote a man calling himself Lenin; 'it is the one form of military action that may be absolutely essential.' His disciples became the new century's 'terrorists.'

    But with a difference. In France, terror had been an instrument of the state. Now terror was directed against the state. Originally, the terrorist was a well-bred French despot, haughtily claiming the authority of law and government. Now the terrorist became a seedy, bearded, furtive murderer - a Slav, a Jew, an Italian planting his crude bomb or hiding a pistol inside his shabby coat. It was one such terrorist, a Serb, who in 1914 assassinated Archduke Hans Ferdinand of Austria, launching the Great War.

    The Germans wanted war, undoubtedly, but it would never have materialized without a keenness for battle on the part of ordinary young men all across Europe. Soon enough, their readiness to die for their countries would be rewarded in a hell they had not foreseen, where sulfuric gases ate the flesh off living men crouched ankle-deep in freezing, stagnant water. But in the hot summer of 1914, European men of every class and station wanted nothing more than an opportunity to meet and mete out death on the battlefield.

    Comparable feelings grew in the United States, especially when German submarines attacked American merchant ships on the high seas. Even as President Wilson steadfastly maintained neutrality, the drumbeat of war grew ever more incessant.

    In the end, a German blunder forced America's hand. In January 1917, Germany telegraphed an encrypted message to the President of Mexico, proposing a joint invasion of the United States. Mexico would regain territories that America had seized from her; Germany would gain the diversion of America's forces. Great Britain intercepted the telegram, decoded it, and delivered it to Wilson. The United States at last declared war. Before long, America would be sending ten thousand men a day to the killing fields of Europe.

    Dr Stratham Younger was among the first to arrive, posted as surgeon and, with the rank of lieutenant, as medical officer in a British field hospital in northwest France.

    After Littlemore left the hotel room, a wartime recollection visited Younger: Colette bending over a bathtub in a blown-out building, clad in two white towels, one around her torso, the other around her hair, as the steam of hot water filled the air. But he had never seen her that way. In this memory that wasn't a memory, Colette turned toward him with fear in her eyes. She backed away as if he might attack her, asking him if he had forgotten. Forgotten what?

    Younger went to the bathroom sink, forcing this pseudo-memory down, only to find in its place a grainy image of a blackboard in a fog or rainstorm, with someone drawing on it, although not with chalk. This memory too, if it was a memory, he suppressed with irritation. He was suddenly sure he was in fact forgetting something - something more immediate.

    He rinsed his face. The moment the cold water struck his eyelids, it came to him.

    Younger rushed out once more to the darkness of the balcony. He saw Littlemore far below, waiting for his car, just as he'd seen the man in the striped suit waiting before. This time his shouting had effect. Waving his arms, he signaled Littlemore to wait.

    Younger burst through the front doors of the hotel onto Forty-second Street. Piled in his arms was an unwieldy collection of hastily gathered items: a curtain rod, stripped from a window; a metal box with dials and switches on it; a pair of long electrical wires; a roll of black tape; and an eight-inch sealed glass tube. He crouched at the sidewalk, where he deposited this load. 'I need your car,' he said to Littlemore, attaching the wires to the glass tube. 'How could I be such a fool?' 'Um - what are you doing?' said the detective. 'This is a radiation detector,' said Younger, connecting the other end of the wires to the metal box. 'Colette was going to use it at her lecture.'

    'That's swell. Couple of things I could be taking care of right now, Doc.'

    'Every sample in Colette's case is radioactive,' said Younger, connecting the other end of the wires to the metal box. 'Their car is leaving a trail of radioactive particles like bread crumbs. We can't see them. But this thing can - if we hurry.'

    Younger flipped a switch on the box. A flash of yellow ignited in the glass tube, accompanied by an explosive blast of static from the box. Just as suddenly, the tube went dark and the box fell quiet. 'Was that supposed to happen?' asked Littlemore. 'Not exactly,' said Younger. 'Radioactivity should produce a blue current. I think.'

    Younger picked up the box in one arm and extended the curtain rod out in front of him, with the glass tube taped to its end, as if it were the tip of a divining rod. Nothing happened. He stepped into Park Avenue, probing along the pavement and in the air. A single blue spark flashed inside the glass. 'Got them,' he said.

    Younger took a step to his right. Nothing. He took a step the other way: another single blue flash lit the tube, and then another. He followed these sparks - until he was face-to-face with Littlemore, his wand pointing directly into the detective's chest.

    'Hello?' said Littlemore.

    'It must be because you got so close to the open case,' said Younger. He returned to the street, cars veering to avoid him. He was looking for a signal much stronger than the individual sparks that led him to Littlemore. In the middle of the avenue, a miniature blue firework burst within the glass tube. As he advanced down the avenue, the firework became a steady blue current, and audible clicks emanated from the metal box.

    'Well, I'll be,' replied Littlemore for the second time that day.

    Moments later they were driving down Park Avenue at full throttle, Littlemore behind the wheel, Younger standing on the running board. Younger held the curtain rod out in front of him, the glass tube at its tip sparkling electric blue in the warm Manhattan night.

    In Times Square, the current went dead. 'They turned,' said Younger.

    He jumped from the running board, carrying his apparatus, while Littlemore wheeled the car around. Younger searched for a signal. To the north, he found nothing. But when he went to the downtown side of the square, a blue current flickered back to life inside the glass. Soon they were heading south on Broadway. For more than two miles they hurtled down the avenue, the device flashing and clicking steadily.

    'Why?' Younger shouted over the car's din.

    Littlemore interpreted: 'Why kidnap her?'

    Younger nodded.

    'They take girls for two reasons,' shouted the detective. 'Money is one.'

    What Colette would have done, had she been on her own, she didn't know. When the car finally came to a halt and they pulled her out into an unlit street, the two stupid underlings, Miljan and Zelko, fought with each other constantly. She might have made a run for it - if she had been on her own. But they had her brother too, so any thought of wrenching loose and running was out of the question.

    Miljan - the small one, who smelled of onion - was apparently competing with Zelko to be keeper of their female prisoner. Each tried to yank her away from the other, coming to the point of blows until Drobac forced Miljan to take Luc, while Zelko got Colette.

    In the warrens of the Lower East Side, Younger had to get down at almost every intersection, hunting for radioactivity through a series of twists and turns in the labyrinthine byways. A few minutes later, on a dark street, the chatter from Younger's device grew so loud he had to dampen it.

    'We're close,' said Younger.

    Luc was thrown to the floor of an apartment in a decrepit old house, where peeling paint revealed a green mold. Rats scurried behind the walls. Miljan tied the boy to a rusting radiator.

    Colette stood in the middle of the room. The beefy, no-necked Zelko had her by the hair, waiting for his orders. Drobac went to a table and wound the hand crank on a phonograph. The cylinder began to turn, and Al Jolson's playful voice, backed by a swing orchestra, came scratchily out of the amplification horn, singing that he had his captain working for him now. Drobac nodded with the beat.

    'Is good,' he said. 'American music is good.' He turned the volume as high as it would go.

    Suddenly the clicking in Younger's device abated. 'Back,' he said. 'We passed them.'

    A few moments later, Younger identified the locus of the radiation: a black sedan, parked in the middle of the block. No one was inside it. The street was lined mostly with warehouses, dark and lifeless. Only one structure showed signs of habitation: an old brick two-story, flat- roofed house. It might once have been a decent family residence, but now it hulked in disrepair. A dingy light shone in several large but dirty windows. Music came from somewhere within.

    Younger picked up a faint signal leading from the sedan to the front door of this house. Neither man said a word. Littlemore produced what looked like a ruler from his jacket, along with a small metal pick.

    Drobac drew from his pockets a series of objects that Colette knew well: brass flasks, stoppered tubes with colored powders, coruscating pieces of ore. He deposited them on the table next to the blaring phonograph. Then he issued commands to the other two in their unintelligible language, went to the door, and held it open.

    Miljan, in his checked suit, smiled nastily. Evidently Drobac had ordered Zelko out of the room. The latter cursed and spat on the floor; despite these indications of complaint, he picked up a chair, carried it out into the corridor, and sat down heavily upon it, his burly arms crossed. Drobac left the room as well and shut the door behind him.

    Colette felt a warm, rank breath on her neck.

    Gun drawn, Littlemore preceded Younger into a tiled, grimy vestibule. The first floor was devoid of life. Swing music played overhead. Younger picked up a signal going upstairs. Littlemore drew a line across his neck; Younger turned off his clicking device. The stairs were filthy but solid, making little noise as they ascended.

    On the second floor, a bare electric bulb dangled from the ceiling, its filaments visible. The big band music romped unnaturally. Human sounds filtered out of the rooms - kitchen clatter, the flush of a toilet. Littlemore, advancing down the hallway, crouched low, peered around a corner, and saw Zelko on a chair, arms folded, at the far end of the corridor. The detective immediately withdrew and led Younger back to the stairwell.

    'A lookout,' Littlemore whispered. 'On a chair. End of the hall.'

    'Can you take him?' Younger whispered back.

    'Sure, I can take him, but then what? The guys inside the room hear the noise. Colette and the kid become hostages - or dead.'

    A girl's voice cried out, muffled by the walls. Only one word was intelligible - 'No.' It was a female voice, with a French accent. Then something substantial, perhaps a body, fell to the floor.

    Littlemore had to restrain Younger: 'You'll get her shot,' whispered the detective. 'Listen to me. I need a distraction. Noise out in the street. Throw something at their window. Break it. Something loud enough to pull that guy from the chair back inside the room.'

    'I'll give you a distraction,' said Younger. But instead of returning down to the street, he went up, mounting a narrow stairway that led to the roof.

    Colette had been forced to her knees, half on and half off a thin, soiled mattress. She lay cheek-first against the hard wood floor, hands tied at the small of her back. Miljan, in his oversized checked suit, was behind her, gun in hand.

    She smelled his reeking breath and felt one of his hands groping at her waist. Blindly, she kicked out and made satisfying contact with the man's knee. Miljan stifled a cry and hopped in pain on one leg. Rolling over, Colette kicked his other leg. He fell to his knees, and she kicked the gun right out of his hand. Surprised and furious, he chased the pistol, which clattered to the floor near Luc. Just as Miljan reached for it, Luc - still tied to a radiator pipe - kicked it away from him, so that It slid along the floor back toward Colette.

    She had worked her tied wrists to the side of her body. Guided by fortune or providence, the sliding gun found its way right into her hands. She had already closed her fingers around it when Miljan stepped on her knuckles as he might have stepped on a cockroach.

    She cried out. Even as Miljan ground her hands with the sole of his shoe, still she tried to get a finger onto the pistol's trigger. It was in vain. He ripped the gun away and put it to her temple.