The Disposable Man (26 page)

“We’ll see,” I said with less confidence. “Is there a major theatrical building here?”

“The CFA, sure—the Center for Fine Arts. It’s huge. They built it about four years ago.”

“That’s where I think we’ll find him.”

It was more than I meant to say—more definite—but I was reacting to Rarig’s earlier cockiness. Like two men bobbing in the middle of an ocean, we were keeping alive not by treading water, but by competing on who’d be the last one to sink. It wasn’t the kind of teamwork I was used to, but then not much at the moment was normal.

Predictably, Rarig dug in his heels. “Why?”

I crossed over to the door. “Because when you run, you run to familiar ground—someplace safe, close, and with any luck, dark. If I were a theater nut, I’d head for the theater. For Lew, I’m guessing it’s a home away from home.”

Without comment, Rarig followed me downstairs. We both instinctively paused at the bottom, peering out the door’s glass panel at the street outside.

Everything seemed as calm as we’d left it.

We climbed off the porch, cut across the lawn, and quickly got into the Ford, irrationally appreciating its protection, even while surrounded by clear glass.

But our surprise, when it was sprung, came from closer by.

Willy Kunkle rose from lying behind the backseat, propped his elbow between us, and laughed when we both jumped. “Hi, guys. Miss me?”

“
JESUS CHRIST
,” RARIG SHOUTED.

Willy sat back, smiling like an idiot. “Saw it in a movie once. Couldn’t resist it.”

“What’re you doing here?” I asked, already checking up and down the street.

“Don’t worry,” Willy said. “I’m not as dumb as you guys. Nobody knows I’m around.” He pulled a portable radio from his inner pocket and keyed the mike. “You there, Sam?”

“10-4” came the familiar voice.

“They’re baaaaack,” Willy announced, laughing at the end.

He replaced the radio. “Except her, of course.”

I pulled at my ear and sighed. “I should’ve expected this. You’ll probably get fired—you know that.”

Willy’s eyes grew wide. “Ooh, that’s a scary thought.”

“You selfish bastard,” I told him. “What about Sammie?”

He laughed again. “You know goddamn well she’s why we’re here. She thinks you set the friggin’ sun, which you probably will before we’re done. What’s the plan, anyway?”

“I take it you found us ’cause of the car.”

“Brilliant. Only took an hour or so. Small town. ’Course, there were two of us, and we knew to look around the college. I gotta say, though, for a guy with a price on his head, and the place crawling with law, you’re not too discreet.”

“How crawling
is
that, exactly?”

“The department here’s got about ten or so. We spotted maybe three or four state cops as well. If you figure they divided the town up between ’em all, not counting the ones at the crime scene and a few to man headquarters, you get six or seven cruisers rollin’ around. And I wouldn’t doubt they got more coming.”

“And you’re sure nobody saw you?”

“Yup.” He reached into his other pocket, pulled out a second radio, and dropped it on the front seat between us. “In case we get split up.”

I picked up the radio and examined it. It was labeled “NewBrook Fire Department.”

“What the hell?”

“I borrowed ’em,” Willy admitted. “On my way through Newfane. I know the combination to their firehouse. They only carry a couple of miles, but I figured we might need a private frequency to talk on. We checked ’em out as soon as we got here—called around, pretending we were up shit creek. Nobody heard us as far as we could tell. So—you even
have
a plan? You been here long enough.”

Rarig scowled at this rapid patter, but I was used to it. “As far as you’re concerned, the plan is to go back home. We’ve got one long shot to check out, and then we’ll probably be doing the same.”

“Great. I like long shots.”

I twisted around to face him fully. “Willy, I appreciate the gesture. I should’ve expected it. And if I really thought we had a chance of pulling this off, I’d even let you stick around. But things aren’t going too well. We were discovered by one of Middlebury’s finest and had to lock him up. You don’t want to be a part of this anymore, and I don’t want it on my conscience.”

Willy was laughing again. “No shit. That’s like kidnapping. And a cop, no less. Boy—you think you know a guy. No wonder you keep me around.”

Now even I was getting irritated. “Willy, for Christ’s sake. Fucking around is one thing—if you stick with us, you’ll be an accessory. That’s jail time.”

Not bothering to argue, he opened the back door and got out. “We figured you’d say that.” He pointed to the radio I was still holding in my hand. “You need any help, just turn it on. We’ll hear ya. If nothing else, make sure it gets back to NewBrook. Don’t want you busted for theft again. Bye.”

He waved at us both and walked quickly down the street.

· · ·

After a long, stunned silence, Rarig said, “I don’t like that man.”

“Yeah—well, he’s an acquired taste. I wouldn’t be without him, obviously whether I like it or not.” I slipped Willy’s radio into my pocket, turned off. “So where’s the CFA?”

Rarig pursed his lips, and for a moment I thought the competitive edge between us was going to rear up into the open. The sudden appearance of two of my own troops, uncontrollable, unseen, and—to him—of unknown quality, obviously rubbed him wrong.

To head him off, I patted my pocket and said, “I’m not going to use it, whatever happens.”

That gave him an out. “You may want to eat those words.”

“Then so be it. I’m not going to turn my own professional suicide into mass murder.”

He contemplated that for a moment and then pointed down the street. “Straight ahead across the intersection. Take a right when you hit South Main.”

· · ·

The CFA—Middlebury College’s Center for Fine Arts—is one of three large structures lining the east side of South Main, just before it turns into Route 30 and heads off into the countryside. As a result of their location, they stand against miles of rolling fields, a lush green golf course, and have a spectacular view of the Green Mountains—all of which contrast violently with the buildings’ bizarre architecture.

The southernmost two are athletic field houses, one looking like a soiled cluster of glued-together teepees, the other a Quonset hut with several Tootsie Rolls stuck to it. Both are connected by a tube-shaped umbilical cord.

Our destination was the newest of the three—as dissimilar from them as they are from each other, except in overall appeal. The Center for Fine Arts is a cob job of every building style known to Western civilization. In parts, its roof is flat, sloped, crenelated, and dormered, and apparently clad in everything from painted metal to slate. Similarly, its walls run from granite to brick to metal to peeling white clapboard, all butting together in cramped chaos. The front, with the most coherent appearance, is a shades-of-brown combination of frontier blockhouse, Norman castle, and federal office building, topped by a roof reminiscent of the sloped hull of the Confederate ironclad Merrimac, complete with gunports.

It is also cavernously huge, being built into the hillside, and at this time of year and day was largely dark and empty. When John Rarig and I stepped through one of the side entrances from the parking lot, I felt like a visitor who’d been shut in after closing time.

The art center’s interior is its soaring redemption. As jumbled as the outside, here the architectural crisscross between new and old, granite and wood, seems playful, airy, amusing, and self-confident. From the building’s middle space, an enormous stone wall thrusts up three floors to an elegant, fan-shaped wooden ceiling, lending to everything around it a paradoxical sense of lightness. Juxtaposed throughout this lofty, weighty, castle-like space are pits and balconies, masses of oddly placed and sized interior windows—some glassed in, some wide open—and an assortment of staircases, clinging to the walls as to a ship’s side.

At present, it was all mysteriously dark, quiet, and foreboding.

That impression grew as we ventured from empty, overarching vestibule to silent, dim hallway to totally dark performance hall. There were several of the latter, some large, others built for either practice or black-box theater, but none containing the man we were after.

At each stop, depending on the lighting and the layout, we either looked around or Rarig shouted Lew’s name into the void, identifying himself—only to hear his voice swallowed up by the gloom.

Finally, after an hour of this, frustrated by our lack of manpower and our ignorance of the floor plan, we were about to admit defeat. Rarig especially seemed to be running on ebbing resources. His mood, ever changing, had finally settled into a taciturn glumness, and mine was close behind. Failure here not only meant that Lew Corbin-Teich had spun away on his own, but it entailed my returning home empty handed, to a reception probably rivaling the surrender of a child killer.

It was therefore with some relief that we finally got an answer to Rarig’s last call.

We were standing in a doorway leading to the balcony section of what appeared to be—had there been any light—a very large stage area. Rarig’s voice had just disappeared as usual, without echo or response, when after a pause we clearly heard the name “John” float by as if carried on a breeze.

Instinctively, we both stepped inside, shutting the door behind us, plunging us into a blackness so deep, I couldn’t see my hands.

“Lew,” Rarig asked, “is that you?”

“Whom do you have with you?” was the answer, coming from somewhere high and against the wall to our backs. It was a light, delicate voice, heavily accented, with the careful phrasing of someone who’s learned the language too well.

“He’s a friend. He figured out you might be here. Are you all right?”

“Yes, but I am not sure for how much longer. No doubt they are doing as you are, searching me out.”

“That’s why we’re here,” Rarig explained, as if coaxing a child. “To get you someplace safe.”

“There may be no such place.”

Rarig lost his patience. “Well, it sure as hell isn’t here. Where are you, goddamn it?”

A soft chuckle. “That is John Rarig. Look to your left.”

We did as instructed and saw a tiny, bright red dot hovering in the darkness. Following it, our shoulders rubbing the wall for reference, we groped forward, found a narrow set of steps, and climbed to the door of a small sound and light control booth wedged up against the theater’s ceiling. The red light turned out to be from a pen-sized laser pointer, which our guide returned to his breast pocket as we joined him. A faint glow emanated from the equipment panel located at the base of a broad window overlooking a huge blank universe.

Lew Corbin-Teich was a soft outline of tousled hair and bushy beard, with an aquiline nose that came and went in the dim light as he turned his head. He greeted John Rarig with a bear hug and a kiss on each cheek, exchanging a few comments in Russian, which Rarig seemed to speak like a native.

Then Corbin-Teich turned to me and fumbled in the dark for my hand, which he shook energetically. “It is nice to meet you. I am Lewis Corbin-Teich.”

“My pleasure,” I said automatically. “Joe Gunther. Do you have any idea who’s after you?”

His shadow shook its head, his voice sounding bewildered. “No. I was walking with Andrei to the Geonomics Center, where he had a meeting. I was merely keeping him company. He has been in low spirits since the passing of his wife. I heard an automobile approaching from behind us. I turned my head to look. I was nervous because I thought I had seen a man watching my house the night before. I saw the barrel of a gun in one of the windows and instinctively I fell to the ground. Andrei never saw a thing, and I never extended a hand to warn him. I was utterly silent throughout the attack. Speechless. Andrei died as if all life suddenly was pulled from him and only his clothes remained. He fell in a heap and never moved.”

Corbin-Teich was weeping. Rarig placed one hand on his shoulder. “Lew, there was nothing you could do. He probably never felt a thing.”

“Tell me about the man you saw watching your house,” I asked.

Corbin-Teich’s voice was strained. “It may have been nothing. I have been on edge ever since the death of Sergei Antonov. I no longer know.”

I switched tacks. “Could your friend have been the target?”

“No, no. Andrei had no enemies. He was the gentlest of men.”

“I heard he was a defector, too.”

Corbin-Teich’s rejection was absolute. “Ah, such nonsense. He was a poet. He left decades ago as a matter of conscience. No one missed him. No one cared, just as no one will care that he was shot down in cold blood.”

Rarig administered more solace as I tried to keep Lew focused, although, truth be told, now that we’d found him, I had no idea what to do with him. Pure instinct was making me act like a cop.

“Did you get a look at the man who shot him?”

Corbin-Teich wiped his eyes with his sleeve. “I am sorry. Having all this return after so many years, it is a shock. I thought I had seen enough. I have become weak with old age. No, it is soft—that is what I have become. Forgive me. I understand what you are trying to do and I thank you. Yes—I did see the man, but I did not recognize him. His features were familiar. He was as they all were in the old days. But I did not know him personally.”

“Why didn’t you go to the other place?” Rarig asked.

“I tried. I ran after Andrei was shot, to the first phone I could find. I called you, and then I ran to go there. But I saw the automobile again, and I felt I could no longer stay in the open. I came here because I know it so well.”

He stopped suddenly and looked from one of us to the other. “How did
you
find me?”

“That was Joe’s doing.”

“Lucky guess,” I finished. “How long have you been here?”

“Hours. I have not paid attention.”

“Rarig, you have any ideas what to do now?”

There was a pause before he answered. “No. I thought we’d just get out of town and go from there. Maybe hole up someplace for a while.”