The Loo Sanction (28 page)

Leonard's head appeared just below him. The Mute snatched at the dangling sheet, then peered down. Jonathan squeezed his eyes shut and concentrated with all his force: Don't look up! Don't look up! The cold of the wet tiles against his nude body was numbing. Again he slipped two inches! But at that second Leonard banged his fist against the casement in fury, covering the sound. Darling said something from within.

They ran out of the room.

A strangled, whimpering groan escaped Jonathan. Getting down would be as dangerous as getting up had been. The pitch of the roof was sharp, and there was a thin coat of greasy dirt on the tiles lubricated by the moisture of the fog. Once he pulled in his legs and let the slip start, there would be no stopping it. With those limp and throbbing wrists, he would have to catch the underedge of the eaves as he slid past and swing back in through the window. If he was off by six inches to either side, he would crash against the building and fall to the flagstone below.

No use thinking about it. No time. No strength left.

He let go.

He was an inch or two off, and as he swung into the room backward, he clipped his head on the center post of the window casement. Dizziness and pain made him reel as he got to his feet, but he drove on, head down, running for the open door.

As Darling started back down the hall with the big revolvers, he heard the crash in Jonathan's room and ran toward it. They collided in the doorway, and went down in a jumble in the hall. Jonathan fought blindly and desperately, grappling for Darling's throat and getting it, both thumbs against the larynx. He could feel that there was little strength left in his grip, so he closed his eyes and bared his teeth, pressing desperately as Darling struggled to bring either revolver to bear on Jonathan's naked side. He wriggled like a beached fish as Jonathan squeezed for all he was worth, expecting at any moment to hear the roar of a gun and to have his guts blown out by a flattening dumdum. From nowhere, the thought came to Jonathan of Vanessa struggling on her kitchen table. Darling had probably held her down as Leonard had prodded at her. With a final surge of desperate fury, Jonathan drove his thumbs through, and the larynx crumpled like a papier-mâché pin box. Darling gargled and died.

For a second Jonathan lay there gasping, his forehead on Darling's silent chest. He got to his knees and picked up the revolvers. Keep moving, he ordered himself. He blinked away the large spots of blindness in the center of his eyes and stumbled on, down the wide curving staircase and across the sterile Art Deco salon. He burst into the exercise room, dropping to the floor with both guns up before him. It was empty. But he could hear them now, shouting outside the house. He cocked back both hammers with his thumbs and struggled to his feet. Dizzy. Nausea.

He reeled toward the door to the small paneled dining room and kicked it open with the ball of his foot.

The dope swam in his head, and the scene played out like a dream—a slow-motion ballet. Strange and Grace were dining. She turned toward the opening door, her naked breasts wobbling viscously with the motion. Strange floated to his feet and put out one hand, palm forward as though in a Hindu gesture of blessing. Jonathan raised one gun and fired. The roar reverberated in his head, and even the recoil kick seemed to lift his hand slowly. Like magic, the left side of Strange's face disappeared and in its place was a splash of red gelatin. Grace clutched the air, her face contorted into a scream of horror, but no sound came. Strange sank away under the table, and she fainted.

From too slow, things began to go too fast. Jonathan stumbled back into the exercise room, panting and unsteady. He needed to vomit. The sound of running men was closer. He turned on the bank of sun lamps and directed them toward the outer door. “I'm sick!” he whimpered aloud as he fumbled on the round green glasses haphazardly, one eye squeezed closed by the elastic band.

They burst into the room. Three of them. The broken-toothed one in the lead tried to shield his eyes from the blinding glare, holding his automatic before his face. Jonathan's first shot blew his arm off at the shoulder, and he spun and fell, spraying the other two with his blood. The next dumdum took the one closest to the door in the small of the back as he scrambled to retreat. His body was lifted into the air and slammed against the wall of exercise bars. He did not fall because his arm got tangled in the bars, but his body jerked convulsively.

The third man got off a wild shot in the direction of the lights, and one of them imploded above Jonathan's head, showering him with hot glass. Jonathan's return shot blew away the man's leg at the knee. He stood for a second, surprised. Then he fell to the unsupported side.

The silence rang with the absence of gun roars. The man tangled in the exercise rings slid to the floor, his forehead rattling on each rung. Then it was still.

“I'm sick!” Jonathan told them again, the words thick and muffled.

The tide of vertigo rose within him. The back of his throat was bitter with vomit. Mustn't pass out! Leonard is still out there somewhere! Hold on!

He tugged the green glasses off and staggered over to the door to the dressing room. Mirrors. An infinity of naked men with guns. Blood caked on their faces; their knees and chests scuffed and bleeding. He opened the center mirror and went into the Aquarium.

And there was Leonard. He had a Mauser machine pistol and was fitting on the wooden holster/stock, slowly and deliberately, his hooded eyes expressionless. He was on the other side of the one-way glass, standing alone in the empty Art Deco salon, pressed close to the mirrored wall, waiting for Jonathan to emerge through the exercise room door.

Jonathan's heart pulsed in his temples. He was so tired, so sick. He only wanted to sleep. The mist of dope in his brain cleared for a moment. Vanessa. Leonard and Vanessa—and kitchen utensils. He set his teeth and crept soundlessly to the mirrored panel before him. He raised both guns, their barrels almost touching the glass, and he waited as Leonard on his side inched forward, waited until Leonard's huge body had moved directly in front of the barrels. One gun was pointed at Leonard's neck, the other at his ear.

The mirror exploded and Leonard's headless body surfed over the parqueted floor on a hissing tide of shattered glass. It twitched violently, tinkling and grinding in the glass. Then it stopped.

And Jonathan threw up.

Covent Garden

T
he driver of taxi #68204 threaded through the tangle of narrow lanes above Hampstead High Street in search of a fare. He accepted philosophically the improbability of making a pickup in that quiet district at that time of night, and he decided to return to center city. As he stopped at a deserted intersection, he began to sing “On the Road to Mandalay” under his breath, shifting keys with liberal insouciance. The back door of his cab opened, and a passenger entered.

“Where to, mate?” the driver asked over his shoulder without turning around.

“Covent Garden.”

“Right you are.” The driver pulled away, humming his inadvertent variations on the theme of “Roses of Picardy.” He vaguely wondered what a man with an American accent wanted in Covent Garden at that time of night. “The market?” he asked over his shoulder.

“What? Oh. Yes. The market will do.”

The passenger's voice was faint and confused, and the driver feared that he might have picked up a drunk who would soil the back of his cab. He pulled over to the curb and turned around. “Now, listen, mate. If you're drunk . . . I'll be buggered!” The passenger was nude. “'Ere! Wot's all this!”

“Go to the market. I'll give you directions from there.”

The driver was prepared to put a stop to all this rubbish, when he noticed two very large revolvers on the seat beside the passenger. “The market, is it?” He released the hand brake and drove on. Not singing.

They stopped at the entrance to a narrow, unlit alley in the heart of the Garden district. “This it, mate?”

“Yes.” The passenger sounded as though he had dropped off during the ride. “Listen, driver, I don't seem to have any money on me . . .”

“Oh, that's all right, mate.”

“If you'll just come in with me, I'll—”

“No! No, that's all right. Forget it.”

The passenger rubbed the back of his neck and his eyes, as though trying to clear his mind. “I . . . ah . . . I know this must seem irregular to you, driver.”

“No, sir. Not at all.”

“You're sure you don't want to come in for your money?”

“Oh yes, sir. I'm quite sure. Now, if this is the place you want . . .”

“Right.” Jonathan climbed painfully out of the cab, taking his revolvers with him, and the taxi sped off.

         

The outer workshop of MacTaint's place was empty, save for the gaunt, wild-eyed painter who looked up crossly as Jonathan's entrance brought a gust of cold air with it. He muttered angrily under his breath and returned to the magnum opus he had been working on for eleven years: a huge pointillist rendering of the London docks done with a three-hair brush.

Jonathan strode stiff-legged past him, still unsteady on his feet, and made for the entrance to the back apartment.

The painter returned to his work. Then, after a minute, he raised his emaciated, Christ-like face and stared into the distance. There had been something odd about that intruder. Something about his dress.

         

He steeped sleepily in the deep hot water of the bath, a half-empty tumbler of whiskey dangling loosely from his hand over the edge of the tub. Although the water still stung and located all his abrasions—knees, chest, shoulder, the back of his head where he had cracked it swinging back in through the window—his mind was quite clear. The worst of it was over. All he had to do now was to get the films from within the Marini
Horse.

MacTaint entered the bathroom, carrying towels, shuffling along in his shaggy greatcoat, despite the steamy atmosphere of the room. “You didn't half give Lilla a start, coming in like that with blood all over you and your shiny arse hanging out. I thought I was going to have to mop up the floor after her. Got her settled down with a bottle of gin now, though.”

“Give her my apologies, as one theatre personage to another.”

“I'll do that. Gor, look at you! They gave you a fair bit of stick, didn't they?”

“They got a little stick themselves.”

“I'll bet they did.” He ogled the bathwater with mistrust. “That ain't good for you, Jon. Bathing saps the strength. Dilutes the inner fluids.”

“Could I have another pint of milk?”

“Jesus, lad! Is there no end to the harm you're willing to do yourself?” But he went out to fetch the milk, and when he returned he swapped the bottle for the empty glass in Jonathan's hand.

Jonathan pulled off the metal lid and drank half the pint down without taking the bottle from his lips. “Good. I'm feeling a lot better.”

“Maybe. But not good enough, my boy. There's no way in the world you could go along with me tonight. Not with your shoulder like that. Say! They got your beak too, did they?”

“No, I did that myself. Falling from a mantel.”

“A mantel?”

“Yes. I climbed up there to keep awake.”

“Oh, yes.”

“But I fell off again.”

“I see. I'll tell you one thing, Jon. I'm glad I'm not in academics. Too demanding by half.”

“Look, Mac. You're sure you can get into the Gallery tonight?”

MacTaint looked at him narrowly. “You ain't in no condition to come along, I tell you. And I ain't having you put sand in my tank.”

“I know. I recognize that.” Jonathan reached over and poured milk into his tumbler, then he put in a good tot of whiskey. “Tell me how you're going to get the Chardin.”

MacTaint looked around for a glass for himself and, not finding one, he dumped the toothbrushes out of a cup on the sink and used that. Then he made himself comfortable on the lid of the toilet seat. “I go right up the outside of the building. They got scaffolding up for steam cleaning the facade. All part of ‘Keep London Tidy.' And no chance of being seen, what with the canvas flaps they got hung on the scaffolding to keep the dirt and water from getting on blokes below. The window latch is in position, but it doesn't do nothin'. I've had a lad working on it with a file, bit by bit, for the past two months. I just nip up the scaffolding, in through the window, and do the dirty to the national art treasures.”

“Guards?”

“Lazy old arseholes waiting for their pensions to come through. It'll only take a couple of seconds to swap my Chardin for theirs.”

Jonathan turned on the hot water with his toes and felt the warmth eddy up under his legs, stinging afresh his scuffs and cuts. “Tell me, Mac. How much do you expect to make from the Chardin?”

“Five, maybe seven thousand quid. Why?”

“There's something I want in there. Just one chamber away. I'll give you five thousand for it.”

“You've got that much?”

“A man gave me ten thousand to do something for him. I'll split it with you.”

“A painting?”

“No. Several reels of film. They're inside a hollow bronze horse by Marini that's on display in the next chamber.”

MacTaint scratched at the top of his head, then studiously regarded a fleck of scruff on his fingernail. “And you were going to get it while you were along with me?”

“Right.”

“Even though that might have fucked up my business?”

“That's right.”

“You're a proper villain, Jonathan.”

“True.”

“A bronze horse, you say? How do I get away with it? I mean, I might attract a little attention running through the streets, dragging a bronze horse behind me.”

“You'll have to break the horse with a hammer. One big blow will crack it.”

“I can't help feeling the guards might hear that.”

“I'm sure they will. You'll have to move like hell. That's why I'm offering you so much money.”

MacTaint clawed at the flaky whiskers under his chin meditatively. “Five thousand, eh?”

“Five thousand.”

“What's on the film?”

Jonathan shook his head.

“Well, I suppose that was a mug's question.” He wiped the sweat from his face with the cuff of his overcoat. “It's hot in here.”

“Yes, and close too.” Jonathan had been trying to breathe only in shallow oral breaths since MacTaint had entered. “Well?”

MacTaint scratched his ear meditatively, then he squished his bulbous, carmine-veined nose about with the palm of his hand. “All right,” he said finally. “I'll get your damned film for you.”

“That's great, Mac.”

“Yes, yes,” he growled.

“When will you get back here with it?”

“About an hour and a half. Or, if they catch me, in about eleven years.”

“Can you drop the film off at my place in Mayfair?”

“Why not?”

“I'll give you the address. You're a wonderful man, MacTaint.”

“A bloody vast fool is what I am.” He shuffled off to find some clothes as Jonathan rose to get out of the bath. He was temporarily arrested by a bolt of pain in his shoulder, but it passed off and he was able to dry himself one-handedly, with some stiff acrobatics.

“Here you go,” MacTaint said, returning with a pile of rags. “They're me own. Of course, they ain't my best, and they may not fit so well, but beggars and choosers, you know. And take those frigging cannons with you. I don't want them laying about the place.”

Getting into the clothes was an olfactory martyrdom, and Jonathan promised himself another shower directly he got to his apartment.

         

He got to his apartment later than he would have guessed, having to walk all the way, despite the five pounds MacTaint had given him. A few late-prowling taxis had come within sight, but they had not stopped at his signal; indeed, they had accelerated. The clothes.

As he got his key from the ledge over the door, he heard his phone ring within. He fumbled at the lock in his haste because all the way home he had been thinking of calling Maggie to tell her it was all over and he was safe.

“Yes?”

Yank's phony American accent was a great disappointment. “I've been calling everywhere for you. Where have you been?”

“I've been busy.”

“Yes, I know.” There was a flabby sound to Yank's voice; he had not fully recovered from his booze-up on Vanessa's whiskey during his self-indulgent crisis of disgust. “I'm calling from The Cloisters.”

“What are you doing there?”

“We just raided the place, figuring you might be in hot water. You left quite a mess behind you. The place is deserted—that is, there are no living people here.”

“I assume Loo is going to cover all that up for me?”

“Oh, sure. Look, I'm on my way out to the Vicarage. Want me to drop by and pick you and the films up?”

“I don't have the films yet.”

There was a pause. “You don't have them?”

“Don't panic. I'll have them in an hour, then I'll pick up Miss Coyne and meet you at the Vicarage.”

“Miss Coyne's already on her way. I called her to find out if she knew where you were. She didn't, of course, so I told her we'd meet her there.”

“I see. Well, don't bother to pick me up. If we drove out together, you'd talk to me. And I don't need that.”

“You sure know how to hurt a guy. Okeydoke, I'll meet you at the Vicarage. Don't take any wooden—”

Jonathan hung up.

He had bathed and changed and was resting in the dark of his room when MacTaint banged on the door.

“You wouldn't have a drop of whiskey about the place?” were his first words. “Oh, by the way . . . here.” He handed Jonathan a cylindrical package bound up in black plastic fabric. “You know what you can do with your friggin' films?”

“Trouble?” He passed the bottle.

“I'd say that. Yes. Never mind the glass.” He took a long pull. “Tell me, lad. Do you have any idea how much noise is made by busting open a bronze statue in an empty gallery hall?”

“I assume it didn't go unnoticed.”

“You'd have thought the buzz bombs were back. Sure you don't want any of this?” He took another long pull, then he tugged the bottle down suddenly, laughing and spilling a little over his lapels. “You should have seen me scarpering my aged arse down the scaffolding, the canvas under my arm, and balancing your damned bundle. All elbows and knees. No grace at all. Bells ringing and people shouting. Oh, it was an event, Jon.”

“Let's see it.”

MacTaint took the Chardin from where it rested facing the wall and set it up on a chair in good light, then he dropped down onto the sofa beside Jonathan, his motion puffing out eddies of stink from within his clothes. “Ain't it lovely, though.”

Jonathan looked at it for several minutes. “You have a buyer yet?”

“No, but . . .”

“I have five thousand.”

MacTaint turned and examined Jonathan, his eyes squinted under the antennal brows. “Welcome back, lad.”

“You're an evil old bastard, MacTaint.” Jonathan rose and gave him the five thousand pounds he had set aside for the films, then he found the other five Strange had given him for expenses and handed that over as well.

“Ta,” Mac said, stuffing the wad of bills into the pocket of his tattered overcoat. “Not a bad night, taken all in all. But I'd best be off. Lilla gets nervy if I'm out too late.”