There Fell a Shadow (3 page)

“Not here,” the man hissed. “Not here, for God's sake.”

Holloway stood poised to leap forward, to separate them with his thick little body if they came to blows. But Colt did not move. He seemed to consider. When he finally spoke, his voice seemed almost calm.

“The Madison,” he said. His intent stare never left the other's face. “I'm at the Madison.”

The man nodded.

Colt pointed a finger at him. “Tomorrow.”

The man nodded.

Then, readjusting his collar, he pulled the door open again. He stepped out and, in another moment, he had disappeared in the whirlwind of snow.

The door swung shut behind him.

C
olt stared at the closed door for several seconds. Holloway sank back into his chair with a sigh. Wexler closed his eyes, daubed the sweat from his flaccid face with a napkin. Colt turned, running his hand up through his hair. He took a deep breath. Walked slowly to the table, and lowered himself into his chair.

At first, he kept his eyes trained on the tabletop. We waited, trying not to watch him, watching him. Finally, he looked up.

“Guy owes me money,” he said softly. “That's all.”

We nodded at him. We mumbled, fidgeted. None of us knew what to say.

The pretty waitress returned to our table—cautiously now. She was hunched over protectively, as if she were afraid of us. She raised one blond eyebrow. “Uh …” she said nervously. “Does anyone, like, want another drink? Or anything?”

That turned out to be just the right question. We all wanted another drink, every one of us. She hurried off to get them.

“Well,” said Wexler, a little too brightly, “nothing like a bit of excitement to enliven the evening, I always, uh, say, you …”

Holloway tried to pick up the slack. “It's funny, I remember this guy I used to play poker with. Owed me money. Once we'd been playing five card stud, and I had three kings and an ace in the hole with no other aces showing. I was broke and this other guy, Bennett, he bet ten bucks …”

Wexler, Lansing, and McKay listened eagerly as Holloway told his story. I pretended to listen. I kept glancing over at Colt.

Colt kept staring at the tabletop. He did not look like he was thinking about money. He looked startled, like a man who'd just had a lynchpin plucked out of one of the sockets of his universe. Like the guy who finds his wife in bed with his best friend or gets a tragic phone call in the dead of night. I knew the feeling.

The waitress brought our drinks. We all went for them in a single motion: grabbed and lifted them to our lips in unison. Colt gulped his beer fast and fiercely. He sat in silence while the rest of us made efforts at talk. We talked shop. The talk went on for a while, then died away. We ordered another round. We talked politics. We drank. The waitress swept up the shards of Colt's beer glass. By the time she was done, we were ready to refill.

So the conversation went on in fits and starts. The incident at the doorway stayed there with us. It made it hard to talk. It made it easy to drink. Easier to drink than not to. We ordered another round. The snow fell. Beer, martini, brandy, scotch. We drank.

Around us, the murmur of the bar had started up again. No more than an occasional nervous glance came our way from the dimly lighted recesses of the room. This was the big city, after all. Colt's encounter was nobody's business. It certainly wasn't mine. I shrugged it off, stopped watching him. I sat and smoked quietly, half listening to the others. I blew smoke out in a thin stream. It rose into the darkness near the ceiling. Vanished there.

I glanced out the window. The snow was still falling, though not as thickly as before. By now, it had piled up high on the street and sidewalk. The garbage near the curb was just a white hulk. I imagined the whole city—the whole soar and dip of its skyline—was just a series of white hulks out there beyond the tavern walls.

The talk faltered yet again. There was yet another stretch of awkward silence. Colt set his beer glass down heavily. He wiped the foam from his lips with his hand. He put on a grin. “What is it we were talkin' about anyway?” he said. “Before we were so rudely interrupted.”

“Sentu!” said Lansing quickly. My attention returned to her. She sat up very straight. Took a deep breath of relief. She was wearing a pink blouse and we all watched it rise and fall. “I was wondering about that,” she said. “What was all that about Sentu? The making of you, you said. What is Sentu, anyway?”

McKay narrowed his eyes. He was studying his latest drink carefully. “It'sh a coun … a coun … a country. Ishn't it?” He was not much of a drinker, our McKay.

Holloway peered into his martini.

“It was,” he said. “It was a country.”

McKay lifted a finger in the air. “Africa. They had a revelation there. A reva … a reva … you know, a lution. A revolution.”

“Ten years ago,” said Wexler. He exchanged glances with Holloway and Colt.

Then Colt gave a snort. He shook his head. “Je-sus, you fellahs never quit,” he said.

McKay grinned at them. “What?” he said. “What?”

“Yeah, come on,” said Lansing.

I sat quiet in the rising warmth of the liquor. I listened.

Holloway tapped a palm on his belly, leaned back in his chair. He held his martini under his nose. Stared across the top of it into space. “We were there, the three of us,” he said. “Sentu. We were freelancers there. We used to feed dispatches to anyone who would take them. Looking for a big story. Looking for a big break.” He laughed a little. “Although—as for me personally—I was looking for a way to escape from Moses Holloway.”

“Moses,” said McKay. “Yeah. Moses Holloway. I've heard of him. He your father?”

Holloway nodded. “That he was. My father and, I may say, one of the most distinguished black journalists of his generation.” He looked at each of us in turn. “The first black man ever to be awarded the Pen Medal. The first to break the color barrier of the White House press corps. First in ties, first in tails, first in the hearts of his countrymen. My old man.” He swirled his liquor meditatively. “Not his fault, of course, but a lot for his son to live with all the same.” With a deep breath, he came around again, said more brightly: “At any rate … At any rate, Sentu was the perfect little country for me. For the three of us. It wasn't big enough for anyone to send a staffer. But it was just rich enough in precious metals for everyone to take the occasional dispatch. And if it fell …” He cocked his head, chuckled his wicked, elfin chuckle.

“If it fell to the rebels … That was a story worth covering. And it did. And it was. And we were there.”

“So now,” Colt said, “every time I wander through town, these two corral me and force me from my warm hotel room out into the cold dark night.”

“Yes, it's real hard to do,” said Holloway.

“Then they ply me with liquor til I get all sentimental-like and tell them what great war correspondents they were before they got fat and rich and old.”

“By God, we
were
great,” said Wexler. Colt made a face. Holloway laughed. Wexler went on: “No, now wait a minute, wait a minute. I admit that Holloway and I have … how shall I put it? Matured, over the years. Moved on to other things, positions more in keeping with our dignity. We haven't merely … continued in the same rut day after day.”

“Pitiful,” said Colt. “I mean, pitiful.”

“But the record here is clear,” Wexler announced. “Crack correspondent Solomon Holloway managed a series of interviews with the rebel leaders that brought the story to the front page for the first time. I remember hearing how they waved the clips of it in each other's faces on the Senate floor as they debated what the U.S. should do. And you have to understand: the rebels hated us. I mean, they
hated
the western press with a passion. Solomon scooped us all, the black buzzard.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Holloway said. Colt snorted into his drink. “But this is the man,” Holloway went on, indicating Wexler, “who got a Pulitzer out of it.”

“Ah!” said Wexler, dismissing it with a wave of his hand. “But I was just trying to get out of there alive.”

“I have to admit: it's kind of amazin' you did,” said Colt with a laugh. Then, to me: “Wex was sending stuff out of Mangrela when most of us were runnin' for our precious little lives. That was the capital city, Mangrela. Man, when it fell, the rebels … They came in there, there was shittin' and shootin' and shellin' enough for everyone. After the U.S. choppers left … Well, none of us stuck around to find out what happened after that.”

“Except Wex,” Holloway said.

Lansing and McKay looked him over appreciatively. So did I. He shimmered a little through the haze of scotch that was now floating before my eyes. Still, he did not look like the heroic type. He seemed too elegant, too well kept. Sometimes, though, those are the best ones: the playing fields of Eton type.

I called to the waitress. A round for the playing fields of Eton.

“Well,” said Wexler. “I had something to prove, too, I suppose. I'd come to New York from the mainline of Philadelphia. Used a number of connections to land myself a fairly prestigious journalistic post. And then promptly had myself fired.” He said it lightly. He drained his glass with a casual flair. The pain of it flickered only dimly at the corners of his mouth.

Colt said, “Hell, that was a long time ago.”

“Yes. Yes, it was,” said Wexler. “But it was something of a scandal at the time. In its minor way. You see, I'd done an exposé on a cult that had started up just a little north of here. Such things were just beginning to become
à la mode
, if you remember. But I was the first to infiltrate a really big one like that …”

My mouth opened on a breath of smoke. I knew this story. I'd forgotten that was Wexler.

Wexler noticed my expression. “You remember, Wells?”

“It was … I mean, everyone said the story was a fake,” I said.

“Oh God, it was worse than that, dear fellow,” Wexler said. “My sources were shown conclusively not to exist. I was said to have made the whole thing up in my hurry to … shall we say, achieve a position on the newspaper that was in keeping with my social standing.”

I could see it all a little better then. I could imagine Wexler in his youth. Rich, pampered—and exiled in disgrace. Alone in the jungles of Africa and its jungle cities. Sweating through the heat and the bugs. And the revolution. The slaughter. The shellfire. I thought of all that, a little drunkenly, and I looked at Wexler now. His moist eyes gleamed with the bitter memories. I could imagine the desperation that had made a hero of him.

“You were set up, weren't you?” Lansing said.

Wexler smiled ruefully. “Set up by the Temple of Love. That was the name of the cult. It had been coming under some examination from the government on a little matter of back taxes. By getting me to disgrace them, then disgracing me, I suppose they hoped to make themselves out to be victims of persecution.”

“Di … uh … wha wash I gonna say?” said McKay.

“You were gonna ask if it worked,” I said.

“Oh yeah. Thash right.”

“No,” said Wexler, with a sudden, incongruous giggle. “The IRS apparently didn't get the joke.”

We laughed. We ordered another round. For the IRS. Outside, I noticed, the storm was letting up. Inside, the club was beginning to empty out. Sodden reporters and editors were turning from their drinks to squint out the window at the slackening snow. Every few moments, one would head for the door, vanish into the night. The comfortable hum of voices was fading into silence. The further reaches of the club were slipping into emptiness and darkness. The barkeep was beginning to give us the eye.

“Last round, folks,” the waitress said as she dealt out the drinks.

“Hey,” McKay said. He lifted his head for the occasion. He pointed irritably at his watch. “Hey … ish only ten after midnigh here.”

“That's the little hand, goofball,” Lansing told him. “It's two a.m.”

Poor McKay's mouth fell open hard. He tried to take his Lord's name in vain but couldn't handle the esses. He tried to stand up. He didn't make it. “I gotta call my wife,” he said finally.

“Oh hell, Mac, you can't do that,” I said.

“She'll be asleep. Anyway, you'll wake up the kid,” Lansing said.

“Thash righ … Thash righ … Then … then … I gotta go home. Thash it!”

“Now you're talking,” I said. “That's the old steel trap.”

Satisfied with himself, McKay tried to rise again. This time, Lansing got up and helped him.

“Come on, old sot,” she said. “We'll find you a cab.” Steady as a rock, she stepped to the hatcheck counter. She returned to us with McKay's overcoat and her own belted black fur over one arm. “I guess I better head home myself,” she said. “I'm sure to have more tiger work in the morning. Probably be assigned to cover the tiger's stomach as it digests Suzanne Feldman's arm.”