The Nylon Hand of God

by Steven Hartov

  She pocketed the key and returned to the counter, yet now she did not look at him at all. The money was behind steel and safe by law. She could kill the old man, and still that trust belonged forever to Katharina. Of course, she had no intention to do so, but the stench of betrayal was on him, and it made her blood run hot and quick.

  “Aren’t you forgetting something?” she said as she watched the elevator.

  “Entschuldigung?”

  “The book.”

  “Oh, yes.” He hefted a large visitors’ ledger, opened it to the proper place, and tried to smile again as he offered a pen.

  She turned and stared at him until he retreated a full step. Then she took the pen, drew only a long black line across the page, dropped it, and walked away.

  The night manager sat down, pulled open a metal drawer, and found his flask of schnapps. He took a long swig, then kept his fingers on the entry buzzer. He watched the main door with longing. The policemen had told him to do nothing, but he had a terrible urge to grab the telephone, dial 911, and flee.

  Martina walked past the single elevator, the shiny brass mailboxes, as she reset the ruck upon her back and stuffed her gloves into her jacket. She reached up under her sweater, gripped the cold butt of her P-38, yanked open the service stairway door, and lunged inside.

  Nothing. She looked up at the ascending brown metal banisters, breathing softly as she waited for a shadow, some hint of sudden retreat.

  Silence.

  She began to sprint up the heavy steel stairs, always looking upward, her mouth closed and her respiration steady, the only sound the creaking of her leather jacket, past the fire extinguishers, the landings.

  She stopped at five and listened. A muffled television set filtered through the door, but aside from that no hasty footsteps, no scrapes of tensioned spines pressed up against walls. She stepped into the corridor.

  Clear.

  She felt her heart now, pressing hard against the elastic of her running bra. She longed for the chill of her motorcycle ride, as the overheated building caused her sweat to run in itchy rivulets from her armpits.

  Perhaps she was wrong, and the superstitions of encroaching age were finally upon her. Perhaps caution itself had become a danger, so draining when one heeded its voice. Be ready, she coached herself. But be calm.

  She was at the rear of the building, facing the corridor of flowered wallpaper, the cream ceiling with its shameless fluorescent fixtures. She dropped her hands to her sides, straightened from a partial crouch, and walked.

  Her mother’s small one-bedroom was at the front, where Martina had insisted it be, paying a small premium for the privilege. It had a picture window from which Mutti could enjoy the changing seasons and Martina could observe the street below. She walked up to the door. It was not locked, a house rule in places where the tenants often fell, fracturing bones.

  She turned the glass knob and gently pushed it open.

  The first thing that hit her was the odor, a waft of mothballs and wool curdled by the overheated atmosphere. Then she smiled as another scent mingled with the first, the tang of thick black coffee, the grounds boiled freely with a floating egg-shell, just the way Mutti always liked it.

  She closed the door behind her. The only light in the room was thrown by a shaded lamp on a tall brass pole, next to the arm of a scallop-backed love seat that she herself had purchased some years before. The seat faced away from her, and over its arch she could see the low glass coffee table, its surface polished to a diamond sheen. The mahogany china closet was still in place against the right wall, and a drum table with maritime hardware counterbalanced it on the left. The rest of the decor consisted of framed pictures covering every horizontal surface, including the radiator cover below the window. Silver frames, brass frames, teak frames, photos so familiar that she needn’t glance at them to know their contents.

  The larger ones were all of Papa, here in woolly suits and fedoras, there in shorts and flannel shirts, a coil of climbing rope across his shoulders. In some he hugged a young and radiant Katharina, in others he glowed from the adoring gazes of his wife and a pigtailed toddler. He posed with other men in shirtsleeves, hovering proudly over drafting tables, and in all of them, with the exception of a stark black-and-white in which he wore the uniform of a Wehrmacht Oberst, he smiled broadly.

  There were other pictures, some art prints clipped from books, of scenes Bavarian; none was Argentinian, as if that period had been stricken from history. And there were a few portraits of a young woman who might have been Martina but was actually a photographic twin selected from the files of a Paris advertising agency. Martina had substituted the stranger for all mementos of herself, placing her faith properly in her mother’s failing eyesight.

  She watched the tall back of a birch rocker as it gently nodded at the picture window, where a few flecks of flurrying snow were beginning to touch the darkened panes. The muted strains of Beethoven’s Fifth drifted from an old radio, yet she knew the selection was coincidental. The tuning dial had probably not been touched this year.

  She stepped softly to the left and through the darkened archway of the tiny bedroom, her muscles tightening as she quickly scanned the space, pulled open the bathroom door, then reemerged somewhat relaxed. She walked over to the rocker, gently stopped its movement, and smiled as she looked down.

  “Grüß Gott, Mutti,” she whispered brightly as she bent and kissed the silky tangle of white curls.

  Katharina looked up from her knitting, and without stopping her reedy hum in accompaniment to Ludwig van, or registering anything more than warm pleasure in her shiny eyes, she smiled.

  “Grüß Dich, Schatzi,” said Katharina, as if her daughter had merely been gone shopping for the afternoon. “Ein schöner Abend, stimmts?”

  “Yes, Mutti,” Martina agreed. “It is a beautiful evening.” And not wanting to expose herself too long before the window, she quickly knelt on the floor and turned the rocker to her. Her mother mouthed surprise at the pleasant little ride, and Martina could see that she was knitting a quilt that had no pattern and was filled with holes and wayward loops of blue yarn.

  “So how do you feel?” Martina placed her hands on the bony knees beneath a pink flannel housecoat.

  “How?” Katharina asked, as if the question was part of an oft-repeated game. “O-o-old,” she sang as she bent forward and placed her forehead to Martina’s.

  They laughed together, and Martina squinted hard in an exaggerated smile. She watched her mother’s eyes, still china blue as they must have been so long ago in mountain German air, searching for a sadness, a knowledge that her daughter might be troubled, alone, in danger, at risk. It was not there.

  “But not s-o-o-o old,” her mother added. Martina leaned forward and kissed her jowly cheek. Then she quickly shrugged off her backpack, fumbled with the buckle, and came up with the long box of chocolate brandy bottles.

  “I brought you something.” She placed the box on her mother’s lap, but Katharina did not even look at it. Instead, she reached forward with a gnarled hand and touched her daughter’s face.

  “Meine Liebste,” she said.

  Martina covered the hand with her own fingertips and closed her eyes for a moment, imprinting the touch upon her memory. Then she twisted where she knelt on the worn carpet, donning the ruck as the barrel of her pistol pressed into her pubis, reminding her that she should not dawdle. She took both her mother’s hands into her own.

  “Mutti,” she said, trying to penetrate with one final thrust of clarity. “I will have to go away.”

  “Ja, natürlich. Try to bring a cake, Marti. For the coffee.”

  “No, Mutti.” Martina squeezed a bit harder. “I mean, maybe for a long time.”

  “Oh, yes. I know, darling. But you always come back, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Mutti. I do.”

  “And you will bring some sweet surprise?”

  “I will try to bring something very special.”

  “And
visit with me, for just a little while?”

  “I always do, Mutti. Don’t I?”

  “Yes. You are a good girl. Just as your friend said.”

  “Yes.”

  Martina felt the rush of something in her chest. Her friend. What friend? She had no acquaintance who also knew her mother, yet she fought with every muscle in her face to maintain her expression, her voice even and undemanding. “My friend.”

  “Ja, such a nice man.” Her mother wagged a playful finger. “Ein gentleman,” she said, as if warning Marti not to break his heart.

  “He is.” Martina’s voice was a hoarse rasp as she wrestled with her smile. “Isn’t he?”

  “Ach, ja.” Katharina giggled.

  “Herr Franz,” Martina said, one last hope that this friend was born of fantasy.

  “Yes,” her mother said, then she shook her head. “No. Herr Klein.”

  Martina leapt to her feet. Klein. Hugo Klein.

  Benjamin Baum had been there.

  And then she heard it, even as she worked to silence her own blood and bring the building sounds to the fore. She had already felt it, ignored it, like a veteran Californian dismissing the tremors. The quick tread of footsteps from the distant stairwell.

  She spun and walked toward the door, her smile turned to a savage lip curl as she unholstered the P-38. She was about to cock the slide when she heard the creak of the rocker behind her. Her mother had risen from the chair and was following her.

  “Marti?” Katharina’s voice was still bright, untuned to the radical atmospheric shift.

  Martina turned, laying the pistol along her right thigh as she reached out and cradled her mother’s chin.

  “Go sit, Mutti,” she whispered, every microsecond an eon of delay. “Go.” She kissed her mother hard on her forehead. “I will be right back.”

  She waited until Katharina turned back toward the window. Then she pulled open the door.

  The apartment door immediately to her right also opened, and the figure of a young man froze halfway out the frame. He was tall and blond, wearing a tie and a long coat, and for a moment she thought that the German BKA had pursued her here. In his right hand he held a chrome revolver pointed at the floor, in his left a small walkie-talkie, and a gold badge gleamed from his belt. His eyes gripped Martina’s face, then flicked over her shoulder, and she knew that he was frozen by the presence of her mother beyond her back. She raised the P-38 to his gaping mouth and cocked it, the echo of the slide ringing in the corridor.

  O’Donovan launched himself backward into the vacant flat, crashing to the wooden floor as the Motorola went skidding away. He snapped out his foot and caught the edge of the open door, slamming it as he crabbed backward and gripped his pistol two-handed between his knees, his breath pouring from his mouth.

  Martina kept her weapon trained on the door as she reached back with her left hand, found the knob, and closed her mother’s flat.

  At the far end of the corridor, the stairwell door flew open and two large figures spilled into the corridor. Martina’s pistol swung to them like a battleship turret, and they stopped, iced silhouettes in the harsh fluorescent light.

  Benni Baum was wearing a ragged army field jacket and a dark wool cap. Jerry Binder’s huge bulk protruded from behind, the yellow hard hat a blazing target he had forgotten to discard.

  Benni was unarmed. He slowly straightened up, opening his hands to the sides, his palms upturned. He saw the barrel of Martina’s pistol, a tiny orifice as large as a train tunnel, but he blurred it from his vision and focused on her eyes, the fiery blue glass unblinking above nostrils stretched like a wild mare’s, a mouth drawn tight.

  “Drop, Benni,” Binder whispered between clenched teeth. He had not brought the shotgun into the rest home, but his pistol was in his hand, concealed from Martina’s view. “I’ll take her.”

  “No,” Benni instantly replied. “Not here.”

  Benni took one step forward, a movement so slow and measured it was like the ballet of a mime. He stretched his fingers further, no tricks up his sleeves. He spoke in German.

  “Martina,” he said as gently as he could, while his heart already felt the impact of the coming bullet. “Hör mich an. Listen to me.”

  For a second he had hope, for she did not move. But then her face went darker, her chin rose, and she shouted.

  “Nein! Not again! Not to you!”

  Binder grabbed Benni’s collar and slammed down onto his back, pulling Baum with him as Martina’s shot exploded in the corridor, a blinding flash and a concussive ring as the round cracked above their noses and split the wall behind them. They rolled away from each other and Binder was up, his pistol fumbling for a shadow as Martina dove into the apartment to her left. O’Donovan charged out from the flat across the way, saw Binder’s gun, and flattened himself against the corridor wall.

  In the street below, Martina’s gunshot was only a muffled report, no more than a firecracker in a clothes closet. Yet everyone who had anticipated it knew what it was.

  Ruth had emerged from O’Donovan’s Fairlane, and she jolted backward with the dull crack and froze, staring up at the Edelweiss. Panic claimed her instantly as she imagined her father’s crumpled body, and she leapt for the entrance of the building. Her feet flew out over a patch of ice as Aaron Davis gripped her upper arm to hold her back.

  “Let me go,” she snapped, but the tall man squeezed until she stopped her squirm. He was also staring upward, the walkie-talkie in his free hand suddenly crackling with O’Donovan’s strained whisper.

  “Aaron, call ESU. We might have a hostage thing up here.”

  “Ten-four,” Davis whispered back.

  He and Ruth snapped their heads around to the roar of a big motorcycle. True to Martina’s instructions, Iyad had broken cover to mount the bike, yet he panicked now as his overthrottling drew the focus of Frank Mancuso, whose assignment was to watch for Klump’s backup. Wearing a black ski parka and a baseball cap, Mancuso sprang up from a maintenance stairwell across the street and began to run down the sloping macadam between the parked cars. He drew his revolver and shouted something as the big Suzuki roared away, its rear wheel fishtailing wildly.

  Iyad suddenly remembered that he was supposed to lose the saddlebag. He wanted to just toss it away, but Martina had strictly forbidden so obvious a decoy. He decided to tilt the bike and help the bag slip off, then made the mistake of turning to look behind, where a mad figure was gaining quickly on foot. The rear wheel skidded over a patch of snow, and then the whole machine was listing hard to the right as the engine guards sparked on the pavement, and the Suzuki tunneled under the running board of a parked Jeep Cherokee.

  Iyad yelled as something sharp tore through the jeans of his left leg. He thrashed for a moment like a downed steed, then freed himself. He pulled once on the handlebars with everything he had, but the motorcycle was locked beneath the car. He got up and sprinted for Second Avenue, his arms flying as he tore off his helmet and hurled it away.

  Inside the darkened flat next to her mother’s, Martina saw the glint of a plastic dinner plate on a tray, snatched it up, inverted it, dropped it to the floor, and with a toe kick jammed it under the door.

  From the flat’s bedroom she heard a weak and frightened cry, “Wer ist das? Wer ist das?” but she sprang to the salon window and threw one palm to the wooden slats. Freshly painted, it would not budge, and she spun back on the room, spotting a large wooden knitting chest. Sensing the intentions from the corridor, she aimed her pistol at the door, closed her eyes to mitigate the flash, and fired another shot. Then she holstered the P-38, picked up the chest, and, twisting once around like a discus thrower, hurled it at the window, where its impact sent pounds of glass and spools of colored yarn out into the night.

  O’Donovan and Binder had squeezed their backs to opposite sides of the doorframe in the corridor. Binder was holding Benni at bay to his left, and they all stared down at the carpet, showered with wooden splinters from Martina’s
hollow-point. The door to her mother’s flat began to open, and O’Donovan reached out and slammed it. The detectives gripped their revolvers two-handed now, and when they heard the window explode, O’Donovan nodded.

  Binder lifted his right knee and bucked his foot back like a mule. The door flew on its hinges, a warbling geriatric cry came from somewhere inside, and O’Donovan charged in behind his outstretched weapon.

  Wind whipped in through the jagged maw of the window, white streams of snow crisscrossing outside in the black air.

  “Jerry, take the stairs,” O’Donovan ordered.

  “Roger that,” said Binder as he turned, expecting to have to manhandle Baum away. But the Israeli’s feet were already pounding down the corridor, and he followed at a hard run.

  In the street, Ruth and Davis heard the sailing glass and ran to the western corner of the Edelweiss, where the building was separated from its neighbor by a twelve-foot gap. Mancuso joined them, carrying the saddlebag and panting in the frigid air, and the trio gawked up at the distant image of Martina’s legs as they disappeared over the last rung of an iron ladder curling over the roof.

  Davis’s radio was at his lips. “She’s going up and over, Sarge.”

  “No shit,” came the hoarse reply, and then O’Donovan appeared on the fire escape, more glass raining down as his coat snagged on the window shards. He flattened himself against the brick face, edging quickly toward the ladder. He looked up, then down at the faces far below, his hair wild and the open coat whipping like a cape as he stuffed his radio in a pocket. He made an encircling motion with his left arm, and then he began to climb.

  The entrance to the Edelweiss sprang open, and Ruth turned to see her father, his face set in something like that ferocity he showed on weekend soccer pitches, yet frightening for its lack of intramural fun. He charged right past her, thundering up the hill toward Third Avenue, with Binder close on his heels.