by Mike Bond
“The other way?” Cohen lit another match.
The man leaned forward. “It came down the ladder, you know, instead of up.”
Cohen shook out the match. “Where did it come from?”
“Alexandria. Where all the rest go to.”
“Feed him the pills, Paul.”
“It's true, it's true!”
“All the way from Egypt!” Cohen grinned. “You're a real asshole, Chester.”
“No. Virginia. You know, near D.C. From the owner, you know, of Kohler.” The man leaned back, as if he had just finished being sick.
“His name?”
“I tell you and I'm a dead man.”
“That's up to you, later. You don't tell us and you're a dead man right now.”
The man regarded them stonily.
“Chester,” Paul said, “I don't want to feed you more acid. You know we can get names and addresses from the files, or from your secretary. I don't want to hurt you; I've never killed anyone and I have no grudge against you. You can save us a little time. Isn't that worth your life?”
The man watched uncertainly, his eyes flat. His forehead crinkled like a dirty undershirt, sending down trickles of exertion along the crevices and blackheads of his nose. He smiled yellow teeth. “You guys'll help me, afterward?”
“What do you want?”
“The regular. Cover and pension. With a new start, you know, I could be real useful to your company.”
Cohen glanced quizzically at Paul, who nodded slightly. “I'd like to say yes, Chester, but I can't. We aren't authorized. All I can promise is a ticket and some startup money.”
“How much?”
“Ten grand. Plus the ticket.”
The man rocked back, hands on his knees. “I'm blowing my whole scene, and you offer me ten grand?”
“We're also offering to blow you completely away. That's the alternative.”
“The cops will be on you in a minute.” He turned to Paul. “This isn't darkest Africa out here, it's Long Island.”
Paul leaned forward. “That was the wrong thing to say, Chester.”
“We're asking you to make a sacrifice, Chester,” Cohen said. “Ten grand is nowhere near enough, we know that. But we can't commit to more. I'm being straight. We can keep tabs on where you are, try for more. I'll try every angle for you. Please don't be stupid!” He shook the Ruger.
“He codes himself, you know, Blaze.” The man was shivering. “But his real name's Marcus Aurelius Clay.”
“How do we find him?”
The man silenced, teeth chattering.
“Once we find him, Chester, you don't have to fear him anymore. He'll never trace it back to you. We already knew a lot about him from Mort, though not his name.”
“I don't know any Mort. Clay's office is in Alexandria, but he's hardly ever there. You have to go, you know, to his home. It's five Dogwood – I always call it five Dogshit – Annapolis.”
“What's he like?” Cohen lit another match and held it out.
“It's been two years, you know, I haven't seen him. He calls on the phone. Tall, silver hair, about fifty-five, a very big man in Washington – I seen his picture, with Senators and stuff, in the paper. That's how I know his name.” He inhaled, sighed. “He's been on some Presidential Commission. He goes to the White House. He's got friends in Vegas, too. Big friends. I wouldn't fuck with him unless you've got an army.”
“He doesn't have an army, either.”
“Oh yes he does. The U.S. Army.”
“Where do you want to go, Chester?” Paul's voice was sweet.
“Shit, I don't know. Paraguay, Brazil?”
Cohen glanced at his watch, stood. Keeping the Ruger on Chester, he backed away, motioned Paul over. “Now what?”
“I s'pose you want to go to Alexandria?”
“Yeah. What do we do with him?”
“We don't kill him. Not me. I got through a whole Vietnam tour – firefights, search and destroy – without killing anybody. When we attacked a village I'd shoot over the huts, aim for the paddies. Not one person, as far as I know. I'm not gonna now.”
“You killed Eliott.”
“I don't mind that. But I won't be party to offing this little wimp.” He sneered at Chester crouching wide-eyed on the ground. “We are what we kill, man.”
Cohen crossed to Chester, extended his hand and raised him up. “How much money you got?”
Chester's face paled. “About forty bucks.”
“That's enough to get you home. We're gonna leave you here; we'll drop by your office Friday morning with cash, passport, the whole setup. In the meantime, act if nothing's happened. Want a passport for boyfriend?”
“Huh? No, he won't go for that.”
“So be it. We'd like you to sit here till dark. Then our backup car will split, at eight-thirty, and you can go. Please for your own sake don't leave till then.”
“I ain't goin’ nowhere, boys. You can bet on me.”
THEY PACKED THE GUN in newspaper in a new plastic suitcase and, leaving the car clean of prints in long term parking, caught the shuttle to Washington. Near the Capitol they had scant trouble locating extra license plates and a recent Chevy Impala with spinners, a vinyl top, and a hole in the dash where a tape deck had been.
Setting sun gleamed on the leafing maples and white houses across the Severn River from Annapolis. Boats crawled up and down, leaving wakes like long feelers behind them. Paul turned to the southeast, to the glimmering deeper chop of Chesapeake Bay. “This here's my last stand, Sam. After this you're on your own.”
“What you gonna do?”
“Go down country, work on a farm, save some money and head for the Coast, start over.”
“Me too, soon. But I want to find the head of this thing first.”
“The head of this thing is America, its way of life, its political system, the money…”
“Okay, okay. For now let's just say I want to find out what this guy Clay is about.”
The Impala's tailpipe clattered in the narrow, stone-walled lane. At 5 Dogwood, a concrete pickaninny with thick red lips and bulging white eyes balanced a black mailbox on its head. The next gate was two hundred yards further down the lane.
The stone wall was above eye level; behind it, the land seemed to slope down through thick trees to the house whose broad, slated gambrel dormers glinted darkly through new leaves, then to the riverbank beyond.
Dogwood Lane ended in a stone-walled turnaround where two granite lions, each with one upraised paw, watched from the sides of a steel-barred gate. They drove back to the beginning, where only a verge of willows separated the lane from the river. “It's dark enough,” Paul said, “we could risk a look from the water.”
Cohen snickered. “Shall I charter a boat?”
“Swim, lazy, swim.”
Cohen pulled off his shirt. “You did the last one, remember?”
“No.”
“The Kali Gandaki? Changtshang.” He slid off his jeans, shirt, and socks, slid his glasses into his shoes, and ducked through the willows into the murky water.
Cold was gathering the darkness into mist and casting it over the surface. A gull flapped up with a strange cry. He swam out a hundred yards, shoulder twinging comfortably, and turned upriver. Steadily the well-lit mansions of Dog-wood Lane drifted by to his left, till he slowed before an elongated gray-shingled cape with a slate roof and gambrel dormers. A dock obtruded from the rip-rapped shoreline. Behind the dock, a bulb glowed in a boathouse where two kayaks stood racked one over the other, a tall shadow moving back and forth before them. While Cohen treaded water the shadow became a tall man in a light blue sweat suit who carried a kayak over his head from the boathouse and dropped it gently into the water beside the dock, climbed surefootedly into it, and paddled toward Cohen.
He dove. Below was inky and numbing; his lungs hungered for air. Interminably he waited for the shadow of the kayak to cross above him but it did not; he pushed up frantically against th
e suffocating cold. The kayak slid by thirty feet away, the man's hair silvered by the boathouse light.
After the kayak had vanished into the mists, he swam quickly to the dock and climbed to the boathouse, lifted the second kayak from the rack and flipped it into the water, tied its bow painter, and returned to rummage in the boathouse for a paddle.
“Who're you?”
He spun round. A girl, perhaps ten, watched him impassively from the door. Her hair was long and tawny. “You startled me,” he said. “Help me find a paddle.”
She edged closer. “I don't know you.”
“I'm Dave Johnston. Friend of your dad's. Can't find a paddle.” He shivered.
“You're looking in the wrong place.” She crossed to a long wooden chest and lifted out a paddle. “When's my dad coming back?”
“Soon. He's helping us with a busted motor on our boat.”
“That's why you're undressed?”
“Thanks for the paddle.” Cohen untied the painter and stepped into the kayak.
“Tell him to hurry home. I've hardly seen him all day, and he has to help me with my Spanish.”
“I'll tell him.” He pushed away from the dock and paddled into the mist, turned downriver to the willows and whistled to Paul. “Get your ass out here. I've found Clay. He's out there in a kayak!”
Paul waded out and slipped gingerly into Cohen's kayak. “Let's go have a talk with the man.”
They paddled back upriver, the paddle slicing silent dimples in the current. A sycamore's low branches reached out for them. They halted beyond the boathouse light. A car honked in Dogwood Lane, its sound muffled by mist.
“Where'd he go?” Paul whispered.
“Not sure.” Cohen explored with his fingers a heart-shaped hole in the canvas below the right gunnel.
A boat was idling near the far shore, its motor steady as an electric fan. It sped up, gurgled, and died. Cohen paddled lightly shoreward, thinking the current had dropped them downriver, seeking the outreaching sycamore. A dark lump swam at them; it was a new-leafed bough riding the current.
Drops fell tip tip tip from the paddle. Cohen lowered it but the sound grew. With it rose a hissing, like a knife drawn steadily toward them through water. He touched Paul's shoulder with the paddle and pointed it toward the sound.
The current was easing them past the sound. Cohen back-paddled gently, roiling the water. He twisted his wrist to deflect the kayak inward.
White, in the water. A plastic milk container. Paul leaned out and pushed it; it bobbed back up, the river sluicing round it. Its handle was fastened to a weedy rope descending at an angle toward the riverbed.
“Where was this?”
“Never saw it,” Paul answered.
“We've drifted too far down.” Cohen paddled toward shore. Laughter ran over the water from upstream. The shore was not there. Cohen dipped the paddle over the side but could not touch bottom. Angrily he paddled thirty strokes ahead and stopped. No bottom. He turned ninety degrees left and took thirty strokes. Nothing. A semicircle to the right and ninety strokes brought nothing more. “We're fucking lost,” he hissed.
Brrrap started the boat, to their left and nearer. It revved high and held, then steadied into gear. Cohen drove hard away from it. The boat moved downriver. Dark trees rose before them. The kayak sliced through weeds, paddle sucking on the bottom.
“Upstream,” Paul whispered.
Cohen pushed out and paddled upstream, drifted down in sight of shore until they were in the weeds again. “Can't find the dock.”
“We must be too low.”
Again Cohen paddled upriver. There was the sycamore, its lowest bough diving out over the water, new twigs up-raised. He went further upriver. Another thick darkness, another sycamore. He tucked into shore and drifted down its edge to the dock. The boathouse was empty.
He paddled from shore and drove the paddle straight down into the mud, holding the kayak against it. Water riffled under the bow. The paddle thunked on the gunnel. Nervously he pushed off the paddle, then realized it had not touched the boat. He pulled it free and moved them toward the sound.
A black prow across the water, head down like a snake. The man raised his paddle. “Evening,” called Paul. “Can you tell us where we are?”
“Where do you want to be?” Clay's voice had a disembodied tone.
“Up the Severn, about two miles from Annapolis.”
Clay was gone in a churn of his paddle, his kayak bottom up.
Cohen shoved his paddle at Paul and dove. The water was cold and thick. He felt for Clay's kayak; its seat was empty. He twisted down to guard his flank, but all was black, above and below.
He surfaced panting and dove again, checking all the way below the kayak to mud and creepers at the bottom. A hand grabbed his ankle – a waterlogged branch heavy with weeds. He broke it free and clawed upward, lungs roaring.
Clay's kayak drifted empty, keel up, to his right. Paul had left; he would be checking further out. Cohen breast-stroked quietly toward shore. A log shape rode ahead.
Cohen took a breath and slid under the log. It was another kayak, upside down. He peered over its side. “Paul!”
Paul didn't answer. Cohen fingered the canvas to the heart-shaped rent amidships, and gently slid away. “Paul!” A motorcycle was working along Dogwood, backing off loudly.
He treaded water. The kayaks had drifted out of sight. He swam toward the sound of the motorcycle and waited. The current carried him downriver; he moved inshore till his feet touched, and pushed upcurrent on the grasping mud, past the first sycamore, until he saw Clay's dock.
The mist was clearing and house lights shimmered in the shallows. Part of the dock's substructure moved and merged with the next piling. It broke free from that piling and moved inshore to the next. He stifled the impulse to call, moved closer, squinting. The water was too noisy; he eased to shore and ran crouching through the trees toward the dock.
A head appeared against above the dock. Shoulders came with it, then arms and a waist, a tall, weaving figure. Cohen pulled a rock from the riverbank riprap. The figure cleared the dock. Cohen bare-footed across the lawn and hid behind young birches. Clay stumbled toward him, face down, on the path to the house. In his left hand was a knife; his jaw hung strangely open, his mouth and nose deep-shadowed.
Cohen hit him on the forehead with the rock; he fell in a clump.
23
HE TIED CLAY'S ARMS and ankles with strips torn from his sweatshirt, stuffed other strips into his mouth and wrapped it shut, found Clay's knife, then dragged him to the water's edge. From the boathouse he took a life vest, rope, and spare paddle. Shoving Clay into the vest, he towed him to the kayak lying in a waist-deep eddy between the weeds and lower sycamore. He jammed Clay into the front and climbed in behind him.
Clay began to move and twist against him. “Where's my buddy?” Cohen whispered. Clay moaned. Cohen paddled into deeper water and began searching in runs paralleling the shore, calculating his increasing distance from it by the lights now freely dappling the black, tossing surface.
Paul floated face down below the lower sycamore. He was still warm. Cohen lifted him to the bow; darkness ran like paint down the canvas. The front of Paul's undershirt was black. It was a small puncture below and into the heart. No pulse, the fingers cold.
Paul felt light, almost alive, as he gathered him into his arms, Paul's blood running tepidly down his stomach. He buried his face in Paul's shoulder; it still smelled like Paul – a musky warmth – and it could not be true that he was dead, that it was too late to love, protect, to say the things that had always been left unsaid. He laid Paul over the bow, the few shore lights clearer now, but there were no people there, in those houses, no people anywhere; the earth was empty.
Dropping Paul's hand he spun the kayak and grabbed Clay by the neck, squeezing the jaw till he felt it break, clamping his hands round his neck and thrusting him underwater as Clay's feet thrashed and thudded against the kayak, twisting out chu
nks of his hair and throwing them like refuse onto the water. When Clay stilled he dragged him out, pinning him by his ears against a thwart. “Why'd you kill him, you bastard? Why'd you kill him?”
Clay moaned. A car's lights flashed over the water. Can't get caught here. He banged Clay's head, splintering the thwart. “Why'd you kill him? He never hurt anyone! Why'd you kill him?”
Clay did not answer. He shoved him into the back and paddled into the river's center, where the current slipped him past the lights of Annapolis and into the Bay's chop. Here Paul's dead weight offset the kayak, forcing Cohen back on the rear thwart. The wind slicing off the wave tips was cold from the south; the water drowning the bows had raised a groaning shiver from Clay.
AN HOUR brought them to the rumbling shore of an island. Cohen turned south, into the wind, where the lowered bow worked to advantage. He crossed a straight between the land and the island, and nudged the kayak along mud flats to a rocky, wooded outcrop far from lights or the sound of traffic. With the paddle he trenched a shallow grave in the mud and dragged Paul into it. He stamped down the mud over Paul's body and covered it with boulders, forced Clay into the shadows of the trees and loosed his gag.
“Oh, God, my arm,” Clay moaned. “Untie my arm!”
“It's just a shoulder separation. You like football?”
“God, I can't stand the pain.”
“They get them all the time, those guys you watch on TV.” Cohen spun the arm like a windmill; Clay shrieked and went limp. Cohen splashed seawater on his face and slapped it until he came round. “Want a doctor?”
“God, yes. Hurry.”
“Tell me about Nepal.”
“Don't know what – God, stop!”
“The truth.”
“I will, God, I will. It was just an operation. I bucked it along.”
“How?”
“From the, uh, source, to the folks in Nepal, via New York.”
“Names.”
“Please, please, stop. Stihl in Nepal, Chester in New York. I just passed the requisitions.”
“That's not what I hear.”
“Cohen – that's who you are. The guy that killed Eliott and Stihl. Half the world's looking for you.”