Nobody spoke.
‘Mr McBride?’
Abe hoped that McBride would keep his mouth shut, but the taxman was too proud.
‘I’m McBride. My colleague, Jim Bosse, is lying dead over there. Judge Styles has already made his exit. These two men –’ he indicated the two accountants ‘– have been assisting us on points of detail. They’re not more than partially aware of the case against Powell Lambert. I will ask them to keep silent about all this, and I therefore request you to let them go.’
‘Nice. Nice speech. But they can stay…’ Roeder approached Abe, coming up close, just a few inches away. ‘Captain Rockwell, how nice to meet you.’
Roeder didn’t make it a question, or a statement, or even a greeting. It was a gloat, pure and simple, the gloat of a predator pleased with its trapped and cornered prey. The man’s eyes were strange, Abe noticed. One eye was inflamed, had dark clots over a purple iris. Abe saw the way the man had difficulty looking directly into the light from the windows, and he shifted position carefully so he was framed against the wide and empty pane behind him.
Roeder looked away. The fire didn’t have the rage of a paper blaze now, but the tables and chairs were still sending up a crackling heat and bursts of sparks and smoke. Abe noticed some of the timber rafters beginning to blacken with the heat. Beneath the fire too, the floorboards were beginning to be eaten away. Roeder’s bad eye was giving him trouble. He rubbed it once, making it worse. The men with Tommy guns stood silently watching their boss, waiting for instructions.
Abe nudged McBride’s foot with his boot. His thumb turned backwards, indicating the window. It would be a huge jump, possibly a bone-breaking one or worse, but the alternatives waiting inside the room were hardly better.
‘No,’ said McBride in a loud, confident voice. ‘Not me, you.’
Roeder’s eyes leaped to the taxman, suspicious and calculating. Part of him – the sadistic, blood-delighting part – visibly wanted to prolong his moment of triumph. The other part, the professional servant of the Firm, decided it was better to get the job done fast and smoothly. He indicated the two accountants, and spoke to a couple of his men, ‘Get them down there, hands and feet tied, stand guard.’
The two men took the accountants down to a corner of the still-burning room.
Now it was just Roeder and four guards left for Abe and McBride. He was clearly planning to kill them then and there.
‘May I smoke?’ said Abe, gesturing at his pocket.
Roeder didn’t say yes or no, but he took one pace back, expecting trickery. Four Tommy guns tightened their aim on Abe’s forehead. He felt his skin freeze, knowing his face was taut and empty. Trying to act normally, he fished slowly in his pocket, making no sharp or sudden movements, and drew out cigarettes and matches. He took one out, lit it, and inhaled. Then, as he was returning the boxes of cigarettes and matches to his pocket, his hand trembled briefly and he dropped them both.
‘Sorry,’ he said.
He got down on his knees to pick them up. He was the only moving thing in a silent room. Down low, the air didn’t have the fierce heat of the fire in it, but the air still pricked with the sharp smell of unburned soot. Abe could feel four sets of eyes and guns following his every move.
And then he did it. The magic show of his career. He reached for the packet of cigarettes. He allowed his right hand to close over them – or seemingly close over them – while in reality, a sharp flick, concealed by the sleeve of his jacket, sent them into his lap. He held his right hand out and opened it: nothing.
He hardly dared to breathe. All conjurors, even the best, like to practise their tricks before exposing them to an audience. It’s no use having a general facility for sleight-of-hand, you need to know the exact weight of the item you’re using for the trick. Even substituting one deck of cards for the one he’d practised with could cause Abe difficulties – and he’d never even taken his limited interest in conjuring beyond fooling around with playing cards.
All the same, he had one thing on his side. Just as conjurors need to train to do tricks, people need to train to see through them. It’s not that easy to do. People see the laws of nature being bent under their eyes. They almost can’t help but watch.
Abe put out his left hand. The cigarette box was there now – but empty. It had been full just moments before. Abe dropped the box. He showed one hand, then the other: no cigarettes. He began to straighten, right up by Roeder’s feet now. He shook the cigarettes invisibly from his sleeve to his right hand, which his audience still took to be empty. Still straightening, he fluttered his hand. Cigarettes seemed to fall out of thin air across the floor.
‘Funny guy,’ said Roeder, moving back.
‘I try.’
Abe stepped back.
Misdirection: the oldest and best of the stratagems of war. Even though Roeder’s eyes had been gluey with suspicion, he’d looked the wrong way. While he and everyone else had been looking at the fluttering cigarettes, Abe had used his left hand to sneak the gun from Roeder’s pocket. It was in his waistband now, at the back. He backed into Haggerty McBride and felt the taxman’s fingers take the gun. Abe paused for a second, to give the taxman time.
‘So long, buddy,’ he whispered.
Then he moved. He stepped back to the window sill. McBride’s gun barked sharply once – twice – a third time – but Abe heard nothing more.
His first leap took him to the window ledge. The next leap took him well beyond.
From inside the room, it seemed as though his leap took him into the clear blue light outside and nothing else. But Abe had already checked his position. Five yards beneath him and as many as three or four yards to the side, an old rusted winch jutted out over the Tarmac. Abe jumped with all the spring his legs could provide. He sailed through the air – a moment of terrifying freedom – then, just as he thought he’d misjudged, his outstretched hands found the rasp of blunt metal. His fingers locked. The swing of his body threatened to tear him away, but he hung on until he could hook his legs over the diagonal support strut. Up above now, he heard shooting: not the snap of McBride’s revolver, but the long roar of Tommy guns. McBride too was dead now: joining Brad Lundmark and Jim Bosse among the heroes who had died to help Abe.
Steady now, and feeling his fear for the first time, Abe slid down the rusty steel to the red brick wall. He was still twenty feet above ground and there was little or nothing to help him down. Hanging at full stretch, so his feet were perhaps a dozen feet above ground, he dropped. Landing like a parachute jumper – legs bent and ready to roll – he hit the ground hard but OK.
Roeder had two men down there on the waterfront in between the warehouse and the Potomac. But they were downwind, trying to catch the swirling papers as the wind lifted them. They had looked up at the noise of shooting, but hadn’t noticed Abe’s figure dropping in the shadows under the old winch. Down on the asphalt, there was a litter of broken glass from the windows above and a mass of documents – mostly the heavier ones, that hadn’t yet been lifted by the wind.
Abe knew what he was looking for and found it quickly.
One of the black-bound banking ledgers; the most recent of them; the one that hadn’t yet been completely filled in. There were other priceless pieces of evidence lying close at hand, but Abe couldn’t afford to waste a moment.
He snatched up the ledger and began to run.
There was a shout from the windows above and bullets began to spatter the ground away and to the left of Abe. The hum and zing of ricochets filled the air. But for the gunmen above, the shooting wasn’t easy. The angle was bad, worsening all the time, and perhaps McBride had managed to do some damage before he’d died.
There was another burst of fire, closer this time, but Abe had reached an alley at the end of the warehouse. He ran into it, lungs bursting, but close to safety now. Somewhere a long way away still, he could hear fire engines clanging their bells. He guessed that someone had managed to find a phone and get help. The fire se
rvice would make life tough for the mobsters. The people now trapped in the bottom section of the warehouse would be able to get clear to safety. Maybe the fire service would collect up the fluttering documents; bundle them up and take them downtown for processing.
But those were subsidiary thoughts. Abe’s priority lay elsewhere now, close by, as though destined.
135
Willard sprawled on the sofa in his bathrobe.
He had eaten his own breakfast and had begun picking at Annie’s. His hangover still muttered at the edge of his brain. The curtains were still drawn, the light outside still unwelcome, the room inside still dark. Next door, Annie was asleep and would be for some time.
What to do?
Willard hadn’t really slept enough, but he was too awake now to think of returning to sleep. His hangover was a nuisance, but he didn’t feel ready to take the few glugs of whiskey which would drive it back into hiding. Really, he wanted to get up, do something, be useful, but both his father and Ted Powell still wanted him sidelined.
The whole Rosalind mess stirred uneasily at the back of his mind. Even now, nobody knew or cared that Rosalind had dumped her fiancé. The odd thing was how strangely unmoved Willard seemed to be. At one level, he felt a breeze of sudden freedom. He felt relieved. But at another level, he felt flat dismay. He remembered some of those old, scary interviews with his father – about his bad results at Princeton, about his move into movies, about the disaster of Heaven’s Beloved. And this time promised to be the same. Junius Thornton wouldn’t say much. What he said would sting. What he didn’t say would sting even more. His son had been dumped. The news would be public. There was no explanation.
Willard’s solution to the problem was an old one. He didn’t think about it. At some point, he’d have to, but that point wasn’t yet. In the meantime, he had no idea how he had ended up with his former secretary curled up in the bedroom next door, but he liked it that she was. He looked forward to the moment when she woke up. They’d have sex together, of course, but nothing brash, nothing showy. Willard would enjoy having a different sort of relationship. Something quieter, more private, intimate.
He poked at the mess of egg on Annie’s plate. The egg was cold and hard, like the light outside. He picked up a slice of bacon in his fingers and ate it. Then he threw himself back on the sofa, a cup of coffee within easy reach.
He lay like that for a minute or two, then became aware of something strange in the room. A little chill of fear swept through Willard’s body. He caught his breath, then jolted himself upright.
Over in the corner of the room, between door and window, there was a man, no more than middling height, not large, very close-cropped blond hair, motionless and silent. The window was open a crack and the thin curtain moved a little in the draught. For one idiotic moment, Willard wondered whether the man had come in by the door or through the window, from the sky itself. The two men stared at each other for a quarter of a second. Willard’s throat was too tight to speak. Then the newcomer moved.
‘Willard, hi!’
Abe walked forwards, smiling. Long afterwards, that was how Willard would remember him: in that first moment, smiling.
‘Gosh – sir! – I mean Captain.’
Willard thrust his legs to the floor, stood up, raised his hand in what started out as a military salute and ended as a strange kind of wave.
‘When you dropped that note to me, the one you enclosed with the movie poster, you said I should look you up. I hope now’s OK.’
‘Gee, Captain, I didn’t hear you knock. How did you get in for that matter? The door was locked, wasn’t it?’
Abe smiled, dangled a passkey from his hand, and dropped it into his pocket. This was the man Willard remembered: the pilot who was always in the right part of the sky at the right time; the pilot who couldn’t be followed, couldn’t be tracked.
‘Is that coffee?’ said the airman.
‘Yes, you want some?’
‘Please.’
‘You want milk? Sugar? The pot’s gotten a little cold. We took breakfast kind of early. If you want, I could call room service. They’re not always too fast, but I could hurry ’em up, if you –’
‘Black. It’s fine. I don’t mind it cold.’
Willard poured coffee from the hotel’s silver coffee pot into a white porcelain coffee cup. He put the cup on its tiny saucer and passed it over to his one-time commander. While cup and saucer were in Willard’s hand, they jigged a tinkling dance of nervousness. When Abe took the saucer, the cup went instantly still.
Abe smiled again.
‘Nice suite.’
‘Yes, it’s OK, isn’t it?’ said Willard, before instantly regretting the word ‘OK’. He knew his old commander had never been well-off before, wasn’t well-off now. This suite must seem like an unthinkable luxury to him. ‘I mean, it’s great, really. Terrific.’
‘May I?’
Abe pointed to a small wooden chair with a covered seat.
‘Huh, sorry? Oh, sure.’ Willard had already sat down, but now got half-up again, waved at Abe to sit, then sat again. ‘Sorry.’
‘I called unexpectedly.’
‘No, that’s fine. I wasn’t doing much…’
Willard gulped. His brain was in turmoil.
Here was the situation. Abe Rockwell had voluntarily walked into Willard’s room. Willard was bigger, stronger, younger, taller. Abe would hardly be a pushover, but if Willard really wanted to, he was pretty sure he could jump on Rockell, fight him, beat him – capture him, in fact. To put it bluntly, Powell Lambert’s most dangerous enemy had placed himself in Willard’s power.
But here was the strange thing: Willard had no impulse to do anything of the sort. Get up and punch Abe Rockwell in the face? It was unthinkable. He’d likelier punch his own father. Meantime, though he knew he ought to call someone, or interrogate his visitor, or do something, he did nothing at all. He just got tongue-tied, embarrassed, flustered.
‘Things OK on Wall Street?’
‘Sure. Yes. Fine. Busy, always busy.’
‘I’m sorry I never got to see your pictures. I knew others who liked them though. You did well.’
‘Thanks, yes. Some of them weren’t so good, but you know one or two, they did OK. And they’re only pictures, I mean. After all, what can you expect?’
‘That kid you sent the movie poster to, he was thrilled.’
‘Great, that’s great.’
There was a pause. Abe looked down at his coffee cup, swigged it all in one go, then put the cup down.
‘The booze, where did that come into things? How did you get mixed up in all that?’
Willard could hardly be surprised that the question arrived, but he was thrown by it all the same. There was no anger in Abe’s voice, no accusation, not even sadness.
‘The booze? Well, you know, who isn’t mixed up in that? Do you know anyone who doesn’t take a drink now and again? I don’t.’
‘I wasn’t talking about taking a drink now and again.’
Willard felt a moment’s anger. He felt angry at his hangover, angry at Abe’s intrusion, angry at the world. And then he did something odd. He spoke the truth.
‘I got into debt. I made a movie. I mean, my own movie. Produced it, directed it, everything. It wasn’t too bad, only … well, no, I guess looking back, it was a stinker. It’s harder than you’d think. Anyway, I owed money I didn’t have. One thing led to another. I didn’t know about Powell Lambert before I joined them.’
Abe’s quiet eyes rested on the younger man for a moment or two.
‘I’m sorry, Will, that sounds tough.’
‘It was actually. You wouldn’t even guess how tough.’
Willard looked up as though asking forgiveness. Abe nodded as though giving it.
‘These things happen.’
The silence came back into the room. Willard remembered the long pauses of his old commander. To begin with, they’d worried him. He’d tried to fill the gaps with chatter.
Later on, he’d come to realise he didn’t need to. These silences weren’t like his father’s domineering silences, they were different, shared. Willard could talk if he wanted to, not if he didn’t. Willard relaxed. He was about to help himself to more coffee, when the phone went, crashingly loud in the quiet room.
‘Excuse me.’
He took the call. It was his father.
‘Willard, my boy, are you up already?’
‘Yes, Father.’
‘Mixed news, mostly good. McBride is dead. So is Bosse. We haven’t got the judge yet, but we know where his family lives. We don’t see him causing us difficulty. There were some others who got away, but nobody of importance.’
‘And the evidence, Pa? The papers?’
‘We have some of it. The fire service has most of the rest. We’ll ask our friends in the police to retrieve it from the fire service in due course. The police will hand it on to us.’
‘Excellent. That’s excellent. Did you …? Was there …? I mean, was a lot of force required?’
There was a half-second’s pause, which was Junius Thornton’s way to register his irritation at his son’s tongue-tied tendencies.
‘There was very little shooting if that was what you wanted to ask. McBride and Bosse virtually killed themselves, it seems. Our own men took some casualties. Three dead, I believe. Some others wounded.’
‘I see.’
‘And I wanted to thank you. You saw the danger. You alerted us. You were right.’
‘Really, Father, gosh, I had no idea. I didn’t know if you were sore at me. All this waiting around in Washington has been driving me crazy.’
‘Has it? Why?’
‘Well, you know. Nothing to do. Communications cut. That type of thing.’
‘I don’t understand. You were able to speak to whomever you wanted, weren’t you? To come and go as you wanted?’
‘Yes, only … it felt strange, you know, what with everything going on.’
‘Powell felt you might feel close to Rockwell. If so, I can understand it. But feelings can get in the way of good commercial judgement. It seemed to make more sense to keep you away.’
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