Michael . . . forget it.
You'll just make yourself crazy again.
Chapter 24
He was called the Baron. Sometimes the Chairman.
Properly, he was the Baron Franz Gerhardt Rast von Scharnhorst. Baron Franz Rast would do. The Baron von Scharnhorst was preferred. In dealing with Americans, he knew that he must tolerate Herr Rast or even Mr. Rast. But certainly not Franz.
He was chairman and chief executive officer of Adler-Chemiker AG, headquartered in Munich and with subsidiaries, wholly owned or controlled, in twenty countries around the globe. All these were on the books. Off the books were “understandings” with over one hundred distributors, shipping companies, health ministries, and well-placed executives of rival firms.
The Baron was a tall man, fashionably thin and gracefully slow of movement. His English had only the barest trace of accent. Among his many vanities was a dueling scar from his student days at Leipzig. It split his left eyebrow and ran, straight and deep, down across the corner of his eye.
The general manager of New York's Pierre Hotel, where the Baron kept an apartment, was aware that the fifth anniversary of his stay at the Pierre fell on the day after tomorrow. But the Baron, alas, had let it be known that he would be leaving in the morning for the White Mountains of Maine. A well-earned holiday before returning to Munich. Do a bit of fly-casting. Outwit a few trout.
The manager had asked, therefore, whether he might honor the Pierre by partaking of an evening meal created by Marcel, his favorite chef. For days now, Marcel had been planning a special menu—it was to be a surprise— and he was crushed to learn that his efforts were to be for naught.
The Baron answered that it's he who would be honored. He would have preferred to take the meal in the comfort and security of his apartment but he knew that to suggest such a thing would disappoint his host. The theatrics of presentation demand an audience of other diners. Further, Marcel would sooner open a vein than permit his creation to be trundled about on a room service cart.
The Baron would take it in the restaurant but he would dine alone. Such a meal deserves one's full attention. He would post his bodyguards, all of them German, at the entrance and at a table nearby in case that Fallon boy should come calling prematurely.
The meal was indeed splendid. The leek soup caused him to moan with pleasure. The milk-fed veal, flown in— smuggled in was more like it—nearly caused him to weep. The wines ... the desserts . . . were a fantasy. Perhaps two other times in his memory had he enjoyed such a meal.
Trust Hobbs to ruin it.
“Well, we can forget about Maine,” said Hobbs, pulling out a chair unbidden. His breath smelled of alcohol. “Would you care to see what's left of my chalet?”
From his pocket, Hobbs produced a group of photographs. He spread them before Franz Rast. The chalet, Playing Hobbs, was a pile of smoldering timbers. It would not have been recognizable but for the three stone chimneys rising out of the rubble. One of them showed the letters ”BH” set in green ceramic tile.
The Baron was not greatly surprised. “When did this happen?’'
“Last night. Right under the noses of two armed guards.”
Hobbs produced a second and thicker group of photographs. “Look,” he said bitterly. “Just look at what the son of a bitch has done.”
He slapped them down, one by one, as if they were playing cards.
“Dink Bellows's Rolls-Royce,” Hobbs said of the first. “Taken from his garage as his family slept. Set ablaze in the middle of his street.”
The Baron scowled, more at the use of that insipid schoolboy nickname than at the sight of this charred pile of scrap. Avery Bellows is the managing partner of their Washington law firm. A Dink Bellows is a boy who sits in malt shops strumming on a ukelele.
Hobbs pushed another toward him. This one a photo of a residence.
“Gardner Lowell's Scarsdale home. The firemen managed to save most of it but the whole west wing is in ruins. Fram Childress wasn't so lucky.”
Lowell was a partner at Lehman-Stone. Frampton Childress was executive VP/sales for AdChem, North America. His house in Glen Cove, a fine old Victorian, was a total loss.
“Victor Turkel's house was spared. But now we can't find Victor. He seems to have gone into hiding.”
The Baron could only sigh. “Mr. Hobbs . . . please put those away.”
“How could Michael have known about Victor? He's never laid eyes on Victor. He didn't torture it out of the taxi driver. That man knew none of our names, least of all Victor's.”
Hobbs pushed two more forward.
Finally, Hobbs laid out the oldest of the set. Those of his home in Palm Beach. Another grimace from the older man.
Truth be told, thought the Baron, he was genuinely saddened by the destruction of the Palm Beach house. It had been a showplace, really, even by Palm Beach standards. Italian Renaissance style, patterned after Vizcaya. At least a million dollars' worth of art on the walls. Now it was a blackened shell. Only the pool house was spared.
Nor could he resist lingering on the photo of the man in the melted lounge chair. What remained of him. Smashed into pulp with a baseball bat and then baked to a turn by the heat that radiated from the house. The bat, broken in two, had been washed clean in the swimming pool and left on his chest. As if that were not symbolism enough, his pistol had been left in his hand to demonstrate, one must imagine, the impotence of weaponry against an avenging angel.
“He knew,” Hobbs repeated. His eyes returned to the photo of the house in Maine. He seemed about to cry.
The Baron sniffed. He was far less sympathetic to the loss of Hobbs's mountain retreat. The builder, some local rustic, thought that if he did enough doodling with a jigsaw, he could call that barracks a chalet.
It did have one advantage, however. Michael Fallon, clearly, was working his way north and this house had seemed the best place to trap him. It sits in its own private valley and is reached by a single dirt road. Two men at each end could easily seal it. Two more, chosen for their resemblance to him and Hobbs, dressed in fishing gear, would serve as bait while he and Hobbs concealed themselves.
This was Parker's idea. Mr. Fallon, however, had un-sportingly jumped the gun. No great surprise in that. The Baron had never thought much of the plan. Fallon did not know that they were laying a trap. He is simply not stupid.
“Suggestions, Mr. Hobbs?”
Hobbs, his eyes on the photo, could only shake his head.
“We could always try this again in France,” said the Baron, dryly. “You have one house left, don't you? In Cap d'Antibes?”
”I don't own that one. I lease it.”
“He'll take that into account, I'm sure.”
Hobbs smiled unpleasantly. “If Fallon makes it to Europe, the von Scharnhorsts have a lot more to burn than I do.”
The Baron sucked his cheek. ”I suppose you have a point.”
Several drinks had emboldened Hobbs. “He might even decide to drop in on the Countess,” he added. “He might tell her it's time she paid attention to business.”
For an instant, Hobbs thought that the Baron might strike him. His knuckles became white. A tic began at his temple. But the older man only closed his eyes. “How will we end this, Mr. Hobbs?” he asked quietly.
End it? Hobbs wanted to shout out that it would never have happened, need never have happened, if the good Baron had kept his head. But part of the blame was his own. He had seriously underestimated Michael.
“Were you aware, incidentally, that he's some kind of martial arts expert?”
“An impressive young man.”
“Those two he crippled . . . Parker's men. Parker doubted their story at first but according to some of Michael's college classmates . . .”
The Baron had raised an eyebrow. “You've been interviewing these people yourself?”
“I'm not a fool, Franz. I only speak to—”
“Franz,'' the older man said icily, ' ‘is one of my chauffeurs. I am the Baron Franz
Rast. The distinction is considerable.”
Again, Hobbs held his tongue with difficulty. The Baron sipped his capuccino, now gone cold. He put it down. “You were saying, Mr. Hobbs?”
“That ... I only speak to Parker. Parker speaks to them. He wants more money for this, by the way.”
“He is well paid as it is. If he thinks he can blackmail me . . .”
Hobbs curled his lip. “Blackmailing us, my dear Baron, is how he got his job in the first place. The money, as it happens, is to hire better people.”
A grunt. “Who speak English, I trust.”
“And who know the city better. He says he would have done so at the outset if he'd had decent information on Michael Fallon. He's now lost two dead, the Jamaican is back in prison, and the Pakistani is still missing.”
“Two dead? Who are the two?”
Hobbs tapped his photographs. “The taxi driver, remember? Palm Beach?”
”I know about that one. Who is the other?”
“The idiot who managed to shoot Bronwyn.”
The Baron pursed his lips. “That was hardly the Fallon boy's doing. But the taxi driver . . .” His expression turned thoughtful. “To be skilled in the martial arts is one thing. But that business by your pool was an act of cruel and calculated savagery.”
You should know, you old bastard, thought Hobbs.
“Is that boy really capable of such an act?”
Hobbs raised an eyebrow. “You can ask? After what he did to two armed attackers? And now he's armed as well. He took that Jamaican's—”
The Baron gestured dismissively. ”I should think he would be. Karate or the like is not a magic shirt. I'm sure its practitioners are shot with great regularity by people with lesser skills and greater sense. Will Parker find him, Mr. Hobbs?”
“He says he will. He's sure he will.”
“How comforting.”
“We've had some bad luck. But Parker says—”
“Bad luck?” Franz Rast felt the veal rising. “Three failed attempts plus one botched burglary and you call that bad luck? And this latest absurdity. Did we really expect a man born and raised in New York City to stalk us through the Maine woods in the hope that he might catch us sloshing about in hip-waders?”
“You agreed, as I recall, that it was worth a try.”
“Absent a less desperate idea, Mr. Hobbs. And I'll say again. The way to find that boy is through that lawyer.”
Hobbs rubbed his chin nervously. He took a breath to prepare himself. “I've . . . just had a call from Bellows. I'm afraid there's more bad news.”
Blood drained from the Baron's cheeks as he heard the details of Doyle's amended suit. Slowly, his color rose again. Two thin fists crashed down upon the table. His bodyguards straightened. Other diners turned their heads. Franz Rast brought his napkin to his lips.
“End this, Mr. Hobbs,” he hissed.
He rose to his feet.
“For the sake of my digestion, to say nothing of your future, put an end to this once and for all.”
Hobbs bit his lip. ”I will . . . speak to Parker.”
The Baron closed his eyes. He shook his head slowly. “Mr. Hobbs, I will teach you the German word for ‘incompetent.’ The word is unbefugt. Chew on it. Let it roll
on your tongue. One would have to summon gutter language to find a word more apt than unbefugt.``
He threw his napkin at Hobbs's array of photographs.
”I will speak to Mr. Parker myself.”
Hobbs, seething, watched the Baron go.
They had been through this before. And it was bad luck.
Bronwyn. Such a terrible loss. Steering Michael into that convenience store at the precise moment when its owner, who had only that morning bought a pistol on the street, must have been praying to his Buddha that some hooded addict would try to rob him again. What else was that but damnable luck?
The shotgun going off not into Michael, not even into a display of beef jerky, but into Bronwyn, who had moved well away from the line of fire.
It goes on and on.
A professional burglar who arrives at Michael's building to find the police already there and the apartment already burgled. The one suspect, a building resident who swore on his life, which it nearly cost him, that he knew nothing about it.
Add the reflexes of a fat black woman who didn't know Michael Fallon from Bull Connor and would have cared even less if she'd had a chance to stop and think.
Add two inept muggers to whom it never occurred that if a white man fails to cross the street when he sees them approaching, he's probably as ready for them as that Korean was.
And of course that was it, thought Hobbs. By that time, Michael knew. Somehow he knew, or at least suspected, and he was ready. He disabled those two, disarmed them, and then he asked them for names.
The Jamaican, the only one who spoke English, swears that he told him nothing. That Michael asked them nothing. The Pakistani confirmed it. Not a word, they say, was spoken by anyone. Not even by Michael.
Perhaps.
But Michael did have that pistol aimed at the Jamaican's knee and he did choose not to shoot. Why such generosity? Was it in payment, after all, for a satisfactory answer? Did the Jamaican, in fact, tell Michael that it was the taxi driver, not they, who beat his uncle to death?
Parker says no.
To begin with, says Parker, the only way they'd know that Walter did that job would be if Walter told them. And Walter, by all accounts, was none too popular with his third world brethren, who thought he was a patronizing shit and a snob about being half Belgian. He would hardly admit to capital murder just to be one of the guys.
But say he did, says Parker. And say the Jamaican gave his name to Michael. Why then did Michael not wait for the police and tell them, “These two just tried to kill me. They say they work for a man named Philip Parker who is chief of security at Lehman-Stone. Parker's boss is a man named Bart Hobbs. Hobbs ordered the death of my uncle but these two say they didn't do it. They say that a certain taxi driver did.”
Why, instead, did Michael walk away?
Why did he then vanish for all these months?
Very well. Parker makes a valid point. Those two told Michael nothing. And he knew nothing, at least that he could prove. This is all well and good until we get to the question of why he would resurface after several months, beat that taxi driver to death, and then start burning down the homes of everyone who's been involved in this.
Parker was just full of answers to that one.
“In the first place,” says Parker, “you never should have fired him. That just pissed him off. It made you the enemy.”
Hobbs snorted. “So he went off for three months and sulked about it? Then he decided that a suitable revenge was to burn my house in Florida?”
”I would have.”
Hobbs closed one eye.
“Come on,” said Parker. “At the uncle's funeral, you tell the guy, take Bronwyn, go use the Palm Beach house, take a couple weeks' R&R.”
“At your suggestion.”
Parker's eyes became hooded. “Mine. Yours. The Pope's. Don't start that shit, Mr. Hobbs.”
“I only meant . . .” Hobbs had to look away.
Parker stared for another beat. “Anyway . . . we had Walter down there house-sitting. Did you hear anyone tell him to do more than that?”
Hobbs winced at the mention of the taxi driver's name. He disliked using or even knowing their actual names and Parker was fully aware of that. Parker was getting a bit too fresh lately.
The man, in any case, had left the city immediately after the Jake Fallon business was finished. Parker posted him to the Palm Beach house. It's true that he, Hobbs, had heard no order given. And yet he knew. If Michael had gone down there, Walter and Bronwyn would have arranged an understandably despondent suicide.
Some security guard. Some suicide.
“What's your point?” he asked Parker.
”I don't know. Could be Fallon smelled
a rat but I doubt it. Maybe after he thinks about it he just says, ‘This hypocritical prick’—no offense—‘offers me this house he's so proud of and then he fires me. You want me to use your house? Okay. I'll go grill some steaks on your living room floor.’ ”
How he detested this man, thought Hobbs. With his foul mouth and crooked teeth. The hooded eyes and perpetual sneer of a bully. He probably has a tattoo. Hobbs took a breath and waited.
“But then,” Parker went on, “you have to believe that this kid ran into Walter, who is no pussy himself, kicked the piss out of him, and then killed him. From what we hear, the kid can handle himself but there's a big jump between fighting and killing.”
“Even if he found out somehow that this man had—”
“Whacked his uncle? We've been through that. The only people who could finger him are you, me, the Baron, and Bronwyn. It sure as hell wasn't us and Bronwyn was in no shape to make a deathbed confession. It wasn't Walter because how would that leave him better off? They went there to burn the house, he was there, and they took him out. It's that simple.”
“They? You're saying that it wasn't Michael?”
“Not alone, it wasn't.”
The Shadow Box Page 21