Tongues of Fire

by Peter Abrahams

  “That’s too rough, Robert,” she said. But it was over anyway. The whole time hadn’t lasted long enough. Her body went very still, waiting rigidly for him to move off her. Then she rolled to her side of the bed and pulled the blankets over her like armor plate. He was wide awake. He sensed her tense body across the sheets, full of complicated emotion. After a while he got out of bed and went down to the den. As he left he heard her make a soft sound between her teeth.

  Much later he slept. He dreamed of cows under the sea. He had not finished dreaming of them when the telephone rang. Krebs was always very quick to shake off sleep. The telephone sat on a little desk on the far side of the room, but he answered it before the second ring.

  “Krebs?” It was Armbrister.

  “I’ve got it, Alice,” Krebs said. He waited. “I’ve got it, thank you,” he said again. He heard a muffled click, and the connection with Armbrister became less diffuse.

  “Separate bedrooms?” Armbrister said, sounding pleasantly surprised.

  “I was just up doing some paperwork.”

  “Good for you. Since you’re up anyway a drive to Manhattan won’t be such an annoyance. Your friend from the East has run into some difficulty. Forty-third and Seventh. The Sheba.”

  “We’ll meet there?”

  “No. It’s a one-man job.”

  Krebs hung up. It was too much of an annoyance for Armbrister to go, although he lived in Manhattan. Krebs lived in New Jersey.

  He went to the window and looked out between the curtains. It was still very dark, but there would be no point in coming home after he looked in at the Sheba. He would go right to the office. Since he was up for the day, he lay prone on the floor, dug his toes into the broadloom, spread his hands, and pushed his body up until his arms were fully extended. He did this ninety-nine more times, counting in a grunting whisper. The last dozen grunts grew louder and further apart. Krebs put it down to lack of sleep.

  Upstairs he quickly shaved and showered. He went into the bedroom and found what clothing he could in the dark. He carried it into the hall, closing the door behind him. He knew Alice was awake because he heard the little sound she made between her teeth.

  As he drove into Manhattan the sky became lighter: a gritty colorless budget-priced dawn with no extra-cost options. As morning seeped through the clouds the wind began to die, as if there was a fixed supply of energy to power the atmosphere, and all the elements had to share it.

  A city patrolman stood in front of the Sheba cinema. His face was oily and needed a shave. He looked at Krebs suspiciously the way policemen do after a crime has been committed. Krebs identified himself and went inside.

  Yellow overhead lights had been switched on in the theater. They exposed it mercilessly, like a cop’s flashlight on the face of an old whore. Three men stood near the front, two wearing uniforms, one a duffle coat. Krebs joined them.

  “You Krebs?” the one in the duffle coat said. He had a bad cold. Krebs nodded. “Christ, you took your time getting here. They said we couldn’t move anything until you showed up.”

  “I live in New Jersey,” Krebs said.

  “Christ,” the man in the duffle coat said again.

  Krebs looked down at what was wedged between the seats. The three men watched him look. “Had his throat cut from ear to ear. First time I’ve really seen it,” one of the uniformed men said. “Course I’ve seen plenty of throats cut,” he added quickly. “Plenty. But not like this. Ear to ear.”

  But Krebs saw it wasn’t like that at all. The point of a sharp and narrow knife had been stuck deeply into the side of the neck, then the edge of the blade had sliced forward through the front. The throat had been cut from the inside out by someone who knew how.

  They waited for him to say something.

  “Any witnesses?”

  “Not so far,” the man in the duffle coat replied. He pulled a dirty Kleenex from his pocket and blew his nose, making a little explosion that the big empty room blew back at them. “The manager didn’t see this until the show was over. He says he always checks that no one’s passed out on the floor or something like that.”

  “How many customers were there?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “Where’s the manager?”

  “Got him in the car.”

  “I’d like to talk to him. First get him to count the take.”

  “Ferguson,” the man in the duffle coat said to the cop who was seeing his first ear-to-ear. Ferguson started walking up the aisle. “And bring me some Kleenex,” he called after him. “There’s a box under the seat.” They watched Ferguson go through a soiled red curtain. “One other thing,” the plainclothesman said to Krebs. “There was a girl. Sucking him off. She was kind of trapped under the body.” Mention of the word drew their eyes back down to the fact on the floor. “She wasn’t hurt or anything. Shock, maybe.”

  “She’s in the car too?”

  “Yes.”

  Ferguson returned with the Kleenex and a fat man. “Nine tickets sold,” he said to Krebs. He handed the Kleenex to the plainclothesman.

  “I’m tired. I want to go home,” the fat man said in a self-pitying tone.

  “Shut your mouth,” the plainclothesman said. He blew his nose.

  “What’s your name?” Krebs asked the fat man.

  “Melvin.”

  “I just want to ask you a few questions, Mr. Melvin. Then you can go.”

  “Melvin’s my first name.”

  “Shut your mouth,” the plainclothesman repeated. The rims of his nostrils were red and sore. “Fatso,” he added.

  “Nine customers, Melvin,” Krebs said. “Is that right?”

  “Yeah.”

  “That means just nine faces to remember. That’s not too many, is it?”

  “I don’t remember nothin’.”

  “Do you remember when the dead man came in?”

  “No.”

  “Was he with the girl?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Krebs turned to the plainclothesman. “How old is the girl?”

  “Thirteen, fourteen.”

  “Did you hear that, Melvin? If she’s not a very young-looking eighteen it may not be so good for you.”

  “I don’t look at faces, mister,” the fat man whined. “I just take the money, that’s all. Why should I look at faces? They’s just jerks that come in here. They come, I take the money, they beat off. That’s all.”

  “Christ,” the plainclothesman said.

  “I don’t need him anymore,” Krebs told him. He went to talk to the girl. He heard the fat man say:

  “You’re not going to charge me or nothin’?”

  “Shut up, fatso,” the plainclothesman replied. “If you can’t shut up on your own, Baker’ll help you. He likes that when he’s tired. Tired, Baker?”

  “Beat,” said the cop who had not spoken.

  The girl sat in the back seat of an unmarked car. There was another uniformed cop behind the wheel. He was working on a crossword puzzle.

  Krebs sat beside the girl. She was small and fair. She wore a lot of makeup, but it didn’t hide her freckles. Her hair was long and blond and curly, like the hair of Irish girls in soap commercials; except hers was matted with blood. There was more on her jeans. And her sweatshirt with the picture on the front—Porky Pig, Krebs noticed.

  “What’s your name?” he asked in the gentlest voice he could manage.

  “Neon.”

  “That’s a nice name. How old are you?”

  “Nineteen.”

  “Really? I’d have said twenty.”

  She looked up at him, squinting. “What do you mean?” Her voice was light and high.

  “I meant it as a compliment,” Krebs said.

  “Thank you.” She brushed a lock of hair out of her eyes, leaving a trail of blood across her forehead.

  “I know you’re upset,” Krebs said, “but I need to ask you a couple of questions.”

  “I’m not upset.”

&nb
sp; “Good. Then maybe you’ll tell me how long you knew the dead man.”

  “He’s not dead.”

  “Yes, he is,” Krebs said, dropping some of the gentleness from his tone. “When all the blood pours out of people that way, they’re dead.”

  She looked up at him again, and stared for a few moments. Krebs didn’t think she was seeing anything in particular.

  “So?” she said at last.

  “Would you like to help me find whoever killed him?” Krebs remembered saying something like that to someone else quite recently.

  “I don’t know.”

  “You can help me a lot,” Krebs said. “What was his name?”

  “Who? My date?”

  “Yes.”

  “Ab.”

  “Ab what?”

  “Just Ab.”

  “Was it your first date?”

  “No.”

  “Second?”

  She closed her eyes tightly, like someone recalling something from long ago. After a little while she nodded. Her eyes stayed closed.

  “Did he call for you tonight?”

  “What?”

  “Did he come to get you in his car? Or a taxi?”

  “No.”

  “You met him here?”

  She nodded.

  “How did you know to do that?”

  “He told me to.”

  “When?”

  “The other time.” She tugged the lock of hair back over her eyes, as if the eyelids weren’t cover enough.

  “How did you meet him the first time?”

  “On the street. I’m good at meeting people.” The eyes opened; they were a golden brown and might have been pretty once, when they still had some life. Six weeks ago, or a month.

  “How much did Ab pay you?”

  The eyes closed. “He gave me a present.”

  “How much?”

  “It was a present. I don’t have to tell about a present.”

  “Twenty bucks? Ten?” From her eyes he could see it was more like ten.

  “Did he give you a present tonight?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What do you mean, not yet? Don’t be stupid.” She shrank into the door. He lowered his voice. “Now, I want you to tell me what happened in there tonight. Did you see anybody sneak up behind Ab?”

  “No.”

  “Or hear any strange noises?”

  “No.”

  “Tell me what you remember.”

  “Ab stood up. Then he fell down. On top of me.” She opened her eyes; maybe she didn’t want to be alone with the memory.

  “Okay,” Krebs said to her. “That’s all for now. We’re going to take you home. Where do you live?”

  “Nowhere.”

  Krebs got out of the car. The cop behind the wheel turned and said over his shoulder: “What’s a five-letter word for upright?” Krebs closed the door.

  He drove to the office in heavy traffic. For some reason he didn’t feel very tired. Cars coughed dirt into the dirty sky.

  Krebs sat at his desk. The hard girl brought him coffee. “You’re in early,” he said.

  “I’m always here at this hour.” He noticed for the first time how educated her voice sounded.

  He took the pot of coffee from her. “Smells good today,” he said. She didn’t reply, and moved toward the door. Instead of fastening his eyes to her buttocks Krebs opened his mouth and said, “What’s a five-letter word for upright?”

  “Erect,” the coffee girl said as she closed the door behind her.

  Krebs turned to his in-basket. On top he found a list of names with a note attached. The note said: “Names not easy to find. Restaurant closed for a week. Hope this is accurate enough.” He didn’t recognize the scrawled initials at the bottom.

  He looked at the list, and began dividing the names by ethnic group: two French, six Spanish or Portuguese, nine Italian, three Greek, four Anglo-Saxon. And a man named Isaac Rehv. Krebs circled Isaac Rehv in black ink.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Snow fell in lumpy overnourished shapes that had lost the light parachuting grace of normal snowflakes. They were modern result-oriented snowflakes, dropping in plumb lines and covering the hills and fields as fast as possible in cold meringue. Although the snow had been coming down like that for hours, the clouds were no lighter or higher or thinner. The meringue slowly rose to meet them.

  Through this dense white air the silver bus moved far too quickly, wrapped in a cocoon of salted frost and frozen mud. Beneath his feet Isaac Rehv could sense nothing at all of rubber treads clinging to the asphalt: The bus seemed to float like a dirigible. He saw that the driver was unaware of any danger. All her concentration appeared to be focused on the toothpick stuck in the side of her mouth. She was oblivious to the weather and, he noticed, to her own personal snowfall as well—a sparse crescent that had settled on the gray shoulders of her uniform.

  Rehv didn’t mind how fast she drove. He was in a hurry. It seemed a long time since he had felt hurried about anything, but that morning, under the red eyes of General Gordon, he had dressed quickly and been halfway out the door when he had met Quentin Katz coming the other way.

  “Good morning, Quentin,” he had said, trying to squeeze by.

  But Katz had taken him by the arm. “Big news,” Katz had said. “I’ve got a lead on a good job.”

  “I didn’t know you were looking for a good job.”

  Katz had laughed. He had seemed unusually full of physical energy. His flesh wasn’t used to it, and jiggled from the internal vibration. “Not for me. For you.” He had turned Rehv around and marched him back into the gallery.

  “I was just on my way out, Quentin.”

  “So? What’s more important than this?” Some of the energy had been diverted into annoyance, and the jiggling stopped. “I’m talking about a good job, a twenty-five-grand-a-year job, and that’s just for starters.”

  Rehv had sighed deeply, trying to exhale some of his impatience. “What is it?”

  “That’s better. Actually you’ve got Sheila to thank, not me. She met the head of modern languages at NYU last night. He said they’re looking for someone in the Arabic department.” Katz had looked up at him brightly, as though he had just performed a clever trick. Rehv had said nothing. The brightness in Katz’s eyes had faded a little, and he had brushed his hand tentatively across the top of his head, perhaps to confirm that his hair was really gone. “Naturally she mentioned you. He wants you to send him your CV.”

  “I’ll think about it, Quentin.” Rehv had moved toward the door.

  “What’s to think? They’re desperate and you’ve got the goods. Stop going out the door every second. Sit down and have a cup of coffee. I’ll tell you the details.”

  “I haven’t got time.”

  “How about Brazilian? We’ve got Santos and Paraná.”

  Rehv had shut the door and gone down the stairs. He had heard Katz muttering to himself as he went away: He had probably wanted a more definite commitment to report to Sheila.

  The bus swept through a small quiet town. It rolled by Rehv’s window like a film going too fast: old oaks and elms bearing snow instead of leaves, tidy white houses with black shutters and snow piled high and round on the roofs, a simple white church with a narrow steeple. He understood where Christmas cards came from.

  A woman leaned across the aisle. “That’s the Congregational church,” she told him, quite loudly. She was a middle-aged woman with well-cut gray hair, clear skin, and clear gray eyes. She wore a heavy gold cross around her neck, and seemed too rich to be riding the bus. “Some of the churches around here are really beautiful, aren’t they?”

  “I don’t know this area very well,” Rehv replied.

  “I thought so,” the woman said happily, leaning a little farther. “The Lord made me notice the way you were looking out the window, praise Him.”

  She paused, and tilted her handsome face up to his, expectantly. Rehv suddenly felt he was in the midst of a liturgy and
the next line was his. He remembered Quentin Katz talking of the Christian country that lay beyond Manhattan. It was an odd place for the prime minister of Israel to be living.

  “I’m very interested in churches.” The woman was still leaning across the aisle. She spoke loudly and clearly, as one whose life is open to all, without fear or shame or secrets. The few passengers scattered through the bus seemed unaware of her. “Not just the church, but churches, if you see what I mean,” she continued. “I’ve photographed thousands of them. They’re all in albums at home. It’s a big job, but I never get tired when I’m doing the Lord’s work.” She lowered her voice very slightly: “I’ve been to the Seven Churches of Asia.” She wasn’t telling him a secret, he realized: She was just being modest.

  “You’ve done some traveling, then?” Rehv said.

  She resumed her normal tone. “Oh, yes. Ever since Baron passed on I’ve done nothing but. The Lord has seen fit to give me all the money I could ever need.”

  Rehv noticed that she felt no need to be modest about that, and supposed she had been guarded about the visit to the Seven Churches because it was a spiritual, not material accomplishment. Rehv thought she should be guarded about the money too: He saw that one or two people had turned to look at her as soon as she had mentioned it.

  The bus entered another town, much like the last except the church was bigger and made of stone.

  “Episcopal,” the woman said, as they drove past. “This was very religious country once,” she went on, keeping her eyes on it. “Jonathan Edwards. Winthrop. The City on a Hill.”

  “And the Salem witches,” Rehv said, before he could stop himself.

  Slowly the woman turned toward him. She had a serene smile on her face. “And it’s going to be a very religious country again,” she said. “Praise the Lord.”

  The bus stopped in front of a small cafe in the center of the town, and Rehv got off. He wondered whether Baron was a title, the name of her husband, or the name of her dog. He went inside the cafe. Two big men wearing bulky coats sat at the counter, their backs to him. One was handing a cylindrical sugar dispenser to the other. The old woman behind the counter looked up. The glare from the light striking the greasy lenses of her glasses hid her eyes.