Cut and Run

by Carla Neggers

  “I’ve never considered not being a pianist.”

  “Haven’t you?”

  He gave her an unreadable half-smile, aware that she was lying. Of course she had. Lately, more than ever. But she couldn’t tell Shuji about the mornings she’d lain in bed wondering what her life would be like if she’d never taken up piano, if she never played again. What would she do? What could she do? She couldn’t tell him about her mounting exhaustion as the tour had worn on, about her fantasies of sticking a jazz improvisation into the middle of a Mozart sonata, about her tiresome fights with her manager, who wanted her to maintain a hundred-concert schedule and at the same time expand her repertoire and do more recordings. She couldn’t tell Shuji about her boredom with the review, the constant travel, the fancy dinners, the men she met. She couldn’t tell him about the growing monotony of it all and her fear that the monotony would follow her into the practice room, where it never had before. J.J. had counteracted some of the monotony, but she wouldn’t be around forever—and Shuji couldn’t know about J.J.

  He was right. She was in a funk. But in nineteen years, she’d never once told Eric Shuji Shizumi he was right. They argued and struggled and discussed, but she never gave in to him, never permitted herself to be intimidated by his legendary status. When that happened, she would lose her independence as an artist and, she thought, as a person.

  “I’m not worried about being around when I’m thirty-five, and I’m not in any funk.” She pushed aside her café au lait and sprang up, feeling tired and scared and so furious she couldn’t see clearly. Why the hell couldn’t Shuji just leave her alone! Why did he always have to push and press! “I hope to hell you’re happy, Shuji. You’ve ruined Vermont for me.”

  “Good,” he said.

  “Bastard. Go to hell.”

  She stalked out, leaving him with the bill and a smug look on his handsome face.

  From his shabby hotel room on Broadway, Hendrik de Geer put a call through to United States Senator Samuel Ryder. The Dutchman had been given the senator’s Georgetown number, and he wasn’t surprised when Ryder picked up on the first ring. It was precisely nine o’clock, when Hendrik had said he would call.

  “You have your answer?” Ryder asked.

  The Dutchman heard the tension in the young senator’s patrician tone, but he took no pleasure in it. “I will meet you at Lincoln Center on Saturday night.” His English was excellent, only lightly accented; he spoke Dutch only when there was no alternative. It was the language of his past. “After the concert. You’ll have a car?”

  “Of course.”

  “Meet me there.”

  “All right. But take care the Stein woman doesn’t see you.”

  Hendrik closed his eyes, just for a second, and felt the pain wash over him. The Stein woman…Rachel. But—“I need no instructions from you, Senator.” His voice was cold. “Bloch knows none of this?”

  “Do you think I’m a fool?”

  “Yes. You tell people what they want to hear, Senator. I know. See to it you tell Bloch nothing, do you understand? Otherwise, my friend, we have no deal.”

  Two

  Senator Samuel Ryder, Jr., edged into the narrow wooden booth of the crowded, smoke-filled Washington, D.C., diner. It was not the sort of place he frequented, ever, but he had chosen it for this meeting—a breakfast meeting not on any calendar known to his protective, thorough staff. His aides would have been horrified to see him give the chubby waitress a halfhearted smile as she slapped a sturdy mug of black coffee down in front of him.

  “See a menu?” she asked.

  The unappetizing menus were printed on cheap white paper and shoved between pieces of peeling plastic. “No, thank you,” Ryder said, concealing his distaste as he looked for any sign of recognition in her bored eyes. There was none. “I’ll just have coffee for now.”

  She shrugged and waddled off, moving her bulk with surprising ease. Ryder tried the coffee; it was hot and strong, although not of high quality. He didn’t mind. During the past month he’d slept little. Coffee kept him going, as well as his sense of duty, of optimism. Things would work out; they had to.

  Without a sound, Otis Raymond materialized in the opposite bench and slid into the corner with the ketchup and sugar packets and A-1 sauce, as if he were the one afraid to be seen. Ryder, forty-one and single, tall, sandy-haired, square-jawed, and well-dressed, stuck out in the greasy diner. Army Specialist Fourth Class Otis Raymond—the Weasel, his buddies in Vietnam had called him—fit right in. He had to be forty, but he was even ganglier than Ryder remembered. Otis still looked like a teenager, a doped-up kid on the road to hell. He wasn’t aging, he was yellowing. His bug-bitten skin, his sunken eyes, his teeth, his fingertips. Even his hair had a dead, yellowish cast.

  Otis grinned. “Shit, man, it’s been a long time. You done good since ’Nam, huh, Sam?” Fortunately, he seemed not to expect an answer. He rubbed his hands together. “I gotta have coffee. Fucking freezing up here. How the hell do you stand it?”

  “You get used to it,” Ryder said.

  “Not me, man.”

  The chubby waitress appeared with a mug and a fresh pot of coffee. She poured Otis a cup, refilled Ryder’s, and took out her order pad. Although Ryder gagged at the thought of what such a place might serve, he knew if he didn’t eat, Otis wouldn’t either, and the Weasel looked even more gaunt and hungry than Ryder remembered. He ordered ham and eggs. Otis said, “Make that two,” and gave Ryder a manic grin. “Can’t remember the last time I had a decent breakfast. You?”

  “I usually play tennis early Friday mornings,” Ryder said.

  Otis laughed, snorting. “Tennis, shit. You wear them little white shorts?”

  “They’re considered de rigueur, yes.”

  “Fuck that.”

  The Weasel pulled out a crushed pack of Camels and tapped out a cigarette, taking three matches to light it. The matches were cheap and damp, and his hands were shaking. Ryder had a feeling they always shook. He dragged deeply on his cigarette, his fingers trembling noticeably. Raymond had always believed he and Ryder had some sort of special rapport because he’d saved Ryder’s life in Vietnam, but of course that was absurd. Raymond had just been doing his job. Ryder didn’t feel he owed Otis any special thanks. He appreciated the former helicopter door gunner’s extraordinary skill with an M-60 machine gun, his principal weapon, which he’d treated with more care and concern than he had himself. But that came as no surprise: Otis Raymond had never planned on making it out of Southeast Asia. And in many ways, he hadn’t.

  Breakfast arrived, smelling of salt and grill grease, and the Weasel attacked his with the relish of the half-starved. The coffee and cigarette seemed to have calmed him, and his hands were steadier. He bit into the butter-slathered toast. “Bloch thinks you’re up to something, Sam.” Otis seemed to enjoy calling a U.S. senator by his first name. He swallowed the toast. “That’s why he sent me up here. He doesn’t give a shit what you do, so long as he gets his money. He’s not worried about you giving away his operation, because he knows if you do, you’ll end up swimming in shit, too.”

  “He’s overextended,” Ryder said coldly, wishing he could feel as confident as he sounded.

  “Yeah, I know, but that don’t matter. He’s putting the screws to you so you can pull him out. Man, he’s been doing this crap for years. You try and mess him up, you don’t come out of it. He will; you won’t.”

  Ryder said nothing. It rankled him that Bloch—Master Sergeant (ret.) Phillip Bloch—had sent Otis Raymond as his messenger. The Weasel, for the love of God. A drug-addicted loser giving him, a United States senator, advice!

  “Don’t bullshit Bloch, man. You got something going, level with him.”

  The acidic coffee burned in Ryder’s stomach as his contempt for Raymond and Block and the underlife they represented again assaulted him. They’d been in Vietnam together—or, more accurately, at the same time. Weasel, Block, Ryder. And Stark. Mustn’t forget Matthew Stark, altho
ugh he’d tried. Of the four, only Ryder had successfully put their shared past behind him. He’d overcome all that had happened to him in Vietnam, all he’d done, all he’d seen, all he’d had done to him. He’d been a first lieutenant, a platoon leader, and Bloch had been his platoon sergeant. Stark had been a helicopter pilot, Otis Raymond his door gunner. They’d all survived their tours of duty.

  Ryder understood tragedy as well as anyone—better than most, he felt. But why dwell on what you couldn’t change? Why not move forward? He loathed men like Otis Raymond, still living the war, letting it destroy them, but at least Otis wasn’t always whining and complaining the way so many were. Ryder had never had much in common with the men with whom he’d served, the men he’d led. Most were from the dregs of American society and had gone to Vietnam not because they believed in or understood the cause for which they were fighting, but because they had had no other real option. “I got into some trouble,” Otis had explained once. “Judge told me, go to school, go to war, or go to jail.” But Ryder came from an old, prestigious central Florida family and was himself the son of a U.S. senator; going to Vietnam for him had been an honor and, as his father’s son, a duty.

  “What more does Bloch want from me?” Ryder asked, hating the hoarseness in his voice. Normally his strong sense of self, which some called arrogance, could conceal his fear.

  “Anything he can get, Sam.”

  He licked his lips, resisting the impulse to bite down. “What does he know?”

  Otis shrugged. “He knows de Geer’s in New York, that you two got something cooked up.”

  “Did de Geer tell him?”

  “The sergeant’s got snitches all over camp. He knows what’s going on.”

  “He would,” Ryder said, dispirited.

  If he leveled with Bloch, the Dutchman would be furious and perhaps impossible to control. Technically, de Geer worked for Bloch, although as an independent his only loyalty was to himself. It was in his role as Bloch’s messenger that Ryder had first met the Dutchman. De Geer turned the screws on Ryder on the sergeant’s behalf—demanding more money, more favors, making those demands impossible to refuse. But now Ryder was the one turning the screws on the Dutchman.

  Still, Ryder knew that if he didn’t level with Bloch, the sergeant would keep digging until he found out what he wanted to know. Right now, Ryder didn’t need that kind of interference. He needed to keep Bloch where he was, at least for the moment. “Can’t you stall him?”

  “Me?” Otis gave a croaking laugh that ended in a fit of coughing. He slurped some coffee and settled back, his bony frame almost disappearing against the tall wooden back of the booth. “Shit, Sam, you got a sense of humor, huh? I don’t stall Bloch—man, nobody stalls that fucker. I try, I’m a dead man.”

  “My God, what have I gotten myself into?”

  Ryder hadn’t intended for Otis to hear him, but the skinny army combat veteran nodded solemnly. “You know it, Sam, don’t you? Let me help, okay? Trust me, I know Bloch. Man, I ain’t going to let you go down.”

  My God, Ryder thought, am I so desperate I need Otis Raymond to protect me? “Thank you, Otis, but I can handle Bloch. Everything will work out.”

  “That’s what you always say.”

  “It will. Trust me.”

  “I gotta give Bloch something.”

  “Of course. I understand that. Explain to him that Hendrik de Geer and I are meeting at Lincoln Center tomorrow night to discuss a plan to get Bloch enough money to purchase the weaponry he needs and to get into his permanent camp—and out of my life for good. That’s to his advantage as well as mine. Our current arrangement is too dangerous for us both.”

  Otis nodded at Ryder’s plate, and Ryder shook his head and pushed it over. “I ain’t had a good plate of eggs in I don’t know when. You should see the crap the sergeant feeds us. Granola, for chrissake. So, what kind of plan?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “Man, you gotta.”

  “Look—”

  “You want Bloch at Lincoln Center, then you clamp up right now.”

  “That’s the last thing I want!”

  Otis dug into Ryder’s cold eggs. “Then talk to me, Sam.”

  “I’m going after a diamond.” Ryder measured his words carefully, trying to ignore the grinding pain in the pit of his stomach. He was so afraid. Dear God, he was afraid. But everything would work out. “It’s the largest, most mysterious uncut diamond in the world.”

  “Huh?”

  “And if I can get it—if—I intend to turn it over to one Master Sergeant Phillip Bloch.”

  Three

  A young woman in a fresh white apron smiled across the counter in Catharina’s Bake Shop at the tiny dark-haired woman. “May I help you?”

  “Yes,” Rachel Stein said, only vaguely aware that in this place, her faded Dutch accent seemed right. “I’m here to see Catharina Peperkamp—Fall, I mean.” It was impossible to think of Catharina married, with a child. “Catharina Fall.”

  “And who should I tell her is here?”

  “Tell her Rachel.”

  It would, she believed, be enough.

  The waitress went back to the kitchen, and Rachel took a piece of broken butter cookie from a sample basket on the counter. For many years when she was young, she’d often been mistaken for a child, but now, with deep lines etched into her forehead and around her serious mouth and small, straight nose, people thought she was an old lady when she was only sixty-five. She’d gone from looking too young to looking too old. Her cab driver had offered to help her out of the taxi! She’d declined, of course, but thanked him lest he not offer his help the next time to someone who truly needed it. She supposed a face-lift would help, but although she could easily afford one, she refused even to investigate the procedure. In her opinion, people needed to see in her face, in its lines, what life had done to her. She believed that. But she kept herself well-groomed—her nails were always manicured, her hair perfectly styled—and she wore expensive, fashionable clothes. In that way, life had been good to her.

  Within thirty seconds, Catharina Fall rushed out of the kitchen, wiping her hands on her apron, a panicked, uncertain look on her face. Rachel wished she could smile to reassure her. But she couldn’t. A smile, now, would be a lie. Yet she wasn’t surprised the impulse was there; everyone had always wanted to protect Catharina.

  “My friend,” Rachel said quietly, holding on to her emotions, “you look wonderful.”

  “Rachel.” Catharina put her fist to her mouth and held back a sob. “I don’t believe it’s you.”

  She’s going to throw me out, Rachel thought. She can’t bear to see me. I’m a reminder. A shadow. As she is for me.

  Instead Catharina burst from behind the counter and threw her arms around Rachel, crying, “My God, Rachel, oh, Rachel,” and Rachel found her own eyes filling with tears and her arms going around her strong, good friend. She’d missed her. Without realizing it, she’d missed her.

  It had been more than forty years.

  Catharina was sobbing openly, and the people around them were pretending not to notice. “I can’t believe…I never thought I’d see you again.” She stood back and brushed away her tears without embarrassment; flour stuck to her nose and she tried to laugh. “Oh, Rachel.”

  Rachel’s throat was so tight it hurt. A sob would relieve the tension, but she blinked back her tears and refused to cry. She was a master at self-control. She hadn’t expected Catharina to have this kind of impact on her. “My dear friend,” she said, squeezing Catharina’s hand, then releasing it. I must be strong. “It’s so good to see you. I heard about your shop, and I thought, while I’m in New York I’ll have to stop and see you.”

  Catharina had stopped crying and was shaking her head. “You know that’s not true.”

  Rachel had to smile, and some of the tightness in her throat eased. “Achh, I never could fool you. It’s always been that way between us, hasn’t it? You always know when I’m not telli
ng the truth. Even after all these years. But come, let’s pretend for a little while.”

  “Rachel…”

  There was fear in those deep green eyes. Rachel wished she hadn’t seen it. “Please, Catharina.”

  “All right.” Catharina nodded, but the fear didn’t go away. “We’ll have tea.”

  “Wonderful.”

  She pointed to a small table in the far corner. “There, go sit down. I’ll bring a tray.”

  Rachel quickly took her friend’s hand. “Don’t be afraid, Catharina.”

  “I’ll be all right. Now go sit down. I’ll bring the tea.”

  “As you wish. I’ll wait for you.”

  The big, open newsroom of the Washington Gazette was filled with the noise of bustling reporters, computers, typewriters, and telephones. Alice Feldon had been at her desk for two hours and had yet to sit down. She didn’t mind. It was a sign things were hopping. What she did mind—what irritated the hell out of her—was that she couldn’t find Matthew Stark. Again. She ignored the skinny, sorry-looking man who wanted to talk to Stark and scanned the newsroom. She had to squint her eyes because her glasses were on top of her head instead of on the bridge of her too-prominent nose. She was a large, lumpy-fleshed, big-boned woman, and she had no illusions about herself or the blue-collar tabloid she worked for. Last night, during a bout of insomnia, she’d painted her nails a shade of lavender she’d found on her daughter’s shelf in the medicine cabinet.

  “Where the hell’s Stark?” she demanded of no one in particular.

  A young reporter three desks away looked up nervously from his computer screen. A Post type if she’d ever seen one. His name was Aaron Ziegler, and he’d majored in journalism, which she considered a dumb thing for a reporter to have done. She’d hired him because he didn’t show her any of the practice obituaries he’d done in class reporting. “He went for coffee,” Ziegler said. “Promised he’d be back in five minutes.”