Abel Baker Charley

by John R. Maxim

  “You knew all this going in?” Harrigan frowned.

  “Only his history. Emma and his new mother were something of a surprise when they appeared. It might have been quite a mess, but happily I was able to keep the three from randomly revealing themselves by associating one with myself, the other with Tortora, according to their talents, and retiring the third to the quiet life of an urban senior citizen. Is that disapproval I see on your face, Mr. Harrigan?”

  “As a matter of fact I think it stinks, yes.”

  “Do you indeed, Mr. Harrigan?” Sonnenberg smiled patiently. “Can I assume you have an alternative to suggest?”

  “Leaving him where he was, for openers,” Harrigan snapped, “where they could have helped him properly.”

  “Where he was, Mr. Harrigan, was in a dry cleaning establishment on Tremont Avenue. He was released, quite un-helped, to a future of slipping polyethylene bags over laundered shirts by day, sleeping on the premises by night, and being entirely unable to function in society beyond regular morning visits to a neighboring butcher shop, where he swept the floor in return for being decently fed.”

  “Ben Meister's place?”

  “Very good, Mr. Harrigan. I'd ask you now to consider what Stanley has become. He kills, yes, but no more indiscriminately than you. I daresay he's a kinder man. Infinitely more loyal, I think. No longer terrified by a world that had no place for him. Now, as you've seen, he's quite capable. Perhaps more than a match for even the storied Connor Harrigan. The same might be said of Emma Kreskie.”

  No easy rebuttal sprang to Harrigan's mind. The original Stanley, he knew, was one of thousands released to the streets of New York City alone each year by overcrowded mental institutions. Some actually lived on the streets. A lot more got numbly through each day doing menial jobs like Stanley's with the plastic bags. At least Stanley was living. And he had an anchor. But what was going to happen to him when the anchor wasn't there anymore? Sonnenberg himself said that he was going to deep-six Tortora.

  Well, Harrigan thought, he couldn't worry about that. Or how crazy Stanley actually was or whether Sonnenberg belonged in a rubber room or running the President's Commission on Human Resources. Simplify, Harrigan. Do what you came here to do. Get Baker and his daughter out and keep them on a nice long leash until you figure out how to use him. Which Sonnenberg knows damn well you plan todo, judging from that loyalty crack. And which he damn well plans to do himself unless Baker can stash himself better than Sonnenberg can find him. Get on with it. Except there's something untidy here. There's something about this museum that bothers the shit out of you and it keeps dancing just out of reach. And there's something else. The point of all this. I mean, here we have Sonnenberg, who set up the snatch on Tina Baker—forget all that Tortora and his kid crap for a minute—then orchestrated getting us all down here. Then we get here, and almost nothing is going the way Sonnenberg could have wanted it to go. He stands up there answering questions he doesn't have to answer. Hershey sits over there in another world watching the show. Stanley, or whoever, sits rocking back and forth. And Baker's in there getting his kid. Which is taking a little too long, by the way. Anyhow, wacko or not, Sonnenberg's no dope. And he's definitely not acting like a man whose plans fell apart. So what is it? A test, like I asked before? Baker says no. Besides, what's to test? Sonnenberg knows everything Baker can do. But it is a test, damnit. An experiment. Everything the guy does is an experiment. So ask him, Harrigan. The guy's in a talking mood, right? On the other hand, the hell with it. Let's just get Baker and get out of here. Like I said, something about this place bothers you.

  “What do you say we take a walk and move things along in there?” Harrigan cocked his head toward the bank facade. With the barrel of his revolver, he motioned Sonnenberg down from the pulpit.

  “We'll wait here, Mr. Harrigan.” Sonnenberg sat back against the pulpit's rim.

  Connor raised his weapon higher and gestured again.

  “Be nice, Sonnenberg,” Harrigan said evenly. ”I won't kill you, but you could lose some skin.”

  Sonnenberg smiled. A patient smile. “Please throw that thing away, Mr. Harrigan. There's a trash receptacle on your left.”

  Harrigan took a step toward the pulpit. The hell with it. He'd drag him off.

  “And while you're looking for the trash can, Mr. Harrigan, I suggest you consider Mr. Hershey's argument for doing as I ask.”

  Harrigan turned his head slowly. Roger had shifted his position and the rifle was no longer on his lap. The cross hairs of its scope were now squarely upon Connor Harrigan's chest. Harrigan looked up at Sonnenberg.

  “Roger's had a change of heart? A little while ago he took himself out of the game.”

  “Out of Domenic Tortora's game,” Sonnenberg corrected. 'Tm afraid Roger has had doubts about Domenic's stability. The gun please, Mr. Harrigan.”

  “Please, Jared.” Melanie turned her hand and opened her fingers so that the small automatic rested harmlessly across her palm. “He's your friend. Please don't leave without talking to him.”

  Baker shut his eyes wearily at her use of the word.

  ”I know, Jared.” Melanie's voice was gentle. “Friends don't kidnap little girls. But he had no choice, Jared. I swear he didn't.”

  “Right.” Baker adjusted his grip on Tina's body, then directed Tanner toward the door with his head. “The devil made him do it. Tortora, right? Don't waste your time, Melanie.”

  “Jared.” She raised her voice, a note of desperation at its edges. “It's not Tortora. It's true Marcus has a problem with that sometimes, but he always controls it. Just like you with Abel and Charley. Please talk to him, Jared. He took Tina for her own good.”

  “baker” It was Charley's voice. Baker ignored it. One of Tina's eyes popped open.

  “Jared, wait.” Tanner placed a hand against his shoulder. “What about Tina's own good?” she asked Melanie Laver.

  “Duncan Peck would have taken her,” Melanie answered a bit too quickly, then looked away.

  “baker.”

  Tina's other eye opened wide.

  “As a hostage?” Tanner asked. “There's more, isn't there?”

  ”I... I don't know.” Melanie looked down again.

  “Let's go.” Baker swung Tina's body toward the door.

  “Damn you, Jared.” Melanie's voice stopped him. “We're going way out on a limb for you,” she said, angry now. “Peck is using everything he's got to round us up. None of us are safe until we get into our new lives far away from here. Roger Hershey is out there close to a breakdown because he killed three men today who would have killed you, and he's too sweet a man to do that anymore. A fourth who was guarding Marcus's boat almost killed him because he hesitated. Marcus and Stanley Levy both kept Tina safe when Tortora might, just might, have harmed her. You can mock that if you want, but then I'll ask you how obedient Abel's been, starting with the day Sarah was killed. We're your friends, Jared. Marcus is your friend. He couldn't go without seeing if he was right about. . ” Melanie chewed her lip. Her eyes dropped to Tina, who was staring intently at nothing. One of Tina's hands had clawed at the wool of her father's sweater and was stretching and twisting it.

  Baker felt a stiffening of Tina's body and looked down at the fist. The blood was draining from his face when he looked up again. “Finish your thought, Melanie,” he said, his voice a bare whisper.

  Melanie hesitated, working her mouth soundlessly. Then her chest heaved once and her body sagged. The hand with the pistol dropped to her side.

  “BAYYKKERRR!”

  “Something went wrong, Jared. It's Tina.”

  “It's Sonnenberg all right,” Michael Biaggi whispered into his transceiver. He crouched low in the dew-dampened shrubs that lined the glass wall of the American Wing. The figure on the pulpit had just shed his hat and overcoat and was leaning over its edge toward Connor Harrigan. He'd almost missed Roger Hershey, who lounged listlessly some fifty feet away. “If Baker's here, I don't see him.”
>
  In an apartment over the Castelli Galleries on Seventy-seventh Street near Fifth Avenue, Ed Burleson straightened at the sound of the doorbell and handed the transceiver to Doug Peterson, who stayed by the open window. A third man, in his fifties, sat slumped against an art-filled wall. He'd fainted. Fingers on both his hands were broken and bleeding. At his feet were the torn remnants of the canvas and frame of an oil painting. Burleson reached the apartment door and tapped it once from the inside, opening it only at the sound of Duncan Peck's voice.

  “Sonnenberg's there, sir.” Ed Burleson gestured in the general direction of the museum. “Just like Poindexter said he'd be.”

  Peck glanced disinterestedly at the broken man curled near the wall. “Philip Poindexter.” He nodded. “This man was Luther Dowling before his reincarnation as assistant curator of the Metropolitan?”

  “Yes sir. We're unable to confirm that through the identification bureau, but he acknowledged as much under interrogation. Luther Dowling, Junior. In fact, he was once the owner of Sonnenberg's house.”

  “Hmmm,” Peck reflected. “Rather sloppy of Sonnenberg to tell us the name Dowling instead of Poindexter. It shows the folly of allowing oneself to be diverted by a compulsion to taunt.”

  “With respect, sir,” Burleson replied, “we were still lucky. He says Sonnenberg reached him at the museum and told him to make sure the place was unguarded and unwired tonight and then bail out immediately without returning to this apartment. He disregarded that last instruction in order to pick up some paintings he especially valued. Poindexter was in the act of packing when our people made their sweep.”

  “Some sweep.” Duncan sniffed. “It's yielded one small fish unless we count the cadaver of Howard Twilley. It will serve little if it fails to result in the taking of bigger fish. Whom do you have observing the museum?”

  “Biaggi, sir. He's on the north end, and one of my men is covering the door to the museum offices through which they forced entry. Biaggi just confirmed seeing Connor Harrigan with Sonnenberg. As a bonus, Roger Hershey is in the same room.”

  “No sign of Baker?”

  “I'm afraid not, sir.”

  “More's the pity,” Peck muttered. “Have we an idea, by the way, why Sonnenberg would set up a rendezvous with Connor Harrigan in so exotic a location? Or why he wouldn't choose a meeting place both more conventional and more simply arranged? Or why Connor Harrigan is suddenly not in the company of Jared Baker and the Burke woman?”

  “We have no information on either point, sir.”

  Peck refrained from rolling his eyes at this sluglike response to his presumption that Burleson possessed an imagination. Marcus, Ivor, whoever, had made a valid point, he thought, about Edward and his ilk. Ah, Marcus! If only you'd been a reasonable man. And ah to you too, Connor. One must give the devil his due. How terribly I shall miss you. How desperately I shall wish that I might have had one of you rather than ten of these. If it were you and not Edward, for example, you would ask why there was a need to force entry into the museum. You would answer that the person who entered in that fashion, doubtless yourself, was an unwelcome guest.

  “Mr. Peck,” Doug Peterson called from the window, his transceiver at his ear. “Biaggi says that Roger Hershey has a rifle pointed at Connor Harrigan and is disarming him.”

  Voilà! thought Peck. Who, therefore, is the welcome guest? Jared Baker? The rest of Sonnenberg's assorted clones? If so, Sonnenberg will soon notice that Philip Poindexter is not among them and begin to sniff the wind. And what of Baker's kidnapped daughter? An event of doubtless major significance and doubtlessly arranged by Sonnenberg, since I know, alas, that I was too late to that table. There, now. There is reason for a confrontation and a broken door. If so, Baker would hardly assign Connor Harrigan as his daughter's rescuer. Baker's there. He's there or he's coming.

  “Tell Mr. Biaggi,” Peck ordered Doug Peterson, “that in five minutes we'll be at his side. He is to take no action.” Peck turned to Burleson, satisfaction on his face. “When thieves fall out, Edward.” He smiled.

  “Sir?”

  “Never mind, Edward. Have you considered a plan of attack?”

  “Cover the probable exits and observe, sir. When they start to come out, we can redeploy and take them.”

  “That was your plan at the Plaza, Edward. This time we'll go in.” Peck noticed the torn and shattered painting at Poindexter's feet. “What is that, by the way?”

  “It's one of the pictures he returned to get, sir. I believe he said it was a Bernard Buffet.”

  “An original?”

  “Yes sir. We tore it a strip at a time to encourage his cooperation. It brought faster results than physical coercion.”

  Peck closed his eyes. “We'll go to the museum now, gentlemen. Acquit yourselves well and perhaps you can smash a Cellini cup or two.”

  “Sir?”

  “Never mind, Edward.” Peck waved a hand toward what was left of Luther Dowling. “Bring that with you. The van is at the curb.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “You're a very good man, Edward.”

  “Holy shit!” Biaggi swore aloud, tossing his transceiver to one side and crouching deeper into the bush. The doors of an old-fashioned building had slammed open, kicked from the inside, and there was Baker. Holding the kid. Screaming at Sonnenberg. Biaggi couldn't hear. He could only see the face and the teeth. And the actress, Tanner Burke, trying to quiet him. And some other dame.

  He was screaming about the kid, Biaggi knew, from the way he kept looking down at her. But the kid wasn't listening. She was just looking around. Staring at walls. Staring now at him, Biaggi thought. He pulled back farther. Easy! There's no way she could see. She's yelling something. She's pointing. Jesus! Now they're all looking. Harrigan's running for a garbage can and Hershey's waving him off. And Sonnenberg is staring. Sneering, the son of a bitch! Take no action, huh. So the bastard can set me up again? Bullshit.

  Biaggi leaped to his feet, snapping the safety off his Uzi, and smashed its butt housing against the safety glass of the window wall. Nothing happened. He stepped back, in panic, and fired a short burst that cleared a ragged eight-inch hole. Out-of-focus figures scattered on the other side. A woman near Baker crashed backward, her hands clutching at her abdomen. Hershey whirled toward Biaggi as the woman cried out. He snapped one shot that missed by inches, then backed away, finally turning and running toward Melanie Laver. Biaggi ignored the retreating back. He jammed the short Uzi muzzle through the hole and sighted low and left on Son-nenberg's pulpit. He fired. Explosions of stone danced upward amid an echoing roar and sprayed showers of sparks and granite when they reached the railing below Sonnenberg's chest. Sonnenberg, arms flailing, staggered backward and slammed hard against the pulpit's inner wall. Biaggi squeezed again as he hung there. Nothing. Empty. He fumbled at the pocket of his gray raincoat for another clip. Baker was running now, the other woman with him, the girl Baker carried shielded by their bodies. Biaggi found the clip and jammed it in place. Too late. Baker was inside a doorway to the right before Biaggi's front sight caught him. To Biaggi's left there was a blur of movement. A man. Running toward him. Running like a woman runs. His mouth moving soundlessly, his eyes full of hate.

  “Levy!” Harrigan screamed his name. Stanley Levy, Biaggi realized. He hadn't seen him. Must have been behind Sonnenberg. Take your time, Michael. Nothing in Levy's hands. Biaggi shifted his position for an insurance burst into Sonnenberg, who was fast sinking out of sight.

  “Levy, get down!” Harrigan yelled again. The running man faltered, glancing back at Harrigan, who was furiously waving him out of Biaggi's line of fire. Indecision slowed Biaggi for no more than a second. Sonnenberg was gone. He swung his weapon onto Connor Harrigan. A short burst and Harrigan dropped. Was he hit? Biaggi wasn't sure. Once more he hesitated before swinging the barrel back to Stanley Levy, who looked different now. He seemed more agile. The mincing step was gone and the eyes were filled with a cooler kind of hate. An ice pick was i
n his left hand and he'd sidestepped so his approach was just at the edge of Biaggi's field of fire. With both hands Biaggi wrenched the Uzi toward Levy and against the constrictions of the hole he'd cut. Biaggi fired, then coughed in pain. Christ! The Uzi's recoil raked the back of his hands against the ragged glass. Jesus! He was hung there. Relax your hands. Straighten them. Easy. Biaggi saw only the blur that was Stanley Levy diving at his gun barrel. And then the ice pick. It arched low and wide, and its thin spike seared into the knuckles of Biaggi's right hand, raking through to the Uzi's grip. Biaggi screamed.

  Levy's right hand gripped the Uzi's sight and his face pressed flat against the glass, his teeth bared and biting as if they could chew through to Biaggi's throat. Levy twisted and ripped with the ice pick, then pulled it free for another thrust. Again Biaggi screamed. Desperately, he braced one knee against the glass and hurled himself backward, scoring his hands and stripping the flesh from his knuckles. But he was free. In agony, he cradled his hands. The Uzi had fallen to the ground three feet beneath the bloodied hole. He reached for it but pulled away in horror. Stanley's arm was coining through the hole, the ice pick in his fist, slashing, sweeping, forcing Biaggi back. Measuring the arm's arc, Biaggi crouched lower, his torn fingers stretching for the weapon. Now Stanley was snarling insanely, his shoulder slamming against the glass for an extra inch of reach. Biaggi lunged for the Uzi. He had it. Hands trembling, he found the trigger and fired. A three-foot slab of safety glass exploded inward at Stanley's beltline.

  Headlights. Splashing on the museum's north wall as their vehicle mounted the roadway's curb and climbed up on the grass. Biaggi stood up, waving, directing the van toward him, toward the shattered glass. Burleson leaped from one side, his weapon ready, while the van slowed.