by Paul Moomaw
“Just that woman’s touch, right?”
“Damned right.” She stepped into the hallway.
“Cops have been here, for sure,” Pray said, and pointed to the muddy footprints that led across the polished oak floor of the hallway toward the interior of the house. “Cops have no manners. Never will.” He strode, more briskly than he felt, toward the sun room. “I know what I want, anyway.”
The room looked cleaner than he remembered. It took a moment for him to realize, with a sinking sensation, that all of the shelves were bare. The wonderful jade pieces that had filled the room were gone—every one.
“Shit!” he said.
“What’s the matter?” Gabriela’s voice came from several yards behind him. He turned around. She had begun to climb the stairs to the second story.
“They’ve stripped the place. Goddammit, if they’ve got their bureaucratic hands on my boat, I’ll never get it back. They’ll declare it a national treasure, or vital evidence, or something, and lock it up for the next thirty years.” Pray jammed his hands into his trouser pockets and kicked the door frame.
“God, what a child you can be, Adam,” Gabriela said with a sigh. “It wasn’t on a shelf to begin with, last time. Remember? Check that cabinet behind the big panel. I’m going to look around some.”
Pray nodded and slouched, without much hope, toward the panel with the ornate pulls. It opened easily enough. The gray safe behind it also swung smoothly open, and held nothing.
“Shit,” Pray muttered again. “I want my boat. I’ve earned it, and I want it.” He threw himself into the silk brocade love seat and stared through the French doors into the garden, which already had an untended look. He felt like whining and pouting, wanted to sink into the cushions and let himself be a sulky little boy. He didn’t hear Gabriela approach until she spoke.
“Give me a big kiss, and I’ll show you something,” she said.
“You ain’t got nothing to show me, lady, unless you got my boat. Then I’d kiss your ass with pleasure.”
“Then pucker up.” Gabriela’s firm haunches pushed their way past his stooped shoulders and rubbed against his face.
“You’re kidding,” he said.
“I never kid.” Gabriela spun around with a bow and a flourish and held out the ebony box.
“It’s probably empty,” Pray said.
“Adam!” Gabriela shook the box vigorously. It rattled, and Pray grabbed for it.
“Careful,” he said. He balanced it across the tops of his thighs and opened it. The boat lay there in all its glory, the dragon grinning serenely and winking at him with its ruby eye.
Pray hugged himself, then stroked the boat, rocking back and forth gently.
“It was in the bathroom, of all places, right on top of the medicine cabinet,” Gabriela said. “Meissner must have taken it upstairs and then stuck it there when he went to get his cocaine.”
Pray nodded distractedly and continued to rock. He wondered how he would get the boat home, and had visions of stiff-necked customs people sticking him with a huge duty.
“I found something else, too,” Gabriela said.
“Uh huh,” Pray mumbled, his mind still at Seattle customs inspection.
“Adam, are you paying any attention to me at all?”
“Of course.” He gave Gabriela his most earnest gaze.
“I found these,” she said, and held out a brown envelope. “Look what’s inside.”
Reluctantly, Pray lay the dragon boat to one side and shook the envelope. A passport fell out. Pray opened it, and Facundo Hesse’s face gazed balefully up at him.
“This was in there, too,” Gabriela said, holding out an empty United Airlines ticket folder. “If he’s on United, he’s hardly flying to Vienna.”
Pray nodded. “And if he left the country, why didn’t he take his passport?”
Gabriela held up a tutorial index finger. “Because he took a different passport.”
“New name, new identity, new life. Good-bye Mr. Hesse. And good riddance, as they say.” Pray tossed the envelope and passport to one side, and picked up the dragon boat again. “But how about you?” He tapped the dragon on its ruby eye. “How do we get you home where you belong?”
“Biven,” Gabriela said.
“Biven?”
“Sure. He owes us one. He can slip it into the diplomatic pouch, and have one of his errand boys bring it to you.”
“Beauty and brains both, by God.” Pray grabbed at Gabriela’s ample hip. “Bring that thing over here.”
Gabriela smiled and slid onto Pray’s lap. “I’ve never done it on an antique before.”
Chapter 55
Facundo Hesse watched the frail looking boy with dark, curly hair disappear through the door of the modest frame house across the street from where Hesse stood. In the driveway of the house, to the left of the front door, a gray sedan sat. Its occupant—who smelled of police even this far away—was the only guard Hesse had been able to spot in his surveillance of Joshua Dorn’s new home.
Hesse pulled out the newspaper clipping again. Survivor Gets 24-Hour Watch, the headline said. The story related the Dorn boy’s move to the north Seattle home of his aunt and uncle, where he was to be placed under full-time police protection, just as a precaution. It went on to quote the usual police bullshit about all leads being actively followed, and included a picture of the boy. The picture wasn’t very good, especially in its Xerox version, but it would do, Hesse thought. How many dark-haired boys could be living with their relatives in one small house on the edge of Green Lake?
Hesse edged against a tree as another gray sedan rolled slowly down the street and pulled into the driveway. Its driver emerged and walked over to the other car, where he leaned against the window and talked to the sole occupant of the parked vehicle. Or maybe told a joke, Hesse thought, when the man tossed his head back and laughed, then stepped back to his own car as the other backed into the street and pulled away.
An easy job. One policeman and one small boy, in a house with flimsy doors, tucked away behind trees and massive rhododendron hedges. The policeman would be the good part. Hesse liked killing policemen. They had given him nothing but trouble, all his life. He had never known a policeman who didn’t deserve to die.
The boy, on the other hand, was a different affair altogether. Hesse knew he would have to harden himself. It bothered him not to have a gun, because that meant he would have to touch the child to kill him. Thinking about it made him queasy, and what little of the Church was left in him knew that he was about to commit a sin that might be unforgivable.
He thought again of calling Rafael, who should be safe at Hayden Lake. He even had a stolen telephone credit card to do the job with. He felt an almost childlike pride in that. He hadn’t actually stolen something since his adolescence, hadn’t even been sure he would have the nerve to pull it off, as he watched the woman in the bus station—the memory of his first, and he hoped his last, cross country Greyhound ride still made his bones ache—use the card at a public telephone. But he had done it, grabbed her purse when she put it down momentarily, fished out the card, dropped the purse into a trash can, and then run like hell until he rounded a corner, out of breath from the unaccustomed exercise, but as happy with himself as if he had just made off with the crown jewels.
Hesse pulled out the card and gazed at it lovingly, feeling a small surge of excitement again at the memory. But he wouldn’t call Rafael. To begin with, these damned American neighborhoods never had stores or public telephones, so he couldn’t take the time to find one. And, as he had told Meissner—he shivered with disgust as he remembered their last encounter—the mess was his to fix, especially because of the boy. He would not ask another person to kill a child.
“I have my honor,” he muttered, not realizing he had spoken aloud until the sound of his own voice interrupting the evening stillness startled him.
* * *
Five o’clock brought darkness deep enough to trigger house l
ights up and down the neatly aligned houses, but the only street lights stood on corners; there was none close to the house Hesse watched. That house did have a bright floodlight over the front doorstep, but the police car remained in shadow.
Hesse waited, checking his watch nervously, until midnight. By then, all of the lights in the house were out. No one else had visited, and the policeman had not left his car.
I wonder if he never has to piss? Hesse thought. He pulled a bootlace from his pocket. It was long, of woven nylon, with a stretchiness that made it more effective for the kind of job Hesse had in mind. He looked up and down the empty street, walked half a block from the house, and crossed. Then, crouching, he made his way toward the car. The trees and rhododendrons that dotted the lawns let him slip from one hiding place to the next, stopping each time to make sure he had done nothing to alert the policeman.
When he got close enough for a clear look, Hesse realized that the guard was asleep, his soft snores drifting through the chilly air.
Que buey, Hesse thought. What a silly sheep, waiting calmly for his death. He smiled and slipped silently to the car. The fool even had his window rolled down, despite the coolness of the night.
Hesse flipped the bootlace over the policeman’s head and tightened it. The sleeping man sucked in air with a squawk like a frightened hen, and woke up. His eyes rolled in Hesse’s direction, the expression in them changing from surprise to terror, and then, in the next moment, to the blankness of coma. His head slumped, the eyes still open, and Hesse counted to fifty, then released the tension on the bootlace. He checked for a pulse and found none, then tugged the lace from around the man’s neck, where the deep crease it had formed clung briefly to it.
He slipped the bootlace back into his pocket and gave the corpse a pat on the head.
“Que duermas bien, pendejo,” he murmured. Sleep well, prick. Then he straightened slowly and gazed at the house. Now came the part of the job he wished he didn’t have to do.
He took a deep breath, looked up and down the street, and sprinted to the front door, ready to spring back into the shadows if it was locked. It wasn’t; the knob turned with a soft click, the door swung silently inward, and he was inside.
Hesse closed the door behind him and looked around, the light pouring through the large picture window from the outside floodlight offering good visibility. He stood inside a small living room, furnished with worn, but comfortable looking chairs and a sofa. A hall led straight back. Stepping carefully, Hesse followed it to the rear of the house, where it opened onto a large kitchen, one big enough for cooking and eating, with a table and chairs of plastic and metal tubing standing in one corner.
Hesse moved cautiously back down the hall. There were four doors, two of them open. One revealed an empty bedroom; the second opened into the bathroom. He glanced back and forth between the other two doors, which stood almost directly across from each other. One would contain the family’s adults. In the other he must find the child he had to kill.
Hesse crept to one of the doors. Holding his breath, he turned the doorknob, a quarter inch at a time. It clicked, and he froze, listening for any sign of wakening from the room. Then he turned the knob the rest of the way and pushed the door partly open.
A small night light near the floor provided just enough illumination for Hesse to make out the figures of two adults, lying together on a queen sized bed. The woman moaned and muttered, and then raised her head. Hesse tried to shrink into the floor. Then the woman’s head sank back to her pillow, and she rolled over on her side, tossing an arm over her companion.
Hesse backed slowly from the room and closed the door carefully. He took a slow, deep breath to calm himself, then turned to the other door.
Inside this room, no light offered illumination, but it didn’t matter now. Hesse knew that this had to be the room. He moved carefully, not lifting his feet from the carpet, feeling his way into the room until his right shin pressed against the bed. He stopped and listened long enough for the sound of gentle breathing from the bed to give him a sense of direction.
Fast, just like that woman’s purse, he thought. In, do the job, and out. His fists clenched and unclenched, then he sprang onto the bed, arms outstretched, reaching for the boy.
His hands closed on a shoulder, slid toward a skinny neck, and then Hesse realized something was wrong. Something bumped him from the side, where nothing should have been.
“Who’s there?” The voice was a child’s, and not the child he held. Hesse sprang from the bed and a light came on, blinding him momentarily. When his eyes adjusted, he saw two young boys, one lying huddled, terror in his eyes, the other sitting up, his hand still on the chain of a bedside lamp.
Hesse stared from one to the other. They looked enough alike to be brothers, both with black, curly hair and large, dark eyes. The picture from the newspaper wasn’t good enough. He didn’t know which boy was the one he sought.
He stood in a panic, wondering what in the name of God to do.
Kill them both, quickly, part of him said, but he cringed from the thought.
Then the door across the hallway crashed open, a brighter light went on, and an adult, the one who had been sleeping peacefully with his wife, stood staring at Hesse.
“Who the hell are you?” the man asked.
Hesse started toward him.
“Freeze!” the man said, and Hesse realized that he held a revolver, pointed at his midsection, but held awkwardly, not the grip of someone used to shooting people.
Hesse lunged at the man and knocked him down. The gun roared, and he felt something bump him hard in his midsection. Then he was out of the house and running through the chilly shadows toward the lake. He knew he had minutes at most until the police arrived. He stopped and returned to the house, and the parked patrol car. He opened the door and shoved the policeman across the seat, then jumped in, started the car, and wheeled it into the street.
After he had driven a few minutes, his mind settled down, and he was able to think more clearly. He was hurt. His hand, where he had been holding his side, came away bloody. He was hunted. But they didn’t know who he was, and he knew a place to go, to hide, a building he had gone to with a woman once, for sex. She had thought it exciting to screw in an abandoned military building.
And he knew whom to call for help.
In the block ahead of the car stood a service station, closed, it’s lights out, but with an outside pay phone. Hesse wheeled the patrol car into the drive. At the rear of the building, two cars were parked, evidently waiting for service the next day. One of them, a dented Chevrolet Nova of uncertain age, had keys in the ignition. Hesse supposed the owner believed that the car’s age and condition immunized it from theft. That was good; driving around in a stolen police car was unnecessarily hazardous. He parked the patrol car deep in shadow, then got out and walked to the pay phone, retrieving the stolen telephone credit card from his pocket. He punched in the telephone number he wanted, waited for the signal, and punched in the credit card number.
At the other end the telephone rang five, six, seven times without an answer. Be there, Hesse thought, and let it continue to ring, then sagged with relief when a voice, the voice he needed to hear, finally answered.
“Rafael, it is Hesse,” he said, surprised at the weakness in his voice. He wondered as he spoke how much blood he had lost.
“I need you to come to Seattle at once. I need your help.” He listened for a few moments to the voice on the other end, then interrupted. “Don’t be a fool. If I am not safe, you are not safe. You have no choice. Do you understand?” He paused again, then nodded to Rafael’s reluctant assent. “Good,” he said. “You know Discovery Park, the old Fort Lawton, on the Magnolia Point? Behind the main complex of buildings, on the east side of them, is a cottage. It stands apart. Come there, tomorrow night.”
He hung up without waiting for an answer, got into the old Nova and drove sedately away.
Chapter 56
Pray let t
he car drift slowly around the curve on Eighth Place, high on Queen Anne Hill, his eyes taking in the expanse of Puget Sound. The dying afternoon had been clear—a rarity in Seattle in November—the sun hovering just above the Olympic Mountains, purple-black in the distance. Now a bank of clouds raced in from the Pacific Ocean, lending a luminous, gray-green tinge to the air, and promising rain before dark.
Pray let his eyes soak up the view. It felt good to be back in Seattle, good to be back in his old gray Mercedes, and good to be within a few blocks of his own home, his own fireplace, and his own bottle of brandy. He glanced at Gabriela, who had insisted on seeing where he lived, and who sat with her chin cupped in her hand and a soft smile playing around her lips. That felt good, too.
He pulled into the driveway in front of the giant old house that contained his condominium.
Gabriela stared up at the place, then back at him. “This is yours?”
“Only a third of it. I’m one of the poor neighbors.” He pointed toward his end of the building. “But I got the best view.”
Gabriela jumped out of the Mercedes. “I bet you get lots of visitors,” she said.
Pray opened the door and stepped into the high-windowed entry hall with its stone floor, mud scrapers, and umbrella stand. Something felt not quite right. He looked around, then shook his head.
“What’s wrong?” Gabriela asked.
“Just jumpy, I guess.” He shrugged and led the way into the living room. “Want a drink?”
“She does not wish to drink.” A tall, olive skinned man with deep set eyes like lumps of coal stepped through the door from the downstairs bathroom. He held a pistol in one hand.
Pray froze. “Who the hell are you?” he asked.
“Only a messenger for someone who wishes to see you immediately.”
“Who?”
“You will learn that when you reach him.” The man waved the pistol. “Let’s go, right now. I have been waiting too long for you already.”