The Green And The Gray

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The Green And The Gray Page 24

by Timothy Zahn


  "You were obviously having a good time in there, and I pulled us out," she said, feeling a sense of relief as the imaginary wall melted away. "And you were so quiet on the way out."

  He shook his head. "You know, Caroline, I'm not angry with you nearly as often as you seem to think. I wasn't talking as we left because I wasn't sure who might be listening. I didn't want anyone eavesdropping while you told me what was bothering you." He looked sideways at her. "Or was I wrong about that?"

  "No, I wanted to get out of there," she confirmed. "There's something wrong about all this, Roger."

  He was silent for another three paces. "Can you give me a hint?" he asked. "Sorry—I didn't mean it that way. What I meant was, can you narrow it down?"

  Caroline chewed at her lip, trying to put her uneasiness into words. "Maybe it's the stiffness of the whole culture," she said slowly. "The children seem almost too well behaved, the adults a little too upright and noble. And it seemed like Aleksander and the others were bending over backwards not to talk about Melantha except when we brought her up."

  "Well, of course they were putting their best foot forward tonight," Roger said. "They want us to like them."

  "Yes, but why?"

  "Well, for starters, Velovsky's not going to live forever," Roger pointed out. "Maybe they want to establish another friendly contact in the human world for after he's gone."

  "Or maybe they're just trying to manipulate us onto their side so we'll give Melantha to them if she comes back," Caroline countered. "Because they're still hiding things, Roger. That business about Persuaders not being able to order people around, for starters. I was there; I know Melantha was under Cyril's control until I snapped her out of it. And I know he was trying it with me, too."

  Roger was silent a moment. "If that's true, a Persuader ought to be able to order her to reveal herself, too," he pointed out. "In which case, why wasn't Aleksander out helping with the search?"

  Caroline shivered. "Maybe because he already knows where she is."

  "In which case, you can say good-bye to any peace treaty," Roger said. "Hell."

  "There's something else about Aleksander," Caroline went on. "There at the end he was talking to someone with that telepathic or empathic thing they do. It seemed to be something very serious or urgent."

  "Something about Melantha?"

  "That's what I'm wondering," Caroline said.

  "In that case, I wonder if the whole evening might have been staged," he said slowly. "Something to keep us occupied while they did something with her."

  Caroline thought back. "I don't think so," she said. "The family stuff seemed genuine, anyway. I'm sure the Greens have a great love for each other, both their immediate families and their people as a whole. But that doesn't mean Aleksander wouldn't lie to get what he wants. In fact, it might make it more likely that he would."

  Roger was silent another five steps. "Let's assume you're right, and that they're trying to manipulate us," he said at last. "Let's further assume that they have Melantha, having either snatched her last night or found her just now. Then the first question is whether they would hide her in the city or—"

  He broke off as a car suddenly roared up from behind them and squealed to a halt. Before Caroline could do more than grab Roger's arm, the door swung open and the driver hopped out, turning to glare over the car roof at them. "Police!" he called, holding out a badge. "Roger Whittier?"

  "Yes," Roger said nervously. "Is there a prob—?"

  "Get in," the cop cut him off, gesturing emphatically toward the back door.

  "Wait a second," Roger protested. "What are you charging us with?"

  "You're not being charged—yet," the other said. "You're wanted as material witnesses."

  "Witnesses to what?" Caroline asked, her heart suddenly pounding in her throat. Melantha? No—

  please not Melantha.

  "Detective Fierenzo has disappeared," the cop bit out. "He may have been murdered."

  24

  "According to witnesses, the screaming started about an hour ago," Detective Powell said, swiveling one of the interrogation room's plain wooden chairs around and sitting down straddling it, his forearms resting on the back. "It was accompanied by the sounds of someone hammering their way through several sections of sidewalk. The whole thing lasted maybe ten minutes before someone called it in and we got out there. By then, Detective Fierenzo was gone."

  "And no one in the station heard any of it?" Roger asked.

  Powell shook his head disgustedly. "They definitely didn't hear the screams. If they heard the hammering, they took it for something else and ignored it." His eyes bored into Roger's. "But from the descriptions, it sounds a lot like the stuff that went down by your friends' apartment in Yorkville yesterday evening."

  "It does, doesn't it?" Roger agreed heavily, a cold chill running through him. So that was it. The battle lines had been drawn, and the war had begun. With or without Melantha, it had begun. Was that in fact the urgent communication that Caroline had detected from Aleksander? That the fragile peace had finally been shattered?

  Or worse, did it mean Aleksander himself had cold-bloodedly ordered the war to begin? "You said the screaming started before the shots?" he asked.

  "That's what two of the witnesses said," Powell said, eyeing him closely. "The others weren't sure. Is it important?"

  "I don't know," Roger said. "It might be."

  Powell hitched his chair a couple of inches closer. "Try me."

  "I don't have anything solid," Roger hedged, throwing a quick glance at Caroline's pale face across the table. "This may be part of a—well, sort of a gang war."

  "Between the Greens and the Grays?"

  "Possibly," Roger conceded. "Like I said, I don't know anything for sure."

  "What about Fierenzo?" Powell persisted. "What happened to him?"

  "Are you sure something did happen to him?" Caroline asked.

  "His gun was found at the scene," Powell told her. "His car's still parked nearby, and there's no answer at either his apartment or cell phones."

  He shifted his glare back to Roger. "And we found traces of blood at the scene that match his type.

  Why is it important whether the screams or cracked concrete came first?"

  "It might tell us who started the fight," he said. "But if the witnesses aren't sure, it doesn't help."

  Powell grunted. "Who were you visiting this evening?"

  "A couple named Vasilis and Iolanthe," Roger told him. There was no point in waffling on that one; a simple canvass of the building would pinpoint the Greens' apartment quickly enough.

  "Friends?"

  "New acquaintances," Roger said. "They invited us to dinner."

  "Anybody at this party make any phone calls?"

  In spite of the seriousness of the situation, Roger had to suppress a smile at that one. Checking out the phones was a time-honored police method for ferreting out links between suspects. Unfortunately for them, the technique was useless against Greens. "I didn't see anyone use a phone while I was there," he said truthfully.

  For a moment Powell eyed him in silence. "You know, Roger, we've been assuming you and your wife were more or less innocent bystanders who got dropped into this situation," he said at last. "But that assumption could change at any time."

  "We haven't lied to you," Caroline said.

  "You haven't told the whole truth, either," Powell countered. "And you might want to bear in mind that complicity in a police officer's murder carries the death penalty in New York."

  Roger felt his skin prickle. "We were all the way across the city when Detective Fierenzo disappeared," he said, fighting to keep his voice calm. "That other cop—Smith—was watching the building the whole time."

  Powell shrugged. "You're the legal expert," he said. "But if I were you, I might take another look at the laws concerning conspiracy and obstruction."

  With an effort, Roger met his gaze. "Are you charging us?" he asked. "If not, we're leaving."
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  Again, Powell let the silence hang in the air a few seconds. Then his lips puckered slightly. "Have a good evening," he said, gesturing toward the door.

  They had to pass by the site of the attack on their way home. It was like a replay of the previous night, Roger thought morosely as he gazed at the bright lights and the purposeful men and women looking for clues.

  Experienced investigators with nothing to investigate. However the Grays' hammerguns worked, Roger's experience with them had already shown they left no bullets or other evidence behind. The Greens' Shriek was by its very nature impossible to analyze after the fact. And once again there was no body left at the scene.

  Only this time it wasn't a Green body that had melted quietly into the bushes. This was the body of a human police officer.

  "You think Fierenzo accidentally walked into the middle of a skirmish?" he asked Caroline quietly.

  "Doesn't seem likely," she said. "Both sides have gone to a lot of effort to keep their existence a secret. I would think they'd cut and run if someone showed up, especially a police officer."

  "Unless that's why they made off with him afterward, either alive or dead," Roger pointed out. "In fact, that could be what Aleksander was so hot and bothered about back at the park. Maybe what you were picking up was him trying to figure out how to cover over the mess."

  "Maybe," Caroline murmured. "But if they decided Fierenzo knew too much, what does that say about us?"

  Roger felt a shiver run up his back. "They did let us go," he pointed out.

  "Because Smith was watching the building," she said. "I wonder if we should stay away from our apartment."

  "Or should get out of Dodge completely," Roger said grimly. "Unfortunately, both sides seem perfectly capable of finding us anytime they want."

  "Yes," Caroline agreed, her voice suddenly sounding odd.

  He glanced at her. She was staring straight ahead, an intense look on her face. "What is it?" he asked.

  "Aleksander wants Melantha to destroy the Grays so that the Greens can stay in Manhattan," she said slowly. "Right?"

  "Right," Roger said, wondering where she was going with this.

  "Cyril wants to sacrifice Melantha so that the Greens and Grays can both stay in Manhattan," she continued. "Either way, they all want to stay in Manhattan."

  "And Aleksander told us why," Roger said, feeling a touch of impatience. He didn't need a recap of the obvious. "They need to stay with their transport."

  "Right," Caroline said. "So why did Nikolos suggest sacrificing Melantha and then leaving?"

  Roger frowned into the darkness, his impatience evaporating. "He did say that, didn't he?" he agreed.

  "He said they should sacrifice Melantha and then pull back to upstate New York."

  "I could understand that coming from one of the younger Greens," Caroline went on. "They might not have the same hatred as their parents, or might not be so attached to the place they'd escaped a war to reach. But Nikolos is one of the original settlers."

  "Yes," Roger said, rubbing his cheek. "I don't know much about warfare, but it seems to me a good tactician wouldn't run away from something as much as he would run to something. I wonder if there's a way to find out if he has any interests upstate."

  "If you mean real estate interests, sure," Caroline said. "I can pull up the database from my office."

  "Upstate records, too?" Roger asked, lifting his eyebrows. "I thought you were limited to the city."

  "No, I can get everything in New York state," she said. "Of course, if it's not in his name we're never going to find it."

  "These are people who insist on hanging onto the Green name even when they're jammed thirty to an apartment," Roger reminded her. "I think we can assume it won't be listed under John Doe."

  "Probably," Caroline agreed. "When should we start? Tomorrow morning?"

  Roger looked around. He didn't see anyone nearby; but with Greens and Grays that didn't mean much. "Let's do it now," he decided abruptly. "Let's get the car out of the garage and do it right now."

  "The car?" she echoed, sounding startled. "I thought you hated driving in Manhattan on Saturday night."

  "I hate getting murdered in my bed even worse," he told her grimly. "Besides, if we find something, we'll want to get right on it. I just hope I remembered to fill the tank before we put it away."

  It took Caroline two hours to compile a list of all the Greens with large land holdings within two hundred miles of the city. After that came two more hours of battling the organized chaos of Saturday night traffic before they finally made it out of the worst of the metropolitan traffic. They found a modest motel near Tarrytown, begged two sets of toiletries from the desk clerk, and settled in to study Caroline's list.

  Half an hour later, they'd found it.

  "That's the place," Roger declared, tapping the listing for a hundred-acre estate tucked away in the hills between Shandaken and Bushnellsville. "E. and N. Green Associates. 'E' for Elymas; 'N' for Nikolos."

  "Certainly looks like it," Caroline agreed. "Though I still don't know what we're expecting to find."

  "Me, neither," Roger confessed. "Maybe it's nothing but an emergency refugee area Nikolos set up when they first got here. I still want to know what he's up to." He glanced at his watch. "We'd better turn in, too. We'll have another couple of hours' drive in the morning, and we'll want to get as early a start as we can."

  "Yes," Caroline murmured, her voice suddenly dark. "Roger... you don't suppose Fierenzo could have been so scared by the Shrieks and hammerguns that he just ran away, do you?"

  "It's possible," Roger said encouragingly, squeezing her hand. He didn't believe it for a minute, of course. But then, neither did she. "But whatever happened, there's nothing we can do about it tonight," he added. "Come on, let's get to bed."

  25

  The first thing Fierenzo noticed as he dragged himself back toward consciousness was that he seemed to be surrounded by a diffuse glow of light. The second was that the familiar city noises reaching his ears were distant, yet too distinct to be filtered through the walls of his apartment.

  The third thing he noticed was that he was freezing.

  Cautiously, he opened his eyes. The glow was just as diffuse with his eyes open as it had been with them closed, a sort of light cream-colored glow that seemed to fill the sky above him. Blinking to try to clear his vision, he reached a hand tentatively upward.

  His fingertips twitched back as they unexpectedly ran into something soft and springy. He blinked again; and suddenly his eyes found the proper focus. He was lying under a length of fabric angling downward over him like the side of a tent.

  He turned his head. Not a tent, actually, but a simple lean-to attached at its upper edge to a rough concrete wall about three feet to his right. Wincing as a stab of pain shot through his neck, he followed the concrete wall down to where it ended at a flat expanse of what looked like roofing material on which he was lying.

  "Welcome back," a familiar voice said from somewhere in the direction of his feet. "How do you feel?"

  Fierenzo lifted his head to look that direction, noting as he did so that he was covered from feet to armpits in a thin blanket the same color as the tent material. Jonah was sitting at the far end of the lean-to, his back braced against the concrete wall. "I've been better," Fierenzo said. "Is it me, or is it cold in here?"

  "It's mostly you," Jonah said. "One of the more delightful side effects of getting hit by a Green Shriek is that your body's not quite sure what to do with all the pain that's been dumped on it. Three times out of five it decides you must be sick, and kicks up a fever for a few hours. I can get you another blanket if you want."

  "No, that's all right," Fierenzo said, turning halfway up onto his right side and resting his head on his right palm. Now that he was awake and moving, he could feel the chill starting to recede. Lifting his wrist, he peered at his watch: just after two o'clock on Sunday afternoon. He'd slept nearly eighteen hours. "Where am I?"

>   "On a rooftop in Chinatown," Jonah said. "This is my assigned station for keeping an eye on the Greens in the Sara D. Roosevelt Park and watching for Melantha to make an appearance."

  "Really," Fierenzo said. Chinatown was in the southern end of Manhattan, miles from where he'd been attacked. "How did I get here?"

  Jonah shrugged. "We have ways of getting around town quickly."

  "Ah," Fierenzo said. Surreptitiously, he touched his chest and heard the reassuring crackle of paper from his inner pocket. At least the sketches were still safe. "Who assigned you here?"

  "Halfdan and his sons are in charge of the surveillance and sentry arrangements," Jonah said, giving him an indulgent smile. "Does that actually tell you anything?"

  "Enough," Fierenzo assured him, only lying a little. "As a matter of fact, I know all about the Greens and the Grays of New York." He lifted his eyebrows significantly. "Jonah Gray."

  Jonah's smile didn't even flicker. "Not bad," he said. "Actually, my name isn't Gray. We're not as fastidious as the Greens about wearing our affiliation on our sleeves for the world to see. In fact, we've been branching out for several decades now, name-wise."

  "But you are a Gray?"

  "I am," Jonah said. "Though I doubt you understand what that means."

  "Let me take a crack at it," Fierenzo offered. "You can climb buildings, you can turn invisible, you have disappearing guns, you can fly, and you aren't human. Did I miss anything?"

  Jonah's lips puckered. "You've been paying better attention than I thought," he acknowledged reluctantly. "That puts me in kind of an awkward position."

  "Sorry to hear that," Fierenzo said, gently rubbing his left elbow along his rib cage where his shoulder holster was nestled. From the feel of it, he could tell that the gun itself was gone. "It seems a waste of effort, though, to save my life, then turn around and kill me yourself."

  "Oh, those Greens wouldn't have killed you," Jonah said. "A cop? They wouldn't have dared."

  "They tried to kill you," Fierenzo pointed out.

  Jonah waved a hand in dismissal. "Different situation. And don't worry, I'm not going to kill you, either. It's just that your dropping in like this is going to make everything more complicated than it already was."

 

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