“Say what?”
“Sounded like two words.”
“What two words, Tom?”
He shook his head:
“Damned if I know. Looking back, it must have been another language.”
“And you have no idea what language?”
“No idea at all.”
“Did Ms. Walker answer?”
“No, she didn’t have time. By the time I’d reached the doorway, they were both standing in the middle of the room, and this guy was pulling back his suit jacket. I’ve seen my share of guns before, and I knew this one was a .38 automatic. I saw him take it out and point it, but then…”
“…then you weren’t really observing anymore.”
“No. I just did what I did.”
“Thank God,” said Nina, quietly.
“Yes, Tom,” Jackson Bennett chimed in. “Thank God.”
“Yeah. Well. Sometimes you need a big stupid goon. And I happened to be available.”
“You can,” said Nina, “put it in your next novel.”
Tom shook his head:
“I don’t want to think that much about it. I’m trying to forget it as hard as I can, but I’m not succeeding. Damn the guy was tough. He was hell for strong, but he knew moves I’ve never seen. I thought I was at least holding my own with him for a few seconds; then he flipped me and I couldn’t move anything, arms, legs, anything. I saw him slip the knife out of his pants’ pocket, heard the ‘click,’ and thought: ‘uh oh.’ Then I felt it against my throat.”
“Take your time,” said Moon.
“Yeah. Well. Not too much more of it. I could see Carol out of the corner of my eye. She didn’t seem panicked at all. She’d gotten hold of the .38 somehow. I guess it came loose from him during the struggle. Anyway, for a second I thought she was just going to shoot, kind of blindly. Looking back on it now, that would have been disastrous, because we were just wrestling there in one big knot. But she didn’t. She bent down as calmly as you please, pressed the end of the barrel against the guy’s temple, and pulled the trigger.”
Silence in the room.
Tom went on, quietly:
“I don’t know if you’ve ever seen what a .38 can do, point blank like that. I know I hadn’t. I’d seen people shot. In the army. On the street.”
More silence.
“But not like that, not right up against the temple.”
And more silence still.
The explosion going through the minds of everyone in the room was sound enough.
“How,” asked Moon, “did Ms. Walker react? What did she do?”
Tom shook his head.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
Another shake of the head.
“No. I’m not sure what either of us did. For that couple of minutes right after…well, right after it happened, my mind doesn’t have anything in it. All I know is, I must have come over and—and got her, somehow, got her on her feet. We must have gotten through the door, stepping over—what all was lying there. But somehow, the first clear thing I remember was the two of us, sitting there at the base of Nina’s stairs, huddled together and crying. There were sirens. Flashing lights. Finally, we were in an ambulance.”
And one last bit of silence.
Followed by Tom saying:
“I was sitting in the back of the ambulance with my arm tight around her. She looked up—I remember she’d lost her glasses, and she was crying—and she said: ‘Thank you for saving my life.’ I said: ‘I think it’s the other way around….’
…and that’s all I remember.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN: THE SMUGGLER
The quietest rooms in Bay St. Lucy Hospital are located on the building’s fourth (and top) floor. These rooms are not large, but each is meant only for one patient, and each has thick, well-insulated walls. People assigned to these rooms have often undergone some kind of mental trauma, and do not need a roommate to chat with, a television to watch, or a constant stream of doctors and nurses coming and going.
It was late morning, when a small stream of such people reluctantly entered room 407, where Carol Walker had been placed the night before, just after having been given a strong sedative. The people in the stream––a stream which had been formed a short time earlier three floors below—were the primary care physician, Nina Bannister, Moon Rivard, and Jackson Bennett.
It was the physician who pushed open the door.
“Ms. Walker? You awake now?”
The room was bathed in the light of late morning, a kind of hazy white glow with what seemed like millions of tiny dust particles floating in it, but which must upon more careful reflection have been super-inflated air atoms, dust of any kind being alien to so sterile an environment as the hospital possessed.
“I’m awake.”
The window behind the bed on which Carol lay revealed the still slumbering—not because of the time of day but because of the time of year—village of Bay St Lucy, with its slate gray rooftops spread out beneath a slate gray sky, and the restless ocean beyond, with its equally slate gray waves churning restlessly in toward shore, all of them, one after another, reaching the beach and turning around to head back out again, disappointed to find no small children waiting to dive in the ocean.
The rest of the party filed in.
Jackson, last in line, closed the door carefully behind them.
The windows were thick. Ambulances going and coming made no sound, nor did anything else from the outside world.
Nina, as though knowing instinctively what to do, pulled a chair, which was as gray as the universe outside the window, up to the side of the bed, sat down in it, and took Carol’s hand.
Carol smiled wanly at her, then, with the other hand, reached over to the night stand beside the bed, picked up her glasses, and put them on.
No one in the room spoke for a time.
The men had formed a small semi-circle around the bed.
Finally the doctor:
“Were you able to sleep, Ms. Walker?”
Carol kept her eyes fixed on Nina as she answered.
“Yes.”
“Good. How are you feeling?”
She gave a small shrug, but did not answer.
Then she turned her head slightly, and her eyes became fixed on the opposite wall.
Moon Rivard took a step forward and asked:
“Ms. Walker, do you remember what happened last night?”
“Yes.”
“Well, due to the nature of the events, it’s important for us to get a statement from you. Understand, Tom has told us what happened. There’s no question at all of charging you with a crime. You clearly acted in self-defense. And you almost certainly saved Tom’s life and your own. I have to tell you, Ms. Walker, you’re a brave girl.”
Another shrug.
Moon continued:
“For the record, though, if you could just tell me in your own words what happened, as you remember it—then I’ll be able to pass that statement along to the proper people. We’ll start processing all the paperwork, and we’ll be able to leave you alone here so you can rest.”
Carol continued to stare at something that was clearly invisible to everyone else in the room.
Finally she took a deep breath.
Her shoulders seemed, thought Nina, very small and delicate beneath the pale blue hospital gown.
“I am,” she said softly, “a smuggler.”
Moon leaned over the bed:
“I’m sorry. I didn’t get that.”
“A smuggler. I smuggle stolen paintings. For a while, I took the paintings on airplanes. Michael would give them to me in Chicago. Different places. Then I would take them on the plane in my backpack. Everyone saw them. No one cared. I’d take them to Frankfurt. Then to Graz, in southern Austria. I would just leave them in the hotel. Someone would come and get them, I suppose. Every time I did this, I would find a check for twenty thousand dollars in a drawer in the desk in the room. I had t
o have the money for papa. He’s very old, and sick.”
“Ma’am, if you can’t…”
But Carol interrupted:
“A man has a castle not too far from Graz. He’s collecting the paintings. All kinds of paintings. View of the Sea at Schweiningen. I had the painting for a while. On Nina’s deck. I touched it. I could feel the sand in it. The wind was blowing the day Van Gogh painted it. I could feel the grains of sand in the paint.”
Then she turned her head slightly and cocked it, so that she was looking up at Moon:
“His head just blew up. I pulled the trigger, and there was this horrible…”
“I know, Ms. Walker. Maybe for now you just better…”
“It was all over me. His head was all over me.”
“We probably should leave now. Whenever you…”
Her grip tightened on Nina’s hand.
Her gaze did not waver, but her voice grew softer:
“We had to change, you understand? It was The Red Claw. He found out. He found out everything. He wants the paintings back. They belong to his people, don’t you see? He’s going to kill us all, so that he can get them back. First he found out about the airports. So Michael came and told me that we couldn’t do any more airports. He said we had to do frame changes. And that would be safe. I did them. But it wasn’t safe.”
The physician:
“We’re going to be letting you alone now, Ms. Walker.”
But Carol simply pulled Nina closer to her and said:
“His head was all on me. All over me. And it wasn’t on him anymore.”
“I know, baby. You just lie still and get it out of your mind.”
“I keep feeling it. It’s all so cold. Everywhere on me.”
“It’s all right. You’re my brave girl. I’m here with you now.”
“Will you stay here?”
“Sure, I will.”
“Don’t let him come back, because he doesn’t have a head. It’s all on me. All over me.”
“No one will come. It’s all right, my baby.”
Jackson, who was standing by the door:
“Maybe if we could all meet out in the hall, just for a second…”
Nina:
“I have to go into the hall for two seconds, Carol. Then I’ll come back and sit with you. I won’t leave you.”
“So many beautiful paintings––but they weren’t mine. I shouldn’t have done it.”
“I’ll be right back.”
A moment later they were standing in the hall.
Jackson said, almost whispering:
“She doesn’t know what she’s saying.”
The physician:
“She’s clearly in shock. I’ve seen this kind of thing before. Painting is so important to her. She can’t really face what must have happened up there in your cottage, Nina. So she retreats into this fantasy world of smuggling paintings. It’s all a delusion.”
“What was she saying about red claws?”
Jackson shook his head:
“It’s all just fantasy. Like the doctor said, she’s in shock.”
Nina, to the physician:
“How long will this last?”
“No way of knowing. Physically, she’s fine. I think we should bring in a psychologist from Hattiesburg. I know a good man. My feeling is, these delusions will pass. They usually do. Shock trauma can go on for a day or so––but, like I said, it will pass.”
“That’s good to know.”
“We just need to keep her quiet, and let her sleep as much as possible.”
“All right. I’m going back in now, and sit with her.”
“Do that.”
And Nina did.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN: ALPINE IDYLL
By mid-morning, a light snow had begun falling on Graz.
This was not a normal thing. The city lay in a kind of basin, ringed about by the Fischbacher Alps, and so its winter months were generally cold, gray, somber, and snowless, the citizenry forced to travel twenty miles or so in order to enjoy the delights of downhill skiing.
But this morning was different.
Franz Beckmeier enjoyed watching the world whiten beneath him as he sat by a plate-glass window in the second floor of Café Europa and savored his ‘Grosser Brauner’ (big brown one), which had been served steaming hot to him seconds before in a coffee cup that seemed as large as half a bowling ball.
There it was, all spread out, the Christkindle Markt, which was Graz’ name for its winter market, held during the month of December on the Main Square.
Good to be back in Graz.
He preferred the summer months, of course. He preferred sitting outside on the café’s balcony, looking almost straight down on freshly-washed streets and watching the vegetable stands do their business, watching the dirndl-clad Hausfrauen laugh and chatter as they threw baskets around and carefully fingered fruit.
But the winter had its charm, too.
The small light brown wooden shacks that hawked Christmas wares, dolls and aprons and clocks and every manner of non-necessities thinkable.
There, beyond the River Mur, the ruins of Castle Gosting. Beyond that, the dark green mountains, topped by a band of snow.
And beyond that, the taller mountains, cloud-shrouded now, but sure to be there shining and glittering in the afternoon when the snow clouds had dissipated by early afternoon.
Yes, he liked Graz.
And here he would stay.
The years of travel were behind.
The last of the corporations were sold. Let others take care of running them.
Of course, he’d never needed to be a businessman in the first place. His family’s lands and fortunes had been secure by the early nineteenth century, and his fiefdom would never have been imperiled, even had he chosen to live his entire life as a recluse.
But what would have been the fun of that?
He’s always been a man who took pleasure in the chase. The hunt.
Competition.
And so he’d competed all these years in the cutthroat world of business.
Where he’d cut his share of throats.
But that was over now.
Now it was time to live. While he still had a modicum of health. While he could still ski. And shoot. And do other things that a healthy man might be expected to do.
And which he was going to do tonight.
“Mein Herr?”
The waiter, tuxedoed, silver haired.
A fixture of Café Europa.
Standing before him now, holding a silver tray.
With a card on it
“Fur mein Herr, bitte schon.”
“Danke.”
He lifted the card off the platter, turned it over, and read:
“Landeszeughaus. Dritten Stock.”
Armory. Third floor.
“Ja. Danke sehr.”
He put the card in his shirt pocket, and said:
“Ich muB momentan weg. Komm gleich.”
Have to leave for a moment. Will come right back.”
“Jawohl, mein Herr.”
So saying, the waiter bowed and left.
No point in paying, Beckmeier told himself as he rose, taking a last sip of coffee. He’d be right back. Whatever he was to be told in the armory, he’d hear quickly.
Then he could come back.
For he had another meeting in fifteen minutes.
A meeting which promised to be much more enjoyable.
The armory was no more than a hundred yards away, just up Sackstrasse, whose cobblestones were being lightly covered by a film of snow. He looked up the street in front of him. ‘Up’ was the correct word, since the narrow passageway climbed the castle mountain at an impossible angle, twisting its way around and through the hedges and wall remnants of the old fortress, and segmented by windows just washed an hour ago.
There, just up the hill, Herzl Backerei: people leaned out the door, wicker baskets hung from crooked elbows.
He should stop there on
the way back from the armory.
Seven-thirty was a bit late in the morning for the freshest baked goods; but he’d find something.
Of course, he had his own cooks, who would be serving croissants for him and his—friend—tomorrow morning.
But it was an old habit, going to the bakery, and he would not give it up.
He trudged on.
Now he was by the Solingen Steel store, with bigger knives on the obscured shelves toward the back, and swords gleaming on racks beside the green-baized counters.
He thought back to his university days.
His dueling scar.
Inflicted with a sword just like that one, that one third from the end of the row.
He himself had used a sword slightly different from any sold now.
Older.
In subtle ways, more effective.
Crueler.
And he’d inflicted his own number of scars.
He pulled his overcoat tightly around him as he walked, wincing a bit as the wind bit into his face.
He peered into the mélange of statue work and concrete stairways, that, had the great green metal door not been opened, would have remained unseen by him as he passed.
How many other secrets, treasures, palaces, chambers, dungeons, courtyards, and mysteries, were hiding beside him?
For Graz, essentially a medieval city, would always hide its secrets, even from a native.
Here: the signboard hanging above the street, announcing in Frakture Script:
Landeszeughaus.
Armory.
He pivoted, his boots scraping on gravel which could have been poured from horse-drawn trailers by knights in the service of Ferdinand II, and stepped into the dark forechamber, through a narrow, gothic-vaulted passageway, and through another turning—where a short staircase beckoned him.
He made a quick turn, climbed five steps, ducked beneath a worn oaken archway that seemed to have been built for beings six inches shorter than he, and then straightened, a vast hall looming before him.
“Mein Gott,” he whispered.
As he always did, no matter how many times he entered this place.
Frame Change: A Nina Bannister Mystery (The Nina Bannister Mysteries Book 5) Page 16