by Jon Land
Scanning the rooftop, she spotted the planks Sal had mentioned and ran over to examine them. To her dismay, only one was usable, the other too rotten to be trusted to carry her. This meant she’d have to get to the neighboring building with only ten inches of cushion.
Patty hoisted the plank and slid it over to the adjacent roof with the utmost care, aware a mistake now could ruin her only viable escape route. No sooner was it in place on the opposite roof, its middle section sagging noticeably, then fresh sounds of pursuit reached her from the stairwell door. She was actually thankful for the sounds; they gave her the burst of adrenaline she needed to step out on the plank and begin her walk.
It was much easier than she had expected. She kept her eyes focused on her goal—the roof of the adjacent building—forcing herself not to look down. Even though her stomach was twisted in knots, the fear of the men in the stairwell proved greater than her fear of falling. She reached the other building with a final leap, remembering to pull the plank after her so whoever was following couldn’t use it to get to her.
The door to the roof of the building she had just escaped from crashed open just as she reached the one Sal Belamo had directed her to.
Please let it be open…
It was. Patty was through it in a flash, hoping her pursuers hadn’t caught a glimpse of her. She thundered down the steps and swung left when she reached the building’s lobby. She bolted through the door to the street just in time to hear a car screech down the alley at the end of the block.
“Hop in!” Sal Belamo ordered from behind the wheel of an ancient Pontiac GTO.
To reinforce his command, bullets pounded their way from the head of the street, shouts and screams behind them. Sal grabbed Patty and yanked her in from the driver’s side. Her feet pushed off the windshield to help her reach the passenger seat as Sal tore away, leaving a burned rubber smell behind him. Patty found the seat at last and felt some exposed springs dig into her buttocks.
“I ain’t exactly finished with her renovations,” Sal apologized as bullets peppered the rust.
The rear window was one of the few parts of the car that was whole—until a burst of fire shattered it and sprayed pieces of glass on both of them.
“Uh-oh,” Sal muttered. Patty caught a glimpse of a dark sedan sliding to a halt at the other end of the alley. The car’s doors whipped open.
“Hold on,” Sal said, and the GTO surged forward with a blitzing roar.
The gunmen managed to lunge out of the way as the GTO smashed their car broadside, shoving its collapsed frame into the center of the street, where a morning delivery truck finished the job. Belamo spun the wheel madly one way and then the other, righting the GTO, which, except for an extra crinkle across the rusted hood, seemed undamaged.
“They don’t make ’em like they used to,” Sal said, with a grin.
“I’ll say.”
“Titanium steel bumper,” he explained. “Part of my own option package when I decided to rebuild this baby.”
Belamo gave the big engine some gas and screeched around a corner. Patty unhunched herself in the seat and brushed off the glass stuck to her clothes.
“Stay down!” Sal barked. “Don’t know if we lost them yet.”
“Doesn’t this come with a rear oil spray?”
“Nope. And no bulletproof shields or machine guns, either. I was workin’ on the ejector seat, though.”
“I can tell,” Patty groaned, shifting to avoid the exposed springs still scraping at her buttocks.
“There’s gonna be hell to pay for this,” Sal said, heading toward the first of the morning traffic.
“You mean what they did to your car?”
“The fuck-up that brought it on, first class all the way, let me tell ya. You ask me, the world’s gone to hell, and a few of us just don’t know it yet.”
“What happened, Sal?”
“Shit hit the fan, lady. And guess who was standing in front of the blades. Here,” he said, and flipped her a wrinkled envelope.
“What’s this?”
“Some cash, an airline ticket, and a passport. You’re on your way to Rio.”
“I’m what?”
“We gotta get a message to old Blaine, lady, and I’m too hot to play delivery boy. All you gotta know now is that it’s you, me, McCrackenballs, and the Indian. Nobody else. Dig?”
“The Gap? Virginia Maxwell?…”
Belamo took a corner hard, and Patty slammed against the right-hand side of the car.
“Listen to me, lady, we had it all wrong. Only reason I know now is ’cause of you.”
“Me? What are you talking about?”
“Better fasten your seat belt to hear this, ’cause it’s gonna jolt you more than my driving….”
Patty reached Rio early Monday morning, nearly a day after Sal’s desperate phone call had awakened her. She started looking for McCracken at the Sheraton Hotel, as Sal had advised. Her call from the airport told her that he had never checked in. Nonetheless, he would have left information about his actual whereabouts at the Sheraton, available to anyone who knew how to ask.
At the hotel, her cab driver had to squeeze by a procession of tour buses lined up around the Sheraton’s circular drive. Patty squeezed through the arriving hordes and entered the hotel through one of the twin revolving doors. The Sheraton lobby was a sprawling affair. A comfortable seating area and escalators dominated the right, while the lobby-level jewelry shop took up most of the left. She headed for the reception desk directly across the way.
“Excuse me,” she greeted the clerk.
“Checking in, miss?”
“I think one of your guests left a package for me.”
“Your name?”
Patty provided the one Sal had given her. “Smithers.”
The clerk punched some keys on his computer terminal, waited for the response to show up on the screen.
“I’m sorry, miss. I have nothing here under that name.” He looked up at her. “What was the man’s name who was supposed to leave it?”
I didn’t say it was a man.
That realization struck her before she had a chance to respond to the clerk’s question. She backed away from the counter as he scrutinized her. “Miss?” he called softly. “Miss?”
Patty didn’t stop. She had learned everything she was going to at the hotel. She wasn’t the only one looking for McCracken. And whoever else there was would now be looking for her.
She swung away from the clerk, finally, and found herself face-to-face with a pair of Japanese men who were standing on either side of a large plant in the center of the lobby. Their eyes locked unblinkingly on her. They remained motionless.
All the victims showed prominent connections with the Japanese….
That bit of her own research echoed in her mind as she swung to her left, toward the elevator bank, only to find another pair of Japanese there. Trying to act as naturally as possible, she moved past the Japanese in the center of the lobby. Their eyes followed her every step. She moved toward the escalators; two more Japanese were standing in front of them, their expensive suits almost a perfect match. She looked over at the entrance; three more men were hovering amid the wave of arriving guests. She was surrounded, boxed in. What could she do? What would McCracken do?
A baggage cart overflowing with suitcases squeaked toward her. Making an instant decision, she closed her eyes and stepped out into its path. The collision rocked her, and Patty made sure to use her shoulders to jostle the bags. The results were perfect. The cart wobbled, and suitcases spilled everywhere. Patty went down harder than she had meant to, then lay still as a crowd began to gather.
“So sorry, miss, so sorry,” the Brazilian bellhop was saying in a mixture of English and Portuguese, reaching down to assist her.
Patty accepted his help, saying, “I was just on my way out, actually.”
“Then let me help you to the door.”
“I’m fine, really.”
“Can I get
you a cab? I’m so sorry.”
“It was my fault. I wasn’t looking. I’m fine.”
Patty’s eyes swept the area around her and saw four of the Japanese men mixed among the crowd. They seemed unsure as to what their next move should be. Clearly she had complicated their task, hopefully buying the time she needed to get safely out of the hotel.
She backed her way out of the open hotel doors, colliding with a group of arriving guests. At least four of the Japanese were coming her way. There was a long line of guests waiting for taxis. She would have to get away on foot.
But the Sheraton’s isolated location left her with little maneuverability. There was just the Vidigal slum rising up the nearby mountain, and that was no answer.
She turned toward the lobby again to search out the Japanese and ended up colliding with an arriving guest. They knocked into each other with such force she almost fell.
“Easy does it, ma’am,” he said in English. He was big! And he was American!
“It’s about time,” Patty snapped, reaching down to pick up the cane the man had dropped when they’d collided.
“Time?” he echoed, stupified.
“Where the Christ have you been?” she demanded.
Patty grasped his arm on the pretext of regaining her balance, which allowed her to draw close enough to him to speak softly.
“Help me,” she whispered, and for just an instant their eyes met—the same instant the Japanese men came out of the hotel doors.
“I’m sick and tired of all this,” she continued, her loud ranting beginning to draw the crowd she sought.
“I’m…sorry,” the man forced himself to say.
“Let’s just get out of here. Now!” she demanded.
He seemed to notice the Japanese men. “Listen, it couldn’t be helped. It—”
“Now!”
“Fine. All right.”
He took her arm with his free hand and aimed her toward a jeep an attendant had been about to park. She climbed in ahead of him, and he pulled himself inside, grimacing with the effort it took. He pulled his cane in after him and closed the door.
“Thank you,” Patty said, with a sigh.
It was then she saw the pistol the man held low by his hip.
“Give me one reason not to shoot you,” he said.
Chapter 22
“YOU’D BE DOING their job for them.”
“Whose job?”
Patty turned to look back toward the entrance. The Japanese were gone. The rest of the crowd had dissipated.
“Just drive. Please.”
“That bad?”
“Worse.”
The man stowed the gun beneath the seat and extended his hand. “Name’s John Lynnford.”
Patty accepted it gratefully. “Patty Hunsecker.”
He gunned the engine and looked back in the same direction her eyes had taken. “What’s this all about?”
“You’re rescuing a damsel in distress.”
John Lynnford’s stiff leg worked the accelerator as he pulled the jeep into traffic. “Distress from what?”
“Not what—whom. Did you see those Japanese back there?”
“Can’t say that I did.”
“They were after me.”
“What’d you do, buy an American car back home?”
“No, I’m Emperor Hirohito’s illegitimate daughter.”
Lynnford regarded her briefly. He was a heavyset, thick-boned man with unevenly styled blond hair, and blue eyes that made him look younger than he probably was. She instinctively trusted him, even though she had no good reason for doing so.
“The Japanese were waiting in the lobby,” she explained.
“For you?”
“For anyone who approached the front desk and asked the right question.”
“Which was?”
“Has to do with a friend of mine that I’ve got to find.”
The jeep glided to a halt at a red light, and John Lynnford looked at her again. “You want to get out?”
“Not really. You want me to?”
“That depends.”
“On what?”
“Your willingness to work my show.”
“Your what?”
“Show. You’re looking at the sole owner of the Orlando Orfei Traveling Circus and Carnival. We’re setting up for a run in Barra da Tijuca.”
“Always wanted to join the circus,” said Patty.
The Orlando Orfei Circus was setting up shop in a muddy field in Rio’s most modern shopping district. Located amid the Casa shopping complex and Carrefour Mall in Barra da Tijuca, the location could not have been better when it came to drawing crowds.
John Lynnford took the roads like he knew them, and they exchanged few words during the ride. As they approached the area, Patty heard the eerie whine of a calliope, along with the constant thud of stakes and studs being pounded into the ground. A number of men seemed to be issuing orders. To her right was the shell of a soon-to-be Ferris wheel. Just beyond it was a merry-go-round, and beyond that the midway was taking shape.
John Lynnford climbed out of the jeep ahead of her, easing his boots gingerly to the muddy ground, then retrieving his cane from the cab. Patty joined him.
“This way,” he said, and started off. “You can wait in my trailer while I send someone back into the city to apologize for my missing the meeting I had scheduled at the hotel.”
“Sorry.”
“If we end up opening a day late, you’ll have to do better than that.”
“I’ll make it up to you.”
“How?”
“Tell me how much you’ll lose, and I’ll make sure you’re reimbursed.”
John Lynnford leaned on his cane and regarded her sardonically. “Yeah, right.”
“I’m serious.”
“You were serious about a bunch of Japanese trying to kidnap you, too.”
“You don’t believe me?”
“Look, ma’am—”
“Patty. Please call me Patty.”
“Look, Patty. I’ve heard these kinds of stories before, but you really don’t fit the type.”
“What type?”
“Someone on the run, looking to hide. Look around you. That’s how plenty of these people got started. That’s how plenty of them will finish.”
“And you?”
“Uh-uh. You first.”
“Then let’s go to your trailer,” Patty said, taking him up on his suggestion. “This is gonna take a while. You’ll be more comfortable sitting down.”
John Lynnford didn’t question her during the tale, not even once. The only break in Patty’s monologue came when, without the use of the cane, he limped to a small refrigerator and took out a bottle of beer. He drained it in a single gulp and started on another without offering any to Patty.
“Wow,” was all John Lynnford could say before he swallowed the rest of his second beer. She had just finished her story.” Jeeze, forgive my manners,” he said, eyeing the bottle and beginning to pull himself up from the chair.
“Nothing to forgive. I’m not thirsty.”
“Go on, then.”
“There’s nothing more to tell.”
“Where’s this McCracken fellow?”
“I don’t know, and I haven’t got the slightest idea how to find out.”
“They could have gotten to him, you know. You mighta come all this way for nothing.”
“No,” Patty said. “You don’t know McCracken.”
“You’re right about that, and I’m thankful for it.”
“You’d like him, John.”
Lynnford rolled his eyes. “That’s what they told me about the last city controller who jacked up my show’s tariff.”
“You and McCracken would get along just fine.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Mavericks always get along.”
“Interesting analysis.”
“You denying it?”
“Let’s stick to the subject at hand
, Patty.”
“Can I have that beer first?”
This time Lynnford used the cane to reach the refrigerator, he came back with a third bottle for himself as well.
“You need a glass?” he asked.
“Nope.”
“I always like a woman who drinks her beer straight up.”
“Men don’t have a monopoly on lips.” She took a hefty gulp of the beer. It was cold and wet and that was all that mattered. “You believe me now, don’t you?”
He sighed. “Everyone here has a story, Patty. When you’ve been with the circus long enough, you learn to tell the ones that are true from the ones that are made up.” He sipped his beer. “The difference is most of the stories I hear come from people who wanna stay here and hole up for a while. Not the case with you.”
“No.”
“So here you are, up the creek with a toothpick for a paddle, and it’s only a matter of time before somebody follows the current.”
“Meaning?…”
“Meaning the hounds chasing you probably won’t be paying customers—and having them nosing around the Orlando Orfei won’t do either of us any good.”
“I really don’t want to endanger anyone. If you want, I’ll—”
“Shut up, Patty. I said I wanted to help you, and I meant it. Lots of people who’ve moved to the midway’ve left skills behind. A few of those skills just might be what you need.”
“Part of their stories?”
“Almost surely.”
“Speaking of which,” Patty said, straightening up, “I haven’t heard yours yet.”
John started to raise the beer toward his lips, then stopped. “Not much to tell,” he said softly. “Not compared to you, anyway.”
“So bore me. I’m not going anywhere for a while.”
Lynnford looked out the window at the work going on outside. “You’re looking at my life, Patty. And it’s been my life for as long as I can remember. Some of the family was into the business end of circuses and carnivals, others like me were performers. Three cousins, my brother, and I formed a trapeze act when all of us were barely out of puberty. Became a big attraction, a lead one even. It lasted six years, until I was twenty-two—’bout fifteen years ago. My cousin forgot to catch me on a routine swing, and the net did the same. Shattered my leg on impact. Not a bone left whole to this day. More steel than marrow, Pat. Guess I shouldn’t complain, though. I’m alive, right?”