It wasn’t a cushion, too big.
As my instep hit a solid obstacle, I heard a moan rise from the floor. I raised my hammer, then realized, in a flash of panic, what I was treading over. A futon. Of course. Carlstein wasn’t the sort to have a four-poster and a Posturepedic mattress.
I froze, expecting the moan to mature into something more substantial. But it faded and I felt the body beneath me squirm and stretch, then settle once more. I let the hammer hang loosely by my side. I wasn’t quite sure why I’d brought it with me.
My heart machine-gunned, like the clock that was ticking against me. But my body remained motionless.
At length, I knelt down. I could now hear short, rasping breaths, hardly audible above the sound of the ocean. Something didn’t add up. I listened harder. There were too many breaths. Some were squeaky, others clicked.
I reached out my hand and touched skin, a face, soft, hairless, but cold and clammy. I could feel the warmth of more than one body waft up from under the comforter.
I eased myself upright. Biting my lip as I felt the wound on my hip split and start to suppurate.
Backing away, I tried to get my bearings again before moving to the other side of the room. I tested each inch of the floor in front of me withthe toe of my shoe. No more bodies. I raised my watch, but couldn’t see the dial. I felt as if I’d been in this room for the whole of my life.
I found the door and moved through into a hallway, only a little lighter than the bedroom but light enough for me to read the time. I’d been in the bedroom for fifteen minutes.
There was an archway to my left, beyond which I could make out a large open space, possibly the living room. To my right, three more doors.
First door, another bathroom.
Second, another bedroom, curtains tied back and light enough to see a single bed—made up and empty.
Third door. This room was dark, the curtains drawn. Again the smell of incense and dope, but no bedroom aroma, emptier and somehow more businesslike. I hesitated and then turned on the light.
A study.
If the pictures on the wall at Baba Mama’s were colorful, then the gallery around this wall was a riot. Unsmiling faces stared out from knotted bodies in every conceivable convolution of union. Rapture was expressed through color rather than expression; golds, blues, reds danced in ecstasy around the actors and actresses in this finely drawn sex show and clothing dissolved into the background while key genital features were thrust, literally, to the fore: pink, pert, wanton.
My eyes were finally drawn away from the wall to a neat drawer-less desk, modern and out of place. A computer monitor and keyboard sat at its center, the disk drive on the floor beneath, alongside a laser printer. There was nothing else. No books, no papers, no filing, no nest of goodies for the curious intruder. Only an old shoebox next to the printer, its lid askew. I laid the hammer down beside it.
One tap of the space bar on the keyboard and a screensaver culled from the wall gallery burst into life.
Twenty-five minutes. Thirty-five remaining.
I took a look in the computer document folder. There was plenty there, and all of it password protected. There was only one word that wouldn’t be a wild guess.
I typed inGemini.
Invalid password. I looked at the wall for inspiration. Unless the password was cock in every orifice, then I was out of luck.
There was no point hanging around hoping that it would pop spontaneously into my mind.
MaybeGemini wasthe password, but not for the document folder.
I switched back to Carlstein’s Internet page, but didn’t attempt to go on line. I clicked on his mailbox and let the sent/saved e-mail menu drop like a flag. I tried to open the “saved” e-mail file.
Password protected. I typed inGemini.
Invalid password.
Lateral thinking, crossword thinking.
Havala.
Invalid password.
Badla.
Fuck, fuck, fuck.
I needed time, oceans of it; that and an armchair and a gin and tonic, maybe an ambient CD on in the background.
Huxtable.
You’ll never get it, dimwit head.
What about Towers of Silence? No: it would be one word, short, pithy.
Something connected with the Towers?
The name signaled from the Netherlands Antilles by Paula. The name that was a place.
Dakma.
Invalid password.
Give up.
Fuck you. There’s anhin Dakma; Paula spelled it out, remember?
Dakhma.
Ten e-mails. He didn’t keep much on the system; they were only a day or two old.
A glance at my watch, the leaking hourglass.
I opened e-mail number one. A header from someone called Ram Narian, aimed at a Durga Dass. The e-mail consisted almost entirely of numbers, a couple of pages of them. Just like the e-mails in the Huxtable file at Askari’s office.
I printed it out.
On to e-mail two. This time to a Jowar Singh. More numbers. More paper spewed from the laser printer.
Three was to a high-class purveyor of oriental erotica based in Munich. All words—some distinctly colorful—but no numbers.
The cursor seemed sluggish, scrolling in slow motion. The printer didn’t move at the speed of light, not even the speed of sound. Time flew, everything else just fucking dawdled.
I was opening e-mail eight when the door swung open and slammed against the wall.
Miranda Carlson stood there. She was even smaller than I’d remembered her from JJ’s funeral, her face now somehow dehumanized and unhealthy, staring at me as a sick or wounded animal might at something threatening. A tatty feral thing in a stained blue nightdress.
Then she ran at me, her nails clawing for my face.
She was shrieking.
It didn’t take much to get her to the ground; it was like pacifying a rag-doll. But she had drawn blood; I could feel a trickle of it down my cheek.
And she was still screaming.
I clamped my hand over her mouth until noise and movement subsided. I released my hand and her eyes shut and she started to sag.
Tucking her under my arm, I half-carried, half-dragged her down the hallway and into the living room. It was still dark outside, the panoramic window a mirror on a man struggling with a life-size doll.
I grappled with the locks on the front door and wrenched it toward me. My hand jarred badly as the door froze after an inch of movement.
I released the chain and stepped onto the stone veranda.
Paula was waiting for me.
“Take her to the car,” I said. “She’s sick.”
Paula ran up the steps and gently took Miranda from me.
Time was just about up.
I ran back into the house.
Grabbing the e-mails from the printer with one hand, I flung the mouse around with the other and returned the screen to the start-up mode. In a few minutes it would revert to the saver and then dive into standby sometime after that. It didn’t really matter, though. Carlsteinwould see soon enough that he was one window short and he was unlikely to blame it on the mosquitoes.
I turned around to find myself staring at a small child, a girl in a filthy pair of bunny rabbit pajamas.
“Mummy,” she whimpered.
“I’ll take you to her,” I said, with a gentleness that surprised me.
I picked her up and ran to the front door.
She started screaming. “Way, way, way.” Over and over.
“Yes, honey, we’re going away,” I soothed. “Right now. Away from this nasty place.”
As Paula ran up the steps to take the girl, I saw headlights scythe across the horizon.
“Want way,” the girl yelled as she struggled in Paula’s arms.
“I told you, honey, we’re going away.”
“For Christ’s sake, Fin,” Paula snapped. “Miranda has two kids, doesn’t she? There’s a boy as well. Is she s
aying the boy’s called Ray?”
“Shit. Ray, hon? Ray? You want Ray?”
She nodded sullenly.
As I ran back into the house, I could hear the car getting closer.
I crashed into the bedroom and flicked on the light and surveyed the clutter of clothes, bed linen, and a lot more besides. But no people, not even little people.
I heard a giggle and ran into the hallway.
A child’s giggle coming from Carlstein’s study.
Under the desk and with both hands in the shoebox was Ray.
I started to pull him away from the box.
“Cars, want cars,” he screamed.
Inside the box was a jumble of die-cast model automobiles and what looked like miniature houses and walls.
“Okay, okay,” I snapped and picked a car out for him. A red Ferrari, he’d like that.
The little boy struggled. “All of them, want all of them.”
I grabbed the side of the box and caught the boy in the crook of my elbow, jerking him off the ground and against my flaming hip.
“We go,” I said firmly, then reached down and picked up the hammer with my free hand.
I ran out of the house to see the grizzled figure of Carlstein at the rear door of the Ford with Paula shrinking back into the car, covering Miranda and the little girl.
Carlstein turned to me, his features buried by rough hair, his eyes burning under lush brows. “You’ve returned the black one to me. The last time I saw her was from behind a mirror. Before the night is out, shards from that mirror will carve epitaphs deep into every one of you.” The voice was without contour, only the merest trace of a German accent.
I saw Paula’s hand dart out from inside the car and slice across his face. Carlstein didn’t seem to notice and no blood appeared.
“Leave them alone,” I yelled. I made it to the car faster than I could have believed and with one arm around my grumbling bundle, I swung the hammer with my free hand and delivered a creditable blow to Carlstein’s shoulder.
He fell back, his face now contorted in surprise and pain.
Momentarily I didn’t know what to do next. Deliver another blow, or get out of there?
Paula’s hand reached out of the car. “Give the boy to me.”
I handed over the boy and the box to Paula and jerked the driver’s door open.
Carlstein had recovered a little and his hand was curled around the edge of the door as I started to close it. I looked into his face, the hairy weather-beaten terrain contradicting a row of unrealistically white teeth, now slightly bared. For a moment I expected him to say something,explainhimself. But he just stared at me.
I gave the handle a vicious jerk and felt it crunch Carlstein’s hand against the frame.
He screamed and fell back.
I started the engine and accelerated hard, feeling the back wheels slither and spin.
The track curved away from Carlstein’s house, ran along the end of mosquito lagoon, then seemed to loop up toward the big house. Where was the turnoff to the blacktop?
I looked behind me. Carlstein was back in the silver Toyota, a four-wheel drive, huge—lumbering but lithe, a motor home with warppower—and I could see it yaw as he floored the accelerator and started to close the gap.
I nearly missed it. A hairpin right onto another track leading around the lagoon and back to the main road.
Swinging the wheel, I hit a rut. As the car lurched, a productive retch sounded from the backseat.
“Bad news, counselor . . .” Paula sounded surprisingly calm.
“It’s okay, I can smell it,” I said.
Ahead I could see the blacktop. I speeded up.
I was able to snatch glimpses of the Toyota, across the lagoon, bouncing along the track, raising a cloud of cinder and stones. That monster could eat stones and shit them out the back.
The junction between track and blacktop was marked by an uneven ridge of asphalt that we hit at thirty. It wasn’t fast but we all felt it. The front wheels ground against their arches as we landed and I fought to keep the car on the road. The shingle beach lay four feet below the embankment on the far side.
The relief at finding myself facing forward and in possession of four still-inflated tires was soon overshadowed by the flash of silver in my rearview mirror.
Ahead of us, on our left, was the Seawanaka. The party was over. Guests clustered around the entrance as people and limos spilled lazily onto the road. I sounded my horn and flashed my lights and swept past them.
I took another look in the mirror. No bodies in the road, no overturned cars. Only the headlights of a silver Toyota, fifty feet behind me.
The ride through the winding lane between the Yacht Club and the causeway was a blur of swerves, as I fought my way around two or three slow-moving limos filled with drunken teenagers. In this environment Carlstein and I were pretty evenly matched, but sooner or later, the relative pedigrees of our automobiles would decide the matter.
Headlights filled the rearview mirror; they could only be a few feet away. They flashed: from full beam, to dipped. On off, on off. Meaningless, threatening Morse Code.
Suddenly our car shuddered violently as the Toyota acceleratedand rammed us. My head hit the steering wheel, and I heard the cell phone fly from the passenger seat and fall heavily against the bulkhead of the floor. Pitiful cries came from the backseat.
We emerged from the cover of trees and onto the causeway toward the sentry post.
I’d forgotten Officer Miller-not-so-Lite. I really had. I almost laughed out loud. Then again, what would I have done differently, if Ihadremembered him? Would I have given more thought as to whether it would be better to give myself up to him or have him rescue us from the bouncing headlights?
Maybe I would have thought about it more, but the answer would have remained a resolute “no.”
I slowed up as we approached the booth, figuring that Carlstein wouldn’t pull anything in the vicinity of Bayville’s finest. In the rearview mirror, the glare was less intense, hanging back a little, not hugging what was left of my rear fender, and he had dipped his headlights, now a thoughtful late-night motorist rather than the silver angel of death.
The barrier was open and Miller was chatting to the driver of a small truck.Courtly Catering Corp.was emblazoned in gold paint on its side.
As I crawled through the narrow gap between the truck and the railing, Miller waved at me.
I took a swift look at my backseat: Paula with one arm around a slumped Miranda, the other slung over a lumpy coat—presumably the children underneath. Paula had tried to account for everything, only Miranda’s blue nightdress seemed incongruous. But there was no time to improvize further.
I waved back at Miller, fixed a grin on my face, and wound down the window.
“You got anything for me?” Miller asked cheerily.
“Sorry, officer. The empties were empty. Not a drop.”
He pointed at the backseat. “Looks like you picked up some stragglers, though.”
Miller laughed and said something I couldn’t hear to the man in the truck. Then he waved me through. “You drive safely, y’hear.”
The Toyota edged forward but couldn’t get through the gap and had to wait for Courtly Catering Corp. to finish its conference with Miller. But I knew it wouldn’t be long before I’d have silver on my tail again.
I accelerated. The plan was to get through Bayville and, assuming the Toyota wasn’t right behind me as we hit the sharp left at the end of the shorefront, to peel off immediately into a side road, or even a driveway, and let Carlstein roar by. At least, that was how they did it in the movies.
“He still with us?” Paula had raised herself and turned to look out of the rear window. “Shit,” she said, answering her own question. “A way off and a small truck between him and us. But he’s still there.”
The road was clear. The beach was deserted. In a few short hours the place would be packed with vacationers.
My father had
said that when he retired, he was going to live near a beach, the one in Corfu. The one in the photo.
My plans didn’t stretch much beyond the turn at the end of Bayville.
The hands around my neck were killer hands.
Nails dug into the skin around my Adam’s apple, the bony fingers pressed deep. Even before I realized I was struggling for oxygen, I could feel my eyes bulge.
And she swung me from side to side. My wig started to come loose, obscuring my view of the road.
“You bastard. You lousy shit.” Miranda’s words were carried on hot, vomit-stained breath; burning spittle rained on my cheek.
As she swung me, I gripped the steering wheel with my burnt right hand and tried to release myself from Miranda’s grip with my left. The car zigzagged crazily, slicing into the shoulder and throwing up a shower of pebbles before tearing across the road to perform the same trick on the other side.
“You bastard,”Miranda screamed.
I was going to lose control completely in a matter of seconds. If I hit the beach, the car would roll or stop dead.
Paula had started to get hold of Miranda and the grip loosenedfor a second, long enough for me to grab a breath, clear wig hair out of my eyes, before the vice was reapplied.
To my left was a wide gap in the shingle leading into an empty parking lot, an acre or three of level asphalt.
I turned the wheel and braked, feeling the car list dangerously. I accelerated into the parking lot.
In the rearview mirror, I saw the flash of gold as Courtly Catering Corp. carried on into Bayville. Then the silver of the Toyota appeared and swerved into the parking lot behind me.
“Let go of him, you fool,” Paula screamed. “We want to help you.”
“You crazy fucks have killed me.”
I heard the sound of knuckle meeting jaw at high velocity and the grip around my throat loosened and fell away.
There were several options. Stop; then meet and greet with Carlstein. The several acres of parking lot were deserted. Officer Miller was a mile away, hanging on to the shirttails of the Seawanaka hoedown.
I could leave the parking lot and continue with the chase. Brother. I wasn’t cut out for this.
Or . . .
On one side of the lot there was a pedestrian tunnel that ran under the road and led to the beach. It was low, but wide, though drifts of sand had clogged its edges.
Walls of Silence Page 36