“With our guns?”
“Just so, with our guns. Now, we must examine the ground and see where is the best place.”
The Music Lover finished tying up Edie Wooten with adhesive tape. The Marneys were tied up similarly and locked in the cellar, as was the dog, who had been perfectly friendly throughout. It was going very well. The summer storm had been a good break, because it would have been difficult to handle Marlene, Tranh, and the little girl all at once, and now they were off the island with no way to return in time to stop him. He certainly didn’t want to hurt anyone without it being absolutely necessary, especially not Marlene, who had been kind to poor dumb Wolfe.
He left Edie lying on the couch and went to get the cello. Reverently, he caressed the miraculous finish, and reflected that the instrument was much like himself. Stradivarius had taken mute spruce and sycamore and willow, and with varnish and glue had made it into something divine, just as the dull material of Jack Wolfe, a hick security guard, a hopeless loser, had been transmogrified by the power of Edie Wooten’s playing into the Music Lover, the perfect audience, soon to be the eternal and only audience.
He lifted the cello and placed it carefully into its case, and put the bow into its velvet clips. Now, should he take the cello down to the boat first, or the musician first and then her instrument? Perhaps he should ask Edie? No, it was important to show decision. He went over to her and said in his music lover voice, so much deeper and more cultured than Wolfe’s voice, the voice of an announcer on WQXR, “I’m going to put your cello on the boat now. I’ll be right back.”
“Please don’t hurt me,” she whimpered.
That was puzzling. His brow wrinkled. How could she not understand? She had been telling him to do this in everything she played. “Of course I’m not going to hurt you, silly! I love you. You just rest here for a minute. Be right back.”
He hoisted the cello and slung Marlon Dane’s MP5 on his free shoulder. The cello was lighter than he had expected. It seemed, indeed, lighter than the machine gun. He walked out the front door, swung right and down the garden path to the boathouse.
“You see, little sister, there is the path he must follow to the boathouse,” explained Tranh. They were squatting in the wood line to the west of the house. “It leads through the rose garden and then sinks between two banks and then rises and curves around before it goes down to the boathouse. You see how I have wired and taped your mother’s pistol to the tree there. It is what we call a fixed gun. It is very useful when you have few troops. We have very few troops, only you and me, but if we are clever, we will win. Now, this wire will fire the gun when you pull it. Take it in your hand. You will crawl under the bush. Do it now! Now lift your head over the stone wall. Can you see the path?”
“Yes. A little of it.”
“And that white rose bush at the end. Can you see that too?”
“Yes.”
“Good. This is very important, so listen. When Wolfe passes that bush, not before, you duck your head behind the wall, all the way down to the ground, and you pull your wire twice, then wait one breath, then twice more. I think that when he hears the bullets pass him, he will drop down behind that low bank for shelter, and fire back at the flash and sound of our gun. I think also that he has a machine gun, so you will hear a very loud banging, and you will also hear the bullets passing overhead. They will make a sharp noise like firecrackers, and pieces of wood and leaves may fall down on you. Will you be frightened?”
“No,” said Lucy; then, after a pause, “A little bit, perhaps.”
“Yes, that is normal, but you will still do what is required.”
“Where will you be?” she asked.
“I will wait at the rear of the house. When I hear your shot, I will come up behind him and capture him.”
That was the plan. Tranh thought it a good one. He really had no doubt that Lucy would do what she should, but as always, the most unpredictable part was the behavior of the enemy. When fired on, Wolfe had four choices. He could go to the ground at the convenient sunken path Tranh had left for him, in which case Tranh would come up behind him and stick a gun in his back. Or he could run back to the house, and Tranh would be between him and the house. Or he could run to the boathouse, in which case he would be trapped, with nowhere to go.
As he took up his position he considered the fourth option and the critical angles of the situation. It was near, perhaps too near, but the child was well hidden, and Wolfe would be confused and deafened by his own firing. And there was nothing else to be done. He waited, squatting, watching.
A door slammed. Heavy steps on the gravel path. Wolfe emerged from around the corner of the house, carrying a cello case, and started down the rose garden path. Tranh slipped along the side of the house in a crouching lope, concealed by the rose bushes.
Two shots sounded. Tranh felt a momentary pleasure. An excellent child, though a girl! Then a burst of three from the MP5, a heavy tread, another burst of three. Bad. Wolfe was doing just what Tranh would have done in the same situation. He was charging the ambushing gun, firing controlled bursts. Tranh took off in pursuit.
The Music Lover had to admit that Wolfe had some useful skills. As soon as the shots were fired, he did the right thing, just as in Vietnam. Run toward the ambush, is what the experienced troops used to say, and although it was scary to do it, the guys who did had a better chance than the ones who dropped where they were, because the V.C. always had mortars or heavy weapons zeroed on the most obvious cover.
Whoever was firing from the wood line shot again, high. The Music Lover saw the flash against the rain-soaked leaves. He fired another burst and kept moving. Now he was in the woods. He crouched behind the tree and waited for his ears to stop ringing from his own firing. He listened, but heard nothing but the rush of wind and the patter of the rain through the woods, and his beating heart.
The plan was still in effect, though. He would take down whoever it was and go on as before. Crouching, he moved through the bushes. There it was, a glint of metal, the muzzle of a semi-automatic pistol.
The Music Lover fired a long burst at where the man holding the gun would be. To his surprise, the gun stayed where it was. He moved forward. He came close enough to see that the pistol had been taped into the crotch of a maple sapling. A wire was wrapped around the trigger. He traced it straight back to another tree, where it took a turn and went off to the left and down. He tugged it. It went slack. The Music Lover saw that the wire disappeared into some bushes ten feet away. He raised his weapon.
From behind him a voice said, “Put down your weapon! Surrender!”
The Music Lover whirled around. He saw the Viet-cong standing there, a thin, wet Vietnamese man in the black clothes they all wore, with his pistol held straight out. The Music Lover tried to bring the machine gun up, but before it had moved an inch, the first of three bullets struck him in the chest.
He fell back onto the wet forest floor. It was all a dream, he thought. I never got out of that ambush. Twelve years, the crummy security jobs, the transforming music, the woman, the plan, cutting that guy’s throat, I dreamed it all. I’m still here in Cu Chi. He thought, how totally fucking far out! Wait’ll I tell the guys! He filled his lungs to yell for the medic, and died.
It was eight the next morning before Marlene could talk sensibly. She came up out of the dream resentfully, reluctant to leave the glittering space opera whose wonderful denizens seemed able to answer the deepest questions that afflicted her soul. And unlike a regular dream, this one stayed in her memory, each detail sharp as crystal, although she could no longer understand what they meant.
“Camel spent off the water,” she said to Tranh. “It’s not less than the sixth, more than the vision. Belanthey is the absolute key.”
“Marie-Helene,” said Tranh, “can you understand me? Do you know where you are?”
The French was somehow able to penetrate through the last seductive vapors of the drug. She blinked, sighed, saw the man, knew h
im, knew herself, recognized the room she lay in as her bedroom at Wooten’s. Her mouth felt all at once unbearably dry. She asked for water, drank.
“I was out of action for a while, wasn’t I?”
“Yes, for nearly an entire day. I believe it was Robinson that put some drug in your lemonade.”
A frightened look. “Lucy …?”
“She is well.”
Then memory flooded back. “My God! Wolfe, Edie, what …?”
Then Tranh had to explain what had happened, editing around Lucy’s part in it, which he did not feel Marlene was yet up to absorbing. There would, apparently, be no trouble with the authorities, who had already come and gone.
“The Wootens apparently can do no wrong in this locality,” he said. “The police arrived, they were polite, they removed the corpse. Miss Wooten explains Wolfe was simply an insane stranger, shot by a security guard. It is fortunate that she speaks excellent French, or it would have been impossible for me to convey the nuances of the necessary fabrication. Wolfe’s association with your company was not mentioned, the press was not notified. So it ends.”
Marlene felt her nose burn and her eyes overflow. “Poor Wolfe! I still can’t believe it. He was … there was something so …” But she could not explain, not to Tranh, hardly to herself, what the dead man meant to her. It was tied in with her brother, and the fucking war, and the men she hired and the men she hurt, all the sweet, slow violent lost American boys.
She stopped crying and asked, “How is Edie? I should go down and see her.”
She made to get out of bed, but Tranh gently prevented her. “Mlle. Wooten is fine, and it seems that she is not to be disturbed in the mornings for any cause. Listen!”
The cello’s music drifted up from below, sonorous and sad.
“I spoke with her last night at some length. A strange story. Would you like to hear it?”
She would. Tranh said, “He spoke to her about her music. Wolfe. He said he knew that she was speaking to him in a way that no one else could understand. Apparently, he was quite knowledgeable about the instrument and its repertoire. She was amazed despite her terror. A sensitive man. It was at root a kind of jealousy, as if by playing to an audience she was betraying him, like a woman who shares her body with many men, and so he had decided to kidnap her so that she would play for him alone. The things he had taken from her, the recordings, these were no longer sufficient to slake his passion.” And more in this vein.
They talked for some time, remembering Wolfe as a comrade, a stranger, a puzzle beyond their comprehension. “He was a soldier too,” said Tranh musingly. “A good one, an infantryman. In Vietnam.”
“How do you know? Did you see his record?”
“I saw him move. I remembered.”
A number of things now came together in Marlene’s mind: Tranh’s isolation from the normally cohesive Vietnamese community, certain things he had let drop, his peculiar skills, the Russian pistol Lucy had seen …
“You weren’t one of our Vietnamese, were you?”
After a moment he shrugged, smiled faintly, and answered, “No. But Tranh Vinh was. He died on the ocean, during our voyage. There were twelve of us on a fourteen-foot sailboat. I took his papers.”
“Who are you, then?”
“No one, to tell the truth. A casualty of the war, perhaps like Wolfe, or your brother. Yes, I know about him. He comes to the office occasionally when you are not there. I give him small sums. We talk about the war.”
“Does he know?”
“No. Only you know. And, you know, sometimes it is very hard for me to recall that there was once such a person as Pham Vinh Truong, who studied in Paris, who taught mathematics in a lyceé in Saigon, who had a wife and a daughter, who joined, reluctantly, the National Liberation Front, who was a major in the 615th Battalion of what you call the Viet-cong, whose family was killed in a bombing raid, who, after the war, was deemed insufficiently devoted to the state, and was imprisoned and reeducated, who escaped by sea, and who …” He stopped and let out a long sigh. “I suppose it was Lucy that led me to this latest chapter in what seems even to me to be an absurd life. She reminds me so much of Nguyen. Not her appearance, of course, but in spirit, her air. I will deeply regret losing her acquaintance.”
“Why should you lose her acquaintance?” Marlene asked.
Tranh seemed surprised at the question. “Because, I assumed, that now that you know my history, you will not wish to employ me. But I hope that you will not feel obliged to inform the authorities of my-”
“Don’t be absurd!” said Marlene, waving her hand dismissively. “I can’t possibly do without you. For the business with long division alone I owe you lifetime employment. Besides, the war is over.”
It is not, thought Tranh, but he said only, “Thank you, Marie-Helene.”
By nine, Marlene had showered, scrubbed most of the foul taste from her mouth, dressed, went down to the kitchen, heard Mrs. Marney’s version of the story (clearly the most exciting thing that had happened on Wooten Island since the Montauk Indian raid in 1687), fended off the substantial breakfast offered, hugged her daughter, heard her version of the story, was appalled and grateful, and sat down at the kitchen table with toast, coffee, and a cigarette.
Mrs. Marney had a little color TV in the kitchen, turned to some morning news show from the city, with the volume turned down to a barely audible murmur lest practice be disturbed. On it a well-groomed woman was interviewing a distinguished-looking older man. Marlene paid it little attention. She still did not feel herself. The colors of the morning were still too bright, the sounds-the sighing of the cello from the music room, the sound of the birds outside the kitchen window-were still too poignant, chance remarks still resonated with covert meaning. Acid, she thought. The fuckhead had slipped her a really immense dose, probably mixed with more exotic indoles.
The TV switched back to an anchorman. He was saying something about a riot. Tape of a night scene, the city, uptown, a gang of black youths, flames from a shop, an overturned car. The anchorman came back, something about the rain suppressing what could have been an even worse riot in the wake of the Rohbling verdict. Marlene’s attention focused on the faint voice. A shot of the distinguished-looking man who had just been interviewed, speaking to reporters in a lobby of the Criminal Courts Building. Lionel T. Waley in white letters across the screen. Marlene felt a chill, one that increased as she saw her own husband shying from a mob of reporters. She got up and ran to the phone.
Karp was in his bed, playing with his sons. He had his knees up under the cover, and Zik and Zak were having a hilarious time climbing up this mount and rolling down it to Karp’s chest, where they were rewarded with a loud raspberry on the tummy. Karp was having a hilarious time too. He couldn’t think of anything he wanted to do more, at this point or into the indefinite future. The phone rang, for the thirtieth time that morning, and as before, he let the machine pick it up.
“Butch!” called the tinny voice. “Pick up! It’s me.”
Karp reached a long arm over and lifted the receiver.
“Marlene! How are you this fine morning? Want to talk to your sons? Boys, it’s Mommy.”
“I saw the TV. What happened?”
“What happened? Mr. Rohbling was declared not guilty by reason of insanity by a jury of his peers, is what happened. How are you, dear?”
“We’re fine. I’m coming home.”
“No kidding? What about your client?”
“That’s finished. The guy’s dead.”
“Well, that’ll teach him not to mess with my wife,” said Karp.
“Are you all right?” asked Marlene nervously. She might be doped up, but there was something about her husband’s tone she did not like.
“Never better,” said Karp.
“You’re not depressed?”
“I was depressed, but now I’m fine. I am also no longer the Homicide Bureau chief.”
“Jack fired you? The bastard!”
“Not at all. The fact is, I bet the farm on this one, and I got whipped, fair and square. He warned me he would have to cream my butt if we lost, and he did, with his usual Irish charm. I am going to be the Special Assistant to the District Attorney for Special Projects.”
“What the hell is that?”
“Nothing. A job with no responsibilities and a low, low profile. With a paycheck, however.”
“Jesus, Butch! What will you do?”
“I don’t know. I think I’ll spend some time hanging around here with the kids. This motherhood racket is a piece of cake. I don’t know why women complain all the time. Yeah, maybe I’ll just hang loose and do my toenails, and read Goodnight Moon and let you shoot all the bad guys. By the way, did you whack this latest guy personally, or did that fall to one of your minions?”
“A minion. Butch, are you really okay? You sound, I don’t know, kind of wacky.”
Karp considered this seriously for a moment, while he licked, nuzzled, and otherwise amused his children. Then he said, “I guess, what it is, when you stretch the rubber band far enough and then let it snap back, it tends to get a little tangled. I made a big mistake, and I should pay the freight. To tell the absolute truth, I feel like somebody just lifted a Mosler safe off my chest. I mean, it’s been years since I haven’t been worrying about something, fighting something, stressed out to the max. You know?”
“Yeah, I do,” she said, with feeling.
“And Roland and Guma took me out last night to commiserate, and Roland was the one who got hammered, because even though he’s such an ambitious bastard, he still felt bad about the trial.”
“And he’ll pick up the bureau.”
“I expect so. God knows he’s lusted after it long enough. And he’ll do a good job. I’ll tell you something, Marlene, when the foreman stood up there-he was that NYU professor I put in there, the alternate-and read the verdict, I felt this incredible sense of relief. Do you think I set all this up? Insisting on running this trial. Just to get a rest?”
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