by Garbo Norman
“Are you sure?” Burke repeated.
“I’m sure. I’m sure. He didn’t say any names.”
“Okay,” said Burke. “Now listen to me. To begin with, those two men weren’t cops. They were a couple of hard-nosed, less-than-blessed intelligence agents, and they had absolutely no right to come in here, pass themselves off as police officers, ransack your apartment, and abuse you. Which doesn’t mean you can just shoot them at will. But at least morally and legally, you’re in a hell of a lot better shape than if you had shot a couple of honest-to-God cops acting in the line of duty.”
David shook his head. “You don’t understand. I shot those two guys because I wanted to, because I hated their guts. I didn’t care what/they were.” He stared bleakly at the bodies on the floor. “And you know something else? I’m not sorry, even now.”
You will be, thought Burke, but said nothing.
“Why were they after you?” David asked. “I knew what they said was crap, but what did they really want you for?”
For a long moment Burke stared silently at the younger man. From old habit, the thought of killing the kid did briefly cross his mind. It sickened him; once you shared something like this, it was out of control. The kid had saved his life. There were the two bodies. They changed everything — David’s future as well as his own. Which meant that from this moment on, the kid was inextricably involved. But he was not about to kill him.
He gave few specifics, but even in vague outline it came across as a chillingly gothic tale, although this was precisely the world he had functioned and survived in all his working life, now hoping he had accumulated enough knowledge and skill to help him survive retirement. Still, this accident-damaged young man, acting out of pure emotion, had just saved both their lives. And how did you go about making rational judgments about that?
When Burke finished, David sat staring into the remains of his brandy. “Jesus,” he said.
“How do you feel?”
“I’m not sure yet. Kind of numb, I guess.”
“We’ve got a long, hard night ahead. Are you up to it?”
David turned and forced himself to look at the two bodies. It was a sort of litmus test. He swallowed once, then nodded. “Just tell me what to do.”
Once they were into it and functioning, it was better for them both. Burke could almost feel some of the old gears grinding into place. David kept his car garaged just a few blocks away, which would at least simplify moving the bodies. But there were details to be taken care of first and they were not pleasant. They stripped the bodies and Burke searched their clothing. He found David’s pictures. There was nothing else of importance. Nor was there anything on the men to tell him who they were. Then he and David scrubbed all traces of blood from the floor. Sometime during the next few days, the entire apartment might be gone over by experts. Finally, they crammed the bodies into two old footlockers that David had used for storage.
Shortly after eleven they used the elevator to get the footlockers down into the basement. David brought his car around to the service entrance and they loaded up. A few people were .passing on the street, but no one paid any particular attention to them. Burke glanced at David. There was a controlled, calm expression on his face that looked as though it might disintegrate at any second.
“Better let me drive,” Burke said.
They rode for almost two hours, until they reached the beginnings of the Catskills. There was a low moon and the night was warm for November, with strands of mist hanging over the roads and fields. A dirt track ran off into the woods, and it was here that they scraped into the soft earth, buried the bodies, and covered the grave with leaves and rocks. Then leaving the two unblessed souls to fend for themselves, they drove back towards New York with the empty footlockers.
It was after four when they crossed the city line. David was driving now. Sprawled beside him, Burke felt drained and saddened because of what he had inadvertantly gotten this decent, already afflicted kid into.
“You’re an incredible young man,” he said “Sure. I’m terrific. They slapped me around a little back there and I vomited on the rug.”
“You also saved both our lives.”
“You mean those two apes really would have killed us?”
“It was their job to find and kill me. And since you would have been a witness, they’d have had to kill you.”
David drove on in silence.
“How have things been going for you?”
“Stinking.”
“Why?”
“You kidding? With this face? I’m lucky the city doesn’t pay to keep me off the streets.”
“It’s really not that bad.”
“Ah, come on. I’ve been living with it for almost a year now. I don’t need any of that bullshit.”
Burke said nothing.
“The thing is, nobody can really look at me, Not my parents, not women, not anybody. When they try, their eyes just kind of slide off my face and ease around it.” David laughed coldly. “So I make it easy on them and keep to myself. The only one who can actually put up with me is this little hooker I found on Eighth Avenue. I figured with someone like her, it’s strictly a cash deal. Her name is Dolores. She’s nineteen years old and looks like sixteen. Imagine. I couldn’t even get it up with her the first time because she reminded me of my kid sister. But I got over that.” He glanced at Burke as he drove. “Anyway, you asked, so I’m telling you. Though I shouldn’t bitch. At least I got enough insurance dough out of the accident so I don’t have to worry about money. And I’m writing. It’s probably not much good, but I’m finally getting stuff down on paper.” David grinned shyly, self-consciously. “And that’s the story of the short, terrible life of David Tomschin, Jew-boy killer.”
“You did okay tonight.”
David stared thoughtfully at the road ahead. “I think tonight’s the first time since my accident that I’ve forgotten about my face for a few hours. But Jesus, what a way to have to do it.”
Chapter 4
Pamela Bailey left her office at 2:10 P.M. for a late lunch and walked up Madison Avenue towards Fifty-second Street. She did not see Burke, watching her from a tan Plymouth parked diagonally across from where she worked. Burke started the car and drove slowly after her, the crawling midtown traffic allowing him to keep pace. He studied the people on the sidewalk, but saw nothing to disturb him. At up to a hundred yards, he could spot a tail as easily as he could pick out a bad hairpiece, and assumed it was just too soon for them to have missed and replaced the two agents David had shot. Still, he took nothing for granted. He had found that for survival, fear usually offered you a lot more protection than assurance.
Pamela was waiting for the traffic signal to change at 54th Street and Park, when he drew up to the curb and stopped beside her. “Pamela!” he called.
It took her a few seconds to bend, peer into the car, and recognize him as Eric Cole. “Hey! Look who’s here!”
He reached over and opened the door for her. “Please get in, quickly.”
Pamela was sitting beside Burke and they were starting across Park Avenue only an instant after the light had turned green and the driver behind had blown his horn.
“You really don’t have to kidnap, me,” she said. “All you have to do is smile nicely and ask.”
Burke grinned. He was sure Pamela had not been followed, but his eyes kept watching the rearview mirror anyway. “You look great,” he said. “Twenty-five years old and beautiful.”
“Look who’s talking! That nose of yours is an absolute masterpiece.”
“We were lucky. We had a good man. They don’t come any better than Obidiah.” Burke paused. “You heard about him?”
“It was awful. Animals are loose in the city.”
“Has anyone been questioning you?”
“What do you mean?”
Burke turned onto Third Avenue and headed uptown to avoid a traffic tie-up ahead. “The police?” he said. “Detectives? Anyone like that?”
>
“Why should they want to question me?” Then seeing where they were heading, “Listen, if we’re really leaving town I’d like to pick up a toothbrush.”
“I need about an hour. It’s important.”
“You mean this wasn’t just a happy accident?”
“I’ve been parked across from your office for more than two hours.”
She sighed. “I have this terrible feeling you’re not lusting for my body.”
Burke drove up the East River Drive, then across the Triborough Bridge and north on .the Major Deegan Expressway. He talked as he drove, finding the telling easier this time. Spilling the, seed, was what Tony Kreuger had called it, believing that the more people there were who knew about you in this work, the shorter your life expectancy. But Burke felt he did owe these people at least a warning and a chance to make their own decisions. Though how much good any of it would finally do them, he did not know.
Pamela sat shaking her head. “Poor David. What a thing for the kid to have to go through. How is he?”
“He’s okay. How are you?”
“Why me?”
“Haven’t you been listening?”
“You said those two men were dead.”
“Yes, but there’ll be others. Also, when they called in to report the existence of those pictures, they apparently never said who had them. Which means it could be any one of you four. And when they fail to make their next scheduled contact, a replacement team will be trying to find out which one of you it is.”
“I don’t understand. Can’t we just call the police?”
“I’m afraid it wouldn’t do much good. Washington can easily smother any local interference in national security matters. And right now there are apparently those who consider me an outright threat to our national security.”
“But this is America, for God’s sake!”
“So it is. And that’s how they’re trying to keep it.”
She was indignant. “But aren’t you even angry?”
“If I thought it would help, I’d happily be angry.”
“How can you be so controlled?”
“You learn.”
Burke exited at Van Cortlandt and parked near the lake. “None of us are really villains,” he said. “Not even those two we buried last night. We’ve just had to learn history more thoroughly than people who do other things. We’ve learned that virtue doesn’t matter to history and that crimes go unpunished, but that every mistake by people in government is paid for in blood. So we do our best to avoid mistakes. When we can’t avoid them, we try to wipe out any signs they ever existed. Unfortunately, I’m currently labelled as one of those signs.”
She sat absolutely still, staring at a crow in the top branches of a naked tree. “I don’t understand much of that But I don’t suppose that really matters, does it?”
Burke said nothing.
“So what am I supposed to do now?” she asked.
“It’s hard for me to tell you that.”
“Why?”
“I can’t ask you to take risks because of me.”
“Why not?”
He laughed. “You do ask the damnedest questions.”
“Well, you do come up with the damnedest situations. Just tell me my options and let me decide about the risks.”
“It’s not that simple.”
“Just tell me.”
Burke took a moment He was unsure of himself, of the situation, and of this woman. But he still trusted his instincts, and these favored what she had so far shown him of herself.
“There are three things you can do,” he said at last. “You can just disappear for a long vacation until this is settled one way or another…”
“What does settled mean?” she cut in.
“They identify and eliminate me, or I identify and eliminate them, or him, or whatever.”
“Lovely,” she said and made a face. “Go on,”
“Do you still have the picture of me that David sent you with the others?”
She was staring up at the crow again. It had now been joined by another on the branch below. “Of course. I keep it beside my bed. With the Bible.”
“Well, then you can wait and give it to whoever appears and asks for it. That is, if they come at all. They may go to Lilly or Hank first and get the pictures from one of them. I haven’t spoken with either of them yet, so I don’t know how they’re going to react to all of this. Naturally, that would be the simplest and safest way for you to keep from getting involved.”
“Naturally,” she said. “All right. Now that you’ve gotten all the bull out of the way, let’s hear what you really want me to do.”
“You’re a very funny lady.”
“Sure. I’m a panic. But since I’m obviously not going to get laid this afternoon, I may as well reach for another kind of truth. So tell me my third option.”
“I can’t really be sure of that until I find out what their next moves are going to be. But to begin with, it would mean doing nothing any different than you’re doing now. Just go on leading your usual day to day life. Except that I’d like you to burn my picture.”
“Burn that beautiful thing? Then what am I supposed to use for my fantasies?”
Burke grinned and handed her the snapshot that he had composed and printed in David’s darkroom early that morning. “You can try using this. The face belongs to an uncle of David’s who died a few years ago, but the gorgeous body is still mine. If they should ever press you for my picture, it could save you a lot of trouble if you give them this.”
Pamela studied the photograph. “I like your face better. But it’s a cute idea. Do you think they’ll go for it?”
“It might buy me some time.”
“Time for what?”
“To find out who it is who considers me enough of a threat to want me dead. Because that’s about the only chance I’m ever going to have to walk around like a human being again.”
They sat without speaking.
The two crows suddenly flew away from the tree, cawing loudly, and Pamela watched them until they were out of sight. “I don’t know why,” she said, “but I’ve always felt terribly sorry, for crows. There’s something so lonely and sad about them.. Maybe it’s that mournful black they have to wear, or that poor, awful sound they make.” She looked at Burke. “Do you have any’ particular feeling about crows?”
“Just that they’re the only birds my father ever said it was okay for me to shoot with my air rifle.”
“You see? The poor things are pariahs, absolutely friendless. Everyone is after them.”
Burke half smiled. “You mean like me?”
She thought about it. Far off and faint now, the crows could Still be heard.
“Well,” she said at last. “Maybe a little.”
“It’s all right I don’t mind you feeling sorry for me.”
“If I do feel that way,” she said, picking her way carefully, “it’s not for you alone.” . “Who else?”
She shrugged. “Probably for myself. And for David. And for Lilly and Hank, too. When I think of us all back there on New Year’s Eve, hoping and expecting so much, yet going through those fake confessionals, pouring ashes on our heads, and making believe we didn’t really hope and expect…” She hesitated. “It takes a long time and a lot of practice to become a human being. It’s obscene, that having finally done so, you find you no longer seem to be of any value to other human beings,” She was about to say something more, but changed her mind. She was breathing heavily, not perhaps from any one emotion but from a whole mixture. She tried to smile, but it never came off.
“Have you seen Lilly or Hank at all?” he asked.
“I saw Lilly in a show, off-Broadway, about six months ago, and I stopped by her dressing room. It was a terrible mob scene. We barely said hello. She seemed to be doing great. She had a good part in a hit show. But there was a kind of wild look to her. I don’t know. Maybe she was just stoned.” Absently, Pamela’s fingers polished the r
ough fabric of Burke’s sleeve. “And Hank?” she said. “Hank called and we saw each other a few times. But it was so sad. He couldn’t find work and we never really had that much to say to one another. I think he kind of resented me finally. You know… my job and the big salary and all. I suppose he found me a threat or something. Anyway, he stopped calling after awhile. I called him a few times, but he always made some excuse. And that was pretty much it.”
Burke drove her back to midtown Manhattan at about four o’clock. They did not talk much on the return trip. Once, she looked at him and smiled. “My poor crow,” she said, and leaned over and kissed his cheek.
“Caw … caw …” said Burke.
Chapter 5
The Orange Lantern was an Eighth Avenue massage parlor with a flickering neon sign over the entrance describing it as an oriental health spa for men. Burke walked past it twice, once from each direction, before he finally climbed the wooden stairs to the second floor reception area and presented himself to a motherly-looking Chinese woman, sitting at a desk.
Ten minutes later he lay naked on a rubbing table in a private cubicle, while a not-so-motherly-looking Chinese girl, in pale blue bra and panties, ran practiced hands over his body.
It was the first time he had ever been in such a place and he thought, curiously, that what it really made him feel like, was the keyboard of an old, out-of-tune piano. It also made him feel vaguely decadent. Being an essentially spartan type, it went against his usual concept of things merely to lie there while another person labored to bring him pleasure. Still, it was all quite pleasant and happily erotic, and since he was there and part of it, he relaxed like a king lion in the sun and let those ten, prepaid fingers romp. The girl had a gift, and he was off on the nicest dream of oriental palaces with their scents and spices, of slant-eyed, nubile maidens breathing rosy pictures into his brain.
“Lovely,” he said when both he and she were finished. “Absolutely lovely.”
Being one who took pride in her work, she beamed.
“You’re really much too much,” he told her. “There should be some kind of law against you.”