The Fugitive

by Fish, Robert L. ;

  “On your way!” he said in that same tense whisper, and then he was gone himself, his arm flinging the door shut behind him, and was running lightly up the driveway to the hotel entrance. Behind him the driver sat rigid, trying to encompass the frightening, grotesque suddenness of their wild ride. The man in white turned for one instant at the hotel doors and looked back; headlights appeared in the distance down the Avenida. The driver awoke from his coma; he changed gears with a clash and stamped on the gas.

  The receptionist was nodding over the counter; the clock above his slicked head pointed to two-thirty. The man in white took a deep breath and glanced about for the night porter; usually there were two on duty. But the receptionist was alone. It’s a good thing I slipped them, he thought; with just one here they would take me, witness or not. They wouldn’t wait any longer. The receptionist was looking at him a bit oddly, and he straightened his face and then realized that his clothing was wrinkled and dirty from his trip. He ran a hand through his hair and put a hand up to adjust his necktie.

  “Mr. William Drury, please.” He tried to sound apologetic. “I know it is very late, but it is quite important. I’m certain that Senhor Drury will not mind.”

  The receptionist stared at him in hesitation. Nowadays it was difficult to judge from clothing alone who people were, and this was a shame. He could remember the time when, with one glance, he could put people into their proper slot, but today this had all changed. Movie stars staying at the hotel wore tennis shoes and sweat shirts; diplomats competed with industrialists in the exoticism of their raiment. The man was still smiling at him, but the smile was subtly hardening. The receptionist started to run a finger hesitantly down the list of guests and then paused in sudden satisfaction, relieved to be saved the problem of disturbing a guest at this unreasonable hour.

  “I’m sorry, but Mr. Drury hasn’t arrived yet, sir.” He didn’t look sorry; he looked almost happy. “I just remembered. We have a reservation for him starting tomorrow. It was just called in.”

  “You are certain? I understood he would be here today.”

  “Positive, sir.” Now that the need for disturbing a guest at the unheard-of hour of two-thirty had disappeared, the receptionist was friendliness itself. “I took the call myself just a few minutes ago. Possibly his plane was delayed.…”

  The man in white managed to arrange his face into an expression neatly combining uncertainty with vague disappointment. “Very inconvenient,” he muttered audibly, and then looked at the receptionist with the air of one about to ask a favor but unsure as to the propriety of his request. “I wonder … would it be possible to leave a package for him? It’s quite important that he receives it as soon as possible … as soon as he arrives, as a matter of fact.”

  The receptionist nodded with professional briskness. He was in his element now. “Of course, sir. More than happy to oblige.” He glanced at the man in white once again, noting the crumpled suit and the need for a shave, weighing them against experience and against protocol. “Is it anything of value, sir?”

  The man in white smiled. “Just to Mr. Drury, I’m afraid.” He thought of the contents of the package and his smile broadened. The clerk thought he was being taken into a confidence and leaned forward, smiling with him. “Things of a … well, of a personal nature, I should say.”

  “Then there will be no problem, sir.” The clerk beamed; it would be wonderful if all things could be so easily resolved. “We always check the mail for an incoming guest, and I’ll leave it in the mail rack. If you will just write his name on it …” He produced a pen from a desk set on the polished counter with an extravagant flourish, almost as if he had made it appear by legerdemain. The man in white hesitated but a moment and then, withdrawing the package from his inner jacket pocket, printed the name on it quickly and handed it over. The receptionist slid it into the compartment marked “D” and smiled at the other.

  “Don’t worry,” he said reassuringly. “It will be delivered as soon as he registers.”

  “Thank you,” said the man in white and then looked about. “I wonder—is the entrance to the apartments still open at this hour? I left my car on the Avenida Copacabana, and rather than walk all the way around the block …”

  “Of course,” said the receptionist understandingly. “You go out by the pool, past the bar … but I’m sure you know the way, sir.”

  “I do. Thank you.” The man in white smiled, although the smile was strained, and walked out past the deserted bar. The pool, under the bright moonlight, had a slightly oily look, the water pulsing gently under the breeze from the adjacent ocean. The empty wrought-iron chairs and tables looked nude without their cushions and mats; his footsteps clattered loudly on the flagstones that bordered the tiled pool. He forced himself to step lightly and hurried to the apartments that formed a separate building at the far end of the pool area. The door opened to his touch; the porter within, busily washing the floor, glanced at him curiously, but he smiled a fixed smile and walked on through, pushing the heavy door to the street.

  The street was empty. He stayed in the shadows, listening for footsteps on the street, watching the shadows for breaks that might indicate an enemy loitering within reach. There was nothing! He sighed; he had done it! He had actually done it! In reaction his teeth suddenly began to chatter, and he started to hurry up the Avenida, keeping well into the dusky blackness of the store fronts, pulling close to the glass windows, using to every extent the hiding places afforded by the lowered awnings and the indented entrances, hugging the dripping cement walls. But he had not passed more than half a block of the concrete monuments that line the Avenida when he felt the gun pressed viciously into his side and heard the sharp, tense breathing in his ear.

  “Hello, Armando,” said the soft voice, still fighting to control the breathlessness. It was the very softness that frightened him the most, that brought back to him the danger of his position. “Easy now. Calma. We all know how big and how tough you are, but this is a gun. And you don’t like guns, do you, Armando? Just one more of your many errors.…” He felt a small hand slide up beneath his trousers leg and unsnap the knife holster strapped about his calf. For one brief moment he considered turning to strike, to fight; but the pressure of the inexorable gun against his side held him back. Until they had the package they wouldn’t kill. If he resisted, they might feel forced to. And also it was true: he hated and feared guns. Sweat began to blind his eyes. He held his hands half raised; his heart pounded dangerously. The chattering of his teeth increased, despite his distinct effort to bind them.

  “Afraid, Armando?” The soft voice jibed him, even deadlier for the relief of having finally cornered their man. “You weren’t afraid on the island, were you? You weren’t afraid of stealing when you thought you could get clear with it, were you?”

  He forced himself to clear his throat. “I didn’t—”

  “You didn’t what? You didn’t think we’d let you get away with it? Or do you mean you didn’t think we’d find you?” The twist of the gun in his ribs was almost contemptuous. “We caught that cab within four blocks. And he was happy enough to tell us where he left you. Why? Are you surprised? Did you really think you could get away with it? And coming through the apartments! I should have been very disappointed if you had not come through the apartments.”

  The car had swung around the corner and drew up beside them. Jorge turned to the driver, keeping the gun pressed against his prisoner. “Here’s our little friend,” he said to the driver. His relief was apparent in his voice. Luis merely grunted; the thought that they had nearly lost their quarry and his precious package was still pounding at his nerves. “In you go,” Jorge said suddenly, and rammed the gun viciously into the side of the tall man beside him.

  The car door swung open. The man in white hesitated but a moment before succumbing to the painful pressure. His mind was a chaos; he suddenly realized that it was very possible that he was going to die. The thought was sickening and he choked. First the
y would make him tell, and then they would kill him. And they would not do it swiftly. Not Jorge; he would enjoy the delay in the arrival of the black angel. He would hold him off with every means within his power, but always beckoning him closer.… The bile rose in his throat and he began to moan, unconscious of doing so.

  “Gávea,” Jorge said to Luis shortly. “The beach beyond the golf club.” He turned to the man in white. “Temptation, eh, Armando? Too rich for your blood, eh?” The voice was still soft and cold, but a tiny note of triumph began to bubble behind it. His hands felt the pockets of their prisoner, gently at first, and then with greater urgency. The note of triumph changed suddenly to one of icy demand. “Where is it?”

  Luis swung about, almost hysterical in his shock. “Where is it? Where is it? Do you mean he hasn’t got it?” His hands flew from the wheel, leaving the car at the mercy of inertia for a moment. With an effort he returned his attention to the road. “What do you mean, where is it? You said he’d never let go of it! You said—”

  “Just drive,” said his brother brutally. “Just shut up and drive!” He turned back to their prisoner. “All right, Armando! Where is it? What did you do with it? Who did you give it to?”

  Luis was seething. “I told you, Jorge! I said we should take him! All along I said we should take him! But you—”

  “I said shut up! All right, Armando! Who has it? Where is it?”

  The man in white seemed dazed. His hands were clenched tightly before him; his chest was rigid. He seemed to have trouble breathing. A subtle pain crept up his limbs; his clothes appeared to stand out from his big body as if they wished to avoid contact with his cold flesh.

  “All right,” the other said slowly, evenly. “You know you’ll tell us.” He drew in his breath and let it out shudderingly. “And you’ll die slowly, now. The night’s young; you’ll have hours to die, Armando. And hours to tell us.…”

  TWO

  Those who die by violence in the city of Rio de Janeiro must be prepared to be brought to the Instituto Medico-Legal in the Rua dos Invalidos, delivered either by overworked ambulances when they get around to it or by resentful taxi drivers, worried about additional spots on their stained upholstery, but more worried by the threats of the surly accompanying police guard. The sudden flush of anger and the quickly drawn knife in some dockside bar usually results in a visitor here; the desperate suicide, mixing some common form of germicide with Coca-Cola and throwing it down his throat, will eventually be discovered and brought here; the mangled body crushed against a wall by a truck or omnibus suddenly reeling out of control also finds its way here, usually wrapped in today’s newspapers.

  But if a victim’s papers are in order he is not detained overly long. A proper carteira de identidade, or a driver’s license, or even a work permit with photograph and thumbprint, albeit crushed, or torn, or stained with blood, and he is held only until the details of his final gambit are recorded. He is then free of the huge building and the probing incurious knives and the multiplicity of paper work and is turned over to any sad-eyed friend or weeping relative ready to receive him. Those who arrive here without identification, however, must be prepared to spend endless hours, or even days, awaiting official decision. True, they wait in an air-conditioned room, neatly laid out in a stainless-steel cabinet; but they wait.

  They do not know it, those who wait—for they are not inquisitive—but they are waiting for Captain José Da Silva.

  Captain José Da Silva, liaison officer between the Brazilian Police and Interpol, brought his red Jaguar sports car to a halt behind a steaming ambulance in the narrow courtyard of the Instituto Medico-Legal, slowly unfolded himself, and got out. He was a tall man of deceptive slenderness, in his late thirties, saturnine in appearance, with a swarthy pock-marked face and the thick mustache of a brigand. His forbidding appearance could be instantly lightened by a puckish smile when he was happy or amused; it could also become even more forbidding by the scowl that could appear with lightning speed when Captain Da Silva was annoyed, a fact both well known and highly respected by the Rio underworld.

  At the moment Captain Da Silva was scowling. Among the many duties attached to his office was the time-consuming one of personally inspecting those bodies that arrived at the Instituto lacking identity. The captain fully understood the necessity for this; several foreign criminals on the Interpol wanted list had been located in precisely this fashion and in precisely this Instituto. The scowl, therefore, was not for the job; it was for the hour. Captain Da Silva had a luncheon engagement with Wilson, his counterpart at the American Embassy, and if he were to spend too much time at the morgue, he was going to be late.

  He tramped up the familiar steps of the white-pillared building and swung open the heavy bronze door. The chill odor of formaldehyde and carbolic acid rose dankly from the lower levels of the building; he frowned down at his wrist watch once again and started down the broad marble stairs that led to the basement morgue. We worry more about them when they’re dead than when they’re alive, he thought grimly. When they’re alive we let them go to hell in their own merry way, but once they’re dead they become statistics, and in our society statistics are one of the things that rate exaggerated respect. These people filed down below are merely constant-inventory cards whose stock has run out to zero. He shook his head at the dismal thought and pushed through the stainless-steel door that led to the storage room.

  The odor was much stronger here; his nose wrinkled. The morgue attendant shuffled forward to meet him in the fluorescent glare of the room. He was a bright-eyed gnome, happy in his work; the competition of the living world, rumbling senselessly by in the cobbled streets overhead, only served to emphasize his joy in his exile. Da Silva wondered if the hunched figure ever left when his day was done, or if he quietly savored his triumph over the battles of life by slipping into one of the empty alcoves and closing his eyes until morning. The sharp eyes of the slippered attendant caught the odd look on Da Silva’s face; for an instant they faced each other in something approximating mutual understanding. We are both ghouls, the gnome’s bright eyes seemed to say, but at least I admit it.

  “Gávea Beach,” Da Silva said abruptly, turning away, breaking the spell.

  “Certainly, Captain.” The gnome nodded sardonically and started to hum. He shuffled to the shining row of cabinets that lined one tiled wall and drew one out. The shelf rasped in protest, sticking; the gnome frowned at this rebellion and pulled harder, dragging the pallet into the light. A heavy, bare arm slipped sinuously from beneath the stained sheet, swinging slowly down like a splotched stalk unfolding from some obscene jungle plant. The gnome grinned and stood back.

  Da Silva shrugged and picked up the arm; it came stiffly, reluctantly, as if attempting refusal. Sand clung to the large calloused palm and rasped under the broken fingernails. The upper muscle was flaccid in relaxation; a tattoo that covered it was wrinkled, the form and letters blurring. Da Silva pulled it straight; it read Mamae! Everyone has a mother, he thought; this one’s mother is lucky she can’t see her darling now. Below the elbow, on both sides of the arm and under the sheen of cold dampness that covered the flesh like sweat, were a series of small scars. They looked like midget mouths, puckered for weeping, and Da Silva studied them thoughtfully. Little nips, pinched in the flesh, but old and long healed. Burns? No … Injections? No. He frowned, dropping the arm, and pulled the sheet from the body.

  Behind him he could hear the delighted intake of breath from the attendant. Something will have to be done about this little monster, Da Silva thought; he’s been among the dead too long. He glanced down. The broad face on the pallet was calm in death, the dark eyes opened in bland indifference to the blinding light; and this appeared the more surprising because the torso was a mass of cruel cuts and vicious bruises. Despite himself Da Silva caught his breath. He had seen death in all its forms, but seldom as brutal as this. Someone had cut, not deeply to kill, but long shallow trenches now brimming with the dried crust of conge
aled blood. And then someone had beaten the tortured body unmercifully, breaking it, denying it even the faintest semblance of respectability to present to its Maker. And yet, despite the obvious signs of beating, or torture, of pain, the expression on the heavy face did not in any way reflect the anguish he must have suffered. Da Silva nodded thoughtfully and then studied the rest of the body.

  A pair of sand-clogged pants were all the corpse was wearing; below the waist no mark of knife or knout appeared. The bare feet, splayed out at right angles, were unmarked. Da Silva picked up the other arm and studied it; the same series of odd scars, long healed, covered the forearm. He folded the arms across the chest, but the one on top rolled free and slid down once again, refusing contact with the mutilated torso. The gnome watched, bright-eyed, as if pleased by the resistance offered by his charge.

  “Did he have any other clothes?”

  “Here.” The attendant shuffled to a drawer and returned with a bloody bundle. “They were brought in separately. They were found scattered around near him.”

  Da Silva spread them out and began to search them by running his hand into a jacket pocket; his fingers emerged from the other side. Both pockets and linings had been slashed, the collar torn. The shirt was useless. The boots had been cut to expose the inner sole.

  The gnome was enjoying Da Silva’s frown. “You won’t find anything, Captain,” he said softly. “The police—the regular police—they searched and found nothing.”

  “I’m sure,” Da Silva said coldly. He returned to the body and started going through the trouser pockets. The body rolled heavily as he pulled it over; sluggish trails of blood began to ooze from several of the deeper cuts. Da Silva grimaced, attempting to stand back a bit to avoid stains on his clothing. He finished his search of the back pockets and let the body slump back to its original position, the recalcitrant arm still swinging slightly. Almost as an afterthought he slipped his finger into a watch pocket, felt something, and, inserting a second finger, drew out a thin slip of paper.