I leaned in at the driver’s window desperately.
“Can you speak English?” I cried.
He poked his round, mustachioed face at me. “Jes. A leetle.”
“Can you get me to Crosby Street in fifteen minutes?”
His eyes widened.
“For twenty bucks,” I said.
His eyes widened some more. “I weel try, my freng.”
I jumped in the back. There were twenty-three minutes left.
It took him twenty. I don’t know how he did it. Down Fifth awhile. Over to Park. Around Grand Central. On down into the jumbled streets and squares below Twenty-third. He never sped up much, he never slowed down. I think he hit every light. I think he won every tug-of-war for street space with the other cabs. In the Village, where the roads narrowed to single lanes crushed between cafés, I think he invented empty byroads, then took us down them.
They were twenty excruciating minutes, all the same. Helpless, I sat in the back, my eyes shooting from my watch to the street signs. I told myself that Geoffrey would not kill her at the stroke of noon. He would phone in first, try to reach Wexler. He would find out something was wrong. Maybe he would abandon plan A and move to another. Maybe a lot of things.
I lit a cigarette, took a drag. It felt fine. I leaned back with my head against the seat. I thought of Wexler’s brow caving in around the black spot in the center. I thought of his body rocking on the floor. I thought I had never tasted a better cigarette than this. I did not know anything could taste so good.
I sat up with a start. I had lost track of myself. Drifted off in my own thoughts. For a second I felt panic rising in me as I wondered what time it was. I looked at my watch. Seventeen of. Thirty seconds had passed since I’d looked last. It had seemed like an hour.
And the driver kept to his course.
We hit the spot with three whole minutes to spare. Three whole minutes for Chandler to keep living. The driver left me off on the corner of Crosby and Spring. I handed my last thirty dollars across the seat to him.
“You’re a genius,” I said, and jumped out of the car.
Even at noon, Crosby Street looked dark. The heavy walls of the old loft buildings leaned close to each other from either side of the warped cobbled lane. The air, when you looked down the road, seemed overhung with shadows. There was no one in sight. No cars. No signs of life at all.
The address Geoffrey had given me belonged to a loft building that sat right on the corner. Six stories of concrete. A heavy, rounded cornice rimmed the flat top. Rows of pilasters marked every floor.
On the side facing Spring, a rusting fire escape zigzagged down from between some of the windows. On Crosby Street, there were only the windows. Huge windows. Great blank screens staring out on either side. They were pivot-hung, the kind that swivel on a pivot in the center. They were the same kind as the ones in Colt’s room. The ones through which Geoffrey had vanished after nearly killing me. The blank stare of those windows made the building look abandoned.
I jogged a few steps down Crosby until I reached the building’s front door. It was a heavy wooden door with black paint chipping off it. There was a For Rent plaque screwed into the wall beside it. I didn’t recognize the realtor’s name, but it was a good guess the building belonged to Wexler.
I pushed through the door into a gray, shabby vestibule. My feet scraped over the curling floor tiles. There were mailboxes on one wall. There were no names on any of them. There were buzzer buttons in a line beside a speaker. The buttons were unmarked also, but Geoffrey had told me to hit the one for the third floor.
Somewhere, outside, I heard a church bell ringing. I reached for the button. Chandler started to scream.
I heard her only dimly. A thin cry from inside, beyond the door. I jammed my finger against the button. I hit it again and again. I heard the screaming stop.
I looked at my watch. It was twelve on the money.
“Jesus!” I hissed to myself. “You asshole! Jesus!”
The speaker crackled at my left shoulder. Geoffrey’s voice followed.
“Mr. Wells,” he said. “Good of you to come.”
The buzzer sounded. I pushed the door open. I let it swing shut again. I turned and sprinted out of the vestibule onto the street.
I had figured from the beginning that he meant to kill us both. He had let Chandler see his face, after all. And though Wexler’s motive for getting rid of us vanished when I got wise to him and wrote my story, Geoffrey still had a good enough reason to want the two of us out of the way.
I did not plan to lumber up the stairs while he waited for me. I did not plan to have him meet me at the front door.
I hurried around back to Spring Street instead. I stood under the building’s fire escape. The ladder was in the up position. It dangled about two feet above my head. I jumped. I felt a muscle in my armpit tear. I grabbed hold of the ladder. For a second I dangled in the air. I felt a muscle in my shoulder tear. Then the ladder came loose and rattled down.
Wincing with pain, I climbed up to the first landing. I went quietly from there. I ran up the stairs on the balls of my feet. All the same, the metal steps rattled below me. My own breathing seemed to roar. I went by the first-floor window. It was about a foot from the stairs. I could peek in at the huge expanse of loft behind the glass. I glimpsed the door of it. It was on the opposite wall, where I thought it would be. That’s where I hoped Geoffrey was standing now. Peering out into the hall. Waiting.
I kept climbing. Up past the rows of pilasters. Up to the second-story window. Here I noticed that the window was shut. For a second, I was afraid that Geoffrey’s would be locked. But I did not think it would be. I think he had a penchant for open windows, for potential avenues of escape. I think it was the first thing they taught him at Murder-Man U.
And on to the third floor. I kept my back bent. I kept my head low. I came up onto the third-floor landing. I was on my knees. I leaned out over the railing to look inside.
Geoffrey was there. He was at the door across the long expanse of the loft. The door was open. He was leaning out into the hall. I could only see his back. He was where I wanted him.
I reached for the window. I touched it. The huge pane swung. The glass swung in on my side, out on the other. It swung in silence. A beautiful silence. The figure at the door didn’t turn. A small opening appeared between the glass and the wall.
I stepped over the edge of the fire escape right onto the windowsill. I grabbed hold of the window’s jamb and hoisted my other leg around. I slid into the loft that smoothly, that easily. My feet came down on the floor with hardly a sound.
Now I was standing in the long, empty room. I could smell the fresh paint on the white walls, see the patina of paint dust covering the floor. Networks of exposed piping ran overhead. They’d been painted lavender by way of decoration.
Geoffrey’s back was to me still. He was maybe fifteen running steps away.
I took one of those steps before he turned, smiling, and leveled the .22 at me.
He did not look the same as when we’d met in Colt’s hotel. I don’t suppose I did either. That meeting had taken its toll on both of us. I could feel it in me. I could see it in him. His nose was an ugly, scabby mess. His brow was crisscrossed with scars. The dark lines that made him seem older than his twenty-odd years were still there. But some of them were darker still. Some of them were jagged from where I’d ripped at them with my fingers.
His eyes, too, were different now. When he’d killed Colt, they had been cold, impassive. Now, as he got ready to kill me, they were like the gray ash covering a red-hot coal. He was smoldering with rage.
He smiled. It was a cold, black smile, like a gash cut in granite. He closed the door quietly. I stood frozen beside the partly open window.
“Mr. Wells,” Geoffrey said. That light, swift sound. “That was very close to intelligent.”
I shrugged. “I’m a brainy guy. Where is she?”
He puffed some air through his
lips by way of laughing. “This is not the thing that should worry you most right now, I think.”
“Listen, my friend,” I said. I pointed at him. I thought it would make me look tough. “Wexler’s dead.”
His face went impassive. Only his eyes stayed hot, alive.
“The cops shot him fifteen minutes ago. That’ll be on the radio now, if you don’t believe me. Everything else’ll be in the Star tomorrow.”
The fire of his anger had spread now from his eyes. I watched it. It made him quiver like a plucked string. When he spoke next, his voice had lost its lightness. It had become the rasp of a knife cutting bone.
“Why … Why did you … pursue this?”
“Same reason you kill without thinking, pal. It’s what I’m trained for.” He stared at me blankly. He did not seem to understand what I was saying. I said: “The point is: it’s over. The cops have got your friend William. He strikes me as the nervous type. He’s probably talking right now. Probably telling them all about you. If I were you, my friend, I’d head for the hills. At least let the woman go, you don’t …”
In the wildness of his fury, Geoffrey was looking around him. He looked at the floor, at the ceiling. He seemed to be searching heaven and hell for help. Finally he looked down at the gun in his hand.
He looked up at me. “The woman?” he said. “You were too late to save the woman. You were fifteen seconds too late.’’ He smiled again. He giggled. Hee hee hee. A high-pitched, childish sound.
I felt something inside me turn to dust.
“You fuck,” I said. It was barely audible.
He giggled some more. Hee hee hee. He looked at my face and fought to control himself. He frowned in mock sympathy. “Oh, so grim, Mr. Wells. Do you hurt a little? A little bit like I hurt? I am so sorry. So sorry. I can hardly bear myself. Here … shoot me.”
He tossed the gun onto the floor between us.
I did not move. I stared at the gun. It lay in the white paint dust. I looked up. Geoffrey gestured to it with his left hand.
“Go ahead,” he said simply. With his right hand, he drew a small black cylinder out of his pocket. There was a click. I saw the silver switchblade flick out into the open. I guess he was out of ceremonial knives. This would do, though. It gleamed in the light. “I have hoped for this since our meeting in the hotel,” he said. “I had hoped for the chance to do this unpleasant thing to you that I know. Now … now that you have Mr. Wexler’s blood on your hands … now it will be all the sweeter. Go ahead, Mr. Wells. Pick up the gun.”
I held my breath. I could not stop staring at that gun. It was smack between us. I’d never killed anyone before. I don’t even know much about handling guns. But it didn’t matter. I wanted my hands on that revolver. I wanted my finger on the trigger. I wanted the barrel trained on his skull. I wanted this guy. I wanted to kill him.
I jumped forward. It was a feint. I went with the top half of my body, but brought my right foot forward and braced myself, pulled up short. That was all it took. Geoffrey sailed into the air, across the room. He landed with his feet astride the pistol, the knife poised, ready to cut my throat. If I had really gone for it, I wouldn’t have had a chance.
I straightened. Geoffrey grinned. He came forward. I didn’t even have time to go out the window. Not the way he moved. I stood there. I waited.
He came forward another step. He slashed the air in front of him with his knife. He raised his eyebrows as if to ask me: How do you like it? He flipped the knife up in the air. It twirled end over end. He caught it cleanly by the handle. He giggled. If he took another step, he’d have me.
He took another step.
I grabbed the edge of the window and slung it at him. It came whistling around on its pivot like a revolving wall. For a single frozen instant, Geoffrey seemed to flash and waver behind the glass. He was still grinning when the thing hit him.
The heavy sill struck him just below the waist. His upper body snapped forward. His head smashed through the glass, and it shattered all around him. There was a cascade of sprinkling shards amid a pink spray of blood. I came wheeling back around and clubbed him with my fist on the side of the head.
That was the only time he screamed. The blow sent his face into the jagged shards still protruding from the frame. The scream became a gurgling sound as his face seemed to dissolve in a gout of blood.
Geoffrey sagged. He dangled over the bottom of the frame, dripping blood. Slowly he began to slide backward. His arms slid over the frame, pulling off pieces of glass as they went. He cleared it, finally. He fell to the floor. He lay there on his back. There was a single gleam of white in his bloody face where one of his eyes stared up at the ceiling. There was a round black hole in the red blood too. It was his mouth, still drawing breath. His chest rose and fell heavily.
Other than that, he was motionless.
“Chandler,” I said.
I went through the loft, shouting her name. I shouted again and again. My voice grew more frantic with every second.
After what seemed a very long time, she called back to me. It was a weary, forlorn sound, full of tears. I followed it down a little hall. There was a bathroom there. She was lying on the floor, handcuffed to the pipe beneath the sink.
He’d cut her. The front of her dress was torn open. It was soggy with blood. He’d cut her just under the arm, just where the swell of her breast began. He’d cut her deep. Her head slumped on her shoulder. She was fading from the loss of blood and from the pain.
I went back in the big room. Geoffrey was still lying there, gasping like a fish. There was a phone on the floor. I called the cops. Then I dug into Geoffrey’s pockets until I found his keys.
When I set Chandler free, she started to cry. Her mouth opened and closed once or twice as she looked at me. Her cheeks were streaked with mascara. Her nose ran. She laid her hands together on her outstretched legs. She rubbed her wrists together. She cried. I put my arm around her shoulder. She shrugged me off. I tried again. She gave a short, shrieking sound and pulled free.
“Leave me alone,” she said, crying.
I sat with her till the police showed up.
It rained the day Lester Paul left the country. It was January then. It was cold in that damp way that eats into your bones. The rain fell steadily. You could not see it fall. It was just an opaque sheet lowered from a gray sky, a sky that seemed like it had never been any color but gray.
I drove out to Kennedy in the rain. I parked and walked through the rain to the main departures terminal. Paul had called me at the Star at noon, not three hours before. He’d told me to meet him here quickly if I wanted to say good-bye.
I stood by the long window in the departures building. I smoked a cigarette and watched the planes taxi down the runway. I watched them gather speed, bolt into the air, and fly away.
I felt a hand on my shoulder. I turned and saw a young soldier standing before me. He was a pimply-faced kid, from the Midwest it looked like. His blond hair was cut short on the side. On top it was covered by an olive garrison cap.
It took me a moment before I recognized him. Then I laughed and shook my head.
“Ssh,” he said.
“What am I supposed to do?” I said. “Salute?”
He smiled. “Disguise may not be dignified, but for me, it’s the only way to travel.” He even spoke in a flat midwestern twang.
I laughed again, nodded. He popped one of his perfumed cigarettes between his lips, bent toward the match I offered him. We walked together slowly beside the window.
“I have not had a chance to congratulate you on your fine stories,” he said. “You made quite a sensation there for a day or so.”
“Thanks,” I said. It was true enough. For a day or so, even the cops had been reading us for information. I was the only one who had the whole story on Wexler and Sentu.
“I liked the way you wrote about her especially,” Paul went on. “If I did not know better, I would have thought you had actually met her.”
> We walked for a few moments without speaking. Beyond the pane of glass, the airplanes taxied, lifted, flew into the gray sky.
“It was easy,” I said finally.
And that was also true. It had been easy to write about Eleanora. For a couple of hours, sitting there at my Olympia, I had felt she was with me. I had seen her cool white figure, her golden hair piled high, her sleek neck showing. I had seen her passing among the refugees, offering them solace, working for their escape. I had seen her the way she was when she refused to leave Mangrela with the children. I had seen her with her chin uptilted in defiance. I had seen her eyes alight and alive. I had imagined them looking into mine.
More than anything, I had seen her as the woman who wrote that letter. That letter Mrs. Colt had shown me.
If this intimacy with death is what we have to pay for our intimacy with living and each other, then I wanted to tell you tonight, my darling, that your smallest kindness to me was worth it, that your whispered word was worth it, that the briefest sight of you was worth it as nothing else could be….
And when you made love to her, she was like a statue of white marble suddenly suffused with life. I had seen her that way, too.
It had been easy to write about her, all right. It had been hard to stop.
“And the charming Miss Burke,” Paul said. I looked up out of the memory, startled. “I trust she’s well.”
“Fine, fine,” I said. “As far as I know, anyway.”
“Ah.”
I shrugged. “She got a little tired of the company I keep.”
“My condolences.”
I shrugged again.
I had not heard from her since she had gone home. I had called her once. When she answered, I told her who it was. She began to speak, then hesitated. A long silence followed. Finally she hung up quietly. I had not called again.
“I trust,” said Lester Paul, “that your acquaintance with someone so … unsavory as myself didn’t contribute to your problems. With Miss Burke, I mean.” He gave me his half-mocking smile. It looked strangely cosmopolitan on the young army recruit.
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