Damn it. She glowered at Vásquez but knew she had no choice. She’d kiss the grand and a half goodbye; she had to. Because five grand waited for her in Berlin. Held by a certain German Commie who rolled a mighty fine cigarette.
“And there is something I help you with, yes?” Vásquez, seeing her hesitation, had let a smile back onto his face. “Get you into the city, through all the barricades, to your rendezvous?”
The flying game had taught her that what you couldn’t fix you shouldn’t sweat. She shrugged. “You got a bath in this joint, Captain? And something better than piss to drink? A steak?”
“Food, yes. Maybe some cognac?” He stepped close—too close. Inhaled so extravagantly his moustache twitched. “And why do you need a bath? When you smell like a woman to me. A real woman.”
Aw, Christ defend me, she thought. Another one.
There’d been a Captain Vásquez at almost every stop she’d made. They all assumed that because she was a woman in a man’s world, she must be an easy time. Lecherous and venal, at least they were never blessed with great intelligence, these captains. “That would be fun,” she drawled, as his face came nearer, “if my new husband, Jocco, hadn’t vowed to cut the balls off any man who got…even as close as you are now. Fweet!”
She made the cutting noise loudly, in his face. He winced, and stepped back.
His expression turned sullen. “Very well. I get you some food. You may sleep here.”
“Thanks. I’ll sleep in my bird. Which you will make sure is filled with gas, right? Tonight.”
After a moment, he nodded. She caught him a last time at the door. “And the bath?”
He didn’t even turn around. “There’s a cold tap outside. No towel. ¡Qué lástima!”
He left but returned after a minute to throw hard salami and even harder bread toward her. The vinegar wine softened the bread a little—and gave her stomach cramps. She went to the tap, used a silk neckerchief to wash the worst of the grime from her face and neck, then bummed a smoke from a sentry. She climbed into the Lockheed’s now-empty hold, took out her pistol and put it within reach. Using her bag for a pillow, she lay down, lit up. Coughed. The cigarette was black tobacco, filterless. “You owe me a big night in Berlin, Zomack,” she muttered. She smoked it to the nub, stubbed it out—and fell asleep surprisingly fast.
* * *
Vásquez woke her at half past dawn with more rock bread and the kind of coffee she could stand a spoon in. He also handed her a business card.
“Professor Ernst Schlaben,” she read. The name had a lot of letters after it, all done in gold copperplate. On the back of the card was a brief note dated July 21 that stated he would be outside the Banco Mundial, in the Puerta del Sol, every morning from ten till twelve.
Roxy used the edge of the card to dislodge a crumb from her teeth. July 21. One week ago. Considering she’d flown from the heart of Africa, she was pretty much on time. “Can you get me into the city this morning?” she asked.
Vásquez nodded. He was obviously not speaking to her. She couldn’t care less.
Though four hours later, at the tenth checkpoint they’d had to negotiate, she considered giving him a kiss. She’d have struggled on her own. Each barricade was manned by a different fist-pumping militia with a fighting name—the Lynxes of the Republic, the Furies—all in the berets and workers’ blue overalls that had become the uniform of revolution. “¡No pasarán!” they’d chanted at every barrier, which was ironic, because each did let them pass after studying their papers for an age—though most clearly couldn’t read—and eyeing her lasciviously. Perhaps they didn’t see her shade of blonde too often in Madrid.
A church bell began to toll twelve, when Vásquez nudged his battered Hispano-Suiza into the Puerta del Sol, one of Madrid’s biggest plazas and crammed with more of the fervent revolutionaries they’d met along the way. Roxy spotted the Banco Mundial straightaway, a horde before it. Anxious—she really didn’t want to have to spend another night in Spain—she scanned the crowd for something different. And spotted it: grey in a sea of blue, a suit amid the overalls. It had detached from the mob, and was moving away.
“Wait here,” she commanded, and stepped out, sliding and shoving her way through the crowd. She caught him just as he went around a corner. “Professor Schlaben?”
The man turned. He was on the smaller side too, skinny, with the kind of balding dome of a head that intellectuals often had. Pale-blue eyes glimmered behind wire frame glasses. “Fräulein Loewen?” he inquired.
He pronounced her name with a vee. Lewven. Roxy still spoke reasonable German—she’d learned more than how to drink schnapps at her Geneva finishing school—and replied in his language. “That is me. I am glad to meet you.”
“And I you.” He held out a hand and she shook it. “I was beginning to despair. I did not want to spend much more time in this city.” He looked around as another revolutionary chant began in a single hoarse female voice, then was rapidly taken up by scores of others. “It is becoming dangerous.”
He’d switched to English, so she did too. “Then let’s get a move on.” She took an elbow and turned him toward the bank, though she didn’t squeeze very hard for fear of snapping him.
At the front door Vásquez joined them. Introductions were swiftly made. “You have the papers I gave you?” On Roxy’s nod the captain continued, “Do not try to return to Getafe until the middle of the night. The militias will be sleepy then and perhaps drunk. Buy some brandy to pass to them to speed your way. You have money?”
Roxy shrugged. Her bribe fund was down to twenty bucks. But twenty bucks could probably buy a lot of the rotgut that passed for booze in Spain.
“Your plane will be ready,” the captain said. “Buena suerte.” He turned away, then turned back. “Oh, a warning. In their enthusiasm to liberate all the anarchists and other political prisoners from jail, the revolutionaries also freed every murderer, rapist and thief.”
“Well, ain’t that just dandy.”
“Yes.”
Vásquez gave a small bow, then pushed his way into the crowd. Roxy followed him with her eyes until she lost him. Was that a warning he’d just given her…or a threat?
She faced Schlaben, who was swallowing repeatedly. Well, if he was nervous, she couldn’t be. “Shall we?” she said, taking his arm again, and leading him into the marble portico of the Banco Mundial.
FOUR
DEATH IN THE AFTERNOON
AT THE TOP OF THE STAIRCASE INSIDE THE CHURCH OF SAN Francisco el Grande in Madrid, Roxy’s stomach let out another long growl. It was the loudest yet and this time the three men—Ernst Schlaben on her left, the bishop of Valladolid and his assistant on her right—couldn’t ignore it.
“You would like, maybe, some food, Señorita Loewen?”
“Monsignor…” Roxy hesitated. Was that the correct form of address? Unlike her German, her Spanish didn’t go much beyond the ordering of mescal in Guadalajara. Fortunately, the bishop of Valladolid understood some English. “What I’d really like is to see what I came for. Once my, uh, colleague here—” she gestured to Schlaben “—authenticates it, we can conclude our business. Let’s eat after. Hell, after I’ll buy you dinner.”
She could, too. She had the funds. Because she’d collected two banker’s drafts at the Banco Mundial. Heeding Vásquez’s warning about the freed thieves, rapists and murderers—oh, wasn’t she just loving Madrid!—she’d placed in her bra’s left cup the one for five thousand dollars, which was to pay for the painting. The second draft, the surprise one, was for two hundred dollars. Bless Jocco, he’d probably guessed that there might be a hitch with the gun payoff so she’d need some cash. She’d turned that one into the dollars and pesetas that filled her right cup. Uncertain how bribery worked here, what denominations she’d need to get her and the painting back to Getafe—Schlaben had a truck waiting outside, so that was transport paid for—she’d gotten a variety of notes. They weren’t especially comfortable.
T
he bishop coloured. Was it her bra adjustments? Her mild profanity? Or was he stalling? She figured the last. Because from the moment he and his assistant—a younger priest as defrocked as his master, both wearing collarless pale-blue shirts, black trousers, braces—had let them through the side door of the church, something had felt wrong.
She was about to voice this, profanely, no doubt, when Schlaben spoke.
“We would like to eat. Thank you,” he said.
She glared at him, raising an eyebrow. He continued softly to her in German, which they’d established the priests didn’t speak, “They are obviously waiting for something, maybe for the item itself. And since we wait—” he paused to push his wire frame glasses back up his nose, his face as moist and slick as hers in the heat “—well, I am hungry. Are you not, Fräulein?”
“Jesus Christ,” she muttered. “I may as well bloody well eat.”
“After you, señorita.”
She led them down the stairs. A door opened onto a cellar. It contained a table, four chairs and a tall mahogany cupboard with ornate rococo hinges and a doorknob of rolled iron. The room was furnace hot.
The bishop nodded to his assistant, who went to the cupboard, pulled some items out and placed them on the table: metal plates, more stale bread and three cans of sardines.
“What a feast,” Roxy said, tearing a hunk off the bread, chewing it and watching hungrily as the priest opened each of the cans. She took one as soon as he set it down, as did the others, tipped the contents onto her plate and lifted a fork.
“Wait, señorita,” the bishop said.
“Grace?”
“Chocolate sauce,” he replied. He reached into his jacket and produced a bottle, poured a large dollop on his sardines, then passed the sauce to Schlaben, who followed suit.
“You guys pregnant?” she asked. Still, when the German offered her the bottle, she shrugged, accepted it and tipped.
It was strangely good. Or maybe she was just that hungry. The young priest put an unlabelled bottle on the table, and three glasses. The bishop poured, raised his glass. “Madre España,” he intoned, and shot.
Roxy and the German sipped, and her eyes watered.
“Cognac,” the bishop said, smiling, reaching again for the bottle.
“In your dreams,” she replied, and coughed.
The eating took no time. They sat in silence then, listening to distant shouts, chants, the occasional gunshot. She’d seen a dozen bodies on the drive in. Old scores were being settled in a country slipping fast into civil war.
She sipped slowly. The liquor was starting to grow on her. But when a church bell sounded nearby and tolled two, she slapped the table. “Look, Your Bishop-ness—”
The man pointed to the stairs. “Viene.”
“He comes,” translated Schlaben.
“That much I got.” Roxy turned to the door. Whoever entered through it would be carrying a wooden panel wrapped in cloth. He would lay it on the table; she’d let the expert do his thing. If he nodded, she’d reach into her bra for the draft. The younger priest might blush. But if she winked, then maybe he’d carry the Bruegel up to the street and load it into Schlaben’s truck.
Roxy wasn’t expecting anyone particular to walk through the cellar door. But the man who did was certainly not who she was expecting. Because she knew him instantly, and the sight of him made the cheap brandy rise like acid in her throat.
She didn’t have a greeting for him. Maybe it was the taste of fishy chocolate in her mouth. Maybe it was the burn of the booze. Or maybe it was because the man who stood before her now, more than any other man in the world, was responsible for the death of her father.
He had a greeting for her, though: “Hello, Roxy,” said Sydney Munroe.
She stood abruptly. She was aware of the others getting up too, which annoyed her, in case they had taken her rising as a signal that this was someone who should be shown respect, as opposed to a cockroach that should be squashed underfoot if you could find a big enough boot.
It was strange seeing him there, in the flesh. She’d seen him plenty in dreams, mostly on a New York street, with something that she would never look at crushed on tram tracks between them. Someone.
In her dreams he had always looked big. In real life he was enormous. Maybe six-six. Maybe four hundred pounds. When she drew herself up to her full five-five, her nose felt about even with his belt buckle.
“Señor Munroe. Bienvenido.” The bishop went around the table and held out a hand. Munroe took it; or rather, his hand swallowed the other man’s. Even as he shook it, his eyes never left Roxy’s.
“May I introduce—” began the bishop.
“Oh, it’s all right, Your Eminence. Miss Loewen and I are old friends.”
His voice hadn’t changed. Still at variance with his bulk. She’d heard it before, at the family home; that day in front of the 21 Club. High-pitched, for a man of his bulk. “He’s no friend of mine.” Roxy sat, before the sudden weakness in her knees took her down anyway. “Why the hell’s he here?”
She knew the answer; part of it, anyway. Because she didn’t believe in coincidence. Luck, sure, every pilot did; you needed luck when the cloud ceiling was one hundred feet and you were an engine cough away from gliding to a strip lost somewhere below. She never flew anywhere without her mother’s rabbit’s foot. No. It wasn’t coincidence that Sydney Munroe was standing there.
It was betrayal.
“Why am I here? A lucky break, you might say.” He smiled. “Staying in the only decent hotel still open in Madrid while I did some business, I spent an evening drinking with Professor Schlaben. Under the influence of a few martinis, he let slip his purpose here. I was intrigued—but even more so when he told me who he was meeting.” His grin widened. “So I approached His Eminence—” he nodded at the bishop “—and asked him to let me know when this rendezvous would take place.” He stepped to the table and sat, the chair creaking loudly. “I am an art collector, Miss Loewen. I have a fine collection at home in Chicago. Indeed, many of my pieces you might recognize. A Braque. A Cézanne. A rather fine blue period Picasso. I picked them up cheaply at the bankruptcy proceedings against your father. Happily for me, he had rather more skill in choosing art than he did in running a business.” He leaned forward, smiled. “You should visit me next time you’re stateside, and get reacquainted.”
Roxy swallowed, forcing the hot anger down her throat. “May I remind you, Eminence, that I am who you’re dealing with here. Me only. We have a deal.” She glared at the bishop. “So can we get on with this?”
But the churchman was still staring at Munroe, like a rat hypnotized by a snake. And though Roxy still didn’t look at Munroe, there was nothing she could do about that voice.
“Before we begin, I am curious about something else, Roxy. I always hoped we’d catch up one day so I could ask you.” Munroe pulled out a handkerchief, blotted his huge, sweating face. “You see, I am the chairman of the group your father bilked of their money.” He paused, as if expecting some objection. When she said nothing, he continued, “We have twice-yearly meetings to decide if the time is yet right to liquidate your father’s few remaining assets. We got so little back in ’29 and ’30, after the crash.” He flapped the handkerchief, put it away. “Every meeting it always seemed that one or two were absent. Then the same were absent again—and a few more besides. Small debtees, it is true. Craftsmen, in the main. Saddle makers. Jewellers. Plane mechanics.” He cleared his throat. “I made some inquiries. And do you know what I discovered?” He looked around, as if throwing his question open.
Roxy glanced at the young priest, at Schlaben. Both just stared at Munroe, silent.
“I discovered that these small debtees had been repaid. Not a dime on the dollar either. Their full debt. Sometimes with interest. So here’s what I want to know, Roxy.” He faced her again. “Why them? Why them and not me? Never even one red cent for me?”
She looked at him fully now, as the others turned to her.
She studied his face, the eyes near lost in all that flesh, the gleam and the glisten and the sheer bulk of him. She considered all she could say, all the things she’d said to him in her dreams. Because if he knew a little about her, she knew a whole helluva lot about him. She had made it her business to know. How he used his money for hurt. Siting mines in countries where the majority were starving, and paying only enough to keep the workers alive. Building labs to develop the kind of weapons she’d seen used in Ethiopia to flay men, burn women and children. Opening museums next to Hoovervilles and swimming pools on the shores of lakes that his factories polluted.
Jocco could have given that speech. For her it was simpler than that. So she said it simply: “Because you drove my father to his death, Munroe.” His eyes widened. He looked like he was going to speak some more. But she’d heard enough. Pivoting to the bishop, she continued, “Business, if you please.”
The bishop came out of his trance. “Pedro.” He gestured, and the young priest went back to the cupboard and began removing the few items remaining in it, then stacking them on the table—more sardine cans, some cutlery, some plates. Everyone concentrated on him as if he were a conjurer and they wanted to see how he would produce the rabbit.
Pedro tilted then lowered the cupboard onto its side. He took a screwdriver to the hinges, removed the doors, then worked down the back edges, the screws giving easily, as if they were used to the caress. Finally, he took a mallet and, with a few hard blows, separated the rear and side panels.
The cupboard lay in pieces on the floor. Roxy glanced first at Schlaben, then Munroe. Both men leaned forward, entirely focused, the light from the cellar’s one naked bulb reflected in the sheen of their skin.
Chasing the Wind Page 5