It's Superman! A Novel (15 page)

A moment later gunfire cracks behind him, bullets glancing off granite, punching into limestone.

Lex pivots, swinging his head around, assessing the possibilities. When more bullets whistle past he dives behind a fenced monument to Richmond County sailors killed during the Spanish-American War. “They Made the Ultimate Sacrifice.” He scrambles away on all fours, his breath chuffing in his ears.

Both Stick and Paulie had urged Lex to carry a weapon, but how could he do that? He’s an elected official! An elected official who—

Is not afraid, he realizes. Three gunmen are chasing him through a deserted cemetery, he’s unarmed, hobbled by ungiving shoes better suited to ceremony, and yet—

He is unafraid.

Crouched behind the pediment of an archangel with outspread wings, he looks at his hands.

Not a tremble.

Lex raises his head an inch or two, searching for his pursuers. He sees one of them just as the man spots Lex.

“Dakota! Over here, over
here
!”

Lex sprints again as more gunfire snaps off behind him.

At the groundsman’s shed he kicks open the door and grabs a pickax from the workbench. Dragging it, he runs back outside, pulls the door shut, then ducks around behind the shed.

“Where? Where
are
you, Carol?”

“Follow my voice, for crissakes,” says the gunman who saw Lex crouched behind the alabaster angel and is now less than twenty feet away. He has unbuttoned his raincoat, and it flaps around his legs as he moves forward in a heavy jog.

If the second man, or the second and the third man, arrive before Lex can get to this first one . . .

Well.

Whatever happens will happen.

Relaxing his stomach muscles, he breathes in deeply, feeling a long, buoyant thrill of pride.

When Carol stops in front of the shed, Lex clasps the ax handle with two hands, one fist around the base, the other below the head.

Now!

Gun in his right hand, Carol is reaching for the door latch with his left.

Lex drives the chisel edge through the back of Carol’s skull. It punches out through his mouth.

The second man is calling Carol’s name again, which gives Lex a direction. He snatches up the dead man’s gun—it’s a revolver—and follows the sound of Dakota’s whining voice, walking steadily and straight-backed, swinging both arms like a commuter moving purposely across Grand Central Terminal but with plenty of time to catch his train.

When Dakota straggles off a grassy hill, Lex shoots him in the temple.

If he comes upon the third man, fine, but now he is going back to his car. The happiest man in the big wide world.

A minute later, Lex is nearly to the cemetery gates when he notices a hat bobbing up and down about twenty yards off to his left.

He shrugs and walks over there and shoots the third man, who is fat and lost and perspiring. He shoots him in the cheek and then in the stomach and then in the groin and then in the middle of his forehead.

The little fat man dies on a gravesite bearing the epitaph of Colonel Nicholas Howat, dated 1743.

On the long drive back to Manhattan, Lex turns on the car radio and listens to
Make Believe Ballroom.

Man, he likes that Benny Goodman Orchestra. Those guys can
swing.

3

“John.”

“
John
. I know I’m asking a big favor, John . . .”

“I’d say so, yes.” Gurney takes another sip at his cocktail—he is on his second rye and ginger ale. Lois so far hasn’t touched her first. “A very
large
big favor.”

Dressed in a pale tan summer-weight suit, he arrived half an hour ago, twenty minutes late, carrying a Panama hat by the crown. He placed that finically on the seat of the empty chair beside him.

“This friend of yours isn’t in any
real
trouble, is he? With the police or anything like that?”

“No!” She can’t meet his eyes. “No, of course not, it’s just—it’s like I told you, he’s got himself into some, well, I guess you’d call it
family difficulties
—”

“Back home in Poughkeepsie.”

“Monticello.”

“And you’ve known this boy since
when
?”

“Oh, practically all my life. We were in school together. I can vouch for him, Professor Gurney.”

“John.”

“And he’s a really good photographer, John. It’s not like I’m asking you to give a job to someone who’s not qualified.”

“Of course not. Lois, are you lying to me?”

“I swear, no.” She tries to laugh, but it sounds breathy.

“You came all the way down to Washington just to ask me to find some work for this old schoolmate of yours. You could have
phoned
.”

“Well. I thought it would be nice to see you again.”

He sits back in his chair. “Well, it’s nice to see you, too.”

“So can you do this?”

“I really don’t know.”

“I remembered that night you were joking with me, remember? And you said you could send my boyfriend to North Dakota? So I thought . . .”

“Uh-huh. Whatever happened to your boyfriend, by the way? Wasn’t he a photographer, too?”

“No, he wasn’t. I wonder where you got that idea.”

“I must’ve mixed you up with some
other
beautiful ex-student of mine. Though how I could’ve done
that
. . .”

Lois says, “Would you excuse me for just a minute, Professor?”

“No.”

She looks startled.

“Not till you call me John.”

With a weak smile she rises to her feet. “I’ll be right back.”

Her legs are rubbery as she crosses the floor of the hotel bar. Everything here is mahogany or brass, the banquettes are sumptuous leather, the tablecloths starched linen, the people middle-aged, successful-looking, assured of themselves, and Lois feels thoroughly, hideously conspicuous. Like the brainy wallflower she’d been at her first boy-girl dance.

The bartender nods to her politely as she goes out into the lobby.

A bellboy walks by with a straining Pekinese on a leash.

Lois spots the powder room door.

On her way there, she passes a sign framed under glass and propped on a painter’s easel standing outside the entrance to the hotel’s Café George Washington. The sign is pink, the size of a theatrical three-sheeter, and the lettering is in flamboyant script glued thickly with silver and red glitter.
APPEARING NOW: HARRY SELTZER’S CARBONATED RHYTHM ORCHESTRA. FEATURING SIGNE GREENE ON VOCALS. COMING IN SEPTEMBER: LEO REISMAN . . . LITTLE JACK LITTLE . . . DOLLY DAWN!

Lois goes into the powder room, finds a stall, sits down, and closes her eyes. She lets her shoulders sag. Breathe in. Breathe out.

This is so ridiculous! She’s a grown woman—well, nineteen—on a desperate mission, and she’s behaving like some nervous Nellie, some
kid.

Lois told Willi Berg she knew how to get him away from New York, far away, where he could be safe till they found some way out of the mess he’s gotten himself in.

She didn’t
promise
Willi anything, but she owes him her best shot.

She does? Oh, does she? Why does she owe him anything?

Breathe in . . .

Breathe out . . .

Reentering the cocktail room, Lois sees John Gurney’s head snap up, which causes her knees to become gelatin-like. Instead of returning immediately to the table, she veers to her left, excusing herself as she squeezes between the backs of two occupied chairs at two different tables, and sits down at the long polished bar. The young barman appears with a clean rag and a fresh coaster. He is perhaps five years older than Lois, thickening around his middle, dressed in a vested white shirt and black trousers. She asks him if by some chance he has a cigarette she can borrow.

“You going to pay it back?” He smiles, already fishing into his vest pocket.

“Very next chance I get.” He smokes Raleighs, and after Lois selects one he snaps open a flat gold lighter. “Thank you.”

“You’re quite welcome. Get you anything else?”

Lois turns and holds up a hand, twiddling her fingers at John Gurney: be right there. “Let me ask you a question, do you mind?”

“Is it personal?” says the barman.

“I guess you could say it was. I’m sorry, forget it.”

“No. No, go ahead.”

“Okay. Do you have a girlfriend?”

Going playfully big-eyed, he leans back and grins.

“That’s not really the question,” says Lois. “That’s just the
start
of the question.”

“Oh.”

“And I’m not trying to pick you up.”

“Ach, I knew those things only happened in books.”

“So, do you?”

“Yes. Say, why didn’t you ask me first if I was married?”

“No ring.”

“Sure. Right.”

“I’m an eagle-eyed reporter.”

“Are
you?”

“Yes,” she says. Then: “Okay, though, here’s my real question. If your girlfriend got in really big trouble, and I mean
really
big, would you do anything you could to save her? That’s stupid. Let’s forget I ever said anything.” She tamps out her cigarette. “I should go.”

“Hold on, let me answer. What do you mean by ‘anything’ I could do to save her? Including . . . kill somebody?”

“No. Everything up to that.”

“You mean things that could get me into trouble.”

“Yeah, or that you’d be ashamed of if anybody found out later.”

“Okay. I got it. And no. For this girlfriend I got now, probably not. But we haven’t been seeing each other that long. But for my
last
one, the one that got away? Oh definitely, I’d’ve done anything.
Including
kill somebody.”

They laugh together, Lois nodding, nodding.

“Thank you. Thanks a lot,” she says sliding off the bar chair.

“How about you? Would
you
do anything?”

“I don’t know.”

“Bet you would. My name’s Lenny, by the way.” He puts out his hand. “Lenny Boring. But I’m really not.”

“Lois.” No last name.

“Nice to meet you, Lois.” Lenny winks, then notices that a solitary drinker at the far end of the bar is gesturing for his attention. “Hope to see you in here again sometime.”

“Oh, I doubt that,” she says. “Bye, Lenny.”

The perfect gentleman, John Gurney stands up as Lois returns to their table. But he’s glowering.

Breathe in, she thinks, taking a breath. Breathe out . . .

“I thought you were ditching me for the bartender,” Gurney says once she takes her seat. Then he sits.

“I was just asking him for directions.”

“Where to?”

“Back to the highway.”

“You
drove
down here?”

“Yes.”

“Alone?”

“Yes, alone.”

He picks up his glass—it is nearly full and the ice cubes are large, so that’s another one, a fresh one; his third? “Why do I feel that nothing is quite kosher about all of this? Can you tell me?”

Lois chooses to ignore that by asking a question of her own. “Can you help out my friend?”

“You want me to find a job for this old chum of yours who’s got himself into a fix at home and needs to get away. That’s it in a nutshell?”

“He’s a
good
photographer.”

Gurney smiles. “Okay. All right. Cards on the table. For a dear friend . . . a dear
friend,
mind you,
not
a former student . . . for a dear friend like you, yes, I might be able to find something. Yes.”

“Thank you.”

“Don’t thank me yet.”

“Oh.”

“ ‘Oh’? And what does
that
mean?”

“I’m not sure. Should I be?”

“You haven’t touched your drink.”

“And I don’t intend to. Regardless of what happens.”

His face is suddenly harsh. “I probably should run.”

“I’m sorry—does your wife have dinner waiting?”

Gurney seems amazed, expressions of annoyance and amusement clashing on his face. Amusement stays. “You’re quite a different person from the smart little girly I used to know.” He removes a long billfold from inside his jacket and lays a ten on the tablecloth beside his glass. “I really have to run. It was good seeing you.”

She nods, feeling on the verge of tears, on the verge of apologizing, of begging. Obliging.

Breathe in . . .

As he stands up, Gurney hands her a small white embossed card. “Tell your friend to call this gentleman here. But give me time to write a short memo first.”

“Are you serious? John, I don’t know what to say . . .”

He touches her fondly on the cheek, sighs, and moves off, lurching once but then catching himself and squaring his shoulders.

“Lois?”

She turns on her chair.

“I’ll need your friend’s name.”

“What?” Her entire body from the crown of her head down to her insteps turns cold.

“His name. What’s your friend’s name?”

She opens her mouth.

“William.”

“William . . . what?”

“Boring,” says Lois. “William Boring.”

4

Clark knocks. You don’t just barge in on people. “Miss Colman?” Opening the front door about a foot, he calls her again. Finally he goes inside. Keeps calling but gets no reply. He thinks he might find Miss Colman still on the telephone, so he tiptoes into the high Victorian front parlor.

The room makes Clark feel claustrophobic. It contains two brocaded divans, a half dozen overstuffed chairs, intricately carved side tables, a piecrust table, a threadbare Persian rug, an embroidered fire screen, and a green-and-white-tiled fireplace mantel with porcelain figurines ranged along the top. An electrified chandelier descends from a medallion in the ceiling. And by the window there is a moth-eaten stuffed owl on its own pedestal. Through that window, closed and hung with sheer curtains that need laundering, you can see the Poore mansion. “Miss Colman? Miss Colman?” No Miss Colman.

He finds her at last in the kitchen, filling a glass from a brown bottle whose label is bordered with mysterious pictographs.

At first, she looks over at him, then sets down the bottle and drains her glass. For half a minute she winces and blinks. “Is that insolent monster still in my tree?”

“No, ma’am, he’s gone. Did you call his father?”