Los Alamos (41 page)

“Maybe he just didn’t know his own strength,” Connolly said.

“Enough foolishness.” She turned slightly to go.

“Don’t,” he said, his voice hard.

She froze, looking up at him.

“That’s right. You don’t want to make a scene. Not here. Not in front of the customers. We’ll go somewhere else. Then we can talk some more.”

“You must be crazy. You come up to me here, in this place, with these—what? Accusations? The rantings of a dead man. ‘I know.’ ‘I know.’ You don’t know anything. Leave me alone.”

“I have a gun,” he said quietly.

She stopped. “Now the melodrama too?”

“It’s over, Hannah. There was a witness at San Isidro,” he said. “He’s identified your friend. And you.”

She looked at him again, assessing. “It’s a lie.”

“Is it?”

“Then why wait so long? All this—” She spread her hand toward the room.

“We wanted to see if they’d send someone else. But they didn’t, did they? Your friends. What if it’s a trap? Send Hannah. She’s expendable. Now that Eisler’s dead. They’re closing you down too.”

He had touched some anger. “You fool,” she said, glaring at him. “Do you think that matters? There’ll be someone else. Always. That’s why we win. Yes, we,” she said, catching his look. “Who do you think won this war? The baby GIs with their Hershey bars? We won it. Communists. Such a dirty word to you. But we
knew
. We stopped them. You think politics is about elections? No—bodies. So, one more, one less? What difference?”

“Then we’ll start with you.”

She tossed back her head. “Yes, start with me. Take your time. You think you have so much time?
Idiot,”
she said in German. “It’s already too late. What did you think? We could sit by and watch you do this? And not protect ourselves? Children—you’re all children here. Do you think we would give a gun to a child?”

“Do you think we’d give one to a gangster?”

She paused, a flicker of a smile on her face. “No. He would have to take it. While the child was playing, perhaps.”

“For his own good.”

“Yes, for everybody’s good. But very carefully. So he wouldn’t know. We had to be very careful.”

Connolly paused. “And yet here you are.”

“For exactly one more minute. Then we are going to smile—it’s very pleasant, the gallery, yes?—and people will say, ‘You see, not so serious. They must have been talking about the art.’ You think you know something? Where is your proof? Friedrich? I was always very careful with Friedrich. When they put him at the ranch, I thought it was a trap—I wouldn’t even look at him. And he thought I had arranged it, so clever. But you know, there is luck in America. Not like Germany. Everything is lucky here. They thought he’d feel at home speaking German. But we never did. All that time, we were too afraid to talk. We couldn’t believe our luck, you see. But afterward, that was more difficult. So I had to be careful. No paper. No strings. Nothing. Nothing to connect us at all. Now what do you want to do? Arrest me? With your gun? Over nothing at all? I don’t think so. Who would believe such a thing?”

“Do you really think you’re just going to walk out of here?”

“No. I have to say goodbye to some people first,” she said coolly, “but then—It’s getting late. You can follow me, of course. But what will you find? Friedrich’s gone. So there is no Corporal Waters. Then my work—well, that’s over. You see, I don’t even have to be careful anymore. Unless you have something else to tell me?”

Then, smoothly, she began to turn away, and Connolly, in an instant of panic, looked around the room—Emma still lurking by the doorway, the kitschy art, people laughing outside—and felt everything slip away. Without thinking, he grabbed her arm, jerking her back toward him.

“It’s not about Eisler. It’s about Karl. You’re not listening. I don’t have to prove a thing about your ‘work.’ I’m arresting you for murder.”

“Let me go.”

“That wasn’t careful, killing Karl.”

“Let me
go,”
she said, pulling her arm away, but Connolly held it. “What do you think you’re doing? On whose authority? Whose authority?” Her voice, louder now in the empty room, caused a few people out on the patio to look up.

“The police are outside. On their authority. You can say your goodbyes later.”

Her face, gone white, now twisted itself in a cold rage. “Take your hands off me,” she said, so self-possessed that Connolly obeyed the order and dropped her arm. “Madman. I never killed anybody.”

“Yes, you did. Technically, you might get away with being an accessory,” he said. “I don’t think so. Either way, you’ll be gone for years and years. I’ll see to it.”

“You,” she said, almost spitting the word.

“What’s the problem?” A deep voice: Hector, looming next to them.

“Come,” Hannah said, another order.

Connolly looked up at him, feeling suddenly dwarfed. Black eyes. “Hannah says you killed Karl all by yourself,” he said, improvising. Again the question mark. No one had known Karl’s name. “The man in the alley at San Isidro. You shouldn’t have done that, Hector.”

Hector glanced at her, then stared at Connolly, stunned. He seemed to lean back, as if he had been struck.

“Don’t listen to him. He’s crazy,” Hannah said.

“All by yourself. We thought she helped, but she said no, you did everything.”

Hector’s confusion made him jumpy. Connolly could see the tension creep into the broad, impassive face, the eyes as alert as an animal’s.

“You should have thrown away those boots,” Connolly said, pointing at his feet. “We matched the prints.” A lie, but would Hector know? “Just like a fingerprint. All over the bushes. When you pulled his pants down.”

Now the eyes, no longer confused, took on a shine of menace.

“Come,” Hannah said. “Foolishness.”

“You weren’t trying to kill him. I know. Just knock him out, the way you do.” As he said it, another blackboard leap. Someone else looking up at the tall, glowering man, black eyes flashing. “Like Batchelor. The soldier at the PX. You weren’t trying to kill him. Just teach him a lesson, right?”

“Shut up,” Hector said, his voice a low rumble.

“You didn’t kill
him
, just roughed him up a little. I can’t blame you. So why’d you kill Karl? We thought she told you to.” He nodded his head toward Hannah. “But she says she wasn’t there.”

Hector turned and looked at her, obviously surprised.

“Don’t say anything,” she said coldly.

“We know you killed him,” Connolly said quickly. “We didn’t know you did it alone. See, the way we saw it, you knocked him out—he’s just out. Messed up. But she said you had to kill him, you had to finish it. Did you even know who he was? Did she tell you? Eisler said you didn’t know.”

“Shut up,” Hector said again, louder now.

“It was smart making it look like the murder in Albuquerque. To tell you the truth, we thought that was her idea too.”

“Hector, come,” she said, a pet command, and took his arm to lead him away.

Connolly glanced from one to the other, feeling he had to do something, say anything to hold him.

“But that was you. See, I didn’t put two and two together until you beat up the guy at the PX. I didn’t realize you were queer too.”

The fist, exploding, came up and smashed into Connolly’s face. He staggered back against the wall, blood spurting out of his nose in a rush.

“I’ll fuckin’
kill
you,” Hector said, moving toward Connolly and chopping his fist down against the side of Connolly’s neck, forcing him to drop to his knees, stunned. He heard a woman scream in the other room, saw in a hazy flash of peripheral vision people turning on the patio to see what was going on. Connolly leaned forward for a second, catching himself, afraid he would black out.

“Hector, no!” Hannah shouted.

“Shut the fuck up,” he said, pushing her aside, heading for Connolly.

But it gave Connolly the second he needed. He brought the gun out of his pocket and held it up before him with two hands. He saw that they were shaking, one of them smeared bright with blood. “Stop,” he said, the word garbled by the blood in his mouth.

More screams. Footsteps. Hector looked down at him, hesitating for a split second, then, sneering, brought up his foot and kicked from the side, knocking the gun out of Connolly’s hands. It slithered across the polished wood floor toward the corner, and Connolly lost sight of it as the workboot came up again, kicking him. He fell over, his face hitting the floor with another crack.

“Stop it!” Emma’s voice. Dimly, Connolly saw her pounding Hector’s back. His face raging, Hector turned away from Connolly and flung her aside as if her fists were nothing more than wasp stings. She fell against the pedestal, the scrap-metal cowboy crashing to the floor beside her.

Connolly tried to stand, but Hector’s foot caught him in the stomach, and when he fell this time he put his hands around his head, curling his body into itself to protect it from the blows. “Stop it!” he heard Emma scream again. Then there was another kick to his chest. He groaned. Hector kicked him again, a machine now, uncontrollable. Connolly realized that if he didn’t move, he was going to die, bludgeoned to death like Karl. Then, in some bizarre transference, he turned to look up and saw not Hector but Emma, her hand held high in the air, swinging the metal down toward him, just the way it must have happened at San Isidro. When he turned his head slightly to protect his eyes, he heard the statue connect, a crack, a thud into flesh, and heard Hector grunt, rearing his head back so that the force of the smash was strengthened and the horse’s hooves pushed into his scalp. There was an explosion of blood from Hector’s head, spattering in a circle around them, an oil well of blood, before he fell over, partially covering Connolly, his body twitching in one long drawn-out spasm.

Connolly heard the statue fall to the side. Now there were lots of voices, screams of surprise, and he knew it was almost over. He looked along the floor to the gun in the corner, but it was gone. Raising his head to see better, he felt the nausea that he knew meant he would black out. He stretched his fingers to grasp the statue and drew it toward him by the hooves, so that when the crowd finally arrived it was clutched in his hand, and with his breath crushed by the weight of the body on top of him and his face sticky with blood, he did pass out.

He couldn’t have been out more than a minute. He felt Hector’s body being lifted off him, then hands hooked under his arms, pulling him to his feet, holding him from behind. “Jesus Christ,” someone said, and Connolly looked at Hector too, his head still oozing blood. Connolly weaved, dizzy, trying to draw breath through the dull pain in his chest. For a moment nobody moved, and Connolly saw the drops of blood on the painting next to him, the end of the arc. One of the guests was leaning over Hector’s body, turning it so that his face, absolutely still, stared up at them. His legs, twisted, hadn’t moved with the rest of him. Connolly tried to move toward him, but someone still held his arms, restraining him.

“Somebody get an ambulance,” the man kneeling over Hector said, feeling the side of his neck for a pulse.

Connolly saw Holliday run into the room, people moving aside in a wave to let him through. He stopped in front of the body, taking in the scene—Connolly with his arms pinned, the statue still dangling from one of his hands, the giant body lying on the floor, blood spreading out from the head in a small lake.

“Let him go,” he said to the man behind Connolly, and Connolly, his arms suddenly free, slumped against the wall. He watched Holliday bend over and examine the pupils, then close the lids of the Mexican’s eyes.

“Oh my God,” someone in the crowd said.

“Call my office,” Holliday said to the man next to him. “Get some of the boys over here. Quick.” Then, turning to Connolly, “You all right?”

Connolly, still breathing heavily, nodded, feeling another wave of nausea as he moved his head.

“This the guy?” Holliday said simply.

Connolly nodded again. The nausea was gone now, and he took a handkerchief from his back pocket to stanch the blood in his nose.

“Broken?” Holliday said. Connolly nodded. “Anything else?”

“Maybe a rib. I don’t know.”

“He’s lucky to be alive,” a woman said. “He was kicking him,
kicking
him. It was awful.” Everyone seemed to be talking.

Holliday turned toward the guests. “You folks want to give me a little room here?” His voice, easy and unhurried, stopped them. “How about all of you wait outside till the boys get here. But don’t anybody run away now— we’ll need to make a report,” he said, slipping into his small-town police manner.

“I saw everything,” the woman said, beginning to cry. “It was awful.
Awful.”
Someone took her arm to lead her away. The room began to empty, some people craning their necks to get a last look.

Holliday looked at the body, then up at Connolly. “He’s dead,” he said simply. “You kill him?”

Connolly nodded.

“Well, that’s a hell of a thing. He come after you?”

“It was him. He killed Bruner.”

An ambulance siren wailed outside, rising over the voices on the patio.

“Who was the woman with him?” Holliday said calmly.

“Hannah. His boss.”

But where was she? Connolly looked around the empty room, suddenly panicked. “Where’s Emma?” he said, but Holliday didn’t know what he was talking about. “Doc, come on.” He moved away from the wall, but Holliday stood up, blocking him.

“Take it easy. I don’t want two bodies on my report.”

“I’m all right.”

“Well, we got a killing here.”

“Doc, she’s got the gun.”

“Who?”

“Hannah,” he said impatiently. “The other one. I’ll explain it later. She’s got the
gun.”

Holliday stared at him as the ambulance crew rushed into the room, carrying a stretcher. Connolly could see police uniforms moving through the crowd on the patio.

“Doc,
now,”
he said. “She’ll kill her.”

Holliday looked at him for another minute, deciding. The ambulance crew swarmed around them. Then he said, “I’ll drive.”