The Memory of Eva Ryker (41 page)

Tom appeared from the orange gloom of the squad car. “I guess we lost them.”

“Shut up,” I said. “They're at the end of the intersection on the right side.”

“How …” he began, then thought better of it, turning to Rand. “Sergeant, get back to the car and radio backup units in Piccadilly. We're going to have to track them on foot. Get Morley to follow us.”

Fog rushed to fill the hole where Rand had been.

“Norman,” he whispered, “stay on the right side of the street, parallel with me.”

Running into the misty shroud, Tom, Rand, and Morley faded in my mind. There was just me and the Kleins in the dark. I could hear their footsteps, which had abandoned all pretense; thrashing and stumbling down the pavement. I couldn't tell how much of a head start they had, and I began yearning for Sergeant Rand's youth; at least the physical advantages.

I also started wishing for some firepower to match the Kleins. Not for myself; I haven't pulled a trigger since the war. The experience was like a purgative; a necessary but deplorable evil to be repeated only in the direst of emergencies. But as for Tom and Rand …

All those
TV
documentaries flashed through my head. See the genteel, unarmed bobbies. Guarding the bastions of Pax Britannia with a mere nightstick. How jolly civilized!

But, here and now, I had misgivings. Big ones. In the Old West they called guns “equalizers.” More than ever I appreciated the nickname, with all its dreadful implications.

The fog had turned spotty and halfhearted as I paused for breath at a stop sign at the end of Archer Street. Mercury vapor lamps strung out toward Shaftesburg Avenue filled the blackness with brackish pools of light. Two figures under one of the lamps cast long shadows toward me.

Tom jogged across the intersection to the left side of the street. Jesus, I thought, he made a tempting target. Moments later my misgivings came to pass.

A pale yellow flower of light flashed his way. The bullet and its noise blasted Tom off his feet. For one hideous instant arms and legs flailed the air like those strobe photos of race horses with all four hoofs off the ground. Then he crumpled. A wad of old clothes tossed down a laundry chute.

I rushed to him. A red-black blotch fluttered across his left side. My fingers felt his throat. Thub. And again. Once more.

“God,” I said painfully. “Just stay still.” The orange fog lights swerved our way. “The car's coming. You'll be all right.”

Tom groaned wonderingly. Deep neural shock. He didn't realize his arm was a boneless mass.

The car screeched up as I slung him in the back seat and jumped in front. Sergeant Rand looked thunderstruck.

“What the hell happened?”

I didn't bother to answer the obvious. Morley scrambled for the first aid kit. As Rand pulled off Tom's jacket and shirt, I leaned over the seat with a wood stake and bandage and began twisting the tourniquet around his left arm. Mercifully, he was out cold.

Rand blinked in wary approval. “You're pretty handy with that.”

I grunted, turning the stake vise-tight.

“Which way were they heading?”

“Down Shaftesburg toward Piccadilly.”

He impatiently slapped Morley's shoulder as the driver let out the clutch and growled into first.

My eyes raised. “Aren't we taking him to a hospital?”

Rand chewed on his lower lip. “The bleeding's stopped. Nothing anyone can do for a while. Do you want those two running loose?”

“Fortunately, Sergeant, the decision's not mine to make.”

Gears grumbled as we ate up the pavement. The fog was losing ground.

“They'll try to lose themselves in a crowd,” he said, leaning anxiously forward, “so the car's useless. The Circus will still have its share of people.” His head shook. “God knows how they keep going.”

The Daimler squealed on to the avenue. Bawdy signs beckoned patrons to strip shows, folk singers, and jazz sessions. London was no longer a ghost town and everyone on the street was a potential victim. Dark crannies between buildings offered no assistance. How to spot anyone in the crowd? Look for the black suit? A light gray dress? All cats are gray in the dark.

But not gray enough. Cruising slowly past the corner of Shaftesburg and Great Windmill Street, I spotted a familiar head of white hair. “She's over there!”

“This is the police!” grated the megaphone on the car's roof.

They didn't need to be told. I got a glimpse of Albert's snarling face before a gun barrel snapped at the Daimler.

The noise of champagne glasses tossed into a million fireplaces. The windshield collapsed in razor-sharp sheets. Rand I were out of the car and on the sidewalk as Morley pushed the glass off his face and wheeled in closer to the tangle of traffic.

People were everywhere, funneling into Piccadilly, screaming and scattering in terror.

There they were, a few yards ahead, shoveling through the crowd. I flung people aside left and right, cursing and swearing.

Suddenly the Kleins and I burst into the Circus. My mind received disjointed, garbled images of vast walls of light. A giant pendulum carved out a neon path. Grant's Scotch. Gordon's gin. Garish yellow letters of the London Pavillion. Max Factor. Persona Blades. Wrigley's Spearmint Gum; Healthful, Delicious, Satisfying. Young people gathered with nocturnal pigeons around the blackly gleaming Eros Fountain.

The Kleins began a heedless dash through the encircling moat of traffic. Scream of brakes and horns mixed maddeningly with the yelling bystanders. They were trapped in the center of the stream of cars as I bounded into the street.

Angry bawling of English motorists hit my ears as a lane of cheese-box cars jerked sullenly to a stop. A whirlpool of Cortinas, Fords, and Austin-Healys swarmed before me. Albert Klein was just a hood's width away.

I flagged the cars to stop, with negligible results. Furiously jumping on the bumper of an Austin Cooper, I slid over the hood and grabbed his sleeve.

There was a break in the traffic as he smashed the back of his fist into my face and leaped for the curb with Martha. Stumbling off the hood and onto my feet, I couldn't have been more than five yards behind. I remember a vague collage of gaping, incredulous faces.

Jesus, how did they keep the pace! But then, I wasn't the one being hunted.

The Kleins approached a tube entrance as Martha aimed a fearful glance over her shoulder. I grimaced as they charged down the steps. The subway was a rat's warren of endless hidey-holes.

The stairs leading to the Underground belched with Piccadilly fun-seekers. I plowed into their midst. In the background Rand distantly cried, “Police! Move aside!”

They moved, all right. In every way imaginable. There was no time for courtesy. I mowed people down like bowling pins. Where the hell were they? Ten yards down the ramp I got a glimpse of her dress.

Martha's face still held untapped reserves of cunning. She grabbed her husband's arm and rode through the jostling crowd like an icebreaker, disappearing down the second flight of stairs.

I kept pushing through the mob like a salmon swimming upstream and gradually rounded the corner. Blessedly, the flow of people stopped. I struggled the rest of the way on my fading rubber legs as they pushed into the porcelain-tiled catacomb.

“Police! Grab that man!”

His eyes bulged whitely like those of a terrified horse as he broke away from his wife and jumped over the guardrail onto the tracks.

Red-faced and sobbing, Martha Klein collapsed to her knees.

“No, Al! My God, don't leave me alone!”

I had no time for her. Vaulting over the railing, I ran to the crowd leaning over the platform like a chorus line above an orchestra pit.

Albert Klein sprinted down the tunnel. He had barely gone five steps when his left leg caved in under him, his face smashing on the steel rail. Exhausted and dazed, he still managed to look back at his left foot caught on a rail tie. He wrenched desperately at the ankle, lips gnarling in pain, but he was doing nothing but tearing ligaments.

Strange and devious is the human mind. Push-button morality gets people in the damnedest fixes. One moment I watched him flutter like an impaled butterfly, and the next instant I jumped over the railing, tugging at his leg.

Far down the tunnel the northbound train greedily winked at us.

Al thrashed at me, avoiding my grasp.

“Keep still, goddamit! Don't you know the far rail's electrified?”

He stiffened into virtual rigor mortis.

Loosen the shoe. I grappled with the laces. If only those idiots would shut up! What were they worried about? And why was that woman screaming? Couldn't they leave a man in peace?

Red blotches of fatigue clouded my vision and I shook them away. My palm pushed the back of the shoe down over his Achilles' tendon. I ignored his painful grunt. It was coming!

My whole universe was the shoe, the greasy rail tie, and, overwhelming me, the glare and lurching rattle of the train with its twin Cheshire cat eyes.

Less than ten feet away. A burning image of two headlamps, the conductor's horrified face, yanking at the air brakes, and screeching, sparking wheels.

Steam from the air brakes tugged at my trouser cuffs as I jumped and landed on the platform. Either the train or an air pocket buffeted me. A scream from hell tore through my head as red and blue lights flashed and all went black.

As the crowd clustered overhead, my eyes blinked open. Ceiling lamps hung down in greeting and a dark figure loomed in the foreground.

“… you all right?” Sergeant Rand was asking.

I sat up dazedly. “Is he …”

His head shook. “You tried, Mr. Hall. There just wasn't any time.”

No time … no time … no time …

His words echoed as I wobbled to my feet. The train was stalled, its scattered occupants craning their heads out the windows. I pushed through the chattering throng on the platform. The conductor and station manager stood at the front of the train, examing the red dripping smear under the front wheels.

You will not throw up, Norman. Besides being undignified, it solves nothing. Just take a few deep breaths. Don't try to swallow. Now, one foot at a time, back up and get out of here.

I turned away from Albert Klein and walked slowly across the subway station to his widow.

Martha was curled in a shivering ball. She rased her head at my approach.

“You killed him! It was all your fault! You let him die!”

I let her cry, not answering.

Tears streamed down the wrinkled cheeks. “I did it all for him, you know. All the hiding and killing. I didn't care about it. I wanted to settle down. What would I do with the diamonds? I only wanted to be left in peace!”

Poor, poor Martha Klein. An old repentant soul, now all alone.

“You'll probably get your wish, Martha. All the time in the world to sift through those ancient sins.”

I dug in my pocket and tossed one of the Boucheron stones to the floor. She watched my heel grind it into a fine pasty powder that glittered in the lamplight.

Once in Sonora I met a cornered rattlesnake caught, right after a recent kill, with empty venom bags. It was still baring its useless fangs as my friend smashed in its head with a walking stick. At the time I felt a curiously tempered remorse, and I felt the same way now.

“Come on,” I said. “Let's go.”

Postscript 1

Our story appeared in
World
's December 16, 1962, issue. To a planet that had flirted with World War III the previous October, our recounting of murder and kidnapping and antediluvian obsessions seemed refreshingly piquant. The magazine pulled out of the red for the first time in six years, and Janice and I found ourselves enduring the buttery good will of Geoffrey Proctor. We banked each bonus check as quickly as possible and tried not to look back.

Eva Ryker and her father shared our front seat on the media roller coaster. Paparazzis prowled her old hideouts in Madrid while she retreated to a rented cottage in Jamaica. I got one post card in January postmarked Kingston: “Greetings,” it simply said. “Let me know when the war's over.”

But the big guns of the press were really aimed at the Old Man. Columnists and politicos flapped their editorials and subpoenas in a feeding frenzy. Congressmen made lofty speeches on the “corrupting influence of American expatriates.” Senate investigations would be made. Bureaucratic cogwheels would grind the Truth exceedingly fine.

William Ryker had been inflicted with the most terrible of all curses; his past transgressions had caught the public fancy.

He responded by putting a double guard at the château's entrance gate and unplugging the phones, while Mike Rogers squirted a squid-cloud of countersuits and indignant denials penned in “high lawyerese.” The international courts would grow old and toothless trying to unravel the knots.

Two months after the publication of my story the Ryker Corporation withdrew its sponsorship of the
Titanic
salvage project. Jacques Cousteau, the National Geographic Society, and the Navy Department fell over each other, proclaiming their innocence of any diamond-recovery hoodwinks. The exploration of the sunken ship stumbled to a halt amid the flying of legal fur. One year after the project began the
Neptune
and
Marianas
ended up in moth balls at New Bedford, while the
Savonarola
was written off by Ryker as a tax-deductible donation to the Scripps Institute in La Jolla.

On May 7, 1963, Alfredo Petacchi was shot to death outside the porte-cochere of Miami's Fontainebleau Hotel by two men in a passing De Soto sedan. Neither the car nor the men were seen again. News clippings at the time stressed his long-standing affiliations with the Scalisi Family. Even so, I can't help remembering the quick frozen eyes of William Ryker when he learned of Petacchi's deceit. And the Old Man seemed to set great store in settling old grudges.