The Orpheus Deception (29 page)

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Authors: David Stone

BOOK: The Orpheus Deception
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“Yes. It over there.”
Bobby made a quick, flicking gesture, indicating the pile of his clothes on the chair by the bed.
“Show me.”
Bobby stepped around the corner of the bed. Lujac kept the pistol on Bobby’s back as he crouched in the corner, picking through the pile. He straightened, and came back with a cheap black nylon wallet. He handed it to Lujac and moved out of Lujac’s reach, glancing across the bed at the cop, and then turning back, his full attention on Lujac. No questions about his rights. No demand to see a badge. In Singapore, what he had been doing with—and for—the cop was a matter for a severe caning and a long prison term. There was no plea to be made. Lujac opened the wallet, checked the kid’s ID, saw a picture of an old Malay woman smiling, gap-tooted, into a cheap camera.
A vague family resemblance there, probably his sainted mummy.
Lujac grinned to himself, as he flipped through a dirty bundle of Sing dollars.
“He already pay you?”
“Yes.”
“How much?”
“Twenny Sing dollah.”
“Okay. Go sit on the bed.”
“I please dress?”
“No. Leave the shirt. Go sit.”
Bobby hesitated, looking at his clothes. Then he dropped his T-shirt and went back to the bed. He crawled on the bed and curled up against the headboard, covering himself as well as he could. He looked a little like a lemur, big eyes, and a round, open mouth. He began to vibrate like a tuning fork. Lujac liked that. The Malay cop stopped keening.
Lujac stepped around the bed, leaned down, dragged the cop to his feet, and shoved him onto the bed beside the boy. The cop dragged himself upright and got his back against the headboard, keeping some distance between himself and the kid. They did not look at each other. They both looked at Lujac. The cop’s black eye was fading a little into green-and-brown tones. His right hand was still bandaged. If he’d been using his right hand to shoot that little pistol at Lujac, Lujac figured he’d be dead now, which would come as a happy surprise to Larissa.
Nobody knocked on the door and asked what was going on. Through the window, they could hear the sounds of the market and the faint echo of distant music. Lujac took a moment to check his ribs. There was blood on his shirt. But not much. He felt his ribs, found a tiny furrow plowed along the flesh. Ruined the Pink’s shirt, but maybe the suit would be okay. He hoped so. It was a Brioni. There was a picture over the bed, a faded color shot of a tropical beach fringed in palms, taken sometime in the forties. On the ceiling, a three-bladed fan turned the smoky air, making a low
whip-whip
sound. The room smelled of sex and sweat, smoke and Tiger beer. Lujac switched the gun from his right to his left hand and pulled out the little oyster-shucking tool. He hefted it in his hand, smiling at the two people on the bed. Neither of them spoke. The cop knew what Bobby knew, what the penalty was for what they had been doing. It would be far worse for him.
He was the cop.
“What’s your name?” said Lujac, standing at the foot of the bed and tossing the little shucking tool into the air now and then, catching it by the handle. The blade glittered in the light, making tiny, flashing arcs as it spun and fell. The cop wiped his lips with his bandaged hand and blinked.
“I am Corporal Ahmed. Of the Interior Police Service.”
“Out of uniform? A bit?”
“I am”—he searched for the phrase, got it
—“unnah-covah.”
Lujac smiled at that, a bright, open, sunny smile.
“So you’ll be happy about the shots, then? Really nails your case.”
Corporal Ahmed said nothing, but Lujac could see what he was thinking:
This is Singapore. This European is not a cop or he would have said so. He was in the suite at the Intercontinental this morning. He is some kind of thief. No matter what he says, I can handle it. Except for the camera. Pay whatever. Get out of the room. Get help. Then find the man again and put him into a bare white room at Changi. But first, get the camera.
“I am
unnah-covah.
This boy is prostitute. You have
inna-fere
with official matter. You must—”
Lujac tossed him the shucking tool. It tumbled through the half-light,glimmering like a pinwheel. The cop and the boy flinched away from the tool, and it struck the headboard between them and thudded onto the mattress. They both looked at it. Then up at Lujac. Lujac had the camera in his left hand and the pistol in his right. The pistol was aimed at Corporal Ahmed’s left eye, just above the bruise.
“Pick it up,” he said.
The cop looked at the boy and then at Lujac’s gun hand. He picked up the tool, staring at Lujac.
“Use it,” said Lujac.
The boy jerked to the right but stopped when Lujac shifted the gun to him. He saw where he was, and it came as no surprise, but his lemur eyes filled up and he began to sob in silence. The cop stared at Lujac.
“His blood on the floor or your brains on the wall.”
The cop shook his head. Lujac fired once. The gun kicked and flared and barked. Chips flew out of the headboard an inch from the cop’s ear. The cop made a snaky move with the tool
—snick
and
snack—
Lujac’s camera flashed and clicked, flaring out and freezing the moment as the boy’s throat was laid wide open from his left ear to his collarbone. Blood gushed out in a scarlet arc, like a spray of rubies, and spattered across the lime green sheet.
Malays are very good with knives. Always have been. Lujac was counting on it. And Lujac caught it all, sixteen frames, a masterpiece of timing. The boy clapped both hands around his throat. Blood pumped out between his fingers. He opened his mouth to scream but no sound came. The cop had cut through his larynx and opened his throat. The kid went blue and rolled off the bed and onto the floor in a tangle of limbs and blood. He lay there, making a faint, breathy gurgle, which mingled with the drumming sound of his blood, spraying, in weakening pulses, across the plywood walls beside his head. Gradually, the line of the blood arc drooped, and, in a little while, the room was very still. There was only the sound of Corporal Ahmed’s rapid breathing, the fan blade churning through the air, and the tinny sounds of the street market coming in through the blinds.
“What you
wan?”
asked Corporal Ahmed, after a long while.
“Why, Corporal Ahmed. I thought you’d never ask.”
24
The Intercontinental Hotel, Singapore
“Will she die?”
Naumann did not answer. Time passed, and still he said nothing. Dalton and Naumann were standing at the pillared railing around the Piazza Garibaldi in Cortona. It was a warm summer afternoon, and the light across the checkerboard valley far below was honeyed and rich, the timeless light of Tuscany. Naumann was wearing a pale tan summer-weight suit over a soft-blue, open-necked shirt. He seemed to have recovered from being dead, since he now had quite a decent tan and his pale blue eyes were clear.
He looks the picture of health, for a dead man,
thought Dalton. For that matter, Dalton knew many men who were still alive who didn’t look half as good as Porter did. Naumann was staring out across the valley toward Lake Trasimeno, apparently lost in thought. Dalton sipped at his glass of pinot for a time, willing to let Naumann be lost in thought. In his heart, he wasn’t ready for an answer to his question. Let it be a beautiful day for a while longer. And it
was
a beautiful day. The swifts soared and wheeled in the luminous air, their formation tight and nimble, their wings catching the light as they dipped and rose. The air smelled of cedar and oleander and green vines heavy with ripe fruit. Dalton no longer wanted his answer. But Naumann had not forgotten it.
“Will she die?” said Naumann finally, watching the swifts as they disappeared into the blue distance. “I did warn you, didn’t I?”
He held out his glass.
Dalton filled it with some pinot and topped his own.
“Yes. You did.”
Naumann turned to look at Dalton. The sunlight lay bright on the side of his cheek, and a single ray of it caught the lens of his right eye, making it shine like a little blue diamond. The left side of his face was in shadow.
“Yes. She will.”
Dalton’s chest clamped up, and his breathing became difficult.
“You know this?”
“I know she’ll die. So will you.”
Dalton gave the matter some thought. Asking questions of the dead had its risks. The dead tended to be Delphic.
“Well, we’ll all die, won’t we? You did.”
“Yes,” said Naumann, granting the point. “That’s true.”
“But she might not die from
this?
This attack in Florence?”
Naumann appeared not to have heard him. His expression was remote, his mind elsewhere. He came back after a time, looking puzzled.
“Yes. That’s true. She might not.”
“Good. Fine. I can live with that.”
Naumann smiled.
“Can you?”
“I can. How are
you?”
“Me?”
“Yes. You’re not really
here,
are you?”
“In which sense? Mentally? Spiritually? Ectoplasmically?”
“I mean, you’re
absent.
What are you thinking about?”
Naumann’s face darkened.
“I’m not sure I’m allowed to speak about it.”
“Allowed?
By whom?”
Naumann made a gesture with the hand that held his wineglass, a wide, sweeping arc that took in all of Cortona. The afternoon sun blazed in his glass as he turned with it, and little diamonds of refracted light—tiny prisms—flickered across his haggard face and glittered in his pale eyes.
“By Cortona, I think. I can’t seem to leave here.”
“Leave Cortona? But you were all over the States with me. That safe house near Missoula. In Carmel, after Laura died. Now you can’t leave Cortona?”
“Yes. Everything’s changed. I can’t remember how long I’ve been here. And the clocks are . . . odd. It’s always about four in the afternoon. Or late evening. The whole thing is giving me the creeps. You get the idea you’re not alone. And things move that should not move. You hear voices. Whispers. Around the far corners. In the empty squares. Down the alleys. You can be in a crowd of people in the square, everyone talking and moving in the light. Close your eyes for a moment, and, when you open them, you’re alone. The city is either empty or too damn crowded. Sometimes I know the faces. Other times, they all look . . . inhuman. Dead faces. I’d leave if I could, Micah. If I could figure out how. This place is
old,
Micah. Older than any other place on the earth. The whole mountain is a tomb. I’m beginning to feel . . . out of place . . . here. Resented. But I don’t know how to leave. I don’t know the way out. Do you understand me?”
“Resented? By whom?”
Naumann merely shook his head, his eyes bleak.
“Sometimes, in the middle of the sunlight, I’m looking at the cobblestones, in the really old part, on the Via Janelli, and I’ll see this . . . smoke . . . coming up out of the stones. Gray. You can see through it. But the wind never moves it. It just drifts up into a shape and hangs there. Hangs there and looks at me. I can feel the emotion coming off it. The emotion is
resentment.
Makes no sense. Can’t figure it out. Wish I could leave, Micah. Really do.”
“Porter, do you
believe
you’re dead?”
Naumann looked at him for a while, his face set and stony.
“No. I guess I don’t. Do you?”
Dalton stared at him for a while, trying to find an answer. There was a rush of music, a deafening crescendo, that seemed to be coming out of the blue Tuscan sky itself, massed strings behind a liquid, sensuous melody of brassy horns, familiar but without a name. Naumann looked up at the sky, his face changing as he came back to Dalton—a ferocious, warning look.
They’re here!
Mandy Pownall was shaking him by the shoulder, her face pale and her hair in disarray. He looked up at her. Her robe had fallen open. He could see her full, round breasts, as pale as pearls, and her erect nipples, a deeper rose color inside an aureole of shell pink; her flat, white belly.
“Micah. The desk just called. The police are on their way up!”
Dalton struggled out of his dream, sat upright in the chair. He was in the suite at the Intercontinental. The plasma screen was rolling the credits for
Lady from Shanghai.
Somebody had turned the theme music up very loud. It filled the room. Mandy stood up and looked down at him, gathering her robe in tight and crossing her arms under her breasts.
“Christ. What time is it?”
“It’s four,” she whispered, a hoarse croak, straining to be heard over the music, her eyes a little wide. “In the morning.”
Dalton got up out of the chair, fully awake. Mandy was watching him, uncertain but steady. She was a tough woman, but she did not need to be here. Why Cather had insisted was still a mystery. But one thing was clear, now that it looked like the bluff had failed and Chong Kew Sak was going to play rough: two agents locked up in Changi was a lousy tactical deployment. Dalton knew there was no way she would have pulled out of the field, if given any time to think about it. But
he
had thought about it. A lot.

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