The Shadowers (17 page)

There were small night sounds all around. I wondered about snakes. It looked like good country for snakes and they always scare me. I started back toward the road and stopped. The farther opening in the gun emplacement or casemate or whatever it was showed a hint of light that hadn’t been there earlier.

I don’t suppose he really expected me to go right for it like a moth to a flame. He probably expected me to scout the whole deserted fortification first, looking for a back door by which I could sneak in and catch him by surprise—only he knew all the entrances and exits better than I did. He’d had time to learn them. Wherever I came in, he’d be waiting, so why waste the time?

I went straight for the lighted opening, therefore, and almost broke my leg stumbling into a masonry circle set in the ground in front, maybe something to do with the traversing mechanism of the great coast-defense gun that once had defended this shore of Florida first from the Kaiser and then from Adolf Hitler. I couldn’t help wondering if they’d ever found anything to shoot at from here—perhaps a periscope or two out in the Gulf, or what looked like a periscope to an excited draftee.

The concrete doorway behind the circle was the size of a railway-tunnel opening. The light was quite weak, apparently only a reflection from a side corridor in there. I went in. The tunnel went straight through the artificial hill. I could see the vague shape of a smaller back entrance with trees beyond. It was barred by a metal grill.

I came to the side corridor, a concrete passageway that presumably ran the whole length of the fortification, but I couldn’t see much beyond the lighted doorway on the right, just a few yards from the corner.

When I stood still, there wasn’t a sound in the place except the sound of my own breathing. When I turned and walked toward the light, my footsteps awoke echoes all through the man-made hill. I came to the doorway. The room beyond might have been living quarters once, or an ammunition storage space. Now it was just an empty, windowless concrete chamber—almost empty, that is.

A kerosene lantern tied to a ringbolt in the far wall threw a yellow light over the barren room. Two motionless shapes were sprawled on the floor to one side. Well, I’d predicted that.

I’d predicted it to Olivia, who hadn’t wanted to believe me, but I stood quite still anyway, regarding the two bodies from the doorway. Mooney was in his slacks and tweedy sport coat. A snappy hat lay beside him. Toni was wearing a loose, heavy black sweater, tight black pants and little black shoes resembling ballet slippers. She could have been sleeping quietly with her face turned toward the wall, except that nobody normally goes to sleep fully dressed on the dusty, hard concrete floor of an abandoned fortification...

Even as I thought this, one of the figures moved. Mooney struggled to a sitting position, so that I could see that his hands and feet were tied; a tight gag kept him from crying out. He tried, however. He stared at me with bulging eyes and made some choked, gurgling noises, pleading for release I suppose. To hell with Harold Mooney.

I went forward, trying not to let myself feel hope, and knelt beside Toni. I put my hand on her shoulder and she seemed to move in response, rolling over on her back sleepily to see who’d disturbed her. Then I saw the blank, wide-open eyes in the pale, bruised face—and the little bullet-hole between the fine black eyebrows.

“Good evening, Eric,” said Kroch’s voice behind me.

I suppose it was a moment of triumph or something. I’d figured it right, hadn’t I? I’d figured everything absolutely right, with the exception of Mooney’s survival. The old crystal ball had been working pretty well. The man I wanted was within reach and I wasn’t dead.

Everything was working out for me, just as I’d told Olivia. Hell, outfiguring a clumsy crumb like Kroch was just child’s play for the brilliant, scheming mind of that old maestro of the undercover services, Matthew Helm. Now all I had to do was take him.

“Get up,” Kroch said. “Be very careful, Eric.”

“Shut up,” I said without turning my head.

“Ah, yes,” he said. “A moment for sentiment. Very well, but no tricks.”

I looked down at the kid. There was some white paper sticking out of a pocket of her dusty black pants. I pulled it out. It was a crumpled envelope with my name written on it, or the name I was wearing currently:
Mr. Paul Corcoran, Montclair Hotel—please forward.
I could feel Kroch watching me closely, but he didn’t interfere as I opened the letter. It was not a letter, however. There was no writing inside. There were only three fifty-dollar bills.

There had never been any mysterious message, just the money I’d left in her studio, the money her pride and anger had forced her to try to return, preferably by finding me and throwing it in my face. And still at the end, I remembered, she’d tried to warn me off.
Mr. Corcoran, don’t come,
she’d cried into the phone,
don’t come, he’ll kill you!

“That’s long enough,” Kroch said. “The period of mourning is over. It is too bad. She was quite pretty. You have very good taste, Eric. The one in Redondo Beach, she was extremely attractive. It hurt me to have to send her off the road to her death. Such a waste. But if they will associate with people like us, they must take the risks,
hein?”

There was suddenly a funny roaring sound in my ears, as if the beach had moved closer so that I could hear the surf.

“Gail?” I said. “You killed Gail Hendricks, too?”

“Was that her name?” he asked casually. “Didn’t you know? Let us say she helped kill herself. She was really driving much too fast for the amount of alcohol she had consumed. Her reflexes were, shall we say, ragged. When I pulled alongside in the curve, very close, and blew my horn loudly... well, at that speed it takes very little to send a car out of control.” He paused. “Surely you didn’t think it was an accident. Accidents do not happen to people like us, Eric. You should know that.”

He was right, of course. I should have known it, but there had been no indication at the scene of the wreck and no motive that I could think of. As murder, Gail’s death still didn’t make sense as part of the case. He’d killed her before I’d even been given the assignment, before anybody could know I was taking it, since I didn’t even know it myself. I thought about this, or tried to think about it, but all that really came was the fact that he had killed her. That was two counts against Mr. Kroch. It was going to be very hard to keep him alive when the time came.

His voice came, easy and confident: “Well, so it goes.
So geht’s im Leben.
All right, stand up. Put your hands against the wall. So.”

Standing there, I felt his hands go over me. They found nothing of significance except the little case in my coat pocket. I felt that taken away.

“No weapons, Eric?” He sounded puzzled and rather disappointed.

“I stashed them,” I said. “There’s a tommy-gun hidden every five paces between here and the car.”

“You hid nothing,” he said. “I was watching. And they would do you no good out there, anyway. You are not going out there again. Turn around, slowly.”

I turned and looked at him for the first time that night. He was standing well back so I couldn’t grab the gun. He’d got no handsomer since the last time I’d seen him. His clothes were rumpled and dirty and he needed a shave. The bald dome of his head looked startlingly smooth and shiny above the craggy, lined face with its rough chin.

The weapon in his hand looked like a Star, one of those Spanish automatics. It wasn’t the smallest gun in the world—the shape of the cartridge, tiny though it is, makes it difficult for technical reasons to build a really small .22 automatic pistol—but it looked like a child’s toy in his large fleshy hand.

He was a big man. It didn’t worry me. The only thing that worried me, after seeing Toni’s body and learning about Gail, was that when the time came I might accidentally break him or tear him apart. I kept reminding myself firmly that this was still a business matter and had nothing to do with love or hate.

“What’s this?” he asked, holding out the little case he’d taken from my pocket.

“You’ve seen them before,” I said.

“It’s a drug case.”

“If you know, why ask?”

“Why did you bring that and nothing else?”

He was puzzled. It was a good way for him to be. He thought I had some elaborate plan, and he wanted to know what it was before he disposed of me. If I’d told him I’d just come there cold to take him and his silly little gun barehanded, he wouldn’t have believed me. So I told him.

“What do I need,” I asked, “to take a loudmouth like you, Kroch? An armored regiment? But I had to bring something along to keep you quiet after I’d taken that popgun away from you and rammed it down your throat or elsewhere. It was either that or a rope, and I didn’t have a rope.”

His eyes narrowed dangerously; then he laughed. “You are bluffing, Eric. No, you are taunting me deliberately to make me angry. Why? What clever scheme have you got in mind?”

Off in the corner, Dr. Harold Mooney wiggled uncomfortably against his bonds and tried to say something through his gag. We paid him no attention.

“Clever?” I said to Kroch. “They wanted me to be clever, but I said what the hell it’s just Karl Kroch, isn’t it? If you want him, I’ll go get him for you. Alive? Sure, I’ll take him alive, I said. A dangerous man I might have to shoot, but not old Kroch.”

His hand tightened on the gun—tightened and relaxed. He laughed harshly. “Childish, Eric,” he said. “Very childish. But I wish I knew what you had in mind. “Then he frowned. “Why would your superiors want me alive? Why would they care?”

The truth was doing all right for me, so I stayed with it. “Well,” I said, “they want to ask you some questions about a gentleman named Taussig, Emil Taussig. I said I was sure you’d be glad to cooperate after I’d worked you over a little.”

He ignored the jab, still frowning. “Taussig?” he said. “The old man in Moscow? The white-haired old man who is so clever for the Communists? I only know what everyone in the business knows about Taussig. I have never even met him. Why would they want to question me about him, Eric?”

I laughed in his face. “Now who’s bluffing, Karl? We have an odd notion you just might be working for that white-haired old man. As a kind of specialist, say. Not in Moscow, but right here.”

He looked at me for a moment. He seemed displeased. He shook his head slowly. “But that is not so,” he said, almost reproachfully. “You must know it is not so, Eric. You must know about me, by this time, enough. I gave you my name; you will have got a report by this time. You know who I am. You know where I came from. Why should you think such a thing of me?”

I had a sudden cold feeling that something was wrong, that everything was wrong. Gail had died before the case even started, as far as I was concerned; and now Kroch was being very sincere and earnest, and a little indignant, about something that shouldn’t have bothered him a bit, if he was what we’d thought him. I remembered that I’d never been really satisfied with his behavior.

“What are you driving at, Karl?” I demanded.

“You do not understand?” he asked. He seemed surprised. “Why, I am Karl Kroch,
hein?
I might work for the Communists if I needed the money, that is true. What are politics to me? I am a professional, like you. But even a professional must draw the line somewhere, even in this decadent world we inhabit now with the Fuehrer gone. I am Karl Kroch. I do not work for Jews.”

It was childish, if you wanted to look at it one way, or vicious, if you wanted to look at it another. But it was also completely convincing. I didn’t like to think what it implied.

I asked sharply, “Well, if you’re not working for Taussig, damn it, why the hell are you trailing Olivia Mariassy around like Mary’s little lamb?”

He stared at me. “But I was not following the lady scientist!” he protested. “Why would I do that? I was following you.”

“Me?”

“I have been looking for you ever since last summer, Eric. Ever since I caught up with you in Redondo Beach a week ago, I have been following you, waiting for the right moment to deal with you properly.”

And there it was. I didn’t doubt him for a moment. There had been too many indications along the way; indications that I’d ignored or allowed myself to be talked into disregarding. I could have blamed Washington, I suppose, but I hadn’t really put up a good fight for my doubts and reservations, not good enough to allow me to pass the buck now.

I’d sensed that Kroch was after me, of course. I’d been practically certain I was the one he’d been waiting for in Olivia’s hotel room, for instance. But I’d assumed that I was merely an annoying detail he wanted to dispose of so he could get on with the main job. It had never occurred to me that I might be that job.

Yet as a man trailing Olivia, Kroch had never been completely convincing. As a man stalking me, whatever his motive, he became quite logical, if still a little melodramatic. I had to face the fact that I’d jumped to the wrong conclusion at the outset—we all had. Gail had died, Tom had died, and I might die, at the hands of the wrong man, a man who knew nothing significant about Emil Taussig. A lot of other people might also die...

“Did she not tell you?” Kroch said. “The beautiful lady in the Cadillac? I hoped she would live long enough to tell you about the ugly man who’d frightened her into the ditch. I wanted you to know I was after you, Eric.”

“No,” I said slowly. I remembered the policeman saying Gail had asked for me before she died. “No, she didn’t tell me. She had no chance. She was dead when I got there.”

“And the little girl here on the floor? Did she not tell you either? I told her to be sure to let you know Karl Kroch was after you and would strike when he was ready.”

I said, “She said something like that, but I was working on another business and misunderstood your meaning.” “Misunderstandings,” Kroch said sadly. “Always misunderstandings. I am sorry. I wanted to give you a fair chance, Eric. At least as much chance as you gave another man; a man we both remember.”

I frowned at him. “What man?”