The Two Faces of January (5 page)

Rydal gave Niko the two passports, and said to Chester, “Now you may give him the five thousand dollars.”

Chester sobered a little and, his pink jowls folding over his white starched collar, swung his overcoat open and got the money from his jacket pocket. He handed it to Niko.

Niko accepted it with a nod, moved under the light of a street-lamp, and began to count the money.

Rydal folded his hands behind him and looked up at the street-lamp. Chester glanced over at the opposite pavement, where a young man and woman were walking with arms about each other, paying them no heed at all. Niko was about fifteen feet away. After he had counted the money, with an air of handling such sums every day, he ambled back, wiping a running nose with a finger, and said to Rydal, “Okay. And five thousand on delivery and—eight hundred for me, okay?” The only English word in it was “okay”.

“I thought a thousand for you,” said Rydal, smiling.

“Okay,” said Niko gaily, and his lead-framed tooth gleamed dully, the gap beside it black as night.

“What time is Frank getting here?” Rydal asked.

“Seven in the morning,” Niko replied positively.

“Can he finish the passports by ten-thirty tomorrow morning?”

Niko spread and waggled his hands, then shook his head. “No. Not that fast.”

“What are you asking him?” asked Chester.

“If he can get the passports to us by the time you have to catch the plane. The answer is no. But you don't have to show passports going to Crete.”

“I know,” said Chester. But his blue eyes were a bit wider.
“When
can
he get them to us?”

“By plane the next day, I'm sure. Thursday,” said Rydal. He said to Niko, “We've got to have them by Thursday, okay? You take the plane and fly with them. The ten forty-five plane to Iraklion, okay?”

“Okay,” said Niko.

It would probably be his first plane trip, Rydal thought. “And you take your fare from the thousand you're paid, okay?”

“Okay,” said Niko.

“If this language consisted in ‘okay',” Chester said, “I'd be okay.” He was reaching in his wallet for another bill.

Rydal started to stop him and didn't. If he wanted to tip, if it made him feel better—

“What about those pearls,” Chester said. “You know, those pearls, the bracelet you showed me.”

Niko knew the word pearls. He jumped as if he had received an electric shock. “Wants to buy the pearl bracelet?” he asked Rydal in Greek.

“Depends on how much. Let's see it again,” said Rydal.

“It's home. You saw it,” Niko said.

“I know, but what're you asking? Go and get it, you'll sell it, I just want to know how much.”

“Fifteen thousand drachs,” said Niko.

“Five hundred dollars?” said Rydal skeptically. “Let's see the pearls again, Niko.”

Niko held up a thick, dark finger. “Twenty minutes.” Then he checked the snaps on his American army waist-length jacket pockets, where the money and passports were, and dashed off at his top-speed gait. His feet splayed, it was neither a walk nor a trot, and he gave the impression of walking on the inside of his ankles.

Rydal folded his arms, held his head high, and waited until a dumpy little figure of a woman had passed by with a small, stuffed shopping bag. “So you're interested in the pearl bracelet?”

“Yes. For five hundred,” Chester said. “They looked real to me.”

Rydal nodded. They were real, and a bargain at five hundred. Soon they would be around Colette's plump, slightly freckled wrist. She would give Chester a big kiss and a bit more for that bracelet, Rydal supposed. “By the way, I don't know if you understood our transaction,” Rydal said. “You'll give Niko five thousand more when he delivers the passports Thursday in Iraklion. Niko asked eight hundred for himself. I suggested a thousand for him. That'll cover his telephone calls, his ticket to Crete and back and . . .” Rydal paused.

“And?”

“Since Niko's now your confederate, I think it's better to have him a bit overpaid than underpaid or merely adequately paid,” Rydal said somewhat stuffily.

Chester's smile was naïve and understanding. “I agree. I know what you mean.”

They were silent for a few seconds. Rydal expected the question, “And how much are you getting or what would you like for yourself?” But the question didn't come. Rydal turned up the collar of his overcoat against the fine mist that was drifting down. The edges of his collar and lapels were getting threadbare, he could feel it with his cold fingertips. He sensed Chester's awkwardness, his lack of courage about mentioning money, possibly his stinginess, and, for all his threadbare clothes, Rydal felt quite superior to Chester MacFarland.

“We've time for an espresso somewhere,” Rydal said. “Shall we get out of this fog?”

“Sure. Fine.”

Rydal found a café around the corner that was full of small, mostly empty tables. Rydal was hungry, and could have eaten one of the white plates of yoghurt or tapioca that were displayed behind the glass counters, but he ordered only espresso black, and Chester a cappuccino.

“How will he know where to meet us in Crete?” Chester asked.

“You can meet him at the airport in Iraklion Thursday around one in the afternoon. That's the simplest,” Rydal said. “The plane comes in between one and one-thirty. Niko'll be going right back to Athens.”

“Um-m.” Chester watched the waiter's hands serving them glasses of water, then their two coffees. “You think the passports'll be passable,” he said, and gave an apologetic or nervous smile.

“Yes, I'd say so. I've never seen any of Niko's friend's work, but he seems to get business,” Rydal replied, as if they were discussing the merits of a tailor. He looked calmly at Chester.

Chester's large, manicured hands were restless on the edge of the table, as if he hadn't enough to do with them between smoking a cigarette and lifting his coffee cup. His pale blue eyes were slightly bloodshot. He gave off an aroma of Scotch, mingled with some unsweet, masculine toilet water or after-shave lotion. Rydal tried to imagine Chester with his father's brown beard along his lower jaw and rising up near his chin to join his moustache. It was easy to imagine Chester with his father's beard. It was easy to imagine that Chester was his father, at forty or so, without the beard, because his father hadn't started the beard until he was forty-odd. Rydal realized that Chester's resemblance to his father was the main reason why he had so suddenly and spontaneously helped Chester with the corpse in the corridor this afternoon—if one could assign a reason to an act of such unreason. It implied, Rydal thought, a lurking respect for his father. He did not like that thought.

“You've been in Athens quite a while?” asked Chester.

“Two months or so.”

Chester nodded. “Picked up the language, eh?”

“It's not difficult,” said Rydal, and shifted in his chair, remembering his father introducing him to Greek at the age of eight, or maybe even younger, at any rate after he had reached a “reasonable proficiency” in Latin, and then, at fifteen, demotic Greek, in preparation for the European tour that his father intended to make in the late summer with his wife and three children. It would have been Rydal's second trip to Europe, but it never came off, because he met Agnes that spring. He felt Chester's eyes on him, more intense now, and involuntarily Rydal leaned to one side and glanced into the mirror which covered the wall just behind Chester. His short, dark hair was combed, a bit shiny with damp, no smudges on his rather pale face, his eyes and mouth serious and composed as usual. Chester was probably thinking he was a very reserved type for a crook, or someone who drifted on the fringes of criminals. It was of no interest to Rydal what Chester thought. “You're in the investment business?” Rydal asked suddenly, lighting a cigarette.

“Well—” Chester's fingertips lifted from the table and hovered in the air. “I am in a sense. I arrange business for several other people. Adviser, you might say,” Chester added heavily, as if he had just found the word. “Stocks. You know.”

Rydal thought he knew. “What kind?”

“Oh—” There was a long hesitation. “Matter of fact many of them are pretty secret just now, not on the market yet officially. One stock, for instance, is being launched on an invention that hasn't yet even been completed. Universal Key. Works on a magnetic principle.” His voice was gathering conviction. He looked Rydal in the eye.

Rydal nodded. Chester was getting onto home ground now, and Rydal could imagine how he operated. He was a con man, and probably a very good one, the kind who convinced himself, fell himself under the spell he wanted to throw over a prospective customer. Rydal sensed that he lived in an unreality. No wonder the reality of the corpse this afternoon had given him a jolt. “Well, I'm not exactly in a position to buy any,” Rydal said.

“No. Well.” Chester smiled easily. “Position to buy any. I was going to mention . . . uh . . . a little reimbursement for your trouble in arranging these passports. What would you—”

“I didn't mean financial position,” Rydal said, putting on a smile also. “I meant I'm not interested in stocks, and don't know anybody I'd be passing secrets on to.” The reimbursement situation was making Chester nervous, Rydal saw. Chester wanted it over with, wanted to know if he were in for blackmail or not. Rydal took a deep breath and sighed, and finished his coffee. He looked at his wristwatch. They were due to meet Niko in five minutes.

“Well, in regard to reimbursing you, what do you think would be fair? I'd like to give you something. Or . . . have you arranged that with Niko?”

“No,” Rydal said casually. “Thanks very much. No need for reimbursement.”

“Oh, come now. I don't mean to insult you . . . didn't mean to, but surely . . .” He was like a man protesting to get the bill and not really wanting it.

Rydal shook his head. “Thanks.” He lifted a finger for the waiter, and reached for his money to pay the tabs which had come with the coffees. “To be businesslike, you should wait anyway to see if the passports are satisfactory. All I've done for you is deprive you and your wife of your passports and five thousand dollars, you might say.”

“Oh!” Chester smiled. “No, let me get this. You got the taxi.” Chester put his own money down and left a hundred per cent tip. “You also did me a great favor in the hotel,” Chester said more quietly, “by offering to give me an alibi, if the police arrived.” He had been looking down at the ashtray, and now he looked up at Rydal. “If you'd like to come to Crete with us, I'd be glad to take care of expenses. That's the least I can do. Give you a small trip and—especially if you're still willing to provide that alibi, in case I'm questioned.” It was an effort for him to get the words out. He brushed away some beads of perspiration on his pinkish brow.

Rydal was considering. He had been planning to go to Crete soon. But that was no reason, no reason he was interested in Chester's offer. Would it be wise or unwise? The unwisdom was plain, the wisdom not, yet Rydal sensed its presence. He was drawn towards Chester in a way he could now only attribute to curiosity. And he was attracted to his wife, though he hadn't the slightest intention of trying to start an affair with her. The situation had its dangers, but was
that
crude attraction really it? He had hoped for adventure in the lavender dusks of Athens, in the rosy-fingered dawns that touched the Acropolis, and he hadn't as yet found it. Was he destined to find it in the liquor-rosy face of a con man who looked like his father? Rydal smiled to himself.

“Well? Need some time to make up your mind?”

“No,” Rydal said. “No, just thinking. Yes, I'd like to go, I think. But I was going to Crete, anyway, and I have the money to pay my way.”

“Oh. Well, we'll see about that, but—you'll come with us tomorrow morning?”

Rydal nodded, wordless, somehow afraid to utter another syllable of assent. “We should be getting back to Niko.”

5

When Chester
returned to the Hotel Dardanelles a little after eleven, he found Colette in bed with tears in her eyes. The night-lamp by the bed was on. She lay on her side facing the door, her head cushioned on her bent left arm.

“Honey, what's the matter?” Chester asked, kneeling on the floor beside her.

“Oh, I don't know,”
she said in the high, childlike voice she always had when she cried. “It's just—all of a sudden it all crashes down on me. On
us
.”

“What do you mean, honey?”

She wiped her right eye quickly. “That man is dead, isn't he?”

“Yes, I think so. I'm sorry. But if it had to be . . . an accident like that, and it certainly was an accident, it's lucky for us, because if he'd waked up in a few minutes, we'd never have got away. This way—”

“I can't understand how you're so cool about it,” she interrupted.

“Well, I've got to be. I'm
not
cool about it, but I've got to keep cool, if I—if we get out of this, honey. You don't want me to lose my nerve, do you?”

“No-o,” Colette wailed, like an obedient child.

“Well, then. I'm doing what I have to do. We'll get the new passports Thursday noon in Crete. I'm meeting the fellow at the airport as soon as he steps off the plane. And look. I brought you something.” He stood up and took the pearl bracelet out of his suit-jacket pocket. He held it under the light for Colette to see.

She looked at it a few seconds, then, without lifting her head, extended her right hand to touch it. Her fingers turned it slightly on his palm, then she said, “It's very pretty,” and drew her hand back under the bedclothes.

“Ho-ney . . .” Chester was at a loss for a moment. “Real pearls and I got them for a song. Five hundred bucks American. Come on. One little smile for me tonight?” He took her soft warm face between his thumb and fingertips.

Usually she smiled, usually she expected a kiss. Now her eyes were troubled and almost frowning. “This'll go on your record, won't it?”

“What?”

“That you killed that Greek man.”

Chester released her, and sat on the bed, puzzled. “It'll go on the record of Chester MacFarland, I suppose. MacFarland's not connected with
me
yet.” He looked at her as if he'd just made the most logical statement in the world. “MacFarland . . . well . . . We'll have a new name Thursday, you and I.
” He waited for her to say something, and when she said nothing, he got up and started to take off his overcoat.

“Chester, I'm worried,” she said, like a child who wants its daddy to sit down by it again.

“I know you are, dear, but you'll feel better tomorrow. I promise you. Rydal's getting tickets for us, I gave him the money, and all we have to do is to be at the terminal at ten o'clock.”

She was silent, and Chester saw that her eyes were still open, staring into space ahead of her. Chester put on his pajamas—he'd had a bath in tepid water in the tiny tub before dinner—and touched up his face with his battery rotary razor. He had a heavy beard, and it was a double bed tonight. As he knocked the water out of his toothbrush, he said in a cheerful tone, “By the way, that fellow's coming with us tomorrow. What do you think of that? I think he'll be rather helpful.”

“To Crete?” Colette asked, lifting her head for the first time.

“Yes. I offered him the trip, if he wanted to go. He wouldn't take a cent for what he's done, or so he told me. He may be getting something from the thousand I'm paying his friend Niko. Anyway, he's coming; and it has the added advantage,” Chester said in a lower voice, walking closer to Colette, but concentrating on drying his hands on a face towel, “that if we're questioned at all by the police, Rydal can say he was with us all this afternoon and that we never saw that Greek agent, but—” Chester broke off, having realized that the alibi would be unnecessary after Thursday, when they were no longer the MacFarlands and had different passports.

“Didn't want any money from you. Isn't that nice of him? See, your suspicions weren't right at all,” Colette said, smiling. She was sitting up in bed hugging her knees now.

“No. Except—” Chester was beginning to think he was a fool, inviting a potential blackmailer—he was still a potential one—for no really good reason to stick with them. After Thursday, Chester could conceive of no possible service Rydal Keener could render. And why hadn't Rydal pointed that out? He was a very intelligent young man, Chester was sure. He looked at his wife's brightened face. All sign of tears was gone now. Chester moved towards his Scotch bottle on the bureau top. “Like a nightcap with me?”

“No, thanks. What I'd really like is a big glass of cold milk.”

“Want me to try?” Chester put the bottle down and started for the telephone.

“Um-m, no,” Colette said, shaking her head. She was staring in front of her again, and thinking of something else. “I hope he's getting something out of that thousand.”

“Why?”

“Because I think he deserves it. He also needs it. Did you notice his shoes?”

“Yes, I noticed them.” Chester sipped his drink and frowned. “I just realized that we don't really need him after Thursday. Not unless something happens that we can't get the passports and we have to say our own were stolen or something like that. He offered to say he'd been with us all afternoon, you know.”

Colette gave a faint laugh, no more than her breath against her upper lip, and Chester felt she had realized this minutes ago. Chester often felt that Colette's brain was better than his, better in the sense of being more direct and therefore quicker.

“Well, he speaks Greek, so that's bound to be a help,” she said. “Besides, he's a very nice fellow, you can see that.”

“Can you? I hope so. Shall we turn the light out now?”

“Yes. He told me he was from Massachusetts.”

“Oh, and so what? I know a lot of crumbs from Massachusetts.”

“Well, he certainly doesn't look like a crumb!” She snuggled into the curve of his arm, her head against the swell of his chest.

“You were talking about his shoes.”

“Oh, the hell with his clothes,” Colette said. “You can see he's got nice manners. He may come from a poor family, but it's a good family.”

Chester smiled indulgently in the darkness. It was one of the things he'd never argue with Colette about. She was essentially a Southerner, he supposed. A pipe began to clank mysteriously in the bathroom. Then an angry voice shouted something that sounded as if it came through several walls, and was answered by a woman's shriller voice.

“Kee-rist! I hope that doesn't keep on all night,” said Colette.

“Hope not.” She was in a better mood, and the fact the young man was coming with them had picked her up, Chester realized. He had thought he might have to do some persuading to make her agree to his coming. It was funny. Then he stiffened a little, remembering the way they had been looking at each other when he walked in from the bathroom with his suitcase tonight. So. Maybe. Maybe that was why the young man hadn't pointed out that his services as an alibi-provider wouldn't be needed for very long. Chester squirmed a little. The young man now had him by the short hair, too, if he wanted to stay on. Maybe he was after bigger money than a few hundred dollars or a thousand.

“S' matter, darling? Am I heavy on you?”

“You're never heavy on me,” Chester said. He was uneasy. He was thinking, as he had been thinking off and on all evening, that the Hotel King's Palace employees might find the body as early as 5 a.m., the police might have the trains and buses checked by 7 a.m., and start on the Athens hotels. They could be picked up at 8 a.m., before they were even out of the Hotel Dardanelles. Or was he feeling over-pessimistic because it had been such a long, horrible day? He had ordered a beefsteak for dinner and hardly been able to touch it. And Colette said he was acting
cool
about it! He lay awake a long time after Colette had fallen asleep, until his arm grew cramped, and he gently pulled it through the little gap her neck made at the bottom of the pillow, and turned over.

Chester awoke first at 7:30
and ordered breakfast.
“American
coffee and toast and marmalade. Buttered toast . . . Oh, all right, butter on the side, yes. . . . No, the milk aside from the coffee. Not in the coffee. Understand? . . . No, I never said anything about French coffee.
American
coffee. . . . All right, if the milk comes in it, it comes in it. Just make it quick, will you? And have our bill ready, if you wi
ll.” He hung up. “Whew!”

Colette was awake. “Trouble, honey?” She smiled and sat up, ran her fingers through her hair and stretched her arms up, her fingers splayed and arched backward, like her spine. She took a quick bath, shrieking at the coolness of the water, while Chester shaved at the basin. “Draw one for you, dear?” she asked as she washed the tub out with her sponge.

“Thanks. Not taking time this morning.”

He did not sit down for his grey-colored coffee, and did not eat any of the round rusklike stuff that passed for toast, though Colette got through several of them, dunking them quickly to soften them, then spreading them liberally with orange marmalade.

“Smell this butter, Ches,” she said through a laugh, holding up the butter plate to him. “Smells just like a wet sheep.”

Chester sniffed, agreed with her, then went on about his business, which at that moment was sneaking a fortifying drink in the bathroom. Colette didn't like him to drink in the early morning.

They were at the Olympia Airlines by a quarter to 9. Rydal had told him he would purchase the tickets in the name of Colbert. Chester checked their luggage, and was not required to give a name, though he was asked which flight he was on. Chester said the Iraklion flight at 11:15 (the time had been set back a half hour, he had seen on a black board). Then Chester went out into the street with Colette. He wanted to take a little walk, to get out of the airline office, which was such a likely spot for the police to look for Chester MacFarland, he thought, though the airport itself was an even more likely spot.

The time dragged. Chester checked an impulse to go by the American Express, as he had been doing twice daily, to see if he had any mail. He couldn't claim Chester MacFarland's letters now. And he couldn't sign Chester MacFarland to any of the five or six thousand dollars' worth of traveler's checks in his suitcase. He wondered if Rydal Keener could come up with an idea as to how to get rid of them without taking a total loss?

“Darling, look at those shoes!” Colette said, dragging him by the arm towards a shop window.

Chester stared into a window full of reddish-brown shoes, all very pointed and arranged in concentric semicircles, so that they all seemed to be pointing at him. “Yes. Sure there's time,” he said automatically to her question, and then he saw her dark-clad figure in the mink stole take a jolt, bend sideways, as the door resisted her.

She came back opening her arms, her pocket-book swinging out. “Closed, the fools! They could've made a sale. Nine-thirty!” She was lively as a little bird.

Chester was secretly glad the store had been closed. He steered her back towards the danger spot, the Olympia Airlines office.

“There he is,” said Colette, pointing with a hand sheathed in a light-grey suede glove. Then she waved.

Rydal saw her, and gave them a wave back. He was walking towards them on the pavement, carrying a brown suitcase. He held up a finger, apparently wanting them to wait where they were, then disappeared into the Olympia office. People were getting out of taxis in front of the place now, and porters were bustling about with luggage.

“He's going to get our tickets,” Chester said.

“Oh. Well, we've got to go in some time.” She tugged at his arm, then stopped, waiting for him to move. “Shouldn't you give him some money for the tickets?”

“Gave him some last night for ours. In cash,” Chester said. “He's buying his own.” Chester walked towards the airline office doors, his feet almost dragging.

They found Rydal among a crowd of twenty or thirty people who were standing about beside their luggage in the office. Rydal greeted them with a lift of his head, and Chester and Colette made their way towards him, stepping around suitcases and laden porters.

“Good morning,” Rydal said, and with a nod at Colette, “Mrs. Colbert.”

“Good morning,” Colette said.

Rydal glanced around at the people, then said to Chester, “They found him this morning around seven.”

“Yes?” asked Chester, his scalp tingling as if he had not been prepared at all. “How'd you hear?”

“There's a radio in my hotel lobby. I waited for the nine o'clock news, and there it was.” He looked at Colette.

His coolness was almost like contempt, Chester felt. No skin off his nose what had happened, of course, no skin at all. Yes, definitely, Rydal Keener had a cocky, top-dog manner. But now was no time to worry about it. After tomorrow noon, if the fellow asked five thousand dollars to disappear, fine, pay it, and say good-bye.

“Here's your ticket,” Rydal said, handing it to him.

“Where's hers?” asked Chester.

Rydal glanced around the babbling crowd, and said in a low voice, “I thought it was better to buy your wife's and mine under Colbert, and yours under another name, Robinson. She and I ought to sit together on the plane, and you should sit alone. Don't worry about the names. You probably won't be spoken to. No passports involved, you know.”