The Second Saladin - Страница 27

“For you.”

He took the phone.

Miles said, “Chardy? What the hell are you doing there?”

“It’s the weekend, Miles. I can go anywhere.”

“Not anymore you can’t.”

Chardy waited, and finally the young man said in a breathless, unpunctuated sentence, “Trewitt and Speight in Mexico and we lost Speight somebody blew his face off with a shotgun behind some whorehouse in Mexico where he wasn’t supposed to be.”

Chardy closed his eyes at the image. Behind a whorehouse. Old Bill, who was always around.

“Paul,” Johanna said, “Paul, what is it?”

“Yost wants you down here. There’s an early flight into National from Logan. We’ll have somebody meet you.”

Old Bill. In Mexico? Now why kill him? What had he come across? Who did it — the opposition, some jealous boyfriend, gangsters, a hunter whose shotgun wasn’t on safe?

But there weren’t any accidents in this sort of game.

“Paul, that flight. You’ll be on it?”

“Yeah, sure,” Chardy said, feeling suddenly that things had just changed and that the safety of the bedroom in which he lay hidden just seconds ago was forever gone. It frightened him a little. And then he had another thought.

“Look, Miles, you better get some people down there to bring that kid in. I could go myself. Without an old hand like Speight, that kid could get himself in a lot of trouble.”

“Trewitt is missing,” said Lanahan coldly.

“I see,” said Chardy.

“He’s dead too, you know,” said Lanahan.

Chardy sighed. It was how these things worked.

“Yes,” he said, “yes, I suppose he is.”

17

Someone in the Dayton bus station had stolen his money.

Ulu Beg sat very still and tried not to panic. But without money he was dead. Any man in America without money is dead, but he would be deader than most, with no place to turn, no one to go to, and nothing but the Skorpion. He was still hundreds of miles from shelter.

They had given him a lot of money.

“By their standards you are a rich man. You could buy a Chevrolet car or a motorboat.”

“I do not desire a Chevrolet car or a motorboat.”

“Of course not. But remember, in America money is life. All things are possible for the man with money, all doors open, all women eager, all policemen friendly.”

He sat in a plastic chair in a bright waiting room and tried to reconstruct the last seven or eight minutes. The bus from Louisville to Dayton was late, held up in traffic in Cincinnati. There had been a rush to get off. He had been mostly among black people, emotional, and at the arrival gate much hugging and squeezing had occurred as families reunited. He pushed through into this main room, all pale plastic, shiny and new. A few policemen and many more blacks stood about, also airmen in their blue uniforms.

And that is when he felt the lightness in his pocket.

Now seven or eight minutes had passed. He knew it had to have happened as he pushed through the blacks. So: a black person.

He examined them, wondering if the thief had fled instantly, and thought not. His eye searched out the blacks. An old man, invalid, in huge overcoat, talking crazily to himself. A beggar? Two tough boys with mounds of hair dancing to radios in a corner. A dapper businessman sitting three seats away, reading a magazine. Or a fat old woman in a flowered hat.

He didn’t know what to do; he was helpless.

In the wallet, he had over $3,000. He could not go to the police. He ached at the loss of it.

He saw a third boy approach the two with the radios. They conferred quietly and then a ceremony began: one, then the other, slapped the outstretched hand, then clasped him by the wrist.

They were big young men in their late teens with unreadable faces and brown, blank eyes.

Ulu Beg stood, gathered his pack, and walked across the bus station to the three of them.

“You have a thing of mine. So give it back.”

“Say what, Jack?” They looked at him suspiciously.

“You have a thing of mine. Give it back. Then, no trouble.”

“What you talkin’ ’bout, man?”

“A wallet. A wallet is missing.”

“Don’t know no motherfuckin’ thing about no wallet.”

“My wallet. I take it back now, please. Okay. No trouble.”

“This dude lookin’ for some trouble.”

“You have my wallet,” Ulu Beg said.

“Jack, take your face outa here.”

“You have my wallet.”

“Some kind of crazy motherfucker. Man, he tryin’ for a trip to Disneyland.”

“Let’s get outa here. Crazy motherfucker make me nervous.”

“Let’s cut his ass up some.”

“No, man. He motherfuckin’ crazy.”

“You have my wallet.”

The three boys began to back away, confirming for Ulu Beg their guilt.

He followed them.

“Shit, man, you nuts.”

He followed them into the night.

They crossed a wide street under bright lights and headed toward a railway viaduct. They turned and walked up a small road that led up an incline.

“Hey, boy, we goin’ up here, you come along and we bust yo’ face.”

“My wallet,” he called.

He could make out their dark forms standing at the end of the road on a kind of crest.

“Those boys hurt you bad, mister.”

He had not seen the woman. She stood just a few feet away, under the bridge.

“They cut your face up. They make you walk with a limp for a long time. They even kill you.”

“But my wallet. They have my wallet.”

“Honey, ’less you got a million dollars in that wallet, you stay here. Don’t be no crazy fool.”

He could no longer see them. Had they escaped? Urgently he began a kind of run, there was nothing here except mud and cinders as the road climbed up to track level. He reached into his pack and felt the Skorpion. But then he wondered what would happen if he shot them with it. There’d be a huge commotion, an extravaganza, a mess.

He reached the tracks. On either side the lights of this bleak Ohio city rolled away. He could see tall buildings, all lit up, a mile or so away.

“Boy, you some kind of motherfuckin’ dumb.”

“Gonna cut yo’ ass bad, motherfucker.”

They were behind him. He turned. He saw a blade spring out.

“Cut his fuckin’ ass. Go on, man, cut his fuckin’ white ass.”

The boy with the knife came at him. He was the bravest, the meanest. He led with his blade, feinted with it.

“Come on, motherfucker, come on,” he shouted.

He flicked the blade toward the Kurd’s throat and Ulu Beg hit him with his open hand across the neck, crushing him to the ground. The blade clattered away. Something lashed into his head. One of the others had a strange fighting device of two stout sticks united by a short chain, and he’d just caught Ulu Beg above the right eye. He twirled it menacingly and Ulu Beg felt the swelling on his forehead.

“Gonna git you, motherfucker,” the boy said and Ulu Beg leapt under the weapon and caught the hand that held it, then hit the boy an upward blow in the throat, knocking him back coughing and gagging. The third boy raced down the tracks.

Ulu Beg went and took the wallet from the boy he’d hit in the throat. It was not his. The boy lay on the ground, moaning.

“Somebody take from me, now I must take from you,” he said.

He picked up his pack and went down the hill to the road.

“Baby, I didn’t think you was comin’ back.”

She startled him again.

“I was about to call a cop.”

“No. No. No police.”

His sudden fierceness frightened her. She stepped back and he turned.

“Baby,” she said, “you don’t want no police botherin’ you, you best not go walkin’ nowhere lookin’ like that.”

He felt blood running down his face from where the boy had struck him with the stick. He reached, wiped it away with the back of his hand. His hand was bloody. More blood came to his face.

“You banged up.”

He looked at her. She was in her forties, a solid-looking woman. She wore a wig and smelled of perfume.

“Help me,” he said.

“You get your wallet back?”

“No. Yes!” He pulled the boy’s wallet out of his pocket. He opened it.

“There is no money here,” he said.

“Where you get that?”

“From the boy.”

“You done took them three?”

“I knock them down, yes.”

“Honey, you best come home with me.”

18

Chardy arrived bleary-eyed, his nerves edgy, ready for a fight. He had adrenaline coursing through his veins by the quart, he could feel his eyes dilated painfully, his breath shallow and tense. In the old days, when you lost somebody you’d go in and kick some ass. It was one of the oldest, the best rules, a rule that would have helped Bill Speight — or any agent — in his last moment or two. You always got back, you always went them one better; it was all personal. There were no truces. And maybe a part of him felt some joy, though he’d never admit it. For here at last was a prospect of action.

But when he crashed into the office, expecting men loading magazines into exotic automatics, others looking at maps, still others chatting bitterly in corners, he found only Miles, sipping coffee.

“Where is everybody?” Chardy barked, at first furious that they’d left without him.