Blood of the Albatross

by Ridley Pearson

  “What about the others?” a faceless voice asked.

  “Check them out. If they’re dead, leave them. Burn the truck. I’ll call Wilhelm and tell him this one’s alive….”

  ***

  The sun was shining, casting hard shadows. Sharon marveled at the fastidiousness of the French as she watched a merchant sweeping the sidewalk in front of his shop, a clean apron tied about his waist. He smiled perfunctorily at a passerby. She snipped and attached the last piece of adhesive tape to the bandage, thankful that the buckshot had not gone deeper. Thankful it would not scar. The bandage would be off tomorrow.

  A few floors below, in the hotel dining room, the luncheon show had begun, a few dozen women in attendance. She pulled down the sleeve of her blouse and buttoned the cuff. When she tugged on the collar to straighten it, a pine needle fell out. She bent over, picked it up, and threw it away.

  Many of the tables had been cleared of their services by the time she made it downstairs. Alert now, she sat down at a table, nodding to the three ladies who looked at her curiously. So far, so good. She thought about the conduit, waiting for the magician to work his way through the routine, realizing she didn’t even know his name. To her he was simply the conduit. His plans were dictating her every move.

  She sipped her water. The magician, a large bald man with a deep, resonant voice, implored the guests to keep their attention firmly on a large gray box center stage. The conduit had told her to watch the door to the right of the stage. She awaited the signal, her heart beating quickly.

  The audience applauded.

  The door moved. No, it stopped and closed again. She tuned the rest of the room out, the door all that mattered. A woman appeared in the doorway to the right of the stage, remaining only long enough to glance toward the back of the room and remove the bright red hat she wore.

  The signal. Sharon left the large hall and walked down a corridor parallel to it. At the end of the corridor, she knocked on a set of double doors. The right-hand door opened, admitting her. Illusion, she thought, is all I’m after.

  A burly man approached her. “Miss, miss,” he said in German, “please. There are to be no spectators backstage.”

  “It is all right, Paul.” The magician appeared from behind a curtain. On stage, a woman could be heard explaining the upcoming finale, her voice low and dramatic. The bald magician continued. “Paul, see to the dressing rooms. We are almost finished.” Paul hurried off. “The hat?” he inquired.

  “Is red,” she answered.

  He nodded. “I am Hercule. We haven’t much time, I’m afraid.” He waved an arm toward the back. “This way, please.”

  She followed behind him, led into the darkness of a prop room, to an enormous box used in one of the disappearing routines. It was difficult to see; her eyes had not fully adjusted. The magician knelt and pushed against a lower section of the box; a hidden door fell open. “It is small. You open it by pulling on one of the straps and then lowering the door to the outside. There is a door on either side. It is the best I can offer. Remain inside for at least one hour once the truck is moving. After that use your judgment—but be forewarned: the truck will be inspected at the docks. It is often no more than a look inside. However, if it is searched, if you are discovered, you are on your own. The driver will admit nothing.”

  She could hardly see the magician. “And where am I going?”

  “If we are successful, you will be aboard ship by this evening. Perhaps sooner. Again, the red hat. You will recognize who to pay by the red beret. He will arrange everything. Now listen: if the driver”—he was hurrying, anxious to be done with her—“knocks twice, it means the rear door will be opened. Three knocks means something has gone wrong. In either case, get inside the box whenever the truck stops. Take no chances. As long as the truck is stopped, remain inside the box until the driver speaks to you directly.”

  “Yes,” she said softly. She handed him a bulky envelope containing the money the conduit had given her. He accepted it.

  “Hurry,” he said, hearing the applause. “Good luck to you.”

  She dropped to the floor and crawled inside. He pushed the door shut behind her. Darkness; muffled applause.

  When the magician reached the stage, he looked out into the crowd, a large smile pasted on his face. Then he spotted three tough-looking men at the back of the hall, their eyes searching the room; he bowed.

  18

  Holst watched as the screen welcomed him to CompuServe. He accessed EMAIL and, when prompted, retrieved a message.

  TO ALBATROSS—RE: J.C. BECKER. BORN COS COB, CT., 12/28/53. FATHER, ROBERT J. BECKER, STOCKBROKER, NYSE. BECKER ATTENDED PRIVATE SECONDARY SCHOOL 1967–70. ONE SEMESTER WILLIAMS COLLEGE, FALL OF ’73. HAS LIVED NEW SEABURY, MASS.; BOSTON, MASS.; NYC, N.Y.; SEATTLE, WASHINGTON. POOR CREDIT RATING. NO MAJOR CREDIT CARDS; NO BANK LOANS. AVERAGE YEARLY INCOME $8,540. NO ARRESTS. THREE MAJOR TRAFFIC ACCIDENTS, ’75, ’78, ’79. ASSETS TOTALING $3,650. SINGLE. OVERSEAS TRAVEL: PARIS, 3/71; LONDON 4/71—MARINER.

  Holst placed the information in a buffer and then closed the buffer. He moved through the menus until he could leave a message. It read:

  TO MARINER—MARK HOOKED. $5,000. WILL OWN NOTE BY WEEK’S END. ADVISE CLIENT: ALL ACCORDING TO PLAN. EXPECT RENDEZVOUS AS AGREED. WOMAN WILL MAKE CONTACT SEPT 3–5. THE LADY FINE—CUTTER-RIGGED YAWL. CAPTAIN: J.C. BECKER. MAINTAIN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION. REPEAT. MAINTAIN AFFIRMATIVE ACTION.—ALBATROSS

  Holst sent the buffer to disc, saving the information on Jay. He could see his reflection in the computer screen. His lips curled. Not long now.

  ***

  Sadie, the tall, coarse-featured black woman, arrived an hour later.

  “You remember what I have in mind?” Holst asked her.

  “I got the message, daddy.” She put down her purse and removed her coat. She was dressed in black leather. The jacket was unzipped to her navel. Her large breasts held the coat off her chest; her skin was the color of boot polish.

  He handed her an envelope. She counted the bills and put the money in her purse. He saw the gun, a .38, standard police issue. He didn’t doubt it was loaded. She walked past him and switched the television on, turning it up. “Sometimes—you know—I make some noise. I try not to. This—you know—helps hide it.”

  She had the dreary eyes of a junkie and was slightly unstable on her feet. She stood in front of Holst and her pink tongue ran over her large lips. He smacked her hard across the cheek. She lowered her eyes and smiled, seeming to enjoy it. “Not too much on the face, daddy. That’s my calling card.”

  He struck her again, and he smiled.

  ***

  Kepella didn’t know what to do; he didn’t recognize his own face in the mirror. His skin had taken on a ghastly gray and the bags beneath his eyes had doubled and grown puffy. His round face and pronounced jowls made him look like he used to look, back when he had been drinking. Must be the fatigue, he thought. He was frightened. How much longer could he endure?

  “What’s the matter, Roy?” Rosie was kneeling on the bed, looking like a young girl, her skin brown from the sun, her pubic hair jet black, a bikini shaped wedge of lighter skin surrounding it. Her breasts pointed up and jiggled as she bounced on the bed. An evening mist had collected on the outside of the window. Rain water streaked the panes—a thousand tears felling from a thousand eyes.

  “I’m old,” Kepella answered. “Rosie, why do you stay with me?” He wanted her out of this. It would grow nasty in the next few days. He had come to like her, despite her obvious involvement in it all. Yes, he wanted her out.

  “You not old to me, Roy. Come to Rosie. Come over here.”

  He wondered how much she knew. She looked like something he might have dreamed about a few months earlier. Cute little Chinese girl—woman, she would insist—naked as the day she was born. Sexy, sassy. His meeting with Brandenburg had been five days ago. How had Brandenburg known about Rosie? Was there a small group of agents assigned to keep him under surveillance
? He didn’t put it past the Bureau. After all, he had lifted a number of sensitive documents, documents worth tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of dollars. He was legally separated from any law enforcement. And although this separation had been accomplished to both bait the trap and allow him the flexibility to break certain laws an undercover agent could not break without reams of warrants, it also meant he was a private citizen, barely employed, with an arsenal of state secrets at his disposal. It only made sense that Brandenburg would keep a close eye on him. He moved to the window, trying to peer through the stretched lines of water. The window needed cleaning. To Kepella it seemed like everything needed cleaning; everything needed change. The street below, lit by the glow of an overhead street lamp, shone wet-black in the glare of the bulb. A new van was parked among the others that lined the streets. He wondered if it was a surveillance van.

  It actually made him feel more secure, knowing he might be under surveillance. He had felt isolated since his last meeting with Brandenburg—isolated from old friends by his suspension from the Bureau, isolated from new friends by playing the role of an angry man, and used by people like Holst and Brandenburg: all to trap Fritz Wilhelm, a man known by name only, a man without a face, a man who had embarrassed the Bureau by entering and leaving Montreal a free man, when he should have been captured, drugged, and placed on a plane to Boston for interrogation. Now it was Kepella’s turn to lead them back to Wilhelm, to try again. Brandenburg waving Kepella under everyone’s nose, the stinking piece of fish used as chum.

  “Come on, Roy.” Rosie stood behind him, naked. He stood by the window, watching the strings of water, wearing a pair of worn boxer shorts. She reached around him and dragged her tiny hands and ruby nails down his chest. He shivered. “Come on, honey. What’s wrong. Why you unhappy?” She paused. “Let Rosie please you.”

  “You scored, didn’t you?” he asked her.

  “Sure, Roy. Why not?”

  He wished he hadn’t asked her. She could do what she wanted to do. He was the one trapped. He knew it.

  She prepared two large lines of coke on a small hand mirror. A whiff of instant confidence. She rolled up a five-dollar bill and snorted up the lines. “You sure you don’t change your mind, Roy?”

  “None for me.”

  But he did want a drink. What the hell was going on? Damn. Why now? Now, when there was no one to turn to. Rosie was staring at him.

  “What is it, Roy? What wrong?”

  Act three, scene four. He lifted her off the floor and kissed her. She giggled and roughed up his hair as he carried her to the bed and lay her down. He sat above her, feeling old enough to be her father. He drew imaginary lines on her chest. She moved his hand down lower, her legs open and inviting. He rubbed the soft inside of her thigh. He said, “I’m in trouble, Rosie.”

  “What kind of trouble?” Her eyes showed concern.

  He wondered, Is she that good an actress? Am I in a den of professional actors? “Money problems,” he said, then hesitated, according to his script. “I borrowed a lot of money, to get out from under some loans.” He stopped caressing her thigh. She closed her legs, trapping his hand. “It is very expensive money.”

  “What you mean, ‘expensive money’?” She sat up, concerned.

  “They charge me a wad of interest on the loan.”

  “Why you do that?”

  “I needed to pay off debts.”

  “Yeah, but why not borrow from a bank?”

  “The banks wouldn’t loan me the money. It had to be these people.”

  “It’s all right, Roy. You pay them back. I know you will.”

  “I don’t have enough money to pay them back, to buy the food, the apartment…”

  She bunched her brows. “You try to tell me something, Roy?”

  Kepella nodded.

  “Don’t hand Rosie bullshit, Roy Kepella.” She sat up, her neck flushed with anger. “If you don’t like Rosie, you say so. Don’t hand me bullshit about money. Fuck money. I don’t cost you nothing. I don’t want to go, Roy. I don’t want to go.” She bunched her legs up against her chest, glaring at him. “You full of bullshit, Roy Kepella.”

  “Rosie, if I screw up on these loans, they’re gonna come looking for me.” He cocked his head. “That makes sense, doesn’t it?” She nodded. “And if they come looking here, they might find you.” She nodded again. “And these kind of people don’t play fair, Rosie. They might take you, hurt you, in order to get to me.”

  “I know how loan shark work, Roy. You think I growed up on Mercer Island or something? Shit. You don’t even know me, do you, Roy?”

  Kepella fought to keep the old Roy Kepella out of this. “Rosie, I’ve been shit for shape lately. I don’t have a fuckin’ friend on earth, except you. You are kind to me, gentle. You talk to me. We talk. We see a movie now and then—”

  “We make good love together, Roy. I mean it. Good love.”

  He placed a hand on her knee. “Yeah… that too, Rosie. That’s real nice.”

  “So what the problem?”

  “The problem is that things are going to get rough. I don’t want you to get hurt. You give me a couple of weeks. I’ll get in touch with you.” He shouldn’t have said that, he realized; he shouldn’t have put it into any kind of time frame. A man in debt was in debt forever. He looked for a way out. “In a couple of weeks I’ll know whether I can pay these guys what they want. Once I get back on my feet, we’ll get back together.”

  The hurt covered her face. Her expression was so convincing that Kepella had a difficult time believing she was acting. Maybe both their roles had had their day. Maybe he was being Roy, and she, Rosie. Jesus he hoped not. He hoped this wouldn’t become any more complicated than it already was.

  “You move in with me, Roy. You know where I live. I take care of you.” He looked into her eyes, her agate pupils like tiny black holes pulling him inside her. “Rosie take care of you.”

  They made love, and later they watched television. Her lovemaking was playful; he moved with all the grace of a three-legged dog.

  Then the phone rang.

  ***

  It was eleven-thirty by the time Kepella dressed. He walked down to Eddy’s and had a soda water at the bar. No one behind him. He left Eddy’s by the back entrance, which led down a fire alley. Old brick buildings lined the alley, like something off the old Twentieth-Century backlot. Kepella had toured the backlot before they began tearing it down, amazed that one could switch worlds by simply rounding a corner. One minute New York, the next a Wild West or Mississippi shanty town, the next a TV suburb that no one would remember. Not unlike his life, he realized: one minute Holst and Fu and some thug called Peace Brother, the next Brandenburg and his crew cut, then Rosie.

  Four blocks later he turned right. He walked another block and turned right again. Then right again. No car followed. No one on foot. He ducked into a porno theater. Two bucks for a couple of hours of skin. The place smelled like piss and puke. He took a seat in the tenth row, his head turning constantly to check the aisle. On the screen two women violated each other. A few rows in front of Kepella, a wino pleased himself. He waited five minutes. No one came in behind him.

  Kepella left by the fire exit, a poorly marked doorway up by the screen. He stepped to one side and waited. No one. He wasn’t being followed. He slipped out the exit door into the chilly Seattle night air.

  The bus pulled up a few minutes later. No one followed him onto the bus. He rode it ten blocks, walked a block north, and opened the door to a Ford four-door with blackwalls and mirrored windows. The car pulled away. Thick Plexiglas separated the driver from the back seat. Soundproof. Nearly bulletproof.

  Director Mark Galpin said, “You’re late.”

  “I’m ten minutes late, close enough. What the hell’s going on, Mark?”

  “Haven’t seen you in a while, Roy. Thought we might have a chat.”

  “Has the board met yet?”

  “Next week, though I must say, it doesn’t
look too good.”

  “Surprise, surprise.”

  Galpin’s mandible muscles flexed when he wasn’t talking, just as they always did. It was as if the man was constantly chewing. He had the same simple face Kepella remembered, the same nervous eyes. The car pulled into a parking garage and parked. The driver left the car. Kepella felt the front door bump shut. He could hardly hear it. Galpin said, “I thought we should be alone. You never know what someone might hear.”

  “How thoughtful of you, Mark.”

  “Hold the crap, would you, Roy?” Galpin’s neck turned crimson.

  “What the hell did you get me out of bed for?”

  To save your butt, friend. Why don’t you try to listen for a minute?”

  “I’m listening.”

  “What have you been doing with yourself, Roy?”

  “I thought I was listening.”

  Galpin waited.

  Kepella said, “I’m unemployed at the moment.”

  “I don’t mean for work.”

  “Get to the point, Mark.” Kepella was irritable. His thumb involuntarily rubbed against the pad of his index finger.

  “Two weeks ago, middle of the afternoon, you were ticketed for speeding.”

  “What’s going on, Mark? Cut the bullshit would you?”

  “Why’d you need forty minutes to reach me tonight, Roy? You need time to shake a tail?”

  Perspiration ran from Kepella’s armpits. His palms were sweating. This was Brandenburg’s deal; no one was to be involved. “I was in the middle of a good fuck, if you’ve got to know, Mark. The old root doesn’t stand up all that often anymore. I take advantage of the times it does.”

  Galpin’s jaw muscles flexed. He faced Kepella more squarely. “Okay, let’s skip the ticket for a minute. We’ve been running a narco stakeout over in Ballard. The usual routine. I’ve got Green, Freeman, and Giapelli on it.”

  “Narco’s not my turf, Mark, you know that. What the hell? It’s late.”