Hard Rain

by Peter Abrahams

  Mr. Mickey had his gun, but he wasn’t bothering to use it. Perhaps he hated waste. He just took her neck in his huge hand and began forcing her head down into the snow.

  Jessie tried to move. She tried to bite. She tried to scream. She could do nothing.

  Then a white bear rose up behind Mr. Mickey. It raised its white paws high in the air and brought them crashing down on Mr. Mickey’s head. Mr. Mickey slumped forward, on top of her.

  Sirens sounded down below. They could have been the screams of very small things, like butterflies. Then Mr. Mickey was no longer on top of her, and the bear was bending down, peering into her eyes. The bear’s own eyes were very worried and a little wet.

  Click. Click. More clicks. The bear looked up. Mr. Mickey was on all fours, his head hanging down. He raised it very slowly, just in time to see a much smaller man come clicking out from behind a tree. He had a ski mask on his face and a gun in his hand.

  Mr. Mickey’s lips twisted up in a little smile.

  The sirens screamed their little screams.

  The gun cracked.

  Mr. Mickey dropped dead in the snow.

  “Got him, Zyz,” said the man in the ski mask.

  “Keith?” said the bear.

  “To the rescue,” said the man in the ski mask.

  The sirens sounded.

  The bear picked her up. He picked Kate up. He carried them down the mountain.

  “I can walk,” Jessie said.

  “You don’t have to prove it,” the bear replied. He didn’t let her go.

  They were almost at the bottom when Jessie put her lips to the bear’s ear and told him a secret. It was just two words: “George Will.”

  42

  “Imagine,” Keith said, “a desk man like me saving the ass of an old hand like you, Zyz!”

  Thanksgiving morning. The wind had died, the snow had stopped falling. The sky was bright blue; snow covered everything, thick and white. The whole world was blue and white, dazzling blue and glaring white. Just being in it—there outside the cabin on Mount Blackstone, watching the ambulance attendants carry out the bodies of the senator, his wife, Major Tsarenko and Pat Rodney—made Zyzmchuk’s eyes hurt.

  “You’ve got a good imagination, Keith,” he said.

  Keith laughed. His cheeks glowed in the cold air like polished apples.

  “Better than mine,” Zyzmchuk said. “Sometimes I have trouble imagining things.”

  “It’s your Central European background, Zyz, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

  Zyzmchuk smiled. Keith smiled. “That must be it,” Zyzmchuk said. “Some sort of sociogenetic block. There are certain things I just can’t imagine.”

  “Like what, Zyz?”

  “Like your father’s wine cellar.”

  Keith’s smile froze on his face. “My father’s wine cellar, Zyz? What about it?”

  Three state troopers came out of the cabin, the rolled-up red rug on their shoulders. “What sort of collection did he have?” Zyzmchuk asked.

  Keith’s smile relaxed. “A modest one, really, I guess. Mostly Burgundies, if I remember. It’s been a long time.”

  “Did your mother like wine too?”

  “My mother?”

  Zyzmchuk nodded. “Did she enjoy going down there and rooting out a nice bottle?”

  “Sometimes, I suppose.”

  “Like after she’d come home from scrubbing Erica McTaggart’s floors?”

  Keith looked up into Zyzmchuk’s face. The glare made him squint, reducing his eyes to slits. “What are you saying exactly, Zyz?”

  Zyzmchuk gazed past him, at the white mountain. “Got your watch on?” he asked. “The gold Rolex?”

  Keith frowned. “Yes.”

  “What time is it?”

  Keith pulled back the sleeve of his coat. “Eight-twenty.”

  “That’s a nice watch,” said Zyzmchuk, looking at it. “Did your mother ever see it?”

  Keith tugged down his sleeve. “She passed away years ago.”

  “I know. I saw a picture of her the other day. I think she would have been impressed by a watch like that.”

  Keith squinted up at him. “Why do you think that, Zyz?”

  “Because she was poor.”

  “I wouldn’t say that. More like middle-class.”

  “Middle-class people don’t scrub floors for a living. You were poor, Keith. No father, and a mother who cleaned up for the McTaggarts. Now you’ve got a gold watch, a red Jaguar, a house in Malibu. You’ve come a long way.”

  Keith’s brow wrinkled. “There’s no house in Malibu, Zyz.”

  “Sure there is. A nice little investment. Just not in your name, that’s all. Do you know Fairweather? He’s flying down to Panama this afternoon to get all the details. He’s very excited about it.” A police helicopter came around the mountain and dipped over the cabin. “You made it big, all right,” Zyzmchuk said, “but it must have been hard being a poor scholarship student, and a local boy too, at Morgan. What with all those rich kids. Like Hartley Frame.”

  Keith squinted up at him for what seemed like a long time. Then moisture squeezed out from between his eyelids. And his voice cracked a little when he said, “It was hard, Ivan. Sounds silly, now, maybe, but it was hard. I wanted so much to … belong. I suppose I embellished things a little. Some things. From time to time.”

  “Perfectly understandable. In fact, there’s only one thing I don’t understand.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Why Frame fired you, that summer you interned in Washington.”

  The moisture stopped leaking through Keith’s eyelids. “I don’t get you, Zyz. I worked there every summer, for one thing, and he never fired me. I left on my own, but that was just two years ago, when I came over to your outfit.”

  Zyzmchuk shook his head. “You worked there one summer, Keith. And you were fired. What happened? It couldn’t have been too serious, or he wouldn’t have taken you back, would he? Was it your long hair?”

  Keith said nothing for a few moments. A plow came slowly up the lane, folding blankets of snow before it. Keith sighed. “I had a brief, very brief, affair with Alice. At her instigation.” Keith’s eyes flickered toward him, then looked away. “It amounted to nothing, but Frame found out.”

  “That’s going to be hard to verify,” Zyzmchuk said. “In the circumstances.”

  Keith shrugged.

  “Still, he fired you.”

  “Yes.”

  “But later he hired you back.”

  “Yes.”

  “So he forgot and forgave.”

  “I suppose you could say that.”

  “When did he take you back?”

  “A year or so after I graduated.”

  “Around the time the Red Cross visited Hartley Frame’s prison camp and declared him dead?”

  Keith glanced around. Zyzmchuk didn’t. He already knew what there was to see: the mountain on one side, state troopers on the other. “I don’t remember the exact date,” Keith said.

  “No? How about Woodstock? Do you remember that?”

  “Woodstock?”

  “The festival. That’s when Hartley and Pat made their little deal in the woods.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about, Zyz.”

  “You were there. It was just the kind of rich man-poor man stuff you understand so well. Pat went to the army physical as Hartley, in return for the blue Corvette. The one you dumped in Little Pond.” Right on top of the BMW Pat Rodney dumped there; it wasn’t surprising, Zyzmchuk thought—local boys always knew the best spots for dumping things, and they were both local boys. Their mothers had worked together at the plant. The sons had started together at the bottom; one had used the other to rise to the top.

  “Maybe they both thought Pat would flunk the physical,” Zyzmchuk continued. “Maybe just Pat did. Maybe he didn’t care much one way or the other. Maybe he thought going to Viet Nam was worth the car. Maybe there would be more payments when he came ba
ck. Maybe he was just a dumb kid. He passed the physical. His fingerprints went into the records as Hartley’s. He went, as Hartley, to Viet Nam. He got captured. Meanwhile Hartley went, as Pat, to California.

  “Then the Red Cross visited the prison camp, and enough evidence was produced to declare Hartley dead. That made the switch a fait accompli. Of course, it was smart to keep Pat Rodney alive. There might have been a propaganda use for him further down the line, if the senator ever ran for President, say. Meanwhile, everyone who knew about the switch tried to profit: Doreen Rodney blackmailed Hartley; Disco made a clumsy attempt to get to the senator. He came up here, didn’t he?”

  “You must be very tired, Zyz. You’re not making sense.”

  “No? Don’t you remember intercepting Disco and taking him on a little trip?”

  Keith looked around again. The mountain and the troopers hadn’t moved.

  “But they were small-timers compared to you,” Zyzmchuk went on. “You’re the one who made it all happen. I’ve been checking the army records. They’re badly organized—it took some time to find them.” Keith bit his lip. “The funny thing is that Hartley’s whole unit could have been wiped out easily, but all they did—North Vietnamese regulars, by the way—was take one prisoner. Isn’t that odd?”

  “Odd?” Keith’s voice was low.

  “Yes. Almost as if it were a setup. Almost as if they knew who their prisoner really was from the beginning.”

  “This is a lot of wild talk, Zyz. I can’t follow you at all.”

  “Sure you can. When Pat Rodney went to Viet Nam, someone—someone with a good imagination—walked into the Russian embassy and told them about the Woodstock deal. Oh—I meant to ask you something. You mentioned you spent your junior year abroad.”

  “That’s right.”

  “Where?”

  “It was an art study program. Arranged by the Art Appreciation Club.”

  “But where?”

  “Various museums. The Uffizi, the Tate, the Louvre.”

  “Did you squeeze the Hermitage in there too?”

  Keith nodded.

  “That must have been a nice year,” Zyzmchuk said. “Meeting all kinds of people, and things. We’ll have to talk about it someday. Or someone will. Anyway, an imaginative fellow walks into the Russian embassy and tells them about the Woodstock deal. Sells them the information, I’m sure, although it will be hard to prove. The Russians appreciate imagination. They decide this imaginative fellow might be useful. They send him back to the senator. He tells the senator about the switch, explains how the senator’s career would be over unless he cooperates. Perhaps the senator never even knew the Russians were involved. Maybe he didn’t want to know. Was that it, Keith?”

  Keith opened his mouth to speak, then closed it without uttering a word.

  “What I like,” Zyzmchuk said, “is that you were running him. I thought it was the other way around for a while. That confused me. You were much better than I thought. Not just a desk man, Keith. A real pro. It’ll take years to figure out all the stuff the Russians got, if we—if they—ever do.”

  A police car followed the plow up the hill, parked in front of the cabin. Grace got out and came toward them, carrying a shopping bag.

  “But Major Tsarenko was running you. It must have been a bad day when he told you Pat Rodney was on the loose.”

  Keith’s brow wrinkled. “Are you talking about the Russian, Zyz? The one I saved you from last night?”

  “That proved what a pro you were,” Zyzmchuk said. “But the timing was a little off. Not your fault, but the major wasn’t a factor by the time you fired. I was the one you wanted of course, but you realized it was too late, once you heard the sirens. So you shot your master, keeping him out of the hands of the interrogation boys.”

  “This is quite a theory, Zyz. But utterly unprovable.”

  “We have a witness.”

  “A witness?”

  “She saw you outside the house in Venice. You just missed catching Pat Rodney there, didn’t you? The real Pat Rodney, I mean. That was unlucky.” Zyzmchuk smiled. “It meant having to deal with Jessie Shapiro.”

  Keith didn’t reply.

  “She saw you again at the barn in Vermont. Said you looked like one of those commentators on TV. Couldn’t remember which one at first. I don’t think she watches much TV. But it finally came to her: George Will.”

  “Is this a joke, Zyz? I’ve been in the same room with him on several occasions, and I assure you I don’t look at all like him.”

  “I’ve always thought you do, Keith. So will the jury.”

  Grace came up to them. She didn’t look at Keith. “I went to his house as you said, Mr. Z. I found this.” She opened the shopping bag. Inside were a gray wig, a polka dot dress and a pair of wraparound sunglasses.

  “‘The Role of Disguise,’” Zyzmchuk said, “‘in the Modern Intelligence Matrix.’”

  “You had no right to enter my house,” Keith said. Grace didn’t answer. He turned to Zyzmchuk. “Dahlin will bounce you the moment I tell him.”

  “Dahlin was bounced himself an hour ago,” Zyzmchuk said. “You should have run last night, Keith. You might have caught the Aeroflot out of Montreal.”

  Keith was silent for a moment. Then he said, “Not with the roads the way they were.”

  “Probably not.”

  They looked at each other. Keith turned away.

  “I’ll do what I can for you, Keith, if you tell me where to find the Picasso.”

  “The Picasso?”

  “The Rose Period one. Alice Frame reported it stolen about ten years ago, and I’m sure she thought it was. You and the senator knew differently, of course. I’d kind of like it to go to her granddaughter.”

  Keith didn’t reply.

  Zyzmchuk took Grace’s arm, started to turn, then stopped. “What role did you play in The Wind in the Willows?”

  There was another silence. It went on and on. Then a very small smile crossed Keith’s face. “Ratty. The review was very favorable, if I recall, even if it was just the college paper.”

  Zyzmchuk led Grace away. The mountain stayed where it was, but the troopers began moving toward Keith.

  “A Lieutenant DeMarco called from Los Angeles,” Grace said. “He left his number.”

  “Throw it away.”

  Zyzmchuk said good-bye to Grace and got into the Blazer. He drove down the mountain, came to Route 7. It hadn’t been plowed. He stopped. South meant Washington, north meant back into town. Zyzmchuk stayed where he was for a few minutes, unmoving in a world of dazzling blue and glaring white. He thought, I’m too old; I know nothing about being a father; it wasn’t real, but only because of the danger she was in.

  He thought those thoughts, but he turned north anyway. It couldn’t hurt to say good-bye.

  He drove to the 1826 House, parked in the lot. Rooms 19 and 20 were sealed. A policeman stood at the door of number 1. He stepped aside to let Zyzmchuk go by.

  Ivan Zyzmchuk opened the door. It was warm inside. A fire burned in the grate. Jessie Shapiro lay sleeping in the bed, her broken arm in a cast, her other arm around her sleeping daughter. Piles of quilts covered them. Their dark, frizzy hair mingled on the pillow.

  He closed the door. He thought, I’m too old; I know nothing about being a father; it was only because of the danger. But he wanted to lie down, if just for a moment. How could that hurt? He wouldn’t fall asleep—he wasn’t much of a sleeper anymore—but just lie down for a while, not disturbing anyone, then get up when the first plow went by and follow it out of town.

  He lay on the bed.

  Not long after, the first plow did go by the 1826 House. But by that time, inside room 1, Ivan Zyzmchuk was sleeping a deep sleep, his arm resting across Jessie and her little girl.

  About the Author

  Peter Abrahams is the author of thirty-three novels. Among his acclaimed crime thrillers are Hard Rain, Pressure Drop, The Fury of Rachel Monette, Tongues of Fire, Edgar Award fina
list Lights Out, Oblivion, End of Story, and The Fan, which was adapted into a film starring Robert De Niro and Wesley Snipes. Under the name Spencer Quinn, he writes the New York Times–bestselling Chet and Bernie Mystery series, which debuted with Dog on It. Abrahams’s young adult novel Reality Check won the Edgar Award for Best Young Adult Mystery in 2010, and Down the Rabbit Hole, the first novel in his Echo Falls Mystery series, won the Agatha Award for Best Children’s/Young Adult Novel in 2005.

  Abrahams lives on Cape Cod with his family. Visit his website: www.spencequinn.com

  All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 1988 by Peter Abrahams

  Cover design by Barbara Brown

  ISBN: 978-1-5040-1629-2

  This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.

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