Night Must Wait

by Robin Winter

  Oroko would have said she hid something with her words, as if she did know how it might not be an accident. Yet he read no guilt, none, and all his awareness sprang into focus.

  "When you put a five-foot black cobra in my own bedroom wing, that's murder."

  "It didn't get in by itself?"

  "The pillowcase on the floor smelling of snake urine suggests not."

  "And why do you accuse Paul?"

  "His confession. His possession of Sandy's cash. His description of you and your mercenary lover. The directions he quoted you giving for a cover-up suggesting accidental death."

  Gilman's fair skin reddened.

  "That's total shit." Gilman resettled her hands about the revolver. She still held it with too tight a grip.

  Oroko listened for any change in her voice, or that too great steadiness of a speech that cannot vary lest a different truth slip through. He watched her stance, every sense alerted. Could have counted the strands of gray and silver in her red-gold knot of hair.

  "Paul was with the Biafran Red Cross and came with me out of Biafra to help me deliver Wilton into your care. I thought of Sandy's jokes and teasing as healing Wilton, and her remaining in Nigeria as supportive. I stupidly depended on you. You never meant to keep your promises."

  Lindsey looked as though she wasn't listening. It was a trick she had, Oroko had seen her drive men to rage with it.

  "Shell shock—it gets worse when you evacuate the patient to a nice safe place. I told you and you didn't trust me. Not even as a doctor. Wilton sits and drools in her chair most days, Lindsey, when she's not having fugues of fear and rage. So safe in America, where you sent her to have the memories and brilliance drugged out of her."

  Gilman stopped, her words had begun to run over each-other, but she'd noticed apparently. He saw her swallow.

  "We lost her mind for her. I made mistakes, yeah. But you lost her mind for your convenience. Because you didn't know how to be human once Sandy died and you couldn't be bothered to make the effort to try. Because you feared what Wilton might say about you and your methods of influence and governance, and assassination.

  "You feared who might understand and believe what she said, because even now you remain an American citizen with Embassy connections, in spite of this office and all your criminal success."

  "I'm listening," Lindsey said.

  Oroko saw her tamp down some emotion so fast he couldn't tell what it might have been. He felt they had always quarreled like this. There was a familiarity between them, in the way Lindsey let Gilman go on and on until she ran out of things to say.

  "Paul needed money," Gilman said. "For personal reasons, he said. I handed it over like a fool because he gave his word of honor, but he never showed up again. I flew back to Biafra, cheated, pissed off. I thought him a thief. I'd no idea your goons would slaughter him and use his possession of Sandy's money to involve me. They must've beaten those stories out of him. Don't you know torture's unreliable? Did Oroko supervise? You need a professional for jobs like that."

  Good question—Oroko had to agree with the premise.

  Lindsey shook her head. Oroko remembered the sergeant dragging in Paul's bloodied corpse, its face broken nearly out of recognition, the body lumpish with other injuries, held together by the rent clothes. A thud on the floor, the beaming salute from a man who had stopped to change his uniform and shave and splash himself with fragrance before presenting his kill like a well-groomed cat dumping a rat upon the floor. "Madam—this is the man," he'd said.

  "Oroko knows what he's doing, how far to go," Gilman said. "My Jantor explained it to me. Truth is lost in pain. Or in panic. Your thugs got what they wanted to get, but not truth."

  Oroko watched. His job, to protect his principal. Only that, unless she ordered him to act. But he heard the words and he saw the little thing that happened in Lindsey's dark eyes, that slight movement of the pupils which had nothing to do with the lighting. Saw her swallow once as if it bought time to think, time to change.

  "Oh, I've wanted to kill you, all right," Gilman said. "But with my bare hands. Not with this stupid revolver. Not with a snake or an idiot thief as agent."

  Lindsey looked down at the desk, and Gilman must have thought Lindsey sought the revolver because she brought it up and set it on the gleaming wood. Gave it up as if having had her say, she now wanted and needed none of the things he would have sworn she came to do.

  Oroko understood then that he'd been wrong about her. This was the act of an intemperate child bucking an authority she's resented all her life, not the act of a murderer with more murder planned. He could see that Lindsey saw the gesture as Gilman's final argument.

  She believed Gilman. He could see it in her shoulders, in the angle of her neck, and he wished she didn't. Lindsey's gaze locked on the revolver. Oroko stopped himself from moving forward. What would he do, take it away?

  "I keep thinking," Gilman said. "I keep seeing us in a suburb on Long Island, manicured hands and hair in permanents, sitting next to pot-bellied husbands playing bridge. You knew how to play bridge, didn't you? You were trained for that life just the way I was. You know, Lowenstein gives Wilton a possible alternate diagnosis of a schizophreniform disorder. Better than his first 'full-fledged sociopathic pers—'"

  "Fools." Wilton's voice came clear and even. She stood, moved around the bookcase to stand and look at all three of them. Clad in black like a mourner, with her eyes wide, skin white as ice, the tumbled graying hair lying thick over her shoulders. "You understand nothing."

  Chapter 113: Oroko

  December 1971

  Lagos, Nigeria

  Gilman stared, shocked in face and body.

  "Wilton," she said. "How?"

  Curious that Gilman's posture reflected a sudden physical guarding as if she feared something. What had happened between them?

  "I had her brought," Lindsey said. "I wanted her witness."

  "Trivialities." Wilton made a gesture with her clawed right hand. "You waste time before God. You were my children. I, your father. Not mother, that's too tender, too intimate. But I raised you up and you turned on each other. How could you, who had so much? A sibling rivalry to betray us all and God Himself? I have permitted you to bring me here for my questions to be answered."

  So much threat in so small a body. Oroko moved, repositioning.

  "Why Lindsey, did you start civilian bombings of Umuahia weeks early? Was it knowing you had the influence to betray our arrangement, a moment of power over me?"

  "I don't remember," Lindsey said.

  "It wasn't even important then? For that pleasure you killed my son."

  "You had a son?" Lindsey's voice reduced to an appalled whisper.

  "You fool, no son of the body. Christopher, my servant. Even as I raised you to make this land, I had others, children of the mind, of the spirit under God."

  Oroko straightened, words balling up in his throat, a question about to burst and she focused at his motion.

  "I gave you a world and you played with it. My fault. The father bears responsibility, so I can rage, rage on against the squandering of your promise, but what it means, ah, what it means is the flaw was mine, the sin mine, the pride and jealousy rooted in my spirit and ruined there."

  "Wilton?" Gilman said, as if anyone could calm such a passion.

  "I loved you too much. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me. Thus saith the Lord. I set you up for gods and turned my face so I wouldn't see your evil, your pride spewing forth like corruption from a wound. I set you up for gods. For sin like that there is only one kind of sacrifice."

  "It was you?" Lindsey's voice hoarse like she had ashes in her mouth. There was a look of terror in her brown eyes. Oroko felt his breath stop, his hands catch into fists.

  "You always could touch snakes," Gilman said. "God, Lowenstein was right."

  Wilton stood still but there was no compromise in her eyes.

  "How many sacrifices have you made?" Kinner said.

>   "The dog," Wilton said. "Christopher, Father Josiah."

  "Buried alive," Gilman said to Lindsey.

  "Sandy. I didn't choose Sandy. I let God choose who died that time, and He told me by the innocence of her sacrifice that we were not done."

  Oh, Sandy. Oroko could taste her name in his mouth.

  "You tried to shoot me," Gilman said, "that day in the tent when I knocked the gun out of your hand. I thought you were going to kill yourself."

  "That failure was a sign. God had more suffering in store for you than death."

  "And tonight…" Kinner said.

  "Yes, tonight," Wilton said. "We are not done."

  Oroko felt sweat break out on his back. Nothing to do with the doctor, everything to do with this woman who made him feel her eyes could kill.

  Lindsey sat down, drew the revolver toward her. Oroko noted how Wilton's gaze clung to it with desire.

  "Oh, we are done," Lindsey said. She swallowed. She considered Wilton and he saw how fast Lindsey's lips parted as if she could not get enough air.

  "Lindsey," Gilman said. "Don't."

  "Sandy," Lindsey said.

  "She's done," Gilman said. "Wilton, sacrifices are over. God will have his way. It's not for us to be jealous of His power. You said that to me once."

  Oroko saw Lindsey close her eyes. She laid the revolver back down, her hands falling away from it. He heard again the howl of dogs, the racket of the nearby bars. As if the noises had all stopped and then restarted, though he knew that couldn't be true.

  He felt the air pull slow and deep, shuddering into his lungs.

  Gilman reached forward, moved awkward to the desk between her and Lindsey, placed both hands palm down and leaned into that support. "Should have seen."

  He could barely hear her.

  Lindsey said nothing. The sweat gathered on her forehead as it does on the face of a woman in labor.

  He wanted to interrupt, but he had no words. For the first time he felt Sandy was gone, her exorcism complete. A loss and a solace in one. He pressed the handle of his knife, enough to make it hurt as the minutes passed. Lindsey's face was bad, grayed.

  Gilman stood upright again, easing her shoulders, glancing around, her gaze catching on him. "What will you do with Wilton?"

  Her blue eyes seemed blurred like those of a drunk woman. Or was it him? He brought himself into focus. No, he was all right. It was Gilman who was undefined. Wilton stayed immobile, white and black, the silver in her hair glinting.

  "I don't know," Lindsey said. "What would you?"

  "Put her in care somewhere. Maybe here is better than America."

  "You're compassionate," Lindsey said.

  "If you ever were, now is the time."

  Lindsey straightened, passed a hand across her face as if waking from a nightmare, but it made little difference in the color of her skin. "I killed her son."

  Her sons are legion. Oroko did not speak the words, but he could taste them in his mouth. But maybe some had been favored over others. Her love was death.

  "You couldn't have known."

  "Yes, I could. Wilton, I didn't understand why you asked for a delay. Thought it wasn't critical. Thought I knew better. People would die anyway, whenever the bombing started targeting urban areas."

  No answer, no change in Wilton.

  "Well Abraham has nothing on Wilton," Gilman said.

  "Gilman, I can give it all back to you," Lindsey said. "A place to work. Significance. All those who came out of Biafra are banned from ever reentering Nigeria, except for you. You belong here. Wilton paid your price."

  "You're crazy," Gilman said, straightening. "I'm going to the States if your hirelings are finished tormenting me. I'm going home."

  "You have no home. You and I both—we'll never leave Nigeria." Lindsey nodded to Oroko. "Take her and have Thomas guard her in the next room while I draw up instructions for her disposal. Goodbye, Gilman."

  "You can't dispose of me." Gilman's eyes went wild.

  "Debate it with Oroko," Lindsey said.

  Oroko saw the angry child return in Gilman's flushed face. But he also noted that every so often Gilman would glance over as if to reassure herself that Wilton stayed still, did not threaten her, and Wilton didn't look back.

  Lindsey turned away from both Oroko and Gilman, standing with her back to them, her face canted, studying the row of music albums on her lower shelf. Oroko wondered what expression she hid, scanning the music without seeming to care anymore for friend, enemy, or employee. Lindsey reached out and selected a battered sleeve, slipped out the black round with its cryptic fine-lined surface so delicately inscribed.

  "Take her away, Oroko."

  When Oroko indicated the door with an open hand to the woman now his peculiar guest or prisoner, he heard the first notes break onto the slow air. He knew the phrase. It was the Tchaikovsky that never ended.

  Gilman moved like a woman who doesn't know why she bothers, not anticipating, as if she hadn't really heard the grant of life in Lindsey's words, the pardon that he too gave. Oroko looked back, but Lindsey and Wilton stood listening to the music.

  He found Daniel just the other side of the door waiting for orders and gave him a quick series of hand signals—restraints, two-man guard. He turned back into the room and closed the door again, noting that Wilton had moved toward Lindsey, a mere step, but he felt it was too close.

  Lindsey had a pad of unlined paper on which she wrote. She took an envelope and folded a page of the work to fit. She looked him in the face as she rarely did, searching. She handed him first a sheet of paper, close written, then the envelope.

  "Get these orders processed, immediately. There are instructions for you to read in the envelope for later," Lindsey said.

  "You are ill, madam," he said. "I shall order your automobile."

  She didn't answer. She considered Wilton instead, and Wilton looked back, as if they struggled, the one with the other in a way he could not control or moderate. Then Lindsey said, as if giving in to some weakness, "Escort the Doctor and Edmund to the car. Take the morning flight North, you know the one. But I would prefer that tonight you remain in this building, that you not commence your journey with the Doctor, until I have left. That will be soon. I do not plan to delay."

  Oroko nodded. He didn't ask about Wilton yet. Lindsey still had that to decide.

  "Goodnight, Oroko."

  Even as he started to object, Lindsey took the revolver into her hand, checked that the safety was still off.

  "I will watch her. You need not concern yourself."

  "Hurry, Doctor," Oroko said. He pushed Gilman toward the waiting Jeep. "I must not leave her alone for long."

  He hissed a signal and Edmund came running. "Guard her as a dangerous prisoner, but do her no harm," Oroko ordered, thrusting the packet of papers into Edmund's hand. "I will meet you at Ikeja, the 6:00 a.m. flight. Purchase two tickets."

  He looked up at the looming building and froze, watching the slit of light expand in a window stories above. He felt himself draw breath, but it was too far. No one would hear him. He saw Lindsey's black shape against the bright lit room behind, imagined he heard the music still coming from the old scratched record.

  Gilman looked up too, as if drawn by his sudden attention. His inhalation.

  Lindsey stood with the metal shutter drawn open, illumined, outlined.

  He heard glass, not automobile nor the cheap stuff of bar windows. Office glass. Yet Lagos was a city of breaking glass, picked locks, stolen goods and murder. A common sound. Surely it could have come from anywhere.

  "Guard her," he said, shoving Gilman toward Edmund, and then he ran.

  In spite of his haste, Oroko was too slow. Knowledge had not prepared him. He found Thomas trying the door, calling out. Gesturing Thomas back, he fumbled his key to unlock Lindsey's office. Crouching low, he entered.

  Lindsey lay crumpled with Wilton kneeling by her in front of the shattered window, red blood soaking into carpet. Revolver
still upon the desk, music playing on. Wilton straightened over Lindsey's body and he hit her hard back against the wall where she thudded, stunned.

  He knelt by Lindsey and touched the marble face, only marred by the neat entry of the assassin's bullet. The exit wound was ugly—the back of her head nearly blown away, a ruin of blood and bone and brain.

  Oroko glanced up at the opened window blinds. He schooled his face in a moment, blinked hard against the heat in his eyelids and moved crabwise to Wilton, dragging her by her collar after him across the carpet. He would offer the enemy no second target.

  He'd failed. Lindsey had given him the order. She'd ordered him to fail. But he hadn't yet fulfilled his commitment—there remained one thing more.

  "Yes, Madame Lindsey," he said aloud, in tribute.

  Chapter 114: Wilton

  December 1971

  Lagos, Nigeria

  Wilton knew he was looking at her. At the sound of his soft step her heart leapt with hope and she stayed still, waiting, but he did nothing. Every second counted against her. God had not forgiven her yet.

  "Professor," Oroko said.

  He'd stayed in the doorway for some minutes. Now Wilton looked up. She could not beg him, or even ask. She could not take control, she must submit to God's intention and not her own.

  The reek of blood hung about him, the stains of Lindsey's sogged Oroko's trousers and the cuffs of his shirt. Wilton noted the revolver in his hand with pain, she knew now he would not shoot her here.

  "I have no instructions about you, Professor Wilton," he said.

  "You don't need any."

  "I do. The habit is in me to do as she said."

  "Then you are not the son I raised."

  She saw him flinch and his fingers seemed to tighten. He continued to watch her, leaning against the door frame.

  "Did you kill Sandy?"

  "What I said finally drew all the puzzles about her death together, didn't it? It solved the questions you didn't ask?"

  He nodded once, his expression difficult to read behind the glasses.

  "And Lindsey Kinner?" he said.