A Matter of Time

by Glen Cook

  Tran stared out a window with a bemused smile.

  “I don’t think it’s funny,” Cash told him. “This isn’t some vacation trip.”

  “I was reflecting on the paradoxes in chains of command.”

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “How many times have you threatened to crucify your lieutenant because he wouldn’t let you do things your way? How many times have you ignored him? You set the example for her.”

  Cash looked at Tran sharply. He wanted to claim that these circumstances were different. But he couldn’t. That would have been pure hypocrisy.

  He grinned. “You got me dead to rights.”

  Having listened to the conversation, Beth remarked, “It’s too late anyway, Norm.” The engines began to whine. “So let’s get on with the job.”

  He gave her a look that promised he wouldn’t forget, but said only, “What else can I do?” He sighed, closed his eyes.

  “Wake me up when we get there.”

  He wouldn’t sleep. Flying frightened him too much. Every little creak from the airframe would be sandpaper across raw nerves. Safety statistics didn’t mean a thing to the primitive cowering at the back of his skull.

  Frank Segasture, true to his promise, was there to meet them.

  Cash embraced the man. “How the hell are you, you runt wop? Getting a little chunky there, aren’t you?” He jabbed a finger into the man’s spare tire.

  Segasture was short, broad, and swarthy. He looked more like a movie Mafioso than a detective. He took the insults with a grin. “When you going to wake up and start wearing a hat? What the wind ain’t bleached it’s blown away. Kids started calling you chrome-dome yet?”

  “Hey, Frank, when the dust settles let’s go out and get plowed. I haven’t gone clubbing since that time in D. C.”

  “In Rochester? You got to be shitting me. Man, people around here go to Cleveland for excitement.” He eyeballed Beth while he talked. She reddened, tried pretending she didn’t notice.

  “Oh. This is Major Tran. And Beth Tavares.”

  “Ah. The lady on the phone. The one with the sexy voice.” He ogled her. “Maybe we can learn something from you guys in the sticks. I never had a partner like this.”

  Beth blushed more deeply, moved nearer Cash.

  “Tran, did you say? The Viets are in on this, too?”

  “Just personal curiosity,” Tran replied. “I was a police officer myself. I find this case extremely interesting.”

  “That it is. You guys had breakfast yet? Didn’t think so. With that outfit you’re lucky the plane even got here. Come on. Let’s get your bags and go. I’ve got us set up at the Holiday Inn. It’s only a couple of miles from the house.”

  “I’m not hungry,” said Cash, puffing as he tried to match Segasture’s pace. “Let’s just go out there....”

  “Down, Sherlock. There ain’t no rush. She hasn’t showed yet. Might as well take it easy till she does.”

  “She hasn’t?” Sudden fear rolled over Cash. Had he guessed wrong? “But she’s had plenty of time....”

  “Hey! Don’t get an ulcer. Okay? We’ll know if... when she comes in. And where she goes.”

  “Huh? How?”

  “Think about it.” Segasture grinned as he helped Beth claim her bags.

  Christ, she must plan on a long stay, Norm thought.

  “I give up, Frank.”

  “Ah, Norm, you never were any fun.”

  “Taxi drivers,” said Tran.

  Segasture spat to one side. “Yeah. Norm, your friend is too damned smart. Yeah. What I did was get to the cabbies working the stations. I told them there was a twenty for the guy who spotted her and let us know.”

  “Isn’t that a little cheap?”

  “There’s guys would cut your throat for that much down in the city. Anyway, they’re going to be your bucks. I’ll up the ante if you want. Hey, pretty lady, I’ll carry them.”

  “Don’t worry, Beth. This old dog is all bark. He’s the last of the faithful husbands.”

  In a tight voice she remarked, “That’s what I was afraid of.” She wasn’t at ease with that kind of banter.

  “You’re blowing my mystique, Norm. Come on. I’ve got a car. Hey! You remember the time we booby-trapped old Handley’s microscope?”

  They relived similar hijinx all the way to the motel, till Cash was sure Beth and Tran were convinced that his FBI course had been waste of the taxpayers’ money.

  Over breakfast Beth became Miss Business. “Norm, did you forget Dr. Smiley?”

  He halted a forkful of pancake halfway along its arc to his mouth. “Damned near,” He explained to Segasture.

  “Okay. I’ll put the word out for the drivers to watch for him. You got any other rats going to come out of the woodwork back here?”

  Cash shook his head. “You know, I wish I could get out and prowl around the countryside. My mother came from a place called Johnstown. I think it’s around here somewhere.”

  “Nan. It’s almost over to Albany.”

  “I remember, back in thirty-four, we drove all the way back there in a twenty-six chevy. For my grandfather’s funeral. Only time I ever saw the man. Laying in a casket.”

  Cash’s mind drifted into the past. It was hard to believe that he had ever been that young. “He had two wooden legs. That’s all I remember about him. He was some kind of mechanic on the railroad. One day he fell asleep under an engine he was working on. Somebody got in and drove it off.... You know, the only other thing I remember about that trip is playing on a barge on the Erie Canal.”

  “Maybe you can go over there after we close this thing up,” Segasture suggested.

  “No. There won’t be time. We’ve got to get back. Funerals.”

  And that was the story of his life. Always there was something that had to be done. Twenty-six months in Europe, with Uncle Sam footing the bill, and he hadn’t seen a damned thing but the cathedral at Cologne.

  Later, in Norm’s motel room, Segasture opened a briefcase and passed out weapons. “I hope we don’t have to use these. Try not to. Especially you, Major. They’re legal, but we might have to do a lot of explaining. So wave them around if the feeling grabs you, but don’t shoot. Norm, you want to ride out there? Look the place over?”

  What he wanted was to go lay an ambush at the railway station. “What if she comes in while we’re gone?”

  “Christ! Don’t be so damned anxious. We’ll find out. If the cabbies can’t get ahold of me, they know who to call at the Rochester P.O. They’ve got to be in on the edges of this thing anyway. It’s their turf.”

  “Sure. You’re right. Let’s go take a look.”

  Segasture drove past slowly.

  “It’s a goddamned mansion,” Cash muttered.

  “The old boy is worth a mint. And the feeling around here is that he didn’t come by all of it legit.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Koppel.... The local cops think he’s connected somehow. Little visible means of support. And he has some pretty strange visitors. Mainly foreigners. The couple who work for him are German.”

  “Who’s this Koppel?”

  “The guy who owns the place.”

  “But... the man we want is Fial Groloch.”

  “Then you’re out luck.”

  “You’re sure that’s the right house?” All he needed was to have to go back to Hank and admit that he had gone on a wild goose chase.

  “That’s the address you gave me. Hey! Calm down. It did belong to Fial Groloch. He sold out to this Koppel about forty years ago.”

  “But she got letters from here!” Cash protested. He shuffled mental files, dredging up everything he had learned about Fial Groloch.

  “Perhaps only the name of the owner changed,” Tran suggested. “The man in residence might be the same.”

  “Of course!” Cash jumped on it instantly. “That’d be the perfect way to cover up the fact that you’re outliving all your neighbors.”

  Seg
asture’s expression was dubious. “I vote we go back and party till we get word that she’s here.”

  “What I’d like to know,” Beth said, “is why, when we asked you to check the place out, back when, you didn’t let us know these things. If Koppel isn’t Groloch, then we’re out time and money for nothing.”

  “She always like this, Norm?”

  “She doesn’t let much get past.”

  “Yeah. Well. It’s like this. I didn’t get into it as deep as it might have sounded on the phone.”

  “I don’t think you got into it at all,” Beth retorted.

  “You faked it?” Cash demanded.

  “Well, sort of. I called some people. In the state police, up here....”

  “I get the picture. They didn’t want to be bothered either. You just wanted me off your back. I’m going to remember this, Frank.”

  “Hey, I’m sorry, Norm. It just didn’t look very important at the time. You know what I mean?”

  “I know what I think. But it’s too late to cry now. Come on. Let’s get back. I need a drink.”

  Two hours at the motel were all Cash could take. He left the others with the impression that he was going to take a nap, caught a cab to the railway station.

  At ten P.M. he finally admitted his folly to himself. He was just working on an ulcer. At the motel, at least, he could share the waiting with friends.

  But he had this damned overpowering urge to do something.

  It almost conned him into a solo recon of the local Groloch establishment.

  For once terror did him a favor. It stopped him.

  By sheer chance, as his taxi pulled away, he glimpsed someone through a Windless window. The man was crossing the waiting room, toward the rest rooms, at a trot.

  “Damn!” Norm growled. “That Malone is stubborn.” He hoped the man’s bladder was choking him. Serve him right, hiding, spying on people.

  He didn’t get upset. There wasn’t a thing he could do about it.

  He went looking for Frank right away. The bartender told him that Segasture had gone to bed. Tran had turned in too. “Hell, it’s still too early. Mix me a rum and Coke in a water glass. Two shots. No ice.”

  Maybe it was just as well. He wouldn’t have to take any crap about sneaking off.

  He went through three drinks before announcing, “I might as well sack out too. Ain’t nothing else to do.” He was dog-tired, but not really sleepy. Too keyed up.

  He was about to become more keyed up.

  He stepped into his room and ass deep into a “situation.”

  Beth was in his bed. She had fallen asleep while reading.

  She didn’t have a stitch on beneath that sheet. One bare, large, dark-nippled breast peeked out at him.

  “So this is why she came.” He closed the door gently, quietly seated himself in the room’s one chair. His knees missed brushing the bed by a scant half inch.

  As nervous as she was, how could she have fallen asleep? She should have been too scared to think.

  Maybe she had reached the point of emotional exhaustion.

  His thoughts went round and round, pecking at the situation from a hundred angles.

  It boiled down to a choice between should do and want to do.

  God, she looked good.

  A half hour passed. The alcohol gradually caught up. He felt on the verge of collapse. He had to get to bed.

  He would have to disturb her or stay awake.

  He didn’t want to endure the inevitable confrontation.

  God damn it, it was his bed.

  A disinterested fraction of his mind observed, with amusement, that, whenever he began to relax, he reacted in healthy male fashion. The resulting tension invariably caused a detumescence.

  He rose, stripped to his shorts, switched the light off, slid into bed.

  Beth wakened instantly, sat upright. “Norm? I’m sorry. I don’t know why —”

  “Shut up. Lay down. Shut up,” he said again. He pulled her toward him, cuddling spoon fashion. She remained stiff, but her skin was smooth, soft, warm. She shivered, tried to pull away. “Lay still. And go back to sleep.”

  They didn’t drift off quickly. There was too much tension, too much waiting for someone to make an advance. But the forced silence gradually sapped the fury of the emotional storm.

  Cash slept, but awakened with the dawn.

  Beth snored fitfully beside him, sprawled on her back. Obviously she was used to sleeping alone.

  Cash touched himself. He had one of those throbbing morning erections that a cat couldn’t scratch.

  He lifted himself onto one elbow, eased the sheet off the bed.

  “Nice,” he whispered.

  She really did have a dynamite body.

  His heart hammered. He shook all over. It was like the first time ever all over again.

  He was going to do it.

  He bent to one of those magnificent breasts.

  • • •

  Frank came pounding on the door shortly after ten. “Hey. Norm. Come on. Get up.”

  They came out of bed grabbing for clothes.

  “In the bathroom,” Cash whispered. “What do you want?” he growled.

  “Come on. We’ve got to move.”

  Norm dragged his shorts on and stumbled to the door. “Man, what’s all the racket for?” he demanded as he opened up.

  “She’s here. Your target. Cabbie just took her out there. She sent him back for a bunch of luggage.”

  “We’ve got to grab that. There’s a trunk I want.”

  “I’ll call the Rochester P. D. while you get dressed. Want me to get Beth? Tran’s already over at the cafe.”

  Cash’s heart hammered. “No. I’ll take care of it. Just get somebody on to that trunk. That’ll make my case.”

  “Ah. I see.” Segasture hurried off.

  What had he meant by that? Cash wondered. And by that sudden little grin?

  He understood the instant he turned. Beth had missed her purse and bra in her rush to the bathroom.

  “Oh, shit.”

  But what could he do? The horse had escaped. Better play it cool, say nothing, and hope that Frank did the same. “Hey, babe, I need the shower.”

  Blushing all over, Beth came for her bra.

  They were even more impressive when she was standing.

  “Male chauvinist,” he murmured.

  “See if there’s anybody outside,” she said softly. “I have to go change.”

  Cash peeked out. “It’s okay.”

  She started to leave. He stopped her, lifted her chin, kissed her lightly. “Thank you, Beth.”

  She clung to him momentarily, head against his chest. “Thank you.” She left.

  He didn’t think it would happen again. Her need had been filled. As once he had filled Teri’s need with a refusal.

  When would his turn come?

  Norm found breakfast awaiting him. “Beginning to look like you’re hooked on this one, too, Frank.”

  “It was the major’s idea. He was afraid you wouldn’t eat unless you were put under obligation.”

  Tran smiled. “We have to care for ourselves first.”

  Cash drained half a cup of coffee, pushed it aside so the waitress could refill it. “I’m looking forward to today. But now that I’m here, and she’s here, I don’t feel any big rush anymore. Did you order for Beth?”

  “Yes. But I assumed she would take longer. Women usually do.”

  “Frank, you were right. He’s too damned smart.” Cash wondered if Tran were smart enough to have figured the night’s happening. Not that it mattered. The man would keep his mouth shut.

  It had been ages since he had felt so relaxed, so fulfilled, so at peace. He had Beth to thank.

  She arrived looking bright and cheerful and not the least bit guilty.

  Cash felt no guilt himself, to his surprise. Maybe it would set in after the euphoria passed.

  The waitress quickly arrived with Beth’s breakfast.

 
; I’m getting close to it now, Cash thought, visualizing Miss Groloch’s elfin face.

  “Here’s how I figure we should do it,” Segasture said, and began outlining a plan.

  XXVIII

  On the X Axis;

  1975

  She paid the cabbie, tipping generously, then added twenty dollars and asked him to recover her baggage from the railway station. She watched him pull away, then marched up the winding, rose-flanked walk to the door.

  He responded almost as if he had been waiting.

  “Fiala! What are you doing here?” He spoke German. His English remained as broken as hers. “Come on in.”

  The house was old, rich, dark. It had changed little with the years.

  Fial had. He had aged.

  But sixty years separated this meeting from their last.

  A woman of sixty, confused and embarrassed, rushed from the rear of the house. “I’m sorry, Herr Koppel. I was in the bathroom.” She, too, spoke German, but with a northern accent.

  “That’s all right, Greta. You and Hans take the car into town, will you? Catch up on your shopping.”

  The woman withdrew with a slight, stiff, Teutonic bow. She seemed accustomed to disappearing when strangers arrived.

  “My God, that woman is ugly.”

  “But the perfect housekeeper. Absolutely close-mouthed. She and her husband have been with me since forty-nine. They’re refugees. I think they were involved with the SS. Whatever, they don’t attract any attention.”

  “Koppel?”

  “I changed names during the Depression. My business connections were beginning to wonder about my longevity. It seemed like a good time to disappear. Financial empires were crumbling right and left. But you haven’t told me why you’re here.”

  “I had to run. I had to, Fial. After I saw him, and the policeman.... I couldn’t stay there anymore. It was all closing in....”

  The old man guided her to an overstuffed chair. “Sit. I’ll make some tea. You settle down. Get your thoughts organized.”

  One familiar with Fiala would have guessed Fial to be as fussy and old-fashioned as his sister. The interiors of their homes were almost interchangeable, though Fial’s place was larger and more carefully maintained. He didn’t fear carpenters, electricians, or plumbers.