Cut and Run

by Carla Neggers

  Sam Ryder, back home in Florida, had hoped they wouldn’t.

  Now, pouring himself another glass of Scotch, he put them out of his mind, his ability to repress well developed. He had to forget Steelman and Weasel; he had to make himself unavailable to Phillip Bloch. Regardless of what Matthew knew or didn’t know, he had no proof—nothing he could print. And he’d have to be very, very careful before he printed anything about Sam Ryder; there was history between them. Stark wouldn’t want to be accused of mounting a witch hunt.

  Nothing had to happen. All Ryder needed was for Bloch to get hold of the Minstrel’s Rough. Then, at last, he’d be satisfied and get out of Ryder’s life.

  Bloch had to get hold of the Minstrel.

  But what will he do to get it? You gave him the names of the Peperkamps. He can find them. He can find Juliana.

  “Juliana.”

  Her name came out as a breath. Why couldn’t he stop thinking about her? She couldn’t be involved with this mess; she could have nothing to do with the Minstrel. Bloch had no reason to go after her.

  Unless he has reason to believe she has the stone. He won’t be satisfied until he’s positive she doesn’t. Until he knows none of the Peperkamp women has the Minstrel, including Juliana.

  Ryder inhaled deeply, then slowly swallowed a mouthful of Scotch. He had to hope Bloch would go to the mother and the aunt first and one of them would lead him to the Minstrel.

  Besides, what Bloch did or didn’t do was not Sam Ryder’s responsibility.

  He poured himself another glass of Scotch and took it to bed.

  Eighteen

  Catharina set her plastic bucket down hard on the sidewalk in front of her bakeshop. Hot soapy water splashed out onto her sneakers, but she paid no attention. It was early, just after dawn, and cold. She dropped her scrub brush into the bucket and knelt down, her heavy corduroy pants worn at the knee from this very ritual. Every other morning she scrubbed the sidewalk from the door of her shop out to the curb. It was an old Dutch custom. Adrian and Juliana teased her about having the cleanest patch of sidewalk in New York. Twice she’d almost been arrested for her odd activity. Yet Catharina was convinced a clean sidewalk helped business. And even if there was no financial gain to be made from her efforts, New York was never so quiet as it was in early morning. She could think then. Dream. Remember.

  But this morning she worked quickly because it was cold and furiously because she was trying so desperately not to think, not to dream, not to remember. Rachel…Senator Ryder…Juliana…Wilhelmina…Johannes. My God, what was happening to her world?

  Again…

  Despite the cold and the ungodly hour, the man was out there, across the street, watching, not caring that she knew he was there. He was young, dark, and fine-featured, not very tall, and he wore clothes that didn’t make him stand out in the upper-income neighborhood. This morning’s outfit was a pair of heavy corduroy pants and a lambskin jacket. Nevertheless he looked tired and uncomfortable, and she’d thought, madly, of walking over to him and inviting him inside for coffee. But she remembered how young and innocent so many of the Nazis, Dutch as well as German, had looked, and she stopped herself.

  Behind her, she heard a soft, distinctive laugh, and she paused, thinking she must have imagined it. It was a laugh of dreams and memories and a girlhood so short, so long ago, that every moment of it was etched in her mind, that much sharper, that much more bittersweet.

  Hendrik…

  Then the laugh came again, and Catharina tossed the brush into her bucket and rolled back onto her heels. She started to tuck a stray white-blond hair behind her ear but remembered her heavy rubber gloves, her hands warm inside them. Her nose felt cold and red. But as she looked up into the warm blue eyes of Hendrik de Geer, the years fell away. She saw none of his deep wrinkles, none of the scars the years had left, saw only the dashing, brave young man he had once been, at least to her.

  “Aren’t you ever afraid?” she asked him.

  “Only for you, sweet Catharina,” he’d told her, and she’d believed him.

  “You’re amazingly clean,” he said now in English, “even for a Dutchwoman.”

  “It’s my mother’s influence.” Her voice was hoarse and unnatural from the tension and an overwhelming sadness, not for the past that had been, but for the past that might have been. She spoke, too, in English. It helped to anchor her in the present. “Mother was always so busy with the Underground Resistance, you remember? I was the youngest, and so I kept house. I wasn’t very good at it, but Mother was an exacting woman and I learned quickly. If she found a loose button on a shirt, she would tear off all the other buttons, too, and I would have to sew them all back on.”

  Hendrik laughed again, and this time she could see how his eyes crinkled up at the corners. “She always reminded me of Wilhelmina.”

  Wilhelmina and their mother. Yes, they were alike, tough-minded and cynical, unwilling to give anyone the benefit of the doubt but, in their own way, loving. Realists, they called themselves. Perhaps it was so. They had guessed what Hendrik was long before anyone else.

  Catharina started to her feet, the spell broken. Hendrik de Geer had never been dashing or brave, and her girlhood was long lost. She stumbled because she was stiff from kneeling and not so young anymore, and because Hendrik was there and hadn’t been in such a long, long time. From the moment she’d spotted him at Lincoln Center, she’d guessed he would come, eventually. Perhaps she’d even wished it.

  He grabbed her arm and helped her up, and she stood close to him as the wind gusted down the wide empty avenue. She felt lightheaded and for no reason at all thought of the cinnamon rolls she’d planned to make that morning, an old, comfortable recipe, and wondered if she’d ever get to them.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked softly.

  He smiled, his hand lingering on her arm. Through her old, heavy fisherman’s sweater, she could feel the imprint of his thick fingers. He’d always been so solid. So strong. Even now, almost seventy, wearing his watch cap and old peacoat, he looked so very handsome and reliable. If only she didn’t know better.

  He said, “I wanted to see you.”

  “Yes.” She looked away, at nothing. “Rachel…”

  “I’m sorry she’s gone.”

  “You knew she was after you.”

  He nodded, although she’d needed no confirmation. “Rachel wanted vengeance, Catharina.”

  “No, Hendrik.” She pulled away from him, and his hand fell awkwardly to his side. “She wanted justice.”

  He looked pained. “I did what I had to do in Amsterdam, to save you—”

  “To save yourself! I won’t live with that guilt, Hendrik.” But she did, every day.

  “They were difficult times, Catharina,” he said as if to a child. “The past is done.”

  “The past isn’t over, not for any of us. It never will be, Hendrik.” Her eyes were fierce and unforgiving. “Did you kill Rachel?”

  “No!” He seemed so appalled, as if he’d never contemplated such a wrong. “No, Catharina. I couldn’t.”

  “Not even to save yourself?” she asked with contempt, but then fatigue crept in—and sorrow. “Oh, Hendrik, just go away. Disappear as you did before.”

  He was shaking his head. “I’ve already tried. It’s what my mind tells me I should do, but my heart tells me otherwise. Catharina, the people I’m involved with have found out about the Minstrel’s Rough. They want it, and they’ll stop at nothing to get it. Believe me, my dear, I know these men.” He paused, his eyes as soft as they could ever be in a man who’d lived such a cold, hard life. “Let me take you away until I can satisfy them that the Minstrel doesn’t exist.”

  Catharina blinked rapidly, over and over, but the tears flowed anyway, whipped from her eyes by the wind. She tried to brush them away but remembered the gloves and peeled them off, letting them drop onto the sidewalk. Her hands were shaking uncontrollably. My God, she thought, will they never stop? It seemed they’d been s
haking since Rachel had walked into her bakeshop after forty years.

  The Minstrel’s Rough…damn that horrible stone!

  “No,” she said at last, in a choked whisper. “You’re not going to save me and let others suffer. I won’t let you!”

  “I can save everyone.”

  She scoffed, sobbing. “As you did in Amsterdam?”

  “Catharina, listen to me. Nothing will happen to you or your daughter—or to Wilhelmina. I promise you.”

  “And Johannes? You took him to Amsterdam, didn’t you? You tried to make him give you that damned diamond. Hendrik, Hendrik, you never change.”

  “His heart was no good. There was nothing I could do.” He took her hands and held them tightly, and she was surprised his were so warm. “You don’t believe me.”

  “Hendrik, please.” Her voice caught, and she was angry with herself for her tears, for thinking, hoping, he’d changed—for wanting to believe they both could pretend Amsterdam had never happened. “I can never believe you again.”

  He looked wounded, and yet at the same time not surprised, almost welcoming the blow. Then the earnestness, the frustrating, endearing, appalling optimism, the unshakable belief in himself, took over. “I can stop this, Catharina. If you tell me where the Minstrel is—”

  “No!” She pounded him once on the chest with her fist. “Damn you, Hendrik, no! Even if I knew I’d never tell you. The Minstrel died with Johannes. Now go—for the love of God, Hendrik go.”

  “Catharina…”

  She shook her head and resisted the impulse to run. Willie wouldn’t; their mother wouldn’t. And she had to protect Juliana. Catharina made herself look at him, into the eyes that had never told anything that was true. “Understand me, Hendrik; leave my daughter out of whatever trouble you’re in this time. If you touch Juliana—if anyone connected with you touches her—there’s nowhere you can go, nowhere you can hide that I won’t find you. If you should die before I do, you’ll see me in hell.”

  Hendrik swallowed and licked his chapped lips, and he whispered, “Don’t hate me, sweet Catharina.”

  “I don’t, Hendrik,” she said, so tired. “I never did.”

  She pushed past him, knocking over the bucket as she ran inside and shut the door hard behind her, clicking shut the deadbolt lock. The sound echoed in the quiet shop.

  Hendrik de Geer stood in the dirty water, and he looked without expression toward the shop. Catharina warned herself that he was the same thoughtless, selfish coward he had been in Amsterdam. How could she feel any pity for him after what he’d done? Nothing had changed. Not Hendrik, not herself, not their past.

  She watched him through the window. He bent over, righting the bucket, and picked up one of her rubber gloves. He pressed it to his lips. Catharina bit back a cry as he walked over and hung the glove on the doorknob.

  He said nothing, and then he walked off slowly down Madison Avenue, alone.

  Juliana had changed into J.J. Pepper to keep herself from being followed to LaGuardia Airport and then changed back into herself in the Gazette ladies’ room, leaving J.J.’s clothes in a paper bag under the sink. Then she proceeded to the newsroom. She was dressed in a chocolate wool gabardine suit with a Hermès scarf at her neck and her hair pulled back. She thought she looked distinctive, if not brass tacks. A reporter pointed out Matthew’s desk, which was as yet unoccupied. She went over and sat on the straight-backed chair next to it, glancing at the notes and papers on his desk. She saw the obituaries on Rachel Stein and her uncle and felt her expression turn grim.

  A tall woman with dark horn-rimmed glasses came over and asked if she could help her. Juliana introduced herself. “I’m Alice Feldon,” the editor said, eyeing her. “So you’re Stark’s piano player.”

  Juliana winced. “When’s he due in?”

  “Your guess is as good as mine.”

  “It’s very important I see him. I—I have new information for him; I’m sure he’ll want to know.”

  “Don’t count on it.” She picked up a scrap of paper and a pencil, jotted down something, and handed both back to Juliana. “That’s his home number and his address. You decide what you want to do.”

  Alice Feldon marched back to her desk, and Juliana picked up the phone but stopped herself from dialing. If Matthew answered, what would she tell him? I was just wondering when you were coming in to your office. He’d ask why; she’d tell him because she was there waiting for him. He’d tell her, “Then wait, goddamnit.”

  She tucked the scrawled address in her pocket and called for a cab.

  With one of his men posted on the street, Phillip Bloch grinned at his former platoon leader from the front stoop of his elegant townhouse. “Morning, Sam.”

  “Bloch—what are you doing here?” Ryder went pale. “I thought we had an understanding that you would never come to Washington. For God’s sake, get inside quickly.”

  “Calm down, Sam.” Bloch entered the quiet foyer. He had a plastic container of fresh fruit salad in one hand, and with a plastic fork, he stuck a hung of cantaloupe into his mouth. At one time he’d smoked cigarettes incessantly. Now he received his oral gratification from various fruits and seeds. Sometimes he felt like a goddamn squirrel. He went on pleasantly, “I love D.C. Christ, I could buy a whole case of melons for what I pay for one stinking salad here.”

  Ryder bristled. “We can talk in the study, but I hardly think we should prolong this meeting, Sergeant.”

  “That’s okay by me.”

  Bloch followed the senator into the study at the back of the house, passing an elegant dining room done in Queen Anne. The sergeant knew it was Queen Anne because for years his mother had kept a picture of a dining set—an Ethan Allen reproduction—taped on the refrigerator. It was what she wanted some day for her dining room, which was pretty much a wreck. Nobody in their household could afford it or even gave two shits whether or not she ever got it. Losers, his mother had called them; you’re all a bunch of losers. She was an old lady now, but she probably still had that goddamn picture on her refrigerator.

  The study didn’t remind Bloch of anything he’d ever known, except maybe a whorehouse or two. Oriental carpet on the hardwood floor, cherry from the looks of it, leather club chairs and sofa, brass lamps, masculine ornaments, paintings of horses. A framed picture of Sammy as a decorated first lieutenant in the U.S. Army stood on an antique secretary, but about the only thing he’d done that entitled him to be decorated, in Bloch’s estimation, was not getting any more people killed than he had. The frame, the sergeant noted, was silver, probably sterling.

  “Fancy, fancy,” he said, looking around the room. “About what I expected.”

  “Let’s get on with this.”

  Ryder gestured nervously to the leather chairs, and they both sat. Bloch finished his salad.

  “Two things,” Bloch said, still amiable. His men were feeding him nice, timely reports. He felt in control. “First, one of my men spotted Hendrik de Geer outside Catharina Fall’s bakery this morning. He ain’t out of this. We tried to take him out last night, but—”

  “For God’s sake, don’t tell me anything!”

  “What, the place bugged or something? Sammy, Sammy, relax. Anyway, I figure de Geer’s trying to get the diamond on his own. Not good. Second, as you well know, Matt Stark ain’t lying down on this one. My man says he was here—”

  “What?”

  “Listen, Lieutenant, I’ve got to keep my finger on things.”

  “You’ve had me watched?”

  “Don’t be such a wimp. Yeah, I’ve had you watched—for your own protection as well as mine. Will you quit interrupting? I’ll assume for now you didn’t tell Stark anything, but if he keeps digging around, you won’t need me to ruin you—he’ll be glad to do the job.”

  “De Geer’s a drunk, and Stark doesn’t have a thing he can use. Just ignore them both. Sergeant, I think it’s time you accepted reality: the Minstrel’s Rough was a good idea, but it didn’t pan out. Let it go.”
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  “Sammy, Sammy,” Bloch said, shaking his head with feigned disappointment. “You give up too easily. We ain’t even started to look for this stone yet.”

  “Not we, Sergeant.” Ryder leaned forward, looking more terrified than determined. “I’m no longer involved. I told you, I can’t be.”

  “I know, you’re a United States senator. Bully, bully. Well, look, I just figured I’d be nice and let you know what’s on my mind, okay? You get this diamond before I get it myself or you give me something else I can use to pin it down, we’re square. I got commitments, you know, creditors barking up my ass. You don’t want me sitting down in Florida forever, do you? Well, help me out.” He grinned, setting his plastic container and fork on a butler’s table. “But if you can’t, I guess you might have my bones rattling around in your closet for a long, long time.”

  “Sergeant, you’re not being fair.” Ryder was close to hyperventilating. “If it wasn’t for me, you wouldn’t even know about the Minstrel. And as I told you, there’s absolutely no guarantee it even exists. It’s not worth the risk to you or to me—”

  “I want the stone,” Bloch said. “And I’ll get it, with your help, Lieutenant, or without.”

  Ryder was panting, obviously horrified by what the sergeant proposed. Bloch watched the former platoon leader try to figure a way out, to distance himself from the very events he’d put into motion so that later on he could deny any involvement on his part. He’d seen that look a thousand times over the years.