“Just experienced.” He gave her a sideways glance. “You can be an irritating woman.”
“It’s the Peperkamp in me. The Falls are all so civilized. But never mind. Tell me about Phillip Bloch—and your friend, have you heard from him? Weaze, is it?”
“Otis,” Matthew said, a sudden feeling of hopelessness washing over him as he envisioned the emaciated former gunner, his friend. “Otis Raymond. We called him the Weasel in ’Nam. I haven’t heard from him. But, Juliana, I was wrong to suggest that you should feel responsible for anything that might or might not happen to him. I was hot; I needed someone to lash out at.”
“That’s okay. Musicians always have people screaming at them. We get used to it. You and Otis Raymond and Phillip Bloch were in Vietnam together?”
“We were there at the same time; I wouldn’t say together. Bloch was a platoon sergeant, I was a helicopter pilot, and Weasel was one of my door gunners. We transported troops into and out of combat.”
Juliana waited, but Matthew didn’t go on. Finally, she said, “You’re not a talkative person, are you? You say what you have to say and that’s it. I can see why you haven’t done much since LZ. When you have something else to say—something that you haven’t said in any of your other work—you’ll do another book. But not another LZ, even if that’s what your public wants. Anyway, what does a gunner do, exactly?”
“Kills people.”
Juliana smacked her mouth shut.
“That wasn’t fair,” he added quietly.
“No, maybe it was. I don’t like to be forced to talk, either.”
“So I’ve discovered.”
“I don’t know anything about the military. At best, my memories of Vietnam are dim. I remember catching scenes of the war on television, between homework assignments and practice sessions, and I remember debates in school about whether the U.S. had any business being there. But I was more interested in analyzing Bach cantatas.” Her expression was grimly self-critical. “The Vietnam War’s another huge gap in my knowledge.”
Matthew hadn’t expected her to be so perceptive, about herself, or, certainly, about him. He pulled back into himself, and when he went on, his tone was less personal, almost clinical.
“My first tour of duty, I flew the Bell UH-1 Iroquois in its transport role. Hueys were the warhorses. The UH-1Bs were the primary transport helicopters; we called them slicks. The UH-1Cs were fitted with armaments; they were the gunships—the hogs, we called them. As pilot, my job was to get us in and out of LZs safely; the slick itself was unarmed, but it could move faster than a gunship. I had a copilot up front with me. In back were the crew chief and door gunner; we communicated with them over radio. They both were armed with M-60 machine guns to protect themselves, the passengers, the crew, and the ship. If we came down in a hot LZ, we could expect plenty of fire. We were all vulnerable, but gunners were the most exposed. A lot of them didn’t live long.”
“But Otis Raymond survived?”
Matthew looked straight ahead. “Yeah, he survived. He was good—and he was lucky. We both were. When I went to LOHs for my second tour, he transferred with me.” He glanced at Juliana and gave her a small smile. “An LOH is a light observation helicopter. We’d draw fire to locate the enemy, and the gunships would come in and do their thing. By then the snakes had replaced Hueys as gunships.”
“Snakes?”
“The Bell AH-1G Cobra. It was heavily armed and a hell of a lot faster than the hogs. Part of the strategy behind the hunter-killer teams was to reduce troop losses; it was a numbers game.”
Juliana nodded, not so much understanding, he thought, as acknowledging that she was both interested and listening. “Why did you stay in for a second tour?”
He shrugged. “Somebody had to do the job. By the time we’d stayed in a year, Weasel and I figured we knew what we were doing and maybe could keep somebody else who didn’t have our experience from getting killed.”
“As a pilot, did you feel responsible for the men who flew with you?”
“Yes.”
“And you still fee responsible for Otis Raymond.”
He sighed, saying nothing. What the hell could he say?
“I won’t pretend I can even imagine what you went through,” Juliana told him quietly. “I’m sorry—”
“No, you’re not, Juliana.” He looked at the pale, beautiful face. “You’re damned lucky.”
Disgusted, Wilhelmina sat on the chair at the dusty Steinway concert grand in her niece’s quiet living room. The bright winter sun streamed in through the big windows, and she could hear the traffic down on Central Park West. She was tired. She had just spent the last three hours searching every corner of her niece’s monstrous apartment for the Minstrel’s Rough. Wilhelmina herself had never seen the Minstrel, but she knew enough about diamonds to feel sure she’d recognize the world’s largest uncut diamond when she saw it.
But she’d found neither the Minstrel nor any indication that Juliana had stashed it elsewhere or had even heard of the legendary stone. All she’d found of interest, minor interest at that, was a gigantic closet full of old clothes and a half-dozen different kinds of colored mousse—and cosmetics! Wilhelmina had never seen so much face paint! Such colors! And she didn’t for a moment believe they belonged to a friend, as Juliana had suggested. Juliana was too solitary a person, and somehow the things reminded Wilhelmina of her niece. Whatever the case, that was her business and of no consequence to her aging aunt.
Yet Wilhelmina was still positive that Juliana had the Minstrel’s Rough. It would explain so much. It was also logical, and the old Dutchwoman was not one to back away prematurely from what made sense.
At any rate, it had been a frustrating morning. The man posted outside the Beresford continued to stand in the cold, but Wilhelmina paid no attention to him whatever. But better to be aware of him than not.
She had made a cup of café au lait and now was tempted to play the piano. Would any of Juliana’s monumental talent seep from the ivory keys into her old bones? Bah, she thought, I must be more tired than I feel.
The Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1 was open on the rack. Wilhelmina knew it to be a difficult piece, but she’d never played it. She wondered if she should give it a try now, to clear her mind.
She pressed middle C very slowly, and no sound came out.
Hendrik…
Yes, he was in her thoughts. Catharina had called, tearfully telling her older sister about seeing him that morning. Wilhelmina wished she’d been able to speak up and ask Catharina to relate every detail of their conversation…how he’d looked, sounded, must have felt. Everything.
Not that she cared, of course.
“You’re kidding yourself, Willie,” she muttered. “You still care. You always will.”
Suddenly she felt eerily alone amidst all that space, with so many people in the city around her. At home in Rotterdam, she never thought about being alone.
“Liar,” she said aloud, with vehemence.
She jumped up, suddenly spooked, and ran around into all the rooms, pulling drapes, checking the locks on the doors and windows, and then came back to the living room, shaking. She turned on the stereo. She didn’t care what she listened to. Anything besides the cries and the screams and the prayers and the loneliness that too often whispered to her in the night.
Hendrik…may God damn you to hell!
And not just for what he’d done—but for showing her what might have been.
“You’re being unfair,” Juliana informed Matthew as he walked with her to the shuttle gate. “Unfair, unreasonable, and damned provoking.”
He grinned. “Damned provoking, huh?”
“Yes.”
“Well, so are you, sweet cheeks.”
“Me?”
“Uh huh. You’re holding out on me.”
She didn’t say a word.
“Maybe not much, maybe a lot. With you, it’s hard to tell. But whatever you’re not telling me, I figure I don’t need
to know. It’s just not worth pulling you deeper into this mess. Whether by accident or design, two people are dead. As far as I’m concerned, that’s enough.”
“I think we should work together,” she told him as the announcement came for her flight to begin boarding.
“God save me.”
“You have no right to tell me what to do.”
“I have every right to keep you from bird-dogging me—and I can do it.”
Her dark eyes gleamed with frustration and excitement, which both worried and pleased him. But the paleness was still there, the bruise on her wrist. He admired her for not wanting to run, but he couldn’t let her determination undermine his own common sense. Having a piano player strutting around behind him wasn’t going to accomplish a damn thing. And there was no guarantee she was ever going to get around to telling him what she knew about the Minstrel’s Rough. She didn’t believe in tit for tat.
Not, of course, that he’d told her everything.
“Matthew, listen to me,” she said, “I’m involved in this whether or not you like it.”
“That’s my point: I don’t like it. Get on the plane, Juliana. Go home, go to Vermont, go to the Club Aquarian, go any goddamn place you want to—just stay the hell away from me.”
“Maybe I’ll go see Sam Ryder and find out if he’s more cooperative.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Matthew jumped forward and pulled her around by the shoulders so she faced him. “Don’t screw around with Ryder.” The words came out dark and angry, but he didn’t raise his voice and his mouth hardly moved. “He’ll eat you alive.”
His tone, his expression, his firm grip on her would have intimidated the hell out of anyone else. He knew it. But Juliana just wrinkled up her face. “That’s not your problem.”
“I’ll make it my goddamn problem.”
“I’m not your concern,” she said.
“The hell you’re not.”
She was as worn out as he was, as testy, as independent, as used to getting her own damn way. She was never nice for the sake of being nice. It wasn’t necessary in her world. Wasn’t necessary in his, either. He looked at the uncompromising set of her jaw and her lovely mouth, and he said the hell with it. He pulled her even closer and kissed her hard, briefly, tearing himself away before the warmth of her penetrated too deeply.
Just as he’d wanted himself, a kiss wasn’t enough. It wasn’t even close.
“I don’t want to see you zipped up in a body bag,” he said.
She teetered a bit, and he was pleased to note he’d had the same dizzying effect on her that she’d had on him. But she recovered. He could see her kicking herself back into gear. “So that’s it, right?” she said hotly. “You kiss me and pack me off like you’re Davy Crockett off to the Alamo or wherever he was off to.”
“That’s right,” he said.
She tossed her head back, insulted.
Stark laughed. “You liked the kiss, sweetheart, and don’t try to pretend otherwise. You kissed me back.”
“A reflex. Like playing arpeggios.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever had one of my kisses compared to playing arpeggios.”
“Well.” She fell into the long line for the shuttle to New York. “If Aunt Willie and I are followed again, I’ll know who not to call.”
Matthew’s thick black brows drew together in a deep frown. Christ, if he only knew when to take her seriously. Her high cheekbones were pink, the rest of her face dead white. What the hell was she talking about this time? Followed—again? Bullshit. It was just a ploy. But Aunt Willie…
“Is that woman in New York?”
Juliana just smiled and waved.
Matthew swore, but she continued to ignore him. Finally, swearing some more, he scrambled for a ticket and got in line, at the end because she refused to let him cut in front of her.
She did, however, arrange to have him sit next to her. Their shoulders brushed lightly. Arpeggios, he thought, Jesus. She looked at him up close, her eyes sparkling. “I have an ulterior motive for permitting you to sit beside me,” she said.
He was thinking she meant their kiss had knocked some sense of fair play into her and she was going to tell him about Aunt Willie and being followed and maybe even something about the Minstrel’s Rough. She might even want another kiss.
But she went on, matter-of-fact, “Now I know about helicopters. So tell me about platoon sergeants.” She smoothed her skirt and looked over at him. “What exactly is a platoon?”
Nineteen
Catharina was impatient for the last of her customers to leave so that she could close up the shop. Over and over again she had berated herself for not telling Hendrik she had the Minstrel. That way, she could have protected Juliana—and even Wilhelmina. She could lead Hendrik away from them, just as Johannes had tried to do. It was a good plan; anyway, good or not, it had to be done.
If only she’d thought to do it when Hendrik was there.
But she would have another chance. She would make one.
The cleanup crew already had the kitchen spotless, and there was just one trio of friends lingering over a pot of tea and a tray of butter cookies. Catharina didn’t rush them. She laid six miniature cream puffs in a box to take home to her husband; they were his favorite. He was urging her to go to their country house in Connecticut for a few days and make wreaths, gathering the pine cones, sprigs of evergreen, and perhaps some grapevines from their own woods. She remembered herself urging Juliana to go to Vermont. Was there really anywhere they could hide?
The little doorbell tinkled, and two men entered the shop. The trio had split up their bill, and each young woman was counting out her money; they had on their coats already. Catharina started to tell the men the shop was closed, but she stopped herself, staring at them instead. One was perhaps in his early fifties with a blunt, mean face and iron-gray hair. He wore a navy blue sweater that emphasized the breadth and strength of his shoulders; she thought the sweater was intentionally snug. She noticed the bulge of his thigh muscles beneath the sturdy pants. The second man was perhaps twenty, rangy and dark, wearing a jacket and baggy jeans. Catharina didn’t think they had come to buy cream puffs.
“Afternoon,” the older one said, nodding in greeting.
Catharina nodded back, holding her head regally, and when she spoke, her Dutch accent sounded exaggerated, even to her. “Good afternoon. Can I help you?”
The older man laughed, a twangy snort that she found disturbing. “Now that’s the kind of talk I like. Yeah, you can help me—Mrs. Fall, right?”
“Yes, that is correct.” Again, the heavy accent.
“Sergeant Phillip Bloch.”
She closed up the white box, “What is it you want?”
“The Minstrel’s Rough.”
Matthew had reluctantly agreed to split up with Juliana at the airport so she could fetch her mother, mostly because he wanted to have a word alone with Wilhelmina Peperkamp. She pulled open the door wearing an apron that had sixteenth-notes across the front and fit rather cozily around the old Dutchwoman’s ample middle.
“You Peperkamps get around,” he said.
Wilhelmina was in a no-nonsense mood. “Come in, Mr. Stark.”
He did.
“Where’s Juliana?”
He explained as he followed the old Dutchwoman down the hall to the kitchen. He remembered her story about feeding her brother’s cat, but she showed no indication the silly lie embarrassed her. She just seemed peculiarly glad to have some company. She was an independent, stubborn woman—a Peperkamp.
“You two are being watched, I see,” he said. He’d compelled Juliana to describe the man who’d followed them and had spotted him outside the Museum of Natural History. He’d stopped himself just short of going over and pounding the bastard into the pavement.
“Yes, but he’s not an expert. We have our ways of dealing with him.”
J.J. Pepper, for one. Juliana hadn’t mentioned her on the plane, but Matthew had no
doubt her services were called into use to handle her Burberry man.
The kitchen was a large, airy room, its faded elegance in need of remodeling, and Stark wondered how Juliana fit in with the rest of the crowd in the prestigious Beresford. Knowing her, she probably didn’t care one way or the other—or even notice such things. She had any number of small, upscale appliances, but they looked relatively unused. Wilhelmina had already started cleaning the place. There was a mop standing in a bucket of sudsy water, and the counters were sparkling.
“I thought apartments were small in New York,” Wilhelmina said as she squatted down and worked at a spot on the floor with a fingernail, “but this place! Did you see that giant green something in the entry? I can’t decide what it is. I’ve watered it, but who knows. Maybe it doesn’t need water. How is your investigation coming?”
Stark debated grabbing a sponge but leaned against a counter instead. Yes, a woman of action was Wilhelmina Peperkamp. “Facts seem to be coming my way instead of me going theirs.”
“Ahh, yes. I know what you mean.”
He had a sneaking suspicion she did. “I’m glad to see you’re just washing floors, but I have a feeling that isn’t all that you’re up to. Look, this thing’s getting serious—”
She glanced up at him, annoyed. “My brother’s body is being cremated, Mr. Stark. He died of a heart attack, but who’s to say what brought it on? You don’t need to tell me about danger, I assure you. I was in the Dutch Underground Resistance during the war. I know danger.”
Properly chastened, Stark watched her get up and swish the mop around, then wring it out. She attacked the floor under the table, complaining because Juliana had such a big kitchen for one person and so many gadgets and who knew how to work such things and there was no food in the place. No cheese. She’d already cleaned out the refrigerator, apparently, and thrown out everything that didn’t look right to her. What it might look like to Juliana didn’t seem to matter a whole hell of a lot. She finished up with the floor, dumped out the water, and proceeded to scour the sink, working fast and furiously.
Cut and Run Page 25
