Abel Baker Charley

by John R. Maxim

  ABEL BAKER CHARLEY

  BY

  JOHN R. MAXIM

  The first beast was like a lion, and the second beast like a calf, and the third beast had a face as a man . . . and they were full of eyes within; and they rest not day and night.

  REVELATION 4.7-8

  1

  The tall man walked more slowly now, avoiding streetlights where he could, merging with the night shadows that lined the park wall. He was listening ... feeling.

  Fifth Avenue was dark and all but lifeless. No cabs had appeared in the fifteen minutes since he'd turned back to his hotel. A fine mist of rain seemed to hover more than fall, daubing a soft haze across his tinted aviator glasses. He stopped beneath a single low sycamore and wiped them dry against the suede of his jacket. Through flat green eyes that had a sadness about them he scanned the street he'd come down, probing one block at a time as he followed the receding wink of traffic lights.

  There was nothing. Only the pull of the park, and it was getting stronger. The man who'd been following him, the young man in the gray raincoat, was gone. At least Baker could not feel him. He must have gone ahead, Baker decided, to where gray raincoat's partner waited. Back to the hotel where Baker had left one suitcase as an animal leaves its scent. Baker would not return there.

  He turned south once more. Ahead of him by several yards was Seventy-second Street. There, the black maw of the park entrance opened wider as he approached. And he felt the pull. He thought he felt it. Slowing again, he weaved across the sidewalk and back, probing, like a dowser searching for a hidden spring. Although he felt no pain yet, he was almost sure. The thing inside him was hunting again.

  “What's in the park, Abel?” He asked the question in his mind.

  “safety”

  “Central Park is not safe. Not at night” Even his inner voice was tired.

  “safe for you. trust me, baker.”

  Trust me! Three times now he'd heard it. Three times he'd heard Abel's warning, if that's what it was, since the airport taxi took him to that first hotel. Leave this place, it said then. Someone will hurt you here. Someone is saying your name here. Leave your smaller bag and go. No, Baker. Not through the lobby. Through the kitchen. Go. Trust me, Baker.

  And then once more at the second hotel, where he'd given a new name. There the voice tugged at him as he sat at the bar nursing the single drink that he'd allowed himself. There'd been a woman sitting there alone. She'd looked at him twice since he entered and each time lowered her eyes to the near-empty glass in front of her. Baker almost spoke to her. He wanted to. She might have taken the edge off his loneliness. They might even have spent the night together. Baker knew that he was not good at that sort of thing. But it does happen. And it might have been nice. Not so much for the sex especially, but to feel the warmth of another human body where no one could find him.

  Baker sighed. It was wishful thinking. He knew that he was so out of touch with single women that he would probably stammer like a schoolboy and make an ass of himself. Then there was the problem of keeping Abel leashed and quiet. Abel didn't like him getting close to people. Not even his own daughter. Well, you can go to hell, Abel. That's where the line gets drawn.

  But he did leave the bar because Abel had said trust me. Walk awhile, Abel said, through the quiet streets so that I can listen. And now here he was. Standing outside Central Park on a damp night listening to another trust me. Closer to an obey me, which it damn well better not be.

  “Abel?”

  “the park.”

  “Who's in there, Abel? Who will I find in there?”

  ”I’ve kept you safe . . . the park is safe . . . the park is darker.”

  Yes, Abel. You've kept me safe, for what that's worth. For what any of this is worth. But you're not worth it, Abel. Not you or Charley either. Not if the two of you are all I have.

  “go into the park, baker, safe”

  For now, Abel, we'll do it your way. This close, we'll do it your way.

  A tiny pressure behind his right eye, barely there and not yet building into pain, relaxed abruptly. Baker jerked his head to shake off the thread that remained. Then, with a grunt of disgust, he passed between the stone pillars into the park.

  A city block to the east, the man in the gray raincoat breathed heavily into the mouthpiece of a sidewalk telephone. “Come on,” he urged as he counted the number of rings. They stopped at eleven.

  “Sir?” he inquired of the silence at the other end. “This is Michael, sir. Do you know my voice?”

  “May I hope that your telephone is secure?” It was a low, rich voice that hinted at a lifetime of privilege.

  “It's an open pay phone on Madison Avenue, sir. It doesn't figure to be dirty, and anyway this is the only time I could have called you.”

  “Madison Avenue in New York City?”

  “Yes sir. He's here. Jared Baker is here.”

  There was a long silence on the distant end. Michael Biaggi could hear the older man swallowing.

  “Jared Baker is where, exactly?” the voice asked finally.

  “Right now he's taking a slow walk down Fifth Avenue. Mr. Harrigan is covering his hotel from the street and Kate Mulgrew is inside. She tried to pick him up in the bar but he didn't bite.”

  “Which hotel?”

  “The St. Moritz, for now,” Biaggi answered. “He checked into the Warwick first but that was a dodge. The name he's using is Harold Mailander.”

  “Humph!” The voice sounded approving. From his Virginia bedroom he could almost hear Marcus Sonnenberg's voice instructing Baker on the choice of assumed names. Pick a name that is easily mispronounced or forgotten. No names that reflect self-image, no names that are easily retained, such as Jared Baker, and no names matching your initials. Jewish and foreign names serve well unless you happen to be in a place where there are few Jews or foreigners. Harold Mailander. A good name. For the St. Moritz, a very good name. “Is there any sign of Dr. Sonnenberg, by the way?”

  “Not so far, sir. Mr. Harrigan thinks he'll turn up, but I'm not sure Baker's even here to see Sonnenberg. Baker could have gone straight up to Westchester in the time it took him to get to midtown Manhattan.”

  “He'll see Sonnenberg. To Midtown from where, incidentally?”

  “He came into Kennedy on a flight from O'Hare. Harrigan seemed to know that.”

  “And chose not to report it,” the other man added icily. “You may assume the Chicago origin is another piece of misdirection. You may also begin to see, young man, why this arrangement between us was thought necessary.”

  “Yes sir.” Biaggi hesitated.

  “You are troubled, Michael?”

  “Sir, it's Mr. Harrigan. He'd kill me if he knew. And there are times when I almost think he does.”

  “You've been listening to too many Connor Harrigan legends, Michael. Legends he does nothing to discourage. The man is hardly psychic. What he is is an extraordinarily perceptive man and a tenacious one. His perceptiveness should move you to caution but not to paranoia.”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Consider our relationship inviolate, Michael. Before long, you may find your position in life greatly improved. And I want to know of any unusual developments regardless of the hour.”

  “There might be one now, sir. Mr. Harrison spotted some of Domenic Tortora's muscle hanging around the Warwick. It might be coincidence ...”

  “Or it might be disaster. Baker cannot fall into anyone's hands but mine, Michael. He is the most dangerous of Sonnenberg's experiments, and more than that, he has become Sonnenberg's right hand. I want him alive, Michael. Incapacitated, if necessary, but alive. No one must interfere with that. Do you get my meaning, Michael, in the event a quick decision must be made?”
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br />   “Even Harrigan, sir?”

  “Anyone, Michael ”

  “Yes sir.”

  “Do you have doubts, Michael, whether you are up to this task?”

  “No sir,” Biaggi answered quickly. “It's just—just that I have to get back on him. I had to let Baker out of my sight to find a phone.”

  “You had to— Then fly, young man. Fly after him. Reassure me at your first opportunity.”

  “Goodbye, sir.”

  Michael Biaggi slammed the phone clumsily onto its hook, in the same motion bursting into a run toward Fifth Avenue. The receiver rocked and dislodged as he hit his stride. He heard it clatter against the cupola but he did not look back.

  In a small study off the bedroom of his home in Alexandria, Virginia, Duncan Peck listened to the clap of receding footsteps and the sway of the dangling phone against its stanchion. It reminded him of a hanging man.

  “Welcome home, Jared Baker,” he murmured. He broke the connection and began to dial another number.

  A hundred yards into the park, Baker stopped and turned. He saw that the thick trees of late summer had closed in behind him. It was only an illusion, he knew. A trick of the curving road. But it seemed that the park had sealed him in.

  Oddly, the notion did not unnerve him. It intrigued him mildly that he felt no urge to flee a place where no prudent man would walk after dusk, but on the other hand Baker had always been comfortable here. He knew the park. Often, when his office was quiet, Baker would spend the noon hour here with his sketchpad. Up ahead was a favorite spot, a knoll popular among artists and especially among photographers of liquor and fashion advertisements. From it he could look out over the famous pond and footbridge and see the Plaza Hotel framed against the sky. Every issue of The New Yorker seemed to carry an ad with a model using that scene as background. That, or the Wollman skating rink, off to the right. Or the Central Park Zoo down to the left. There the models were usually children in jeans and jumpers. Tina had posed once. A photographer picked her out of the crowd one Sunday morning and gave her twenty dollars to be in a Buster Brown clothing ad. Tina was so proud. She was so tiny then.

  That might have been the last time he was here with her, Baker realized. It was the year before she was to start school. Sarah had looked at the city through new eyes and saw that a place that had seemed exciting up to now had become dangerous and dirty. At least for Tina. Sarah found a house, their first house, in what she hoped would be the gentler surroundings of Connecticut. Baker shook away the thought.

  He stepped off the main road, which snaked like a moonlit jungle river through the darkness. There was a footpath. He knew it would pass close by the zoo.

  Comfortable! He chewed upon the word. He wondered how comfortable he would have felt a year or so ago. Strolling through this park after midnight. Not comfortable at all. A year ago, he'd have been hearing footsteps by now. He'd be sweating and struggling against an urge to run, looking for the shortest route to where there were lights and people. A year ago, he'd never have entered the park at night. And that woman at the St. Moritz. A year ago he'd never have given her a second look, nor would he have been in a bar drinking alone. It would have been too soon after Sarah. But then, a year ago he wasn't Baker either. Not exactly.

  Baker moved off the rutted pavement and onto the grass, then on toward the red glow to the south. The grass was more silent and the foliage there kept him in deeper shadows. There was no reason for doing this that Baker knew.

  “Abel?” He called the name in his mind. “Why the sneaking around, Abel? Do you hear something?... Abel?” There was no answer.

  A quarter-mile farther, Baker knew by the scents in the air that he was passing the zoo. He would hear the animal sounds in a minute. That would put him only six blocks from his hotel.

  “Charley? What about you? What am I going to do about the one sitting outside the St. Moritz? Do I ignore him until morning? Do I spend the night on a bench? Come on, Charley. If you can receive, you can also send. Why don't you call ahead and see if the Essex House has an empty room?”

  Still no answer.

  The hell with it, he thought. Maybe that woman is still in the bar. Except something about her bothered him.

  The sounds came. They were grunting guttural sounds that he supposed were the equivalent of a man snoring. He heard a single heavy splash that might have been a sea lion falling out of bed. The splash was answered by the peevish chatter of a tropical bird and then a squealing sound that ended in a cough.

  Baker froze.

  The squeal had not risen from the zoo. It had come down, down the steep slope ahead of him and to his right. He cocked his head and waited. Nothing. Only the whisper of leaves and the roar of a bus on a distant street. He had just leaned into a step when it came again. There was a thrashing of branches and then a sharp slap that could only have been flesh against flesh. A gasping sound.

  Baker eased forward toward the slope, his movements slow and measured. Pressing his body close against the hill, he climbed on all fours, aiming toward a small stand of dogwood at the summit. He could hear words now. They were frightened, pleading words in a woman's voice. Its sound was despairing, as if she knew the words were useless.

  He reached the crest and he could see them. There were two men, bent or kneeling low within a copse that bordered the bridle trail. Baker could not see the woman. She was pinned beneath them, lost in the shadow of their bodies. One man, a shadow much larger than the other, appeared to be pinning her arms outstretched above her head while the other knelt astride her. The smaller man held a knife with a blade that was long and thin. He raised it for a long moment and held it aloft, rolling it between his fingers so that she could see the flash of faraway park lights along the blade. Then his arm came down slowly and he pointed the knife at where her eyes must have been.

  “Come on, man,” Baker heard the other shape say. “We don't have all night for this.”

  “Shit, we don't,” the knife answered. “Look what we got here. We ought to take her someplace for a week.”

  “Oh, hey, please,” came the woman's voice again. “You don't have to hurt me.” Her voice was stronger now. Baker knew that she was talking about the weapon. About being cut. Her tone said that she'd accepted whatever else they might do to her. If they just wouldn't mark her. If they wouldn't kill her.

  The smaller man understood. With his free hand he tore slowly at her upper clothing. She tensed but did not move as his fingers ran over her skin, not until he found some part of her flesh and twisted at it. The woman's body bucked and heaved. A desperate flash of rage pushed through her fear. “You little bastard!” She sucked in her breath and spat full in his face. Once more she drew the breath of a scream, but a hand slashed hard across her face. Again it struck, backhanded, and the scream became a cough. Her body sagged and was still.

  “See that?” he hissed. ”I just saved you from yourself. You were going to scream, and I told you if you did that I was going to let your air out with this knife.” He pressed the blade against her throat, and once more her body arched beneath him. But she made no further sound.

  “That's better,” he said. “You have to learn to be nice. Me and my friend here are your fans, you see. You have to be nice to your fans. But you, you cunt, you don't know about being nice, do you? You didn't want to come party with us, you called me bad names, you even scratched me here on my neck.”

  “And she tried to knee me in the balls,” the big one complained.

  “See? Even him. You don't know how to be nice at all.”

  His left hand did something. He must have grabbed her hair and twisted it because her face jerked into what light there was. “Miss Burke? You're not answering me, Miss Burke.”

  Baker had straightened to his full height. He'd begun to move forward, but the name seemed to stop him. A look of confusion crossed his face and he lowered his head to peer more closely through the hazy light. He tried to think. He squeezed his eyes shut and pressed the fin
gers against his temples in an effort to block the shove that was starting to build. Abel was back.

  Baker tried to ignore him, turning his thoughts instead to the whirl of his own emotions. There was hatred. And there was a stab of fear that caused his heart to break into a runner's pace. The men had knives. And Sonnenberg or no, he was still human enough to fear them. And too, there was a small shock of recognition. He knew that name and that face. Twice that name had touched his life, and now it was here and it should not be here.

  “Abel? What is this, Abel?”

  Abel pushed again but he did not answer. Baker shook him off and his own rage returned.

  The rage came because he knew the men. He knew them in a different way than he knew the woman, but he knew them. He knew their kind. They were not what he expected when he first heard the woman's cries. They weren't park people. Their clothing looked like Bloomingdale's. Their hair, even in this light, had a blown and sculptured shape, expensively barbered. Yet Baker was barely surprised. It was as if he knew what he would find. What Abel would find. And he'd found him. The one with the knife, the talkative one. The sadistic little shit who affected a kind of evil logic when he spoke. He was another taker. A destroyer. This one, Baker thought, was very much like that other. (You son of a bitch. You drunken son of a bitch. You killed them ... Jesus, look at my bike. Stupid fucking broads made me bust up my bike . . . Your bike? Your bike? I'll kill you, you— Hey, back off, ass-hole. Why don't you keep them off the fucking streets where they...)

  Baker dashed the picture from his mind. Just in time. The memory was becoming too fresh and the pain was too real, and it almost made him say Abel's name aloud. It is you, isn't it, Abel? You found this one like you found all the others.

  The pain stabbed at him.

  “Not yet, Abel. Maybe not at all this time”

  The pain came harder.

  “Abel, there's something different herey isn't there. Why is Tanner Burke here? And these two. How did you know they 'd be herey Abel ? ”