by Trevanian
“You took your time answering the door.”
“Actually, I did not hear you knock, sir.”
“Then how come you turned up? For which, by the way, much thanks.”
“Intuition. Premonition. As I told you, I am Haitian.”
“Voodoo and all?”
“You know voodoo, sir?”
“Not really. No.”
P’tit Noel smiled. “It exists. I passed some time studying the legal implications of crime committed under its influence. Because of the limits of my British education, I was prone to scoff at first.”
“Which limitations are those?”
“The limitations of logic and evidence. Of European sequential thought.”
“You were a student in Jamaica?”
“No, I was a lawyer, sir.”
Jonathan admired the cool way he laid that on him. “You know, P’tit Noel, you’ve developed a magnificent way of saying ‘sir.’ When you use the word, it sounds like an arrogant insult.”
“Yes, I know, sir.”
P’tit Noel led him up a narrow staircase to the first floor where the ambience was that of the well-appointed town house—totally alien to the gaudy glitter of the club. They passed down a hallway and stopped before a double door of dark oak. P’tit Noel tapped lightly.
“I shall leave you now, sir. You may go in.”
Jonathan thanked him again for his intervention, opened the door, and stepped into a lavishly furnished room of crimson damask and Italian marble.
Grace was indeed amazing.
She stood in the middle of the room, wearing a transparent peignoir of a white diaphanous material. Poised, her fine body was even more seductive when covered with a mist of fabric through which the circles of her brown nipples and the triangle of her écu were a dim freehand geometry. But it was her stature that gave Jonathan pause. Little wonder the marble mantel in the photograph had seemed uncommonly high. Amazing Grace was only four feet six inches tall.
“Good evening, Grace,” he said, settling his smiling gaze on her large oriental eyes.
Her nose wrinkled up and she laughed hoarsely. “Well, you handled that just fine, Dr. Hemlock.”
“I’m unflappable. Particularly when I’m stunned.”
“Is that so.” She turned away and walked over the thick red carpet toward a little grouping of furniture before the fireplace. The splayed toes of her bare feet seemed to grip the rug. “Don’t just stand there, boy. Come on over here and have a drink with me.” She lifted a decanter of clear liquid and filled two sherry glasses, then she arranged herself on a small chaise longue, taking up all the space in an unprovocative way that denied the possibility of his joining her on it.
He took his glass and sat across from her and near the crackling wood fire.
“Happy times,” she said, lifting her glass and draining it.
“Cheers.” He swallowed—then he swallowed again several times to get it down. His eyes were damp and his voice thin when he spoke. “You drink neat Everclear?”
“Honey bun, I don’t drink for flavor.”
“I see.” Jonathan had been surprised by her accent from the first. He had assumed that she, like her staff, was West Indian. But she was American.
“Omaha,” she explained.
“You’re kidding.”
“Sweety, people don’t kid about coming from Omaha. That’s like bragging about having syphilis. Pour yourself another.”
“No. No—thank you. It’s good. But no thank you.”
She laughed again, a rich brawling sound that was infectious. “Hey, tell me. No shit now. How can a swinging type like you be a doctor? You don’t look like you’d waste time jamming nurses behind screens.”
“I’m not that kind of doctor. What about yourself? How did you end up in the flesh trade?”
“Oh, just answered an advertisement. ‘Positions wanted.’” She hooted a laugh. “But seriously, I did a couple years in Vegas working at a joint that specialized in uncommon meat. My being tiny makes tiny men feel big. Then I decided that management was more fun than labor, so I saved up my money and . . .” She made an inclusive sweep of her hand.
“It looks like you’re doing very well.”
“I’ll probably make it through the winter.” Instantly the shine in her eyes dimmed. “Is that enough?”
“Enough?”
“Small talk, honey bun.”
Jonathan smiled. “Almost. One more question. P’tit Noel. Is he your lover? I only ask out of a sense of self-preservation.”
“Are you kidding, man? I mean, he’s nuts about me and all, that goes without saying. I imagine he’d eat half a mile of my shit just to see where it came from. But we don’t fuck. I’m a little girl, and he is a big man. He’d puncture my lungs.”
The flood of earthy imagery made Jonathan laugh.
“Besides,” she continued, refilling her glass, “I don’t use men anymore. When I need it, I have a girl in. Women know where the bits are and what they want. They’re more efficient.”
“Like the Everclear.”
“Right.”
He shook his head. “You’re amazing, Grace.”
She drank off half the glass. “So? What did you want to see me about?”
“I want to see Maximilian Strange.”
“Why?”
“I believe he wants to see me.”
“Why?”
“I’ll ask him when I see him.”
“What brought you here?”
Jonathan sighed. “Please, lady. That will slow us down a lot.”
“All right. No peekaboo. Tell me why you want to see Max. We’re partners. Or didn’t you know that?”
Jonathan’s eyebrows raised. “Partners? Equal partners?”
She finished her drink and poured another. “No, Max doesn’t have any equals. He’s one of a kind. The most beautiful man; the most cruel man. He holds all the patents on excitement.”
“It sounds like you feel about Strange the way P’tit Noel feels about you.”
“That’s not far wrong.”
Jonathan rose and looked around. “Grace? There’s something I want to do. And you can help me.”
“Yeah?”
“I’ve got this problem. How can I tell you this without offending you? Honey, I’ve got to piss.”
“Nut!” She laughed. “It’s back there. Through the bedroom.”
When he returned she had taken off her peignoir and was standing with her back to the fire, rubbing her bare buttocks and stretching to her tiptoes in the warmth.
“Do you know that you’re nude, madam?”
“I like to walk around bare-assed. I feel free. And it turns men on, and I get a kick out of that. ’Cause they ain’t going to get nothin’.” She said this last in a low-down Ras accent.
“Well, you keep flashing that fine body around, you’ll get yourself raped one of these days.”
“By you?” she asked with taunting scorn.
“No, I’ve given up rape. The pillow talk is too limited.”
She frowned seriously. “You know, if some stud decided to rape me, I don’t think I’d fight it. I’d let him in. Then I’d tighten up the old sphincter and cut it right off.”
“What a lesson that would be for him.” But her taut, cabled muscles under smooth skin gave the image credibility, and he couldn’t help a quick local wince.
His trip to the bathroom had been profitable. There was a window giving out onto a flat metal roof. He had left it open. If they came for him, he’d be able to give them a chase that would prevent anyone from thinking he was overeager to get into The Cloisters.
“Tell me, Grace. When you talked to Strange on the phone, did he give you any idea when he’d like to meet me?”
“What makes you think I called him?”
“You called me Dr. Hemlock. P’tit Noel didn’t know my title.”
Her feline composure faded perceptibly. “I guess I screwed up, right?”
“A little.
But I won’t mention it to Strange.”
She was relieved, and he realized that Maximilian Strange did not tolerate error—even from partners. “When does he want to meet me?”
“They’ll be here any minute now to pick you up.”
“Uh-huh. Well, I don’t think I can make it tonight. Let’s set something up for tomorrow.”
She smiled at the thought of anyone thinking about changing Max’s plans. “No. He said tonight. He’ll be pissed if you’re not here.”
“He may have to live with that.”
At that moment there was the sound of footfalls outside the door. Several men.
She smiled at him and lifted her arms in an exaggerated shrug. “Too late, honey bun.”
“Maybe not. You just stand there warming your ass, and don’t try to stop me. I’m a real terror against girls of your size.” He ran to the bathroom and scrambled out the window onto the metal roof. As he did, he could hear her opening the door and talking rapidly to the men. There were barked orders, and one of the men rushed through the flat toward the bathroom, as the others ran back down the stairs.
Jonathan flattened out against the brick wall beside the bathroom window. A big head came poking out, and he hit it with his fist just behind the ear. The face slapped down against the stone sill with the click of breaking teeth, and the head slid back inside with a moan and a sigh.
His eyes not yet accustomed to the dark, Jonathan crept along the top of the roof on all fours. He came blank up against a brick wall and felt his way along it to a corner. By then his eyes had dilated and he could see dimly. Below him was a narrow gap, a cut of black between two windowless brick buildings. It didn’t seem to lead anywhere, so he decided to climb upward, toward the dirty, city-glow smear of fog. The gap was only about four feet wide. He slipped off his shoes and, falling back on his mountain experience, eased out over the void and jammed himself between the two brick walls, his back against one, his feet flat against the other. He executed a scrambling chimney climb, holding himself into the fissure by the pressure of his feet against the opposite wall and inching up at the expense of his suit jacket and a quantity of palm skin. The building before him went up beyond his vision, but the one at his back was only three stories tall. When he got to the lip of the flat roof, he shot himself over with a final thrust with his legs, and he lay panting on the wet seamed metal. He crawled across the roof and looked down. Below was a cobblestone alley strewn with garbage cans, and it appeared to give out onto a street. There was light from a distant streetlamp, and he could see to negotiate a heavy, cast-iron drainpipe that led from the roof to the floor of the alley. From afar, he could hear a call and an answering shout, but he couldn’t make out the direction. The descent was fairly easy, but when he landed a piece of broken glass went through his sock into the sole of his foot.
Jesus Christ! The same fucking alley!
He pulled the triangle of glass out and gingerly made his way through the shattered bottles.
It occurred to him how ironic it would be if, in attempting to avoid appearing anxious to get into The Cloisters, he had evaded them altogether.
But no worry on that score. There was a shout. Footfalls. And there they were, two of them in the gap, blocking his exit, their forms punctuating the glowing nimbus of fog. They moved toward him slowly.
“All right, gentlemen. I give up. You win.”
But they didn’t answer, and by their slow inexorable advance he took it that they wanted some revenge for their toughed-up mate above.
Just then a door opened behind him and he was caught in a shaft of light. It was P’tit Noel.
“Thank God,” Jonathan said. He heard the explosive sound of P’tit Noel’s openhanded slap to the back of his head, but he didn’t feel it. He seemed to float away horizontally, and later he remembered hoping he wouldn’t land in the broken glass.
Hampstead
Before opening his eyes or moving, he waited until full consciousness had gradually replaced the spinning nightmare vertigo. He was aware of the rocking motion of the automobile and the harsh drag of the floor carpeting against his cheek each time they turned a corner. He was cramped and stiff, but there was no pain in his head, as there ought to have been. The sick dream of it all was intensified by the dark, so he opened his eyes, and he found himself looking strabismally at the glossy tips of a pair of patent leather shoes not four inches from his nose. Light came and went in raking flashes as they passed by lights.
It was as he tried to sit up that the pain came—a vast swooning lump of it, as though someone were forcing a sharp fragment of ice through the arteries of his brain. His eyes teared involuntarily with the pain, but when it passed, it passed completely, not even leaving behind the throb of a headache. He struggled to a sitting position. They were in a taxi. The three men with him watched his efforts dully, without speaking or offering help. He got to his knees, pulled down the jump seat, and sat on it heavily. There were two men across from him on the backseat, and a third beside him on the other jump seat. The streaked drops of rain on the windows glittered with each passing streetlamp.
He looked down. There was no registration number for the cab in the usual frame between the jump seats. They had evidently taken a leaf from the Chicago gangs, using a private taxi for basic transportation because its vehicular anonymity allowed it to prowl the streets at any hour of the night without arousing undue attention.
The driver, unmoving on his side of the glass partition, was undoubtedly one of them. There were neither door nor window handles on the inside of the passenger compartment. Very professional. Unaided, the driver could deliver a man without additional guard.
Jonathan took stock of the men with him. He could forget the driver. Drivers are never leaders. The man on the jump seat lifted his hand to his swollen, discolored mouth from time to time, gingerly touching the split upper lip. That must be the one who had the misfortune to stick his head out the bathroom window. He inadvertently inhaled orally, and winced with pain as the cold air touched the exposed nerves of his broken front teeth. Jonathan was glad he wasn’t alone with this one. The owner of the patent leather shoes who sat facing him was a furtive little man with nervous eyes and a tentative moustache. A diagonal scar, more like a brand than a cut, ran in a glairy groove from the right cheek to the left point of his chin, intersecting his lips and moustache, and giving him the appearance of having two mouths. He sat well over against his armrest to make room for the third man, whose great bulk was arranged in an expansive sprawl. That would be the leader of this little squad. Jonathan addressed him.
“I assume we’re going to The Cloisters?”
Viscously, the big man brought his heavy-lidded eyes to rest on Jonathan’s face, where they settled without recognition, not even shifting from eye to eye. The broad face was dominated by an overhanging brow, and his slab cheeks flanked an oval mouth, the thick, kidney-colored lips of which were always moist. So extreme was the droop of his eyelids that he tilted back his head to see, exposing only the bottom half of his pupils. Jonathan recognized the psychological type. He had met them occasionally when working for CII. They were used in low-priority sanctions because they were effective, cheap, and expendable. Often they would do “wet work” without pay. Violence was a pleasurable outlet for them.
Attempts at conversation were not going to be fruitful, so Jonathan set to examining his condition. He explored the base of his skull with his fingers and found it only a little tender. The nose was clear, and he could focus his eyes rapidly, so there hadn’t been any concussion. The openhanded slap to the back of the neck with which P’tit Noel had put him away is one of the premiere blows in the repertory of violence. It can kill without a bruise and is undetectable without an autopsy to reveal blood clots and ruptured capillaries in the brain. But to use the blow in its middle ranges requires a fine touch. Jonathan had to admire P’tit Noel’s skill. Not bad . . . for a lawyer.
Despite the Haitian’s professional art, Jonathan was a
mess. His trousers were torn and filthy, his jacket was scuffed from the chimney climb up the brick wall, and he had no shoes. For his meeting with Maximilian Strange, he would lack the social poise and sartorial one-upmanship he usually enjoyed. Even among these goons, he felt awkward.
“Sorry about those teeth of yours, pal,” he said unkindly. “You’re really going to make a haul when the Tooth Fairy comes around.”
The man on the jump seat produced a compound of growl and sneer, which he instantly regretted as the in-suck of air made him twist his head in pain.
The taxi was easing down a steep cobble street, past what appeared through the streaked windows to be large villas of the late eighteenth century. But then they passed an anachronous modern shopping plaza that looked like a project by a first-year design student in a polytechnic. It seemed carved in soap, and the dissonance it obtruded into the fashionable district spoke eloquently of the truism that the modern Englishman deserves his architectural heritage as much as the modern Italian merits the Roman heritage of efficiency and military prowess. Then they turned and reentered an area of fine old houses. Jonathan recognized the district as Hampstead: Tory homes amid Labour inconveniences.
The taxi turned up through open iron gates and into a driveway that curved past the front entrance. They continued around and to the back of the sprawling stone house and pulled up at the rear. The driver stepped out and opened the door for them.
Directed by small unnecessary nudges from behind, Jonathan was conducted into a dimly lit waiting room where two of them stood guard over him while the kidney-lipped hulk passed on upstairs, ostensibly to announce their arrival. Jonathan used this time to sort himself out. Alone, unarmed, rumpled, and off pace, he had to ready himself for whatever turns and twists this evening might take. He stood with his back against a wall and his knees locked to support his weight. Closing his eyes, he ignored his guards as he touched his palms together, the thumbs beneath his chin, the forefingers pressed against his lips. He exhaled completely and breathed very shallowly, using only the bottom of his lungs, sharply reducing his intake of oxygen. Holding the image of the still pool in his mind, he brought his face ever closer to its surface, until he was under.
