Trophies

by J. Gunnar Grey

  The door at the end of the hall, leading from the office area to the showroom, was also locked, but it was one of those nearly useless doorknob locks that could be opened with a screwdriver or bobby pin. The camera blinked only twice at me before the cylinder rotated, then I pushed the door open.

  "Are you ready?" I asked.

  "Yes."

  I entered the showroom, leaving the door open and rattling the hat box to claim his attention. The lights snapped off behind me and the showroom was swallowed by the onrushing dark. The only light entered from the front window, slicing to dim ribbons the gloom around Trés' human zoo, and it brightened and died as the lightning flashed. Even though I could see nothing, someone was breathing. Someone was near. The electronic control, unearthly voice, detached instructions, were cold and impersonal; but this was an animalistic sound that spoke to both the logical and the unreasoning fears lurking within me.

  With neither sound nor warning, spotlights flashed on. I jumped. The lights drenched the nearest display, the one showcasing Sidnë's large panel, We Could Have Danced All Night.

  But the sexy, swirling blues and purples I remembered were sheathed by a black drop cloth. In front of that, in the full glare of the focused spotlights, sat Father in Prissy's rolling office chair. So much rope covered him, I only knew his shirt was striped blue and white because I remembered it. His hands were bound to the arms, his legs were strapped to the center swivel, and a black gag covered the lower half of his face. Above it, his eyes were dark, glazed, and almost closed. His breathing was ragged. My blood froze, the ice forced from my chest through my arms to increasingly numb fingers.

  "If he's had a heart attack then all deals are off. I'll kill you, Glendower."

  But Father's eyes opened and focused; he'd been adjusting to the sudden glare. A message, if not of love then at least of blood loyalty, flashed between us. He was in shock, but otherwise okay. I forced myself to relax, as much as I could when I knew a gun barrel was lined on my center of mass with a killer behind the trigger.

  Another spotlight flared on, this one aimed directly into my eyes. Again I froze, squeezing my eyes shut, my pulse accelerating. It was Glendower's move. And I hated it. The battle could be lost before I had a chance.

  "Set the jewelry down. No, further away, toward the front door."

  I did as directed, then paused. My sense of time has never been good; I couldn't be certain how many of those five minutes had passed. I had to give Sherlock time to make his move. I'd heard nothing from him since entering the gallery, but then, I hadn't expected to. I didn't expect to hear anything until Glendower's getaway car exploded in the street.

  "Do you want to see it?" I said. "You should make certain you're getting everything you're bargaining for."

  Glendower paused. The electronic voice had gotten quieter since I'd entered the showroom. He had to be on the floor somewhere, watching me from behind one of the displays and speaking more softly to conceal his position. He could have jumpered the security panel, the same way I'd jumpered Wingate's burglar alarm, and be controlling the system from anywhere in the showroom.

  "Why not? Open it again."

  Piece by piece I laid the jewelry out at my feet. There was the Waterford Blue diamond, set in the ring I'd worn for the last few days, like some rich new image of myself, and I angled its glittering facets to the light before setting it down. I'd never wear it again. I'd never want to. The rich new image of myself was as much a fraud as the magical veneer Aunt Edith had given me, and neither was worth the blood they'd claimed.

  One by one I pulled out the necklaces: Buckingham's diamonds and delicately crafted swans; the Montgomery family's Stone Waterfall, with its intermixed emeralds, sapphires, and amethysts; and the Earl of Bedford's graduated sapphire teardrops, the one Ezra Higdon and Aunt Edith had died to defend.

  I handled each piece reverently, posed them carefully, gave them all my attention and Sherlock all the time I could manage. There wasn't a sound in the room beyond Father's ragged breathing and the pounding of my heart as I waited for Glendower to tire of the show and shoot me. Imagining how Father felt, seeing the collection assembled by his little sister and her lover, burned away the ice in my bloodstream. Shame would be part of it, knowing he could have prevented all this and protected my life by ringing the police years ago, well before I was born. Instead, he and I both had chosen to protect the family honor, and here we were.

  I listened with all my heart, waiting for the explosion from the street. Gelignite, after all, was not subtle.

  "That's enough. Put them back in the box."

  I paused as long as I could. Surely Sherlock needed more time. But if I made a mistake now, the lunch tab I didn't want to pay would arrive early. "What about this?" I lifted out the carved meerschaum pipe.

  "What the hell is that?" Even through the electronics, confusion warped the disembodied voice.

  That wasn't the reaction I'd hoped for. I glanced up, around, trying to pierce the blackness beyond the circle of my spotlight. It was impenetrable. But Father's eyes were fastened on the pipe, and they were huge.

  And suddenly I knew. I knew Aunt Edith's deepest, darkest secret. After all, there was no sense stealing a trophy from someone you respected.

  I lifted out the scent flask. The spotlight glittered off the rusted filigree silver plating and flashed sparks about the encircling blackness. "Or this?"

  "That's mine." It sounded as if the words were yanked from the bottom of his soul.

  My heart's tympani pounded an exultant rhythm. "Perhaps she didn't love you as much as you thought."

  The raw silence stretched like a wound. Then from somewhere beyond the blackness, I heard one drawn shuddering breath. My pulse accelerated again. My time was over and he was about to end this. Poignantly, I was glad I was no longer disappointed with Aunt Edith.

  "Stop wasting time. Put them back."

  I could no longer delay. I reached for the Stone Waterfall, praying for noise.

  But the sound that reached my ears wasn't an explosion from the street. Across the room, in the deepest dark where Trés' oils were displayed, something snapped. A muffled voice swore. The darkness itself seemed to sway, then it crashed and rattled like the swords of a thousand demons on the hardwood floor. Something bounced and rolled: the little carved emerald hippopotamus, and it only stopped when it bumped into the Waterford Blue diamond ring.

  No one moved. Surely this was just a nightmare, public or private, a dream sponsored by homemade hooch and more trauma than the human brain could endure. Finally and too late, the car in the street exploded.

  "Great timing," I said to Father. Now that the moment had arrived, I didn't need to think. I jumped in front of him.

  Something snapped behind me. A white-hot brand slapped my right shoulder, sending me stumbling into Father. I fell across the ropes crisscrossing his chest, my cheek smashing his gagged mouth. But I knew I couldn't keep my balance. I knew I was going down—

  —I ignored the background crump of artillery fire and panned the rifle's scope along the enemy emplacement, atop the ridge overlooking our sandbagged trench. Beneath the camouflage netting and wilting tree branches I made out one big field gun with its muzzle recoiling, another, a third—

  —the enemy spotter stood contemptuously in full view, binoculars to his eyes, gazing off to my left but sweeping this way. The rangefinder showed the distance at eight hundred meters. I set the elevation turret and aligned the sight's upper chevron on his center of mass, drifting aside by one hash mark to compensate for the gentle flow of air across my right cheek. Binocular lenses flashed sunsparks. His lips moved as I took up the initial pressure on the trigger—

  —a line of machine-gun fire stitched across the sandbags below my perch. Whines ended in hard thuds, felt more than heard. Dark dust puffed out and billowed in the breeze, into my face, carrying the acrid tang of gunpowder. I recoiled, jerking the Mauser to my chest like a shield. Behind me Sherlock swore and someone screamed
, a shrill sound that went on and on and on—

  —the dust and gunpowder caught at the back of my throat. My innards contracted at the piercing smell of blood. Had I been hit? I felt nothing, but they say it sometimes happens that way. On the ridge, the machine gun chattered again. The spotter, my intended target, had spotted us and his gunners were getting our range—

  —it was my job to protect the troops. I threw myself atop the sandbag and raised the Mauser, locating the spotter through the scope within seconds, and he lowered the binoculars and stared right back at me, lips moving. Again the guns rattled—

  —fire lanced across my back like one of Theresa's explosions mishandled. Icy blackness threatened to swamp me, driving me into myself as if I'd never surface again. It was all I could do to remain conscious, empty nothingness boxing me in. The agony on my back flamed brighter. I lay across the sandbags, the rough, dirty canvas stark criss-crossed lines in the sunlight. The screaming behind me got shriller and shriller. It sounded like my own heart screaming and in that moment I knew I was dead—

  —but the spotter was still alive, still directing enemy fire onto our position. He was my job and I hadn't done it. I forced myself to sit up. Every nerve in my body and soul screamed at me to stay down, out of the line of fire, and I wanted nothing more than to listen to them—

  —there was the Mauser, in my hands. I ignored the pain, raised the rifle to my shoulder, and focused through the scope. The glass had cracked, but I aligned the upper chevron once more upon the spotter's center of mass and adjusted for wind—

  —he stared, head thrown back, looking down a Roman nose at me, eyes wide and getting wider. Any moment he'd jump for cover so as he moved I squeezed the trigger and his body jerked—

  —a hole appeared in his neck to match the one in my back. Blood spurted in a thick stream. It spread out and sprayed across his uniform and the ground and the surrounding air. He held onto the artillery piece as if it could save him, then the blood spurted again. I'd drilled him through the large artery, I'd slit his throat and he would bleed to death within moments—

  —and he still stared at me, man to man, human to human. His terror was my terror. He was dead where he stood, I was dead where I lay, we'd killed each other, and in that pain-wracked second I felt closer to him, my enemy-brother, than I'd ever felt to anyone else in my life and he was dying, sliding down the carriage of the artillery piece—

  —I dropped the Mauser. There was Sherlock, eyes wide and staring in his unscarred face. I knew I was sobbing, face streaming with tears, and I didn't care, because it was Sherlock and the guns were still on us—

  —Glendower's gun was still on us. The showroom, impenetrable in the blackness, smelled of gunpowder and disaster. Something else thudded to the floor behind me. If I fell, nothing would protect Father. I grabbed the ropes binding him to the chair and held on. In the glare of the spotlights, a crimson stain blossomed across his pinstriped shirt. But there had been no snap of a silenced gun, so it was my blood spurting onto him. He was still uninjured and it was my job to keep him that way.

  His eyes glared, huge, into mine. The chair rocked. My arms shook. My right hand refused to close. Equally, I refused to let go. That right shoulder was numb and useless. With my left hand, I yanked at the ropes and threw my weight into it. More pain flashed from the stitches in my left shoulder. The chair overbalanced. We went down together. Another shot snapped behind us, whining past my ear. The chair crashed, horribly loud. I slid down Father's bright red chest to the floor and could no longer protect him.

  "Sherlock!"

  "You bastard." The words rasped like a file across stone. "You son of a bastard."

  I looked up. Glendower stood over us. The spotlights' circle revealed a warped and greyed parody of the City gentleman from the scrapbook photos. He held the silenced Browning in his right hand, a jumble of brilliant gemstones in his left. The barrel wasn't aimed at me. It aimed at Father. And it was far too close to miss.

  "I told you to come alone. I told you what would happen if you double-crossed me."

  The helplessness was total. There was nothing I could do. Father was going to die. I'd failed and this time, it wasn't the aftereffect of the flashback but horrible reality. The fight was over and I lost. I could only watch as Glendower's finger took up the initial pressure on the trigger.

  Then bright light flooded the gallery. I started. Above us, Glendower flinched. His body twisted. His finger closed reflexively. The thud of the bullet into the floor was louder than the snap that escaped the silencer.

  "Good night." That was Sherlock's drawl, tight, angry, and satisfied, coming from across the room.

  Glendower knew his number was up. He started to duck and turn. But it sounded as if another car exploded, then another, then a third, all inside the gallery showroom with us. Three red stars glittered in Glendower's chest and his body bucked between them as if he'd been kicked by a horse. Blood spurted over us, over the black drop cloth protecting Sidnë's artwork, into my brain, and I knew it was all over. I closed my eyes. The welcome warmth of shock closed over me like a sheet of water. I didn't care how long I stayed down; until I drowned, I hoped. Beneath my clenched left fist, I felt the uneasy rhythm of Father's damaged heart.

  "Still with me, Robber mine?"

  Sherlock crouched over us. Gently he disengaged my grip from the binding ropes, then sliced them open with a pocketknife. Blood and bits of things unmentionable covered Father's shirt, and me. Some mine, some Glendower's.

  I swallowed bile and didn't bother trying to sit up. "Still here. What happened to you?"

  "Nothing I couldn't handle." He sawed at more ropes.

  "Right," I said. "You tripped, didn't you? The man who can sneak up on a damned cat tripped over his own feet. Am I right?"

  He grinned; it seemed lopsided, from that angle. "I hate it when you are. But actually it was Glendower's phone cord, the one he trailed across the floor from the jack to the display he hid behind. And if I hadn't tripped over that, I would have run smack into him a step later, 'cause I couldn't see him at all in the dark. So I guess all's well that ends well."

  In other words, it wasn't his injury. Thanks, boss.

  The shock wore off fast and the pain in my right shoulder grew in equal proportion. Sherlock helped me sit up, and one-handed, I helped Father. It took all three of us to remove the gag that covered half his face.

  "Father?"

  "I'm all right, son. You?"

  Outside the building, someone shouted.

  "That's the police." Sherlock scooped up the scattered pieces of jewelry, counted them, stuffed them into my pocket, then crossed to the gallery's front door and shouted through it. "Man down, people, man down. This door's locked but the back's open. Bring the medics."

  The cry was taken up beyond the door by what sounded like a crowd of disembodied voices: man down, man down, we need a medic.

  I knew a medic. Actually, I loved a medic. I smiled.

  "Charles?" Strain lines deepened in Father's face.

  "It's not serious."

  "There's a lot of blood."

  "No, really, it's not."

  I pushed myself straight. His arms, surprisingly strong, wrapped about me, giving me traction.

  "You recognized that pipe."

  He touched my face, wiped a swollen thumb beneath my eye. It came away wet. But because it was Father, I didn't care. "It was my father's."

  We looked together at the motionless, huddled lump. Father said what I was thinking.

  "He died disappointed in her."

  Caren, medical kit in hand, followed the police into the showroom. She knelt before me, her face white. Sherlock murmured in her ear. Her chin dipped in the barest of nods.

  "Come on, tell him it's not serious," I said.

  Her fingers probed gently. I swallowed a scream.

  "You're right. It's not."

  The room swam. It didn't matter whether it was serious or not. I was injured, and as usual that was
too much for me. As Caren, unseen by the police swarming the showroom, slipped the jewelry from my pocket into her little black bag, I fainted gracefully into Father's arms.

  Second Interim

  no time

  Again I was inside the yellow crime scene tape. Again I wasn't certain how I'd gotten there.

  I sat on the gallery's landing and leaned against the doorjamb, smearing blood across Prissy's nice clean woodwork. Her lousy security company had finally unearthed her, at the house of a male friend, and not long after her arrival she'd vanished into the rear mews, arguing with the forensics team every step of the way. Served her right for ignoring my advice.

  Rain pattered on the concrete, dripped from step to step, tingled when it struck my face. Squad cars blocked the street and lit it with their headlights, doors hanging open, emergency lights washing the dripping street with blood then wiping it clean, over and over again. Even when I closed my eyes, I could see it. Even in my memory, I could smell it.

  My shoulder hurt, a sharp monotonous throbbing that went on and on. Caren had said something about an ambulance. I wished it would hurry.

  She stood beside me like a sentinel, her little black bag open at her feet. Her hand rested on my uninjured shoulder. One finger stroked my neck inside the fatigue collar, over and over.

  The family huddled in a knot in the middle of the street. William's arms encircled Patricia on one side, Lindsay on the other, but his roving attention missed nothing. Father, my blood congealing and blackening on his pinstriped blue shirt, sat on one of Prissy's folding metal chairs. He stared at me and saw nothing else, that little smile still on his face.

  Theresa and her questionably legal case had vanished. But Bonnie in her unremarkable civvies blended into the crowd on the far side of the street. She was waiting, I knew, for me to faint again so she could laugh at me.

  Beside me, Caren gasped. Wingate escorted Sherlock from the gallery. His scarred hands were cuffed in front of him.

  "You still with me, Robber?"

  "Still here, boss." I tried to pull myself together and go to his aid, but I couldn't force myself through the stream of consciousness that surrounded me.