“In other words, you want to watch after me, but you also want to use me for bait.”
For the first time, Janeway looked really tired. “I want to catch who killed him. I’ve got no better notions. If you do, tell me. If you want to come with me to the Carlyle, for Christ’s sakes, say so. I’ll get you a room, I’ll take you down to D.C., we’ll keep you hidden till whatever this is is over. Anything you want, I swear, please, just tell me.”
Babe didn’t even hesitate. Bogart wouldn’t have hesitated. “I wasn’t upset, Mr. Janeway, I swear, it was just curiosity; now that I know, I think it’s terrific.
I mean, historians don’t get much chance to have adventures, it’s kind of a sedentary profession, you know what I mean? Sit on your tail all day, read, read, read. Besides, I hadn’t planned on going out till the afternoon, so what you’re asking me to do is what I was going to do anyway, only without police protection.” Babe could tell that Janeway was watching him closely, trying to fathom if he was telling the truth or not. But that didn’t bother him, because he was. He wondered if he would have been quite so confident if he wasn’t a dead shot with a loaded pistol in the bottom drawer of his desk, but that was all academic. He had the pistol, he could use it like a bastard.
And how wonderful, if only Janeway turned out to be right in his guesswork, to be able to have revenge so quickly. If only Doc’s killers would come and he could blast away and watch them fall. He ran his hands across Doc’s blood on his shirt.
“All right,” Janeway said finally. “I’ll go, you stay. How can you reach me?”
“Carlyle—seven four four one six oh oh—Two one oh one.”
Janeway was reasonably impressed.
“I wasn’t my brother’s brother for nothing,” Babe said.
“Lock it behind me,” Janeway ordered. He took the suitcase and left.
Babe locked it behind him.
All of them were gone now.
Everything was gone now.
Doc most of all.
Mourning time.
Babe went to his chair in the corner and sat. Now there was no one left to butt in, no reason to dam up his heart. He sat very still, alone, the sole survivor of the union between H. V. and Rebekkah Levy.
He really was alone now, whatever that dread word meant. There was no old family homestead to return to. This horrid student’s room was, as much as any place, the family homestead now, and that by itself was almost cause for mourning. An aging rectangle of a place, a single crummy closet, a single crummy sink, rusty water, a tiny windowless bathroom with a tiny tub, and practically hidden off in a corner one nearly cracked window with a mildewing frame that never brought in any breeze or—
—Christ!—the window—the goddamn window, was it locked, had he locked it, because if he hadn’t there was a fire escape and that’s how they’d come for him, up the fire escape, hide in the darkness, get out their rifles with the silencers, burst in, torture him, kill him, and gone.
Babe ran to the window, checked it.
Of course, it was locked.
Jerk, he told himself. Working yourself up over a stupid thing like that. When there were important deeds to be done, there was mourning to be done “and only I am left alone to tell you.”
Babe went back to his chair in the corner and sat. He cleared his mind to mourn.
No chance.
“Doc,” he said out loud. “You’re gonna have to give me a raincheck.” Because the truth was, the terrible and very strange truth was, simply that in all his adult life, he had never had an adventure before, and the thrill of it swept all possibility of thinking far, far away. Bogie and Cagney, they had adventures every day of their fives. Edward G. too. And now it was his turn.
T. Babington Levy was maybe, hopefully, in danger.
Fantastic.
Let the stoop kids try to call him a creep now. Let anybody. Maybe what I’ll do, Levy decided, is get my gun and stick it sort of in my pocket but not all the way, and then just kind of walk past the stoop kids and let them see the heater, really scare the pee out of the bastards, and maybe the head of the gang might get up the nerve to whisper, “... hey, sir, is that a... a you know?” and he, Levy, would turn and give his best Alan Ladd look and maybe say, “I don’t know; why don’t you mess with me and find out?”
You need a better answer, Levy told himself. A real clockstopper of a retort. Lemme think...
Don’t bother, Levy told himself. Janeway said you can’t show your head till noon.
Screw Janeway. He wasn’t any kid.
“I’m not any kid,” Levy said. He was an historian and historians had freedom of choice unless they were Marxists, and he didn’t work that side of the street. He was free and he could go and come when he so desired, just as he’d done ever since he’d rented his pit.
Hadn’t he survived an entire summer on West 95th Street in New York City without a single incident, not counting the mugging, and that took place in the park? And if you could make it through a summer on West 95th, if you could live through August without air conditioning, you didn’t need any crew-cutted Provider to tell you what was safe and what wasn’t.
He was sitting there, genuinely calm, until he heard them starting to force his window.
All things considered, later, Babe thought he reacted rather well. He didn’t panic, didn’t scream or run. Instead he just dove across the room toward his desk, ripped the bottom drawer open, and then the gun was in his hand, and as he stood he cocked it, and as he cocked it he aimed and moved dead at the window.
Obviously, there was no one there.
It had just been a creak, old buildings did that, this one more than most, and the rest had been his imagination. Babe stood still, the weapon in his hands, and he didn’t feel stupid and he didn’t feel proud.
He felt frightened.
He remembered the precise moment the fear entered him: It was when he grabbed the gun. Because that was reality, and reality was a brother murdered and maybe him standing somewhere in that same line.
Babe began to sweat.
Jesus, he wanted air. He started toward the window, stopped. That wasn’t air outside. It was just floating dirt. And besides, it was very dark by the fire escape, a killer could hide by the fire escape.
Perspiration was pouring off him now. His tongue felt dry and what would have really tasted good would have been an egg cream, cool and relaxing—stomach-settling too. Probably the old egg-cream guy on the corner would be closed now, but maybe not, maybe on hot nights he stayed open as long as business stayed good. But even if he was shut, it would be better than staying alone, panic building, pointing a pistol at sounds. So, carefully concealing his weapon deep in his windbreaker pocket, Babe took out his wallet and key and left his room.
Heart, goddammit, pounding.
Cagney wouldn’t have even thought twice, Bogie would have gone unarmed after the egg cream, and here was he, panicked as he crept down the reasonably well lit stairs in what he knew was a fruitless quest for a mixture of chocolate and cold milk and club soda.
Babe moved at a slow pace down toward the main floor. Every half dozen or so steps, he brought himself to a sudden stop and whirled around, watching and listening, making good and damn sure no one could sneak up behind him.
He continued down, continued his eccentric halts and spins, his right hand deep in his windbreaker pocket, glued to the gun.
God, the swings of fear, Babe thought.
Just a few moments before, joy at adventure.
No more.
He reached the landing of his brownstone, hesitated, peering through the doors toward the street, trying to spot the police.
He saw nobody.
Carefully, heart still pounding, ready to fire, he stepped outside into the night. It was Indian Summer gone berserk; no wind, nothing to help it along.
“Hey, Melendez,” one of the stoop kids said, “it’s the creep.”
“Hey, creep, past your bedtime,” Babe heard, and he tu
rned, fighting the temptation to point his pistol in his windbreaker pocket, because he knew it was the stoop gang. There were four of them drinking beer and smoking on their steps. A couple of girls, one pretty. Probably marijuana in the vicinity.
The one who mentioned his bedtime, their leader, evidently Melendez, sat bare-chested and jeaned in the awesome heat. “Hey, creepy, ain’tcha scared you might catch cold with just that little jacket,” he called to Babe. “Wanna borrow my parka awhile?” The others laughed.
That Melendez is cleverer than I am, Babe thought. He dwelled on that awhile, because it took his mind off the stupidity of his situation, looking for an egg cream after one in the morning with a pistol cocked and ready in his pocket. A sixteen-year-old delinquent shouldn’t be able to outwit me, Babe decided. He did his best to sound unruffled, casual: “Where’s the nearest egg-cream place, I wonder?”
“You mean the nearest open egg-cream place, don’tcha?” Melendez replied. “You can probably break into the one down around the corner if you’re really desperate—that’s how most of the other egg-cream addicts handle things.” The gang hooted again.
Humiliated, Babe backed inside. What a wipeout— totaled by a Spanish Milton Berle. Babe bolted back up the stairs, ran to his room, unlocked it, stepped carefully inside, locked it behind him securely. Then, gun clear of pocket, he checked the window to see that it was still locked, the bathroom to see that it was still empty. He jerked open the closet door, made sure no one was hiding behind his sport coats, quickly, foolishness growing, dropped to one knee, making certain no one was scrunched up under his bed. After that he crossed the room, dialed the Carlyle, asked for 2101, and before the second ring there came Janeway’s voice, urgent and loud: “What?”
Babe felt embarrassed. “It’s just me.”
“Yes, Tom, what? Go on.”
“Nothing. Nothing crucial or anything.”
“Tom—you called me, remember? You must have had something on your mind.”
“I just... I was about to take a bath and hit the sack, and I wanted you to know everything was fine.”
“Lie.”
Babe could almost see the quick blue eyes boring in at him. “After you left, I was terrifically excited, but that didn’t last—I got scared, Mr. Janeway, and I wanted to talk, that’s all. To anybody. You qualify...” Babe waited, but there was only silence from the other end. “That was supposed to be a joke,” Babe said.
“Are you still frightened?”
“No, I would never have called until I had control and everything, I wouldn’t want to come out a jerk.”
“Lie.”
“I’m a lot better. I don’t want you to think I’m walking around here giggling to myself, but I’m definitely on the road to recovery. True.”
“Do you want me to come over?”
“No sir.”
“Do you want me to come get you and bring you back over here?”
“No, really.”
“I’m not offering charity, you understand.”
“I do, yes sir, but if you came here, they’d know I wasn’t alone, and if I came there, they’d know my place was empty. Let’s just leave things like they are, it’s best.”
“They probably won’t move tonight anyway—they don’t even know that Scylla’s gone—if they went back to where they got him, they’d find he wasn’t there. They’ll have to check around to see, and that takes time. You wouldn’t be ruining anything if you came here, and I’ll be honest, I don’t like the way you’re sounding.”
“Maybe that’s because I’m a little bothered on account of the real reason I called was to tell you there isn’t any surveillance outside, Mr. Janeway. The police never showed.”
Silence from Janeway.
“I checked very carefully; I’m really right.”
“You went outside,” Janeway said, and Babe could hear his anger building. “The one thing I said don’t do, you did.”
“Only for a second, in and out, like that.”
“Levy?”
“Yes sir?”
“You’re not supposed to be able to see surveillance. I’ve got four men from Division on the first shuttle down in the morning. Do you think when they take over, they’re going to wear sweatshirts saying, ‘Do not disturb. I’m on surveillance’?”
“You don’t have to humor me, I just had some information I thought you ought to know.”
“I’m not humoring you, if I had you here I’d kick your ass across the. Carlyle. When I left tonight, there was a cop there He wasn’t in uniform but he was there, with nice long hair and pretending to be stoned.” He paused a moment “I don’t like the way you’re acting or sounding. Give me a few hours’ rack, time, I’ll be there by six. Set your alarm for a quarter of, because when I get there, if coffee isn’t ready, your life will really be in danger.”
“Thank you, Mr Janeway.”
“De nada. I was a friend of your brother’s.”
They hung up, and then, at last, Babe started to undress, taking the bloody clothes from his thin body. He went to the bathroom, turned on both spigots till the water stopped being rusty, drained the tub, turned the spigots back on again He continued undressing, pondering whether or not to take his gun in with him while he bathed He was so jumpy, he’d probably shoot his thing off reaching for the soap “Rhodes Scholar Emasculates Self in Tub,” the Daily News might headline “Thought He Heard Meanies”.
Babe shoved the weapon into its proper place in his bottom desk drawer, went back in, turned off the water, then padded out again for something to read. He did a lot of his best work in the tub; you couldn’t beat warm water when it came to ruminating, going over notes, or rereading history books. But which to study now? He looked around his place; it was starkly lit, with just four cheap unshaded lamps set in strategic places, one by his bed, two flanking his desk, one by his reading chair in the corner.
He decided on Cowles’s 1913, because even though she was not a noted historian, she had selected an interesting year worldwide, because there were points and minutiae you had to comprehend fully before you could really grasp not just the war that followed, but the twenties that followed the war. He grabbed a pair of clean pajamas and entered the bathroom.
What about locking the door?
Babe put the pajamas over the towel rack and pondered. He could begin to feel his heart again. Why should he lock it? He never had before, and he wasn’t about to be stampeded into it now. Shut it, sure; that was okay, even though in the past he had not made it a blind habit. Still, nothing wrong with shutting it, it didn’t mean you were chicken.
He started to get in the tub, testing it with his big toe; it was too hot. He spun the “cold” spigot, but it made too much noise, he thought suddenly, because what better time to sneak in than behind the curtain of water thundering down? Thundering? His crummy trickle of a cold-water spigot and he was calling it “thundering”? Babe waited foolishly by the filling tub for the temperature to make itself bearable,, and when it did he got in, expertly flicked off the “cold” spigot with his big toe again, and began thumbing through the book Then he took the book, closed it, held it between his hands, shut his eyes.
That was his way, often, of finalizing facts He would almost command a book to obey him. Once he had read it carefully and gone back through it again, he would hold it tightly and then by force of will order the facts to file into his brain. The summer in London had been hot. Deaths from the heat wave. Carpentier knocked out Bomber Wells in mere seconds, a Frenchman annihilating an Englishman. The suffragettes were building, and one of them threw herself under the king’s horse at the Derby and was killed for her gesture. The tango was the dance sensation. Babe paused a moment, because even though he didn’t dance, he was quite sure there was something basic in the enterprise, that somewhere there was a paper in it, minor, to be sure, but worthwhile, comparing an era’s chosen dances with its morals, perhaps not its politics, but certainly its lust for sex and blood and—
; —and click.
Jesus Christ what was that? Babe lay frozen, except for his eyes, and they would not stop blinking, because he had heard it, had heard it!—heard what? —what the hell was that sound, that click—it came from outside, from his empty room, so what could it be?
Nothing, he told himself. Just like all the other sounds tonight have been nothing. It was a creak from an old rotting cripple of a building, and that’s all!
Except it didn’t sound like that. It was different, it sounded sort of like a lamp being clicked off. No, not “sort of”; it sounded exactly like a lamp being clicked off.
Babe leaned out of the tub, trying to get a glimpse under the door to see if the room beyond seemed darker, but he couldn’t tell a damn thing. So what, he was big enough to handle himself, especially when there was nothing to take care of.
Nothing.
Now, he had four lamps out there, so if there were four sounds like that, four clicks, then you might have a situation on your hands. But you don’t, so forget it.
Back to 1913.
Germany was having a bitch of a time getting their Zeppelins to work right. Benz was already a thriving car company, and the Krupps were already richer than anybody, all this even before things started heating up, before munitions became a A-number-one priority or— —or click
Babe half dove out of the tub, locked the bathroom door. In doing so, he created a small wave and considerable splashing, so it was hard to hear for a bit, but once he was back in the water, things quieted, and he shut his eyes, trying desperately to listen.
No sound.
Two of his four lamps could have been clicked off, or it could have been two creaks. He remained very still, and even though he was undeniably concerned, he was also more than a little pleased with the fact that his panic was not growing. Better, his mind was functioning, logic was his, and logic said that if there were people outside turning off lights, they wouldn’t stop with two or three, they’d need total darkness, which meant don’t sweat it till you’ve heard the big fourth, and if that happened, well then—
Marathon Man Page 14
