JC had written another song, back when he was a kid in his mid-twenties, which had a line in it that came to me as I was watching the girl who reminded me of Annie DeWinter. JC had known what the line meant when he wrote it, as if he’d grown old before his time. My God, how the time slips away … Just words then to the rest of us, no particular meaning, what did we know about time or any other damn thing slipping away? Now, remembering the line, the words hit me so hard I had to close my eyes and hold on to the table for a moment, until my equilibrium returned, and then I looked back at the woman who was real and so was the table, and my life, it was borderline real. That was, of course, the trouble. My life wasn’t quite real and this whole crazy escapade was bringing me up too close to the nasty truths and the nastier lies …
“Too bad there wasn’t a better view of the mountains. Perhaps tomorrow will be better.”
I looked up from the tail end of my dinner, surprised. It sounded like a password from a novel by Eric Ambler. The voice was dark and thickly accented. I’d seen him on the flight from Rome. He’d been wearing a Tyrolean hat, one of those feathered green wool jobs more suitable for winter. In Rome he’d been sweating beneath the brim. He’d been listening to a small cassette player, his ears plugged with the headphones. He was staring down at me now, standing beside my table, giving the impression that he was smiling twice, once with his loose-lipped mouth and once with the rims of his jowls. He had a bald, smooth-featured face, sixtyish, built like a professional wrestler who’d let himself go a bit.
“I’ve been here before,” I said. “I’ve seen the mountains many times.”
“They are very beautiful,” he said. “Very dangerous, but very beautiful. Like women, is it not so?”
“Would you care to join me for coffee?”
“You are too kind. I must not intrude. You were so deep in thought. You like the mountains, do you?”
“Sure, sure. They’re dark, full of ogres and trolls. I like them fine.”
“Mother Nature’s answer to Disneyland.” He didn’t move away. He stood looking down as if memorizing my face for some obscure reason of his own. He could have been a phrenologist contemplating running his fingers through my hair.
“Are you a Zuricher?” I asked.
“Sometimes yes, sometimes, no.” He shrugged, fingering the brim of the green hat. “Zurich, as you know, can be a dangerous place.”
“Why should I know that? It’s the land of cuckoo clocks.”
“All that money,” he said. “What else? So much money always attracts danger, don’t you agree?”
“I suppose you’re right.”
“Mark my words. I know of what I speak.” He finally began to draw slowly away from my table. “Are you staying in Zurich long?”
“No, I shouldn’t think so.”
“Pity. We could have taken the tram up to Uetliberg. Lovely view.” He shrugged again philosophically. “But it is not to be.”
“Perhaps you could tell me one thing. Is there still a place called the Moon Club? I remember it from a long time ago—”
“Oh yes, I believe such a place still exists. Much changed, however. Not, I think, the sort of place you would enjoy now. But who knows?”
“Still in the old quarter?”
“I believe so. Somewhere between the Globus Store and the water. Well, have a pleasant evening. And forgive my intrusion.” He was polishing his glasses on a crumpled handkerchief he’d taken from his sleeve. Bowing slightly, he was gone.
Two strangers meet momentarily in a distant city, chance brings them together. It happens all the time, nothing more commonplace. English novelists have made an industry of such plot points. Lingering over my coffee, I saw the table where he’d been sitting. The remains of a pastry, coffee, a cognac. A salesman, perhaps.
I might have sat there another hour thinking about Annie and JC and Clive and Innis and Whitney and Heidi and Morris Fleury; my mind was turning over reluctantly, sluggishly. But it was warm in the restaurant, too warm. I forced myself to pay the bill, get my raincoat, get out. I was thinking about the Moon Club, the cellar in the old part of town across the water.
The mist was blowing in my face. It served to wake me up. I set off with the idea of walking the meal off. I wasn’t really intending to visit the Moon Club, it had been a fairly idle question on my part. But Clive might still own the place, might be there. Tomorrow, I could check it all out. I wandered down a main street, looked at the arrangements of goods in the shop windows, spectacularly expensive watches and pens and binoculars displayed like jewels in fields of velvet. A few turns and I was back down by the water. I should have strolled back up toward the lights and the taxis drifting past. I should have gone back to the hotel and gone to bed. But I looked across the shiny black water at the old quarter and I had to take a look around. Old times’ sake.
I crossed the void, the water lapping beneath me, sucking at the bridge pilings, and strolled along the quayside, watching the lights shining along the wet paving, dancing and flickering on the slick surface of the water. Annie DeWinter and I had spent a few nights walking there, looking into that water, and none of it had changed. Nothing but Annie and me. My God, how the time slips away.
To my left those remarkably picturesque, evocative little streets twisted uphill, all curious shadows and odd angles. I wandered in among them like a man stepping onto the set of an elaborate film. Up ahead a man in a raincoat stood whistling under a street lamp while at the end of a leash his dog relieved himself. The mist clung to the street lamps like balls of shattered crystal. It was a quiet, peaceful night in the old part of an old city, old as scary fairy tales and bad dreams. Now the Moon Club had been in there somewhere.
I made a couple of turns, had the narrow slanting streets to myself, and I knew I was bound to find the place as long as I stayed in the quarter. The paving stones shone like drenched gemstones, slick and treacherous, and I heard some music very faintly, something familiar jogging my attention, somewhere behind me, hidden in the ragged shadows. I put together stray bits and pieces of the music. I knew the singer and the song. I had heard it so many times. I had been in the studio the day JC had recorded it. He’d written two moon songs, the one for Annie and one for himself, “Zurich Moon,” and they’d been released on the same single. JC’s was a kind of romantic ballad, bittersweet, like “The Long and Winding Road,” while Annie’s had been full of pain and distanced passion. “Zurich Moon” had become a kind of city anthem. He’d sung it with a raspy, whiskey-torn voice before anybody had ever heard of Tom Waits. There were some guitar riffs that Les Paul had loved; the damn things nearly broke your heart.
Now was it just a chance song in the night? Or was it meant for me?
A wave of paranoia was washing toward me from the shadows. My stomach dropped away and I felt a tremor in my knees. I kept walking, hearing my own footsteps, straining to hear others, flinching at the sight of a fat tabby slinking through the pool of light at the corner, hugging the wall trying to stay dry.
The music was following me. Or I was following it. It was here and then it was there, hard to pin down.
I hate coincidence. I don’t believe it. Now someone was somewhere behind me in the tangled cat’s cradle of dark streets with JC singing, doing his thing. The music drifted this way and that. Maybe it was the breeze. I stopped and waited, trying to get a fix on it. Someone was playing games with me. Was I supposed to follow the music? Or was it following me? You never knew with a music lover.
The street behind me curved downward and out of sight and was empty. The mist had turned to rain and blew like a lace curtain in the breeze. Above the ancient rooftops the city glowed from across the Limmat. A door slammed somewhere, a man swore.
The music was coming closer as I stood waiting, trying to locate the sound more accurately. I stepped back into the shadows, a deep doorway, and tried to control the beating of my heart. Who was it, there in the dark? He had to be following me … maybe the sound of JC was supposed
to be a signal, reassuring me, telling me he was a friend, he only wanted a word with me, maybe it was the he, she, or it who had left the message for me at the hotel …
Finally I heard his footsteps and from the shadows I saw the tall, bulky figure topped by the green Tyrolean hat, reminiscent of Jacques Tati as Mr. Hulot, the light reflecting for an instant in his glasses. He came into view slowly, appearing over the crest of a hill, moving steadily, head cocked slightly as if to hear the singer better. He was carrying the cassette player but he’d removed the earphones, freeing the sound to the night.
I shrank back into my hiding place, waiting for him to pass, waiting an eternity as he moved deliberately toward me. He stopped abruptly between the pools of streetlight, about twenty yards away, and looked curiously into the emptiness. Where had I gone? I could see the hesitation in his stance, the way he turned slowly to look behind him, then back in my direction as if his gaze could penetrate the gloom. He seemed to be thinking. He looked at his wristwatch. Where the hell had I gone?
At last he adjusted the volume on the cassette player, making it somewhat louder, as if that might help reel me in, and began walking toward me again. He tugged at the brim of his comic hat, shoved the other hand into his trench-coat pocket. He passed within six feet of me, head down, lost in the music, while I held my breath. Then he was past, strolling onward. I waited until the sound of his footsteps had died away, then I stepped into the street and looked after him. I could still hear the music and saw him pass into a deep shadowy overhang, waited until he came back into view, the sound of JC Tripper growing fainter.
I sighed with relief, ready to play a game of my own. I wanted to know what the hell this character was up to. I set out following him. I crossed the street at the corner and moved into the shadow he’d just vacated. The sidewalk was narrow beneath a second story that jutted out overhead. I felt a heavy cast iron railing on my right, wet, slippery.
I was leaning on the railing for a moment when it happened. I was straining to see the receding figure of the man from the restaurant …
There was a brief shuffling, a movement in the darkness behind me. I turned and felt a glancing blow, a heavy forearm across my back and shoulder that surprised me more than hurt me, then an immensely strong arm circled around my throat beneath my chin, yanking me backward, where we slammed into the wall. It was a big man, thick and strong, wearing an oiled sweater, his breath whistling in my ear, the arm tightening. I smelled a mint, heard him crunching it between grinding molars. I dug my elbows back into his midsection, a futile gesture as he tightened his grip, his fingers feeling for his wrist to make a vise. I was trying to cough and couldn’t, felt my throat constricting, my lungs straining as he suffocated me … when a cat screeched near us, somewhere close by, underfoot, then shot away from us out of the shadows. The man jerked away in surprise, loosening his hold for a fraction of a second, and I flexed the muscles in my shoulders, jammed my foot down hard on his instep, yanked halfway out of his grasp. I heard my trench coat rip, buttons bouncing away in the street. He reached for me again, pulling me toward him, as if determined to squeeze me to death, crush me, wring my neck, but instead of trying to escape I coiled myself and thrust back against him, driving him back with all my weight, smashed my skull into his face, felt the stitches in the top of my head ripping and popping, and suddenly everything was different, changed. He had a length of wire in one hand, I felt it lashing across my face, cutting the skin stretched tight at my cheekbone, and I reached, clawed, in a kind of scarlet anger for his face and raked my fingers across it, trying to lock into an eye socket or nostril, anything I could gouge or rip or tear off, anything but his mouth, anything but the teeth … Now he was the one gasping for breath, struggling to drive his knee upward into my groin, and I clubbed his chest with my poor wrecked head, feeling the strength ebbing out of him. He flailed with the wire, harmlessly beating my back, and I slammed him back into the railing, pushing, hammering at his chest, hearing him gagging as I bent him backward over the railing.
I heard him break.
It sounded like my grandfather closing the door of his Packard.
I was entirely crazy by that time. I kept pushing him, bending him backward, blood cascading down my forehead into my eyes. I kept ramming at him with stiff, extended arms, my palms flat against his shoulders, and then at his rib cage, ramming him backward in a rush of uncontrollable fear and shock and rage.
He’d been dead a long time when I finally stopped killing him.
Everything was blurred with my blood and the effect of the adrenaline rush. I was gasping and then I sagged forward, supported myself against the wall, feeling sweaty and clammy and cold, and lost my dinner. It smelled god-awful. When I stepped backward I slipped on something—it must have been something I ate, heh-heh—and abruptly fell down. I felt better, just sprawled on the wet sidewalk with my legs jerking in tight little spasms, and I sat there gagging, gasping, making fish faces and trying not to faint.
Christ. Someone had been following me, I’d got that right, but I’d picked the wrong man. Or maybe they’d been working together, one setting me up for the other. I couldn’t stop shaking.
The man was still hanging backward over the railing, bent the wrong way like a life-size doll cast away by a gigantic, cruel child. I tried to stand up and fell back down.
“Are you going to live, chumley?”
Someone was standing beside me. I saw crepe-soled shoes and damp down-at-heel seersucker cuffs. A hand came down and I grabbed it, felt myself being lifted upwards. “Jeez,” the voice said. “You look really terrible …”
I couldn’t see his face in the darkness where I’d killed a man, but I knew the voice.
“We’d better tidy up a bit,” he said. He heaved the limp body back over the railing and it fell down into the areaway. It hit a trash can, made a hell of a loud noise. I heard a window open somewhere overhead. A woman said something angry in a language I couldn’t understand. She hadn’t bargained for a murder in her sleep.
“Come on, my man. Time to hasten away.”
Then I saw his face, looking worried and creased and tired.
Morris Fleury.
Of course.
Fifteen
THE MOON CLUB, LIKE SO many other things in life, wasn’t what it once had been. There was good news and bad news. The bad news was that the Moon Club was now in a sort of post-punk funk, which meant that it was frequented by skinheads, nutcases decked out in old Nazi regalia, and large specimens whose sexuality was in considerable doubt but might best be described as Martian. The music was earsplitting and awful, a fifth-generation parody of itself. The place was full of the ugliest people I’ve ever seen. The good news was that no one noticed me, dripping with blood, head split open. I fit right in. Perfect disguise. I was one of them.
Morris Fleury guided me down a dark hallway with a red light at the end and into the toilet. Two guys wearing enough chains to play Marley’s Ghost paid us no attention while he dabbed at the blood. He had the corncob pipe clamped in his teeth. His suit was soaked through. It was the same seersucker suit he’d been wearing that first night I’d found him camped on my terrace. I wondered if he’d ever dried out in the meantime. I was wondering about a lot of things while I listened to him breathing heavily through his nose, felt his surprisingly light touch on my scalp. He kept up a steady stream of muttered comments, the drift of which seemed to be that only a couple of stitches had pulled loose and he didn’t figure there was any real cause for alarm.
“You did, however, kill a man,” he mused, squeezing my head back together, “though I think we’re home free on that one, too. Nothing to connect you up with the stiff.”
I was staring down into the crackled, filthy sink while he kept dabbing at my head. “Why didn’t you help me?”
“Got there too late. You didn’t need no help no mo’.”
“I don’t get it,” I sighed.
“No, it’s all pretty confusing. This sort of thing a
lways is. Too many details, too many angles. You just gotta let it wash over you like and check out what it leaves behind. Now lift your head real slow, don’t start the bleeding again. You’re gonna be just fine. What the hell happened to your head anyway? You got enough stitches up there for a sewing circle.” He chuckled to himself, not really caring about the answer. “Little Heidi close her legs too fast and pop your top?”
How can I say this? It just wasn’t worth telling him to shut the fuck up. So I ignored him. “You and Heidi,” I said, trying to focus my eyes in the mirror. My face was right at home among the pentagrams, swastikas, and depictions of dripping penises. “The Moon Club,” I sighed. There was a lot of screaming and shouting filtering down the hallway. These people were having a good time. “What are we doing here? Looking for Clive?”
“Soaking up atmosphere. Revisiting the past. Learning a lesson. Everything changes,” he said. He took off his Panama and mopped his bald head with its few strands of hair crossing the top like black threads. The handkerchief was wet with my blood and left pink streaks on the wet gray expanse of his skull. He blinked at me from pouches of wrinkles. He looked tired and sixty and not very dangerous anymore. In my mind I’d turned him into something scary. The reality was looking worn out and more frightened than I. “You look like sort of a human being now,” he said. “We used to say that about my uncle Verm. He was on my mother’s side, the Boolers. They was always in trouble, gettin’ blood on ever’ damn thang.” He was fanning himself with the straw hat, enjoying the dialect. “You gonna need a new shirt, sonny,” he grudgingly allowed. “Otherwise …” He shrugged. The thing was, I looked better than he did.
When we struggled free of the Moon Club it was past midnight. The mist had thinned for the moment and the moon was shining past the shredded clouds. A wind freshened off the water. The sound of the club faded behind us. The streets were empty. The body would be found tomorrow and the cops would be up against it. My head had stopped aching. Maybe the stitches had been squeezing my brain. It felt good to walk. I felt as if someone else had killed the man in the darkness.
The Suspense Is Killing Me Page 18
