by S. J. Rozan
“Blackmail’s your game, Grice. It isn’t mine.”
He was starting to speak when the telephone shrilled loudly. Grice may have jumped; I know I did. Lydia was still as stone. Grice backed over to the phone, picked it up. “Yeah?” Silence. His twisted face twisted some more. He tried to speak a few times, finally yelled, “Hold it! Dammit, hold on! No. No! Look, I’ll call you back.” He dropped the receiver back between its prongs, said to Arnold, “Take them upstairs.” He stood by the phone, watching, as Arnold pressed his gun against my spine and showed us the way upstairs.
On the next floor were three disheveled bedrooms and one closed door. Arnold, with a lift of his eyebrows, rousted Otis and Ted from a decaying couch and a Gilligan’s Island rerun. He passed Ted something from his pocket, nodded toward the closed door, and thumped back down to join Grice.
“Doesn’t he ever talk?” Lydia asked into the cold air as we were shepherded up the steep steps beyond the door.
“He talks to Frank,” Otis said. “He don’t like to talk to no one else.”
The stair stopped in a small, slant-ceilinged room. It held two chairs and a table, a sink full of ancient dishes, and a sense of chill neglect.
“Now what?” I asked Otis.
“Now you stay here until Frank wants you somewheres else.” He turned to go.
“I don’t trust him, Otis,” Ted whined.
“It’s too damn cold to stay up here with ’em.”
“Maybe we should cuff him to something. The radiator,” Ted suggested.
“Yeah,” Otis agreed. “Good idea.” He took the gun Ted had been pointing and he pointed it while Ted came around behind me and opened the cuffs.
I was ready. As soon as the first steel claw released I twisted, dropped, hooked Ted’s legs from under him. I saw a blur of black as Lydia dove for Otis’s gun.
Ted thudded to the floor, me on top of him. I slammed my elbow into his face, and then I did it again. He softened under me. I rolled off, was pushing to my feet when I heard an explosion, the shattering of glass.
Lydia had Otis bent back against the sink. She had one hand around the gun, which had just gone off, and the other on his throat. Dimly aware of pounding footsteps, I grabbed at Otis’s fingers, pried the gun loose. Lydia drove a hard punch into Otis’s exposed gut, seized him by the shoulder, threw him across the room. I swung the gun to face the door opening at the bottom of the stairs. Then another explosion, roaring, blinding, knocked me down, endlessly down.
19
MY NAME, SPOKEN faintly in the darkness. I tried to answer, and to move; I couldn’t do either. The soft voice spoke my name again, more urgently this time. It came from far away, the other end of a long, dark tunnel. It was hot in the tunnel, stifling; or maybe it was deathly cold. I wasn’t sure, and it didn’t seem to matter anyway.
I heard my name again, and this time with the sound came the blessed cool of a damp cloth pressed to my temple. A pale shape formed in front of me, gradually resolving, sharpening into a face, Lydia’s face. She was sitting on the floor next to me, wringing out a dish towel in a bowl of water. The water was pink with blood.
I was sitting too, my hands behind me, sharp ridges pressing uncomfortably into my back. I tried to shift position, bring my hands around, but it wasn’t possible.
“Don’t try to move,” Lydia said. “You’re handcuffed. To the radiator.” She dabbed at my face with the wet towel, then laid it against the side of my head again.
I leaned my head back, resting it between two cold metallic ridges. “What the hell happened?” I managed.
“Arnold shot you. Just a graze. There’s a lot of blood, but I don’t think it’s bad.”
She didn’t think it was bad. “Are you okay?” My voice sounded like someone else’s.
“Uh-huh.”
I tried to look at her; my eyes wouldn’t focus. I couldn’t tell whether what she said was true.
“Where are they?”
“Downstairs. Grice isn’t here. They’re waiting for him to get back before they decide what to do with us.”
Chances were good they’d already decided, but I didn’t say that to Lydia. “Is there anything to drink?”
“Not the way you mean it. There’s water.”
“Water’s good.”
She brought me some and it was better than good. I drained the chipped glass twice. Doing that exhausted me, and I leaned my head back again, closed my eyes. “How come you’re not chained to something?” I asked her bitterly.
“They’re out of cuffs. They tied me, but only with a rope.”
“Only with a rope.” I opened my eyes again, saw through the throbbing and the haze a snaky length of hemp lying limply on the floor. “You’re amazing. Can you pick a lock?”
“You taught me. But I don’t have my picks.”
“In my wallet, in my jacket, left side.”
She searched my jacket, both sides. “Your wallet’s gone.”
“Shit. What about the cell phone?”
“You really think they’re dumb enough to leave you a cell phone?”
“I thought maybe they were too dumb to recognize one.”
“Six months ago you wouldn’t have recognized one,” she pointed out.
“Oh, Christ, all right. Just remember, I told you the thing was useless. Do I still have cigarettes?”
She fished one out, lit it for me, and then, while I smoked, Lydia prowled the room, collecting things that could be used to pick a lock. She sat on the floor, worked on the handcuffs with the bent tine of a fork, with the prong from my belt buckle, with the straightened end of a wire hanger she’d found hanging from an empty curtain rod. Finally she sat back on her heels, spread her hands emptily. “I’m sorry, Bill. It’s not working.”
“You must have had a lousy teacher.”
Sounds came from somewhere in the house below, the loud slamming of a door, voices. We both froze, eyes on the stairs. Lydia’s hand tightened on my arm.
When no footsteps came up the stairs and the voices stopped we breathed again.
“What’s outside?” I asked. “Something you could climb on? Could you make it out a window?”
Lydia looked around without getting up. “Maybe I could. But I’m not going to leave you here like this.”
“Lydia, please, don’t be a hero, just go call a cop.”
“It’ll take me an hour to find a phone.”
I started to shake my head, realized that was a mistake. I leaned back again, but I didn’t close my eyes. “There’s a Hess station a quarter mile north, where this road hits the paved one.” We’d come from the south. She wouldn’t know I was lying.
She hesitated. Then she said, “They’ll kill you.”
“Christ, Lydia!” I put as much into it as I had, which wasn’t much. “You think you can stop them, if you stay? If you’re here when Grice gets back they’ll kill us both.” It crossed my mind that I didn’t know why they hadn’t done that already. “I don’t want to die here, but if I do, I want someone to pay. Please, Lydia.”
“If it were the other way around, you wouldn’t leave me.”
“Bullshit! I’d leave your Chinese ass in the dust so fast it wouldn’t know what hit it.”
She laid her hand very gently on my cheek. “Can you look at me and say that?”
I turned my head, to her, looked into her eyes, which had become liquid, bottomless. I didn’t say anything.
After a moment she kissed me, her lips soft and warm, resting as lightly on mine as her hand on my cheek. Then she stood. She walked around the room, looked out each window in turn. She paused at one in the wall to my right, one I couldn’t see. I heard her open it, felt the cold wind push in. A soft slithering sound, a quiet thud, and then nothing. Nothing for a long time. I started to breathe again.
And then the crack of a rifle shot. Another. Voices, yelling; words I couldn’t make out. Adrenaline surged through me, rammed my spine straight, scraped my nerves. I strained to hear, through th
e hissing wind, through the pounding in my ears, but the voices had stopped and there was nothing else. I found I was yanking, stupidly, repeatedly, at the cuffs that pinned me where I was, in this dim attic room, alone and useless.
* * *
I didn’t have much time to be alone; I didn’t have much time to wonder. Feet thudded, the door crashed open, Arnold and Otis and Frank Grice exploded up the stairs and into the room. They stopped when they saw me. I could feel them relax.
“Well,” Grice grinned. “So it looks like your girlfriend skipped out without you.”
I couldn’t see their faces well; they were standing too close, towering too high. The radiator wouldn’t let me tilt my head back. Hoarsely, I said, “If you hurt her, Grice, I’ll kill you.”
“Yeah,” he snickered. “Sure.” He squatted, brought his face level with mine. “Would it bother you if I told you she was dead?”
I couldn’t answer; I was frozen in ice. Then Grice laughed, clapped me on the shoulder as though we were drinking buddies sharing a good joke. “Well, she’s not. She’s not even scratched. She was lucky,” he said. “Just like me. Get him up, boys. You’re lucky too, Smith. Come on, we’ll go for a ride.”
Arnold knelt behind me, unlocked the cuffs. He and Otis hauled me to my feet. Otis propped me up while Arnold pulled my hands behind me again, slid the handcuffs shut around my swollen wrists.
I needed the support. The room was swaying; my knees were like water. I shut my eyes to fight the dizziness, but it got worse. Grice’s voice came from a long way off: “Sit him down.” I felt myself dropped onto a chair. I’d have slipped off if someone hadn’t been holding me there. The world rolled sickeningly around me.
Then something hard was pressed against my mouth. Fire burned my tongue, my throat. I swallowed, coughed. Time out. Then there was more, and I swallowed again, and when I opened my eyes the room was almost still.
“All right?” asked Grice. “Because the boys don’t want to carry you.”
“More.” A croaking half whisper seemed to be the only voice I had.
Arnold held the bottle for me, and I gulped as much as I could get. Whiskey trickled down my chin, splashed wet patches onto my shirt. When Grice said, “Enough,” Arnold took it away, stood it on the table.
I let my eyes shut, made them open again. I wasn’t ready for Grice’s face; I focused on the bottle. Canadian Club. I gave a short, harsh laugh. “I had you figured for the Four Roses type, Frank.”
“He’s ready,” said Grice. “Get him up.”
This time as they pulled me to my feet the room lurched but it didn’t flip over. The stairs were difficult, but Arnold’s iron grip kept me upright all the way down to the living room, where Lydia sat, pale but, as far as I could see, whole. Her hands were tied behind her. Opposite her, on the other shabby chair, Ted held a deer rifle casually on his lap.
“You okay?” I asked, in a voice as strong as I could make it.
She nodded. Then she shrugged, smiled with a corner of her mouth, said, “Sorry.”
I gave her back the same smile. Then I turned to Grice. “I want to deal.”
“Smith, what the hell you think you have to deal with?”
“I must have something. I’m not dead yet.”
“Oh.” Grice grinned. “And you think that’s because you have something I want? Well, you don’t. You’re just going to help me out a little. Now,” he crossed to Lydia’s chair, laid his hand on her head, “this is something I want. But it’s not yours anymore.”
Lydia jerked her head from under Grice’s hand. He laughed. I ignored what he was doing, and the way it made me feel. I spoke evenly. “So why aren’t I dead?”
“Because you’re lucky. You see, when I had the boys bring you up here, I was still looking for Jimmy. Just to help Brinkman out, you know. I’m that kind of guy. Arnold was going to persuade you to tell us where he was. You wouldn’t’ve enjoyed that, but Arnold would.” He smiled at Arnold, who smiled back. “But then I had to go all the way to fucking Cobleskill to calm Sanderson down, because you got his balls in an uproar. And driving back, I’m thinking about you, I’m thinking about Jimmy, I’m thinking about last fall. And bang! It comes to me. That’s where he’s got to be. He’s up at the quarry.”
He waited for an answer. I didn’t give him one. “Well?” he said.
I met his eyes. “I don’t know.”
Grice looked at me for a minute, then laughed again. “Okay,” he said. “But let’s go look. If he’s not there, Arnold can ask you nicely where he is. If he is there, you can be my insurance. I don’t think he’ll shoot me if he has to shoot through you.”
“I still want to deal.”
“With what?”
I took a breath. “I have the paintings.”
Grice smiled a big, slow, crooked smile. “No,” he said.
“Yes.”
“And I thought you were a straight-arrow type.”
I shrugged. “They’re worth a lot of money.”
“So you stole them.”
“I just moved them. Nobody else seemed to have any idea they were there. I didn’t know how they got there but I knew what they were.”
Lydia was watching me closely, her eyes narrowed.
“So where are they?”
“That’s the deal.”
Grice flipped open his gold cigarette case. Arnold snapped his lighter. Grice sucked at the end of the cigarette, said around it, “Okay. You tell us where they are, we’ll let you go.”
I laughed. “Bullshit. I’m dead, Frank. You think I don’t know that? The deal is this: you let Lydia go. Then I tell you where the paintings are.”
“If you’re dead,” he said, streaming smoke at me, “how come she’s not?”
“Because she’s not as dangerous as I am. What the hell does she know? She heard you confess to one murder and to being an accessory to another, but you’ve got Jimmy framed for both. By the time she gets to tell anyone her story, Jimmy and I’ll be dead and you and the boys here”—I spat the word “boys”; I couldn’t help it—“will have an airtight alibi, probably provided by Sanderson in return for whatever it is you’ve got on him.”
Grice smoked, a contemplative look on his uneven face. I wasn’t sure he’d bought it, so I went on. “In fact, if she’s smart—and she is—she won’t say anything to anybody. Why bother? Isn’t that right, sweetheart?” I looked at Lydia, my face blank, everything I’d ever wanted to say to her in my eyes.
Lydia’s obsidian eyes widened slightly. She said, “That’s right. I like to stay out of trouble.”
“Okay,” Grice decided. “We go find Jimmy. Then we go get the paintings. Then she goes home.”
Even through the protective layer of Canadian Club the throbbing in my head was making it hard to think and my legs were getting rubbery again. I had to end this. If I passed out here Grice would just pile us all in the car and forget about making any deals.
“She comes with us,” I said. “She gets out where I say, so I can see. Then I tell you. Nothing else, Grice. Nothing else.”
Grice finished his cigarette. He nodded slowly. “Sure. Why not?”
Thank God, I thought, as the six of us crossed the swampy lawn to the blue Ford. Thank God. Now just keep it together, Smith, one more play and you can sit out the rest of the game.
Because I knew what Grice was thinking: let her go. Find out where the paintings are. And then deal with her later.
He could do that. I knew he could. Lydia wouldn’t be able to prove what she’d heard today, and she wouldn’t be safe from him, ever.
But I had one more play. And if Grice was stupid enough, and Lydia was smart enough, we just might pull it off.
20
THE RHYTHM OF the car was soporific with my eyes closed, sickening with them open, but I needed, desperately, to stay awake. One chance; one place.
An argument started in the front seat and I concentrated on it.
“It ain’t on the goddamn map, Frank,”
Ted was complaining. “I never been there.”
Papers rustled loudly, Grice unfolding a highway map, not nearly detailed enough to show them the way to the quarry from the green house near Franklinton.
“Here,” Grice said, with his finger on a place on the map. “This is where the truck road starts. Get us here. I can find it from there.”
Ted peered over. The car drifted; he yanked at the wheel, swung us back from the shoulder. “Okay, Frank,” he said. “Sure.”
Arnold had brought the bottle. I asked for a drink. Arnold looked to Grice, in the front seat next to Otis. Grice shrugged, Arnold held the bottle for me, and against its better judgment my blood started to move again.
I wondered if Ted had been promoted to Wally Gould’s old job, and how Otis felt about that. We drove north, hit the paved road a mile away at a featureless intersection. Lydia threw me a look, muttered, “Hess station, huh?”
Grice turned around. “What?”
“Private joke,” I answered.
We kept moving. I kept trying to stay awake. Not much longer, I promised myself, feeling a trickle of blood slide down along my jawline from the throbbing place near my eye. For Lydia. For Jimmy. And not much longer.
I almost missed it. There was only one good way to the quarry from where we’d been; that was the basket all my eggs were in. But when we got to where I’d been waiting to get to, I was almost gone. The road climbed, ran straight, fell. I pushed myself back to consciousness, said, “Here.”
“Here what?” Grice asked.
“Lydia gets out here.”
Grice gestured to Ted. The car slowed, stopped. “Why here?”
“Because it’s deserted. Because it’ll take her an hour to find anyone, if she’s looking. So she can’t stop you doing whatever it is you’re planning to do. So you’ll let her go.” Buy it, I begged him silently. Buy it. It’s all I’ve got.
Grice nodded. Arnold reached across Lydia, opened her door. He untied her hands as Grice said, “Get out.”
Lydia hesitated, looked at me. I met her eyes. “Walk back the way we came,” I told her. “Don’t turn around. And Lydia?” I added, “it’s okay. Remember, it’s just a game.”
