The Black Ice Score p-1

by Richard Stark

  When he was very young, six or seven, Formutesca first learned about the two words white men in his country used when referring to black men. One was a word that meant monkey, and that referred to the tribesmen outside the cities and the workers on the big estates and the urban poor. And the other was a word that meant something like civilizedand something like evolved, and that referred to the white-collar workers and the professional men, all the Africans who had received training in European skills and who conducted their lives by European standards. In the way it was used, this second word seemed to imply also a further level of meaning, something slyly contemptible, something like castratedor tamed. It had seemed to Formutesca, as a very young child hearing those words, that between the two it was better to be a monkey than a eunuch, and ever since then he had watched himself for traces of that wildness and that brash humor that he thought of as being the essence of monkeyness.

  But his parentage, his background and his training all made him tend in the other direction toward the tamed. He was too intelligent to throw all that over the average “monkey” in Dhaba had an annual income of one hundred forty-seven dollars and would die of one of several possible dreadful diseases before his fortieth birthday. But when he saw the bland, emasculated Africans in their blue-gray suits gliding along the halls at the UN as though on muffled roller-skates, he determined over and over again never to let that depersonalizationwas what it was happen to him.

  Could one of them possibly be here now in his place? One of those smooth-faced amiable pets? Never.

  In the dim light he saw Manado’s eyes gleaming, and he suddenly smiled because it occurred to him that he and Manado were both exceptions to the rule, and for opposite reasons. Manado was a monkey trying to be a mannequin, and Formutesca was a mannequin trying to be a monkey.

  Manado whispered, “What’s that sound?”

  Formutesca had heard it too. A click, and then a thudding sound, and then more clicks, and then silence. He held up his hand for Manado to be quiet and listened. Nothing happened for half a minute and then the sequence started again: the click, the thud, more clicks, silence.

  “The elevator,” Formutesca said, he didn’t bother to whisper, and his words had a slight echo up and down the elevator shaft. He made hand motions, bringing the sides of his hands together to illustrate what he meant. “The doors are trying to close.”

  Manado said, “What’s the matter with them?” There was something trembling in his voice.

  There was very little light here. Formutesca switched on the flashlight and shone it on Manado’s face. Manado’s eyes were wide with barely controlled panic, his mouth hung open, and his whole manner was startled, on the verge of flight. He seemed to be wearing hysteria like a plastic raincoat; he could be seen through it, but dimly.

  It would be no good if Manado fell apart. It would be very dangerous for Formutesca if he couldn’t rely on his second man. Quietly he said, “There’s something in their way. They can’t close because something is blocking them.”

  “What?”

  Carefully, Formutesca said, “Probably a body.”

  Manado blinked, then shut his eyes entirely and held up a hand. “The light,” he said.

  “Sorry.” Formutesca switched it off. “Shall we go see?”

  Manado didn’t answer. Formutesca, peering at him, said, “Are you ready?”

  “Yes. I nodded.”

  “I didn’t see you.”

  “I’m sorry, I should have, I didn’t realize.”

  Formutesca reached out and grabbed Manado’s wrist. “Don’t fall apart, William,” he said. “We need each other.”

  “I won’t. I just don’t want to be up here any more.”

  “Neither do I.”

  Formutesca lifted the trapdoor, keeping his head to one side of the opening. He wanted to be sure they were both unconscious before he showed himself, and he also didn’t want to be in the line of any updraft in case some of the gas was still active. He knew it was supposed to be inert by now, but he felt a kind of vague awe toward gas and didn’t trust it.

  Light columned upward from the opening, but that was all. Formutesca counted to three and then looked over the edge and down into the elevator.

  Both. One face up along the back, the other face down across the entrance, his upper half out on to the floor, his body keeping the door from shutting again.

  Formutesca turned and nodded at Manado. “Perfect,” he whispered, and was pleased to see Manado manage a smile.

  Formutesca went first, dropping lithely down into the elevator and stepping over the body in the doorway. Ahead of him was a largish room full of display cases with wooden masks lined along the far wall. Monkey faces looking at him. He felt like an initiate.

  He heard Manado land behind him. Not looking back, he moved farther into the semidarkness.

  Manado called softly, “Just a minute.”

  Formutesca turned back just in time to see Manado slit the throat of the one in the elevator. The blood looked like red paint, too sudden and thin to be real.

  Formutesca went blank. All he could do was stand there in shock and amazement. It was true they’d talked this over beforehand, he and Manado and Gonor, and decided the Kasempas couldn’t be allowed to live. They would have to be killed, all five people in the building, and their bodies buried in the basement. They’d argued that out more than a week ago knowing it would be too dangerous to everybody concerned to leave the Kasempas alive.

  Still, to have it happen so fast, so casually, just a few seconds ago he’d been worrying that Manado would panic, and now, with a calm that even Parker might envy, Manado had dropped into the elevator and methodically slit a Kasempa’s throat.

  In his shock and confusion Formutesca remembered when they’d found out that Balando was the one betraying them to Goma and his white mercenaries. He remembered that it was Gonor who had finally killed Balando and it was he himself who had done most of the questioning, but it was Manado who had suggested the tortures. They hadn’t had to use them; the suggestions had been enough. Manado, serious-looking, studious, studying Balando with efficient earnestness, suggesting horrors he’d heard of when he was a child.

  Suddenly Formutesca knew just how many light-years he was from monkeydom. However much he might play at savagery he was a tame lamb, nothing but a tame lamb.

  Cast adrift, he invoked Parker. How would Parker act now? How would that man think? What would he be? Neither monkey nor lamb, but something better than both. It seemed to Formutesca that Parker would remain cold, aloof, emotionless, that he would be like a computer, quickly but methodically solving the problem of this robbery, moving through it like a pre-programmed robot. That’s how he must be himself if he was going to survive. This was not a joke.

  Manado was saying something. Formutesca looked at him, trying to understand, and saw Manado gesture with the streaked knife at the other unconscious man, the one across the doorway.

  Formutesca shook his head, forcing himself to move. “No,” he said. “He’s mine. Get the guns.”

  Manado nodded and stooped to wipe the knife blade on the dead man’s shirt.

  Formutesca’s own knife was in a sheath attached to his belt and tucked into his right hip pocket He had felt good putting it on, felt like a commando.

  He’d never killed anyone in his life.

  The knife handle felt bulky and awkward in his hand. He went to one knee beside the Kasempa and then he saw he would have to turn the man over first. He put the knife on the floor, grabbed the unconscious man’s shoulder and belt, and heaved him over. He was heavy and he would go only halfway, his hips then resting against the edge of the elevator doorway where the doors were recessed. Every thirty seconds the doors tried to close, recoiling when the rubber leading edge struck the body.

  Formutesca left the body lying on its side. He picked up his knife again, and with his other hand pushed back on the Kasempa’s forehead exposing his throat. He kept thinking, I can’t make a botch o
f this; I have to do it right the first time; I won’t be able to do it twice.

  He held the knife against the throat. He could hear the man’s breathing; it sounded as though he had sinus trouble. He knew Manado was back up on top of the elevator again waiting to hand down the machine guns.

  If only they could have gotten lethal gas. Gas murdered so much more cleanly.

  Formutesca dragged the knife across the throat. It was very sharp, but in his desperation not to have to do it more than once he pressed as though it were dull. Blood spurted out as though he’d discovered oil, and he jumped back. It was on his trouser leg, his sleeve, his hand.

  He looked at himself, looked at the knife, looked at the body. There was no more sinus breathing.

  Shakily, Formutesca smiled. I did it, he thought. He wanted to say it aloud, but he resisted. He felt no more fear, no more revulsion. It was accomplished, and everything after this would be routine. He felt vast relief and a great deal of pride.

  Now he knew what army men were talking about when they mentioned the baptism of fire.

  Because he’d cut so deep there had been much more welling up of blood than with Manado. It was hard to get his knife clean; the handle was also smeared. He did what he could, wiped his hand on his corpse’s trouser leg, then put away the knife and went back into the elevator.

  Manado’s face in the ceiling opening was the face of a brother. Formutesca smiled up at him and saw the surprise with which Manado smiled back. Then Manado lowered the guns to him and dropped back down again. Formutesca handed him one of the guns and led the way out of the elevator.

  The stairs were in the middle of the building. They turned on no lights, the spill from the elevator giving them enough vague illumination as far as the staircase. From here on they would prefer darkness.

  They were closer than they’d planned, the elevator having stopped on the second floor. They moved slowly enough to be silent.

  As Formutesca was about to start up the stairs Manado touched his arm. Formutesca looked at him questioningly and Manado leaned close to whisper, “I’m all right now.”

  Smiling at the silliness of that, Formutesca nodded.

  “It was just the waiting,” Manado whispered. “But now I’ll be okay.”

  6

  Lucille Kasempa had been awake since the second explosion. She’d thrown a robe around her heavy body and come out to the hall to find her husband’s brother Ralph standing there wearing nothing but trousers and a pistol.

  She’d said, “Where’s Patrick?”

  “Went downstairs with Albert.”

  The fourth brother, Morton, had come out then wearing even less than Ralph. Only the trousers, no gun. The three of them had stood around asking each other what had happened, and finally Lucille had gone down to the elevator and pressed the button to bring it up so she could go down and see for herself what was happening, but it hadn’t come.

  And now she was beginning to worry. They’d been down there too long, and there wasn’t a sound.

  She didn’t like this. She’d had a foreboding from the beginning, from the time Joseph had first come to her with his scheme for getting his money out of the country. “Why do it?” she’d asked him. “In Tchidanga you have everything. You’re president of the country, you have power and prestige, you’re rich. Why give it all up?”

  But he’d said, “How much longer do you suppose I can hold on to this thing? If Goma doesn’t get me, Indindu will. The two of them are out there, both after my head, both after this job. Goma’s got the whites behind him, Indindu’s got the army and the diplomatic staff behind him. It’s only a matter of time a year, maybe less than a year. I’d rather be a Faruk than a Diem.”

  And she was the only one he could trust. He’d said that, and she’d known it was so. But she’d left Tchidanga with a heavy heart, and it wasn’t just because she was giving up the life she loved, the social position, the importance of being the president’s sister. It was also this sense of foreboding, this fear that the scheme wouldn’t work. They were doomed; they were bringing down upon their heads a violence none of them would escape.

  That was why she’d insisted on the children’s going to boarding school in Scotland. She didn’t want them anywhere around when it happened, if it happened.

  If it was happening now.

  She had always thought of the Blessed Virgin Mary as her special protector, her patron saint. She had always prayed to the Blessed Virgin. In her bedroom at home there was a small shrine to the Blessed Virgin. She had always come with all her troubles to the Blessed Virgin.

  But how could she pray now? For a month that had troubled her. How could she ask the Blessed Virgin’s aid and intercession now? How could she say, “Help me help my brother rob his country, betray his trust, cheat the people who gave him his high office?” How could she ask that? All she could do was say, “Blessed Virgin, although you cannot condone what I am doing, still I pray you understand why I could not refuse, and for the sake of my children help us through this hour of trouble.”

  Was help not to come?

  She could hear nothing from downstairs. How long had it been now, ten minutes, fifteen minutes?

  If only there were an intercom in this building. There certainly should be.

  Maybe she would be able to hear something at the staircase. She started in that direction, and all of a sudden around the corner there she saw two men coming.

  All in black.

  With machine guns in their hands.

  She shrieked and flung herself at the nearest door. She fell through, rolling, the door banging against the wall, and heard the sudden vicious chatter of the machine guns behind her. Ralph and Morton had been farther down the hall, exposed, vulnerable.

  She had never moved so fast in her life. She rolled to her feet; she grabbed the edge of the door; she slammed it. There was a latch on the inside, and she locked it, even though she knew it could only delay the inevitable for a few more seconds.

  She was in Patrick’s insomnia room. A game of solitaire was in progress on the table. A notepad there had obscure rows of numbers.

  Patrick? He had gone downstairs. Those two men had come up from downstairs. Patrick could no longer be alive.

  She shook her head, having no time to think about Patrick now, Patrick or anything else. She hurried to the window, flung it open to the cold damp air, and stuck her head out. “Help!” she cried. “Help!”

  The fire escape was down to the right, three windows away. Even a circus performer wouldn’t be able to get there from here.

  Would no one hear her? “Help! Please, help!”

  No lights went on in the row of black buildings before her. Nothing happened.

  The door crashed open behind her. She spun around, flattening her back against the wall beside the window. The two men came in, and one of them stood in the middle of the room while the other one came over and shut the window. He smiled crookedly at her. “Not in New York,” he said. “It is well known no one listens in New York.”

  He had blood on his face, on one sleeve, on the knee of his trousers. She stared at him in horror.

  He continued to smile. “You have nothing to fear from us,” he said. His voice was insinuating, like a seducer’s. “Just tell us where the diamonds are,” he said.

  She shook her head. “I don’t know. My husband kept them; I don’t know what he did with them.”

  He stopped smiling. Mocking her, he looked troubled. As though he really worried about her, he said, “We aren’t going to have to force you to tell us, are we? We don’t want to have to hurt you.”

  She looked at the other one still in the middle of the room, his machine gun pointed at her head. He looked so young, so much more innocent than the other one. Would he stand by and let her be tortured?

  He’d have to, of course. The older one must be in command here.

  She wouldn’t be able to stand torture, she knew that.

  It was all over now, all Joseph’s plans,
just as she’d feared. Even if she didn’t tell them, even if she let them kill her without telling them, they wouldn’t have to search very hard to find the diamonds. So it was all over, no matter what she did.

  The important thing was to stay alive. For her own sake, and the sake of the children.

  She said, “You won’t kill me?”

  “Why should we kill you?” It was the same seducer’s voice he used, and it made her know he did intend to kill her. But the other one? Would he stand for it if she cooperated, if she pleaded with him, mentioned the children, did whatever they asked?

  She said, “Down to the right. The last room on the left. In the closet. There’s a pair of overshoes in there.”

  “In the overshoes?”

  She nodded. “In two cloth bags inside the overshoes.”

  He said to the younger one, “Watch her,” and left the room.

  She looked at the younger one. Wasn’t his face familiar? She felt as though she’d seen him somewhere. At some diplomatic function perhaps, or some social occasion in Tchidanga.

  She tried to smile at him, but it didn’t work very well. She said, “You don’t have to kill me, you know. I won’t cause you any trouble.”

  He didn’t say anything, but she thought she detected sympathy in his expression. She said, “I have three children, you know. They’re all I care about, not the diamonds or politics or anything else. I wouldn’t want to leave them alone, with no one. So you don’t have to kill me, you can leave me here, and I promise you I’ll never”

  The other one came back in. He nodded to the younger one and patted the pocket of his jacket. “Got them,” he said. He turned and looked at Lucille and said, “I’m sorry.”

  Looking at him, meeting his eye, she realized with a shock that he wassorry. It wasn’t mockery after all; he was deeply troubled by what he was doing here tonight.

  Too late she understood she’d made her appeal to the wrong one.

  7

  Aaron Marten stood at the window looking out over Riverside Drive and the Hudson toward New Jersey. A few lights defined buildings over there even at this hour of the morning.