There Fell a Shadow

by Andrew Klavan

  “So who are you busting today, Wells?” Holloway said. “Am I gonna have something for the morning?”

  “Don’t look at me,” I said. “Our banner’s the tiger.”

  “A farewell to arms.” Holloway laughed.

  “Yeah,” said Lansing proudly, “but our skyline’s a bribe to Brooklyn’s borough prez.”

  Holloway’s lips parted. “Robins?”

  “Read about it in the bulldog, Solomon,” I said.

  The waitress brought the drinks. A beer in front of Colt, a brandy in front of Wexler, a martini in front of Holloway. Holloway sipped the martini, stared at me over the rim of the glass.

  He set the glass down. “Corlies Park, you bastard. You finally got Corlies Park.”

  “It’ll cost you thirty-five cents to find out,” I said. “But for that, you get the sports and columns, too.”

  “You bastard,” he said.

  “Oh, when will you turn away from the vain life of daily headlines,” said Donald Wexler, sniffing at his brandy, “and come to the tropic paradise of the weekly magazine?” He drank.

  Before I had a chance to avoid answering that, Colt chimed in. His voice had a rich twang to it. Oklahoma, was my guess.

  “Wells, John Wells.” He pointed a lazy finger at me. “I’ve seen yer stuff. Corruption in city government, that kind of thing.”

  “The voter’s friend, that’s me,” I said.

  “Yeah. Yeah, it’s good stuff. Got a sort of … meloncholy to it. Yeah. Real good.”

  “Thanks. I liked your pieces from Iran.”

  He studied me a while, nodding thoughtfully. But in another moment, his gaze shifted direction. He had other business. “Now you,” he said to Lansing. “I cain’t say I’ve heard of you before.”

  He put his arm on the back of her chair. He leaned toward her. She sent a rapid glance at me. I wouldn’t play. I reached for the ashtray, crushed out a cigarette, hard. Her gaze was drawn back to Colt. Her cheeks colored a little. He was a good-looking guy. His eyes went deep and there was something vital and electric about them. They kept moving—not nervous, but watchful. I had seen them, after he first sat down, as they calmly memorized the lay of the room. They had seemed to catch the movements at the tables, at the bar. And whenever the door opened, whenever someone came in or out, they turned casually to study them, to file them away.

  But right now they were fixed on Lansing. They traveled over her where she sat and seemed to pull every detail of her into their depths.

  “What is it you do?” he asked.

  “Spot news, for the most part,” Lansing said hoarsely. She hid behind her drink.

  “She won the AP for the Yorktown Building Collapse,” Holloway said.

  “AP,” said Colt with deep appreciation.

  Lansing appealed to heaven. Colt laughed. She smiled.

  Wexler helped out: “Colt just got back from Afghanistan.”

  “Oh?” said Lansing.

  “Behind rebel lines,” said Holloway. He nodded at Colt. Colt shrugged.

  “Oh, come on now, don’t be modest,” Lansing said. Her voice was warm. “What’s it like over there these days?”

  Colt shrugged again. “It looked mighty like a war to me.”

  “And Colt should know,” said Holloway, with a jolly laugh in his martini. “He’s covered most of them.”

  The lines of Colt’s rugged face turned down in a frown. “It’s a livin’,” he said softly.

  “Oh now, come clean, dear boy,” said Wexler. I saw a somewhat nasty gleam in those wet eyes. “You know what Voltaire said: ‘Once a philosopher, twice a pervert.’ You wouldn’t keep going to war if you didn’t like it.”

  I sensed Colt tighten. He withdrew his arm from the back of Lansing’s chair. “Voltaire said that about goin’ to whorehouses.”

  There was silence for a minute. I saw Lansing take the opportunity to glance up at Colt’s profile.

  Then Holloway laughed. His thick lips curled in an impish V. “All I know,” he said, “is that Sentu was war enough for me.”

  “Hear, hear,” said Wexler.

  He lifted his snifter. Colt smiled, shook his head. His hands closed on his beer. He lifted it, too. Holloway followed with his martini. The three looked at each other. Their glasses came together, touched in the air. Lansing, McKay, and I watched quietly.

  “To Sentu,” said Holloway.

  “Sentu,” said Wexler.

  Colt echoed: “Sentu.”

  And, as each brought his drink to his lips, Holloway added: “The making of us all.”

  They drank. I looked at Lansing. She tilted her head to one side. I glanced at McKay. He gestured uncomfortably with his hands. I glanced, finally, at the three men drinking their obscure toast.

  That’s when I saw the haunted man again.

  He had reappeared suddenly. From somewhere in the back. I remembered there was a flight of stairs back there that led down to the rest rooms and a broom closet. Now he was moving swiftly toward the front door. His head was ducked down behind the collar of his heavy overcoat. His shoulders were hunched as if to further shield him from view. He wove through the tables with smooth, quick strides, looking neither to the right nor the left.

  In a moment he’d reached the door. He grabbed the handle and pulled. The wind gusted in. It blew back his collar, bared his face. Snow swirled over the floor, rose around his ankles. He seemed about to plunge forward, to vanish into the blizzard.

  The sound of shattering glass stopped him.

  Startled, I followed the sound. I saw Colt: he had turned to check the movement of the door. He sat frozen in his chair. His cheeks were the color of ashes. His hand was still curled as if he were holding his beer mug. He wasn’t. It had slipped through his fingers. It had fallen to the floor, and the thick glass had exploded into a million pieces. The pile of them glittered in the pale light.

  When the glass broke, the man in the doorway halted, swiveled. He and Colt locked eyes. The whole bar had gone silent. There was only the wild, hollow sough of the wind as it brought in the snow.

  Then—in a hoarse gasp that seemed part of that wind—Colt said: “You!”

  The door handle slid from the man’s grasp. The door swung shut slowly. The sound of the wind died. Colt pushed unsteadily to his feet.

  “Colt,” Holloway said. He reached for Colt’s arm. Colt shook him off. Wexler made no effort to stop him. He sat transfixed.

  “You!” Colt said again. He growled it this time.

  The haunted man stood still and waited. Colt stalked him. Came near him step by step until he was standing with him in a small pool of melted snow. Their faces were inches apart.

  Colt said quietly: “You’re dead! You’re a dead man!”

  The other reared back.

  Colt shouted: “You’re a dead man, goddamn it! Goddamn it, you owe me an accounting.”

  He grabbed the man by his lapels. I heard a chair scrape as Holloway started to his feet. But the haunted man’s hand shot up swiftly. He knocked Colt’s arm away with a single sweeping motion. Colt staggered back a step.

  “Not here,” the man hissed. “Not here, for God’s sake.”

  Holloway stood poised to leap forward, to separate them with his thick little body if they came to blows. But Colt did not move. He seemed to consider. When he finally spoke, his voice seemed almost calm.

  “The Madison,” he said. His intent stare never left the other’s face. “I’m at the Madison.”

  The man nodded.

  Colt pointed a finger at him. “Tomorrow.”

  The man nodded.

  Then, readjusting his collar, he pulled the door open again. He stepped out and, in another moment, he had disappeared in the whirlwind of snow.

  The door swung shut behind him.

  Colt stared at the closed door for several seconds. Holloway sank back into his chair with a sigh. Wexler closed his eyes, daubed the sweat from his flaccid face with a napkin. Colt turned, running his hand up through
his hair. He took a deep breath. Walked slowly to the table, and lowered himself into his chair.

  At first, he kept his eyes trained on the tabletop. We waited, trying not to watch him, watching him. Finally, he looked up.

  “Guy owes me money,” he said softly. “That’s all.”

  We nodded at him. We mumbled, fidgeted. None of us knew what to say.

  The pretty waitress returned to our table—cautiously now. She was hunched over protectively, as if she were afraid of us. She raised one blond eyebrow. “Uh …” she said nervously. “Does anyone, like, want another drink? Or anything?”

  That turned out to be just the right question. We all wanted another drink, every one of us. She hurried off to get them.

  “Well,” said Wexler, a little too brightly, “nothing like a bit of excitement to enliven the evening, I always, uh, say, you …”

  Holloway tried to pick up the slack. “It’s funny, I remember this guy I used to play poker with. Owed me money. Once we’d been playing five card stud, and I had three kings and an ace in the hole with no other aces showing. I was broke and this other guy, Bennett, he bet ten bucks …”

  Wexler, Lansing, and McKay listened eagerly as Holloway told his story. I pretended to listen. I kept glancing over at Colt.

  Colt kept staring at the tabletop. He did not look like he was thinking about money. He looked startled, like a man who’d just had a lynchpin plucked out of one of the sockets of his universe. Like the guy who finds his wife in bed with his best friend or gets a tragic phone call in the dead of night. I knew the feeling.

  The waitress brought our drinks. We all went for them in a single motion: grabbed and lifted them to our lips in unison. Colt gulped his beer fast and fiercely. He sat in silence while the rest of us made efforts at talk. We talked shop. The talk went on for a while, then died away. We ordered another round. We talked politics. We drank. The waitress swept up the shards of Colt’s beer glass. By the time she was done, we were ready to refill.

  So the conversation went on in fits and starts. The incident at the doorway stayed there with us. It made it hard to talk. It made it easy to drink. Easier to drink than not to. We ordered another round. The snow fell. Beer, martini, brandy, scotch. We drank.

  Around us, the murmur of the bar had started up again. No more than an occasional nervous glance came our way from the dimly lighted recesses of the room. This was the big city, after all. Colt’s encounter was nobody’s business. It certainly wasn’t mine. I shrugged it off, stopped watching him. I sat and smoked quietly, half listening to the others. I blew smoke out in a thin stream. It rose into the darkness near the ceiling. Vanished there.

  I glanced out the window. The snow was still falling, though not as thickly as before. By now, it had piled up high on the street and sidewalk. The garbage near the curb was just a white hulk. I imagined the whole city—the whole soar and dip of its skyline—was just a series of white hulks out there beyond the tavern walls.

  The talk faltered yet again. There was yet another stretch of awkward silence. Colt set his beer glass down heavily. He wiped the foam from his lips with his hand. He put on a grin. “What is it we were talkin’ about anyway?” he said. “Before we were so rudely interrupted.”

  “Sentu!” said Lansing quickly. My attention returned to her. She sat up very straight. Took a deep breath of relief. She was wearing a pink blouse and we all watched it rise and fall. “I was wondering about that,” she said. “What was all that about Sentu? The making of you, you said. What is Sentu, anyway?”

  McKay narrowed his eyes. He was studying his latest drink carefully. “It’sh a coun … a coun … a country. Ishn’t it?” He was not much of a drinker, our McKay.

  Holloway peered into his martini.

  “It was,” he said. “It was a country.”

  McKay lifted a finger in the air. “Africa. They had a revelation there. A reva … a reva … you know, a lution. A revolution.”

  “Ten years ago,” said Wexler. He exchanged glances with Holloway and Colt.

  Then Colt gave a snort. He shook his head. “Je-sus, you fellahs never quit,” he said.

  McKay grinned at them. “What?” he said. “What?”

  “Yeah, come on,” said Lansing.

  I sat quiet in the rising warmth of the liquor. I listened.

  Holloway tapped a palm on his belly, leaned back in his chair. He held his martini under his nose. Stared across the top of it into space. “We were there, the three of us,” he said. “Sentu. We were freelancers there. We used to feed dispatches to anyone who would take them. Looking for a big story. Looking for a big break.” He laughed a little. “Although—as for me personally—I was looking for a way to escape from Moses Holloway.”

  “Moses,” said McKay. “Yeah. Moses Holloway. I’ve heard of him. He your father?”

  Holloway nodded. “That he was. My father and, I may say, one of the most distinguished black journalists of his generation.” He looked at each of us in turn. “The first black man ever to be awarded the Pen Medal. The first to break the color barrier of the White House press corps. First in ties, first in tails, first in the hearts of his countrymen. My old man.” He swirled his liquor meditatively. “Not his fault, of course, but a lot for his son to live with all the same.” With a deep breath, he came around again, said more brightly: “At any rate … At any rate, Sentu was the perfect little country for me. For the three of us. It wasn’t big enough for anyone to send a staffer. But it was just rich enough in precious metals for everyone to take the occasional dispatch. And if it fell …” He cocked his head, chuckled his wicked, elfin chuckle.

  “If it fell to the rebels … That was a story worth covering. And it did. And it was. And we were there.”

  “So now,” Colt said, “every time I wander through town, these two corral me and force me from my warm hotel room out into the cold dark night.”

  “Yes, it’s real hard to do,” said Holloway.

  “Then they ply me with liquor til I get all sentimental-like and tell them what great war correspondents they were before they got fat and rich and old.”

  “By God, we were great,” said Wexler. Colt made a face. Holloway laughed. Wexler went on: “No, now wait a minute, wait a minute. I admit that Holloway and I have … how shall I put it? Matured, over the years. Moved on to other things, positions more in keeping with our dignity. We haven’t merely … continued in the same rut day after day.”

  “Pitiful,” said Colt. “I mean, pitiful.”

  “But the record here is clear,” Wexler announced. “Crack correspondent Solomon Holloway managed a series of interviews with the rebel leaders that brought the story to the front page for the first time. I remember hearing how they waved the clips of it in each other’s faces on the Senate floor as they debated what the U.S. should do. And you have to understand: the rebels hated us. I mean, they hated the western press with a passion. Solomon scooped us all, the black buzzard.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Holloway said. Colt snorted into his drink. “But this is the man,” Holloway went on, indicating Wexler, “who got a Pulitzer out of it.”

  “Ah!” said Wexler, dismissing it with a wave of his hand. “But I was just trying to get out of there alive.”

  “I have to admit: it’s kind of amazin’ you did,” said Colt with a laugh. Then, to me: “Wex was sending stuff out of Mangrela when most of us were runnin’ for our precious little lives. That was the capital city, Mangrela. Man, when it fell, the rebels … They came in there, there was shittin’ and shootin’ and shellin’ enough for everyone. After the U.S. choppers left … Well, none of us stuck around to find out what happened after that.”

  “Except Wex,” Holloway said.

  Lansing and McKay looked him over appreciatively. So did I. He shimmered a little through the haze of scotch that was now floating before my eyes. Still, he did not look like the heroic type. He seemed too elegant, too well kept. Sometimes, though, those are the best ones: the playing fields of Eton
type.

  I called to the waitress. A round for the playing fields of Eton.

  “Well,” said Wexler. “I had something to prove, too, I suppose. I’d come to New York from the mainline of Philadelphia. Used a number of connections to land myself a fairly prestigious journalistic post. And then promptly had myself fired.” He said it lightly. He drained his glass with a casual flair. The pain of it flickered only dimly at the corners of his mouth.

  Colt said, “Hell, that was a long time ago.”

  “Yes. Yes, it was,” said Wexler. “But it was something of a scandal at the time. In its minor way. You see, I’d done an exposé on a cult that had started up just a little north of here. Such things were just beginning to become à la mode, if you remember. But I was the first to infiltrate a really big one like that …”

  My mouth opened on a breath of smoke. I knew this story. I’d forgotten that was Wexler.

  Wexler noticed my expression. “You remember, Wells?”

  “It was … I mean, everyone said the story was a fake,” I said.

  “Oh God, it was worse than that, dear fellow,” Wexler said. “My sources were shown conclusively not to exist. I was said to have made the whole thing up in my hurry to … shall we say, achieve a position on the newspaper that was in keeping with my social standing.”

  I could see it all a little better then. I could imagine Wexler in his youth. Rich, pampered—and exiled in disgrace. Alone in the jungles of Africa and its jungle cities. Sweating through the heat and the bugs. And the revolution. The slaughter. The shellfire. I thought of all that, a little drunkenly, and I looked at Wexler now. His moist eyes gleamed with the bitter memories. I could imagine the desperation that had made a hero of him.

  “You were set up, weren’t you?” Lansing said.

  Wexler smiled ruefully. “Set up by the Temple of Love. That was the name of the cult. It had been coming under some examination from the government on a little matter of back taxes. By getting me to disgrace them, then disgracing me, I suppose they hoped to make themselves out to be victims of persecution.”

  “Di … uh … wha wash I gonna say?” said McKay.