by Peter Straub
“Our contact. What’s he called now? Our divisional region controller. He said you’d be handling all the paperwork. Interesting guy. He’s an Indian, did you know that? Lives in Fontainebleau. His daughter has a rabbit named Custer.” N bent at the knees and planted his hands on either side of Hubert’s waist. When he pulled up, the body folded in half and released a gassy moan.
“He’s still alive,” Martine said.
“No, he isn’t.” N looked over the edge of the narrow strip of grass and down into the same abyss he had seen from the edge of the parking lot. The road followed the top of the gorge as it rose to the plateau.
“It didn’t look to me like he was planning to cheat anybody.” She had not left the side of the Mercedes. “He was going to make a lot of money. So were we.”
“Cheating is how this weasel made money.” N hauled the folded corpse an inch nearer the edge, and Hubert’s bowels emptied with a string of wet popping sounds and a strong smell of excrement. N swung his body over the edge and let go. Hubert instantly disappeared. Five or six seconds later came a soft sound of impact and a rattle of scree, and then nothing until an almost inaudible thud.
“He even cheated his customers,” N said. “Half the stuff in that shop is no good.” He brushed off his hands and looked down at his clothes for stains before tucking the satchel back under his left arm.
“I wish someone had told me this was going to happen.” She put the pistol in her handbag and came slowly around the trunk of the Mercedes. “I could always call for confirmation, couldn’t I?”
“You’d better,” N said. In English, he added, “If you know what’s good for you.”
She nodded and licked her lips. Her hair gleamed in the light from the Mercedes. The skimpy black thing was a shift, and her black sheer nylons ended in low-heeled pumps. She had dressed for the Arabs, not the auberge. She flattened a hand on the top of her head and gave him a straight look. “All right, Monsieur Cash, what do I do now?”
“About what you were supposed to do before. I’ll drive up to the restaurant, and you go back to town for your car. The mule who’s driving it down from Paris takes this one to Russia. Call in as soon as you get to your—what is it?—your LUD.”
“What about . . . ?” She waved in the direction of the auberge.
“I’ll express our profound regrets and assure our friends that their needs will soon be answered.”
“They said fieldwork was full of surprises.” Martine smiled at him uncertainly before walking back to the Mercedes.
Through the side window N saw a flat black briefcase on the backseat. He got behind the wheel, put his satchel on his lap, and examined the controls. Depressing a button in the door made the driver’s seat glide back to give him more room. “I almost hate to turn this beautiful car over to some Russian mobster.” He fiddled with the button, tilting the seat forward and lowering it. “What do we call our armament-deprived friends, anyway? Tonto calls them ragheads, but even ragheads have names.”
“Monsieur Temple and Monsieur Law. Daniel didn’t know their real names. Shouldn’t we be going?”
Finally, N located the emergency brake and eased it in. He depressed the brake pedal and moved the automatic shift from park to its lowest gear. “Get me the briefcase from the backseat. Doing it now will save time.” The Mercedes swam forward as he released the brake pedal. Martine glanced at him, then shifted around to put one knee on her seat. She bent sideways and stretched toward the briefcase. N dipped into the satchel, raised the tip of the silencer to the wall of her chest, and fired. He heard the bullet splat against something like bone and then realized that it had passed through her body and struck a metal armature within the leather upholstery. Martine slumped into the gap between the seats. Before him, a long leg jerked out, struck the dash, and cracked the heel off a black pump. The cartridge came pinging off the windshield and ricocheted straight to his ribs.
He shoved the pistol back home and tapped the accelerator. Martine slipped deeper into the well between the seats. N thrust open his door and cranked the wheel to the left. Her hip slid onto the handle of the gearshift. He touched the accelerator again. The Mercedes grumbled and hopped forward. Alarmingly near the edge, he jumped off the seat and turned into the spin his body took when his feet met the ground.
He was close enough to the sleek, recessed handle on the back door to caress it. Inch by inch, the car stuttered toward the side of the road. Martine uttered an indecipherable dream-word. The Mercedes lurched to the precipice, nosed over, tilted forward and down, advanced, hesitated, stopped. The roof light illuminated Martine’s half-conscious struggle to pull herself back into her seat. The Mercedes trembled forward, dipped its nose, and with exquisite reluctance slid off the earth into the huge darkness. Somersaulting in midair, it cast wheels of yellow light, which extinguished when it smashed into whatever was down there.
Visited by the blazing image of a long feminine leg unfurling before his eyes like a lightning bolt, N loped uphill. That lineament running from the molded thigh to the tender back of the knee, the leap of the calf muscle. The whole perfect thing, like a sculpture of the ideal leg, filling the space in front of him. When would she have made her move, he wondered. She had been too uncertain to act when she should have, and she could not have done it while he was driving, so it would have happened in the parking lot. She’d had that .25-caliber Beretta, a smart gun, in N’s opinion. Martine’s extended leg flashed before him again, and he suppressed a giddy, enchanted swell of elation.
Ghostly church bells pealed, and a black-haired young priest shone glimmering from the chiaroscuro of a rearing boulder.
He came up past the retaining wall into the mild haze of light from the windows of the auberge. His feet crunched on the pebbles of the parking lot. After a hundred-foot uphill run he was not even breathing hard, pretty good for a man of his age. He came to the far end of the lot, put his hands on the fence, and inhaled air of surpassing sweetness and purity. Distant ridges and peaks hung beneath fast-moving clouds. This was a gorgeous part of the world. It was unfortunate that he would have to leave it behind. But he was leaving almost everything behind. The books were the worst of it. Well, there were book dealers in Switzerland, too. And he still had Kim.
N moved down the fence toward the auberge. Big windows displayed the usual elderly men in berets playing cards, a local family dining with the grandparents, one young couple flirting, flames jittering and weaving over the hearth. A solid old woman carried a steaming platter to the family’s table. The Japanese golfers had not returned, and all the other tables were empty. On her way back to the kitchen, the old woman sat down with the card players and laughed at a remark from an old boy missing most of his teeth. No one in the dining room would be leaving for at least an hour. N’s stomach audibly complained of being so close to food without being fed, and he moved back into the relative darkness to wait for the second half of his night’s work.
And then he stepped forward again, for headlights had come beaming upward from below the lot. N moved into the gauzy light and once again experienced the true old excitement, that of opening himself to unpredictability, of standing at the intersection of infinite variables. A Peugeot identical to his in year, model, and color followed its own headlights into the wide parking lot. N walked toward the car, and the two men in the front seats took him in with wary, expressionless faces. The Peugeot moved alongside him, and the window cranked down. A lifeless, pockmarked face regarded him with a cold, threatening neutrality. N liked that—it told him everything he needed to know.
“Monsieur Temple? Monsieur Law?”
Without any actual change in expression, the driver’s face deepened, intensified into itself in a way that made the man seem both more brutal and more human, almost pitiable. N saw an entire history of rage, disappointment, and meager satisfactions in his response. The driver hesitated, looked into N’s eyes, then slowly nodded.
“There’s been a problem,” N said. “Please, do not be alarmed, but Mon
sieur Hubert cannot join you tonight. He has been in a serious automobile accident.”
The man in the passenger seat spoke a couple of sentences in Arabic. His hands were curled around the grip of a fat black attaché case. The driver answered in monosyllables before turning back to N. “We have heard nothing of an accident.” His French was stiff but correct, and his accent was barbaric. “Who are you supposed to be?”
“Marc-Antoine Labouret. I work for Monsieur Hubert. The accident happened late this afternoon. I think he spoke to you before that?”
The man nodded, and another joyous flare of adrenaline flooded into N’s bloodstream.
“A tour bus went out of control near Montory and ran into his Mercedes. Fortunately, he suffered no more than a broken leg and a severe concussion, but his companion, a young woman, was killed. He goes in and out of consciousness, and of course he is very distressed about his friend, but when I left him at the hospital Monsieur Hubert emphasized his regrets at this inconvenience.” N drew in another liter of transcendent air. “He insisted that I communicate in person his profound apologies and continuing respect. He also wishes you to know that after no more than a small delay matters will go forward as arranged.”
“Hubert never mentioned an assistant,” the driver said. The other man said something in Arabic. “Monsieur Law and I wonder what is meant by this term, ’a small delay.’”
“A matter of days,” N said. “I have the details in my computer.”
Their laughter sounded like branches snapping, like an automobile landing on trees and rocks. “Our friend Hubert adores the computer,” said the driver.
M. Law leaned forward to look at N. He had a thick mustache and a high, intelligent forehead, and his dark eyes were clear and penetrating. “What was the name of the dead woman?” His accent was much worse than the driver’s.
“Martine is all I know,” N said. “The bitch turned up out of nowhere.”
M. Law’s eyes creased in a smile. “We will continue our discussion inside.”
“I wish I could join you, but I have to get back to the hospital.” He waved the satchel at the far side of the lot. “Why don’t we go over there? It’ll take five minutes to show you what I have on the computer, and you could talk about it over dinner.”
M. Temple glanced at M. Law. M. Law raised and lowered an index finger and settled back. The Peugeot ground over pebbles and pulled up at the fence. The taillights died, and the two men got out. M. Law was about six feet tall and lean, M. Temple a few inches shorter and thick in the chest and waist. Both men wore nice-looking dark suits and gleaming white shirts. Walking toward them, N watched them straighten their clothes. M. Temple carried a large weapon in a shoulder holster, M. Law something smaller in a holster clipped to his belt. They felt superior, even a bit contemptuous toward M. Labouret—the antiques dealer’s flunky, as wed to his computer as an infant to the breast. N came up beside M. Temple, smiled, and ducked through the fence. “Better if they don’t see the screen,” he told their scowling faces. “The people in the restaurant.”
Already impatient with this folly, M. Law nodded at M. Temple. “Go on, do it.” He added something in Arabic.
M. Temple grinned, yanked down the front of his suit jacket, bent down, clamped his right arm across his chest, and steadied himself with the other as he thrust his trunk through the three-foot gap. N moved sideways and held the satchel upright on the top of the fence. M. Temple swung one leg over the white board and hesitated, deciding between raising his right leg before or behind. Leaning left, he bent his right knee and swiveled. A tasseled loafer rapped against the board. N took another step along the fence, pulling the satchel to his chest as if protecting it. M. Temple skipped sideways and pulled his leg through. Embarrassed, he frowned and yanked again at his jacket.
N knelt down with the satchel before him. M. Law gripped the board and passed his head through the gap. When he stepped over the board, N eased out the pistol and fired upward into the center of his intelligent forehead. The bullet tore through the back of M. Law’s skull and, guided by the laws of physics and sheer good luck, smacked into M. Temple’s chest as blood and gray pulp spattered his shirt. M. Temple staggered back and hit the ground, groaning. N felt like a golfer scoring a hole in one during a farewell tournament. He bounced up and moved alongside M. Temple. Grimacing and blowing red froth from his lips, the Arab was still gamely trying to yank his gun from the shoulder holster. The bullet had passed through a lung, or maybe just roamed around inside it before stopping. N settled the muzzle of the silencer behind a fleshy ear, and M. Temple’s right eye, large as a cow’s, swiveled toward him.
Light spilled from the auberge’s windows onto the row of cars and spread across the gravel. M. Law lay sprawled out on the board, his arms and legs dangling on either side. Blood dripped onto the grass beneath his head.
“A thing of beauty is a joy forever,” N said. Whatever unpleasantness M. Temple offered in return was cut short by the fall of the nine-millimeter’s hammer.
N grabbed M. Law’s collar and belt and slid him off the board. Then he grasped his wrists and pulled him through the grass to the edge of the gorge and went back for M. Temple. He took their wallets from their hip pockets and removed the money, altogether about a thousand dollars in francs. He folded the bills into his jacket pocket and threw the wallets into the gorge. Taking care to avoid getting blood on his hands or clothes, N shoved M. Temple closer to the edge and rolled him over the precipice. The body dropped out of view almost instantly. He pushed M. Law after him, and this time thought he heard a faint sound of impact from far down in the darkness. Smiling, he walked back to the fence and ducked through it.
N opened the driver’s door of the Arabs’ Peugeot, took the keys from the ignition, and pushed the seat forward to lean in for the attaché case. From its weight, it might have been filled with books. He closed the door softly and tossed the keys over the fence. So buoyant he could not keep from breaking into quiet laughter, he moved across the gravel and walked down the hill to his car with the satchel beneath his left elbow, the case swinging from his right hand.
When he got behind the wheel, he shoved the case onto the passenger seat and turned on the roof light. For a couple of seconds he could do nothing but look at the smooth black leather, the stitching, the brass catches. His breath caught in his throat. N leaned toward the case and brought his hands to the catches and their sliding releases. He closed his eyes and thumbed the releases sideways. There came a substantial, almost resonant sound as the catches flew open. He pushed the top of the case a few inches up and opened his eyes upon banded rows of thousand-dollar bills lined edge to edge and stacked three deep. “One for the Gipper,” he whispered. For a couple of seconds, he was content to breath in and out, feeling all the muscles in his body relax and breathe with him. Then he started the car and sailed down the mountain.
When he turned into the walled lot, the bright windows framed what appeared to be a celebration. Candles glowed on the lively tables, and people dodged up and down the aisles, turning this way and that in the buzz and hum of conversation floating toward him. This happy crowd seemed to have claimed every parking spot not preempted by the Comet truck, parked in front of the kitchen at an angle that eliminated three spaces. N trolled past the dirty Renault belonging to the drunken Basques, the Japanese tourists’ tall red van, the Germans’ Saab, and other vehicles familiar and unfamiliar. There was a narrow space in front of the trellis beside the entrance. He slid into the opening, gathered his cases, and, holding his breath and sucking in his waist, managed to squeeze out of the car. Beyond the kitchen doors, the Comet man in the blue work suit occupied a chair with the bored patience of a museum guard while the women bustled back and forth with laden trays and stacks of dishes. N wondered what was so important that it was delivered after dark on Sunday and then saw a bright flash of blue that was Albertine, facing a sink with her back to him. Only a few inches from her hip, the innkeeper was leaning against the sink
, arms crossed over his chest and speaking from the side of his mouth with an almost conspiratorial air. The intimacy of their communication, her close attention to his words, informed N that they were father and daughter. What Daddy doesn’t know won’t hurt him, he thought. The man’s gaze shifted outside and met N’s eyes. N smiled at his host and pushed the glass door open with his shoulder.
On his way to the counter he saw that his own elation had imbued an ordinary Sunday dinner with the atmosphere of a party. The Japanese men, the German family, French tourists, and groups of local Basques ate and drank at their separate tables. Albertine would not be free for hours. He had enough time to arrange the flights, pack his things, enjoy a long bath, even take a nap. As his adrenaline subsided, he could feel his body demand rest. The hunger he had experienced earlier had disappeared, another sign that he should get some sleep. N took his key from the board and lugged the increasingly heavy attaché case up the stairs, turning on the lights as he went.
He locked his door and sat on the bed to open the case. Twenty-five bills in each packet, six rows across, three stacks high. Four hundred and fifty thousand dollars: no million, but a pretty decent golden handshake. He closed the case, slid it onto the closet shelf, and picked up the telephone. In twenty minutes he had secured for a fictitious gentleman named Kimball O’Hara a 4 A.M. charter from Pau to Toulouse and a five o’clock connecting flight to Marseilles. His employers’ concern would not reach the stage of serious worry until he was on his way to Toulouse, and he would be on a plane to Italy before they had completely advanced into outright panic. The bodies could go undiscovered for days. N folded and packed his clothes into his carry-on bag and set it beside the door, leaving out what he would wear later that night. Kim went on the bedside table. He would push the satchel down a drain somewhere in Oloron.
Hot water pounded into the fiberglass tub while he shaved for the second time that day. The bath lulled him into drowsiness. He wrapped a towel around his waist and stretched out on the bed. Before he dropped into sleep, the last image in his mind was that of a rigid, magnificent female leg encased in sheer black nylon.
