Chameleon (9 page)

He stared at himself in the mirror for a few moments and then looked down at the scars. His mind was like the blip in an electronic game, bouncing back and forth, from the arena above, to the woman on the other side of the steam bath who supposedly would lead him to Chameleon.

Almost as an afterthought, he took the .25-caliber Beretta from the shoulder holster, held the small gun in the palm of his hand, and checked the clip, then tucked it into the towel at his waist. He draped a second towel over his shoulders, letting it fall at his side to conceal the pistol. He entered the steam room.

It was like being lost in a cloud. He had never seen steam so thick. Gruber groped his way along the wall to the benches on one side and sat down. Driblets of sweat trickled down and began to gather at his waist in the tuck of the towel. He took the Beretta and laid it on the bench beside him.

The room was larger than Gruber had expected. He could vaguely make out its perimeters from the haloed glow of the lights recessed in the walls.

God, he thought, it must be a hundred and twenty degrees in here. I’ll give it two or three minutes and then get the hell out.

He took the towel from his shoulders and dipped it in a bucket of ice that sat melting on the floor near the wall and wiped his face with it.

The sound of a sudden shower of water, followed immediately by a harsh burst of steam, jolted him. It came from across the room. Someone had just pulled the cord and released a water shower on the hot coals that wore obviously over there somewhere on the other side of the room.

The mist swirled and grew thicker.

To his right, he heard the other door open and thunk shut.

His hand edged closer to the Beretta. He was jumpy, his pulse still hammering from the opening minutes of the show in the arena above.

Then the mist on the far side of the room seemed to clear for a moment and he saw briefly, as though through gauze, the shaggy figure of a man, staring at him.

It jolted him. He sat upright, instantly alert. But the steam immediately obscured the figure. He took the Beretta in hand and stood up and took a few cautious steps across the slippery tile floor toward the figure. Was he large or small? Fat or thin? Gruber wasn’t sure.

He sensed, but never actually saw, the figure. It materialized for an instant, tore off his towel and ‘vanished back into the mist. The Beretta clattered on the floor. Gruber stood in the room, naked. Panic began to gnaw at his stomach. He bent his knees and lowered himself slowly down toward the gun, peering into the thickening mist.

Another hiss of steam from across the room. It distracted him for a moment. The kick came from nowhere, a sudden jarring pain from out of the mist, bang! Just like that.

He didn’t see who kicked him, didn’t even hear it coming. But he felt the heel rip into his side, felt the ribs crack and the tendons tear loose. His feet thrashed from under him and he went down on his side, sliding across the tiled floor, and hit the wall.

All of his finely tuned systems went haywire for a moment. Then he twisted his body, ignoring the fire in his side, got quickly to his knees, and waving the pistol in front of him, pointing at everything and nothing, he stood up, keeping his back against the wall.

He hardly had time to appraise the situation.

The second time it was the toes, hard as a cake of ice, that came from nowhere into the pit of his stomach, digging up deep into his diaphragm, slamming him into the wall. He gagged as the air gushed out of him, and the back of his throat soured instantly with bile.

He jack-knifed forward, caught himself with his hands, the Beretta still clutched in a sweaty fist, and rolled away from the wall, seeking the sanctity of the thick steam himself.

As he started to get up, he caught a fleeting glimpse of something, a spectre that seemed to materialize just long enough to shatter the right side of his jaw, before it was enveloped once again in mist.

The pain screamed out along his nerves and flooded his brain. This time he screamed, but as he fell, he swung the Beretta up and got off one shot, its flat spang echoing off the walls.

Karate.

Traditional.

Okinawan.

What was the best defensive stance possible under the— Whap!

He felt his wrist snap, saw the black pistol spin away into the fog, heard it smack the floor and slide into a corner.

He spun quickly in the direction of the blow.

Nothing but swirling clouds of hot steam.

He was beginning to shake. Sweat was gushing from every pore in his body. His breath came in laboured gulps. He turned and lurched for the door.

His feet were swept from under him, soundlessly, effortlessly, invisibly. He fell flat on the wet floor, his broken jaw smacked the wet tile, fire raged in his ribs, his ruined hand was folded uselessly under him.

Groaning uncontrollably, he was fighting to stay conscious. He decided to stay down until he could get some strength back. The ice bucket was a few inches from his good hand.

He rolled slowly on the other side and inched across the floor until he got a grip on the handle and rose very slowly to his knees, his eyes darting fearfully in their sockets, his ears straining for any sound of warning. Pain warped his judgment.

He had to get out of the room. The door was behind him and perhaps six or seven feet away, lost in the haze. Gruber backed toward it, swinging the ice bucket in wide arcs, growling like a hurt animal.

The chop came from behind and separated his left shoulder. The ice bucket soared from his hand and hit the benches nearby. Ice showered down around him.

He was helpless, his left arm and right hand useless and needled with pain, his jaw hanging crookedly, his side swollen and red.

‘You son of a bitch,’ he groaned hoarsely, partly in English, partly in German, ‘show yourself.’ But he was washed up and his nerves began to short-circuit and then everything went, and shaking uncontrollably, he collapsed against the bench.

From the other side of the room a voice said, in perfect English: ‘Be out of Japan by five tomorrow afternoon.’

The Beretta, from out of the fog, slithered to his feet. The clip was gone.

Gruber heard the door open, felt the cold rush of air from across the room.

‘Bon voyage,’ the voice said, and the door banged shut.

3

It was four-thirty in the afternoon and the news room was, as usual, the capital of Pandemonia. One of the editing machines was down and Mooney was getting a rubber ear from listening to all the complaints and excuses, an& the phone rang and Mooney snatched it up and snapped, ‘Forget it!’

Eula, his secretary, wisely replied, ‘Unh unh.’

And Mooney said, surprised, Unh unh?’

And Eula said, ‘It’s God.’

Mooney groaned. ‘Aw shit!’

Just what he needed. God, of all people. The Hare Krishna of all Hare Krishnas, owner of the moon , the stars and the rest of the universe, as well as the Boston Star, five radio stations and three TV affiliates, including the one for which he, Harold Claude Mooney, was Director of the News Department. Not News Director. Director of the News Department. Big difference, especially at Channel 6 in Boston. God, otherwise known as Charles Gordon Howe, among other things, was a fanatic about chain of command and titles. To Howe the title was almost as important as the job. Howe had once explained this philosophy at a rare meeting of his executives: ‘People are immediately intimidated by titles. It takes them a while to size up a person. But the title, the title gets ‘em every time. It says “Here’s the power,” bang, just like that.’

Well, Howe had the title. The Chairman. Not chairman of the board. The Chairman. An hour and a half from showtime, ninety minutes until the daily Circus Maximus, The Six O’Clock News had a stick in his mouth and was staring down his throat and who’s on the phone? The fucking Chairman.

He put a smile in his voice before he answered. ‘Mr Howe? Hal Mooney here.’

‘Mr Mooney, I know you’re probably wishing some kind of strange voodoo curse on me for calling you right now, but I want five minutes of your time. Then I’ll let you get back to work.’

‘Five minutes, sir? Okay, shoot.’

‘I want five minutes on Eliza Gunn. Sum her up for me. I’ll time you.’

‘Right now? Are you starting the clock this minute?’ Mooney said and chuckled, although he knew Howe was probably sitting on the other end of the line with a stop watch in his hand.

‘Right now.’

Mooney glanced idly at the clock over his office door, thought for a few seconds and started. ‘One of the best investigative reporters I’ve ever known. She uses it all, whatever it takes. She can be adorable if getting it takes adorable. She can also be serious if it takes serious, or funny if it takes funny, or heart—warming, or cold-blooded, or meaner than a goddamn cobra with tonsillitis, if that’s what it takes. Point is, she gets it. She’s Joe Namath his first year with the Jets. Every throw’s gotta be a winner.

‘The first thing comes to my mind is the cross-eyed tiger. She called it a hunch. I call it instinct, pure instinct, without which a reporter’s a dancer with a broken leg.

‘Thing is, it took me a little while at first, y’know, to see it. At first I figure she’s just cute, a little ditzy. I used her on light stuff.

‘But that tiger story, that was a doozie. The rest of the stations were treating it as a humour piece, y’know, a kicker. I mean, what the hell, how else you gonna treat a story about a cross-eyed tiger named Betsy Ross ho’s getting her eyes uncrossed? So everybody gets stuff on the tiger going into the operating room and the doctor talking about the operation, like that. Then they split.

‘Not her. She hangs in there. I even told her to leave the damn zoo. There was stuff fast-breaking all over town that day.

“I got a hunch,” she says.

“Whaddya mean?” I says.

“You know what a hunch is, for Chrissakes,” she says

‘I feel like a dodo. I got this five-foot, ninety-eight-pound twenty-two-year-old asking me do I know what a hunch is and me in the business — what, twenty years? Almost as long as she is old.

“Look,” I says, “I got shit busting all over the place, I’m the news director, get your ass in the van and get over to” — hell, I don’t even remember where.

‘Now, she’s on staff maybe two, three months at the time, she’s a goddamn receptionist before that, I’m the expert, she’s nothin’ short of an intern, so who’s the boss, besides, what does she know, right?

‘Wrong.

‘She says, “I don’t trust these assholes” — she talks like a longshoreman by the by—and I says, “What assholes?” and she says, “The vets,” and I says, “Isn’t this like three expert tiger doctors they got Out there?,” and she says, “I don’t give a shit if it’s the top vet, he’s got a funny look in his eye. Trust me.”

“Trust me”!

‘I’m looking the Six O’Clock News dead in the eye three hours away and she wants to tie up a camera crew, herself and a van on a hot news day because the tiger doctor has a funny look in his eye.

‘I make a little joke. I says to her, “Not as funny as the look in the tiger’s eye, ho, ho, ho,” and she gets pissed, starts giving me all this jazz about this tiger, how it’s real valuable because it has white under the black stripes inst.ead of yellow and how they’re just doing the operation to make the tiger even more valuable and then the zoo’s gonna sell it to some Arab king for some enormous amount of money and on top of that the vet’s in for some big fee.

‘A tiger, for God’s sakes.

“Get your ass outa there now,” I say s, and she says, I swear to God, she says, “Bullshit!’ And she kills the connection. Not only that, she leaves the damn phone off the hook and I’m ready to kill her and I’m dictating a memo canning her ass and at five-thirty she bombs in the door and the tiger is dead on the operating table and this big-time vet has fucked up royally and the zoo people are freaking out all over the place, and she’s got this hotshot doctor with his balls hanging out trying to get off the hook explaining why the tiger died and all they were trying to do was fix its eyes, and there isn’t another newsman within twenty miles and the next thing I know Cronkite’s people are on the horn looking for a national pickup and we get more phone calls from that one goddamn story, for Chrissakes, than anything I can remember.

‘That lady has instincts. And that’s the name of the game. I have never argued with her since. And she’s never let me down.’

‘She seems very good at finding people,’ Howe said quietly. ‘People who don’t want to be found, that is.’

‘It’s far from the first time. Take Tomatoes Garziola. Just before that mess between Garziola and the Feds blew up. In fact, she kind of fired the first shot in that war. An assistant DA named Flannagan had made some comments at a luncheon about Garziola and everybody was looking for him, except Garziola wasn’t that anxious to be found.

‘But Lizzie decided, by God she was gonna find him, so she pulled his package and was going through the stuff and found a reference to Garziola’s mother. Lo and behold, it’s the old lady’s birthday. So she and a crew head down to Providence, which is where the old lady lives, and Lizzie cruises up to the door, and sure enough, there’s Tomatoes with half a dozen of his gorillas, having dinner.

‘Thing is, she kept calling him Tomatoes to his face. I mean, the last time anybody called Garziola Tomatoes to his face, they floated up under the Atlantic Street pier. Did you see the original tape? Here comes Garziola out of his old lady’s front door with a look on his face would make the whole front line of the Dallas Cowboys wet their pants and he stares down at her and says, “I don’t pick on ladies, okay, particularly they don’t weigh twenty pounds soakin’ wet, but I could make an exception in your case, sister.”

‘She looks up with that fifty-dollar smile, says, “The DA, Flannagan, is making a fool of you, Mr Tomatoes, I just thought you’d like to get your side of the story on the record,” and he starts laughing and he turns around to these four apes behind him, says, “Mr Tomatoes!” and he’s laughing so, of course they all start laughing, too, and then he says, “Whaddya talkin’ about?,” and she says, “Mr Flannagan has publicly accused you of graft and kickbacks and hijacking and even a little murder here and there,” and Garziola looks down at her again and says, “Why, that little son of a bitch, on my mother’s birthday, too,” and she says, real tough like, “Yeah, on your mother’s birthday,” and then without even a breath in between she says, “Why do they call you Tomatoes?,” and the next thing you know, Garziola’s sitting there on his mother’s stoop telling her all about how it was on the docks in the old days when he was getting started and how’ they used to hold up off-loading the produce until the tomatoes were rotten and finally the owners started knuckling under and that’s when they started getting a living wage and that is where the name Tomatoes came from.

‘Forty-five minutes later he’s still talking and then he puts the cork in the bottle and says, “Look, little lady, when it comes to kickbacks and the old payola, the first one’s got his paw out is that little schmuck, Flannagan. You want a story, I’ll give you a story,” and his lawyer’s standing there trying to shush him up and he’s telling everybody get lost and he gives her book, chapter, verse on what turned out to be one of the juiciest scandals in years. I’m not saying she broke the story — I mean, in the long run it all had to come out — but we got it first, and that’s the name of the game. Your papers got most of the mileage out of it, but you saw it first on Channel Six and she’s the one started the river flowing. That time it took adorable.

She was adorable. See what I mean?’

‘Sum her up in one word.’

Mooney thought for a few moments. ‘Tenacious,’ he said.

‘Thank you very much, Mr Mooney..’

‘Anytime, sir. She’s not in trouble, is she?’

‘If she were, Mr Mooney, she wouldn’t be anymore. Not after that accolade. And by the way, congratulations on being number one in the ratings again this period.’

‘Thanks. Thanks a lot.’

‘Goodbye, Mr Mooney. Thank you for your time.’

Click.

Just like that. What in the hell was the old bastard up to? If he steals her away from me for some other station, Mooney said to himself, I think what I’ll do, I’ll go over his house and kill the son of a bitch.