Cut and Run (25 page)

“It is for me. Why are you here?”

“I had to know if this black rumor were true.” He drank some of his martini, too much. “My God. Jazz, pop, blues.”

“Don't be so damned sanctimonious. I happen to like jazz, pop, and blues.”

He sighed. “Do you have any idea what this will do to your reputation?”

“I've only been in this business since I was eleven years old. Since I'm so damned dumb, why don't you tell me?”

“Juliana—”

“I
know
what I'm doing, dammit. I don't care what this does to my precious reputation. That's right, I
don't
care. I enjoy playing the Aquarian, and if people don't like it, well then to hell with them. Being J.J. Pepper gets me out of myself, out from under the pressures of being Juliana Fall all the time. It's important to me, Shuji. And if I'm in a funk, this is helping me, not hurting. I need an outlet. And musically, playing here is enriching me, not ruining me.”

Shuji was unimpressed. “Your work in the practice room should be your outlet.”

“My work is my work. I don't want to give that up—I can't. But I need this, too.”

“Let me hear the Chopin,” he said, tight-lipped.

“Now?”

“Yes, why not?” He nodded to the baby grand. “There's a piano.”

“I'm J.J. Pepper here.”

“Play the Chopin, Juliana, or I walk out of here.”

His gaze was hard and direct. Shuji wasn't one to pussyfoot around, and she knew he meant what he said. “And then what?”

“And then I'll remember fondly the eleven-year-old girl who begged me to teach her, not the thirty-year-old ingrate who has turned her back on me and everything we've worked for together for almost twenty years.” His tone was scathing, filled with bitterness, edged with sadness. “You've been J.J. Pepper for eight months. Eight months, damn you, and not a word.”

“I wanted to tell you.”

“You didn't.”

She stiffened. “You're right—I knew what a jackass you'd be about it.”

“The Chopin,” he said.

She got up and walked over to Len. “That's Eric Shuji Shizumi at the end of the bar,” she said, whipping off the turban. Her blond hair tumbled onto her shoulders. “I've lied to you, Len. My real name's Juliana Fall. I'm a concert pianist.”

Len folded his arms on his chest. “Names aren't what's important here. It's who you are, babe, what you want to do, that counts.”

“I don't know the answer to that.”

“Well, until you do, it's okay by me if you want to keep up with your J.J. Pepper act. Just no hairy-assed stuff, okay?” He grinned at her. “Unless you want to do brunch.”

She managed a smile. “That would really kill Shuji. May I play now?”

“Piano's yours, Juliana Fall, muddy bass and all.”

She glanced over at Shuji. He was still working on his martini, not smiling, not understanding, wrapped up in his own hurt and anger. A pang of horror sliced through her as she tried to imagine going on without him. What would she do?

She sat at the piano and played the first chord of Chopin.

But she couldn't continue. She couldn't betray Len, her Club Aquarian audience—J.J. Pepper's audience. She couldn't betray herself. And, finally, she couldn't betray Shuji. Playing the Chopin now, here, would be a lie. He wouldn't see it that way, of course, but she couldn't help that. She switched to a short Duke Ellington piece she thought everyone might like, even Shuji.

But when she finished and turned around, he was gone. In his place at the bar there was only a half-drunk martini.

H
endrik de Geer blew on his frozen fingers as he stood at the edge of Central Park opposite the Beresford. It would be a bitterly cold night. He longed for a bottle of gin, but he had forsworn drink. Sentiment and drink would make him careless. He couldn't permit that to happen. It was clear to him, now that the coward Ryder had told Bloch everything, that the sergeant would have to find out for himself if the Minstrel was lost. He would never settle for anyone else's word; the possibilities for the stone were too tremendous. Hendrik well understood that kind of thinking.

It left him with two choices. One, he could walk away. Two, he could act.

But first, before he made up his mind, he must gather information. He had already discovered that Catharina was being watched. Now he was at the Beresford, and he could see one of Bloch's men standing out at the bus stop in front of the Museum of Natural History, stamping his feet in the cold.

So the daughter was being watched, too. Bloch was taking no chances—he never did—but he was not yet prepared to make his move. The sergeant was a hard, unyielding man with no apparent weakness. He was just starting out in this business, but already he had a solid reputation. He paid well and on time. That was what had drawn Hendrik to his employ. Profit and survival. They had been his chief interests for many years, and if Phillip Bloch wished to make them possible, then Hendrik would work for him.

Several well-dressed men and women, in tuxedos and furs, came out of the Beresford, followed by a stout old woman in an unremarkable wool coat, a scarf tied peasant-style around her head, and ankle boots.

Across the street, Bloch's man threw down his cigarette.

Hendrik squinted as the woman came into the glare of the street lamp, and he saw the plain, square face.

Wilhelmina!

He almost laughed aloud. Of course she would be here! Even given the underworld in which he'd operated for forty years, Wilhelmina Peperkamp remained the most suspicious person he had ever encountered. Ah, Willie. He could see she'd already spotted Bloch's man. Once Hendrik had been attracted to her bluntness and competence and had found her plainness comforting, even appealing. She was so reliable. For a while, that had been enough.

She went across West Eighty-first, walking at a good clip, and Bloch's man started after her. Hendrik stayed where he was. He wasn't worried. Willie had outwitted the Nazis for five years. She would have outwitted them until the end, had she not trusted Hendrik de Geer.

In a few minutes, Bloch's man returned, looking dismayed and frustrated. This time Hendrik did laugh aloud. The man wasn't necessarily incompetent; he simply didn't know the kind of woman with whom he was dealing.

As he reached for a cigar, two men darted out of the dark, cold shadows of the park and came up on either side of the Dutchman. They flashed knives. Hendrik grunted, disgusted. Damned New York! He had no patience now for a mugging. Both men looked very fit, older than he'd have expected. Without a doubt, they thought they were fierce.

“Your wallet, old man,” one said.

Hendrik shrugged, thinking he must be getting old. He should have heard them coming, anticipated this. But now he was at a disadvantage, and he wished not to attract attention. His fingers cold and stiff, he removed his wallet from his trousers pocket and handed it to the man who'd made the demand. The second man kept his knife pointed while his comrade inspected the wallet.

“What are you doing?” Hendrik asked, suspicious. “‘Take the thing and go—”

Wait, he thought. If they were ordinary muggers, they would have taken the thing and gone. They would already have disappeared into the park with their booty. There was no need to check for identification.

They wanted to make sure who he was.

Before they obeyed Master Sergeant Phillip Bloch's orders and killed him.

“Bastard,” Hendrik said without emotion.

“Huh?”

Their puzzled looks quickly changed to surprise, then pain and horror as Hendrik slammed his hand sideways into the throat of the man with his wallet. The second man sliced toward him with his knife, but the Dutchman was ready and dodged, the knife grazing his coat. While the other man choked and sputtered, Hendrik pushed his comrade down, moving fast, with an agility that amazed even him. His opponent had no chance to grab on to him.

He fled, running out into the middle of Central Park West. Cars screeched, horns blared.

Not until he was on the other side of the street in front of the Beresford did Hendrik look back. The two men had scurried away. In front of the museum, Bloch's other man had disappeared. Hendrik grunted to himself without satisfaction.

Twenty years ago he would have killed them all.

 

Aunt Willie had found nothing to her liking in her niece's kitchen and had gone out looking for something to eat. Juliana had taken no offense. Instead, with her aunt gone, she sat at the piano. She didn't expect to be able to practice. There were too many distractions. Yet she did, with an absorption that had eluded her for months. With her uncle dead, her mother not talking, her aunt outside in the dark, her building being watched, with Matthew Stark and his black-brown eyes and leather coat tugging at her emotions, she began to make progress on the Chopin. The real world hadn't thrown her off. It had become not something to escape, but something to express.

So simple.

If only Shuji would understand. But he never would. She remembered when she was eleven and she and her parents had gone to his magnificent Upper East Side house, and she'd thought him the handsomest, most incredible man she'd ever seen. She owned all his recordings, would listen to them late into the night, when her parents thought she was asleep. His ability had made her cry with rage and jealousy and amazement at all he could do and all she couldn't, at least not yet. But when Shuji had taken her alone into his studio, her first words were not to tell him how wonderful he was but to tell him she'd worn white for their introduction because he always wore black.

More than anything else, he'd told her many years later, it was that comment that had prompted him to take her on as his student. He knew he was a strong personality. He had no interest in molding another pianist into a mini-Shuji. He had wanted, encouraged,
demanded
her development as an independent artist.

Now he couldn't understand why she needed to color her hair pink and play jazz in a SoHo nightclub. He wanted her to be independent so long as she didn't break any of his sacred rules.

“The bastard,” she muttered, still playing, “the goddamn
bastard.
”

She ignored the tears burning in her eyes and the fatigue gnawing at her muscles and the hollowness inside her, the cold, raw fear that had nothing to do with diamonds and coincidental deaths and men following her.

Shuji was gone. My God, she thought, what am I going to do?

 

Matthew drank a beer and watched part of a basketball game just to calm down, but neither helped. Weasel, Bloch—where the hell were they? He went for another beer, a Sam Adams, and took two sips as he sat down at the telephone in what passed these days for his study, of which the most notable items were his television and stereo system. His typewriter was covered and had about twelve issues of
Sports Illustrated
stacked on top of it. The bottom one, he noted, went back eight months. He didn't own a computer. Working on one at the newsroom was enough. He didn't like all those goddamn lights blinking at him.

He held the receiver in his hand and told himself not to do it.

He did it anyway. He had the number memorized, had already started to dial it twice this evening.

There were four rings, and then her voice came over the message machine. “I'm unavailable at the moment, but if you leave your name, number, and a brief message…”

“Juliana, if you're there, pick up the damn phone. If not—”

The machine cut off. “Matthew.” She sounded vague, spaced. “What is it?”

The rigidity of his muscles began to ease as he listened to her. She had a beautiful voice. It made him able to envision her eyes, vivid and filled with energy. He began to imagine his mouth on hers. You're slipping fast, buddy, he thought, and drank more beer.

“Were you practicing?” he asked.

“Mm, yes, I think so.”

“You
think
so?”

“I sort of lost track. That hasn't happened to me in a while. I don't think about where I am, what I'm doing, I just get totally absorbed. Then when I stop, it takes me a while…” She paused to take a breath, as if she'd been running. “A while to come back from wherever I've been, I guess. I was working on—what was it?” She sounded drugged. “I mean, I know what I was. It was the Chopin. It's just not easy to articulate my thoughts after concentrating so hard. You should see what I'm like after I've been at it for seven or eight hours at a stretch.”

“Dizzier that you are right now?”

“Oh, much.”

Hard to imagine. But suddenly Matthew wanted to know what motivated this gorgeous, eccentric woman. What drove her to do what she did? What kept her at it? She had so goddamn much energy. She'd just returned from Antwerp, for the love of God. He could barely concentrate on a basketball game, never mind Chopin. He remembered how she'd been sweating after her Lincoln Center performance and yet still had been able to settle down. Did the woman ever just chill out?

In Vermont, he remembered. No piano there.

“I'm glad I'm not your neighbor,” he said, hearing the humor in his tone.

She laughed, that cool, sexy laugh with just a hint of nuttiness. “The Beresford has very solid walls—that's one reason I live here. Aunt Willie doesn't like it. Wouldn't, I mean. But you were saying?”

“Juliana, this thing with the Minstrel, your uncle, Rachel Stein—it's damn serious.”

“I know that.” Clipped, pissed. Back on earth.

“I don't mean to sound patronizing, but it's more serious than it was even yesterday. Listen to me, Juliana. I want you to stay in your apartment as much as possible, and I want you to play piano and stay the hell out this mess.”

“Is it Otis Raymond? Has something happened to him?”

He appreciated the note of worry and concern in her voice. “Not that I know of.”

“Then what?”

Phil Bloch knows your name, knows you were in Antwerp, knows you could have the stone. Never mind whether you do or you don't. Never mind what you know and what you haven't told me. Just get the hell out, sweetheart.

But he said only, “New information. I'll explain another time. Watch yourself.”

“Matthew—”

“Do it, Juliana. Trust me on this, all right? God help me. I know what I'm talking about.”

For a few seconds she was silent. Then, “You know who's behind all this, don't you?”

She sounded breathless and excited and scared, and Stark knew if he gave her more, she'd be back on his doorstep, in deeper trouble than ever. He could almost see the brightness of those ice-cool emerald eyes. Christ, he had to find Bloch! But what good would that do? Coming down on Bloch's head might only further endanger Weasel. Goddamn Ryder…

“I can't talk,” he said. “Just watch yourself.”

“Won't talk, you mean.” She was cool again, one tenacious lady. “You're in Washington, aren't you?”

“Take care of yourself. Why not take a trip to Vermont?”

She hung up on him.

 

Catharina sat at her bedroom window and looked down at the Christmas lights on Park Avenue. Tears streamed down her face, but she made no attempt to brush them away. Her thoughts had drifted back more than forty years, to the last Christmas with her mother and father in Amsterdam. She was just a teenager but had taken charge of the household. She'd planned for the holiday for weeks, scrounging up ingredients to make
speculaas
and
appelbeignets,
and Hendrik had brought rum and cocoa. What a feast they'd had! Johannes had managed to come, so tall and stoic, and Ann, so sweet and sad. Johannes had been marked for deportation to the Nazi labor camps and was in hiding, himself an
onderduiker,
and Ann, as the Jewish partner in a mixed marriage, was to report for sterilization procedures. She had refused and was in hiding too. Her family—her parents and younger sisters—had been deported the previous year and there had been no official word on where they were. The rumors were too dreadful to believe.

But that Christmas they'd ignored so much, laughing and carrying on, and afterward Catharina had sent goodies back with Wilhelmina for Rachel and Abraham. In a rare display of affection and pride, her mother had hugged both her daughters and told them they were fine young women. Hendrik had said he agreed, and when no one was looking, he'd kissed Catharina on the cheek. How she'd blushed! For hours after, her face burned. He was twenty-five and a hero in the Underground Resistance; everyone adored him.