Home Fires (38 page)

“I see…”

“I don’t want you to start the same investigation, so I’m not going to give you that name. All I want is for you to look around for the Z man. He had a secretary, didn’t he? And a Girl Friday? Some kind of assistant?”

“Yes, sir. Yes, he did. Chrissie was the secretary. I think the other girl was Wendy something.”

There was a pause.

“Wendy Kaya. She was a criminology major just out of UCTI, but he said she was smarter than a good many people who’d been in the business for twenty years.”

“Find Zygmunt if you can.” Skip’s fingers drummed the table. “Find those girls. The second should be better but either one of them. Get the story and get back to me.”

“Yes, sir.” Boris paused. “There’s a man here who wants to see you. I know you told Dianne not to bother you today, but since you’re on the phone now, I thought I’d tell you. He … well, he doesn’t have hands, for one thing. He says he’s a friend of yours, but he won’t even give his name.”

“I understand. I know him, and he is. Tell him to wait. Say I’ll be there in an hour and I’ll see him first. Is he carrying anything?”

“Yes, sir. An old lunch bucket. I suppose it’s in case he gets hungry.”

Skip smiled. “No doubt you’re right. Tell him I’ll be there.”

After picking up his new card at the manager’s office, Skip went to the bank and left with three thousand noras in his briefcase. When he reached the offices of Burton, Grison, and Ibarra, Achille was lounging in the waiting room, his left hook through the handle of a battered black lunch box. Skip nodded, motioned to him, and led him into a small conference room.

“I bring what you give me, mon. I give him back. You got the money?”

“Right here.”

“You show him, I show you.”

“Fair enough.” Skip opened his briefcase and produced packets of bills. “Three thousand was the price we agreed on. These are fifties. There are twenty banded together in each stack, so each stack is a thousand noras. If you want to count them, go ahead.”

“I look at, mon.” Achille’s right hook drew a packet to him. His left held it down while his right tore the paper band.

“Some are new, some aren’t. The bank didn’t have sixty used fifties.”

Achille nodded—mostly, as it seemed, to himself. “Look good, mon. Look real good.” Picking up the lunch box, he put it on Skip’s desk. “You look, too. I don’ cheat you, mon.”

Opened, the lunch box revealed a soiled red rag. Skip took it out.

His gun, the sleek gray pistol he had wrenched from Rick Johnson’s dead hand, lay upon an even dirtier rag that had once been white. Skip picked the gun up, took out the magazine, and pulled back the slide far enough to see that there was a round in the chamber.

“I don’ shoot him, mon. I don’ do nothin’ to him. He is like you give him to me.”

“It’s good to see it again.”

“I got more. Open like before.”

Skip did.

“That man got shot? You got his gun. I got his bullets.”

Skip lifted the dirty white rag, finding it heavy and tightly knotted.

“I don’ want him to make no noise,” Achille explained.

“I understand. How much for the ammunition?”

Achille shook his head. “You say friends? I can be good friend, too.”

Skip felt cartridges through the rag and set it down. “I understand. You’ve earned that money. Take it.”

Achille did, inserting the still-banded packets in his pockets dexterously, before he pushed the other bills into a loose stack.

“Want some help with those?”

“I do it, mon. I drop, I get back.” He held the stack down with the side of his left hook and folded it over with his right, held it between both hooks, and bit the fold. One hook pulled his filthy shirt out; he bent his head and dropped the bills into it

“You’re amazing, Achille.”

“Got to be, mon. You know what I do now? Get new hands, the best. They got good here.”

Skip nodded.

“I clean up, first. You think I like be dirty? I don’, only I been long time. On ship I get shower. Got soap in bottle. I pour on my head, rub with arms, only I don’ wash clothes. Need woman for wash. New clothes now an’ get room.”

Skip smiled. “And after that?”

“New hands, the best. Go somewhere, not here. Only I need paper for police. You know?”

“Indeed I do. Wait a minute.” Skip clicked an icon, scrolled, wrote on a pad, and tore off the sheet. “Can you read this?”

Achille glanced at the sheet. “Sure, mon. Miguel Fonseca.”

“Correct. He may be able to help you. Tell him I sent you.”

“I got it, mon. What cost?”

Skip considered. “It should be under two hundred. He’ll ask a lot more if he knows how much you have.”

“You say him?”

“No. Of course not.”

“I don’ neither, mon.” Achille rose, grinning. “I got hands, know what I do here? I hold gun, you give me noras, an’ I run.”

“Would you really do that? I don’t believe you.”

Achille shrugged. “Maybe. I don’ know.
Merci pour votre aide
, mon. Get new hands, papers, go new place. Go Cayenne, maybe. You know Cayenne?”

Skip shook his head.

“I don’ neither. Maybe nice place for me. Only I don’ see you no more.” Achille held out his spiked hook.

Skip rose and shook it. “It’s possible we’ll meet again. I doubt it, but you never know.”

“Is so, mon.”

A minute or more after Achille had gone, Skip sat down. For a still longer time, he stared at nothing, sitting quietly with both hands flat upon the polished surface of his desk.

At last he picked up one of the compact telephones there. “Dianne, there’s a legal arm down at the south end of the city that represents all the armed services; I think it may be called the Judge Advocate’s Department. I want to talk to somebody there, a receptionist if I have to, or a liaison with the civilian justice establishment, if they have one.”

He was silent for a few seconds, listening.

“Yes, whatever you can get. I don’t know who I should be talking to, but I’ve got to start somewhere.” He hung up.

Another telephone chimed at once, and he answered it. Boris’s long, worried face filled the tiny screen. “I’ve been looking for Stanley Zygmunt, Christine Vergara, and Wendy Kaya, sir.”

Skip nodded. “What have you got?”

“Stanley Zygmunt is dead, sir. That was why I called. His body turned up this morning. As of now, I haven’t been able to find out where it was or how he died. Or even what condition it was in. They’re being very closemouthed about the whole thing.”

“I see.”

“The women seem to be missing, sir. Both of them. The police have them listed as missing persons.” Boris cleared his throat. “There’s no investigation of missing persons, sir. I’m sure you know. They just wait for something to show up on the computer.”

“Correct. Discontinue your inquiry—I don’t want to lose you.”

For a moment Boris was quiet; then he said, “Thank you, sir.”

“You’re welcome.” Skip hung up.

REFLECTION 19

Cobblestones

Someone once said that to destroy a man one need only bring his work to naught. I would say instead that to destroy a man the Fates need only grant his wish. For me—

What of Chelle? She went into space, saying that when she returned she would have a rich contracto and I a young and beautiful contracta. Chelle hasn’t been destroyed, nor would I wish her to be. As for me … Well, I wished more deeply. For Chelle on Johanna or Gehenna or wherever it was, there can only have been the wish to live. That wish, and that wish alone, if not always at least on many days. She will have wanted life and natural sleep, and no death, no pain.

She very nearly died. Without Jane Sims, she would have died, perhaps; she can’t have thought a lot about Earth and a rich contracto. I dreamed of Chelle for hours, almost every day. Granted one wish, I would have wished for what I got, Chelle stepping out of the shuttle, Chelle in my arms.

Yes, even though she did not know me.

I knew then what I had known earlier, although I was loath to admit it. I knew I’d have to win her again, win her a second time; and I told myself that as I had won her once I would win her again, and that I’d begin my second courtship with enormous advantages I had lacked for the first: wealth, position, and a contract already in force.

They have not availed. Should I give up? To give up would be to welcome death, to agree to it, to surrender to it. I will not. My wish has never changed. “If wishes were cobblestones there would be no grass.” Cobblestones could not hurt more.

I never welcomed death on the
Rani
. Some hid and some cowered, and I understood both all too well. The courtroom had given me so much practice, putting on a brave face for clients I knew would perish, pressing each argument with every fact I could lay hand to—and every sophistry. With conviction, above all. Conviction is the seed of passion, and before nine juries in ten passion will carry the day. How often have I won cases I knew were lost?

Ellen Woodward had a rifle that might have served some soldier fifty years ago, Connell a pistol Ellen had to explain to him, and Auciello a kitchen knife. I told all three to follow me and I kept my game face, though my heart pounded and my bowels had turned to slop. They followed. Ellen’s bullet took their leader in the face as he aimed at me, and we won.

I won’t surrender now. Third time’s the charm, they say. Once more, just once more, and I win.
Omnia vincit amor.

20

’TIL THEN

Winter had ended, spring had forgotten the city, and the heat had come. A lanky young woman with mismatched hands sweated beside two open windows, under a sodden sheet.

*   *   *

There was a street carnival, and it was already very late. She dodged a man with the pale face of an absentminded angel; he was juggling too many things to count, balls of silver and gold, painted eggs, a black-and-white kitten, a little brown rabbit that looked dead. The crowd jostled her and she jostled back, glad she was on skates when they had none.

A fire-eater lit his torch with a great puff of orange flame; and the rockets came in as if it had been a signal, rockets that flew without a sound, the explosions throwing stones and bodies high into the air. No one in the crowd paid the least attention. She tried to hit the dirt, to fall facedown and take what shelter she could from the cobblestone street; but the crowd pressed her too tightly, the big, fat, frowning, moon-faced man shoving her aside.

“Where’s Mick?” She had intended a demand and voiced a plea. An exploding rocket shook the ground and somehow harmed her head. “Where’s Mick? I know you know. Please tell me! I’ve got to find Mick.”

The moon-faced man seemed not to hear her and pushed past again, his expression intent and inscrutable.

“Mick! Skip! Skip!”

Someone had opened a cage of white doves, a cage that must have held thousands. They fluttered above the crowd, which fired on them.

“Don! Donny! Where are you, Donny? Where have you gone?”

Something was shaking her shoulders. She trembled, her teeth chattering, as a wounded dove spattered her feet with blood.

“Wake up, Chelle.”

Her face was wet. She blinked.

“That’s better. I’m right here, darling. Don’t be afraid.”

He lifted her, sat beside her, and put his arm around her. “What were you dreaming about?”

She wiped away tears with the edge of the sheet, and for a moment failed to recognize him.

“You were talking in your sleep. Then you started crying, and I thought I’d better wake you up.”

“I’ve got a headache.” Pressing her temples eased the pain, but only a little.

“Sure, darling,” Mick Tooley said. He left, and returned moments later with white tablets and a tinkling glass. Chelle swallowed the tablets without protest and sipped from the glass. Soda water.

“Drink it all,” Tooley said, “that’s what you need.”

She nodded. “Shouldn’t you be at the office?”

He glanced at his watch. “I will be in twenty minutes.”

“About that job…”

He shook his head. “I can’t, and I wouldn’t if I could. How would it look? He’s a senior partner, and he’ll be in the office two or three times a week.”

“If I could earn some money—”

“We’d get a better place and get out of his building. Right. And I’ll find you a job, and we will. Only not at Burton, Grison, and Ibarra. That’s out.”

“How was I last night?”

“Fine. You were fine.” He kissed her forehead. “Now listen up. You drink all of that, then lie back down and go back to sleep if you can. Let those pills work. You’ll wake up again around ten, and I’ll call you if we can go out to lunch together.”

She nodded, and found that nodding hurt. “You can’t say for sure?”

He shook his head. “It’ll depend on how things go at the office. Every day is different. I told you.”