Smart Moves (16 page)

Povey said something in a language I didn’t understand and shifted the knife for a full-weighted lunge at my belly. He never made it. The thud and roll of the boat came together, as he went tripping over the side and I rolled helplessly to the edge of the boat, which almost turned over. As the boat righted itself, I could see Einstein contentedly watching the success of his second attack on an enemy vessel.

I forced myself up on one elbow and looked for Povey. No sign, not a ripple.

“Get my gun,” I shouted at Einstein. He might come up anywhere, try to get at us or back up here.

“I don’t shoot guns,” Einstein said.

Nothing happened in the water. I couldn’t believe that Povey couldn’t swim. I couldn’t swim, Einstein couldn’t swim, but Povey was another story. Still nothing happened in the water. I crawled over to the side of the boat and tried to grab onto Einstein’s bow. I wanted my .38 in my hand, even if I couldn’t hit anything with it. When my hand was touching the rail, Povey’s arm shot out of the water and gripped me. I didn’t have time to think, only to imagine myself being pulled under that water. I wrapped my legs around the wooden mast in Povey’s boat and felt myself stretch out and my arm pop. Povey’s bandaged hand pulled at my sleeve. My arm burned with pain, but my legs hugged the mast as I tried to wriggle free of my jacket. Povey still hadn’t come up for air.

“Doesn’t the son-of-a-bitch have to breathe?” I screamed as my legs were about to go limp.

My eyes closed in pain and then opened. I was on my back about to be pulled into the water. Upside down I could see the frail figure of Einstein standing unsteadily in his boat, holding something over the side in two hands. He let the thing go and something plunked into the water. My arm was released. I pulled it back in agony.

“What did you hit him with,” I groaned.

“Anchor,” said Einstein, pulling the rope back up to retrieve the anchor. “Guns I do not approve of, but murder I approve of less.”

Povey didn’t come up again. Einstein tied Povey’s boat to his and began the slow sail back to the dock, while I scanned the water for Povey, keeping my arms well within the confines of the small boat. As Einstein headed for shore, I almost passed out from the pain. Once he took out a notebook and jotted something down. “Images come at the times most unexpected,” he said to me.

At the dock, I kept looking back, even when two men helped us out of the boat. “What was that shooting?” said one leathery old guy.

“What happened to the white-haired guy who stole Al’s boat?” asked his equally old but slightly less leathery companion.

Einstein handed me my .38. With one hand it was a little awkward getting it back in the holster but I managed. The two old guys looked at each other, at us, and then out into the lake.

“Never saw anything like this before,” said the less leathery one.

“What about Eric on the roof over at the Glenn place?” said the other.

“That was worse,” said the first guy, “but not like this.”

We left them ranking disasters and I staggered alongside Einstein, who asked, “Did you bring a car? I don’t drive and we should get you to a hospital.”

“Walker,” I gasped. “His car, around here someplace. I think I’m going to pass out. Get out of the way.”

Before I could fall, someone caught me. It wasn’t Einstein. He was in front of me.

“Thanks,” I said to whoever was behind me, as he helped me sit on the edge of the dock. “Could have cracked my head.”

“What happened to your arm?” said Carlisle’s caddy, who eased me down. “Damn thing looks like it’s on by a thread.”

Cheered by his observation, I bit my lower lip and watched Carlisle stride over to us from a clump of trees.

“Are you a caddy or the Red Cross?” he shouted at the caddy. Carlisle’s little hat bobbed on his head and threatened to slide off.

“Hurt his arm or something,” the caddy explained. “Looks like it’s hanging by a string or something.”

Carlisle looked at me and then at Einstein. Recognition crossed his pudgy face. “You’re somebody, aren’t you?” he asked Einstein, pointing a wood at him.

“Yes,” Einstein admitted.

“You’re a doctor … Doctor … you’re Einstein, for Christ’s sake,” Carlisle said, scanning Einstein while I lay in pain. Carlisle turned to me. “He’s the real Einstein.”

“I know,” I moaned.

Carlisle got on one knee next to me and put down his wood. He looked at me and at my arm and whispered, “Einstein, for God’s sake. You know him or something?”

“I taught him everything he knows,” I whispered, closing my eyes.

Something grabbed my limp arm and my eyes shot open, thinking that Povey had crawled out of the water, determined to drag me back into the dark lake. Carlisle had a grip on my wrist with one hand and my shoulder with the other.

“This will hurt,” he said.

“Wait,” I panted, trying to stop him with my free hand. But I was too weak and too late. He pulled and there was a loud pop, and a monster whose teeth looked like a beartrap gobbled the limp cord that had been my right arm. This time I passed out.

11

When I opened my eyes, I saw Carlisle looking down at me. I also saw a ceiling, which meant that I was no longer on that dock next to the golf course.

“What’d you do?” I said around a dry, swollen tongue.

“Put your dislocated shoulder back together,” Carlisle said, “I’m a rotten golfer but a hell of a doctor. Try to move it. I’ve got six more holes to play and at this pace I won’t be finished till Labor Day.”

I sat up and looked around. Einstein was across the room looking at me. No Walker. No caddy. I tried to move my right arm, expecting agony, but none came.

“It doesn’t hurt,” I said.

“Of course it doesn’t hurt,” Carlisle said, standing up. “Everything’s where it belongs, instead of where it doesn’t belong. That’s the scientific explanation. You want some advice?”

“Sure,” I said, feeling the cot under me as I put my feet on the floor.

“Take a shave. You look like some killer out of Dick Tracy.”

Carlisle took off before I could thank him. There were golf balls to lose, miss, and mangle. He had no time on his free Saturday for murder attempts and dislocated detectives.

“You are better?” said Einstein, stepping toward me.

“I’m better,” I said. “You saved my life back there on the high seas.”

“And you saved mine,” he said. “I’ve never killed anyone before. I’m finding it very difficult, very difficult.”

I stood up without falling, tried my legs and found them working. I took a few steps like the Scarecrow in
The Wizard of Oz
, and pronounced myself ready for duty.

“He was trying to kill you,” I reminded Einstein.

“I am aware of that,” he said, fishing in his pocket for something.

“He was working for the Nazis,” I added.

“That too I know,” said Einstein, taking out his pipe and putting it to his mouth.

“And he’s probably not dead,” I concluded, reaching for the door. “That was a small anchor and Povey is a big man. Besides, I looked back and didn’t see the body come up. Anyone report a body floating out there while I was out?”

“I don’t …” Einstein began, removing the pipe.

“Look, I’m trying to cheer you up by telling you that a paid killer who tried to shoot us isn’t dead, that he’s probably soaking wet and mad as hell and ready to try for you again. Like ‘Wild Bill’ Elliot, I’m a peaceable man, but we’d both be happier if Povey were squaring off against Old Nick right now. You want to make big bombs that kill thousands of Germans, but cracking the skull of one Nazi goon is too much for you.”

“Your point is well taken,” Einstein admitted, following me out the door.

“Sure it is,” I agreed, “You handle the violence and leave the philosophy to me.”

Einstein chuckled as he followed me out the door and down a small white-painted wooden corridor. We opened the screen door at the end and went out into the afternoon. I patted my gun, tested my arm again, and looked around for Povey. People were playing on the golf course, but Carlisle was nowhere in sight. Neither was Walker, though his car was where we had left it. Einstein watched the golfers and I watched everything. I was about ready to give up, head back to the clubhouse, and call a cab, when Walker came running from the lake, his jacket flapping, his long legs gangling. He should have been faster.

“What happened? Professor Einstein, are you all … is anything …?” he panted.

“Where were you?” I asked.

He stood, trying to catch his breath as he looked around, right to left, back to front, scanning the horizon as if trying to remember where he had been, trying to see it. “Looking for you, around the lake, everywhere,” he stammered.

“Did you happen to run into Povey?”

“Povey?”

“Big white-haired guy with fangs, carrying a giant scimitar and a Tommy gun or two, sopping wet with a bandaged hand,” I prompted. “You couldn’t miss him.”

“You’re joking,” Walker said soberly. “Perhaps a little.”

“Let’s just get the hell out of here,” I said, knocking on the window of the car.

There wasn’t much conversation on the way back to Princeton. Walker asked Einstein again how he was, and Einstein said he thought his cold was much better. I sat alone in the back, brooding and watching Einstein’s mane bob on his shoulders, in contrast to Walker’s neatly shaved neck and short hair nailed down with Wildroot.

With luck, pluck, and a little sleep, I was keeping Einstein alive, but I knew luck was the big reason. We hit Einstein’s house and he invited us both in, though I had the feeling he didn’t want us to take him up on it. We took him up on it. He told me where a razor was when we came through the door. Einstein spotted the empty milk bottle I had left on the table, shrugged, and left it there. I grunted my way up the stairs as they moved to the study.

The bathroom was small, a towel on the floor, the medicine cabinet partly opened. I opened it all the way and found an old straight razor, with a pearl handle and something written on it in German. I lathered, shaved without cutting my throat, looked at myself in the mirror, wiped the drops of soap from my shirt and grinned a horrible lopsided grin at the pug in the mirror who looked as if he were having a good time. It was then I decided for the two-hundredth time that the guy in the mirror was some kind of looney. My ex-wife Anne had seen it in my face long before I did, that young-old face with dancing brown eyes and a smashed nose, smiling when things were complicated and people with assorted weapons were trying to take him apart for scrap.

“This is what it’s all about,” I told the grinning fool in the mirror, not knowing what I was talking about but knowing I meant it and it was the truth. I waited for an echo to answer “Fraud,” or “Nevermore,” but there was no echo and no answer. I dried myself off with the towel from the floor and went back downstairs. Without checking on Einstein, I went outside, looked both ways and into bushes for a white-haired Hungarian assassin, a breed that had recently been spotted in the area, and dashed across the street. A curtain moved in the living room of
the
house I was heading for, but no face appeared. I went up the steps and knocked. No answer. I knocked again, louder. No answer. I knocked again and shouted loud enough to be heard in Ohio. “Open the damn door or I’m going to send J. Edgar a very nasty letter,” I shouted.

The door opened and Spade reached out and pulled me in, closing the door behind me.

“You’re supposed to be protecting Einstein,” I said, “not dying your hair.” His hair was about three shades darker than it had been in the theater. Instead of making him look younger, the darker hair made the contrast with his lined face even more evident.

“Now you’re getting cruel,” he said, smoothing back his hair.

“I’m sorry,” I said and I was. “But where the hell have you guys been?”

“We’re not perfect,” he said, pointing toward the living room.

“I noticed,” I said. “Povey tried to kill me. He tried to kill Einstein. You said you’d be watching him.”

Archer was standing tall and stoop-shouldered at the window, looking back at me as if I were a job for Bromo-Seltzer. “We were watching,” Archer said. “You want a Pespi?”

“No, I … you got a sandwich with that Pepsi?”

“We got a sandwich,” Spade said to me, and then to Archer he said, “It’s your turn to make sandwiches.”

“My …” Archer began, dyspeptically pointing to himself. “What about breakfast? That doesn’t count? It’s not a meal? You forgot about breakfast?”

Spade advanced into the room, his false teeth clicking with rage. “I didn’t forget breakfast, but someone in this room forgot coffee and rolls at a little after ten. Someone forgot, someone who can check it in the log. Does someone want me to get the log?”

“Forget the sandwiches,” I said. “Just forget the damn sandwiches and tell me where the hell you were.”

Spade and Archer glared at each other for about ten seconds and turned reluctantly to me.

“First place,” said Archer, “don’t stand out there on the porch and yell at us. The whole neighborhood knows the FBI is in here now, maybe the entire Fifth Column.”

“And the Girl Scouts,” added Spade.

“And the Girl Scouts,” agreed Archer. “Don’t do that. Povey isn’t working alone.”

“What the hell has that …” I started.

“While you were playing Fletcher Christian on the pond, we were piecing the network together,” said Spade. “You sure you don’t want that sandwich?”

“No sandwich,” I said. “What network?”

“We have no legal obligation to tell you,” Archer said.

“You sons of …”

“But we will,” Archer went on. “Povey works for a German born in the United States, a man named Zeltz, Carl Zeltz. Zeltz is the one who helped set up the fake movie business.”

“He’s got a flair for the dramatic,” said Spade, moving to the sofa to plop down and adjust his hair.

“Right,” said Archer, pacing as he told his tale. “And Zeltz has an assistant, a young assistant who was assigned to watch Einstein and find out how much Einstein is involved in a project we can’t tell you about.”