Soft touch (20 page)

"You get hurt again and again and again," the big one said. "We've got all the time there is. Again and again and again, until we get the money."

One of the small dark ones, the one who hadn't worked on my foot, said, "Hold it a minute." He turned on the bed lamp, put his hand on my chin and turned my face toward the light and looked into my eyes.

"What is the date, Jamison?" He had an accent I couldn't place.

"Let me think. April. Sometime in April."

"What did you do yesterday?"

"Yesterday? I worked, I guess." I tried to remember yesterday. I could not remember anything about it with any distinctness.

"When did you last see Vincente Biskay?"

"Vince? My God, it's been . . . thirteen years. But. . ."

"But what?"

"I just had the funny feeling that I'd seen him recently. Just for a moment. With a ring on his finger with a red stone in it. But that's nonsense."

"Are you falling for that?" the big one asked.

"You are too heavy-handed, my friend," the one who had questioned me said. "I don't think our friend is bright enough to simulate a classic case of traumatic amnesia. I suspect you gave him a nice little concussion. And I do not think he would stand so much pain so well."

The big one looked dismayed. "What does it mean?"

"It means there will be a return of memory, either bit by bit or all at once. In ten minutes, ten days, or ten weeks. Until then there isn't a thing we can do."

"Memory of what?" I asked.

The little one looked down at me with no expression. He glanced at his wrist. "It is three in the morning on Saturday the fourteenth day of June," he said.

I stared at him without comprehension. "Are you crazy?"

"I'm not lying to you. You have a lot to remember. Start with Biskay. Try to remember Biskay. And try to remember money. A great deal of money."

"Who are you? What do you want?" 152

"Well wait until you remember."

"Where's my wife?"

"She's no longer here. She hasn't been here for over a month."

"Where is she? Where the hell is she?"

"Nobody seems to know."

They had another whispered conference in a far corner of the room. The one who had damaged my foot dressed it deftly, using gauze from the medicine cabinet. He and the big one left. I heard them go down the stairs. The other one stared at me for a little while, lips pursed, and then followed them, turning the light out as he left the room.

Biskay and money. I wondered how Vince was, wondered what he had been doing all these years. The fourteenth of June. Two months gone. I could not believe it. I tried to make myself believe it, tried to capture lost memories. When I was small we had a small gray cat for nearly a year. Its name was Misty. For weeks after it was run over, I kept seeing it out of the corner of my eye, just out of my range of vision. And I would turn, but of course it was not there because I had watched my father bury it, and I had put up a cross for it.

These memories were like that gray cat. They seemed to be there, but as soon as I could catch the hint of one and try to face it directly, it would be gone.

One memory, or pseudo-memory, was clear long enough for me to grasp it. There was sunlight in the bedroom. Tinker Velbiss sat naked at the dressing table, brushing her red hair. That, of course, was absurd.

And then something about a copper screen, holes in a screen. But that was gone too.

I wondered if the man had lied to me about Lorraine. Why would she go away? Where could she go?

My foot throbbed and burned. And I felt the growth of a cold anger, an anger born of pain and humiliation and indignity. No matter what had happened in the lost months, these men had no right to do this to me. And it seemed easier and more satisfying to think of how to untie myself than to try to explore memories that were

not there. I tested my good foot and my hands carefully, each in turn. I could touch the bonds with my fingers. It felt as though they had used neckties. It was a Hollywood bed with a stubby headboard, no footboard. From the angle of my wrists, it seemed that the other ends of the bonds were tied to the frame. They had left the bed lamp on the bedside table lighted, but I could not lift my head high enough to see either wrist.

I pulled myself as far to my right as I could. I pulled until I felt that I was dislocating my left shoulder. It gave me a few inches of slack on the right wrist. I moved my right arm back and forth as far as the slack permitted, rubbing the binding against the metal edge of the bed frame. It slid smoothly. I strained to change the angle. After several attempts I felt a small catch of fabric on an edge or roughness of metal. I worked at it, resting from time to time. I felt the tiny rippings, the threads being pulled loose. Yet when I yanked hard at it, it held firm. The frequent yanking had forced the wrist loop so tight my hand was numb. The awkward position made an agony in the stretched muscles of my arm and shoulder.

I felt that I could not free myself. I gave a final convulsive effort, using the last of my fading strength. There was a sudden rip and pop of taut fabric and my arm was free. I laid it across my belly and rested for a time, breathing hard, feeling the strain and pain go out of the muscles. I loosened the wrist knot with my teeth and then lay quietly, working my numb fingers, feeling the needles of sensation return.

I rolled onto my left shoulder, reached over and, in a few minutes, released my left wrist. I sat up, massaging my hands, rubbing my arms. And heard footsteps on the stairs.

There was a heavy glass ashtray on the bedside table. I picked it up with my left hand and lay back, spreading my arms as before, the ashtray out of sight over the far edge of the bed. I could only hope that it was one of them, and he would not turn on the main lights. I turned my head toward the door and closed my eyes, not com-154

pletely, left them open just enough to see him vaguely. And as he came in, I groaned.

He came to the bed. He leaned over me, just enough to be within the sweeping circle of my right arm. I swung it around and caught the nape of his neck and smashed the heavy ashtray full into his face. It fell from my hand onto my belly. He made a pale sound, moving weakly. I picked it up again and swung it against his face. This time it shattered. He was one of the dark ones, not the one who had worked on my foot. He collapsed across me, slipping back toward the floor. I held him and lowered him gently to the floor beside the bed. His face was finished for all time. I strained over the side of the bed and went through his clothing. There was no gun on him. There was a pocket knife, a tiny gold thing, flat, with a single blade. I used it to cut my ankles free. I hitched myself to the end of the bed and sat there for a moment steeling myself to the point where I could chance putting my weight on the damaged foot. I stood with all my weight on my left leg and tentatively pressed my right foot against the floor. The room swam and tilted and I sat down again. I tried again. I was able to bear it, though it made me sick and dizzy.

The toy knife was not a weapon. I remembered my .22 automatic, wondered why it had not occurred to me sooner. I hobbled to the bureau. It was gone from its usual place in the drawer. I had thrown it into . . . And the memory was gone. Something about darkness. I shook my head in a vain effort to clear it, but only awakened an area of pain behind my left ear. I touched it with my fingertips. It had the pressure and sensitivity of an infection, and the feeling of heat.

I took a sock from my bureau drawer and went into the bathroom, taking small quick steps on the damaged foot. When I turned the bathroom light on I saw Lorraine before me on the floor, her head at a sick angle. I gasped with shock and then she faded abruptly and was gone. It was as though I had stared fixedly at her for a long time and then turned quickly and saw the retinal after-image of her on the bare tile floor in that

moment before it faded and was gone. I felt as if I were losing my mind.

I opened the medicine cabinet and took a jar of cream deodorant and slipped it down into the toe of the sock. It was of heavy glass. When I swung the sock it had a lethal weight.

There were two more of them. Two that I knew about. The big one and the one who had worked on my foot. But there could be more. I went into the bedroom and looked at the one on the floor. He seemed to be breathing very slowly and very heavily. I turned out the table lamp and went to the bedroom phone. I heard the dial tone. I dialed zero. The operator answered. I asked for police headquarters.

"Police headquarters, Sergeant Ascher."

"Let me talk to Lieutenant Heissen." I heard my own hushed voice ask for a name I had never heard before. Someone I did not know. There had been a Heissen a long time ago. Paul. A brave and stubborn and immovable high school center.

"He isn't on duty."

Fear came from some inexplicable source. Something in the guts. Frail and crackling, like paper too close to a fire, writhing and browning in the heat.

The sergeant was saying, "Hello? Hello?" as I gently replaced the phone on the cradle. I could not understand or rationalize the fear. I was in a train as it plunged through a long tunnel. I saw the tunnel lights whip by me, illuminating fragments of scenes I could not understand.

And I heard another one on the stairs. m I moved as quickly as I could and brought too much weight on my right foot so that for a few moments I was in a great hollow place full of echoes and little dots of brilliance whirled and swam behind my eyes. I did not fall. I moved to the far side of the door, and when the tall shadow came in through the doorway, I swung the heavy sock with all the furious strength of panic. And felt and heard the hard glass jar fragment against the skull. And sensed, beyond that, the sick crumbling 156

of the skull itself. I moved to catch him, but my weight came wrong on my right foot and he was too heavy and he slipped away and fell with a heaviness that filled the night and the silence.

There was a hoarse call from downstairs, a call of panic and question and alarm. I was on my knees in darkness. Clumsy hands on his clothing, fumbling, pawing. He was on his face. Levered him over with grunt of effort. Bulk of metal under the breast of the coat. Cold serrated grip that fitted into the chill oiled sweat of the palm of my hand. The gun felt long and muzzle-heavy. I moved on my knees toward the doorway, struck the dead foot, fell forward, half in and half out of the bedroom. The lower hall light was on. When he reached the head of the stairs, an instant after I fell, he was in silhouette. The trigger pull was stiff. It fired. A most curious sound. A smothered sound. The way a man in church might muffle a cough in his Sunday handkerchief.

The man at the head of the stairs was taking a step forward. He touched his toe to the floor and then swung his foot back, so that it was like a dance step, quite slow. He took another step back and his back was against the wall and he made a long frightened sound. "Maaaaaamm!" he cried, lost and goatlike.

And I fired twice again. Each time the sound was appreciably louder, but the last was no louder than the sound a book would make dropped flat on a rug. Then he took half an aimless step toward the stairs, bowed with an antique grace, plunged. I listened to the inconsequential rattle and thumble of his fall, heard him come to rest in silence. Heard a tiny gagging noise and then nothing.

Tunes came into my mind and I felt my lips spread back in the kind of grin that you acquire when you bump into somebody with an awkward carelessness. Long long ago there was a picture of a murderer. With a song of his own. "Mighty Like a Rose." I whistled it between my teeth, a tinny sound in the silent house. Just the refrain. Over and over. I backed on my hands and knees into the room and touched the muzzle of the gun to

the head of the big one, backed off an inch and pulled the trigger. Don't know what to call him but he's mighty like a rose. And the same to the one with the ruined face. The big one did not move when I fired. The dark one bucked and drummed his heels and flapped at the floor with one hand and sighed. I wondered what dreams the leaden pellet had smashed, down into what dark corridors it had dived. Don't know what to call him, but . . .

I turned on a light. I did not look at them. I put a sock on my torn foot with utmost tenderness, and edged it gingerly into my shoe, biting my Up against the pain. I laced it snugly. It was easier to stand on, but when I came to the stairs I inched down them, one at a time, good foot first. The third one lay in the front hall under the light, face down, arm buckled under him, ankles comfortably crossed. Eenie, meenie, minie, mose—you're all mighty like a rose. And drove a round hole into the back of his neck, directly in the center, neat as a strike into the pocket, a long putt, a threaded needle. Then looked up the stairs and saw, before she faded away, a woman naked, struggling with a robe.

By the electric clock in the kitchen it was quarter after four. The keys were not in my car. I had to go through their pockets. I had luck. They were in the pocket of the one in the downstairs hall.

I got into the car.

And suddenly a lot of it came back. It came in heavy clods and jagged pieces. I was like a man who stands under a collapsing building, shielding his head with his arms, waiting for the great roof section that will smash him against the ground. I waited under it until the sound of falling ended. And I looked at what had fallen. There was more to come down. But I had parts of it now. The copper Porsche turning in the air as it fell into the lake. Carrying Lorraine out to the station wagon. Tinker and Mandy. Paul Heissen.

And the money. The thick rich stacks of currency baled with wire, neatly fitted into the black tin suitcase.

I had to have the money, and I had to leave. Quickly. 158

And I thought of the money and remembered where it was.

I drove out to Park Terrace. I parked by a high stack of cinder block. I used a broken piece of block to break the lock on a tool shed. I knew the right place. A pick and a shovel would be enough. There were stars to see by. The concrete was pale. I tried to swing the pick with great force, but there was no strength in me. I could do little more than lift it with great effort and let it fall under its own weight. When it landed tilted a little one way or the other, the haft would turn in my hands and it would clang on the concrete. After a long time I got to my knees and felt of the hole. It was half the size of an apple, with the concrete around it pocked by the times I had missed my aim.