The Extraordinary Adventures of Alfred Kropp (11 page)

“Don't be worried, Betty,” I said. “I'm okay.”

“Where are you?”

“I'm going to be a while longer. I just wanted to tell you I was okay.”

“Oh, Alfred,” she said. “Alfred, please come home.” She was crying.

“I don't have a home anymore,” I said, and I hung up.

There was somebody else I wanted to call, but it took me a long time to work up the nerve to do it. I got her number from the operator and almost hung up when a guy who sounded like he might be her dad answered the phone. But I didn't.

“Is Amy there?” I asked.

After what seemed like a couple of years, I heard her twangy voice.

“Who is this?” she asked.

“Me. Alfred. Alfred Kropp.”

“Who?”

“The guy you're tutoring in math.”

“Oh! The dead-uncle guy,” she said.

“Yeah,” I said. “The dead-uncle guy. Look, I just wanted to say—”

“I knew it wasn't somebody I know,” she said. “Because you called this number. People I know call me on my cell phone.”

“Right,” I said. “Look, the reason I called. I—I don't think I'll be at tutoring tomorrow. Or ever. I don't think I'm coming back.”

There was silence. I said, to break it, “I said I don't think I'm coming back.”

“I heard you. Look, I know you must be really messed up right now. I know what that's like. When I was twelve my big brother ran over my dog. I couldn't get out of bed for a
week
.”

Why did I think she cared? Why was I thinking anybody cared? My own father hadn't even cared. I was an accident everybody had to suffer from, like Barry with his sprained wrist.

I said good-bye to Amy Pouchard and started to walk. It was getting dark now, and there were a lot of people about, couples mostly, walking arm in arm, and I watched them as I walked. Something made me turn around at one point and I saw him, the tall guy with the white hair, about half a block down. He was standing by a newspaper rack, pretending to read. I walked to the intersection of Western and Central, turned left, and walked half a block to Ye Olde Coffee House, right next to the old JFG coffee plant.

I went in and ordered a grande with extra cream and sugar, and sat at the long counter against the window, watching the couples pass outside.

Halfway through my grande I saw him sit down at the very end of the bar, next to the bathroom. I picked up my coffee and walked over to sit down next to him.

We drank our coffee in silence for a moment. The end of his nose was red and runny; he had a cold. He pulled out the white handkerchief. It had a design of a horse and rider on it. The rider was a knight carrying a red banner. That clinched it for me.

“How is Mr. Samson?” I asked him.

“Dead.”

I thought about my dream and asked, “When did that happen?”

“Two days ago.”

“Mr. Mogart—he killed him?”

“Do not say that name.” He folded the handkerchief into a perfect square and tucked it back into his breast pocket.

“Who're you?” I asked.

“Call me Bennacio.”

“I'm Alfred Kropp.”

“I know who you are.”

“We've met before,” I said. “At Samson Towers. I didn't recognize you at first without your robe. But I recognize your hands. And your voice.”

He nodded. “The man you know as Bernard Samson was killed two nights ago in Játiva, on the slopes of Monte Bernisa in Spain.” He sipped his coffee. He had taken off the lid and I could see he drank it black. “I was given instructions to find you in the event of his fall.”

I thought about that. It didn't make much sense to me, but, since Mom died and I went to live with Uncle Farrell, almost everything had stopped making sense. “Why?”

“To tell you of his fate.”

“That's important—telling me?”

He shrugged, like he really couldn't make a judgment on the importance of keeping Alfred Kropp in the loop.

“What happened in Spain?”

Bennacio kept looking out the window. “He fell. Four of our Order fell with him. I alone have escaped to bring this news to you, Kropp. It was his dying wish that you should know.”

He sipped his coffee. He had a sharp nose and dark, deep-set eyes beneath thick salt-and-pepper brows. His white hair was swept back from his high forehead.

“Two of the Order fell in Toronto,” Bennacio said. “They were the first, dispatched by Samson to stop the enemy before he could flee North America. Another in London. Two in Pau, before the rest of us arrived.”

I did the math. Mr. Samson had told me there were twelve knights left. “That leaves just two of you.”

Bennacio shook his head. “Windimar fell near Bayonne, the night before we discovered the enemy in Játiva. I am the last of my Order.”

He didn't say anything for a while. We finished our coffee. Finally, I said, “I'm sorry, Mr. Bennacio.”

“Just Bennacio,” he said. I don't think it really mattered to him if I was sorry.

I went on. “But there's a lot of other people in on this, right? Mr. Samson brought in this secret agency, some kind of spies, I guess, or mercenaries; I don't know what you'd call them . . .”

“You are speaking of oy-pep.”

“I am?”

He nodded. “O-I-P-E-P. Oy-pep.” He made a face like saying the word left a bad taste in his mouth.

“What's OIPEP?”

“Did you not just say Samson told you?”

“Well, like a lot of things he told me, he kind of did but he kind of didn't. But I'm not exactly what you might call quick on the uptake. What exactly
is
OIPEP?”

He glanced around the coffee shop. “We should not talk about OIPEP here, Kropp.”

He stood up. I don't know why, but I stood up too. I followed him to the door and into the night. The late-spring air was soft and warm. He took out his white handkerchief again and blew his nose.

“It is a fool's hope,” he said with a little laugh.

“What is?” I asked.

He didn't give me a direct answer, sort of like Mr. Samson never gave direct answers. Maybe that was part of being a knight. “For Mogart cannot be stopped, not while he wields the Sword. Yet while I live, I must try to stop him.” He turned and looked right at me for the first time. His dark eyes were sad.

“Now is the hour,” he said softly. “Our doom is upon us.”

He walked away without saying anything else and I watched him cross the street. Then I saw two big men step out of the doorway of an antique store and follow him. Both wore long gray cloaks that were too heavy for the warm weather.

Bennacio didn't seem to notice them; he walked with his head bowed, like he was deep in thought. A little voice inside my head said, “
Go home, Alfred
.” But I didn't have a home anymore. Now Mr. Samson was dead and all the other knights except this Bennacio guy, and it was all my fault. I could have—
should have
—told Uncle Farrell no, I wasn't going to help him get the Sword. I knew it was wrong at the time, and if I had stood my ground everybody would still be alive and I would have a home. I had hated that little apartment with the worn-out furniture and its old fishy smell. I had wished every day that my mom hadn't died and my uncle was somebody more like Donald Trump than Farrell Kropp, but now that sounded like heaven to me. I would have given anything to have it back.

Bennacio was walking north on Central, the men keeping pace a few feet behind him.

And for some reason I have never understood, I followed them.

When I turned the corner, they had Bennacio against the wall and were taking turns slugging him, one guy holding him up while the other one slammed his big fists into his gut. They were too busy pounding the crap out of him to notice me.

One of them turned to his buddy and said with a foreign accent, “Finish him.” The second man pulled something long and black from the folds of his gray cloak.

“Hey!” I shouted.

They looked over at me. None of us moved for a second; then the guy holding the dagger jammed it into Bennacio's side, the other one let him go and, as Bennacio slid slowly down the brick wall, they took off east along the railroad tracks.

I ran over to Bennacio. His eyes were open and he was breathing. He was clutching that white handkerchief in both hands. I put my hand on his side and it came away covered in his blood.

“Leave me,” he said.

I hauled him up, pulling his arm over my shoulder, and kind of dragged him back to Central.

“You're hurt,” I said. “I'm taking you to the hospital.”

“No hospital. No hospital,” he gasped.

I spotted a Yellow Cab parked on the corner. I shoved Bennacio into the backseat.

“Where to?” the driver asked.

“Where to?” I asked Bennacio.

“The Marriott . . .” Bennacio gasped.

“Take us to the Marriott,” I told the driver.

Bennacio leaned against me, and I tugged the handkerchief from his hands and pressed it against the badly bleeding wound in his side.

“Oh, boy,” I whispered. “Oh, jeez, you're bleeding pretty bad, Bennacio.”

“Hey,” the cabbie said, staring at us in his rearview mirror. “Your friend okay, kid?”

“No hospital, no hospital,” Bennacio kept whispering. His face was very pale and his eyes were rolling in his head as he leaned against me. I guessed he was dying.

14

I managed to get Bennacio out of the cab and into the lobby of the hotel, with him leaning against me. The clerk behind the desk gave me a look.

“My uncle,” I told the clerk. “Little too much wine.”

Bennacio told me his room number and somehow I got him into the elevator, up to the sixth floor, and into his room. I laid him on the bed.

His eyes were closed and he was breathing in short, hard gasps. I opened his jacket and unbuttoned his white shirt to expose the wound, a gash just below his ribs on the left side. I got some towels from the bathroom and pressed one into his side, watching the blood soak into it. I threw that towel on the floor and replaced it with another. He wouldn't stop bleeding.

“I don't know what I'm doing,” I told him. “You're gonna bleed to death if we don't get you to a doctor.”

He opened his eyes and looked at me. “The blade was poisoned,” he said. “The bleeding will not stop.” Then he raised his head a little and looked at my hand holding the towel against his side.

He must have seen the scar on my thumb, because he whispered, “You have been wounded by the Sword.”

“Yeah.”

“In the bathroom,” he gasped. “My straight razor. Bring it to me.”

I found it in a little black leather bag on the vanity. The razor had a long retractable blade that slipped into the handle. I didn't think anybody used a straight razor anymore. How did I know this Bennacio wasn't lying—that he wasn't really a goon for Mogart, come to kill me? But even if he was lying, even if he was a bad guy, who was I to let him slowly bleed to death?