The French Kiss (15 page)

The grin had come back again, a sly one, and the needle into his voice.

“I'm clean on that score,” I said. “The Law …”

“Sure, the Law. Same old cagey Cage. I bet you've got an alibi a yard long too.”

“A yard long, Al.”

“A yard long. Well, let me tell it like it is, friend. We've stopped running. The rats are cornered. We're where you'd never think of looking, not in a million years …” Here his voice dropped almost to a whisper. “… but if you did … well, next time, Cagey, you'd better bring your army with you.”

It hung there in the overheated air, the menace along with the trace of plea.

“What kind of deal, Al,” I repeated.

He hesitated. Then, with a shrug:

“There are two deals, Cagey. Like I say, it's a standoff right now. On my side, I've got one great picture and I've got Helen Raven. But no buyer. Whereas on yours, you've got two … well, let's say you've got two pictures. And you've the buyer and sure, you could try peddling them to her and take what you can get. Only the way I figure it, you haven't tried yet. And maybe with good reason, honh?”

The grin again.

“Have you doped it out yet, Cagey? Or only suspected? I mean, who do you think painted them? Do you think Blumenstock did? Not that anyone could tell the difference, not even an expert. They're good all right, and he had the right materials and sketches to work from. Try to prove it! Hell, she didn't even tell
me
till after we'd signed!”

The grin turned to laughter. Then the laughter went away. He was waiting for me to say something.

“The thing is, Cagey, you put it all together and they'll still be worth two million francs, and that'd be cheap the way things go these days. Three Blumenstocks for two million? It's practically a bargain! If Cookie smells a rat, not that she should, but Lascault could still do that well on the open market. At least that well. Or without Lascault! Hell, who needs Paris? There's Japan, there's the Middle East. It's America's revenge, baby! What's more …”

He went on with it, working himself up as he went. I let him go. I watched him while he talked and I heard the words, but my mind was heating up in a hurry inside.
He's got some property that belongs to us
, she'd said. It hadn't even occurred to me that the property was split, and she hadn't seen fit to tell me. And why was that? Turn it around as I might, I could only come up with one answer: she didn't want me to know.
Just find him, fix him
, she'd said,
and I'll take care of it then
. And why didn't she want me to know?
He's scared to death of you
, she'd said.
Kiss me
, she'd said.
Kiss me again
.

Al Dove was laying it on me now, and I heard him and I didn't hear. Because the palms were bending and scrunching their necks and the storm rolling toward them, the waves rising and crashing, the lightning screeching across the bloody sky like chalk on a giant blackboard. And Al Dove was telling me that together we could do it. He knew where the pictures were as well as I did now. Lascault's place in L'lsle-Adam, where else? That's where Fleurie's man had been headed. He'd go himself, now that he knew where, only he didn't want to share the same fate. But together, the two of us, sure we could pull it off. Because the Blumenstock setup was intact, that was the beauty of it. They'd ripped off the rest of his operation, had they? Well, they were welcome to it. But three pictures for two million or more, and Lascault could be brought around once it was a
fait accompli
, and besides, what was there that said we had to stop at three when nobody knew how many there were? What was to keep people from accepting five, or eight, or ten, if it was organized right? Because there was room in it for Cage, plenty of room. Because his deal with Helen Raven and Rillington was fifty percent of the proceeds but he'd cut them to a third, that was no problem, didn't a third of something beat a half of nothing?

It was my fourth offer. The first two had fallen by the wayside. The last two were a hell of a recommendation for holy matrimony.

The storm died down inside. Down, say, to a whisper, soft and warm and licking at my ear.
Kiss me
, the whisper said.
Kiss me again
.

I was sweating all over. He was staring at me. I saw the knuckles of his gun hand stiffen and whiten.

“Geezus, Cagey,” he said in a strained voice, “you never forget, do you.”

In hindsight, I realize that he was talking about something else, something that went back in time almost as far as Denise. Call it the real bone of contention between us. But on the spot, all I said was:

“What's the other deal, Al?”

He'd been watching me, ramrod stiff. Then all of a sudden, and all together, the muscles of his head and body seemed to let go. His face, his neck, his shoulders. It was like he'd put the last of his chips on the come line and let fly, and thrown a pair of eyes again just like he'd known he would secretly. All at once he gave up, and the air went out of the pumpkin.

“All right,” he said tonelessly. “I'm tap city, Cagey. It's yours. All I want is a fair stake, and then I'll lay it in your lap, the whole package: the portrait, Helen Raven, Rillington. Then you can play it like you want to. You'll have to do your own negotiating with them, but it shouldn't be hard. All Helen really wants is revenge on Cookie Lascault, and Rillington'll do whatever she tells him to.”

Another train rolled into the station, the last one as it turned out. But no one got on and no one got off, and if there was anyone else on the platform besides us, I didn't notice.

“How much is a fair stake, Al?” I said.

“I figure ten percent of the original deal I had worked out. That's two hundred thousand francs, and if you play it right, two hundred thou could be a lot less than ten percent. If I have to, I'll take half in cash and half in a note. The only thing is: I want it fast. I'll give you till tomorrow night. No more. Otherwise …”

He paused.

“Otherwise what?” I said.

But all I got for an answer was a staccato laugh and: “Hell, baby, some day you ought to try living on the run with a bitch like that.”

He glanced at his watch. Tomorrow—or today—was Sunday, but he figured Lascault still ought to be able to come up with that kind of cash. He'd meet me at the same place, at ten o'clock that night. I was to bring the money, alone. Then he'd tell me where to go.

He glanced at his watch again. Something seemed to revive him momentarily, the idea maybe that, because he'd said it, that was how it was going to happen. Then with a brief grin he placed the gun on the little desk between us.

It lay there.

“Your move, baby. Only remember: I know where they are and you don't.”

Maybe so, but he'd given me a pretty good idea. And in hindsight, I'd have to say he meant to.

I was looking at him and the empty tracks behind him. Someone moved into the gap between. For a split second it might have been my move at that, but the split second came and went and then Helen Raven was standing in the doorway behind him, a gun in her hand. It was pointed at the back of Al Dove's head.

How much she'd heard I didn't know. Enough in any case.

“You're selling cheap, aren't you, Al,” she said. It came out a statement, not a question. He started, but she jammed the barrel end hard into his neck. “If you turn around, you bastard, I'll blow your head off. You!” she snapped at me. “Very carefully now. I want you to brush that gun off the desk and onto the floor. Don't try to pick it up.”

“Wait a minute, Professor,” I said. “Guns that are brushed onto the floor have a way of going off. I …”

“
You shut up
!” she shrilled at me. You could feel the suppressed hysteria oozing out of her pores and Al Dove's pupils went large in their sockets. “
You do what I tell you to do! NOW!
”

I did, very carefully. The artillery clattered at my feet. Then it lay still.

She told Al Dove to push forward in his chair. He did, until we were sitting knee to knee, at which she moved inside the booth and covered us both.

“Two hundred thousand francs,” she said, the words bursting scornfully out of her. “That's cheap, Al. Isn't that cheap? What wouldn't you sell for two hundred thousand francs? And only half of it in cash. After all I've been through, that's what it comes down to. To be sold out for two hundred thousand francs by a cheap gangster.”

“Wait a minute, Helen, you've …”

“Shut up!”
The command shrilled again in the small booth.
“Stand up, Al!”

He stood up. His face, pale and tense, loomed over me. I could see the sweat bubbling on his forehead. He looked like he thought he was going to check out any second.

“I've had enough of your schemes, your sweet talk, your reassurances! If you're so damn clever, how come you let
me
follow you here? You said the portrait alone would be worth half a million, didn't you? Half a million minimum, isn't that what you said? Well suppose I decide I won't sell it at
any
price? Suppose that's my price:
no
price! Then what the hell do I need you for?”

“You're crazy!” he shouted, half-turning his head. “They'll chew you up and spit you out! Don't be a damn fool, Helen, you'll get nothing! You'll …”

“SHUT UP, GOD DAMN YOU!”

It was alarm time in the cockpits of hell. The boiler was about to blow. The gongs were going off and the red lights flashing, the dials spinning and the voices of panic bleeping out of control. It was time to bail out … for Alan Dove, ex-courtier, and for B. F. Cage as well.

But just then, without warning, the lights went out. It happened first on the far platform, then on ours.
Click
followed by
click
, and the station plunged into darkness.

It threw her, just for a second. I'd already dug my chair into the wall. Now I thrust off, driving for the doorway. Only Al Dove had the opposite reflex. He stooped, ducking either from her or for the gun. My head, then my shoulder, slammed into him, flinging him back, and the cannon went off between us even as we catapulted into her. I took the blast of it right in the eyes and somewhere behind me a thousand sheets of glass shattered into a million or more small pieces. Then the three of us exploded out of the booth in a burst of pinwheeling bodies, like somebody had flung a grenade among us, and something carved my legs out from under me neatly and plunged me forward, smashing my face into the stone of the platform. I scraped and slid painfully toward the edge, and I saw the stars you're supposed to see all right, only they had jagged edges and they pulsed and tore in time to my blood beat, and a herd of heavenly horses went charging across my skull and down the platform, racing for the last train.

Only the last train had gone. And there weren't any horses, only two ghostly shapes swaying and staggering to their feet on a cosmic platform a couple of light-years off. Something had gone screwy with my vision. It was like the whole dark station was flashing in light but the two of them were ghosts, like after-images or white blurs on a negative. I saw Al Dove wobbling near the booth. His hands seemed to be raised above his head. A long way away I heard his voice telling her not to be crazy, telling her she'd never get away with it alone, telling her the station was already locked, that even if she killed us both she'd never get out of the fucking station. Even then, half-stunned and with the panic squeezing his larynx, he was trying to make a deal. But the Professor was beyond listening. I'd seen her scabbling on the platform, I'd seen her come up with the gun. She held it out in front of her, in both hands, and if the rest of her was teetering like a drunken tightrope walker, the gun was clenched stiff. She backed off a couple of steps. Then she fired: once, twice, three times, her body jumping each time, and turned, and ran down the platform in the direction of the darkened exit, and the echoes of the blasts were drowned out by Al Dove's screaming.

TWELVE

I tasted blood. It was trickling down from my nose. I got to my feet. From somewhere came a dim light, but I didn't have to wait for my eyes to adjust to it to find Al Dove.

He was shaking with shock and screaming his bloody head off. He was convinced he was going to croak any second, and even if he didn't Helen Raven would be back to finish us off. The only recourse was the tunnel. We had to get into the tunnel before she came back. He tried to stand up, but cried out instead and sank backwards onto a bench and started begging me to finish him off, please Jesus God Cagey to get the gun and put him out of his misery. Whereupon it took all my strength to hold him to the bench, because Helen was going to be back any second, the entrance would be locked, there was no other way out, she'd shoot us down like rats in a trap if we didn't get into the fucking tunnel.

As it happened, he was wrong on both counts: Helen Raven wasn't coming back, and he wasn't about to croak. As near as I could tell, two of her bullets had missed altogether. The third had pierced his left breast but high, almost at the armpit, and it had come out under his shoulder blade. Or most of it. There wasn't much blood. It could have nicked bone on the way through and he'd need to see a doctor, but I was pretty sure he'd live all right.

If, that is, he didn't die of fright first.

Because the fear was in him, along with that end-of-the-road sobbing and blubbering and remorse which is one of the sorrier spectacles, even in a world short on heroics. To understand it, you'd probably have to go back before the cocky young guinea I'd first known, back to the altar boy lighting candles in St. Geronimo's in downtown San Berdoo.

But like I say, I can't take you that far, and come to think of it, he himself stopped short of calling for a priest, that night there in the métro.