Tongues of Fire (12 page)

Krebs looked into the kitchen. It was brighter than he had expected: A weak white light spread through the center of the room, leaving the edges in shadow. The light came from the refrigerator on the far side of the room. It was open. A heavy naked woman stood in front of it, her back to him. She was bending forward to get something from one of the lower shelves.

Very slowly Krebs pulled the door toward him, not quite closing it. He kept his hand on the knob and did not move.

He heard the refrigerator door close. The woman's bare feet moved across the tile floor. A plate clicked on a ceramic counter. A drawer opened, rattling its metallic contents. The drawer closed. Silence. The feet approached, very close, and stopped. He heard a sound he didn't recognize immediately: rhythmic, moist, sucking. He realized she was chewing. The chewing stopped. He heard a faint wet rubbing that might have been her tongue licking her lips. The feet went away. They climbed the stairs. They pressed on a floor above. A bedspring squeaked.

Krebs stood still. He looked down at the green numbers on his wristwatch. Three-thirty. He didn't move again until four o'clock.

When the green point of the hand covered the green dot of twelve he gently opened the door and entered the kitchen. He walked quietly through an arched doorway and into the front hall. Faint street light penetrated the windows and pushed the darkness into the corners. Off one side of the hall was the living room; he could see the low soft shadows of couches and chairs. On the other side was the dining room, most of its space taken by a long table. Behind him the stairs led to the second floor. He climbed them one at a time, keeping his feet to the outside edge.

At the top Krebs found himself in another hall, smaller than the first, and darker. He looked around, trying to make his eyes absorb every particle of light. He saw three doors, one open and two shut.

He took slow even steps toward the open door, his tennis shoes silent on the thick carpet. He peered inside and saw nothing. The curtains must be closed, he thought. He raised the flashlight and flicked the switch on and off, very fast. In the moment that the beam shot across the room he glimpsed the large bed, and the single lump rising in the middle. He stared into blackness where the lump had been. Nothing moved. He listened very hard but heard nothing, not even the sound of breathing. For some reason he suddenly thought of Alice. He didn't know why.

He backed into the hall and turned to the first closed door. He opened it very carefully, the way he had opened the door at the top of the basement stairs. He didn't need the flashlight. He felt the cool air against his face and quietly closed the door. Bathroom.

Krebs went to the third door, opened it, and looked in. Something bubbled in a dark corner. He flashed his beam: an aquarium. A goldfish faced him, pressing its lips against the glass.

He closed the switch. A little light came through two rectangular windows and advanced partway across the room. At first he thought it was empty; then he saw large dark shapes on the floor. He touched one with his toe: a pillow. The office must be on the third floor, he thought. He turned to go, but he didn't take a step. He looked again at the dark shapes on the floor. Something about them made him think that the room was set aside for work, what sort of work he didn't know. He shone his light around the walls. There was a closet in one corner.

He crossed the floor and opened it. Inside stood a tall wooden filing cabinet. Krebs went to the door that led to the hall, closed it softly, and returned to the filing cabinet. He ran the little circle of light over the labels on the drawers, and pulled out the one marked “Q to S.” His fingers hurried through the files. Rafferty, Rainey, Rapaport, Rather, Reed, Rehv.

He opened Rehv's file. Inside was a single sheet of paper, covered in handwriting. He knelt, laid it carefully on the floor, and took the little camera from his pocket. He held it twelve inches from the sheet of paper and pressed the button. There was a flash that seemed very bright. Krebs listened, and heard nothing but the refrigerator, very faint. He put the paper in the file, put the file in the drawer, and closed it. He closed the door, put the camera and the flashlight in his pockets, and left the room.

Softly, trying to slow down, he walked past the dark bedroom, down the stairs, and into the hall. He thought of leaving by the front door but remembered the bolt he would have to leave open. Neither could he close the latch of the basement window, but that might never be noticed. He went down the basement stairs and across the hard cement floor to the window. He pulled it open, placed his hands on the sidewalk, and lifted himself through.

Hot white light bored into his wide-open pupils.

“Freeze,” said a voice.

Krebs froze.

“Hands up high. Turn around real slow. Against the wall.”

Hard hands ran quickly over his body. They took his Swiss Army knife, flashlight, camera, and wallet. While they were doing that he realized what it was about Alice that he had tried to remember while he stared in the darkness at the lump in the big bed: It was the tension in her body when she pretended to be asleep.

He heard the front door open. “Police?” said a woman. She sounded very frightened.

“That's right, lady,” said the voice behind him. “It's all over.”

“Is that him?”

“Yup.”

“I don't want to see him.” The door closed.

There were two of them. They handcuffed him and pushed him into the back seat of the patrol car. One went into the house to talk to the woman. The other sat in the front seat.

“Better look at the wallet,” Krebs said to him through the steel screen.

“Better shut your fuckin' mouth,” the cop said without turning his head.

They sat there waiting, Krebs looking at the back of the cop's head, the cop at nothing in particular. After a while the cop took Krebs's wallet off the dashboard and opened it. He saw what Krebs wanted him to see.

“You could call McCulloch at Midtown South,” Krebs said. “He knows me.”

“I'll bet a lot of cops know you,” the cop said, but he didn't sound sure.

The other cop returned. The first one opened the wallet and showed him the yellow card inside. They called McCulloch.

Darkness had begun to give up the eastern part of the sky by the time McCulloch arrived. His cold was worse. His nose was red, and he had a wad of Kleenex tucked into the sleeve of his duffle coat, like a maiden aunt. He looked at Krebs and said nothing.

McCulloch went to his own car and talked on the radio for a few minutes. He got out of the car and returned. “Suspect escaped custody on the way to the station,” he said to the cop behind the wheel. He turned, got into his car, and drove away, without looking at Krebs again.

The other cop opened the back door and unlocked the handcuffs. Krebs got out rubbing his wrists. They gave him his wallet, but they kept the Swiss Army knife, the flashlight, and the camera. Krebs walked away. He felt their eyes on his back.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Everyone was rich. They broke around Isaac Rehv in waves of fur and high-priced scent. They carried packages wrapped in thick paper of red and green and gold, and tied with ribbons and bows: a luxurious caravan bearing away the riches of the West. The wealth they shared did not seem to make them any friendlier toward each other. They still walked as fast as they could, eyes straight ahead, mouths shut. The only mingling went on over their heads where their breath condensed in the cold air and came together in silver vapor that hovered above. Rehv supposed that must be the Christmas spirit.

He stepped out of the flow of people and stopped in the lee of a phone booth. He took out his wallet, the wallet with the faded Q.K. stamped on one corner, and counted his money. He had three twenty-dollar bills, four tens, a five, and nine ones. In his front pockets he found a quarter, a nickel, and three pennies. One hundred and fourteen dollars and thirty-three cents. That was it. No bank account, no stocks, no bonds, no real estate: the man who would do it all himself. He thought of Quentin Katz's twenty-five-grand-a-year job. He needed more. Sooner.

Rehv looked up and saw a tall thin Santa Claus watching him across the sidewalk. His hard little eyes were locked on Rehv's wallet. He folded it, put it away, and continued walking to work. Santa Claus shook his bell at him.

La Basquaise had been closed for a week. When Rehv arrived he found that all the tables had been moved and their numbers changed.

“Pascal is very superstitious,” Armande explained. He picked up a dessert knife, examined his reflection, and shook his head. “It's so ridiculous,” he said: “People shoot each other in Italian restaurants.” He allowed a pained expression to cross his handsome face, as though some horrifying gaffe had been committed. He held up the dessert knife and looked into it again. The pain went away.

“Stomach all better?” Rehv asked.

Armande gripped the back of a chair, his knuckles white. “It was ghastly,” he said in a voice that was suddenly hoarse. “I vomited. I defecated. Sometimes both at once, if you understand what I mean. It is better left unsaid. Both at once.” He sighed deeply, then looked at Rehv and narrowed his eyes. “I will never eat
pieds et paquets
again in my life.”

“But you're better now?”

“Physically, yes,” Armande replied. “We went to Walt Disney World for a few days. Pascal likes to go on the rides.”

The first customers appeared in the doorway. “Okay,” Armande said, “let's make some money.” He went off to greet them like an amiable wine baron welcoming old friends for dinner. He looked fine. His tan was deeper, his yellow hair yellower, his blue eyes bluer. He hadn't said anything about Manolo.

It was a good night for making money. People were hungrier and thirstier than usual: Hours of frenetic shopping and lugging heavy presents in the cold made them that way. They wanted steamed lobster and
quenelles des crevettes
and
galantine de volaille à la gelée
. They wanted Burgundy, and lots of it.

Two men in Rehv's section ordered steak tartare. Women never seemed to order it: It was a dish for men who were men. For Rehv it meant a performance at their tables with egg yolks and capers and Worcestershire sauce. At the first table conversation ceased and everyone watched him as if he were about to do some magical trick; at the second table the man who was a man wanted to direct preparations: “More capers. Another egg yolk. Haven't you got HP?” While Rehv was ruining the dish according to these specifications he felt a brief hush fall over the dining room. He looked up and saw Armande leading a famous screen actress and two companions to a table in his section. The hush was very brief, and no one stared, except out of the corner of the eye; not because they valued her privacy, but because they were important too. La Basquaise was that kind of place.

The actress had eaten there before, but never at one of Rehv's tables. Armande gave her a banquette in a shallow alcove designed like a balcony overlooking rolling meadows. She was wearing a pearl-colored coat that almost touched the floor, made from the earthly remains of numerous chinchillas, and a matching hat which served as a monument to two or three more. She would have been warm on the retreat from Moscow, Rehv thought, although she probably had not come from far away: Armande had said once that she always stayed at the hotel across the street when she came to New York.

Rehv scooped the last of the steak tartare onto a plate and set it before the man who knew how he liked it. “Bon appétit,” he said. The man picked up his fork and jabbed it into the midst of the raw meat. Rehv turned and moved toward the banquette. He heard a woman say, “How can you eat that?” The man answered, “It's perfect,” with his mouth full.

The actress and her friends were sitting with their backs to the pastel meadows. She sat in the center, listening to something Armande was saying. Whatever it was made her smile. She had big teeth, white as piano keys, and glossy hair as black as the sharps and flats. Her eyes were huge and dark, surrounded by huge and dark frameworks of makeup; there were no lines on her face, but Rehv saw a slight tautness around her eyes and mouth, where lines should have been appearing by now: She had been a movie star for a long time.

On one side sat a man who looked a lot like Armande, except he was younger, had longer hair, a deeper tan, and less intelligence on his face; and at that moment his smile was not quite as broad as Armande's, although his mouth seemed capable of reaching such extremes. On the other side sat a thin dark woman who may have had an Oriental ancestor two or three generations before. Her face was much more intelligent than the man's, but right now her mind was somewhere else.

Still smiling with every muscle in his face, Armande turned to Rehv and said: “I think these people would like champagne.”

“Good evening,” Rehv said to them. “What kind do you prefer?”

“Laurent Perrier,” the actress said, rolling her
r
's. She rolled them very nicely. The thought that she had chosen as she had for that reason crossed Rehv's mind; but he remembered that there were good
r
's for rolling in Krug, Dom Pérignon, and Pol Roger as well.

“Do they make a pink champagne?” the young man asked. He had a light voice that made him sound even younger than he looked.

“Yes,” Rehv said.

The young man turned to the actress. “Do you feel like some of that?”

“Oh, you silly boy.” She laughed, a laugh that began high and thin but was quickly pushed into a lower, warmer register.

“The pink, then?” Rehv asked her.

She looked up at him, revealing diamond seashells on each earlobe and a narrow middle-aged wrinkle at the base of her neck. “No,” she said coldly.

For a moment no one spoke. Rehv heard a glass shatter on the other side of the room. Impatiently the thin dark woman said: “Let him have the pink if that's what he wants, and we'll have the other.”