Дональд Уэстлейк - Forever and a Death

“I don’t know where he is,” she said. “I don’t know what happened to him.”

“Got on with his life, I suppose,” Jerry said. He still didn’t get it.

But Luther did, by now. He said, “You’re sure it was just coincidence, them seeing you there. The people who chased you.”

“Yes, of course, it had to be,” she said. “Only George knew where I was, and if he was going to turn me over to those people he could have done it a long time ago. In fact, he never had to save me in the first place.”

Luther said, “Would they have known you were waiting for Manville?”

“Probably. They knew I’d got off the ship with him, they probably figured we were hiding out together.”

“So,” Luther said, “they might have gone back to where they saw you, deciding that you had been waiting to meet up with Manville again.”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” she agreed. “I got so lost, running away from them, it took me forever to find the Mall again, and of course by then he wasn’t there.”

Luther said, “So either he was captured by them or he escaped the way you did.”

“I went to the parking lot where we left the car,” she said. “George rented this little red car, and it was still there. I called the lawyer’s office, but it was almost five o’clock by then, and everybody was gone. He wasn’t at the Mall, and he didn’t pick up his car. So that’s when I tried to call you two, at the Planetwatch office down in Sydney, and the people there said you were up here, and which hotel, so I just waited in the lobby. And I’m really sorry, Jerry.”

“It’s all right, Kim, it really is.”

“Well,” Luther said, “there’s nothing we can do now. It’s nearly six o’clock on a Friday afternoon, everybody’s gone away for the weekend. What I suggest you do, first you should call your parents.”

“Oh, my God, I have to!” Kim said, startled by the realization. “They were told I was dead, weren’t they? What time is it in Chicago?”

“They’re here,” Luther said. “Well, not here , in Brisbane, but here in Australia.”

Kim blinked. “They are? Why?”

“Because you’re dead,” Jerry told her. His voice sounded hollow, as though he were speaking from a tomb.

“I’m really sorry, Jerry,” she said, almost reflexively by now.

Luther said, “They’re down in Sydney, in a hotel there, you should phone them soon.”

“Yes. I will. But then, what about George?”

“I think,” Luther said, “Manville was right when he said you shouldn’t go to the police yet, until he’d had legal advice. But now things are different. I think you should stay here tonight” — Jerry gave him a startled look, and Luther went smoothly on — “we’ll get you a room as close to this one as we can, and then in the morning you can telephone the place where you and Manville were staying, to see if he’s come back. If he hasn’t, we’ll go look for the car in the parking lot. If it’s still there, I vote we go to the police.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Jerry said. “This is Richard Curtis at his worst, his absolute worst. I know some people think I harp on him too much, but now you get a sense of the man, you see what it is he’s capable of, what we’re up against. The police, absolutely.”

“Thank you, Jerry,” Luther said, and said to Kim, “Do you want to call your parents from here, or wait till you’ve got your own room?”

“You call, Luther,” Kim said, “if you don’t mind. Talk to them first. Prepare them. I don’t want to cause any more people to faint.”

Lying in yet another bed, in yet another room, this time with the brightness of Brisbane beyond the curtain over the one window, Kim felt very strange. It had been a weird rollercoaster day, being chased by those people, losing George, finding Jerry and Luther, talking on the phone with Mom and Dad, and then having dinner with Jerry and Luther as though they were all three equals together, in a way that had never been true on the ship.

She’d also made another batch of the same small purchases: toothbrush, toothpaste, lipstick, all the usual. And more clothing, outer and under, enough to carry her for a few days, all bought with money borrowed from Jerry. And a new cotton shoulder bag to put it all in. And by now Mom would have phoned Aunt Ellen in Chicago to go over to the house, pack up Kim’s passport and wallet, which had just arrived there today, and air express it all back to Sydney, to arrive on Monday. So, except for George, things seemed to be going pretty well.

George. She was tired, but she couldn’t sleep, here in this strange new bed, all alone. Every time she moved, the sheets above and below her felt rough and cold. When she lay still, the big flat hard-mattressed bed seemed immense, as big as a football field. If she put her left arm out to the side, that other unused pillow over there was a big cold mound, an alien that didn’t belong with her.

Last night had just been the beginning with George, and yet already being here without him seemed unnatural. She wanted the feel of him, the solidity of him, the knowledge that he was there. To have had it just begin, and then stop like this, was terrible.

She needed to sleep, because tomorrow would be another crowded day, but she remained awake, her mind skittering around recent events, and always coming back to George. To remember how he had been last night, so gentle and then so strong, did not lead her toward sleep at all, but she couldn’t help the thoughts, they just kept swirling around and around, constantly there.

Is he all right? Where is he? What’s happened to him?

There was a knock at the door.

Manville looked at it more in irritation than surprise. “You’re the ones who locked it,” he called. “What do you want me to do?”

The key was already turning in the lock, with a loud snick , before he was finished speaking, and then the door opened and a young woman entered, in a tan pantsuit, smiling apologetically, saying, “I did not want to startle you.” A pile of clothing was over her arm. “If I may?”

He stepped to the side. She’d left the door open, and the hall looked empty from where he stood, but he didn’t doubt one of the men who’d brought him here was out there, or some other goon of Curtis’s, leaning against the wall, casual but making damn sure Manville stayed where they wanted him.

The young woman laid the clothing on the bed, neatening it, smoothing out wrinkles, then turned to smile at Manville again and say, “Mr. Curtis asks you to come to dinner in thirty minutes. You may refresh yourself in the bathroom there, and here are garments that we hope will fit you. The door will not be locked now, sir. In thirty minutes, if you would go out and to your right, and at the end of the hall turn left, that is the dining room. Thank you.”

She dipped her head and left, closing the door behind her. There was no sound of the key turning in the lock.

Manville guessed he’d been in this room now no more than fifteen or twenty minutes. He hadn’t looked at his watch when he’d first come in, assuming they’d be leaving him in here overnight.

They’d driven directly into the garage inside this building, and as they’d gotten out of the Daimler, all of them stiff, stretching, a young man in the same kind of tan pantsuit as this woman had opened an interior door at the left end of the garage, stepped forward through it, and called, “This way, please.”

Manville had paused to note the other two vehicles parked there, a tan Land Rover and a kind of dune buggy made mostly out of chrome pipe, and then he’d followed the man, while the leader of the thugs who’d captured him — Morgan, he’d called himself — had followed Manville into that broad low-ceilinged hall outside, with what looked like Navajo carpets on the red tile floor and framed aboriginal art on both walls. At the first open door on the right the man in the pantsuit had turned and made a please-enter gesture.