Peter Rabe - A Shroud for Jesso

By twisting his head and holding very still, Jesso could see them. An overhead light made a glare from somewhere, and the top of the pier showed like a black knife edge from side to side. And on the edge, knee bent as in a lazy pose by a fireplace, was a leg with a black silk stocking showing in front of the glare of the light. That was Kator. Gluck was standing farther from the edge.

“So don’t miss the tide, Kator.” The head was nodding. “You’re out in half an hour or hell breaks loose.”

First the silk wrinkled a little and then the foot began to tap. It had the same precision as Kator’s voice.

“I must delay, Mr. Gluck. I must. Your arrangements for my ship’s departure could be the same tomorrow as they are today.”

“Too risky I can’t buy off twice in a row. You leave now, tonight, or you take your chances with the officials.”

“I’ll pay you, Mr. Gluck.”

“You’ve paid me. You’re dumping Jesso for me. Besides, you’ve found your man. He even kicked off for you from natural causes and you’re covered.”

“That is the point, Mr. Gluck. As it turns out, the information I collected is incomplete. With Joseph Snell dead, I must delay departure in order to complete my mission by consulting other sources. You see, Snell’s death is really a complication, Mr. Gluck.”

“Sorry,” Gluck said. “The ship leaves now.”

“If I could stay behind, Mr. Gluck, our difficulties would not exist, but my presence is required in-in Europe. Without being familiar with the details of my business, Mr. Gluck, you must try to appreciate the importance-“

“Sorry.”

That was Gluck all over. When it came right down to it, Gluck never budged; he made everything simple that way. What in hell was Kator selling?

“Twenty thousand, Mr. Gluck.”

Gluck barely laughed.

“Forty thousand.”

Kator’s foot had stopped tapping.

“Fifty thousand.”

“Pretty important, huh, Kator?”

“Fifty thousand, Mr. Gluck, for the privilege-”

“Look, you got half an hour. Call up somebody you know, tell them what you need, explain what’s eating you, and don’t waste your time arguing with me.”

This time Kator laughed. “You underestimate the complexity of my business with Joseph Snell.”

“I didn’t ask you to tell me about it.”

What didn’t concern Gluck he didn’t want to know. He was through with Kator and that’s where his interest ended. But Jesso’s interest was just picking up. He wasn’t through with Kator, he was just starting. Nothing was clear to him yet, but what he had heard meant one thing for sure. Jesso’s knuckles ached where he held the rim of the porthole with a hard, still grip, holding on as if the words from the pier were his salvation. One thing was sure: Kator hadn’t got all he wanted. Joe Snell was dead when they got to him and all he could give them was the thing under his toupe. A piece of paper, most likely, a piece of paper with part of a message, and the rest had died with him. Kator was strapped.

Then Jesso’s hands relaxed on the metal rim and he moved his shoulders the way a boxer does, limbering up. Kator was strapped. And nobody had seen Joe Snell before he died-except Jesso.

He wasn’t interested any more in what else went on up on the pier. Kator would jack up his price and Gluck wouldn’t take it. Gluck would have his way, which meant that the ship would go out with the tide. Jesso could hear the rumble of the engines somewhere nearby. He closed the porthole, stretched, and sat down where the bulkhead curved up. A nap might be good now. He leaned back, feeling the small, hard vibrations of the hull as the engines turned faster. The massage gave him a tickle around his nose and he squirmed his face to kill the itch. He smiled and settled against the steel. Once they’d cleared port and the tugs had cast off and the pilot had left, there’d be a clanking of feet and the door opening, because Kator would be ready to finish his business with him.

And that’s when Jesso would be ready to start business with Kator.

They came earlier than he had expected. The door clanked, waking Jesso, and he struggled against his stiffness, trying to get up. Jesso remembered the tall one by the door from the time in Gluck’s office. He stayed by the door, holding a Luger in his hand, while the other one came into the compartment. Before Jesso was up, a heavy boot caught his ribs and he fell hard to the side. He stayed there, fighting for breath, while the tall one stood by with his Luger. The other one closed a solid cover that darkened the porthole. He clicked a lock on it. Then they both left and Jesso was alone in the dark.

When the pain had simmered down, he got off the floor and tapped along the wall, trying to find the porthole. It was locked, all right. There wasn’t even a crack of light. If they had been far out to sea, they wouldn’t have bothered to close it. Instead they would have come for him to finish Kator’s end of the bargain.

The ship rumbled with a rhythmic thump. They cleared the islands, at any rate.

Jesso sat down again and waited. He tried to sleep a few times, but sleep wouldn’t come. His head ached, his legs were sore from the rawness where the skin had been scraped, and with each breath a shooting pain ran up the side of his ribs. After a while he tried to think of other things, how he would handle Kator, if there was time to handle Kator, and if perhaps his whole new hope was just the crazy wish of a man the night before his death.

A thousand times he went over it in his mind. After a while a slow rage started to boil in him, and if someone had opened the door right then Jesso would have jumped up and killed him.

But nobody came. For a long while there was nothing but the steady rumble of the ship, swaying now.

Jesso was crouching by the slanting bulkhead when he heard the steps. He had been crouching for an eternity, not moving, but his breath came fast and hard. And when the door swung open there was an outlined shape standing there, but Jesso was up like a cat, out through the door, and then his balled knuckles made contact until the shape was down and moaning.

Jesso stood blinking in the dim light from the companionway. He felt all right. He rubbed his knuckles, feeling nothing but the pleasant burn where his fists had hit.

The other guy had stood back. He came out of the shadows now, first the Luger, then his long shape.

“Don’t move,” he said, and his voice meant that he wished he would.

Jesso waited. He put his hands in his pockets and stood still. “Bean Pole,” he said. “I want to see your master.”

Bean Pole maneuvered around so he had Jesso against the light. “First you’re going to die,” he said.

Jesso laughed. “Like hell. Show me Kator, Bean Pole. I got something to sell.”

He couldn’t tell whether Bean Pole was taking his word for it, because all he said was, “Up the stairs.”

Before Jesso went, he turned to look at the man on the floor. It was the one that had kicked him in the ribs. Jesso went up the stairs feeling better than ever.

It was blowing strong and steady on deck, but except for the wind-ripped tips of the waves, the water seemed to move slowly; big glassy mountains of water that stood for a moment with foam like marble along their sides, and then slowly sank into themselves, becoming the dark floor of a valley.

After the airless hold, Jesso felt suddenly cold and uncomfortable. When he stopped, the gun spiked him from behind and pushed.

“Turn left,” said Bean Pole, “and walk as far as you can.”

Jesso was out in the wind now. He felt his trouser legs whip back against his shins.

“As far as you can,” Bean Pole had said. Fifty feet ahead was the round stern of the ship, with a low railing that sank below the black line of the horizon with a lazy dip, then climbed up again to stick out into the sky.