Дональд Джеймс - The House of Eros

‘Maybe we took the ramp, maybe not,’ the elder boy said. ‘Who’s asking? You’re not a cop?’

Nan Luc took four twenties from her purse. ‘You can help me. Perhaps you can help me.’

The boy hesitated. ‘How can we help you, lady?’ he said, his eyes flicking down to the money in Nan Luc’s hand. ‘Last night we jes’ drove back home, is all.’

‘Coming up the ramp you were behind a dark coloured Mercedes.’

‘Nice car.’ The younger boy spoke for the first time. ‘Right, Tony?’

Nan Luc turned. ‘You remember it?’

‘We tucked up behind it right down nearly to the bridge,’ the young boy said. ‘It slipped a lane there and went way ahead.’

‘So you were staring at the back end of this Mercedes for most of ten minutes.’

‘We didn’t get no number,’ Tony said. ‘New York plates is all I remember.’

‘You’re sure?’ Nan Luc said. ‘You didn’t even get part of a number?’ The boy shook his head. ‘How about you?’ Nan Luc turned to the younger boy.

He shuffled his feet. ‘No…’

Tony turned back to Nan Luc and the twenties held just above the open neck of her purse. ‘Sorry, lady. We’d really like to help.’

Nan’s eyes roamed across the forecourt. ‘You’ve got time to think.’ She showed no sign of moving.

‘The only thing I got,’ the younger boy said, anxious to please, ‘is a sticker.’

‘The Mercedes carried a sticker?’

‘In the rear window,’ the boy said. ‘Hey, what was it now? Something funny.’ He stopped suddenly, looking at Nan Luc. ‘Something about Vietnam.’

‘Something about Vietnam?’ Nan felt a sudden surge of hope.

‘Something Vietnam. Place upstate we did that refrigerator truck.’ He turned to the other boy.

‘Meyerick,’ his friend said flatly.

‘It’s coming.’ The boy snapped his fingers. ‘Meyerick Vietnam Fund. That’s it, lady.’

‘Where’s Meyerick?’

‘Upstate New York,’ the other boy said. ‘An hour or two’s drive north and west.’

‘You did a good night’s work last night,’ Nan Luc said. ‘I’m sorry to hear you didn’t get paid. How much do you calculate you lost?’

He felt the phone had been ringing since time began. As his eyes opened Cy Stevenson frowned into the darkness. He was in a chair, an armchair. Something was rolling around his feet. A bottle. Two even. And the phone was ringing. The curtained windows showed thin cracks of daylight. He had no idea what time it was.

He reached left and knocked over a lamp. His hand connected with the telephone. He picked it up. As he spoke into it the memory surged over him of last night. He could hear a woman’s voice in his ear. Frantic, repetitive. ‘Cy, is that you? For God’s sake speak. Speak, for God’s sake.’

He grunted.

‘Cy, I’ve been trying to call you for the last hour. Sunny knows,’ Mary’s voice said. ‘About us.’

He reached down for one of the rolling bottles, put the neck to his lips and let the last few drops of whisky trickle across his tongue.

‘Cy, did you hear me? Sunny’s left for Virginia. We have to talk. I’m coming straight over?’

He put the phone on the arm of the chair and felt about on the floor for the light. Clicking the switch he screwed up his eyes as light jumped across the pale carpet. Mary’s voice was still coming from the phone. He picked up the receiver. His suit, he saw, was covered with mud.

‘Listen,’ he said, infinitely weary. ‘Just for Christ’s sake leave me alone.’

In the mirror behind the barman’s head Hal Bolson caught sight of Max hurrying down the steps and swung round on the stool.

‘Thanks for meeting me at such short notice, Hal,’ Max said, shaking his hand.

Bolson grimaced. ‘Now I’m retired I find I have all the time in the world. And I don’t like it. On the phone you sounded like a worried man.’

‘I am. Unless I can find Nan Luc in the next few hours. You said there are things you can tell me.’

‘There are things I might be able to tell you,’ Bolson corrected him cautiously. ‘But I have to get clearance first.’

‘Clearance? From the Pentagon, you mean? The CIA?’

Bolson shook his head. ‘In the bars of Saigon there were more agents than there were whores. But I wasn’t one of them.’ He paused. ‘You really think Nan Luc’s going for the jugular?’

‘The wrong jugular.’

‘But she doesn’t yet know where to find Stevenson?’

‘Don’t count on it.’

Bolson signalled to the barman. ‘Let me buy you a drink.’

Max shook his head. ‘I don’t have that kind of time, Hal.’

‘OK. I get the message.’ Bolson pushed himself off the barstool. ‘I’ll do what I can.’ They walked towards the stairs. Bolson took his topcoat from a hook and shrugged himself into it.

‘This clearance you’re going to have to get, Hal. Who is it from?’

Bolson buttoned his coat. ‘A woman,’ he said. ‘I have to check with her first. All this could put a cannon shot through her life.’

Max stood under the plastic dome of a call point and punched the numbers for San Diego. He was looking through the clear side of the booth at the picture of the Vietnamese woman on the front page of a stack of newspapers at the newsstand on the street corner. Within seconds he heard the soft, unhurried voice of Edward Brompton.

‘Mr Brompton,’ Max said, not trying to disguise the urgency in his voice, ‘this is Max Benning.’

‘I told you, Mr Benning, that I couldn’t help you with my wife’s New York address.’

‘Do you know who I am?’ Max said carefully. ‘Do you know I was a friend of your wife’s in Vietnam?’

‘Yes. I know who you are, Mr Benning. I’m afraid the answer’s the same.’

‘I have something to tell you, Mr Brompton, which I think might make a difference.’

‘What’s that?’

‘In Vietnam Nan Luc used to say that if she ever got to America she would trace her father through her Aunt Louise whose husband she thought might be a New York cop.’

‘Yes, that’s probably one route she’s following,’ Brompton said cautiously. ‘What is it you have to tell me?’

‘I believe Louise has been murdered, Mr Brompton. I think it’s her picture on the newsstands here in New York. Louise Cartwright, policeman’s wife. Found murdered in the early hours of this morning.’ He paused. ‘I think there’s every chance the man Nan Luc’s looking for is a murderer.’

At the other end the phone was silent. Then Ed Brompton said abruptly. ‘Nan Luc isn’t at her apartment in Greenwich Village. I don’t know where she is. You think she could be walking into danger.’

‘I know she is. I’m not sure she knows it.’

‘OK,’ Ed Brompton said crisply. ‘I’ll give you the address of the apartment and arrange for the superintendent to let you in.’ For the first time his voice betrayed his anxiety. ‘Hell,’ he said, ‘maybe there’s something at the apartment that can point the police to where she’s gone.’

She had never seen such a restrained display of wealth. Cars, clothes, tennis courts, the furnishings of the club itself, all proclaimed a cautious Eastern Seaboard affluence.

The trick, Nan Luc thought, was to leave you in no doubt that this was a highly exclusive club and that its members were the wealthiest families in the county, all without hammering a notice on the door. Portraits, old and new, lined the long wall of the dining room. Jason Rose was seated below an eighteenth century wigged figure under which was written, ‘Joshua Meyerick, Esq. Born 1699, Woodstock, Oxfordshire, England. Died 1789, Meyerick City, New York, in the United States of America.’