Carla Neggers - Cut and Run

“Want to do me another favor?”

Aaron shifted from one tassel loafer to the other. “Okay.”

“See what you can find out about a retired army sergeant by the name of Phillip Bloch.” He handed Ziegler a scrap of paper he’d scrawled names on during the flight from Belgium. “You can try the guys listed her. They might be able to help.”

“Is there anything specific you’re after?”

“Yeah. I want to know where he is.”

Juliana’s apartment building was an outrage, of course, but Wilhelmina resisted comment as her niece led her past the uniformed doorman into the marble lobby, then to the brass elevator with its smiling elevator man. Juliana explained that Central Park West attracted numerous performing artists and she felt comfortable there, she could be herself. Wilhelmina wondered, how could you be anyone else? To her, the place felt like a museum or a queen’s palace.

And the apartment itself! So many locks, so many rooms! Juliana told her aunt she could choose whichever bedroom she wanted, except for the “blue” one and the “rose” one.

“I use the blue,” Juliana said.

“And what about the rose?”

“My friend J.J. stays there when she’s in town; she’s left a lot of her stuff in the closet.”

“Oh.”

Wilhelmina investigated. In and out, in and out. She counted closets, bathrooms, bureaus, fireplaces, paintings, vases. She found some comfort in seeing the film of dust on virtually everything. Perhaps Juliana’s material possessions didn’t mean too much to her.

She settled on a tidy, sparsely furnished room in the back. It was the smallest. Juliana had taken a shower while Wilhelmina looked around, and she grinned from the doorway, her hair up in a big white towel. “This is the former maid’s room, Aunt Willie,” she said.

“Is it? How charming.”

“Did you want to see Mother this afternoon?”

“Yes, of course.”

“She isn’t going to talk to you in front of me, you know.”

“Then you can always leave. Now hurry up and get dressed.”

In less time than Wilhelmina thought her niece would have been capable of, Juliana joined her in the living room, wearing a pretty multistriped mohair coat and a black mohair scarf tied over her hair, which was still slightly damp. She had a leather satchel hooked over one shoulder.

“We can get the bus across the street and take it over to Fifth Avenue,” Juliana said, “then walk over to Madison-unless you’d rather take a cab.”

“The bus is fine,” Wilhelmina said, buttoning her coat. She nodded to the satchel. “What’s in there?”

Juliana grinned. “Bus tokens.”

But when they climbed onto the bus, Juliana slipped two tokens from her coat pocket. Wilhelmina sniffed. Better to be told something was none of her business than to be lied to. However, she said nothing, more interested in the man standing on the corner just down from the bus stop, leaning against a nude tree on the wide sidewalk. He was a solid, pleasant-looking man, perhaps in his midthirties, with a fleshy face. He wore a trench coat and a tweed cap. Wilhelmina had spotted him watching them as they’d crossed the streets from the Beresford.

Now, as they got onto the bus, he flagged a cab. He would know the bus route, possibly even guess where they were heading. Not that it mattered. She didn’t think he’d have any difficulty at all following the bus and getting out at the same stop they did.

“Aunt Willie, is something wrong?”

Juliana had responded well to the Nazi who’d followed them in Rotterdam; Wilhelmina had been impressed with her niece’s display of nerve and competence. And she’d seemed to take no real pride in what she’d done, which was good. Wilhelmina believed one should act in accordance with one’s own tolerance for risk, not to impress or shock anyone else. In her experience, that was when trouble started. Better to deal with an admitted coward than an un-admitted coward. She loathed bravado.

Nevertheless, being followed in Europe was quite different than having one’s own home watched. Wilhelmina shook her head. “No, nothing.”

“You saw him, too, didn’t you? The man in the Burberry, right?”

“Yes.”

Juliana smiled, her eyes shining. “It sounds like an Agatha Christie novel, doesn’t it? The Man in the Burberry Coat. ”

“Juliana-”

“It’s all right, Aunt Willie.” Her expression was grim but also surprisingly determined; she would deal with what was happening and not fall to pieces. “We’ll handle him.”

Of that, of course, Wilhelmina had no doubt.

Sergeant Phillip Bloch stormed into the fishing lodge and kicked the chair out from under his desk, putting all his pent-up rage into that one motion. He didn’t sit down. His body was rigid with tension; he felt as if he could break himself into pieces, like chopping wood.

That idiot Ryder, he thought. That goddamn, fucking idiot!

Block tried to calm himself. This level of stress wasn’t good for his health; he had to take things in stride. Ryder wasn’t going to turn smart overnight. He’d just let Hendrik de Geer go off as he pleased, and now Johannes Peperkamp was dead, and Ryder didn’t know where the Dutchman or the diamond was.

Jesus!

Ryder, who didn’t know shit about people, had said de Geer was a drunk and had just gone off on his own. He’d disappeared. Bloch didn’t believe it. De Geer had his own reasons for not killing Ryder and being done with the stupid asshole. Whatever those reasons were, Bloch didn’t trust them, and he was going to make damn sure he didn’t have that stinking Dutchman flying back in his face.

“Christ,” he said aloud, his teeth gritted, “do I have to do everything myself?”

It was so fucking simple. With the old man dead, all you do is go to the Peperkamp women. Wilhelmina Peperkamp, Catharina Fall, Juliana Fall. You take them one by one, nothing fancy. You point out that their brother or uncle would have made arrangements to pass along the Minstrel’s Rough to one of them. You point out that means one of them has it. You let them know that you want it. They argue, you grab them by the throat and say, “Get me the Minstrel or else.” One of them does, and bingo.

You don’t act wishy-washy. You have to believe that one of them has the stone.

Once you get it, you have it cut, polished, and evaluated, and you go about snipping off any loose ends still hanging in your face. Rachel Stein-type loose ends. No big deal. Just the things that have to be done to achieve the larger objective. Means to an end. Like stuff he’d had to do in Vietnam.

Then you cash in on the world’s largest and most mysterious uncut diamond-now cut-and you say hello to the big time.

To do anything, you couldn’t rely on fucking incompetents.

“I don’t have the maneuverability you do,” Ryder had whined.

Christ.

“You have to understand, Matthew Stark is nosing around. You know what he thinks of me.”

Same thing I do, Sammy.

Bloch grunted, calmer. Yeah, Ryder had a point about Stark. Neither of them could afford to have that sonofabitch climbing up their backs, trying to bring them down. Guess it was time he and Steelman-Christ, he hated all those dumbass nicknames-came to terms.

He sat down at the desk and picked up the phone.

Juliana found her mother sitting disconsolate in a quiet corner of the bakeshop kitchen, a pot of tea in front of her. Aunt Willie had broken the news about their brother’s death and retreated to the shop, for coffee and something to eat, she’d said. Juliana knew better; her aunt wanted her sister and niece to have a chance to talk.

“Just don’t mention our gentleman in the trench coat,” Aunt Willie had whispered.