Carla Neggers - Cut and Run

“That’s not what I meant!” She felt her face heat up. “I am not doing this because I’m bored. I’m doing it because I have to. I have no choice. Ten years ago maybe I wouldn’t have bothered. You and all the other jerks involved with this mess could have done as you damned well pleased. I’d have been fine. But now I can’t not act. I can’t run away. It’s not so I’ll be a better pianist.” She sat back, angry with herself. She’d stopped trying to explain herself to people years ago. If they understood her, okay. If not, to hell with them. Why was it different with Matthew Stark? “Anyway, I’m here.”

“For about five minutes.”

“Look-”

“Sweetheart, your butt’s back in New York as soon as I can get it on a plane out of here.”

She clamped her mouth shut. “I knew I shouldn’t have tried to explain.”

His expression softened, but not much. “I’m glad you tried,” he said. “It’s just that it doesn’t make any difference. Look, if it’s any consolation, I understand a lot more about where you’re coming from than I’d like to let on. I know what it’s like to be single-minded about work. I was about mine at one time-and like you say, not because I wanted to be rich and famous, but because I needed to get down on paper things that I needed to say. And I know what it’s like to get to the top and have the pressures of being there-the expectations, the goddamn effort involved-interfere with the work itself.”

“Is that why you’re at the Gazette? ” she asked quietly.

He grinned. “I didn’t have a J.J. Pepper to slide into.” He finished off his beer in one long swallow, set the empty bottle on the table, and rose. “Tell you what, you be smart and don’t put up a fuss about going back to New York, I’ll tell you about Master Sergeant Phillip Bloch on the way to the airport.”

She had to ask. “If I’m not smart and do put up a fuss?”

“Darling,” he said, leaning very close, close enough that she could feel the warmth of his breath on her mouth and smell the beer, “do you really want to know?”

Sweet Catharina…

Hendrik de Geer stumbled into the Upper East Side bar and slid onto the stool as he ordered a double shot of gin. He ignored the looks he received from the well-dressed clientele. What did they know? The gin wasn’t Dutch, but it would do. Anything would.

I’d forgotten how sweet.

He filled his glass, drank down the needed liquid. How much would it take before oblivion overtook him? One bottle-two?

Breathe, Johannes…goddamn you, breathe!

They’d brought his body to the streets of the old Jewish quarter. Dumped it there among the ghosts. Hendrik had kept his face uncovered, half-hoping he’d be recognized. Not caring. But there was no one there anymore to know Hendrik de Geer and what he’d done. So many of the Jews were gone; a hundred thousand dead, it was said. He believed it. A dozen were on his conscience.

I didn’t mean for them to die!

But they did.

He poured another glass, drank it down, then another.

Bloch will go after the Minstrel. Ryder won’t stop him.

It was none of his concern. Samuel Ryder was a coward and a fool, and to save himself he would have to appease Phillip Bloch. For him, there was no other choice. He’s like me, this senator, the Dutchman thought. He would involve people he cares about in his schemes to save his own skin.

Now that Bloch knew about the diamond, he would never be satisfied until it was in his possession. Ryder would help if necessary. Bloch would know that.

They’ll go to Catharina…to her daughter…to Wilhelmina.

Willie, the wily old bitch. There was no forgiveness in her stone heart. She could always see through him. For a time, she’d been excited by what he was. Now she’d kill him without a thought.

You must stop Bloch. You know how he thinks. You can do it.

No, he couldn’t. Phillip Bloch had a stockpile of weapons, he had men who were well trained, if loyal only to themselves, and he had contacts, like Senator Ryder. He was tough, deliberate, cautious, and very dangerous. Hendrik was too old to take him on. Too tired.

And if Catharina dies?

Then she dies.

And he thought, as he refilled his glass, I’m already damned.

They took Matthew’s car, a black Porsche, to the airport. “A German car?” Juliana said. “Aunt Willie would be disgusted.”

Their shoulders almost touched in the cozy confines of the sportscar, and Matthew saw that she was still pale from her ordeal on his front steps. He glanced down at the slender, blunt-nailed hands folded on her lap. Her wrist was swollen, but she’d refused his offer of ice, assuring him and, he thought, herself that the injury was only minor. He hadn’t told her what it was like to stand there and watch her tough it out with two of Bloch’s men. Hadn’t told her how the anger had ripped through him; how he’d had to fight the impulse to go after the goddamn cowards. They wouldn’t deliver Bloch’s message to him personally but had waited for an unarmed piano player. She’d handled herself well under the circumstances.

But Juliana Fall was getting to be one hell of a distraction.

“Why would Aunt Willie be disgusted?” he asked.

“She has this thing about Germans.”

“You sent her back to Rotterdam?”

Juliana turned and looked out the passenger window. “No one sends Aunt Willie anywhere.” Then she turned back to him. Her cheeks had regained some of their color “You know, Matthew, I keep telling myself if you’d gotten yourself throttled on my doorstep, I’d have insisted you return home as well. But then again, I wonder if I might understand your need to see this thing through.”

“It’s not your fight.”

She looked at him, icy and smart and nuts and beautiful. Matthew didn’t know why the hell he hadn’t kissed her by now.

Because, jackass, you won’t stop with a kiss. And then where would you be? Stay away, my man. Stay away.

She said coolly, “Bullshit.”

“I don’t want you around.”

“And I make my own decisions.”

“Not used to considering anyone’s opinion but your own, are you?”

She gave him one of her distant, mysterious smiles. It warned him away and made him want to come closer. It made him realize how much he didn’t know about Juliana Fall, and how much he wanted to know everything. For the first time, he saw her self-awareness-her understanding of who she was and what she was.

The mystery went to her dark eyes. “An only child in a solitary profession, a woman of some means who lives alone? Of course I’m accustomed to doing as I please. And you should talk. When I left the newsroom, your editor said, and I quote, ‘Tell that independent pain in the ass to keep me posted.’ We’re not so different.”

“We are,” he said. “I know what I’m getting into. I’ve been there, Juliana.”

She scoffed. “Why is it that men who’ve been to war always think they know more than people who haven’t?”

“How the hell many ‘men who’ve been to war’ do you know?”

“Your view of the world is just as skewed as someone who has never seen combat,” she said, not backing down. “We all state our convictions from within our convictions.”

“Jesus Christ.”

She lifted her small round shoulders and gave him another of her cool smiles, but said nothing.

“I don’t think I’ve ever heard anyone accuse a Vietnam vet of being smart. We fought and died and were heroes and cowards and everything else in a war most people hated, not least of all us, in a war we didn’t win. Not smart, wouldn’t you say?”