Carla Neggers - Cut and Run

“He’s here in New York, okay? I think he’s going after the women, first the baker, then these two, just to ask them some questions. They deal with him straight, he’ll let ’em go.”

“You dumb fuck,” Matthew said, but he didn’t waste any time or energy explaining to Paul that it didn’t matter if you dealt straight with Sergeant Phillip Bloch. If you were a loose end, he cut you off.

He ran out into the street, and a cab screeched to a stop in front of him. It was occupied. He didn’t care. He tore open the door and flashed his press badge. “It’s an emergency-please,” he said, climbing in.

The woman already occupying the cab decided she wouldn’t stay in for the ride and shot out. The driver, a fat, slow gentleman from Brooklyn, insisted on checking Stark’s press badge before he went anywhere.

“Okay, fella,” he said, “where to?”

It sounded ridiculous, but Matthew said it anyway, “Catharina’s Bake Shop on upper Madison.”

Phillip Bloch’s henchman Peters bent down to haul Juliana to her feet, but she was ready for him. Ignoring the shooting pain in her head and the muted cries of her mother, she kicked out viciously, one of her three-hundred-dollar black Italian shoes landing squarely in his face, knocking him backward. He grunted in surprise and blinding pain, and Juliana seized the opening, scooting backward as far out of reach as she could and scrambling agonizingly to her feet.

Bloch growled. “Fuck it, do I have to do everything?”

From the front room came a crashing sound and, absurdly, the tinkling of Catharina’s little doorbell. Matthew, Juliana thought wildly, hanging onto the doorframe, it’s got to be him!

A stout, fair-skinned older man jumped behind the counter, brushing her aside as he went into the kitchen.

“Hendrik-help Juliana!” Catharina was sobbing as Bloch twisted her good arm behind her back and pushed her toward the storeroom and rear exit. “Never mind me- for God’s sake, never mind me! ”

“Don’t follow me, de Geer,” Bloch said. He had pulled out a monstrous gun and looked ready to call the whole thing a wash and kill everyone in sight. Blood poured over his hand. “I’ll kill her right now-and the girl. I’ll cut my losses. You know I will.”

The Dutchman took a short breath and halted, his cold eyes giving Juliana a quick, appraising glance. The young henchman was coughing, climbing slowly to his feet. Juliana could see his eyes focus on his gun and shot out one foot, kicking it farther away. De Geer folded his hands together and brought them down on the stumbling Peters, hitting him almost exactly where Juliana had gotten him with the wooden shoe. He fell unconscious.

Phillip Bloch had seized the opportunity and had disappeared through the storeroom with Catharina.

“Come, you must get out of here,” the Dutchman said in a low voice, “before he changes his mind and thinks he can handle us both after all.”

Juliana lunged blindly toward the storeroom. “Mother-”

“Bloch will kill her, and you, if we don’t leave now. He means what he says.”

“Dammit, I’m calling the police!”

Hendrik de Geer grabbed her by the shoulders and held her, not ungently, against the doorframe. “No. Understand me, Juliana: he will kill her.”

She nodded dully, hurting everywhere, gulping for air as she tried to still her pounding heart and concentrate… Mother. But she knew the Dutchman was right. “He wants the Minstrel,” she said.

“Of course he does. Now come. I will get you somewhere safe.”

She looked at him. She had never seen eyes so piercingly blue. “You’re Hendrik de Geer.”

“Yes,” he said, without pride. “I’m the man who betrayed your family and the Steins- my friends -to the Nazis. And, of course, you’re wondering whose side I’m on.” He gave her a thin, wretched smile. “But that’s very simple, Juliana. Everyone knows whose side I’m on: my own. Right now it suits me to help you. Now come.”

Betrayed…my friends…Juliana held back another wave of shock. She couldn’t think about the past and all she didn’t know right now. Stay within yourself. Shuji always said. “Wait-it’s all right. I can find my own way.”

“Your mother told me-”

“I know, but go after her. You can do it.” She had the feeling he had to. “I’ll be all right.”

The smile grew less thin, less wretched, and the cold eyes moistened and became almost warm. “You’re a fine woman, Juliana Fall,” he said.

He waited until she’d gotten safely out to the street, past the unconscious Peters, the fallen gun, the fallen knives, the pots, the baking pans…the smashed box of cream puffs. The glass door was smashed, but she seemed hardly to notice. She was a strong girl, Hendrik thought. He reminded her of Catharina-and Wilhelmina. He watched her stumble out into the street and flag a passing cab and waited until she’d climbed in, safe.

Then he went silently through the storeroom.

“Juliana.” Shuji opened the door to his Upper East Side townhouse. “You look like hell.”

She managed a weak smile. “Jazz’ll do that to you.”

“Bullshit.”

“I need help, Shuji.”

He sighed. “Get in here.”

Shuji’s townhouse combined a Japanese sense of negative space with his flair for the opulent and dramatic. The entire fourth floor was his music studio. Juliana knew; she’d spent countless hours there. A warmth came over her, a nostalgia for those days, their security. She almost cried.

“What do you need?” he asked.

“A car and some cash.”

He managed a small smile. “The New York Times find out what you’ve been up to?”

“No, my mother’s been kidnapped.”

He looked at her, uncertain that she was in fact serious. For almost twenty years he’d listened to her problems, excuses, fears, exaggerations. He knew her better than he knew anyone. Loved her in a way he could love no one else-as, he realized, she did him. She was unpredictable and outrageous, and he knew he was lying to himself if he believed he could ever walk out of her life, J.J. Pepper or not.

He handed her the keys to his Mercedes and all the cash in his wallet. “I presume you’re in too big a hurry to answer any questions.”

“Later,” she said, throwing her arms around him as she felt the tears hot on her cheeks, and then she fled.

It must be a man, Shuji told himself, heading back upstairs to practice. Now at least he could. Since their argument he’d been able to do little more than stare at the keyboard, something, of course, he would never admit to her. He hadn’t understood what happened to her. J.J. Pepper, dyed hair, turbans, outrageous clothes. Jazz. He shuddered. Yet now, while he still didn’t understand, he did know it wasn’t something he needed to address. It was Juliana’s problem-something she had to confront and decide what to do about on her own. If she wanted his counsel, she would ask for it. The student-teacher relationship they had had for so long was over. It was one of those things that had been ending for a long time, gradually fading, not like a sunset into the night, but like the colors of dawn into a bright, beautiful day. Yes, that was how he would think of it.

They’d become friends, he thought with satisfaction.

Equals.

The cabdriver obviously felt vindicated when he pulled up in front of Catharina’s Bake Shop and the place was crawling with police. Blue lights were flashing, in contrast to the festive holiday lights lining the street. Stark passed him a twenty and didn’t wait for change as he got out, dropping his mask in place. Inside he was empty and stone cold. He flashed his press credentials and talked to the cop in charge, listening without comment. It seemed to be a simple break-in; they’d found a guy unconscious in the kitchen claiming he was smacked on the head while buying cream puffs. Guy’s name was Peters-Alex Peters. They’d tried to reach the owner.