Carla Neggers - Cut and Run

“There are doormen-”

Hendrik laughed, and she regretted her lapse into naiveté. He went on, “If Bloch finds me here, he’ll kill me. Then I’ll hardly be in a position to help.”

Wilhelmina shrugged. “It seems to me he’ll kill you anyway at some point.”

“Maybe so.” He grinned at her. “You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Willie? But revenge never feels so good as we think it ought. Hating me keeps you alive.”

He started toward the door. Wilhelmina touched his arm, but not to stop him. He seemed to know this. His eyes were as blue as she’d remembered and had seen in the dreams she’d never been able to control and will away. Who was she to change what had been? He was a devil, yes, but she’d not always thought him so. That, too, was a part of what had been.

She asked quietly, “Did you ever touch her?”

“No,” he said, “never.”

Then he ran. As before.

The old Dutchwoman spoke no English, which pissed Bloch off, but he figured the younger sister could translate-and he had no trouble getting through what he wanted her to do. A.357 Magnum reduced the need for a common language. He waved it around and told her to get her fat ass out the door, and, sure enough, she did.

He let himself relax, cutting down slightly on his guard-and that was when she whipped around with a goddamn knife that could have sliced an elephant in two with one swipe. She had it at his throat before he could shoot the silly bitch. Like a damn fool, he’d hesitated that fraction of a second because he didn’t want to cause any more ruckus than he already had in busting past the doormen. Now if he fired, the old woman’s last act would be to shove her fucking knife in his throat. And even if it weren’t and he could manage to blow her fat butt across the hall, there’d still be the noise and the mess.

There was also the chance she had the diamond. He wanted Wilhelmina Peperkamp alive.

“Achh,” she grunted, cursing him in Dutch. She threw down the knife and proceeded to the elevator.

Jesus Christ, Bloch muttered to himself, glad none of his men had been around for this one.

He refused to meet her eye on the ride down in the elevator. He decided she’d made her point.

They collected his man in the lobby; he’d done a fair job of convincing the doormen they shouldn’t call in the cavalry just yet. Their car slid up to the Central Park West entrance, and they jumped in, Bloch giving the stout old Dutchwoman a good shove. Henson, the guy posted across the street, had joined them. He didn’t look too happy, and within a block, the sergeant found out why.

“Stark was here,” Henson said.

Bloch swore. He should have taken care of Matthew Stark himself when he was in Washington. Hell, he should have taken care of him twenty years ago in ’Nam.

“Tell him anything?”

“No.”

Bloch didn’t believe it. Time he and Matt Stark finished things, anyway.

“Think the doormen’ll call the police?” Henson asked.

“Worry, worry,” Bloch said derisively. “What do you care if they do? We’re free and clear.”

But Henson sat back, not reassured, and Bloch wondered if the guy had scruples or was just scared. Either one didn’t sit too well with him. Mostly his men were shit. Not all of them, but enough. But that would change soon, and it was another problem for another time.

He told the driver to speed it up, he wanted to be at Teterboro Airport in New Jersey as soon as possible. Then he told the two women, who were yapping in Dutch, to shut the fuck up. The younger one was a nice-looking woman with real manners, but pale and sweating from her busted arm-and Jesus Christ, did she hate his guts. The old one called him a Nazi. Bloch was just as glad she hadn’t known about her sister’s arm before she’d thrown down her knife.

“Well, ladies,” he said, downright jovial, “I hope to hell one of you can lead me to the Minstrel’s Rough. Otherwise I’m going to have to find where de Geer stashed pretty little Juliana Fall. Then we can have a nice family reunion.”

He knew he’d have to find Juliana Fall at some point, regardless of what her aunt and mother did. She knew too much as it was, and she could identify him. A loose end. But he saw nothing to be gained from telling them that, and at the moment he thought the best strategy was to get back to camp and reassess exactly where he stood. If he were lucky, the girl, the Dutchman, and Steelman himself would come to him.

If not, he’d go to them.

The tiny, antique cape house stood on a hillside overlooking the winding Batten Kill River in southwestern Vermont. Three inches of light, dusty snow glistened in the moonlight on the gravel driveway. Juliana plowed Shuji’s Mercedes right through it and went in through the back, into the country kitchen, turning on lights and ignoring the pounding in her head and the tugging at the back of her eyes that told her she needed sleep. She stumbled into the common room and started a fire in the huge center chimney fireplace, using more matches than usual because her hands were shaking with cold and fear. Finally, it caught.

The crackling of the flames and the soughing of the wind were the only sounds. She listened to her footsteps on the wide pine floor as she went into her small bedroom off the common room and found some warm corduroys and a sweater and heavy socks and put them on. She left her city clothes in a heap on the floor.

The fire didn’t take long to get going, and Juliana soon added another log. Then she sat cross-legged on the round hand-braided rug in front of the hearth. Everything about the house was soothing. There was a basket on the floor filled with the needlework she only did when she was here; for the past four years she’d been working on a sweater made with wool from a farm nearby. There was a stack of unread books on the Shaker candle table. Bundles of herbs she’d dried last summer. Reference books on bird watching, gardening, jam making. The women who came here and exulted in simple domestic chores, she thought, was as different from the Juliana Fall who had just completed another highly acclaimed European tour as she was from J.J. Pepper.

She rested back against the Duncan Phyfe sofa, trying to ease her tension, to think. Just a few minutes, she thought. If she just closed her eyes and emptied her mind for a little while, she would be better able to deal with the problems of her mother and the Minstrel’s Rough. She could feel the fire warm her feet. The Chopin sounded in her head. She listened to it, hearing it in a way she’d never heard it before. Closing her eyes at last, she let the sounds envelop her, then seep in, becoming a part of her.

After a while she became aware she was no longer alone in the house. She hadn’t heard anyone come in. Although preoccupied, she hadn’t been asleep and was certain an unusual sound-a door, a car-would have alerted her.

Very close to her a sandpaper voice said, “I don’t know why I don’t just wring your neck and be done with it.”

She opened her eyes, and when they fell on the solid figure of Matthew Stark, her heart skidded; she’d been missing him, she realized, wanting him here while she was hurting in so many different ways. “Matthew.” Could he hear the longing in her voice? “How did you get here?”

He glared down at her, his dark face lost in the shadows of the room. “I came through the goddamn kitchen door that you left unlocked.”

“If I hadn’t,” she said noting the socket wrench in his right hand, “you’d only have broken in. Then I’d have had to buy a new door. How did you find me?”

“Your Aunt Willie. She guessed you’d come here.”

“She did, did she? I didn’t think she had that much imagination. I’ve just been sitting here humming Chopin,” she said. As if to prove it, she hummed some for him. “That’s the one I’m supposed to be working on. Frederick Chopin’s Piano Concerto Number One. My uncle’s dead, Rachel Stein is dead, my mother’s been kidnapped, my aunt’s muttering about onderduikers and Nazis, I’ve been knocked around and have met a Dutchman who betrayed my family and the Steins to the Nazis-and I’m humming goddamn Chopin.”