Carla Neggers - Cut and Run

He ordered them to get into a helicopter. He called it a bird.

Wilhelmina looked around with a sense of foreboding she hoped she masked, but in the eerie light of the airfield she saw the silhouette of a helicopter. To her it looked nothing like a bird, but more a dead spider on its back. When the propellers began to twirl, it looked like a dying spider on its back, which in Wilhelmina’s opinion wasn’t any better at all.

Whispering in Dutch, Catharina explained she thought they were in Florida or southern Georgia, near a swamp, that’s what the smell was, and did Willie think they should continue to cooperate? Dag, she whispered. Yes. For now.

The man Bloch told them to shut up and get in the chopper, the fat ass first.

Wilhelmina got the idea.

Matthew awoke at dawn, the light streaming through the window as pale as the soft hair spilled across his chest. He had willed himself to awaken before Juliana. She was lying on her side in a dead sleep, her smooth back to him, snuggled up close, the quilts pulled up to her chin. He could feel his own warmth on her skin. A part of him told him to kiss her and love her and maybe later call the police and let them handle everything while they just stayed in bed together.

But then he saw the bruise along her jaw, and he stopped the wishful thinking. He knew Phil Bloch. The sergeant would get the Minstrel on his own terms, not anyone else’s.

Taking care not to let the cold in under the covers, Matthew extricated himself from the bed. The room was freezing. He could see his breath in front of his mouth, and the last thing he wanted was to wander around buck naked. He gathered up his clothes and his boots and tiptoed out of the room, cursing silently as the goosebumps sprang up all over him. For no reason at all he thought of the Weasel and how he’d laugh his ass off right now, seeing Matt Stark tiptoeing out of a warm bed, with a woman in it no less, turning purple, all so he could go finish up what Otis Raymond had started him on. A piano player, the Weaze’d say, grinning that ugly, yellowed grin, Jeez’m, Matt.

Jeez’m indeed. He got down the stairs and jumped into his clothes and rubbed his hands together, trying to get warm. He checked the thermostat: fifty-five degrees. Good Christ. And it was colder than that upstairs. With a growl, he turned the heat up to all of sixty-two. He wouldn’t be around to enjoy it, but what the hell.

Juliana would. She could afford the damn oil bill.

He snuck around in the kitchen and got the keys to the Mercedes. The keys to her Audi were already in his pocket. Then he went outside. It was cold out but breathtakingly beautiful. Three inches of snow-a mere dusting around here-had fallen during the night, and the view was as picturesque as any he’d ever seen. He could understand Juliana’s attraction to this place. But he didn’t linger. The Batten Kill River, with snow-covered branches hanging low on its banks and its clear, cold waters running past patches of ice, wasn’t going anywhere. He’d be back to see it. He glanced up to the side window and in his mind saw Juliana snuggled up under the blankets, and he thought, damn right I’ll be back.

Unless after this she didn’t want him. But that was a chance he’d have to take.

He opened up the hood of the Audi and pulled out the spark plug wires, just in case she had a spare set of keys in the house or in her purse. Then he got in the Mercedes. It started right up and handled the snow in the driveway with hardly any trouble at all.

But, apparently, the noise was just enough to awaken his sleeping beauty.

Juliana leaped out the front door with nothing but a ratty quilt over her and yelled, “You sonofabitch,” as she pounded through the snow after him. Good thing there weren’t any neighbors, Stark thought somewhat grimly, or they’d talk. World-famous pianist trots naked through snow after has-been reporter. Well, not quite naked. But that’d kill her reputation a hell of a lot quicker than J.J. Pepper could.

As the Mercedes hit the plowed and sanded main road, he left her standing there, cursing him. He took some consolation in knowing he’d turned up the heat. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about that lovely behind of hers getting frostbite.

He doubted she’d see it that way.

Bloch pulled the phone toward him in the handsome study of Senator Samuel Ryder’s fishing lodge on the western edge of the Dead Lakes. As a military compound, it worked out okay, but not great. He and a couple of his most trusted men occupied the lodge, while the others were tucked into the fishing shacks around the perimeter. Ryder had been properly horrified when Bloch had called him up and said, hey, Sammy-boy, guess where I’m hanging out? But it was only a temporary arrangement. Bloch had himself a real camp in the works.

He nibbled on a handful of sunflower seeds and carob chips. If he ate any more than that, he’d feel too full, and then he’d want to sleep. Couldn’t afford to sleep right now. He’d blown it. An A-plus shitass job he’d done. The two women were stashed in one of the unoccupied shacks. The old one still wasn’t saying anything, and the young one was still saying the Minstrel was in Switzerland. Christ! How stupid could he be? Ryder must be rubbing off, he thought, dialing the senator’s Washington number with a steady hand.

The aunt hadn’t slit his throat, which he had deserved to have slit for letting a goddamn seventy-year-old woman get in that kind of position over him. She’d only let him off because she wanted to be with her sister.

The mother was protecting the daughter. Jesus, did it piss him off for forgetting how sentimental and dumb people could be about their relations. He had a brother; hadn’t seen him since before Vietnam. He hadn’t wanted to sign up. “I don’t believe in this war,” he’d said. Bloch felt a war was a war, and one was pretty much the same as another. When you were a soldier, you were paid to kill, not to think.

Yeah, he thought with a spasmodic laugh, you leave the thinking up to idiots like Sam Ryder.

The senator answered on the twelfth ring. Bloch kept count. “Knew it was me, didn’t you?” he said.

He could hear Ryder’s fear just in the way he breathed. “What do you want?”

“Juliana Fall.”

“What?”

“She has the diamond.”

“That’s ridiculous, Sergeant, she’s a concert pianist! She knows nothing about diamonds, I’m sure. Why would she have it? Look, why don’t you just give it up? I’ll see what I can do about getting you some stop-gap funds to help you vacate the camp and start over elsewhere-”

Bloch ignored him. “The Dutchman helped her get out yesterday. Sammy, Sammy, you’re not helping me. Why don’t you go and find out where she went.”

“Sergeant, I can’t help you! Don’t you understand?”

“Yeah, I do.” Bloch ate some more sunflower seeds. “I understand I’m sitting down here in your goddamn fishing camp with a couple tons of illegal weapons and ten men who probably ought to be in jail and how sweet that’d look splashed across the front page of every goddamn newspaper in this country.”

Ryder coughed, spitting with anger, but that, Bloch knew, was the most he could ever do with his anger-just spit and sputter with it. Made a good politician, Sammy-boy did. “Where am I supposed to find Juliana Fall?”

“Don’t whine, Lieutenant. You’ll think of something.”

“Sergeant-”

“And keep an eye out for Stark, let me know if he comes your way. I don’t like it that he’s messing around out there and I don’t know where he is. I’ve got a man at his house, but he hasn’t showed. You keep in touch, Lieutenant. And Sammy? I can use you in Washington.”