Carla Neggers - Cut and Run

Catharina regarded her old friend with despair. “He’s never even admitted he did anything wrong. Oh, Rachel, what’s the point? You know what he is-”

“ That’s the point. I do know what he is!”

Rachel balled one tiny hand into a fist and thumped the table with her bony knuckles. Dishes rattled. Catharina jumped, looking startled and hurt.

Inhaling deeply, Rachel calmed herself and went on with quiet intensity. “He says Hendrik conned his way into seeing him to urge him to support an increase in defense spending but that he, Ryder, knows very little about him and had no way of getting in touch with him. I don’t believe him, but no matter. He’s agreed to investigate my allegations further if I can corroborate my story. I asked Abraham, but he thinks I’m crazy and that Ryder is only trying to pacify me and look good to a Jewish constituency. Maybe he’s right.” She laughed, remembering the shouting match she and her brother had had. But they had been fighting all their lives; they had good fights. “Abraham’s content to believe Hendrik de Geer will meet his fate one day, if not until the moment of his death. Me, I believe Hendrik will even fast-talk God!”

Rachel grinned, but the light in her dark eyes faded as soon as it appeared. “I intend to make Hendrik answer for Amsterdam,” she said, her gaze on the fair woman across the table, not easing up, not letting her off the hook. “You can help me, Catharina. You can corroborate my story.”

“You can’t make Hendrik answer for anything,” Catharina said, tension strangling her words. “No one can. Rachel, he’s a hard, hard man. Please don’t do this. Don’t go after him. Leave the past alone. Not for his sake, not for mine-for your sake, Rachel. You know what he is!”

Rachel filled her teacup once more, her hand steady. “I can’t leave the past alone.”

She could see the mix of anguish and determination in her friend’s face and understood, because she had waged the same battle with herself and made her decision.

Catharina sighed softly. “Of course, how could I even ask you? It’s just that I’m afraid for you, Rachel.”

“I know.” Rachel smiled and waved a hand, but she couldn’t dismiss the pain in Catharina’s beautiful eyes. She’d forgotten what it was to have someone-aside from Abraham of course-care about her. “The future holds nothing for me. It never did, even when I was twenty. I think only of the past. I can remember so clearly, as if it happened just this morning, how my father would sit me on his knee and tell me about diamonds, let me help him sort them. So boring! But there was such life in his eyes. Do you remember?”

Catharina nodded sadly. “Your father was one of the gentlest, wisest men I’ve ever known.”

“He was younger than I am now when he died.” Rachel drank some tea, replacing the cup on its saucer with a firmness that underlined her own resolve. “Don’t be afraid for me, Catharina. I’m doing what I must do, what I want to do. I know exactly the kind of man I’m facing, and I don’t care. If Hendrik wins, he wins. But at least I’ll have tried. All I want is for him to understand what he did.”

“He never will, Rachel,” Catharina said.

“We’ll see.”

“Hendrik never intended for bad things to come of what he did, and when they did, he couldn’t admit he was at fault. He couldn’t accept the consequences of his own actions-he probably still can’t. It’s not in his nature. You’re not going to change him. Hendrik de Geer will always be out for himself.”

“Let’s not argue,” Rachel said. “I won’t force you to help.”

Catharina looked shocked. “No, that’s not what I meant. Of course I’ll talk to Senator Ryder, if that’s what you want, but I’m pessimistic that anything will come of it. Even now, Hendrik probably already knows you’re after him. He won’t stick around. And Rachel, my God, you’ve suffered enough.”

“We all have,” she said, fire coming into her eyes. “But not Hendrik.”

“I know, but…”

Rachel reached across the table and grabbed Catharina’s strong hand, squeezing it tightly, aware of how small and frail her own hand was-but it was only bones, skin, muscle. Nothing that counted. The bond between them, what was unseen and immeasurable and timeless, was all that mattered. “You live on Park Avenue and have dried dough under your nails. Only you, Catharina. My friend, my dear, dear friend, I know how difficult this must be for you. But you don’t have to see him. You-”

Catharina was looking at someone across the room. “Oh, dear heavens.”

Rachel felt her heart pound. Hendrik-was it Hendrik? Had he found her? She whispered, “What’s wrong?”

“Juliana. I forgot, I invited her to tea.”

Resisting the impulse to draw a heavy sigh of relief, Rachel turned around and looked at the young woman grabbing a butter cookie and waving to her mother. Blond hair falling over her open black cashmere coat, dark green eyes sparkling, smile bright-a fascinating combination of strength and delicacy was this Juliana Fall. Full of piss and vinegar, Abraham would say. “So that’s your Juliana? She’s very beautiful, Catharina. You’re fortunate.”

“I know. Sometimes I wonder how I produced such a child. From the time she was a tiny girl, her whole life has been music. I don’t understand. Adrian and I aren’t musical, but with Juliana, there’s never been anything else. Have you ever heard her perform?”

“Not in person, but I’ve listened to her on the radio many times. And Senator Ryder has tickets for Lincoln Center tomorrow night. He suggests we meet there, after the concert, and-Catharina?”

She’d gone white. “Rachel, she doesn’t know. Juliana. I haven’t told her.”

“About Amsterdam? Nothing? ”

“I couldn’t. Even Adrian…” Catharina shut her eyes briefly; Rachel watched her fight for self-control with a mother’s willpower as her daughter made her way to the table. “Neither of them knows what happened. I know I’m overprotective, but I didn’t want any of that to touch them. I just can’t talk about Amsterdam.”

“That’s your right,” Rachel said carefully. Having never married, she had never had to make such decisions. “I understand.”

“You’ll keep her out of this?”

Rachel smiled reassuringly, and although she didn’t understand, perhaps didn’t approve, she felt good about being able to comfort her friend. “Of course. There’s no reason whatever for Juliana to be involved in this.”

Matthew Stark was in the middle of an argument on shortstops with a couple of sports reporters when Ziegler found him in the Gazette cafeteria. At thirty-nine, Stark was a dark, solidly built, compact man with a face that might have been good-looking except for the shrapnel scars. His eyes were deep-set and a very dark brown; people told him that sometimes they seemed black. He had on jeans, a chambray shirt, and his heavy, handmade Minnesota Gokey boots.

“Sorry to bother you,” Aaron said, “but Feldie’s got a guy downstairs who wants to see you. He looks like somebody out of Night of the Living Dead. Calls himself the Weaze.”

“Weasel? Hell, I thought he’d be dead by now.”

Without rushing, Stark refilled his mug and walked back with Aaron, a curly-haired kid who wore tassel loafers and suits and didn’t know a damn thing about baseball. Matthew knew he scared the hell out of Ziegler, but he didn’t let that trouble him.

“Feldie was getting pretty impatient,” Aaron said.

“Right.”

When they returned to the newsroom, she had put her glasses, big black-framed things, on her nose. “Don’t hurry, for Christ’s sake,” she said.