“Still got that good pair of eyes, Max,” the Gypsy said.
The parks department truck was at the far end of the boathouse lot, its shiny surfaces partially obscured by the overhanging limbs of immense willow trees.
Luther Boyd approached the truck with the Browning in his hand. He jerked open the door and smelled the rank, fetid odor of the Juggler and saw-as he had guessed-that the cab was empty. There were bloodstains on the leather of the passenger seat.
After checking the rear of the truck and finding it empty, Boyd ran across the pavement of the parking lot to open ground that led toward the Ramble. He came to a thick tangle of hawthorn hedges, stopping at an area which looked ragged and torn, as if a wild animal had charged through it. And as he forced his way through this ragged passage, his flashlight picked up the distinctive prints of the Juggler’s Wellingtons.
Attack now, he thought, and as he bent low and ran swiftly along the line of those tracks, an irrelevant but annealing maxim of war came to his mind: “My center is giving way, my right flank is crushed, situation excellent, I am attacking.” That was Marshal Foch to Paris Headquarters, Second Battle of the Marne.
Within minutes, he spotted a movement far ahead of him in the shadows created by the tossing crowns of great trees. Then Boyd saw him clearly, still hundreds of yards ahead of him, a huge figure lurching across a moonlit meadow. And Boyd could see, even at this distance, the Juggler’s yellow cap and the light flickering on the blade of the knife in his right hand.
Luther Boyd flicked off the beam of his flashlight and ran silently at speed after his quarry.
Lieutenant Tonnelli drove slowly into the boathouse parking lot, and his headlights bathed the sides of the parks department truck, in brilliant illumination. The front door of the truck was open, and the cab was empty, and this confirmed the first estimate of the Juggler’s route: into the Ramble west on a line with Seventy-seventh Street. That was the fix that Luther Boyd had given him. Gypsy Tonnelli didn’t need to track the prints of those Wellingtons, even if he had had the skill to do it. Cutting the headlights of his squad car, Tonnelli drove slowly from the parking lot across a meadow that was flanked by a tangled thicket of low hawthorns. He rounded this hedgerow, which had been torn apart in one area, and drove slowly onto the flatlands of the park, the squad car merging slowly and silently with the shadows of huge trees.
Chapter 26
His odor was rank on the air now, and when Luther Boyd stepped from shadows into a moonlit grove, the movement froze Gus Soltik into immobility, and he stared at Boyd in terror, his body trembling and his breath coming so rapidly and harshly that saliva churned into froth on his lips. This was what he had feared this night, the “coldness” that had stalked him so cruelly and relentlessly. His thoughts were like splinters of steel piercing his tormented mind, bringing the redness there, the agonizing memories of the father’s threats and his mother’s punishment, the way they had held him and beat him, and his terrifying conviction that he knew no words to make them stop.
With an inarticulate scream of rage and fear, he jerked the hunting knife from his belt and rushed at Luther Boyd. He raised the knife high in the air, plunging it toward Boyd’s face, but Boyd trapped his wrist in a powerful Y formed by his own crossed forearms. The tip of the blade glittered inches from his eyes, but it was held there finally and forever by the strength of Boyd’s tempered muscle, and when Soltik tried to free himself, Boyd swiftly went to attack, the palm of his right hand going behind Soltik’s neck and the full swing of his arm sending the big man sprawling to the ground.
When Gus Soltik tried to rise to his feet, Boyd kicked him in the stomach with a lightning-fast blow, and an instant later, he broke Gus Soltik’s right wrist with a chop of his hand that sent the hunting knife flying into thick underbrush.
Sobbing with pain, Gus Soltik stumbled backward and collapsed on the ground against the bole of a tree.
He longed for his pain and torments to cease. He wanted it to be over forever. Why was it always like this? Going on and on. While his eyes filled with tears, he looked up and saw that the man standing above him holding that gun was like something carved from rock.
Luther Boyd stared at Gus Soltik’s swollen features, noting narrow eyes the color of mud, slack lips and bad teeth, the bulging forehead behind which stretched the festering swamp of mind. There was nothing there to salvage; this was human refuse. It was so often like this when you had slain your enemy on the battlefield; there was little cause for triumph because what you had destroyed was only another miserable and suffering human being, a youth whose mother went to sleep praying for him or something black and charred in the wreckage of a war machine.
He asked one question in a voice an inquisitor might have applied to a man stretched on a rack.
“Is she alive?”
Gus Soltik nodded dumbly, eagerly, filled with a desperate need somehow to soften the hatred and contempt he saw blazing in the eyes of the man who held the gun in his face.
“Date,” he said, in a hoarse, choked voice.
Luther Boyd put a hand on the man’s shoulder and jerked him to his feet, spinning him around and ramming the muzzle of the Browning against his spine. “Take me there,” Boyd said in the same voice he had used before.
Gus Soltik nodded quickly, almost happily and lurched forward, the gun at his back prodding him into a stumbling run.
The direction the Juggler had chosen coincided exactly with Boyd’s earlier estimate of where his daughter might be, and with the realization that this dreadful night might finally end with Kate alive and warm in his arms, he felt a surge of relief flowing through his veins.
“Hot chocolate,” Gus Soltik said, and his voice was soft and gentle and questing. “Boats to ride around the water.”
“Shut up!” Luther Boyd said, speaking quietly and ramming the barrel of the gun harder into the big man’s spine, increasing their speed until they were devouring ground with long, running strides.
Boyd flicked a glance over his shoulder. He couldn’t see him yet, but he could hear the soft purr of the motor on the night winds. Earlier he had monitored Sokolsky’s orders to all forces in the Ramble to return to the reserve unit in the Sheep Meadow. And so this could only be Tonnelli coming after him, stalking him in a police squad car, his Sicilian passions aroused to destroy the Juggler at any cost, including Kate Boyd’s life.
Tonnelli quietly braked the squad car to a complete stop and cut the engine. As silence settled around him, he carefully opened the door and stepped from the car, his eyes tracking back and forth across the darkness of the Ramble. Nothing stirred in that black expanse but the silhouettes of moving trees against a clear sky, and the only sounds he heard were occasional gusting winds that created a delicate rustle among the fallen autumn leaves.
Tonnelli’s hand was on the butt of his gun. He knew that Boyd had a two-way radio, and without any doubt Boyd would know the Ramble had been emptied of all police officers. And would know of the missing parks department truck, of course.
Tonnelli stood quiet and motionless in the darkness for at least thirty seconds, straining for a glimpse of Boyd or the Juggler, testing an almost unnatural silence by turning his head from side to side, trying to track sound and motion like a human radar screen.
At last the Gypsy moved carefully behind the wheel of the car, settled his powerful torso silently into the leather seat, and then turned the ignition and allowed the motor to idle softly before touching the accelerator and letting the car inch slowly toward a tunnel formed by towering fir trees.
Luther Boyd had checked the Juggler with a grip on his arm, and they had stood stock-still after Boyd had heard the sound of the squad car’s engine fade away into the silence of the night. He turned and stared over his shoulder at tangles of underbrush and the slowly swaying crowns of tall trees, trying to analyze Tonnelli’s tactics. Why had he stopped? Was he tracking him on foot now?
Then, after an interval of almost a minute, Boyd heard the squad car’s motor cough softly to life, and he tried to judge whether Tonnelli had got a fix on his position during that beat of silence.
He pushed Gus Soltik forward, prodding him with the barrel of the Browning.
“Faster,” he said, his voice as soft as the whispering winds in the trees.
