“So we get to work,” Horn said. “Summarize what we’ve learned.”
“That’ll be easy,” Bickerstaff said, holding the cigar between index and middle fingers, “considering it isn’t much.”
“Evidence suggests both guards were killed at almost the same time,” Paula said, “one with the sharpened screw Mandle used to disembowel the other prisoner. The other was shot, then his face and head were bludgeoned, probably with the butt of the gun.”
“The guard’s gun,” Horn said.
Paula nodded. “Mandle’s got both their guns.”
“Any witnesses turn up?”
Bickerstaff said, “Not anyone who saw the escape itself. It had to have happened lightning fast. A guy named Smith-actually Smith-who happened to be glancing out a window of a sleazy hotel near where the escape took place and said he saw someone in what he called prison garb leaving the scene on the run. Then Smith disappeared. Apparently doesn’t want to get involved. Wants to join all those other Smiths out there who aren’t really Smiths.”
“We’ve canvassed the neighborhood,” Paula said. “Doubled patrols in the area, buttoned up the airports and Port Authority, put a watch in the subway. And, of course, every minute and a half the media are showing that creepy photo of Mandle taken during the trial.”
She thought she might have heard the doorbell chime in the bowels of the house, some noise on the stairs. Horn didn’t seem to have noticed. Or care.
“Not that it’ll do much good,” Bickerstaff said, “but we’re keeping a watch on the building where Mandle rented an apartment under an assumed name. Maybe something’ll draw him back to his familiar neighborhood-a favorite item he left behind, unfinished business, an old love or something.”
“Somebody he forgot to murder,” Paula said.
Bickerstaff drew on his cigar and looked at it appraisingly the way cigar smokers do, as if pleased by it and wondering what it was going to do next. “It’s amazing-” he said. Paula thought he was going to comment on the cigar. “-the way Mandle just dropped out of the world without leaving tracks. He kills three men, then unlocks handcuffs and leg irons and strolls away dressed in a luminous jumpsuit. Right off the end of the earth. So far, a perfect disappearing act. How the hell did he bring it off?”
“It’s his training,” said a voice from the doorway.
And there was Colonel Victor Kray in full military uniform, his regulation coat slung casually over his arm. The medals on his chest gleamed as if he’d just polished them- or had an aide do it.
“I know because I trained him.”
“I feel somewhat guilty,” Kray said, stepping the rest of the way into the room. He draped his coat over the back of a chair but remained standing. “I don’t think I fully got across to you earlier how skilled Mandle would be in the lethal arts. And that includes the art of subterfuge. If he’s hiding from the police, from the world, he won’t be easily found. He’s trained to be elusive in countries where he doesn’t even speak the language.”
Horn’s only response was to offer Kray a cigar.
“I don’t smoke,” Kray said. “But I wouldn’t mind another glass of that single malt scotch.”
Paula was beginning to feel as if she’d wandered into a men’s club.
Horn got up from behind the desk and poured Kray his drink. Paula and Bickerstaff declined, and Horn put the bottle back in its cabinet then returned to sit behind his desk. Though there was a chair nearby, Kray didn’t make a move to sit down. Paula wondered how he could appear so relaxed while maintaining such an erect posture.
“I came back,” Kray said, after sampling the scotch, “to offer my help. After all, the Night Spider is, in a way, my creation. I taught him how to move like a ghost and kill, and then hide.”
“And now you think you’re better qualified than anyone to find him,” Horn said.
“I think I might be the
“How do you intend to help?”
“In any way you choose. Fill me in on what you know about his escape, keep me apprised, and as events unfold, you can contact me and I’ll provide any insights I can.
Obviously, you can accept or reject my suggestions. If nothing else, I’ll sleep easier knowing I made them. I’ll be staying at the Sheraton Towers. Not for an indefinite period of time, but as long as my absence from other duties permits.”
Horn thanked him. “I’m sure your insights and advice will be of value.”
“And of course,” Kray said, “I’d appreciate it if you’d view me as a kind of ace in the hole. To alert media or other agencies of my involvement would be to admit the SSF exists, which officially it doesn’t. The relatively few people who know about it get kind of prickly if they’re forced to go on record denying they’ve ever heard of it. Elections, promotions, and all might be at stake. Careers.”
“Such as your own,” Bickerstaff said.
Kray shot him a look that seemed to physically press Bickerstaff back in his chair. “Yes, such as my own.”
Horn said he understood, and that they appreciated the risk Kray was taking. They’d do everything possible to maintain confidentiality. Bickerstaff and Paula seconded the sentiment.
Kray finished his scotch, then smiled graciously and nodded to each of them in turn as he said his good nights. He abruptly did a kind of smooth about-face, scooping up his coat from the chair back as he spun, and showed himself out.
The room seemed to have been made smaller by his leaving. Paula thought you didn’t often meet somebody whose absence made almost as profound an impression as his presence. The man did have an effect. She felt as if she’d hear an order to charge up a hill any second, and up the hill she would go.
“Well?” Horn said, after about half a minute.
“He doesn’t waste our time with small talk,” Paula said.
“He said what he came to say,” Bickerstaff remarked in a tone of admiration, “so it was time to leave and he went.”
“How very military,” Paula said.
Bickerstaff puffed on his cigar. “You think about it, Paula, we’ve won some wars.”
* * *
Horn’s first night alone in the brownstone. Scotch straight up. Cuban cigar and the hell with the smoke and lingering tobacco scent. He was still bewildered and smarting from Anne’s departure, and knew he was indulging himself in a way that was almost childishly defiant.
Living alone. Old cop aging in an old house in an old part of an old city. It was a depressing thought, but at least it had
Damn, the place was quiet!
He’d just returned from a steak dinner at a neighborhood restaurant he’d always liked but Anne despised. Full stomach, good liquor, and a quality cigar. He knew he should feel at least some sense of well-being if not contentment. What he had, what he was left with, was far beyond the means and luck of most people in the world. There was a reason why misery loved company. It was probably comparison.
But he felt no contentment, and it was no comfort that others had more reason for misery. In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man still had only one eye. He remembered a time long ago when fledgling TV journalist Nina Count almost touched a microphone to the nose of a young cop who’d just shot and killed a burglary suspect and asked, “How do you feel? Right now?” Then it became such a cliche that even TV journalists no longer asked the question. It was an interesting question despite its intrusive and often tasteless nature. Horn took a sip of scotch and asked it of himself.
He realized he hadn’t been lonely in years. Really lonely. The kind of lonely that grabs at your guts and makes you afraid to look into yourself.
