Carrion Comfort (50 page)

“Yes,” said Cohen. “Several old people murdered for their money and some innocent witnesses eliminated, no?”

“Close enough,” said Gentry. “One of the old people that was involved was an ex-Nazi living under the name of William D. Borden.”

“A film producer,” said the tall, frizzy-haired Israeli on Gentry’s left. Gentry jumped. He had almost forgotten that the bodyguards could speak. “Yeah,” he said. “And Saul Laski had been hunting for this particular Nazi for forty years— ever since Chelmno and Sobibor.”

“What are they?” asked the young man to Gentry’s right.

Gentry stared. Cohen snapped something in Hebrew and the young agent blushed. “The German . . . Borden . . . died, did he not?” said Cohen.

“In an air crash,” said Gentry. “Supposedly. But Saul didn’t think so.”

“So Dr. Laski assumed his old tormenter was still alive,” mused Cohen. “But what did Borden have to do with the murders in Charleston?”

Gentry removed his cloth cap and poked at the crown. “Settling old scores,” said Gentry. “Saul didn’t know for sure. He just felt that the Oberst . . . that’s what he called Borden . . . was involved somehow.”

“Why did Laski meet with Aaron?”

Gentry shook his head. “I didn’t know they had met. I didn’t even know Aaron Eshkol existed until yesterday. Saul flew from Charleston to be in Washington on December twentieth to interview somebody . . . he wouldn’t say who. He was going to stay in touch with me, but I haven’t heard from him since he left Charleston. Yesterday I visited Saul’s apartment building in New York and talked to his house keeper . . .”

“Tema,” said the tall man and silenced himself after a harsh glance from Cohen.

“Yeah,” said Gentry. “She mentioned Aaron. Here I am.”

“What did Dr. Laski want to talk to Aaron about?” asked Cohen. Gentry set his cap on his knee and opened his hands. “Damned if I know. I had the impression that Saul was expecting to get more information about Borden’s life out in California. Could Aaron have helped him there?”

Cohen bit his lip for some time before responding. “Aaron took four days of personal leave before meeting with his uncle,” he said. “He spent part of that time in California.”

“What did he learn there?” asked Gentry. “We don’t know.”

“How did you know about his meeting with Saul? Did Saul come to your embassy?”

The tall man said something in Hebrew that sounded like a warning. Cohen overrode him. “No,” he said. “Dr. Laski met with Aaron a week ago today at the National Gallery. Aaron and Levi Cole, a coworker in communications, thought the meeting was important. According to friends in the department, Aaron and Levi kept some files that they thought were of great importance in the cryptography safe that week.”

“What was in them?” asked Gentry, not really believing he would get an answer.

“We don’t know,” said Cohen. “A few hours after Aaron’s family was murdered, Levi Cole logged into the embassy and removed the files. He has not been seen since.” Cohen rubbed the bridge of his nose. “And none of it makes sense. Levi is the bachelor. No family here in the States, none left in Isreal. He is an ardent Zionist, ex-commando. I cannot imagine what hold they could have used on him. Logic dictates that it was him they should have eliminated, Aaron Eshkol they should have blackmailed. Only the question is, of course, who are
they
?”

Gentry said nothing. “All right, Sheriff,” said Cohen. “Please tell us anything else that might be of help.”

“That’s about it,” said Gentry. “Unless you want to hear Saul Laski’s story.”
How do I tell it without getting into the Oberst’s powers, the old ladies’ abilities?
thought Gentry.
They won’t believe me and if they don’t believe me I’m dead.

“We want everything,” said Cohen. “From the beginning.”

The limousine glided past the Lincoln Memorial and headed for the Tidal Basin.

N
atalie Preston used her Nikon with the 135mm lens to record the decaying contradictions of the dying city: stone homes, brick row houses, a bank designed to blend in with eighteenth-century buildings on either side, antique stores filled with broken junk, Salvation Army outlets filled with junk, empty lots filled with junk, narrow streets and alleys filled with junk. Natalie had loaded the Nikon with black and white Plus-X, not worried about the graininess, taking long, slow exposures that should bring out every chip and crack in every wall. There was no sign of Melanie Fuller.

After she had loaded the film, she had worked her courage up and loaded the .32 Llama automatic. It now lay at the bottom of her big purse, under the clutter and lens caps and cardboard false bottom.

The city was not so frightening in the daylight. The previous evening, landing after dark, feeling displaced and disoriented, she had allowed the man who sat next to her on the plane— Jensen Luhar— to drive her to Germantown. He said it was on his way. His gray Mercedes was parked in the long-term lot. At first she was glad she had accepted; the ride was long— down a busy expressway, across a two-level bridge, into the core of Philadelphia, out another winding, hectic freeway, across the river again— or perhaps it was another river— and then onto Germantown Avenue, a broad, brick thoroughfare wandering past dark slums and empty shops. By the time they were approaching the heart of Germantown, nearing the hotel he had suggested she stay at, she was sure the proposition was coming: “How about if I come up for a minute?” or “I’d love to show you my place— it’s just a little farther.” Probably the first; he wore no wedding ring, but that meant nothing. The only thing that Natalie was sure of was that there would be the inevitable proposition and then her clumsy rejection.

She was wrong. He parked in front of the old hotel, helped her in with her bags, wished her luck, and drove off. She wondered if he was gay.

Natalie had called Charleston before eleven and left her hotel phone and room number on Rob’s answering machine. She had expected him to call right after eleven, probably suggesting that she go back to St. Louis, but he did not. Disappointed, feeling strangely hurt, fighting sleep, she called Charleston again at 11:30 and used the device Rob had loaned her. There was no message from him, only her two calls on the tape. She had gone to sleep puzzled and a little frightened.

It was better in the daylight. Although there still was no message from Gentry, she called the
Philadelphia Inquirer
and by invoking her Chicago editor’s name she was able to get a little information out of the city editor. The details of the crime were still largely unknown, but it was certain that some or all of the four gang members had been decapitated. The Soul Brickyard Gang had their headquarters in a city-funded settlement house off Bringhurst Street, only a mile or so from Natalie’s Chelten Avenue hotel. Natalie looked up the settlement house’s phone number, called, and identified herself as a
Sun Times
reporter. A minister named Bill Woods gave her fifteen minutes at three o’clock.

Natalie spent the day exploring Germantown, wandering farther and farther down depressing side streets, and shooting photographs. The place had a strange charm. North and west of Chelten Avenue, large old homes held their ground in a reduced role of duplexes while black and white families carried on a semblance of middleclass life, while east to Bringhurst Street, the neighborhood decayed into burned-out row houses, abandoned cars, and the sightless stare of the hopeless.

The sun was out, however, and for a while children followed her in a giggling pack, beseeching her to take their picture. Natalie did so. A train roared by overhead, a woman’s voice bellowed from a doorway half a block away, and the entire pack scattered like leaves in a wind.

There was no message from Rob at ten, twelve, or two. She would wait until eleven
P.M.
Damn.

At three she knocked at the door of a large 1920s-style home set in the midst of rubble, burned-out apartment buildings, and factory yards. Part of the railing along the wraparound porch had been knocked out. Windows on the third floor had been boarded over, but someone had added a thin coat of cheap yellow paint during the past year. The house looked jaundiced.

The Reverend Bill Woods was white and lumpy. He sat with her in a cluttered office on the first floor and complained about the lack of city funding, the bureaucratic nightmare of administering a community action project such as Community House, and the lack of cooperation from the youth groups and community in general. He refused to use the word “gang.” Natalie caught glimpses of young black men coming and going in the halls and heard shouts and laughter from the basement and second floor.

“Can I speak to someone in the Soul Brickyard . . . group?” she asked. “Oh, no,” cried Woods. “The boys do not wish to speak to anyone except the television people. They enjoy being on camera.”

“Do they
live
here?” asked Natalie. “Oh, heavens no. They simply congregate here frequently for fellowship and recreation.”

“I need to talk to them,” said Natalie and rose from her seat. “I’m afraid that won’t be . . . hey, wait a minute!”

Natalie strode down the hall, opened a door, and went up a narrow flight of stairs. On the second floor a dozen black males huddled around a pool table or sprawled on mattresses scattered on the plaster-strewn floor. There were steel shutters on the windows and Natalie counted four pump shotguns propped near them.

Everyone froze when she entered. A tall, incredibly lean man in his early twenties leaned on his pool cue and snapped, “What you want, bitch?”

“I want to talk to you.”

“Shee-it,” said a bearded youth lying on one of the mattresses. “Listen that. ‘Ah want tuh talk to yoah.’ Where the fuck you from, woman? Some cracker state down south somewhere?”

“I want to do an interview,” said Natalie, marveling that her voice or knees had not yet betrayed her. “About the murders.”

Silence stretched until it grew mean. The tall youth who had spoken first raised the pool cue and walked slowly toward her. Four feet away he stopped, extended the cue, and ran the chalky tip between the open flaps of her goose-down jacket, down her blouse, to hook on the belt of her jeans. “I be givin’ you a interview, bitch. A real in-depth interview, you get what I mean.”

Natalie forced herself not to flinch. She shifted her Nikon to one side, reached into her coat pocket, and held out a color print of Mr. Hodges’s slide. “Have any of you seen this woman?”

The man with the cue looked at it and waved over a boy who could not have been more than fourteen. The boy stared, nodded, and went back to his place by the window.

“Get Marvin up here,” snapped the one with the pool cue. “Move your ass.”

Marvin Gayle was nineteen, was strikingly handsome with pale blue eyes, long lashes, skin the exact color of Natalie’s, and was a born leader. Natalie knew that the instant he entered the room. Somehow the focus in the room
shifted
, the posture of the others changed ever so slightly, and Marvin was the
center.
For ten minutes Marvin demanded to know who the white woman was. For ten minutes, Natalie offered to tell them
after
they told her about the murders.

Finally Marvin showed beautiful teeth in a broad smile. “You sure you want to know, babe?”

“Yes,” said Natalie. Frederick called her babe. It disconcerted her to hear it here.

Marvin clapped his hands together. “Leroy, Calvin, Monk, Louis, George,” he said. “The rest of you stay here.”

There was a chorus of protests. “Shut the fuck
up
,” snapped Marvin. “We still at war, you know? Somebody still out there waitin’ to
do
us. We find out who this honky old bitch is, what she do with this, we know
who
to get. Got it?
Get
it. Now shut the fuck up.”

They went back to their mattresses and pool table.

It was four o’clock and getting dark out. Natalie zipped her coat tight and blamed her sudden attack of shivers on the wind. They went north on Bringhurst, under the train tracks, and west on a street Natalie had thought was an alley. There were no streetlights. It was trying to snow. The night air smelled of sewage and soot.

They stopped at an entrance to a real alley. Marvin pointed at the fourteen-year-old. “Monk, tell what happened, man.”

The boy put his hands in his pockets and spat into the frozen weeds and tumbled bricks of a vacant lot. “Muhammed, he and the three others, they got to right here, you know? I come after them but wasn’t there yet, you know? It was, like, Christmas at the Pit, and Muhammed and Toby was doing a little coke, you know? They left without me to make another score at Zig’s brother’s place, you know? In Pulaski Town, right? But, like, I was so fucking stoned I didn’t see ’em leave and come running after them, you know?”

“Tell about the white dude,” said Marvin. “Fucking white dude, he come out of the fucking alley here, give Muhammed the fucking finger. Right here, about. I be half a block down the fuckin’ street, hear old Muhammed say, Shit, you believe this shit? Little fucking white dude right there, flipping off Muhammed and three brothers.”

“What did he look like?” asked Natalie. “Shut up,” snapped Marvin. “I ask the questions. Tell her what he look like.”

“He look like
shit
,” said Monk and spat again. Hands still in his pockets, he wiped his chin on his shoulder. “Little honky motherfucker look like he been dipped in shit, you know? Like he been eatin’ garbage for about a year, man. You know? Stringy hair, like. Sort of like dirty vines hangin’ down over his face, you know? All streaked, all over, like he be all bloody or something. Shit.” Monk shivered.

“Are you sure he was white?” asked Natalie.

Marvin glared, but Monk laughed loudly and said. “Oh yeah, he
white.
He one white honky motherfucking monster. That no lie.”

“Tell her about the sickle,” said Marvin.

Monk nodded rapidly. “Yeah, so this white dude, he run down this alley. Muhammed, Toby, and them, they stand there like they don’t get it, you know? Then Muhammed he say, get him, and they all run in there, you know? Not packing anything. Just their knives, you know? Don’t matter. They gonna cut that little motherfucker up good.”

“Tell her about the sickle.”

“Yeah.” Monk’s eyes seemed to glaze over. “I hear the noise and come up here and look in. Don’t run or nothing, you know? I figure, shit, on probation with that King Liquor thing, don’t need no murder shit, you know? So I just look in to watch the shit go down. But this white dude, he ain’t the one bleeding, dig? He got this big sickle thing . . . like in the cartoons?”

“Which cartoons?” asked Natalie. “Shit, you know, old dude with the skull and stick with a sickle on it. Like a hourglass too, you know? Comes to get dead folks in the cartoon. Shit.”

“A scythe?” said Natalie. “Like they used to cut wheat with?”

“Yeah, shit,” said Monk and pointed at her. “Only this honky monster motherfucker, he be cuttin’ down Muhammed and the bros. He
fast.
Oh, shit, he fast. I see enough, I hide right there . . .” He pointed at a large Dumpster. “I wait ’til he
done
, you know? And then wait ’til he gone a long time. I don’t
need
that shit, man. Then, when it get light, I go tell Marvin, you know?”

Marvin crossed his arms and looked at her. “Got enough, babe?”

It was very dark now. Far down the alley, Natalie saw the lights and traffic of what had to be Germantown Avenue. “Almost,” she said. “Did he . . . did the white dude kill all of them?”

Monk hugged his arms and laughed. “You fucking
know
it. Took his fucking time, too. He
like
it.”

“Were they decapitated?”

“Huh?”

“She means did he cut their heads off,” said Marvin. “Tell her, Monk.”

“Fuck yes they capitated. He fuckin’
sawed
they fucking heads off with that sickle and shovel. Stuck the heads on the parking meters out on the avenue, you know?”

“Dear God,” said Natalie. Snowflakes pelted her face and froze on her cheeks and lashes.

“Wasn’t all,” said Monk. His laughter was so ragged that it verged on being sobs. “He cut their fucking hearts out, man. I think he ate them.”

Natalie backed away from the alley. She turned to run, saw nothing but bricks and darkness everywhere, and stood stock-still.

Marvin took her by the arm. “Come on, babe. You coming back with us. Time to tell us. Time to talk.”