He threw the gun on the bed and turned her around gently guiding her back into the living room.
"I took the bullets out before I came into the bedroom," he said.
She had stopped crying. He sat her down on the sofa, near her shoes. She slumped forward. Her mouth was open. Her face was white and she looked almost her age and his.
"Coffee?" he asked.
"What?"
"You want some coffee?" he asked again.
"You're going to kill me," she said.
"My only sister? No. Took me too long to find you. You want coffee, water, tea?"
"Tea," she said.
"Stay right there," he said gently, "You won't be able to work the locks on the door and you can't get through the windows. Just sit. I'll get the tea."
She sat. Her eyes moved to the paintings on the wall, the dark cell, the portraits and the scale and scorpion. She stared at the scale and scorpion. Somewhere inside she registered the sound of water from the tap in the kitchen, the sound of a humming microwave oven. No time seemed to pass.
Ringerman stepped back in the room, still clad only in his underpants. He handed her the tea and sat next to her.
"What do you… what are you going to do?" she asked.
"Two hundred thousand even," he said. "Talk to your husband, draw it out, cash. I meet you. You give it to me and you don't see me again unless you ride the Western Avenue bus, which I don't see much chance of. I owe Alan fifty thousand for his help. The rest goes to… I haven't really thought too much about it. The money. You get the money tomorrow. Talk to your husband if you like, but I get it tomorrow or I go to the police. I don't like going to the police. It'll get complicated. You might get by but I don't think so, and a good lawyer'll take the money and your house."
"All right," she said.
"I'd like to see my nephew once, maybe," he said. "You have a photograph?"
She gulped back some tea, put the cup down and reached for her purse, the purse in which she had carried the gun she had planned to use to kill the man who sat next to her gently asking about her son. She took out her wallet and handed it to him. Ringerman opened it and looked at the photographs: Charlotte and her husband, a smiling man with a tanned face and white teeth that looked false; Charlotte alone, a candid of her smiling over her shoulder at the camera in front of a tree; three photographs of a boy, one when he was no more than three, another when he was about seven or eight sitting on a white fence and waving his hand, and the last, a tall boy wearing a suit and tie.
"Looks like me." Ringerman said.
"Yes, a little," she agreed.
He removed all the photographs except the one of Charlotte and her husband and placed them on the table in front of him, side by side.
"I'll keep these," he said.
"Why?"
"The only family I've got. I've got one of our mother and father when they were young. I can get you a copy."
"No, thank you," she said, a touch of her earlier anger returning. "No, no, thank you. They didn't want me. I don't want them."
"Suit yourself," he said. "You can get dressed and go. I'll meet you at the bank at ten in the morning."
"How do you know which bank?" she asked getting up.
"I know."
"Your friend Al?" she asked.
He nodded.
"You can take the gun," he said.
It was her turn to nod.
"Don't think about coming back with new bullets," he said. "I had tape recorders running from the second you came through my front door. I'm putting the tapes in an envelope and mailing them to Al right after you leave. You shoot me and… well you understand."
"I won't shoot you," she said. "I'll get your money.'
She moved to the bedroom and dressed while Ringerman sat waiting. When she was ready, he watched her take a mirror from her purse and reapply her makeup.
"I… you want to hear something crazy?" she said. "Very crazy?"
"I've heard enough crazy in the last hour to last me the rest of my days," he said.
"Maybe… I mean maybe we could be… you know, see each other. You could meet my husband, your nephew."
"I'll pick my time to see the boy," he said. "He won't know. I won't bother him. If you hadn't pulled the trigger in the bedroom, I might have considered your offer, but not now. Not now."
He got out of the chair. She watched him walk to the wall and take down the painting of the scorpion on the scale.
"It's yours," he said holding it out to his sister.
She slung her purse over her arm and took the painting.
"The woman in the other paintings," she said turning her head toward them. "Who is she?"
"No one," he said looking at the paintings with her. "I made her up."
Ringerman walked to the front door, threw open the heavy bolt and turned the other locks. He opened the door.
She stepped into the corridor.
"Tomorrow morning at the bank, ten sharp," he said.
"Thank you for the painting. I wish…"
He was shaking his head 'no', not sure of what she might wish, but certain that he would have no part in making it come true.
"Emma Bovary," he said softly. She didn't seem to hear.
She walked slowly down the hall, painting held out in front of her. Ringerman closed the door and bolted it. The envelope was ready, addressed and stamped. He got the tapes from the two recorders and dropped them into the envelope.
In a few minutes, he would get dressed, go down and drop the envelope in the mailbox a block away. Now he sat in front of the table in his living room and looked at the photographs he had spread out.
They would go in his wallet along with the old snapshot of his parents and if anyone ever asked him about his family, he would show them his collection.
He looked at the photograph of Charlotte for about a minute and said aloud, "We don't look like either of our parents. Not even a little."
He would take the bars off the windows now. He would remove the bolt lock from his front door. He would not keep himself locked in or keep others locked out.
Ringerman touched the image of his sister, got up and moved to the bedroom to get dressed.
Bob Mendes
Noble Causes
BOB MENDES
was a chartered accountant until 1989, when he became a full-time writer. His lyrical power and style catapulted him to the front ranks of the European authors. He has twice won the Golden Noose, Belgium's highest mystery award, in 1993 for his novel
Vengeance
, and in 1997 for
The Power of Fire
. His novels have been translated into French, German, Spanish, and Czech. "Noble Causes," which first appeared in the magazine
De Standaard
, showcases all of his strengths in one tightly woven story.
Noble Causes
Bob Mendes
I
t was Friday afternoon and pouring with rain. Walter Goldwasser was the last person to leave the Diamonds International building at precisely two o'clock. He left through a reinforced side door leading to the executive car park. Eighteen seconds after he pulled the door closed behind him, the second phase of the newly installed security system was automatically activated.
His Mercedes SL 600 was parked ten meters away. With his Delvaux calfskin attaché case in one hand and a man's pocketbook and his car keys in the other, he risked the plunge through the rain. Halfway between the door and his car, he pushed the remote control button to unlock the car doors. No satisfying click, no flashing car lights: the remote wasn't working. Of course, the car was in a puddle so he couldn't even put his attaché case down. In order to free one hand, he put his pocketbook on the roof of the car. With his thumb he slid the flat emergency key out of the remote and put it in the lock.
As he tried to open the car door, he saw Fanny Galinda, the newly appointed secretary, on the sidewalk behind the fence. She was trying to find her way among the puddles, holding a newspaper over her head. She was wearing a white blouse and red pullover, on a black leather miniskirt riding up even farther because of her raised arms, so that he could admire the flawless shape of her thighs and calves in the black leggings even more.
Fanny was a Romanian refugee who had been hired a week ago because of her knowledge of Russian and other Slavic languages, in view of the constant expansion of trade with the East. Only this morning she had told him in a confidential mood that she had no friends in Antwerp. The least he could do in this weather was offer her a ride.
He called her name, but she was too busy trying to keep her hairdo and legs dry. She didn't hear him.
Goldwasser hastily slid behind the wheel and started the engine. Heat sensors and TV cameras recorded the changing situation. Now he had to punch in the code number for the security system on his mobile or radiotelephone within thirty seconds otherwise he would set off the alarm. He made a mistake the first time and had to start over. At last the gate opened. He drove through it. Relieved, he saw Fanny standing thirty meters up the road, under the awning of a jewelry store admiring the window display. He turned on the CD player and took his time choosing an appropriate piece of music.
The steel gate closed automatically behind the car; the security system went into its third and final phase.
When Goldwasser pulled up abreast of Fanny, he slowed down and smiled invitingly. It was all the encouragement she needed. Pleasantly surprised she ran round the car and sank into the empty seat beside him with a contented sigh. "You have just saved my life," she cooed happily.
The mighty twelve-cylinder engine accelerated. Goldwasser was happy to listen to her telling him how lucky she was, working for a company like Diamonds International and people like Mr. Goldwasser. He thought that the weekend ahead might turn out quite nicely. His wife was on holiday in Marbella and he didn't expect her back before Monday.
Not for one moment did he remember his pocketbook and other valuables still on the roof.
* * *
Pier was preparing breakfast and Rosa was calculating how much extra income they had earned this month, on an old copy of a regional paper. "Almost three hundred and sixty euros," she said. "If we do all right today, we could deposit two hundred euros for the Damian fund at the end of the week." She made a quick calculation. "They can buy medicine for seven lepers with that." Pier and Rosa both lived on social security and since Pier had moved in with her, they could make ends meet fairly well. They earned extra income by putting advertising pamphlets in mailboxes for Rosa's brother, in the city's difficult districts. Her brother gave her half of what he got from the Belgian Distribution Service, the company with the monopoly on door-to-door advertising. He spent the other half in 't Heilig Huiske café on Klooster Street. The advantage was that Pier and Rosa got their money under the counter. That's why they thought it no more than fair to donate part of these earnings to a charitable institution every month. This way none of it would get stuck to anyone's fingers, and they were left with a clean conscience.
Pier put the bacon and eggs on the Formica kitchen table. He knew she'd already explained to him once but he'd forgotten. "What is a euro again?" he asked.
"The euro replaces the former franc but it's worth forty times as much. And you can use it in almost all European countries."
Pier put a rasher of bacon between two slices of bread and sank his teeth in. "It's going to rain today," he said, chewing. "We'd better put on our raincoats."
Rosa nodded. "There. Now you see how lucky we are. When I was a child we didn't have raincoats. We were so poor that we wore the same clothes year-round. Rain or shine." She spread margarine on her bread and jabbed her fork into the pan. "What areas are we doing today?" she asked.
"The Diamond district and the Jewish district." Pier answered. "From Vesting Street to the Charlottealei. A regional, two DIY leaflets, and three supermarket flyers. Everything is folded and ready. We'll have to come back twice to get more." He knew exactly how many houses and how many mailboxes there were on each street.
They continued eating and Rosa was talking about her childhood again, about how there had been ten of them at her house and how sometimes they had to share two or three eggs among them. "See how lucky we are?" she repeated as she scraped the last bits of egg from the pan with a slice of bread, broke it in two and gave half to Pier.
* * *
The downpour had turned into a dull rain that left dirty tracks on the windshield of the SL 600. Fanny wasn't only good at languages but she'd also studied art history for a while and when Goldwasser told her he had a collection of rare Chagall prints at home, she showed great interest. A gift from heaven to Goldwasser. He'd been trying to find an excuse to take her with him to his impressive house on the Kastanjelaan, near Nachtegalen Park. They drove down Quinten Matsijslei, with the city park on their right. At the intersection of Plantin and Moretuslei and the Loosplaats the traffic lights changed to red. Goldwasser took his foot off the accelerator and cleared his throat. "Maybe we could go to my place first…"