The Man Who Fought Alone

  By then most of the traffic had scurried for shelter. I found a parking space at the curb no more than ten yards from the entrance to Chez Amneris. Ten yards in this storm—There may’ve been covered parking somewhere nearby, but I’d never find it.

  Naturally I didn’t own anything as reasonable as a raincoat—or an umbrella. By the time I reached the restaurant’s front door, I’d look like a puppy someone tried to put to sleep in a bucket.

  For a couple of minutes, I sat where I was, hoping for a break in the deluge—and trying to convince myself that Deborah wouldn’t let weather like this stop her. But the rain just came down harder.

  Finally I swallowed what was left of my dignity. Leaving my cell phone on the passenger seat to keep it dry, I jumped out of the van, slammed the door, and ran like the damned for what Deborah had called her favorite restaurant.

  Those ten yards felt like slogging along the bottom of a lake. By the time I burst into shelter, I wore enough water to irrigate a football field.

  Slapping moisture out of my eyes while I fountained in all directions, I found myself almost nose-to-nose with the maitre d’. His disapproving mustache matched the hard glare in his eyes. He retreated quickly to protect his tux, flapped his hands to ward me away.

  “Perhaps,” he sniffed with immaculate hauteur, “monsieur is unaware of the invention of umbrellas.”

  “That’s not all,” I told him in a sputter of rain. “I also didn’t know they’d invented rude waiters.”

  He didn’t rise to the challenge. Instead he fixed his glare on my sodden shoes. “Of course monsieur has a reservation.”

  Like I needed one. The place was practically empty.

  When I looked around, however, I spotted Deborah Messenger at a table near the back of the room. As soon as I saw her, she waved and smiled.

  I grinned back. “I guess I do,” I told mine host as I turned my back on him and strolled away, squishing.

  Chez Amneris was done up in a pseudo-Egyptian motif, complete with potted palms, Moroccan tableware, and sand-strewn pyramids in fresco. But the management had replaced the traditional rush-strewn floor with a hearty maroon carpet that made the whole room look awash in drying blood.

  As far as I could see, Deborah wasn’t wet at all. Her hair flowed around her head like a nimbus, dry and full of life, and her face had the fresh moist gloss of makeup rather than rain. She wore a mauve silk blouse that would’ve shown every drop of water, but instead it seemed to float against her, teasing me with hints.

  She must’ve brought an umbrella the size of a trampoline.

  A welcoming glitter in her eyes matched her smile. What with one thing and another, she nearly ravished me off my feet.

  I didn’t try to sit down. I wasn’t sure I could. When I’d grinned back at her for an hour or two, I muttered sheepishly, “I could use some paper towels.”

  She laughed and pointed. “The restrooms are that way.”

  Unsteadily I sloshed away.

  By the time I returned—still wet, but no longer dripping—she’d ordered herself a glass of burgundy, and the maitre d’ had taken advantage of my absence to set a menu at my place. As I sat down across from her, she laughed again.

  “Apparently I forgot to tell you there’s a parking garage next door.” So much for the trampoline theory. “You poor man, you look like you’ve been through the rinse cycle once too often.”

  Since there was hauteur in the air, I tried to fake some. “I prefer to think of it,” I sniffed like the maitre d‘, “as ‘rode hard and put away wet.’”

  Deborah bit her lip mock-solicitously. “Did you have a horrible time getting here?”

  “Moderately horrible,” I admitted. “But it’s already worth it.”

  “You’re too kind,” she told me. “But don’t stop. I like it.” Then she turned serious. “This must have been a difficult day. How are you?”

  I considered the question briefly. “Confused.”

  “Not about me, I hope.”

  “Actually, I am. I can’t figure out what a woman like you wants with me.” I smiled to take the edge off my clumsiness. “But on the Great Scale of Incomprehension, that’s one of my lesser problems. The rest are bigger.”

  “Tell me,” she urged.

  So I told her. Even though I didn’t know how to trust her. I needed to talk more than I’d realized.

  Apparently I’d forgotten how much I used to talk to Ginny—and how much good it did me.

  Once I got started, I lost track of the ordinary details of dinner. The fact that I felt like I was wearing wet towels stopped bothering me. I ordered and ate something without registering what it was, drank club soda without noticing the lovely, pernicious aroma of burgundy. Instead I just talked. About Puerta del Sol and Ginny. About Bernie and Mai Sternway. About Alyse and Marshal, Turf Hardshorn and Sifu Hong. Whenever I got stuck, Deborah asked an attentive question, and I went on.

  Outside the storm grew stronger. Thunder crashed like granite through the downpour, and shots of lightning paled Chez Amneris’s lamps in jagged streaks. But the effect was muffled, almost impersonal. It didn’t get in my way.

  I was still going when Deborah announced, “Brew, I want you to come back to my apartment.” From the look in her eyes, you would’ve thought that I’d been seducing her for hours.

  “Please,” I answered ardently. Nevertheless I couldn’t stop. While she summoned the check, I asked, “What do you remember about Saturday—when Bernie was killed? You were in the lobby, weren’t you? Talking to Sternway and Lacone?”

  “That’s right.” She didn’t push the question away. “Alex had asked me to meet him, but he didn’t really have anything to discuss. He just pretended he did. He doesn’t take me seriously—as a professional, I mean. All he wants is a chance to stand close and proposition me.” She shrugged. “But he’s an important client, so I do my job and make nice. Most of the time his propositions are easy to ignore.

  “Mr. Sternway joined us after a while. I suppose we’d been making small talk”—she consulted her memory—“for maybe five minutes when we realized something was wrong.”

  “How did you know?”

  She claimed the check before I could reach it. “We saw hotel security running. They looked upset. And one of them blocked the men’s room.” She smiled wryly. “That was enough for me.”

  “Can you remember where you were standing?” I pursued. “Which direction were you facing? What could you see?”

  “Brew.” She put her hand on my arm. “I’ll think about it. I’ll tell you everything I can remember. But I’d like to go now. Please?” Mischief and desire shone in her eyes. “The way you talk about your work—I don’t know how much longer I can keep my hands to myself.”

  I nearly fell over getting out of my chair. Then, just in case I didn’t already look foolish enough, I bowed to the floor. “Yours to command, my lady.”

  Laughing again, she stood to join me.

  Through the windows the storm looked fierce enough to overturn cars. After each hot strike of lightning, the thunder fell like buildings under demolition. She offered to give me a ride, bring me back to the Plymouth tomorrow, but something nagging in the back of my head told me that I might want the van. So she led me out the restaurant’s rear entrance and up an escalator to the parking garage, then drove me in her sleek robin’s-egg blue Audi into the lashing torrents and around the block until we were right beside the Plymouth. From there I heaved myself out in one stride, hauled open the van, and dove in. Altogether I wasn’t exposed to the storm for more than three seconds.

  It soaked me to the skin. Drenched me completely. I couldn’t have gotten any wetter if I’d strolled here from Chicago.

  The Plymouth didn’t want to start. I could barely see the lights from Chez Amneris. The rain fell like reified darkness, driving every scrap of illumination to its knees. Whenever a bolt of lightning hit, the buildings on both sides of the street seemed to jump into existence as if they were crowdi
ng closer. Then the sudden impact of thunder restored the dark, tightened its noose around me. I felt like a fugitive from justice, desperate for escape, as I cranked the starter again and again.

  Invisible through the rain, Deborah waited for me. Only her headlights showed that she was still there.

  Finally the engine coughed a few times and sputtered to life. I revved it hard, trying to burn the damp from the plugs. When I’d snapped on my headlights and flicked them two or three times, Deborah’s Audi began to creep ahead of me.

  Guided by her taillights, I followed her through the smothering storm.

  I didn’t know where her apartment was, so I concentrated on not losing her. Unless lightning cracked open the torrents at just the right moment, I couldn’t make out street signs. And I had too many other problems to wrestle with.

  Clinging to Deborah’s taillights as if they might save me, I asked myself the same question I’d almost asked her. What did she want from me? I couldn’t avoid it any longer. I was on my way to spend the night with her when some part of me believed that I should be standing guard over the chops and Sifu Hong.

  Lightning gave me a clear white look at the Audi. Buildings that might’ve been banks crowded the road, leaning inward like they were being thrashed by the rain. Thunder pounded overhead, so close that it made the Plymouth shudder on its tires.

  What did she gain—

  —by distracting me?

  By distracting me tonight?

  From a loyal insurance company employee’s point of view, Watchdog would lose major bucks if something happened to the chops. Therefore of course Deborah wanted me to do my best for Lacone and Nakahatchi.

  But suppose she wasn’t a loyal employee—

  What if instead she was a greedy woman with tastes too expensive for her salary and a secret yen for—just picking a name at random—T’ang Wen? Think of the cash she could get her hands on if she helped him steal and fence the chops.

  The idea made me want to puke Chez Amneris’ cuisine all over the van. According to this theory, she’d arranged for Hardshorn and his team to make Posten and Watchdog nervous by working the tournament. Then, when she was sure that I’d jump through any number of hoops for her—including ditching my former partner—she’d urged Lacone to hire me. So that she could get me away from Martial America tonight.

  Then it followed that Hardshorn had killed Bernie. They must’ve been alone in the men’s room. Deborah was out in the lobby with Lacone and Sternway, and no one else had a motive to crush Bernie’s larynx and take the flik.

  But—

  I didn’t believe that Hardshorn killed Bernie. Hardshorn’s willingness to kill me only made sense if he had more at stake than a bag of petty loot. But nothing except the presence of a recognizable partner explained Bernie’s death.

  And the bag later ended up hidden in Mai Sternway’s house? How crazy was that?

  No matter whose name I substituted for T’ang’s in this theory, I couldn’t make the pieces fit. If Deborah had larceny in her heart when she invited me to her apartment, nothing added up, and I was utterly lost.

  For a moment her taillights eluded me. The deluge swarming down my windshield drained my self-confidence as it ran, washing me by scraps and shreds into Carner’s overfilled sewers. If I were that wrong, absofuckinglutely anyone could’ve killed Bernie.

  Then the Audi braked for a turn. I’d almost overshot it in the blackness.

  Maybe everything in my head was just so much lightning and thunder, a tension reaction, neurons making themselves insane under the strain of the storm. Or maybe Carner itself lay so far beyond any reality I understood that I couldn’t think straight.

  I needed an answer, and I needed it soon.

  At the next slash of lightning, I heard myself yelp. How long had I been doing that? My throat felt tight and raw, as if I’d already howled half a dozen times without noticing it.

  Incoherently I began to fear that I’d have to follow Deborah through this pummeling chaos for the rest of my life. God alone knew how she coped without a set of taillights to guide her.

  When she swung left, I assumed that she’d turned to another street. But the roadway sloped suddenly downward, and then between one heartbeat and the next the rain stopped, cut off as cleanly as if we’d fallen over the edge of the world. We were in an underground parking garage. A swollen river accompanied us downward. As the pavement leveled out the rainwater spread into a surging lake that covered the Audi’s wheels to the hubcaps.

  Deborah sculled her car into a parking space. I found one nearby for the van. When I opened my door, she stood on the Audi’s running board, facing me over the roof.

  “Now that,” she called through the muffled clamor, “was horrible.” Enforced gaiety strained her voice. “I haven’t seen a storm like that in my life.”

  “Stay there,” I shouted back. My whole body ached with the absence of torrents. My head felt like it’d been packed with cabbage and buried to rot. “I’m already wet. I’ll carry you.”

  She made a noise that might’ve been laughter or hysteria. “Don’t be silly. I’m a big girl.” She removed her shoes, then hopped off the running board, closed her door, and splashed toward me. “Although I have to say,” she added as she got closer, “I’m tempted. It sounds just too gallant for words.

  “Besides, the water is cold.”

  As soon as I stepped out of the van—in past my ankles—she gave me a febrile grin and sprang at me. I braced myself just in time to catch her without falling over backward.

  One arm under her knees, the other around her back, I held her above the lake. She kissed me quickly, then flung one arm outward like a command. “That way, Sir Knight,” she ordered imperiously. “To the elevator, and at once. I need a drink. And you”—she slapped my shoulder—“need to get out of those clothes.”

  She hadn’t dropped her purse. I’ve never understood how women do that. Ginny had the same gift. She could fall down a logging flume, and when she splashed out the end she’d still have her purse. Hell, it probably wouldn’t even be damp.

  Awkwardly I reached back into the van to retrieve my phone. I had to release one arm to do it, but she compensated by clinging to my neck. Once I’d settled my arms under her again, I leaned against the door to close it and headed for the elevator, high-stepping to avoid concealed obstacles.

  She was right—the water was cold, bitter as a serpent’s tooth. Soon the clenched concentration of driving caught up with me, and I started to shiver.

  “Brew!” Deborah protested at once. “Put me down. You’re freezing. We should hurry.”

  I didn’t obey. “Forget it.” Chills shuddered through me. “Right now you’re the only warmth I’ve got.”

  I wanted her in my arms. The cold wasn’t the only thing that made me shiver—

  Nevertheless I tried to take longer strides. She hugged herself against me, ignoring the possibility that she might ruin her blouse.

  At the elevator, rainwater no longer drained into the shaft. It was already full. If the elevator’s motor and wiring were in the bottom of the shaft, and they weren’t insulated—

  I didn’t know how many stairs I could climb in my condition.

  But when Deborah hit the call button, lights over the door showed the elevator descending from fifteen floors above us.

  Fortunately the car came straight down. When the doors opened, water flooded in. But it leaked back out as we rose. By the time we reached her floor, my shoes were no longer submerged.

  Carefully I set Deborah on her feet. Waves of shivering undermined my balance. Holding my arm, she supported me into the hallway.

  The hall gave off an impression of muted gentility—framed prints in soft colors interspersed with ornamental lighting fixtures along the walls, a carpet with a comfortable pattern. Four or five doors down from the elevator, she produced her keys, undid the lock, and hustled me inside. Then she hurried away.

  “Take off those clothes,” she ordered over her
shoulder. “I’m going to turn on the shower and start some water boiling.”

  Take off those clothes. Ha. Would’ve been a good idea if my hands weren’t shaking so badly.

  I stood in a short entryway like a mini-foyer, complete with a delicate side table and—I assumed—a coat closet. A light blue carpet several shades richer than the one outside led to a living room on the left and a kitchen on the right, with half-open walls between them above a sideboard for the living room, counters for the kitchen. The room she’d disappeared into beyond the kitchen must’ve been the bathroom. Presumably the doorway opposite it led to her bedroom.

  A nice apartment for a woman living alone. Not quite wealthy, but definitely upper-middle-class. Maybe Watchdog paid well. Maybe she’d inherited money, or struck gold on the stock market, or won a modest lottery. Or maybe—

  I still held my phone. I put it down on the side table. Fighting shivers, I managed to work my jacket off my shoulders and down my arms. The holster came next. That was harder. While I fumbled at the straps, I wondered distantly whether the .45 would still fire. Probably it would. I’d used enough gun oil to make the damn bullets waterproof.

  Shirt buttons? How?

  Deborah bustled out of the bathroom, leaving the door open. I heard water running, glimpsed a wisp of steam. She started for the kitchen, then veered toward me instead. “Let me,” she instructed firmly as she tackled the buttons. With matter-of-fact efficiency, she undid them all, loosened my belt, bent down to tug off my shoes. She’d had practice, apparently.

  Finally she worked my shirt off and dropped it on my jacket. The skin of my chest looked like I’d spent a week underwater. Pointing at the bathroom, she said, “Leave the rest of your clothes on the floor. I’ll put everything in the dryer. I’m going to have a drink. Do you want coffee or tea?”

  “Coffee,” I mumbled. I sounded like I had frostbite in my mouth.

  With a nod, she nudged me into motion.

  I shut the bathroom door behind me, mainly to keep the steam in. That warmth restored enough sanity to get me undressed the rest of the way—and to make me test the temperature before I stepped into the shower.