The Talbot Odyssey (37 page)

Abrams and Katherine emerged from the BMT station at Fort Hamilton Parkway and ran north, entering the five-hundred-acre Prospect Park along South Lake Drive.

Abrams breathed in the cooler, cleaner air of the heavily treed park. The terrain features had been created by the last Ice Age terminal moraine, and that, coupled with heavy plantings, offered a diversity of landscape and hiding places. But Abrams knew every inch of the park and knew where the surprises could be expected.

They turned north on East Lake Drive, ran up Breeze Hill and past the boathouse, and approached the zoo, set in an expanse of gardens. They slowed to a walk on the steep rise called Battle Pass Hill and stopped on the hill’s summit.

Abrams looked west into the Long Meadow, a sweep of grassland that could pass for a rural valley. Katherine looked north and west into an open area called the Vale of Cashmere, covered with resting migratory birds. She said, “This is a good spot to take a break. Good all-around view.” She sat on a patch of grass and caught her breath.

Abrams knelt beside her, wiping the perspiration from his face with his sleeve.

She said, “I think this is the spot where Washington’s command post was during the Battle of Long Island.”

Abrams nodded. “He picked a good place to keep an eye on the muggers.”

She smiled, then looked around. “I don’t see any muggers. . . . There’s a fair-sized holiday crowd.”

“Right. I don’t think Thorpe likes crowds. Let’s take the subway back to my place.”

She thought a moment, then said, “Let’s finish the park.”

Abrams fell back on the grass. “The park will finish me.”

“You’re doing fine. You shouldn’t lie down.”

He didn’t answer, but looked up silently and watched the sky. After a few seconds he said, “I’ve seen that helicopter before.”

She looked up and watched a small gray helicopter disappear to the north. “Yes. I’ve seen it before too.” She stood. “Let’s go. You’ll get muscle cramps.”

Abrams got slowly to his feet. “I think I liked masquerading as an old man better than this.”

“We’ll walk awhile,” Katherine said.

They began following the path down the long hill. She said, “That may have been a police helicopter.”

“Possible. But I don’t recognize the model. They use Bell copters. That was something else.”

She gave him a sidelong glance. “
Do
you have police backup?”

“I’m not a policeman.”

They walked in silence, then he said, “You realize that he could get to you anytime? On the boat out to Glen Cove, for instance. Or he could smother you with a pillow in bed.”

She looked at him. “What are you getting at?”

“Actually, though, I don’t think he intends to kill you. He probably wants to kidnap and interrogate you.”

She thought of the garret room above the apartment, then said, “But he could have just asked me to come to the Lombardy for a drink.”

Abrams replied, “‘Will you walk into my parlour? said the spider to the fly; ’tis the prettiest little parlour that ever you did spy.’” Abrams added, “Would you have gone at this point in your relationship?”

“I would have gone at any point, if I thought there was something to be learned or gained.”

“But you’d be covered before you went. And if you didn’t come out, Thorpe would be exposed.” Abrams concluded, “My theory is that Thorpe is using you to get at me. To get two birds with one stone. Time is short for him. I’m to be killed, by the way, because I’m not worth interrogating.”

She replied in a slightly taunting tone of voice, “That’s quite a piece of deduction, or do you hear those voices again?”

He smiled. “No, but I am getting into his head. He’s clever, but predictable.”

She stayed silent awhile, then nodded. “So . . . Peter has used me as bait to draw you out, and you’ve used me as a decoy to draw him out.”

“Something like that.”

She glared at him. “At least you’re honest. Look, you don’t care much about the national-security aspect of this, do you?”

He replied, “I’ll give that more thought when my life is out of danger. For now the first law is not
salus populi suprema lex,
but
lex talionis
—the law of retaliation—
vendetta.”
He pronounced it with an Italian accent.

She forced a smile. “Well, I’ll never try to push
you
off a roof.”

“I take it personally. I’m not very professional when it comes to my life.”

They came to the Memorial Arch at Grand Army Plaza. She said, “I told Peter that if he hadn’t joined us by this point, I’d take the subway back to Manhattan from here. Would you like to come back to my place?”

He looked at her, and her meaning was clear enough. “I would.”

She nodded. “We’ll wait five minutes.”

Abrams waited in silence, checking his watch more often than he needed to. He looked back in the direction from which they’d come. “Well, here comes Peter Cottontail, hopping down the bunny trail.”

She turned and saw Thorpe running toward them, dressed in a tan and blue jogging suit.

Abrams said, “If you normally kiss, then kiss.”

“I’m not a very good actor.”

Thorpe slowed and trotted up to them. “Well, the marathon man and the long-distance lady. You both look beat. Good run?”

Katherine kissed him on the cheek. “Yes. What happened to your nose?”

Thorpe touched his fingers to his bandaged nostril. “I had it where it didn’t belong, as usual.”

Abrams said, “What happened to your fingers?”

Thorpe glanced at his two bandaged fingers. “The same thing that happened to my nose. Why are you always so excited by the sight of my blood?”

“Blood makes me curious.”

“Typical cop.”

Katherine interjected, “You look pale.”

“Hey, what is this? Dump-on-Peter day?” Thorpe looked around the park. “Damned awful place to run—baby strollers, little savages on bicycles, skateboard freaks, and dogs who eat joggers.” He scratched his head, then said brightly, “Hey, let’s run Greenwood Cemetery. I did that once. Five hundred acres of stiffs.”

Abrams said, “Cemetery running is illegal.”

Thorpe smiled. “Come on, Tony. I’ll bet you’ve run cemeteries. They’re great for solitude.”

Katherine said, “Won’t there be a lot of people there? It’s Memorial Day.”

Abrams replied, “It’s an old cemetery. The last interment was probably sixty years ago. They don’t get many visitors.”

Thorpe clapped his hands and began jogging in place. “Okay, troops, follow me.”

Abrams and Katherine followed. They ran down the avenue alongside the park for twenty blocks, until they came to the high wrought-iron fence of Greenwood Cemetery.

Thorpe looked up and down the block. “Okay, gang, we’re in the clear.” He shimmied up the fence and dropped into the cemetery. “Come on.” He looked at Katherine and Abrams through the bars. “Well?”

Abrams helped Katherine up, grasping her legs, then pushing up on her rear. Thorpe said, “Watch that, Tony.” As Katherine climbed down into the cemetery, Thorpe reached up and helped her, and Abrams could see he felt for and discovered the pistol.

Abrams climbed up and dropped to the other side. Thorpe reached out to steady him, but Abrams brushed him off.

They began walking through the graves until they came to a single-lane road. Abrams had run these somber acres, the final resting place of half a million souls, including such notables as Currier and Ives, Horace Greeley, Boss Tweed, Henry Ward Beecher, and Samuel F. B. Morse. And Thorpe was right about one thing: cemetery running was the best. The old graveyard was not only serene, it was a treasurehouse of Victorian Gothic Revival funerary. Statues, urns, tombstones, arches, and wrought iron crowded every acre of this place where time had stopped.

They began trotting slowly along the road lined with lonely mausoleums. There didn’t seem to be anyone else in the cemetery. Thorpe recited, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for I am the meanest mother-fucker
in
the valley.”

“Peter,” exclaimed Katherine, almost playfully, “that’s vulgar.”

“So is death, which is why it’s second only to sex as a topic for jokes.”

Abrams, running a bit behind, looked from one to another. He could see how Peter Thorpe held a perverse fascination for some women. Katherine seemed almost to enjoy his boorishness, even now. But, he reminded himself, she could feel nothing for him any longer, and was playacting, as ordered.

They came to a fork in the path and Thorpe called out, “Left one.”

They ran between the black-granite and white-marble headstones for about a thousand yards, Thorpe setting the pace. Katherine fell back, and Abrams was dropping even farther behind.

Katherine called out, “Peter . . . too fast! We’re pretty beat.”

Thorpe shouted back, “Oh, Kate, you’re fine. Tony has got to push himself a little.”

After a few hundred more yards Thorpe slowed, then began walking. Katherine, then Abrams, caught up, both breathing heavily, and perspiring.

They walked in silence. Abrams tried to listen for anything out of the ordinary, but the blood was pounding in his ears. He felt very fatigued, very vulnerable here in this place of infinite ambushes.

Thorpe took up the role of guide. “This landscape architecture was very typical of the Romantic movement. Does anyone feel romantic?” He motioned toward a field of tombstones. “Tony, do all these crosses make you nervous?”

Abrams didn’t reply.

Thorpe continued, “Have you ever seen so many guardian angels? Do you have a guardian angel, Tony?”

“We may soon find out.”

Thorpe smiled, then looked to his left. About fifty yards in from the drive was an open grave, a fresh mound of earth beside it. Two long-handled shovels were stuck in the loose earth. Thorpe cut across the grass and stood beside the open hole. “Look at this. The stone is over a hundred years old, but the hole has just been opened.” He knelt and peered into the deep grave as Abrams and Katherine approached. “Empty . . . I think they can disinter the bones after a certain amount of time. Sell the plot to somebody else. Not exactly a final resting place.”

Katherine said, “Let’s move on.”

Thorpe said, “There must be a funeral today.”

Abrams observed, “Then the old tombstone would be gone.”

“True,” replied Thorpe. He read the words carved in the black granite. “‘Quentin Mosby—born April 21, 1843, died December 6, 1879.’ He was younger than us. They didn’t hang around too long in those days, did they?” He stood and looked at Abrams. “Why do we expect to live so long?”

“Because we watch ourselves.”

Thorpe nodded. He said, “By the way, I hope you’re prepared for trouble. Things are getting a little tense this weekend.”

“I hadn’t noticed anything unusual.”

“But you are armed?”

Abrams stared at Thorpe, and Thorpe stared back. They both understood that the time had arrived. Thorpe seemed almost to nod in acknowledgment.

Abrams looked around. Three men were approaching from different directions, working their way between the gravestones. They were dressed in the green work clothes of gravediggers.

Katherine watched the men draw closer. She said, “Peter, who are those men?”

Thorpe shrugged, “How should I know, Kate. I guess they’re who they appear to be.”

Katherine said, “Let’s go.” She turned back toward the drive and saw three more men standing on the edge of the grass.

Thorpe said, “We seem to have gotten ourselves in the middle of a funeral.”

The three men who were approaching stopped, each one less than twenty feet away, forming a half circle around the grave. Each man took up a position beside a tombstone.

Abrams saw that the three men on the drive had spread out. He also saw that Thorpe had moved beside the headstone over the open grave. Everyone was in position. Abrams could see no way out of this one.

Abrams stood perfectly still. Strangely, the blood in his head stopped pounding, his heart slowed to a normal rate, and his breathing became regular. He felt the numbing fatigue of the long run lifting, and his senses became acute. He smelled the freshly dug earth, the sweaty bodies near him, and the faint fragrance of flowers. He saw clearly the fixed expressions on the faces of the six men around him, and the inscrutable expression of Peter Thorpe. The perspiration was cooling on his skin, and he was keenly aware of the shoulder holster on his chest. Somewhere, a bird sang in a distant tree. He stole a glance at Katherine and their eyes met for a brief second, just long enough to transmit assurances and confidence in each other.

Thorpe cleared his throat and said softly, “This looks a bit suspicious. If I were paranoid, I would say we were surrounded by men whose intentions are questionable.”

“I would say you were right.”

Katherine added, “I would say we should draw our guns.”

Thorpe looked at her. “Unfortunately, I don’t have a gun, but I assume Tony does.” He nodded toward the grave. “Perfect fox-hole. Ready?”

Abrams took Katherine’s arm in a restraining gesture, and looked down into the grave. “The law requires only six feet. This looks nearly eight. Good grave, lousy foxhole.”

Thorpe shot Abrams a look of unmistakable hatred. “Well, what do you suggest?”

“It’s your show, Pete. You call it.”

Thorpe regarded Abrams closely, then said, “Well, let’s just stay cool. They may only want to chat.”

“All six of them?”

Thorpe didn’t answer, but wiped his forehead with his sweatband.

The six men began moving simultaneously, as though they’d gotten a signal. They closed in around the grave, stopping only a few feet short of Abrams, Katherine, and Thorpe. They didn’t speak, or make any overt threatening movement.

Abrams glanced at Katherine. She looked deathly pale, but he had to admire her composure in the face of death. He looked at Thorpe, who appeared to be lost in thought. The reason for this grotesque standoff, Abrams knew, was that Thorpe was a man who kept all his options open. He did not intend to reveal himself until he was certain that this was not a trap, that the tables could not be somehow turned.