The Judas Goat (11 page)

“Why are you following this young woman?” the guy said to me. He had an accent, but I couldn’t say what kind. “Why do you want to know?” I said. He took two steps across the room and punched me in the jaw with his right hand. He was a strong little man and the punch hurt. Hans and Fritz both had their guns out. Fritz’s was a Luger. Big Nose stayed behind me. “At least you gave me a straight answer,” I said. “Why are you following this young woman?”

“She and a number of her associates blew up the family of a rich and vengeful American,” I said. “He hired me to get even. ”

“Then why did you simply not kill her when you found her?”

“One, I’m too nice a guy. Two, she was the only one I had contact with. I wanted her for a Judas goat. I wanted her to lead me to the others.”

“And you think she has?”

“Some. You’re new, but the guy with the big bazoo here and Hans and Fritz, they look about right.”

“How many people are involved?”

“Nine.”

“You have killed or captured three. You have located four more, and it has not taken you very long. You are good at your work.” I tried to look modest. “Someone that good at his work should not have been so easy to catch standing there in the park like a statue.” I tried to look embarrassed. “You were armed and you look dangerous. In the past you have killed two men lying in ambush for you.” He looked out the window. “Have we followed her down the slaughter chute as well?” Big Nose said something in a language I didn’t know. The little guy answered him. Big Nose went out the front door, moving with a kind of shambling lope. “We shall see,” the little guy said. “What’s your part in all of this?” I said. “I have the misfortune to have this collection of thugs and terrorists in my organization. I do not admire them. They are childish amateurs. I have business a good deal more serious to conduct than blowing up tourists in London. But I also have need of bodies and I cannot always choose the best.”

“It’s hard to get good help,” I said. “It is that,” he said. “You would be good help, I think. I have knocked men down with punches no harder than I gave you.”

“You might try it sometime when your thugs and terrorists were not around to support you.”

“I am not big, but I am quick and I know many tricks,” he said. “But we’re going to kill you so you and I will never know.”

“You are when your friend Nose-o comes back and says there’s no one waiting outside with an antitank gun.” The little guy smiled. “You are not an amateur either,” he said. “We’ll kill you whether there is someone there or not. But it is best to know. Perhaps you would serve as a hostage. We shall see.”

“What’s this important work you’re doing?” I said. “It is freedom’s work. Africa does not belong to the Nigras or the Communists.”

“Who does it belong to?”

“It belongs to us.”

“Us?”

“You and me, the white race. The race that brought it out of the cesspool of tribalism and savagery in the nineteenth century. The race that can make Africa a civilization.”

“You aren’t Cecil Rhodes, are you?”

“My name is Paul.”

“All your people share this goal?”

“We are pro-white and anticommunist,” Paul said. “That is common ground enough.”

“Let me ask you a question, Kathie,” I said. “You speak English, I assume.”

“I speak five languages,” she said. She was on the couch in the same spot she’d been in when I came in. She was very still. When she spoke only her mouth moved. “How do you wear white pants like that without the French bikinis showing through?” Kathie’s face turned a slow red. “You are filthy,” she said. Paul hit me again, with his left hand this time, evening up the bruises. “Do not speak so to her,” he said. Kathie got up and left the room. Paul went after her. Hans and Fritz pointed their guns at me. A key turned in the door behind me and Big Nose stepped in. “No one,” he said. Hawk stepped in right behind him with two shotgun shells in his teeth and, firing past his ear with a cutdown shotgun, blew most of Fritz’s head off. I dove behind a lounge chair. Hans fired at Hawk and hit Big Nose in the middle of the forehead. Hawk fired the second barrel at Hans as Big Nose was going down. It folded him over and he was dead by the time he fell. Hawk broke open the shotgun. The spent shells popped in the air. Hawk took the fresh shells from his mouth and slid them into the breech and snapped the shotgun closed by the time the spent shells hit the floor. I was on my feet. “Through there,” I said, and pointed toward the door where Kathie and Paul had left the room. Hawk reached it while I dug my gun out of Big Nose’s belt. “Door’s locked,” Hawk said. I kicked it open and Hawk went through in a low crouch, the shotgun held in his right hand, and I went behind him. It was a bedroom and bath with sliding doors that opened onto a courtyard. The doors were open. Paul and Kathie were gone. “Goddamn,” Hawk said. “Let’s get the hell out of here,” I said. We did. 

The next morning we looked in the Danish papers. There was a front-page picture of Kathie’s apartment and a shot of bodies being wheeled out on stretchers on page two. But neither Hawk nor I could read Danish so there wasn’t much to learn. I clipped the story anyway, in case 1 found a translator. Hans and Fritz looked pretty much like two of the people on my list. Hawk and I looked at the Identikit sketches and agreed that they were. “You doing pretty good,” Hawk said. “That’s six.”

“You didn’t waste a lot of time when you came through the door.”

“Like halt or I’ll shoot, that jive?”

“What did you do,” I said, “follow Big Nose?”

“Sort of. I spotted him when he come out looking around and I figured he was checking if this was a setup. So I slipped in the hallway there and hid in the shadows back under the stairwell. You know how hard we is to spot in the dark.”

“Unless you smile,” I said. “And if we keeps our eyes closed.” We were having breakfast in the hotel. Pastry and cold cuts and butter and cheese buffet style. “Anyway,” Hawk said, “he come slipping back in and when he open the door I come right in back of him.” Hawk drank some coffee. “Who the one we lost with Kathie?” he said. “Name’s Paul, little guy, very tough. He’s a lot heavier article than we been dealing with before. He’s a real revolutionary, I think. Of one sort or another.”

“Palestinian?”

“I don’t think so,” I said. “Right wing. Wants to save Africa from the Communists and the Nigras.”

“South African? Rhodesian?”

“I don’t think so. I mean he may be in that now, but he spoke a language more like Spanish. Maybe Portuguese.”

“Angola,” Hawk said. I shrugged. “I don’t know. Just said he was anticommunist and pro-white. You probably didn’t do much to change his attitude.” Hawk grinned. “He got a big job. I hear there’s quite some number of Nigras in Africa. He going to have to do a powerful heap of saving.”

“Yeah. He may be dippy, but he’s no pancake. He’s trouble.” Hawk’s face was bright and hard. He grinned again. “So are we, babe,” he said. “True,” I said. “What’s the program now?” Hawk said. “I don’t know. I gotta think.”

“Okay, while you thinking, why don’t we stroll down to Tivoli and walk around. I heard about Tivoli all my life. I want to see it. ”

“Yeah,” I said. “Me too.” I paid the bill and we went out. Tivoli was nice. Lots of greenery and not too much plastic. We ate lunch on the terrace of one of the restaurants. There wasn’t a great deal for adults to do but watch the kids, and quite frequently the kids’ moms, as they went here and there on the pleasant walks among the attractive buildings. It was fun to be there, but it was more a matter of presence, of space allotted to pleasure and thoughtfully done, that made it a pleasure. The lunch was ordinary. “Ain’t Coney Island,” Hawk said. “Ain’t the Four Seasons either,” I said. I was trying to chew a piece of tough veal and it made me grumpy. “You thought enough yet?” Hawk said. I nodded, still working on the veal. “Should of had fish,” Hawk said. “Hate fish,” I said. “Right now we are up a fjord without an oar, as we Danes say. Kathie sure as hell isn’t going to go back to her apartment. We’ve lost her and we’ve lost Paul.” I took out my pocket notebook. “What I have got is an address in Amsterdam and one in Montreal that I took off her passports. I also have an address in Amsterdam that was the return address on a letter she got, and kept. The addresses are the same.”

“Sounds like Amsterdam,” Hawk said. He sipped some champagne and watched a young blond woman with very tight shorts and a halter top stroll by. “Too bad, Copenhagen looks good.”

“Amsterdam’s better,” I said. “You’ll like it.” Hawk shrugged. I dug out some English pounds and gave them to Hawk. “You better get some new clothes. While you do that I’ll set us up to Amsterdam. You can probably change the money to kroner at the railroad station. It’s right across the street.”

“I change it at the hotel, babe. Thought I might leave the shotgun home while I trying on clothes. Three folks got done in with a shotgun yesterday. I just as leave not explain to the Danish fuzz about what we doing.” Hawk left. I paid the bill and headed out the front exit of Tivoli Gardens. Across the street was the huge red brick Copenhagen railroad station. I went across the street and went in. I had nothing to do there but it was everything a European railroad station ought to be and I wanted to walk around in it. It was high ceilinged and arcane with an enormous barrel-arched central waiting room full of restaurants and shops, baggage rooms, backpacker kids and a babble of foreign tongues. Trains were leaving on various tracks for Paris and Rome, for Munich and Belgrade. And the station was alive with excitement, with coming and going. I loved it. I walked around for nearly an hour by myself, soaking it up. Thinking about Europe in the nineteenth century when it had peaked. The station was thick with life. Ah Suze, I thought, you should have been here, you should have seen this. Then I went back to the hotel and had the hall porter book us a flight to Amsterdam in the morning. 

The KLM 727 came sweeping in low over Holland at about nine-thirty-five in the morning. I’d been there before and I liked it. It felt familiar and easy as I looked down at the flat green land patterned with canals. We were drinking awful coffee handed out by a KLM stewardess with hairy armpits. “Don’t care for the armpit,” Hawk murmured. “Can’t say I do myself,” I said. “You know what it reminds me of?”

“Yes.” Hawk laughed. “Thought you would, babe. You think old Kathie gonna be in Amsterdam?”

“Hell, I don’t know. It was the best I could do. Better bet than Montreal. It’s closer and I got the same address from two different sources. Or she could have stayed in Denmark or. gone to Pakistan. All we can do is look.”

“You the boss. You keep paying me, I keep looking. Where we staying?”

“The Marriott, it’s up near the Rijksmuseum. If it’s slow I’ll take you over and show you the Rembrandts.”

“Hot dawg,” Hawk said. The seat belt sign went on, the plane settled another notch down and ten minutes later we were on the ground. Schiphol Airport was shiny and glassy and new like the airport in Copenhagen. We got a bus into the Amsterdam railroad station, which wasn’t bad but didn’t match up to Copenhagen, and a cab from the station to the Marriott Hotel. The Marriott was part of the American chain, a big new hotel, modern and color-coordinated and filled with the continental charm of a Mobil Station. Hawk and I shared a room on the eighth floor. No point to concealing our relationship. If we found Kathie or Paul, they’d seen Hawk and would be looking over their shoulder for him again. After we unpacked we strolled out to find the address on Kathie’s passport. Much of Amsterdam was built in the seventeenth century, and the houses along the canals looked like a Vermeer painting. The streets that separated the houses from the canals were cobbled and there were trees. We followed Leidsestraat toward the Dam Square, crossing the concentric canals as we went: Prinsengracht, Keisersgracht, Heerengracht. The water was dirty green, but it didn’t seem to matter much. What cars there were were small and unobtrusive. There were bicycles and a lot of walkers. Boats, often glass-topped tour boats, cruised by on the canals. A lot of the walkers were kids with long hair and jeans and backpacks who gave no hint of nationality and very little of gender. Back when people used to speak that way, Amsterdam was said to be the hippie capital of Europe. Hawk was watching everything. Walking soundlessly, apparently self-absorbed, as if listening to some inward music. I noticed people gave way to him as he walked, instinctively, without thought. The Leidsestraat was shopping district. The shops were good-looking and the clothes contemporary. There was Delftware and imitation Delftware in some quantity. There were cheese shops, and bookstores and restaurants, and a couple of wonderful-looking delicatessens with whole hams and roast geese and baskets of currants in the windows. On the square near the Mint Tower there was a herring stand. “Try that, Hawk,” I said. “You’re into fish.”

“Raw?”

“Yeah. Last time I was here people raved about them.”

“Why don’t you try one then?”

“I hate fish.” Hawk bought a raw herring from the stand. The woman at the stand cut it up, sprinkled it with raw onions and handed it to him. Hawk tried a bite. He smiled. “Not bad,” he said. “Ain’t chitlins, but it ain’t bad.”

“Hawk,” I said, “I bet you don’t know what a goddamned chitlin is.”

“Ah spec dat’s right, bawse. I was raised on moon pies and Kool-Aid, mostly. It’s called ghetto soul.” Hawk ate the rest of the herring. We bore left past the herring stand and turned down the Kalverstraat. It was a pedestrian street, no cars, devoted to shops. “It’s like Harvard Square,” Hawk said. “Yeah, a lot of stores that sell Levi’s and Frye boots and peasant blouses. What the hell you doing in Harvard Square?”

“Used to shack up with a Harvard lady,” Hawk said. “Very smart.”

“Student?”

“No, man, I’m no chicken tapper. She was a professor. Told me I had a elemental power that turned her on. Haw.”

“How’d you get along with her seeing-eye dog?”

“Shit, man. She could see. She thought I was gorgeous. Called me her savage, man. Said Adam musta looked like me.”

“Jesus, Hawk, I’m going to puke on your shoe in a minute. ”