Cut And Run

Catharina was looking at someone across the room. “Oh, dear heavens.”

Rachel felt her heart pound. Hendrik—was it Hendrik? Had he found her? She whispered, “What’s wrong?”

“Juliana. I forgot, I invited her to tea.”

Resisting the impulse to draw a heavy sigh of relief, Rachel turned around and looked at the young woman grabbing a butter cookie and waving to her mother. Blond hair falling over her open black cashmere coat, dark green eyes sparkling, smile bright—a fascinating combination of strength and delicacy was this Juliana Fall. Full of piss and vinegar, Abraham would say. “So that’s your Juliana? She’s very beautiful, Catharina. You’re fortunate.”

“I know. Sometimes I wonder how I produced such a child. From the time she was a tiny girl, her whole life has been music. I don’t understand. Adrian and I aren’t musical, but with Juliana, there’s never been anything else. Have you ever heard her perform?”

“Not in person, but I’ve listened to her on the radio many times. And Senator Ryder has tickets for Lincoln Center tomorrow night. He suggests we meet there, after the concert, and—Catharina?”

She’d gone white. “Rachel, she doesn’t know. Juliana. I haven’t told her.”

“About Amsterdam? Nothing?”

“I couldn’t. Even Adrian…” Catharina shut her eyes briefly; Rachel watched her fight for self-control with a mother’s willpower as her daughter made her way to the table. “Neither of them knows what happened. I know I’m overprotective, but I didn’t want any of that to touch them. I just can’t talk about Amsterdam.”

“That’s your right,” Rachel said carefully. Having never married, she had never had to make such decisions. “I understand.”

“You’ll keep her out of this?”

Rachel smiled reassuringly, and although she didn’t understand, perhaps didn’t approve, she felt good about being able to comfort her friend. “Of course. There’s no reason whatever for Juliana to be involved in this.”

Matthew Stark was in the middle of an argument on shortstops with a couple of sports reporters when Ziegler found him in the Gazette cafeteria. At thirty-nine, Stark was a dark, solidly built, compact man with a face that might have been good-looking except for the shrapnel scars. His eyes were deep-set and a very dark brown; people told him that sometimes they seemed black. He had on jeans, a chambray shirt, and his heavy, handmade Minnesota Gokey boots.

“Sorry to bother you,” Aaron said, “but Feldie’s got a guy downstairs who wants to see you. He looks like somebody out of Night of the Living Dead. Calls himself the Weaze.”

“Weasel? Hell, I thought he’d be dead by now.”

Without rushing, Stark refilled his mug and walked back with Aaron, a curly-haired kid who wore tassel loafers and suits and didn’t know a damn thing about baseball. Matthew knew he scared the hell out of Ziegler, but he didn’t let that trouble him.

“Feldie was getting pretty impatient,” Aaron said.

“Right.”

When they returned to the newsroom, she had put her glasses, big black-framed things, on her nose. “Don’t hurry, for Christ’s sake,” she said.

Stark didn’t. He hadn’t heard from Otis Raymond in a couple of years, but he’d had twenty years of his troubles and expected he’d have twenty more, if either of them lived that along. “Where’s the Weaze?” he asked.

“I parked him over at your desk. He says he has a hot tip for you. Who is he?”

“Nobody who’ll sell newspapers.”

Otis Raymond sat restlessly on a wooden chair next to Stark’s desk. Matthew just shook his head as he approached the thin, ugly figure and noticed the swollen bug bites along the back of the scrawny neck, the yellowed eyes and skin. He had on ragged jeans and an army issue jacket that didn’t look warm enough for him. He was shivering. It seemed crazy now, but lot of guys owed SP-4 Otis Raymond their lives. He’d been good. Damn good.

“Weaze,” Matthew said, coming up behind him. “So you’re alive.”

Weasel turned around on the chair, grinned, and rose unsteadily. His clothes hung on him, and he looked like hell. According to the book, he and Stark shouldn’t have become friends. A warrant officer and a spec-four, a helicopter pilot and a gunner. They’d flown Hueys together, and they’d survived two tours. Not many in their positions had. It was as good a reason as any for a friendship.

“Matt—yeah, hell, I’m still kicking. Christ, I’m hitting forty, you believe it?”

Stark went around and sat down, and Weasel dropped back in his chair, eyeing the cluttered desk. “Figured you’d have an office.”

“A piece of the wall is about the best you get in a newsroom.”

“Yeah, I guess. I don’t know much about this stuff. When’d you quit the Post?”

“Two years before the last time I saw you.”

“Oh. Right. Shit, man, I can’t remember nothing anymore.”

“You never could. What’s up?”

“I got trouble, Matt.”

Stark waited for him to go on, but Weaze was gnawing his thin, yellow-purple lower lip, and he’d crossed one foot over the other. Except when he was behind his M-60, he always had an excess of useless, unfocused energy. Stark had often wondered where Otis Raymond would be today if he’d been able to channel that energy.

“You gonna help?” Weaze asked.

“Maybe. What kind of trouble are you in?”

“Not me this time. Ryder.”

It wasn’t a name Stark wanted or expected to hear, but he kept his face from showing it. “What’s Ryder got to do with you?”

“I owe him. He tried to set me up after ’Nam, give me a hand, remember? I fucked up, made him look bad.”

“He survived. The Sam Ryders of the world always do. You don’t owe him a damn thing, Weaze. If anything, he owes you. Whatever trouble Ryder’s got, let him handle it.”

Weasel gave a honking snort, and Stark recalled that in the last ten years Otis always seemed to have a runny nose. “Shit, man, I thought I could count on you.”

“You can. Ryder can’t.”

“He’s in deep shit, Stark, and you know what a goddamn asshole he is, he’ll never learn, and if we don’t pull him out, he’ll go down. Man, I mean it. This time he’s in it.”

“That’s his problem.”

“May be a story in it for you.”

“Too much history between me and Sam Ryder, Weaze. No objectivity.”

“Then a book, maybe.”

Weasel somehow sounded both hopeful and smug, as if he’d struck the right note, the one that would make Matthew Stark do what his old buddy wanted him to do. “Forget it, Weaze,” Matthew said. “That part of my life is over.”

“Oh, come on—for old times’ sake, then?” Otis Raymond laughed hoarsely, coughing. “’Member the good ol’ days, huh, Matt?”

The good ol’days. Jesus. “You never change, Weaze. Go ahead, tell me what you’ve got. I’ll listen.”