The Damnation Game Part 42

"When will you come back?" the Razor-Eater asked.

"Never."

Breer smiled. "I'm free, then," he said.

"You are dead, Anthony," Mamoulian replied.

"What?" Breer's smile began to decay.

"You've been dead since the day I found you hanging from the ceiling. I think perhaps somehow you knew I was coming, and you killed yourself to escape me. But I needed you. So I gave you a little of my life, to keep you in my employ."

Breer's smile had disappeared altogether.

"That's why you're so impervious to pain; you are a walking corpse. The deterioration your body should have suffered in these hot months has been held at bay. Not entirely prevented, I'm afraid, but slowed considerably."

Breer shook his head. Was this the miracle of redemption?

"Now I no longer need you. So I withdraw my gift . . ."

"No!"

He tried to make a small pleading gesture, but his wrists were bound together, and the bindings bit into the muscle, causing it to buckle and furrow like soft clay.

"Tell me how to make amends," he offered. "Anything."

"There is no way."

"Anything you ask. Please."

"I ask you to suffer," the European replied.

"Why?"

"For treachery. For being, in the end, like the others."

". . . no . . . just a little game . . ."

"Then let this be a game too, if it amuses you. Six months of deterioration pressed into as many hours."

Mamoulian crossed to the bed, and put his hand on Breer's sobbing mouth, making something very like a s.n.a.t.c.hing gesture.

"It's over, Anthony," he said.

Breer felt a motion in his lower belly, as though some jittering thing had suddenly twitched and perished in there. He followed the European's exit with upturned eyes. Matter, not tears, gathered at their rims.

"Forgive me," he begged his savior. "Please forgive me." But the European had gone, quietly, closing the door behind him.

There was a brawling on the windowsill. Breer looked from door to window. Two pigeons had squabbled over some morsel, and were now flying off. Small white feathers settled on the sill, like midsummer snow.

66

"It is Mr. Halifax, isn't it?"

The man inspecting the boxes of fruit in the breezeless, wasp-woven yard at the back of the shop turned to Marty.

"Yes. What can I do for you?"

Mr. Halifax had been out sunbathing, and injudiciously. His face was peeling in places, and looked tender. He was hot and uncomfortable and, Marty guessed, thin of temper. Tact was the order of the day, if he hoped to win the man's confidence.

"Business OK?" Marty asked.

Halifax shrugged. "It'll do," he said, unwilling to be drawn on the subject. "Lot of my regular customers are on holiday at this time of year." He peered at Marty. "Do I know you?"

"Yes. I've been here several times," Marty lied. "For Mr. Whitehead's strawberries. That's what I came for. The usual order."

Halifax registered nothing; he put down the tray of peaches he was holding. "I'm sorry. I don't supply any Mr. Whitehead."

"Strawberries," Marty prompted.

"I heard what you said," Halifax replied testily, "but I don't know anyone of that name. You must be mistaken."

"You do remember me?"

"No, I don't. Now if you'd like to make a purchase, Theresa will serve you." He nodded back in the direction of the shop itself. "I'd like to finish here before I cook in this b.l.o.o.d.y heat."

"But I'm supposed to be picking up strawberries."

"You can have as many as you like," Halifax said, spreading his arms. "There's a glut. Just ask Theresa."

Marty could see failure looming. The man wasn't about to give an inch. He tried one final tack. "You don't have any fruit set aside for Mr. Whitehead? You normally have them packed, ready for him."

This significant detail seemed to mellow the dismissal on Halifax's face. Doubt dawned.

"Look . . ." he said, ". . . I don't think you quite understand . . ." His voice dropped in volume, though there was n.o.body else in the yard to hear. "Joe Whitehead is dead. Don't you read the newspapers?"

A large wasp alighted on Halifax's arm, navigating the ginger hairs with difficulty. He let it crawl there, undisturbed.

"I don't believe everything I read in the newspapers," Marty replied, quietly. "Do you?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," the other man returned.

"His strawberries," Marty said. "That's all I'm after."

"Mr. Whitehead is dead."

"No, Mr. Halifax; Joe is not dead. You and I both know that."

The wasp rose from Halifax's arm and careered in the air between them. Marty swatted it away; it came back, its buzz louder.

"Who are you?" Halifax said.

"Mr. Whitehead's bodyguard. I've told you, I've been here before."

Halifax bent back to the tray of peaches; more wasps congregated at a bruise on one of them. "I'm sorry, I can't help you," he said.

"You took them already, did you?" Marty laid a hand on Halifax's shoulder. "Did you?"

"I'm not at liberty to tell you anything."

"I'm a friend."

Halifax glanced round at Marty. "I've sworn," he said, with the finality of a practiced bargainer. Marty had thought the scenario through as far as this impa.s.se: Halifax confessing that he knew something, but refusing to provide the details. What now? Did he lay hands on the man; beat it out of him?

"Joe is in great danger."

"Oh, yes," Halifax murmured. "You think I don't realize that?"

"I can help him."

Halifax shook his head. "Mr. Whitehead has been a valued customer for a good many years," he explained. "He's always had his strawberries from me. I never knew a man love strawberries the way he does."

"Present tense," Marty commented.

Halifax went on as though he hadn't been interrupted. "He used to come in here personally, before his lady wife died. Then he stopped coming. He still bought the fruit. Had somebody come and pick it up for him. And at Christmas, there was always a check for the kiddies. There still is, come to that. Still sends money for them."

The wasp had alighted on the back of his hand, where the sweet juice of one fruit or another had dried. Halifax let it have its fill. Marty liked him. If Halifax wasn't willing to volunteer the information Marty wouldn't be able to bully it out of the man.

"Now you come here and tell me you're a friend of his," Halifax said. "How do I know you're telling the truth? People have friends who'd cut their throats."

"His more than most."

"True. So much money, so few people who care about him." Halifax had a sad look. "Seems to me I should keep his hideaway secret, don't you? Or else who can he trust in all the world?"

"Yes," Marty conceded. What Halifax said made perfect and compa.s.sionate sense, and there was nothing he was prepared to do to make him rescind it.

"Thank you," he said, cowed by the lesson. "I'm sorry to have kept you from your work." He made his way back toward the shop. He'd gone a few paces when Halifax said: "You were the one."

Marty pivoted on his heel.

"What?"

"You were the one who came for the strawberries. I remember you. Only you looked different then."

Marty ran his hand across several days' growth of beard; shaving was a forgotten craft these mornings.

"Not the hair," Halifax said. "You were harder. I didn't take to you."

Marty waited somewhat impatiently for Halifax to finish this farewell homily. His mind was already turning over other possibilities. It was only when he turned back into Halifax's words that he realized the man had changed his mind. He was going to tell. He beckoned Marty back across the yard.

"You think you can help him?"

"Maybe."

"I hope somebody can."

"You've seen him?"

"I'll tell you. He rang the shop, asked for me. Funny, I recognized the voice immediately, even after all these years. He asked me to bring him some strawberries. He said he couldn't come himself. It was terrible."

"Why?"

"He's so frightened." Halifax hesitated, looking for the right words. "I remember him as being big, you know? Impressive. He'd come in the shop and everyone would part for him. Now? Shrunk to nothing. Fear did that to him. I've seen it happen. My sister-in-law, same thing happened to her. She had cancer. Fear killed her months before the tumor."

"Where is he?"

"I tell you, I went back home and I didn't say a word to anyone. I just drank half a bottle of Scotch, straight off. Never done that in my life. I just wanted to get the way he'd looked out of my head. It really turned my stomach, hearing him and seeing him that way. I mean-if the likes of him's scared, what chance have the rest of us got?"

"You're safe," Marty said, hoping to G.o.d the European's revenge wouldn't stretch as far as the old man's strawberry supplier. Halifax was a good man. Marty found himself holding on to this realization while staring at the round, red face. Here is goodness. Flaws too, no doubt: sins by the armful perhaps. But the good was worth celebrating, however many stains the man had. Marty wanted to tattoo the date of this recognition on the palm of his hand.

"There's a hotel," Halifax was saying. "It used to be called the Orpheus, apparently. It's up the Edgware Road; Staple Corner. Terrible, rundown place. Waiting for the demolition squad, I shouldn't be surprised."

"He's there alone?"

"Yes." Halifax sighed, thinking of how the mighty had fallen. "Perhaps," he suggested after a moment, "you might take him some peaches too?"He went into the shop and came back with a tattered copy of the London A to Z Street Atlas. He flicked through the age-creamed pages looking for the appropriate map, all the while sounding his dismay at this turn of events, and his hope that things might still turn out well. "Lot of streets been leveled around the hotel," he explained. "These maps are well out of date, I'm afraid."

Marty peered at the page Halifax had selected. A cloud, bearing the rain that had already dampened Kilburn and points northwest, covered the sun as Halifax's stained index finger traced a route across the map from the thoroughfares of Holborn to the Hotel Pandemonium.

XIII

At the Hotel Pandemonium

67