The Judas Goat (10 page)

“Lemme see,” I said. And Hawk put the shotgun in my hand. It was an Ithaca double-barreled 12 gauge. The stock had been cut off and both barrels were cut back. The whole thing was no more than eighteen inches long. “Do a lot more damage than a target pistol,” I said. “And it’s no problem. Just go buy a shotgun and cut it down. If we have to go to another country I ditch this and buy a new one where we going. Take me an hour maybe to modify the mother.”

“Got a hack saw?” Hawk nodded. “And a couple of C clamps. That’s all I need.”

“Not bad,” I said. “What you going to do next, modify an Atlas missile and walk around with it tucked in your sock?”

“No harm,” Hawk said, “to fire power.” The next morning I got up early and went up and burgled Kathie’s apartment while she was at the laundromat. I was neat about it, but sloppy enough to let her know someone had been there. I wasn’t looking for anything, I just wanted her to know someone had been there. I was in and out in about five minutes. When she came back I was leaning in the doorway of the next apartment house wearing sunglasses. As she passed I turned away so she wouldn’t see my face. I wanted her to spot me but I didn’t want to overact. 

I used to know a guy named Shelley Walden when I was with the cops who would get spotted tailing a guy through a rock concert. I never knew why he was so bad at it. He had a small, innocuous look about him and he wasn’t clumsy, but he couldn’t keep out of sight. I tried to run this stakeout like Shelley would have. If she spotted me when she went by she didn’t let on. I knew Hawk was somewhere behind her but I didn’t see him. When she went into her apartment I walked casually across the street and leaned on a lamppost and took out a newspaper and started to read it. That would have been Shelley’s style. The old Bogart movies where he pulls back the curtain and there’s a guy under a lamppost reading a newspaper. 

I figured she’d see that someone had been rummaging in her apartment and that would get her nervous. It did. About two minutes after she went in, I saw her looking out her window. I was looking surreptitiously over my newspaper and for a moment our eyes met. I looked back down at the newspaper. She knew I was there. She should recognize me. It was sunny and I wasn’t wearing my Irish walking hat. No mistaking me for Rex Harrison. She had reason to be nervous about being spotted. She had phony passports and stolen guns in her bedroom. That would be enough to bust her. But I wanted them all. She was the string and they were the balloon. If I cut her off I lost the balloon. She was all the handle I had. What she should have done was sit tight, but she didn’t know that. She would either call out the shooters again, or she’d run. She sat in her apartment and looked at me looking at her for nearly four hours, and then she ran. Hawk had been right. The shooters must be getting wary of me. Or maybe I’d cleaned them out. Maybe all the shooters the organization had had been used up, except the one guy that got away. I wasn’t dealing here with the KGB. Liberty’s resources were probably limited. She came out of her apartment at about two in the afternoon. She was wearing a tan safari jacket and matching pants and carrying a very large shoulder bag. The same one she’d had at the zoo. She was careful not to pay me any attention as she went past me on Cleveland and headed up Goodge Street toward Bloomsbury. 

For a half hour it was hare and hounds with Kathie dekeing and diving the side streets of Bloomsbury with me behind her and Hawk behind me. At every turn I kept before me the clear image of Shelley Walden. When in doubt I asked myself, “What would Shelley, do?” Everywhere she went, she saw me behind her. Only once in all of this did I catch sight of Hawk. He was in Levis and a corduroy sport coat, surprisingly innocuous, on the opposite side of the street going the other way. I let her lose me in the Russell Square Underground. She got on and I got on. At the last minute she got off and I let her go. As the train pulled out she was heading back out of the station and, behind her, Hawk, with his hands in his hip pockets and the faint bulge of the shotgun along his spine. 

He was smiling as the train went into the tunnel. 

I went back and staked out Kathie’s apartment, but she never came back. Good. She was probably headed for a new place. Any pattern break was better than none at this point. After dinner that night I finished up Regeneration Through Violence and was thumbing through the International Herald Tribune when Hawk called. “Where are you?” I said. “Copenhagen, babe, the Paris of the North.”

“Where is she?”

“She here too. She checked into an apartment here. You coming over?”

“Yeah. Be there tomorrow. Anyone with her?”

“Not yet. She just flew over, came to the apartment and went in. She ain’t come out.”

“The revolutionaries do lead an exciting life, don’t they?”

“Like you and me, babe, international adventurers. I’m at the Sheraton Copenhagen watching Danish television. What you doing, man?”

“I was glancing through the Herald Tribune when you called. Very interesting. An enriching experience.” Hawk said, “Yeah. Me too.”

“I’ll come over tomorrow,” I said. “Room five-two-three,” Hawk said. “Have them pack up my stuff and ship it to Henry. Hate to have some limey walking around in my threads.”

“Ah Hawk,” I said, “you sentimental bastard.”

“You gonna like it here, babe,” Hawk said. “Why is that?”

“The broads are all blond and they sell beer in the Coke machine. ”

“Maybe I’ll come over tonight,” I said. But I didn’t. I slept another night in England. In the morning I arranged for Hawk’s stuff to be shipped to the States. I called Flanders and told him where I was going. Then I packed my gun as before, in my luggage, and flew to Denmark. Have gun, will travel. Did Paladin do vengeance? Probably. The airport at Copenhagen was modern and glassy, with a lot of level escalators to move people around the airport. I took a bus in from the airport to the SAS terminal in the Royal Hotel. On the way I spotted the Sheraton. A short walk from the terminal. I made the walk carrying my flight bag, my suitcase and my garment bag, feeling the odd excited buzz I always felt in a place I’d never been. The Sheraton looked like Sheratons I’d seen in New York, Boston and Chicago. Newer maybe than New York and Chicago. More like Boston. It looked as Danish as Bond bread. 

I checked in. The desk clerk spoke English with no accent. Embarrassing. I didn’t even know how to say Søren Kierkegaard. The hell with him. How many one-armed push-ups can he do? I unpacked and dialed room 523. No answer. The air conditioner was purring under the window but wasn’t cooling the room. The temperature was about 96. I opened the windows and looked out. There was a broad park across the street with a lake in it. The park extended several blocks down to the right. Across the park I could see another hotel. The open window’s help was largely psychological, but I didn’t feel quite as bad. I reassembled my gun, loaded it, put it in its shoulder holster and hung the rig on a chair back. My shirt was wet. I took it off. The rest of me was wet too. I took off my clothes, brought the gun and holster with me into the bathroom, hung it on the door knob and took a shower. Then I toweled off, put on clean clothes and looked out the window some more. About two in the afternoon there was a knock on the door. I took my gun out, stood to one side of the door and said, “Yeah.”

“Hawk.” I opened the door and he came in. He was wearing white Nikes with a red slash, and white duck pants and an off-white safari jacket with short sleeves. He was carrying two open bottles of Carlsberg beer. “Fresh from the machine,” he said, and gave me one. I drank most of it. “I thought Scandinavia was cool and northern, ” I said. “Heat wave,” Hawk said. “Never had one like this before, they keep saying. That’s why the air conditioners don’t do shit. They never really use them.” I finished the beer. “Right in the Coke machine, you say?”

“Yeah, man, right on your floor here, around the corner from the elevator. You got any kroner?” I nodded. “I exchanged some at the desk when I checked in.”

“Come on, we’ll get us a couple more. Helps with the heat.” We went out and got two more beers and came back in. “Okay, where is she?” I said. The beer was very cool in my throat. “About a block down that way,” Hawk said. “You lean far enough out your window, you probably see her place.”

“Why aren’t you poised outside watching her every move?”

“She went in about eleven, nothing happened since. I was thirsty and I figured I’d come see if you got in.”

“Anything shaking since I talked with you before?”

“Naw. She hasn’t done a thing. Somebody else staking her out though.”

“Ah hah,” I said. “What you say?”

“I said, Ah hah.”

“That what I thought you say. You honkies do talk strange.”

“They spot you?” I said. “Course they didn’t spot me. Would they spot you?”

“No. I withdraw the question.”

“Damn right.”

“What can you tell me about him?”

“Dark fella. Not a brother. Maybe a Syrian, something, some kind of Arab.”

“Tough?”

“Oh yeah. He got a look. I think he had a piece. Saw him sort of shrug like the shoulder holster straps was aggravating him.”

“How big?”

“Tall, taller than me. Not too heavy, sort of stoop-shouldered. Big beaky nose. Thirty, maybe thirty-five years old, crew-cut. ” I had out my descriptions and my Identikit drawings. “Yeah,” I said. “He’s one.”

“Why is he watching her?” Hawk said. “Maybe he’s not watching her, maybe he’s looking for me,” I said. “Yeah,” Hawk said. “That’s why she don’t do much. Since I tailed her over she just take a couple walks, and come back. Each time the dude with the big honker he follow her, very loose. He stay back of her. He looking for you, see if she was followed.” I nodded. “Okay,” I said. “She’s got some people here. We’ll play their match. I’ll watch her. I’ll let Big Nose watch me, and you can watch him. Then we’ll see what happens.”

“Maybe Big Nose burn you the first time he see you.”

“You’re not supposed to let him do that.”

“Yeah.” The beer was gone. I looked at the empty bottle with sadness. “Let’s get to it,” I said. “Sooner we get them all, the sooner I get home.”

“You don’t like foreigners?”

“I miss Susan.”

“Can’t blame you for that, man, she got one of the finest ass…” I looked up. Hawk said, “Cancel that, man. I sorry. That ain’t your kind of talk about Susan. It ain’t mine either. I forgot myself.” I nodded. 

I went out of the Sheraton and turned left on Vester Stogade. Most of the buildings along the street were low apartment buildings, relatively new, and middle-class or better. Number 36 was hers. Brick, with a small open porch on the front. Before I got there I crossed the street and lingered inconspicuously near some bushes in the park. A lot of people must walk their dogs, I noticed, ‘along a narrow path that skirted the lake. A light blue Simca cruised by with one man at the wheel. I stayed where I was. I didn’t see Hawk. In a few minutes the Simca was back. A little one, square and boxy. It went past me gqing the other way and parked a half block up toward the hotel. I stood. It sat. 

After another ten minutes a black Saab station wagon pulled up in front of Kathie’s apartment. Three men got out and two of them began to walk toward me, the third went into Kathie’s. I looked in the other direction toward the Simca. A tall, dark, stoop-shouldered man with a big nose and a gray crew-cut was getting out. Behind me was the lake. One of us was sort of cornered. The two men from the Saab fanned out a little as they came so that if I had wanted to I couldn’t run straight ahead and split the defense and get away. I didn’t want to. I stood still with my feet about a foot apart, my hands clasped loosely in front of me, slightly below my belt buckle. The three men reached me and spread out in a little circle around me. The tall guy with the nose stood behind me. The two men from the Saab looked like brothers. Young and ruddy-cheeked. One of them had a scar that ran from the corner of his mouth halfway across his cheek. The other had very small eyes and very light eyebrows. Both were wearing loud sport shirts hanging outside their pants. I guessed why. The one with the scar took a .38 automatic out of his waistband and pointed it at me. He said something in German. “I speak English,” I said. “Put your hands on top of your head,” he said. “Wow,” I said, “you hardly have an accent.” He gestured with the gun barrel. I rested my hands loosely on my head. “That seems dumb to me,” I said. “Should ein cop come by he might notice that I was standing here with my hands on my head. He might pause to ask why, nein?”

“Put your hands down at your sides.” I put them down. “Which of you is Hans?” The guy with the gun ignored me. He said something in German to the big-nosed guy behind me. “I’ll bet you’re Hans,” I said to Scarface. “And you’re Fritz.” Big Nose patted me down, found my gun, and took it. He slipped it into his belt under his shirt. “That’s the Captain behind me.” They didn’t seem to be fans of the Katzenjammer Kids. They didn’t seem to be fans of me either. The guy with the small eyes said, “Come.” And we walked across the street from the park and into the apartment building. I was careful not to look for Hawk. Kathie’s anartment was first floor right, looking out on the park. She was there when we went in, sitting on the couch, half turned so she could look out the window. She was wearing a white corduroy jumpsuit with a black chain for a belt. The man in the room with her was small and wiry with a wide, strong nose and a harsh mouth. He had a big gray mustache that extended beyond his lips, and he wore wire-rimmed glasses. He was nearly bald, probably, but he had let what little hair he had grow very long on the left side and then combed it up and across. Thus his part started just above his left ear. To keep it in place he seemed to have lacquered it with hair spray. He was wearing work shoes and tight-legged corduroy jeans. His white shirt was frayed at the collar. The sleeves were rolled up and his forearms looked strong. He was dark, like Big Nose, and middle-aged. He didn’t look like a German, or a crazy. He looked like a mean grownup. He spoke in German to Scarface. Scarface said, “English.”