Climbing the post-office stairs, I remembered another fragment. Bertrade, lovely as I’ve ever seen her, had worn nothing but a silver moon on a chain around her neck and touched my arm. So slippery was the memory that I began to wonder if this dream might have been planted in my head by an enemy.
The little unmarked window was where I always picked up mail from the Kingdom beneath the Hill. And I wanted to talk to that clerk and find out what he knew. The window was shut, which had never happened before.
The guy at the overseas window didn’t know what I was talking about when I asked about the window next door. He said this wasn’t his regular assignment, and that I should try the next day.
Walking slowly across that lobby, I thought of the ice-cold knife racing up my leg like I was a letter being sliced open, and I felt real small and insignificant. But I started to put things into some kind of order.
The elves had set up Jim and Anne Toomey as bait for me. First they invented the Culpepper job and hired Jim, who needed the work. Then they made sure he couldn’t function, and put it in his head and Anne’s that they should ask me. And I was the bait to lure Bertrade.
Taking my seat in the coffee shop across from the Van Neiman Building, it occurred to me that maybe on our first encounter Bertrade and Darnel had used me as bait to catch the elf. Knowing the ways of the Gentry, that seemed quite possible.
The waitress and counterman didn’t notice that I was a repeat customer. I figured that the elves wouldn’t probe as long as I was doing what they wanted. They didn’t have to worry. I was coming after them.
That they were keeping me in play, letting me stay alive, could mean they’d made Bertrade aware that I was in danger. And it would also mean they weren’t sure where she was or what she was going to do. That Bertrade was avoiding direct contact with me was a sign that she relied on me to play my part, walk into the trap and ensnare the trapper. It would also mean she knew that the spell that shielded my thoughts could be broken by the enemy.
Just then, Culpepper, whoever he was, came through the doors of the Van Neiman Building with his briefcase. I got up and followed him. It went like before. He walked west, and I followed on the other side of the street. I wondered how much Culpepper knew. What promises and rewards had they made to him?
Seeing him go through this routine reminded me of how in France, just before we went into action, I saw a couple of German prisoners, starving, flea-bitten men, cramming army rations into their mouths while our guys stared like they were exhibits in a zoo. That sight took away all of the enemy’s mystery.
I stopped on the east side of Tenth Avenue, watched from a doorway when Culpepper crossed and went into the apartment building. As I waited, a light went on in the third-floor window.
A rhythmic pounding came from over on the river. It sounded like they were driving piles. The earlier drizzle had become rain. Workers headed home at a brisk pace. The streets were getting empty.
Stakeout work is fine, outdoor labor, good for the health and spirits. But I’d noticed a bar on the corner with a clear view of the apartment house.
It was a Wednesday night, with a moderate-sized crowd and a cowboy movie on the TV above the bar. The guys drinking spotted me for a cop and looked away when I stepped inside. I ordered a rye and water and kept my eye on the apartment house doorway.
I was pretty sure they wouldn’t leave without me. There was a good chance I’d be dead before long. But death hadn’t come yet, and I’d given it several very good chances.
In the dark, a long freight train ran south on the elevated tracks. When I looked further west beyond Twelfth Avenue, the pier at the end of the street seemed lit up.
About the time I began to wonder if I was crazy and Culpepper really was just a guy stepping out on his wife, I saw through someone else’s eyes. They were moving uptown along the river’s edge. I saw a pier and a big yacht all lit up. Suddenly that disappeared. Was this skirmishing between elves and fairies?
Like it was a signal, the one called Culpepper came out the door of the apartment house. He carried an umbrella and held it over Mimi White. The game was on. They headed west, and I followed them.
A good detective recognizes a pattern. Once more, I was heading onto a pier at night to encounter the Gentry.
As we crossed Eleventh Avenue, a big ocean liner sailed up the Hudson with every light onboard shining. It looked like a floating city block. The tugboats guiding it honked at each other. I saw the liner, and then, for an instant, I saw it again from the viewpoint of someone down at the river. The pile driving paused briefly, and all was as quiet as Manhattan ever gets.
Approaching Twelfth Avenue, I saw that the old freighter from the day before was gone. In its place was the oceangoing yacht with lights on deck that I’d seen through someone else’s eyes.
At certain moments, time gets fluid. At Aisne-Marne, the platoon was pinned by machine-gun fire. The gunners had waited until we were within a hundred yards. The lieutenant was dead. Someone was screaming. Later I found out the whole company was pinned; the battalion had gone to earth. The minutes we were down went by like hours.
The machine guns fired a short burst right over me; fired a burst to my left, another further along. I knew that it was ratlike little guys going through the motions. It would be a bit before they’d come back my way.
I pulled a pin with my right hand. I jumped up with the grenade in my left. The Krauts were firing from a gap in an embankment a hundred yards away. I’d hurled dummy grenades in practice, knew their weight. I judged the arc and tossed. “Get down,” someone yelled. The grenade hit the side of the gap, bounced in the air.
As I dove for cover, I was knocked flat, and a cold knife raced up my leg. A muffled bang sounded, a man screamed, another cried out, the machine-gun fire stopped, and my war was over.
Crossing Twelfth Avenue, walking into the trap, I told myself that all I needed was a few seconds of clarity, like I’d had thirty-two years before.
Maybe Bertrade had given me up. But I was going to deal out payment for Jim and Anne. All I needed was those few seconds.
Culpepper and Mimi stopped just inside the gates at the end of the pier. A couple of hundred feet beyond them, the yacht had lights on the gangplank, atop the cabins, shining through the portholes.
A figure, tall and thin, wavering slightly, stood on the deck leaning on the rail. He was faced away from me. But I could recognize one of the Fair Folk, whether elf or fairy. He was too far away to hit with a handgun. I wished I had a grenade.
A scream in the night came from downriver. At almost the same moment the pile driver started up out in the water. Distant sirens sounded, but they were on fire trucks and going the wrong way. The Fair Folk didn’t want any human interference.
A breeze blew the rain in my face as I crossed the avenue with my raincoat open. My arms were at my side. The .38 in my hand was hidden by the coat flapping.
The ones I knew as Culpepper and Mimi faced me as I approached. I was going to tell them to get out of my way before they got hurt.
But their eyes were blank. For an instant I saw myself from their viewpoint as I walked past them. Someone was looking out through them like they were TV cameras. Someone was in my head.
Figures moved in the darkness beyond the lights. Fair Folk were out there. For an instant I caught an image of long, thin figures on a small powerboat.
The lights on the yacht flickered for a moment. The tall elf on the deck looked my way. He seemed amused. Bertrade’s image telling intruders to stay out got knocked aside like it was cardboard. He was in my mind. My feet moved without my willing them and my body shambled forward to the foot of the gangplank.