An Old Friend of the Family d-3 Read online

  After a long pause, Morgan turned silently toward the east side of the street, and once there headed north. Poach kept with her, stumbling more noticeably now. Joe wondered if he might be faking greater injury than he felt.

  Above the city’s lights the sky was changing subtly and at intersections Joe could see the sky to the east, above the lake; there it was no longer dark so much as blank. He looked at his wrist watch, but what he saw conveyed no meaning to his worn mind.

  Stoplights blinked out an elaborate ritual, timing nothing.

  “Do you think they’ll go into a building?” Kate suddenly wondered aloud.

  The old man shrugged. “We could follow. They do not really want to seek a general involvement of the breathing world, any more than I do. That would be ultimately bad for all of us. Our branch of the human race has the habit and tradition of settling its own affairs.”

  “I just thought,” said Kate, “If they keep going east much farther—”

  “Yes?”

  “They’ll wind up out on the ice. On the lake. That’s considered very dangerous. When people do that the police sometimes bring out a helicopter and pick them up, right Joe?”

  “Ah.”

  “Fortunately,” said Joe, puffing steam, “all the copters in the city are going to be very busy today doing other jobs.”

  And still Morgan led them north. Going north would also, in time, bring them to the curving shore. Ahead, the gray canyon of buildings in which they moved came to an abrupt end. There, at Oak Street, the Boulevard melded with the Outer Drive and with a delta of lesser arteries. There the park began, and the beach. And, inland, the rank of tall apartment buildings in one of which Craig Walworth lived. “It’s just hit me,” Joe announced. “They’re trying to get to Walworth’s place.”

  Corday nodded. “That seems quite probable.”

  “You won’t be able to get in there to get at them. If I’m beginning to understand how these things work?”

  “Your new understanding is in general correct, I think.” The thin lips smiled faintly. “But I was asked into that apartment a few hours ago.”

  “Oh.”

  And now they were at Oak Street. The white-shrouded curve of the Drive, for once as silent as a country lane, stretched away to the north under the streetlamps and the altering sky, strewn with abandoned vehicles. The wind off the lake, now dying, had ridged the Drive with snowdrifts. But unlike the Boulevard it was already scrawled with rutted tracks where something had managed to crawl through. The sound of diesels was again a little louder now, and Joe thought he could see a yellow snow-mover laboring far to the north.

  Morgan and Poach still headed north, now crossing blank white that had been parkway. East of them lay snow-covered beach, and then a fantasy of ice. Beyond that, more than a hundred yards away, the almost invincibly open water of the lake was leadenly visible under the changing eastern sky.

  When she had gone another block north, Morgan came to an abrupt stop. She stood there looked ahead and inland, to where apartment buildings rose above barren trees. Joe realized that Walworth’s building had just come into full view. One window of it, about twenty stories up, was leaking interior light of a different tone than the light from other windows near it. In a moment he realized that the glass of that window must be gone—those windows were not made for ordinary opening. Looking at the ground below it now, Joe could make out human figures, beaming flashlights at one another and on an object lying in the snow. Some of the tiny figures were wearing caps and jackets of police blue. A black face showed between an orange ski cap and a brown civilian coat. Joe had seen that cap before; at this distance Charley Snider’s features were unrecognizable, but fortunately distance worked both ways. An olive-drab halftrack with a red cross on its side, something borrowed from the armory, stood by with its headlights helping to illuminate the scene.

  Morgan and Poach were standing still in conference. Now the giant raised an arm to point eastward at the approaching dawn. The desert of water and ice in that direction was becoming gradually more visible. The pale, still sunless sky above it was generally clear. Now the two turned and walked in that direction, not looking back.

  At once the old man moved to follow, almost at a trot. Joe and Kate were gasping with the effort of staying at his heels. Joe foundered across a snow fence, only the top two inches of its ineffectual slats showing above curved powder.

  Beyond the snow fence, forty yards of unbroken white ended in a jumble of foot-thick ice slabs, broken up and cast ashore by yesterday’s or last night’s powerful east winds. As Joe drew near the wilderness of ice its jagged horizon reached higher than his head. Above the ice beautiful streaks of pink were being born in the southeast sky.

  First Morgan and then Poach vanished, this time in something like a normal human way, climbing into the cold maze of broken ice. Corday paused for an instant in his pursuit to ask: “Will it be possible for them to find a boat of any kind?”

  “Not here. Not in the winter.” Legs laboring, lungs pumping on frozen air, Joe labored after Corday’s effortless, snow-plowing sprint, holding his spear at the ready, like a slow pole-vaulter, thanking God he had at least found gloves in his jacket pockets.

  Following Corday’s gestures, his allies spread out to his left and right, then followed his advance into the ice field. Joe had the worst of it, handicapped with the spear when two hands as well as two feet seemed hardly enough for clambering among the jumbled, slippery slabs.

  Trying to keep Corday’s head at least intermittently in sight, Joe advanced as best he could. The sky was light enough now to let him see what he was doing, but still the going was very awkward and treacherous. Moving silently was impossible, at least for Joe.

  In a minute or so the whole city behind him was out of sight. Here it was as silent as Alaska, except for the sounds of his own progress. And, somewhere that could not be very far away, a gentle lapping of water against ice or rock or sand.

  Joe lost Corday for a little while. Then, dragging himself up into a saddle between two cakes, he was relieved to see the old man’s head and shoulders against a third, still and silent as the ice he rested on. He’s probably letting me draw the first attack, Joe suddenly realized. The clumsy, noisy one . . . well, if that’s the way we have to do it, it still has to be done. He gripped his spear and went ahead.

  In a moment he had slipped on impossible footing, skinning a knee painfully inside his trousers and wrenching an ankle, fortunately not hard enough to cut down on his mobility any further. Joe cursed silently and gripped his spear and went ahead. When he got close to the place where he had last seen Corday, the chuckle of water was much closer too. It sounded like it might be eating at the ice right beneath his feet. If a man were to fall into one of these deep, dark blue holes . . .

  Here was where Corday had been. But the old man was gone now. He and Kate must be nearby, following, listening even as the enemy were to Joe’s clumsy progress. On the other hand he could imagine the whole chase gradually progressing away from him, and he, the dull-sensed one, falling and freeze-drowning here and never knowing its result. Someone would find him in the spring . . .

  Ahead, around the corner of another tilted green-gray slab, an object of a different nature came into view. It took Joe a moment to recognize the tilt-topped mass of a concrete breakwater, draped as it was with smooth curves of ice. A few hours ago, great roaring breakers must have beaten on it. Deep water was nearby, then, underneath the ice-jam.

  There was a small sound like a sigh, and from the top of an almost level lintel of ice at Joe’s right the enormous form of Poach came leaping down at him from ambush. Joe got the spear around barely in time. The needle point of it made wooden contact, hooking Poach’s dinner jacket and perhaps his ribs beneath. At the same moment, a woman screamed nearby and Corday shouted something.

  The butt of the spear was jammed down against ice by Poach’s weight on top. It rotated then, deflecting him in his leap to land with what ought to ha
ve been deadly impact, on concrete sheathed in ice. A sound like a drumbeat was driven from his open mouth. The barbs of the spearpoint tore free. Poach slid from the breakwater into black open water just beneath.

  For a moment he was gone. Then he surfaced at Joe’s feet, mouth roaring water and air mixed, his eyes fixed on Joe. His huge hands scrabbled for a grip on ice or spear or enemy.

  Groaning as if with his own death, Joe forced the barbed spear home once more. This time it went straight into the giant’s throat. But Poach’s long arm shot forward. His hand locked on Joe’s arm farthest forward on the spear shaft. They were going to go down together. Joe’s feet were slipping on the ice.

  Someone seized him from behind, just as he was being dragged to watery death. A thin arm round his waist supported him. He could not turn his head. A wave washed at Poach, and suddenly most of the exposed flesh of Poach’s hands and face was gone. The next wave seemed to knock apart the bones of skull and fingers—Joe could hear them hissing, see them dissolving, as if the water were purest acid.

  It was over. Even the clothing had gone down. The spear was bobbing in the water. Joe found his footing and shakily stood up straight. Turning, he met Kate’s eyes. He started to ask: “Where’s—”

  Kate uttered a horrible little cry and struck at something on his arm. Poach’s skeletal right hand dropped off, bones shattering when it hit the ice. The first direct rays of sun were on the still-moving bones now. Joe watched them crumble into dust, and then to nothingness.

  “Where’s Corday, Kate?”

  “This way. He sent me to help you.”

  Scrambling after Kate around a monolith of ice, he came upon the old man and Morgan in its shadow. The two of them looked almost like lovers seeking privacy. But Corday had the long wooden knife in one hand now, and his other hand held both of Morgan’s wrists tightly behind her.

  She was looking into the distant sky. Her eyes and face might have been carved from the slab she leaned against. Corday turned to the two breathing people. “It is over. You may leave us now.” When they did not go he added: “What would you have me do? Do you want to sentence her to one of your prisons for her crimes? Leave us.”

  But when they had turned away he called: “Wait. Tell—tell those who know me, that I shall be all right. That I am going home.”

  Joe took Kate’s arm. Suddenly she was leaning against him weakly. It would be a struggle to get back to where they could call for help, but they would make it.

  Behind them a woman screamed loudly, once. That name, again.

  TWENTY-TWO

  After the first preliminary session with Charley Snider and Franzen of the Glenlake force, Joe’s head was spinning with exhaustion. But he still held to his determination not to collapse, and not to let Kate out of his sight, until she was ready to collapse too. As for Kate, she swore that she was holding out until she’d seen her little sister.

  Snider obligingly drove them from Glenlake to the hospital, over freshly plowed thoroughfares. On the way he told them about Walworth’s plunge through a broken window. Nobody knew yet whether it was suicide or not. But this time, the Homicide man made it plain, the authorities mean to get to the bottom of the whole business, once and for all—

  Judy had been found at home, unconscious amid the ruins of the pottery collection. A pillow had been tucked neatly beneath her head and there were two blankets wrapped around her. Someone had called police about her and fortunately they had been able to get a four-wheel-drive vehicle to get her to the hospital. On regaining her senses, in a room near her brother’s, Judy had been unable to give any coherent account of how she had come to be where she was found. Examination disclosed that she had suffered a moderately serious loss of blood. Internal bleeding of some kind was diagnosed, because no wounds were visible that might account for the loss. When the news came that her older sister was after all alive, Judy accepted the happy shock with no apparent surprise at all.

  “Tell me once more now,” Charley Snider asked, going up on the short hospital elevator ride with Joe and Kate. “Try to think. Where did you two first run into each other last night?”

  “I told you, I’ve been drugged.” Kate looked happily giddy. There was a Band-aid on her arm where blood samples had already been taken for the police. “Somewhere on the Near North, I think it was.”

  “I can’t remember,” Joe chimed in. “I can’t think very straight just now.” He felt horrible, out on his feet, and he knew he must look the same, quite bad enough to lend some credence to his story, or lack thereof.

  Snider gave him a look that said: We’re going to have a long talk soon. Right now Joe did not care in the least.

  “We got your grandmother dead,” said Charley, thinking aloud while he looked at Kate. “But so far all the other Southerlands are still alive, though some are damaged. We got Gruner dead. And now we got Walworth dead, right out of the building where Gruner was the doorman. This Corday is still missing. This Winter that you and Johnny describe is nowhere.”

  “Try finding Leroy Poach,” said Joe, and giggled. The giggle had a strange sound.

  “I think you better check in here yourself,” Charley told him.

  “No.” Kate pressed his hand. “He’s going to come home with me and sack out there.”

  “Thanks,” said Joe. “I will.”

  The elevator stopped at Judy’s floor and they got out. Two rooms down, the hall had police bodyguards.

  “Daddy still glowers at you,” Kate said. “He’ll glower worse when I bring you back home. And then I’ll punch him in the nose.” Now first she and then Joe were laughing uncontrollably. Snider shook his head and walked off somewhere. A nurse came to stand looking at them doubtfully. When they had done their best to try to look like decent visitors, the nurse said: “You can go in now, if you’re quiet. She’s been asking and asking for you.”

  Snider reappeared from somewhere to follow them in silently. There was only one bed in the room, with a pale Judy lying in it. In a chair nearby Johnny sat in his bathrobe. Judy sat up with a jerk as they came in.

  “We’re all right,” Kate got out. Johnny sprang up to give her his handless hug. She looked over his robed shoulder at Joe, appealing for some way to communicate the rest.

  Joe tossed Judy a wink. “I have the feeling that the good guys are going to be all right now.”

  The pale girl couldn’t help herself. “Dr. Corday too?”

  Joe could feel eyes boring into the back of his neck. The ears of Homicide would be tuned in like dish antennas. What did he care? He was going to marry into quite a wad of money soon. “Him especially,” Joe said, and winked again. “He can take care of himself. If I was him I’d be going back to Europe as soon as I could.”

  “The airports will be watched,” Judy worried weakly.

  “There are night flights, aren’t there?” Kate commented. Let Homicide try to make something out of that. And Joe could hear Charley Snider’s shoeleather creaking quietly out of the room.

  “Oh, Kate,” said pale Judy from her bed, “are you really all right now?”

  “I think so. Listen, Jude. You and I are going to have a lot of things to compare notes on, when we get the chance.”

  “Oh, yes. Yes, we are.”

  “And then,” said Kate, “I think we’d all benefit from a winter vacation somewhere.”

  “Great weather to go south,” Joe put in.

  Judy took thought. “Yes, going somewhere to rest up sounds like fun. Only . . .”

  “What?”

  “Maybe not south . . . they say the off-season is a great time to visit Europe.” Judy’s eyes had begun to glow, to dance a little. With one finger she picked at a spot, a tiny pimple maybe, on her throat.

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