The Land Across (36 page)

“I suppose.”

Everybody got quiet and ate after that, which I had been doing already. After a while I went to the door and looked at the sky. It was getting gray, so I knew then why I was getting sleepy. Night was nearly over. Besides, I had eaten my eggs and six or eight buttered rolls. My jaw ached, reminding me of the aspirin I had found in Naala’s medicine cabinet.

While Naala and I were walking back to her apartment I asked her if she knew who had killed Butch. She said she did not, but we had ten prisoners and they would be quizzed all day. “Also others search there for papers. It may be they find something. If so, I will be told. Also who throws the head in. I must have the lock changed.”

There is not a lot left to tell about that night. I had a shower and Naala had a bath and got me to come in and scrub her back. “So you are useful after all,” she said, and grinned at me.

We had a drink before that, and we had a couple more before we went to bed and talked some. It was mostly private stuff so I am not going to give it here. Then we went to sleep.

When I woke up I was in my room and Naala was gone. So were all the clothes I had worn the night before. My gun and my badge case were lying on top of a stack of new clothes. I thought of the hand and was worried sick. It was not in the box or anyplace else I looked in. When I dropped my badge case I saw there was an identity card in there now. It had my picture on it, and it probably said I was JAKA. I put on the new clothes, threading the new belt through the holster, and so on. I got a paring knife from the kitchen to cut off the tags. The wad I had taken from the guy I fought was at the bottom of the stack.

The clock on the mantel said it was almost three, and for a minute I thought it had stopped. I watched it until the minute hand moved. So I had slept all day and most of the night. I went into Naala’s room, being very quiet, and she was in there sound asleep and snoring.

After I had shaved I knew what I had to do. God knows I did not want to, but I had to. I found a new jacket in the closet. This new one was wool, too. When I went out I made sure the door had locked behind me.

The walk to the cathedral was long and dark, cold and lonely. I kept hoping to catch sight of the tower, which did not really happen until I was just about there. Then I saw it, dead black against the stars, and it seemed to go up forever.

The big door in front was locked, but there was a little path around to the side, and a little door there that was not. I went in and up a narrow, pitch-black stair, and found I was right underneath the tower in an alcove full of hanging ropes. It had no ceiling but just went up and up. It was still dark as hell in there, even though a little starlight sifted down. One side was open to the main part of the cathedral. It was dark in there, too, although a candle was burning on each side of the altar. I did not see the ropes until one bumped my face.

There was another stair off to the side. It was wider than the one I had just come up, but steeper, too, with nothing to hang on to. A cold stone wall on one side and a really good drop on the other. The steps were narrow, like they had been made for feet that were smaller than mine. I kept telling myself that if I fell I would grab one of the bell ropes, but I do not believe I could really have done it. Pretty soon I learned not to try to take those steps fast. You went slow or you stopped every so often and sat down on a step. Your choice. I went slow, feeling the wall with my left hand.

When I finally got to the top, it was maybe twice as big as I had expected. I have had hotel rooms that were a lot smaller than that. My bedroom in Kleon’s house had been smaller, too. There was a big hole for the ropes in the middle, and a walk all the way around it with a low wall around that. No rail on the bell-rope side. For a while I tried to figure out why it was the way it was. Then I realized that eventually the ropes must wear out, and when they did somebody would come up here with a plank and lay it across the hole so he could get to the broken rope, cut the knot and let the rope fall, and tie on a new rope. I would not want the job, but somebody must have done it. Of course you could reach some of the ropes just standing on the walkway.

So now I was up here, and there was nothing for me to do but wait. My broken watch had disappeared with my old clothes, but I figured it must be about four a.m. Or it could be five. I went to the front and stood there a while, looking out over the city. There were only two buildings taller than that tower in it, and you could see the roofs of all the rest. Later on, when the sky started to get light, you could see down a lot of the streets, too.

That was when I moved to the back to wait. At first I tried sitting on the flat coping back there, but it was too high for my feet to reach the walkway. So I just leaned against it and checked my gun, and put it back, and waited.

It seemed like a long time but it cannot have been, because the sun was not showing yet when I heard his feet on the steps down below. I knew that if he looked around, he would see me. That was when I looked around good myself and saw there was somebody else up there with me already. It was the third border guard, just standing in a corner. He did not say anything to me, and I did not say anything to him, either. The two of us just waited.

The first thing I saw was the archbishop’s little black cap and his white hair under it. He was facing away from me when he came up the steps so I could not see his face. He went to the front and leaned against the low wall with his arms stiff and his hands on the top, and he looked out at the city pretty much like I had. He was saying something, but I could not quite hear what it was. Just whispering to himself.

So I edged closer until I could see his profile, and then I knew I had been right. Maybe I should have cleared my throat or something to let him know I was there, but I did not. I knew what I was going to have to do, and I was not looking forward to it.

Finally he saw me and turned to look at me, and began to say something. Only he thought better of it and shut his mouth instead.

I said, “Good morning, Your Excellency. Do I have to show you my badge?”

He did not speak, so I pulled it out of my pocket and opened it for him to see, and stuck it back in. That was when I would have noticed the hand was in there, if it was. But I did not.

I said, “You know why I’m here. You knew it as soon as you saw me. I could see it in your eyes. We caught a bunch of your people last night at the undertaker’s. Did anybody tell you?”

He shook his head, moving it just a little.

“It was pretty late. Probably they didn’t want to wake you up. Three are dead, but we got ten alive.”

I waited, but he did not say a word.

“Here I could tell you they ratted you out. Maybe I ought to. The truth is I don’t know, but if they haven’t, they will. Ten of them? Most of them women? We’ll keep after them day and night until they pass out, and go after them again as soon as we can wake them up. One will talk. Probably they all will.”

He said something too soft for me to hear, and he kept on saying it, his lips moving and moving. Pretty soon I realized there was somebody else there besides the third border guard, the archbishop, and me. Just having it there made me angry and sad and terribly down, but I kept going.

“I said I could tell you they had, but I won’t. There have been too many lies in your life already, or at least that’s how I think it must have been. Shall I tell you how I knew?”

He said, “Please do, my son. I wish you would.”

“Two things. The first was the hand. You told Naala and me that the tattoos were curses. I got someone I trust to translate a couple of them, and they were prayers.”

He did not speak.

“I guess they looked like curses to you, so that was what you told us they were.”

The archbishop said, “What was the other?”

“It was something I picked up from a priest I know. I won’t tell you his name, but he had been in a hurry to talk to you.”

I paused for a few seconds before going on.

“He knew you climbed this tower every morning, so he got up early and waited for you to come down. He told me about it, and I could see something was bothering him quite a bit. He never said what it was, so it bothered me, too. The first thing I thought of was that he was worried about your health, afraid you had a bad heart or something.”

He said, “I do.”

“Yeah, I know what you mean. Only if this priest had been worried about a heart attack, he would have said so.”

“Papa Zenon.”

“Right. So what else could it have been? For a while I thought it was something you told him that he couldn’t tell other people. Then I thought about the tattoos that were really prayers, and it hit me. It was the way you had looked when you came down from—”

I stopped talking because he was not paying attention. He was staring at something beside me, so I shut up and looked, too. It was my gun on the coping, stood up straight and pointed right at him. The hand had it.

Maybe I should have grabbed it. I did not. I froze, and I saw him throw his leg over the coping, moving a lot faster than I would have thought a man his age could. The rest of him followed his leg. I tried to grab him. My fingers brushed his sleeve, and he was gone. People in movies scream all the way down. He did not make a sound until he hit.

He just fell. When I looked over, I saw him way down on the pavement below, a little splash of black and a tiny dot of red beside it.

When I had gone down the first three steps I turned around and looked back, thinking I ought to remember how it had been up there, and that I would probably never go there again. The third border guard was standing at the top of the steps like he had known I would do that. He touched his forehead as if he were saluting, and it looked to me like he was smiling under his mustache.

Then he was gone.

The bad feeling I had when I was up there came down the first twenty or thirty steps with me, then I tripped on something I could not see and almost fell. After that I started saying certain things under my breath. I am not going to tell you what they were because they probably would not work for you. A lot of it was from my mother, who passed away when I was six. I still remember her, though. How pretty she was and the songs she used to sing, and some of the stories she used to tell me.

I thought by the time I got down to the ground there would be a big crowd around the archbishop, but there was nobody. I guess it was too early. I did not want to look at him and just walked away.

By the time I got back to Naala’s apartment she was up and moving around. I could hear her in there, so I tapped on the door and she let me in. She was not dressed yet, but she was wearing an old robe. She looked at me for a minute and then she said, “This is most bad, I think.”

I shrugged and went over to the chair I usually sat in and sat down.

“You are going to tell me.”

“Not now,” I said. “Later. Only yes, I’ve got to. Maybe you won’t want to report it. Maybe you will. I don’t know.”

“I must dress.” She bustled away.

After a minute or two she called from the bedroom, “We go out and get something. My green dress or the black one? Which is it you think?”

I told her to please wear the green one.

“I agree. Green is better.”

We went out, and when we had gone past several cafés, one closed and two or three already open, she said, “We walk and walk until you are ready to stop, Grafton. You must tell me then.”

I saw a café on the other side of the street that had tables outside, and pointed. “There. All right?”

She said it was.

Once we had a table she glanced at the menu, we ordered, and I had a good look around. There was nobody close enough to overhear us if I kept my voice down, so I said, “The Undead Dragon? It was the archbishop, Naala. It really was, and he’s dead.”

She drummed her fingers on the table and looked away, and looked back. Then she looked away again. Finally she said, “Tell me.”

“There isn’t much to tell,” I said. Really there was a lot, but I had decided not to tell all that. “I figured it out last night, and this morning…” I did not know how to say it. “He climbed the tower of the cathedral every morning. Remember how he told us that?”

She nodded.

“I decided to go up there and wait for him, and hit him with it when he came up. So I did. He came up, and after he had looked out at the city for a minute I came over and showed him my badge. He hadn’t seen me til then. I told him we’d picked up a bunch of prisoners last night, and they were talking.”

Her eyebrows went up. “Are they, Grafton?”

“Not as far as I know, but I said they were. Then I told him that if he came along quietly there’d be no rough stuff, but I wanted to pat him down first. When I reached out to take hold of him, he jumped.”

“From the top of the tower?”

“Right. That drop would kill anybody.”

She stared at me. I think she was seeing if I could look her in the eye. I could and did. Finally she said, “You shoot him and throw his body off the tower.”

I shook my head.

“I must see your gun. Take it out and give it to me.”

I said, “Sure,” and handed it over.

She sniffed the muzzle, then pulled the magazine out. You could see the cartridges through holes in the sides, and it was full. She put it in again and gave the gun back to me. “You throw him off the tower. That will be better for us. There will be no bullet—”

“The hell I did!” I made it as strong as I could. “I swear I never laid a finger on him. Not one single finger! There’s a stone railing up there and he went over it before I could grab him.”

She was quiet after that until our breakfasts came. Then she said, “Who sees you there?”

“Nobody.”

“You are sure of this?”

I said, “Yes. It was about five. Nobody saw me except him.”

“We do not speak. Not now and never it may be. I must find a telephone.”

“Who are you going to tell?”

She grinned. It had hit her hard, but she was over it. “Nobody. Did not I say this? We tell nobody, but when we have eaten I must find a telephone.”