He grinned and closed his eyes. They burned from lack of sleep, too much bad living, and too many goddamn memories. But shit. It’d all be worth it. Stark’d say to him, “Hey, good going, Weaze,” the way he had before, back in ’Nam, when Otis hadn’t been brave so much as plain doped-up crazy. This time he was being brave. He knew the risks, knew what he was doing. Yeah, after this, he’d haul out his medals. Brag a little.

The door to the shack creaked open, and Bloch and two of his bodyguards walked in, just like they’d been out fishing all day. Bloch was even cleaned and pressed. Beside him, Otis had always felt like a dirty, slimy worm. It was the one thing the sergeant liked about him, called it proper respect.

Otis wiped the dribbled whiskey off his mouth. He didn’t care if Bloch saw the bottle. He squinted at the sergeant and the guards from the gloom of his corner and wished they’d shut the fucking door. They were letting in the cold air.

“Raymond,” Bloch said.

Out of habit, Otis climbed to his feet. The rules of soldiering were all that made sense to him anymore, maybe all that ever had. He sucked in what was left of his stomach. “Sergeant?”

“You’ve been out of camp, Raymond.” Bloch’s voice was steady, his tone without condemnation or doubt. “You went into town without permission.”

No use denying it, so Otis just stared straight ahead. He couldn’t figure out why, but he wasn’t seeing anything. Just blankness, not even dark. Nothing. It was weird.

Bloch shifted his position on the dirty floor. “You made a telephone call while you were there. Do you want to tell me about it?”

“Do I need to, Sergeant?”

“No,” he said softly, almost sadly, but Otis knew better. Bloch didn’t have feelings. “I don’t suppose you do, Raymond. The call was to Washington, D.C. You talked to Matthew Stark, didn’t you?”

Otis didn’t move, didn’t speak. No point in bluffing. Bloch already knew who he’d called and what he’d said. Bloch knew everything. Otis wasn’t surprised, he wasn’t impressed, he wasn’t even scared. That was just Bloch. One thing: Stark’d handle him. Otis wished he’d have a chance to warn Stark that Bloch was onto him, but what the hell. Matt was good.

“Raymond?”

Otis idly scratched an insect bite on his forearm, and suddenly he smiled. His mind wasn’t going after all. Shit. The uncontrollable visions, awake or asleep-they weren’t the mindless wanderings of a fucking lunatic.

They were the dreams of a dead man.

Yeah, he thought. Bloch can’t kill me. I’m already dead.

Fourteen

J uliana and Wilhelmina got off the bus near a small tenement building just outside the diamond district. As they walked up the front steps, Wilhelmina scowled at the dead geraniums sticking up out of the window boxes. There was no excuse for such laziness. She rang the doorbell, and a round, bald-headed man came to the door and let them in, introducing himself as Martin Dekker. He was younger than she’d expected, perhaps in his late forties. But these days most people seemed so young. They didn’t remember the war, the bombings, the starvation, the treachery of the Nazis and their collaborators. And if people like herself didn’t tell the young, refused to talk, how could they know? What assurance could there be that it all wouldn’t happen again?

She introduced herself and Juliana, speaking Dutch. She didn’t bother to translate, assuming Juliana could follow along well enough.

“I’m so glad you came,” the Belgian said cheerfully, leading them upstairs as he jingled a huge ring of keys. “There’s still been no word from your brother.”

“Have you called the police?”

Dekker shook his head. “I thought I should wait for you.”

And let me go through the trouble, Wilhelmina thought irritably. People always seem to sense her ability to make difficult decisions. She didn’t like to any more than they did and wasn’t, in her opinion, more competent to do so, but she wasn’t one to leave the dirty work to someone else. It was peculiar how people wanted her to be decisive and then were uncomfortable with her because she was.

“It’s not like Mr. Peperkamp to disappear like this,” Dekker went on. “He’s always been such a good tenant. Now he’s late with his rent, and-” he made an exaggerated sigh of despair “-and nothing from him. Not a word.”

Wilhelmina hoped he didn’t expect her to pay her brother’s rent. She only wanted to find him, not settle his debts. Not getting the desire response, the landlord unlocked the door to Johannes’s apartment and excused himself, thumping quietly back downstairs.

“He doesn’t speak English?” Juliana asked.

“I don’t know,” Wilhelmina said. “I didn’t ask.”

They went into the two-room apartment. A fat, half-smoked cigar lay cold in a brass ashtray, and the sleeve of one of Juliana’s recordings stood in front of the elaborate, outdated stereo system. She was smiling, and her hair was longer. Johannes owned all her recordings. Wilhelmina didn’t own any, but sometimes she heard them on the radio.

“For so long I’ve thought of Johannes as the muscular, stubborn boy he was before the war,” she said, half to herself, except that she spoke in English. “He won so many speed skating races on the canals. I would watch, all bundled up, drinking hot cocoa with my friends.”

Juliana asked softly, “Did you learn to skate yourself?”

“Mm, yes, but I’ve forgotten long since.” There had been too many years when she’d had to devote so much of her energy just to survival and then to putting aside the past and going on. Not forgetting, of course-simply going on.

For the first time in her life, Wilhelmina felt sorry for her older brother. Johannes Peperkamp, the famous diamond cleaver. The cutter with the incomparable eye.

Now he lived in dreariness.

Ignoring Juliana’s look of concern, she went into the galley kitchen, little more than a converted closet off the sitting room, and automatically put on a kettle for tea. The kitchen was clean enough, but there were no begonias in the windows. She could feel the loneliness that had crept into her brother’s life. There was none of the cheerfulness and sparkling cleanliness in this place that there had been in his big apartment with Ann.

She inspected the refrigerator. Four kinds of cheeses and half an eel were neatly wrapped and there was a tin of butter cookies, but the milk had soured and a basket of mussels was beginning to smell. Even during his days of fame and greater fortune, Johannes hadn’t been an extravagant man. He was naturally frugal and spent little money on himself. What he was saving it for Wilhelmina didn’t know, and yet she did the same. And neither was one to waste food. There had been too many days in their lives without it.

“It doesn’t feel right here, does it?” Juliana asked, standing behind her aunt.

Without speaking, Wilhelmina shook her head and turned off the heat under the kettle. She no longer wanted tea. Together, she and Juliana went into the bedroom, but there was nothing there either, nothing to say, nothing to find. The double bed was neatly made, and on the bureau were two photographs, one of Ann, laughing, just a touch of the familiar sadness behind her eyes, and one of their wedding day before the war. Wilhelmina could remember more clearly than she could remember anything that had happened last week how she and Rachel had wished that one day they would have a marriage like Johannes and Ann had. What dreamers they’d been.

Now there were no more dreams, only memories.

“Let’s go,” she said.

“Aunt Willie…”

“I’m fine. We’ll bring Mr. Dekker the eel. That will have to satisfy him.”

But downstairs in the entryway, a dark figure was trying to communicate with the Belgian landlord in bad French. Juliana let out a small cry and jumped backward, but too late.