someone punching a bag of rice. His silhouette came into view; hat, overcoat, and briefcase. Poole reached into his bag and pulled out a pillowcase with two eyeholes. He tossed it to Alice. “Put it on.”
She looked at him inquiringly and he repeated his command. He didn’t want her to be the target of any reprisals. She pulled the case over her head and adjusted it so she could see out the eyeholes. He took a stocking from the bag, removed his hat, pulled the stocking over own his face, then replaced the hat. They looked absurd, he knew, but it was essential to keep their identities a secret. He had also found that under such circumstances, absurdity could be quite unnerving to the mark.
Bernal hesitated twenty feet from the gazebo, and Poole beckoned him forward with an expansive arm gesture. Bernal resumed walking. Poole noticed that he did not look over his shoulder. At the foot of the three steps leading up to the gazebo, Bernal paused again.
“Move,” Poole said.
Bernal ascended slowly and stepped to the center of the gazebo. He gave the hooded Alice a look but did not seem perturbed.
“Set the case on the floor.”
Bernal did as he was told.
“Did you bring the police?”
Bernal shook his head.
“Because if you did, now is the time to tell them to screw. I have an associate with the photos. I don’t return, they get sent to all the rags.”
“I didn’t bring the police.”
“Okay.” Poole showed Bernal his Luger. “I have one, just so you know.” He replaced it in the shoulder holster. “You wearing?”
“No gun.” The man’s face was expressionless. He did not seem scared, though he was certainly tense.
“Mind if I check?”
Bernal spread his arms and legs, keeping silent. Poole, patting up his sides and legs and finally his back, found nothing.
“Okay, open the case.”
Bernal got down on one knee and sprang the two latches. Then he slowly lifted the lid to reveal the stacks of twenty-dollar bills.
“Pick one out from the bottom and show me.”
Bernal dug his hand into the case and removed a packet of bills. He flipped through them, showing Poole that they were all twenties. The wind gusted now, and the trees made a soft noise like fire on wet wood. It would be harder now to hear an approach.
“You know that if you’re short—”
“It’s all there.”
“Okay. The other thing you are going to do for me is, you’re going to meet the union’s demands and end the strike.”
Again, Bernal remained silent, but now his face betrayed him.
“Savvy?” Poole prompted.
“I don’t think you understand,” Bernal began, then thought better of it and tried again. “It’s not something I can just do.”
“I don’t believe you.”
“You can believe me or not. I can’t do it.”
The wind was constant, the scent of phosphorus overwhelming the Christmas smell of the pines. The ripples on the water below began gathering into tiny waves.
“You have two days to make it work. I don’t care what you have to do. I don’t care what excuses you have. Two days. Forty-eight hours. Then the photos go to press.”
Bernal shut his eyes, and picking up the great tension in the man’s body, Poole realized that Bernal would hunt him dead were he ever to suss out his identity. Poole felt a sudden chill and with it the first stirrings of panic at all the sounds that would not be audible beneath the wind.
“Close the case.” His words sounded shrill.
Bernal opened his eyes, his gaze locking on Poole’s. Poole wondered just how effectively the stocking was managing to disguise his features.
“Close the goddamn case,” Poole shouted, his nerves rioting.
Bernal dropped to one knee again, closed and latched the case, and then stood up.
“Turn around and walk to the wall.”
Bernal turned his back to Poole and took two steps until he was leaning against a wall overlooking the stirring pond.
“The girl in the apartment,” Poole said, “she wasn’t in on this, got it?”
Bernal shrugged.
“If she’s hurt, it will make things more difficult for you.”
Again Bernal shrugged. Poole grabbed the case with one hand and with the other grabbed Alice’s arm, jerking her up with more force than he intended.
“What time do you have?”
Bernal checked his watch. “Five after eleven.”
“Wait until ten past.”
Bernal nodded.
They half-walked, half-trotted down the path, the wind blowing pine needles and dead leaves around their ankles. Poole pulled the pillowcase off Alice and the stocking from his face and stuffed them in a coat pocket. He had left the bag at the gazebo,