Page 60 of Tightrope

He got it open. No one fired at him. He took that as a good sign. But he was too late to get a look at the vehicle that had raced away from the scene a moment earlier.

Three men dressed in shabby clothes emerged from behind a boarded-up structure and gathered in the street in front of the workshop.

Matthias slipped the gun back into its holster and moved outside. Alarmed by the sight of him, the three turned to run.

“It’s all right,” Matthias said. He reached inside his jacket again. This time he took out his wallet. “I’d like to ask you some questions.”

The sight of the wallet riveted all three men.

“You okay, mister?” one of them asked. His long hair was tied back with a strip of leather. “Sounded like somethin’ blew sky-high in there.”

Another one of the group stared at Matthias with wild eyes, as if he was fighting to control a nightmare that was threatening to swamp his senses. He trembled visibly.

“Grenade,” he rasped. “Thought I was back in the trenches.”

“It’s all right,” Matthias said. “No one was hurt.”

He tried to keep his voice quiet and calm. It was not the first time he had met a veteran of the Great War. Not all battle wounds were visible. Far too many of the former soldiers looked out at the world with the eyes of men who had witnessed what no decent man should have to witness. The term that had been coined for the condition wasshell shock.

“Somethin’ went wrong in that crazy inventor’s workshop, didn’t it?” Long Hair said. “Always figured he’d blow himself up someday.”

“Did any of you get a look at that car that just drove off?” Matthias asked.

“I did,” Shell Shock said. “Black Ford sedan. Looked new. Why?”

“I’d like to ask the driver some questions,” Matthias said. “Did anyone see him?”

“Didn’t get a good look at him,” the third man said. “He parked his car behind that garage over there. We kept our heads down. We were afraid that the owner of one of these old warehouses had sent him around to run us off.”

Long Hair spit on the ground. “Probably a mob man lookin’ to dump a body.”

“Did you notice his clothes?” Matthias asked.

“Had a hat pulled down real low so I couldn’t see his hair or his face,” Third Man said. “Looked like a quality coat, though. Dark brown. I used to have a coat like that.”

So much for a description,Matthias thought.

He asked a few more questions, probing for details, but it was obvious that the three transients had not seen much.

He handed around some bills, waved off a lot of effusive thanks, and turned to go back into the workshop.

“I’ll tell ya one thing,” Shell Shock called out.

Matthias stopped on the doorstep and turned back. “What?”

“I saw him throw that grenade. Pulled the pin. Waited a couple of seconds before he tossed it through the window. He weren’t no amateur. He knew what he was doing.”

Chapter 30

“That grenade was intended to kill us,” Amalie said.

They were sitting in a booth at a roadside diner on the outskirts of Playa Dorada. There were a mug of coffee and a toasted cheese sandwich in front of her. She had yet to take a bite of the sandwich. Matthias, on the other hand, had just polished off a large plate of fried chicken accompanied by mashed potatoes and gravy and some overcooked green beans. Evidently the excitement back at Pickwell’s workshop had given him an appetite.

She had yet to decide exactly how she was feeling. Words likenervy,jumpy, anddisorientedsprang to mind but did not quite capture the essence of the emotions that were still shivering through her. For the second time in her life someone had tried to kill her. If the tire blowout the previous night had, in fact, been another attempt, that made three tries. How many lives did a former trapeze artist have?

She picked up the coffee and then immediately put it back down. The last thing she wanted to do was stimulate her already overstimulated nerves.

A short time ago Matthias had called Luther Pell from the pay phone booth outside the entrance of the diner. He had returned with the news that Pell would be making inquiries at the Burning Cove gas stations to see if anyone driving a black Ford sedan had filled up a tank in preparation for the hundred-mile-plus drive to Playa Dorada. It was a long shot, Matthias said, but it was all they had at the moment.

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