Forgetfulness by Ward Just

Trust me. They're dead men. We owe that to Florette.
    Outside, they shook hands, promising to stay in touch. Russ proposed a weekend in Paris at the end of the month, nothing grand, a few decent meals and a stroll through the Grand Palais where an exhibit of Degas drawings was newly installed. Beautiful exhibit, Russ said, and by the end of the month the crowds will have thinned. Promise me you'll come. Thomas said he would think about it and let him know. Bernhard promised again to call when he had news of value. Thomas thanked them both and Bernhard said he adored Florette and would remember her always and meantime he would do whatever was necessary to settle the score. We won't let it rest, Russ said. "Without haste, but without rest," Bernhard added, quoting somebody, looking hard at Thomas, a private warning or perhaps a threat, one or the other. And then they were gone.

    Thomas watched the cab winding down the drive to the road. The cab's were the only lights in the vicinity. Granger's farmhouse was
dark and Big Papa was very dark against the sudden night sky. Thomas watched the headlights rise and dip, like a ship navigating ocean swells, until the cab vanished at last into the darkness. He said aloud, Bon voyage, but he was thinking of Bernhard's score-settling skills. His American friends lived in a world where scores were always settled because the alternative was unbearable chaos. Chaos was a world without justice. In some sense score-settling was what they did for a living. Florette would become a civic project—a wrongful death, an unnecessary and violent death in the world-that-was-not-ideal, a crime that demanded vengeance. A death in the mountains, and how many of those were there on any given Sunday in November? Deaths in the Alps, the Himalayas, the Caucasus, Atlas, Andes, Blue Ridge, Urals, Pyrenees. He had the idea that in the death-stakes, mountains resembled oceans, brutally dangerous and unpredictable weather with the possibility always of a misstep or marauders, sometimes both at once. A mystery always surrounded an unwitnessed death at sea, the circumstances unknowable; and then Thomas wondered what Bernhard would turn up and whether his findings would bring consolation, meaning facts better known than not known. And now he had a motive, the better to discount the despised randomness. Randomness was the enemy of coherence. The day before, out of Russ's hearing because Bernhard was convinced Russ had lost a step over the past year (Notice how his hearing's gone to hell and his memory's a sieve and he's simply not on top of things; he's become repetitious and he's always talking about Sandra, who's been gone at least a decade), and was therefore an unreliable collaborator, he had confided: I don't think it's likely but you have to consider the possibility that Florette's death may have to do with you, Thomas. Payback for one or another of the odd jobs you've done for us over the years, maybe a job you don't even remember, it seemed so routine at the time. Truth to tell, Russ and I often thought you were too cavalier, doubting the seriousness of your tasks. It's true you never knew the full context of things, safer for you and safer for us, and naturally there were consequences, and these, too, were inside the parameters of need-to-know. And the Spaniard would be in this category.
    I know that's come between us in the past.
    A job that got out of hand. A betrayal.
    That's usually the way.
    So we have to consider all the possibilities, disagreeable as they may be.
    We have to consider this. Other people have long memories and carry them around like you'd carry cards in your wallet. So this is the possibility that cannot be overlooked, someone from your past deciding to make payback. Bottom line: what happened to Florette may not be random at all. Nothing random about it, bad luck, bad weather, Florette in the wrong place at the wrong time et cetera, assaulted by persons unknown, probably smugglers.