Answered Prayers

I had no sooner sat down than Aces was summoned to answer a telephone call. I had a good view of him, for the telephone is located at the far end of the bar; occasionally his lips moved, but mostly he seemed to be just listening and nodding. Not that I was really watching him, for my mind was still upstairs contemplating Kate McCloud's loose hair, her dreaming head-a spectacle so consuming that Aces' return startled me.

"That was Kate," he a

"She was asleep."

Aces always carries a mess of kitchen matches in a jacket pocket, it's one of his affectations; he lighted one with his thumbnail and touched the flame to a cigarette. "She may not seem so, but Kate's a very knowledgeable young woman—her instincts are usually sound. She liked you very much. And so," he said, gri

I said: "Why did she marry Axel Jaeger?"

Aces blinked, as if this was the last reaction he had expected from me. He stalled. Then: "Perhaps a more interesting question would be—why did he marry her? And an even more interesting question is—how did Kate meet him? You see, Axel Jaeger is an elusive man. I've never encountered him myself, only seen paparazzi photographs: a tall man with a Heidelberg sword-scar across his cheek, thin, almost emaciated, a man in his late fifties. He comes from Dusseldorf, and inherited an ammunitions fortune from his grandfather, a fortune he has astronomically increased. He has factories all over Germany, all over the world-he owns oil tankers, oil fields in Texas and Alaska, he has the largest cattle ranch in Brazil, over eight hundred square miles, and a fair share of both Ireland and Switzerland (all the rich West Germans have been buying up Ireland and Switzerland: they think they'll be safe there if the bombs start falling again). Jaeger is easily the richest man in Germany-and possibly Europe. He's a German national, but he has a permanent Swiss residence permit; for tax reasons, naturally. To keep it, he has to spend six months of the year in Switzerland whether he likes it or not. God, what tortures the rich won't endure to protect a pe

"As I understand it, he was, and is, a very convinced Catholic. And for that reason he remained married to his first wife for twenty-seven loyal years, or until she died. Even though she was unable to give him a child, which seems to have been the crux of the matter, for he wanted a child, a son, to continue the Jaeger dynasty. That being the case, why didn't he do the obvious and marry a well-bred, wide-hipped German girl who could fill up a nursery bim-bam? Certainly a clever soigné beauty like Kate would hardly seem the ideal choice for a man of Herr Jaeger's constrained austerity. And, so far as that goes, it's incomprehensible that Kate would find herself attracted to such a person. Money? That couldn't have been as issue. Actually, after I first really got to know Kate, she told me that her first marriage had been such a trauma, she never intended to marry again. And yet, within a few months, and without any signal, without ever mentioning that she even knew this legendary tycoon, she obtained a papal a

"But you don't know why?"

Aces thumbnailed another kitchen match, and blew it out. "The fall-out, or whatever one may call it, was as enigmatic as the alliance itself. She disappeared for several months, and a doctor I know told me she had spent them cloistered at the Nestlé Clinic in Lausa

"Well. But why didn't they get a divorce?"

"The Catholic hang-up, I suppose. He would never countenance divorce."

"For Christ sake, she could divorce him, couldn't she?"

"Not if she ever wanted to see Heinie again. That door would be shut forever."

"Sonofabitch. I'd like to shove a shotgun up his ass and pull the trigger. Bastard. But you mentioned danger. I can't see where she has anything to be afraid of."

"Kate thinks she does. So do 1. And it isn't any paranoid fantasy that Jaeger has agents following her, or gathering information on her wherever she goes, whatever she does. If she changes a Kotex, you can be sure the Grand Seigneur hears about it. Look," he said, snapping his fingers for a waiter "let's have a drink. It's too late for daiquiris. How about a Scotch-soda?"

"I don't care."

"Waiter, two Scotch-soda. Now, as to this offer I've made you—are the terms satisfactory, or would you like a few days to think it over?"

"I don't have to think it over. I've already decided."

The drinks arrived, and he lifted his glass. "Then we'll drink to your decision, whatever it is. Though I hope it's yes."

"Yes."

He relaxed. "You're a godsend, P. B. And I'm sure you'll not regret it." Seldom has a more untrue prophecy been prophesied.

"Yes, it's yes. But. If he doesn't want a divorce, what does he want?"

"I have a theory. It's only a theory, but I'd bet my last chip that it's accurate. He intends to kill her." Aces tinkled the ice in his glass. "Since the strictness of his Catholicism forbids divorce, and because as long as she's alive she represents a threat to him, a threat to him and the custody of his child. So he means to kill her. Murder her in a ma

"Aces. Oh, come on. You're crazy. Either you're crazy. Or he is."

"On this particular subject, yes, I believe he is crazy. Hey," he said, "I just noticed something. Where's your dog?"

"I gave her to the lady upstairs."

"Well, well, well. I can see you really were quite impressed."

I walked all the way home from the Proustian-ghosted corridors of the Ritz to the rickety rat-trap halls of my hotel near the Gare du Nord. An elation lightened the journey—at last I wasn't a deadbeat expatriate, an aimless loser; I was a man with a mission in life, an assignment; and like some cub scout about to embark on his first overnight hike, my mind childishly churned with preparations. Clothes; I would need shirts, shoes, some good new suits, for nothing in my wardrobe would survive scrutiny in strong sunlight. And a weapon; tomorrow I would buy a.38 revolver and start practice at a shooting range. I walked fast, not simply because it was cold with that Seine-damp misty coldness peculiar to Paris, but because I hoped the exercise would so exhaust me that I would fall into dreamless sleep as soon as I put my head against a pillow. And I did.

But it was not a dreamless sleep. I well understand why analysts demand high payment, for what can be more tedious than listening to another person recount his dreams? But I'll chance boring you with the dream I dreamt that night, because in future time it came to be realized in almost every detail. In the begi