Reggel aimed at the altar. With his first shot the lights in the ambulatory dimmed. At his second the light panel shorted and the cathedral went black.
Reggel plunged through the door. The first thing he stepped on was a paint can placed in the middle of the walkway. He went down on his face but kept moving on his hands and knees until he regained his feet. Odrich’s .22 popped twice. Reggel’s cheek was bleeding, but whether from a bullet or his fall he didn’t know.
The walkway made a 90-degree left turn at the end of the chapel. Reggel rebounded off the rail. Odrich was firing again, and Reggel felt a bullet pass through the back of his leg.
Reggel caromed off another rail, then dropped to one knee and made a quarter turn left. The noise of his automatic overwhelmed Odrich’s .22 and resounded around the roof like a bell clapper. Parts of the door behind Odrich scattered into the north gallery, and at Reggel’s last shot the door itself flew open.
While Reggel still squatted, he as much felt as heard Odrich climb back on the walkway and run untouched out on the gallery. Odrich’s lead was no more than twenty feet, but he had vanished by the time Reggel reached the end of the gallery.
Reggel ran back the way he’d come. Beside a shattered door was a short flight of stairs. He took them in a bound and threw his arms up. A tin-and-tar-paper cover shot into the air, and Reggel heaved himself up onto the roof.
A battery of finials surrounded him on three sides. On the other was Fifty-first Street.
Reggel was about to go back in the church when he saw a flash of gold running along the upper roof. It was as if Odrich had leaped fifty feet in one jump.
Reggel found the rope he was looking for hanging beside an apsidal window. He also saw why Odrich had gone up instead of down. The streets were filling with cars and police. He yanked himself up the rope greedily, his feet running over the window.
Odrich had ripped the lining from the Holy Crown and thrust his arm through it so he could use both hands climbing the slate tiles of the roof. The heavy crown still slowed him, and Reggel was already scaling the roof face when Odrich reached the top. Unaware, Odrich moved along the five-and-a-half-foot-tall open crest of gilded brass that ran the length of the ridge.
The roof was laid out in a cross. As Odrich reached the bar he saw police cars on Fifth Avenue. For the first time he was aware of growing tired.
Reggel kept track of Odrich by the crown swinging in his hand. The crown stopped short as Odrich seemed to halt and consider his next move. Reggel inched closer, keeping the man-high crest between them.
The crown came back toward him, and Reggel crouched within an arc of the crest. There were shouts in the street, as meaningless as the lights of the skyscrapers.
Odrich stopped ten feet away to rest, setting the Holy Crown on a point of the crest.
Reggel had only started to ease forward when Odrich wheeled and shot. Although the bullet went through Reggel’s chest, it was his legs that collapsed. A hand clutched to the bottom of the crest kept him from falling entirely, but his heart pounded as if it were tearing loose of its arteries. His face grew hot against the cold slate and a roaring filled his ears. He noticed as a secondary effect the blood rising to his mouth.
“It always works,” Odrich said, as if his point had been proven. “Show you the Holy Crown and you lose all sense. You are reliable in that way alone.”
Leaning over, he placed the barrel of his gun against Reggel’s temple. Before he fired, the bells of the north tower began ringing in the dark. Odrich was amused.
“The cardinal, do you think? A call for help?”
He was not so amused to find that Reggel’s free hand had moved around his ankle. Odrich tried to push the hand off with his other foot, but his sneakers made it impossible to get the necessary force.
“Don’t be foolish. Let go and I won’t shoot.”
Reggel let go of the crest and grabbed Odrich’s ankle with both hands. The Hungarian was not trying to climb up. He was pulling down.
“You’ll only get us both killed that way, Reggel.”
Reggel got his feet planted into the roof’s steep pitch and stood, hauling on Odrich with all his strength as he swayed. His shirt and pants were red.
“You’re crazy.”
Odrich fired until the hammer of his gun flailed an empty chamber. He dropped the gun and twisted back to hold onto the crest with both hands but couldn’t reach. The hand he had on the crest began to spread.
Reggel had hold of both Odrich’s feet and seemed to be walking down the roof.
“Magyar!”
The cry came from the street only once. There was nobody near the crest or on the roof to hear a second one.
A general rush to the falling bodies carried Isadore and Lynch to the buttresses along Fiftieth Street. Men bearing stretchers and cameras followed them. One of the patrol cars used its spotlight to pick out the Holy Crown on the crest.
Roman passed them all going in the opposite direction.
22
The horse was tall and milky white. The boy held onto Roman’s waist as they rode around Pulika’s camp.
“You don’t see many of those in the city,” Isadore observed. He and Dany watched from the park next to the Gypsy’s lot.
“That’s why we’re going, if you let us,” Dany said.
“Do you know how many different investigations have started about the crown? And each one wants its hands on Roman.”
They heard Pulika hoot with excitement as Roman slapped the horse into a gallop. A dog ran behind with enthusiastic barks.
“Why are you so set on going?” Isadore asked.
“It’s the Gypsy in me.”
He smiled painfully at Dany. “You’re starting to sound like Roman. You’ve been around him too long.”
“If I can help it.”
Roman knew his hour was up. The horse galloped out of the lot and into the park, climbing the hill to where Dany and Isadore waited for him.
“Here I am, back in protective custody,” he said as he slipped off the horse.
The boy’s blue eyes amazed Dany.
“Sarishan.”
“Sarishan,” he answered her greeting.
Roman patted the horse’s nose and pointed him back toward the camp.
“Take it easy,” he told the boy. “He’s a good horse. Just let him take you home.”
The boy dug his bare feet into the horse’s side. They went down the hill at a walk, but from the boy’s expression they might have been racing the wind.
“I didn’t know you spoke Romany,” Isadore told Dany.
“I’m learning.”
Isadore’s Ford was parked out of sight of Pulika’s camp. They walked to the car in silence. Before opening the door, the detective fumbled in his pockets until he found a stick of gum.
“The cardinal is being questioned this morning,” he said. “They’ll start on you as soon as we return. What happens if I lose you before then?”
Dany smartly opened her purse and took out two passports.
“What about your suitcase?” Roman asked. “We can’t go back for that.”
“Since when does a chi need suitcases?”
“Well, she’s right,” Isadore admitted. “She’s learning.”
They made their farewells on the Staten Island side of the Narrows. Roman and Dany waved down a cab to take them across the bridge to the airport.
“Is this how Gypsies really live? I think I’ll like it.”
Roman kissed her as their cab took them over New York Bay.
“Tell me how you like this?” he asked her.
Let your red blood and my red blood
Run together in one stream,
Let it drive a mill,
And that mill should have three stones;
Its first stone should throw white pearls,
Its second stone should throw small change,
It’s third stone should produce love.
“Very much,” Dany said. “Is that Gypsy?”
“No, oddly enough. That’s actually Hungarian.”
They had a final glimpse of Manhattan before the bridge descended to Long Island.
“Reggel taught it to you?”
“Yes,” Roman lied, because he knew no one else would give Reggel an epitaph.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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MARTIN CRUZ SMITH’S novels include Tatiana, Stalin’s Ghost, Gorky Park, Rose, December 6, Polar Star, and Stallion Gate. A two-time winner of the Hammett Prize from the International Association of Crime Writers and a recipient of Britain’s Golden Dagger Award, he lives in California.
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Rose
Red Square
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Gorky Park
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Saint Stephen’s Crown, also known as the Holy Crown of Hungary, is real. All the characters in this book are fictitious.
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Copyright © 1972 by Martin Cruz Smith
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Originally published in 1972 by Ballantine Bantam Dell
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-4767-9590-4
ISBN 978-1-4767-9591-1 (ebook)
Martin Cruz Smith, Canto for a Gypsy
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