It struck her, suddenly, how sad it would be if they never got to find out any more about one another. If their story had to end right at its beginning.
That was a possibility, wasn’t it? They had broken the street law. They had gone after Alexandre St.-Germain and the Midnight Club.
Stefanovitch sensed that he was blushing as they held one another in the hallway. He felt vulnerable lately, completely at Sarah’s mercy.
Finally, they pulled apart. Sarah clumsily tried to find the house key, groping inside her purse.
“You’re the writer. Say something clever to break the silence,” Stefanovitch said.
“I can’t find my damn key.”
The two of them laughed as they entered her apartment. The laughter was a relief, because it came so infrequently lately. The heavy wooden door slammed shut behind them.
Locks clicked tightly into place.
The digital clock radio inside Sarah’s bedroom went out at three-seventeen in the morning.
The almost imperceptible electric hum inside the apartment suddenly stopped. The buzz from the refrigerator and the illuminated face of an old “Pepsi Cola Hits the Spot” wall clock in the kitchen disappeared.
Sarah stirred slightly. She rolled toward Stefanovitch, but she didn’t wake up.
The building’s electricity had gone off.
Downstairs in the lobby, the night doormen cursed the building’s prehistoric wiring. Their usual night of card games, paperback book reading, and paid catnaps was going to be ruined.
The fire exit stairway leading to all floors, the roof, and the basement was illuminated in a widening arc from a powerful flash lamp. The fifth-floor hallway eventually appeared in the jouncing lamp’s bright light. Then the imposing dark wood door to Sarah McGinniss’s apartment was revealed in the narrowing cone of light.
Low rumbling voices could be heard in the hallway. Three dark figures stood huddled together behind the search lamp.
More words were spoken softly. A ring holding several skeleton keys was produced. One after the other, the keys were inserted and tested in the Medeco lock.
One of the passkeys began to turn slowly in the lock…
92
SARAH WAS CERTAIN she had heard something outside the bedroom door. The noise was different from the usual nighttime sounds inside her apartment. She was surprised the tiny sound had awakened her at all.
Something was different.
Her eyes were wide open, revealing a field of total blackness stretching out around her. For a brief moment, it gave her the illusion that she might still be dreaming.
A few seconds of concentration were necessary to accustom her eyes to the dark. Finally, she could discern the outlines of both large picture windows inside the bedroom. The sounds of car horns and pneumatic bus brakes drifted up from the street, but no noise came from inside the apartment.
Sarah began to look for her clock.
Where was it? She couldn’t find it anywhere on the night table.
She thought she heard a floorboard creak. Did it come from the hallway?
Maybe a board under the living room carpeting? Someone was in the apartment.
Her breathing was already coming in short, rapid bursts. She couldn’t get enough air into her lungs.
Sarah concentrated on listening… listening… just listening to whomever… whatever…
She was sure that she heard another distinct sound, and she desperately wanted to cry out, to call out and question whoever was there. This wasn’t just night frights. Not some ordinary New York apartment scare…Somebody was actually inside her apartment.
Oh God. She was a fighter, but not against something like this.
Who was it? Alexandre St.-Germain? The Grave Dancer? That horrifying, truly bizarre night and early morning in Atlantic City came flashing back at her… The murders. Out of nowhere, it had seemed. How had they gotten in so easily?
“Stef?” she whispered as softly as she could. She moved over to touch his shoulder.
He wasn’t there.
“Stef?…”
“I hear them.” A voice came from a few feet away, off to the left.
He had gotten himself into his wheelchair. He had moved across the bedroom, away from Sarah. His revolver was cradled in his lap.
“Go lock yourself in the bathroom.” There was no mistaking the policeman’s command in his voice. “If anybody so much as touches the bathroom door, start screaming like hell. Once you start screaming, don’t stop for anything.”
“Stef?…Who do you think it is?”
93
“I DON’T KNOW. Get into the other room, please. There’s going to be shooting here.”
John Stefanovitch heard the creaking bedsprings, then Sarah’s light footsteps padding across the bedroom carpet.
She understood what was happening… the imminent possibility of gunfire in the bedroom. There was no arguing or discussing with him this time.
Stefanovitch tried to maneuver the wheelchair, and to catch his breath at the same time. He wondered how good he would be in this kind of situation…
He never could have imagined how unnerved he would be by the presence of an intruder inside Sarah’s apartment. Rage surged in the corridors of his brain, balancing some of the fear.
How many of them were there? Would they come into the bedroom firing? Maybe they would creep up to the bed and fire at close range.
How would Alexandre St.-Germain want it done? The street law had to be observed. That was it, wasn’t it? Another important object lesson to be taught to the world.
I wanted you to know one thing …I shot her myself.
I stood in the hallway of your pathetic little apartment building….
Suddenly, Stefanovitch imagined exactly how it had been that night. For a terrifying, sickening instant he saw everything, the unbelievable horror of the killer coming right into his home. How Anna must have felt at the end.
The awful silence made him feel he was trapped in a jar.
As Sarah stood inside the bathroom, a hundred conflicting thoughts rushed through her mind. Her body felt heavy and almost useless. This isn’t happening to us, she thought over and over. It was impossible to accept that they had actually come into the apartment.
Her mind kept grabbing on to one thought. Alexander St.-Germain is inside my apartment. The Grave Dancer is here.
Sarah couldn’t control her breathing. She could hear the amplified pounding inside her chest. She had a sudden urge to double over and throw up.
She almost began to scream for help. For a second, she was absolutely going to scream, but Stef had told her to wait, to stay quiet until they actually tried to come into the bathroom.
Sarah stood very still. She waited. A wave of exhaustion rolled over her. It was instantly followed by another wave.
Outside in the apartment hallway, the unidentified noises had stopped. There were only honking car horns, and the acceleration of buses out on Madison Avenue.
Stefanovitch was certain that one or more hit men were outside the bedroom door, listening before they crashed inside—before the insanity began.
How many of them would there be? Was there anything he could do to stop this from happening? He knew there wasn’t. That was the worst part.
Had Alexandre St.-Germain come himself? That was the question he needed answered.
Stefanovitch wished it weren’t pitch-black inside the bedroom. He thought about pulling the window drapes back, but it was too late for that. He didn’t dare make a noise and lose his advantage: that they didn’t know he was up, waiting for them.
Another floorboard creaked.
His heart boomed against his chest; it felt as if it were physically exploding.
There was a loud click.
The bedroom door opened. They were coming in.
94
STEFANOVITCH RAISED HIS revolver until it extended straight out in front of his face.
Fleetingly, he thought that he hadn’t fired a gun at anybody
in nearly two years. He had never gotten used to shooting at another person.
Both his arms were rigidly straight. These could be the same men who hit Trump Plaza with submachine-gun pistols, he was thinking. There was no hope, no way out if they had machine guns. There was no hope for either him or Sarah.
Alexandre St.-Germain had started out working the streets himself, Stefanovitch was thinking. He had done much of the early killing in Marseilles, in Paris, in a place called Long Beach. He seemed to enjoy it, to thrive on wet work. Would St.-Germain have come himself?…Would he take that risk? What drove the bastard to do anything that he did?
A single light flared—a powerful search lamp was shining into the room.
Stefanovitch tried desperately to grab hold of his mind. Concentrate, he urged himself. Focus.
Instinctively, he wanted to jerk back, to move farther away from the probing light, but there was nowhere to go.
He heard the distinctive snick of a pistol action working across the bedroom. Definitely a pistol.
How many of them are there? he wondered again. Unanswered questions. The most important ones of his life. Of Sarah’s life, too.
Were they all inside the bedroom now? They were as quiet as rats working in the darkness. Spasms of fear twisted through his body.
A second flashlight blinked on. Its beam revealed an empty bed. No one sleeping there. Now they knew…
Suddenly, John Stefanovitch fired at the lead flashlight. He aimed half a foot above the source of its piercing ray.
A man screamed, wounded and shocked by the unexpected ambush. A body hit the floor with a hollow, sickening thud.
The second flashlight blinked out instantly.
There was the sound of muffled voices, of men speaking in a foreign language.
Stefanovitch couldn’t be sure of anything that was happening in the pitch-darkness.
He thought they were moving farther into the bedroom, though—not back into the hallway. Rats rushing into a dark hole at night. He and Sarah trapped in the hole.
He could hear their shoes, vague shuffling sounds on the carpet, their clothes brushing against furniture.
Then the eerie silence took over the room again. As if no one were there.
The bedroom was near-total darkness, but his eyes were finally adjusting to the scene.
He thought he could make out vague, subtle shapes. That shape over there was—Sarah’s vanity table? Or was it that he knew where the vanity table was? Was he seeing, or remembering? The distinction was so important.
He could see the shadowy outline of the bedroom door leading out into the hallway. Could he see the mirror hanging on the bathroom door?
He saw moving shadows then, like something liquid being spilled against the bedroom walls.
The air was gone from his lungs. He needed to stand up, to get his breath.
Could they see him?
He kept wondering whether their eyes had become used to darkness. The question was screaming inside his head.
The mirror on the bathroom door caught an image.
He saw a shape crossing past. It moved very quickly—running, darting to the left.
He had to do two things, almost at exactly the same time: fire and move away. Fire just to the left of the mirror door; move away in his wheelchair. At the same time…
The revolver flared in his hands. An instant later, his left arm reached back and pushed hard off the bedroom wall. All his arm strength went into the motion.
The second gunman crashed loudly against the hollow-sounding wall, then stumbled to the floor.
The flashlight! His thoughts were so loud it seemed as if he were talking to himself, babbling in desperation. There was at least one more of them. Maybe two.
Maybe one gunman was without a flashlight. A very smart one? The grand cocksucker himself?
Frightened tenants in the building were beginning to cry out from the relative safety of their apartments. A woman screamed close by, probably on the same floor of the luxury building.
Finally, Sarah began to yell for help. Her back was up against the closed bathroom door; both bare feet were wedged against the cold porcelain of the tub.
“Call the police! Somebody call the police! Please call the police!” Sarah screamed at the top of her voice.
A handgun roared like a small cannon inside the bedroom.
A terrible shock of pain poleaxed through John Stefanovitch’s body. He reeled violently to his left; he almost went over in the wheelchair.
One of the hit men was behind him.
The third man?
The fourth one?
He felt the same searing heat he’d experienced at Long Beach. The sheer force of the gunshot had almost thrown him from the wheelchair, ripped him from his seat.
A fire burned down the right side of his spine, searing into his flesh. He moaned softly, against his will, but he couldn’t control the sound.
The gun muzzle bloomed again. Behind him.
The pain that pierced his brain was excruciating. His eyes started to blur. He could see a bright tunnel of light. It was Long Beach all over again.
At that instant, the bathroom door flew open. Sarah was out in the clear. Her silhouette was cast against the wall. Then she disappeared back inside.
What was she doing?
“Sarah, no!” Stefanovitch shouted at the top of his voice.
Suddenly, a glass object crashed against the bedroom wall, near the closet. Another glass shattered. She was hurling things out of the bathroom. Distractions! Trying to help any way she could.
“Sarah!”
The gunman fired again, this time point-blank into the bathroom.
“Sarah? Sarah?… Sarah!”
Stefanovitch steadied his arm where the bright flash of gunfire had been. His hands were shaking. He aimed behind the last of the ghosting gun flashes. He squeezed the revolver tightly in both hands. Rage had taken over.
Both shots missed.
Chaos followed. Seconds later, all the appliances and lights in the apartment building came back on. The effect was startling temporarily, the shock jarring.
He saw the third gunman slip out the bedroom door. There had only been three of them… Had the last one been Alexandre St.-Germain? He couldn’t tell.
“Stef?” he heard Sarah cry out. Then he saw her coming through the widening crack in the bathroom door. “Are you all right? Are you hurt?”
“I’m okay,” he said, not wanting Sarah to know he’d been shot. He was having trouble breathing.
Someone was pounding loudly on the upstairs door of the apartment. Muffled shouts came ringing through the walls. “Are you all right in there? Mrs. McGinniss? Mrs. McGinniss?”
95
WITH A TREMENDOUS physical effort, Stefanovitch stubbornly started the Chair forward. Inside his head, there was no other choice. He propelled himself out of the bedroom, then down the hall to the upstairs doorway and, finally, out of the apartment itself.
Once he was moving, it was much better—so long as he didn’t lean too far to the left. If he did that, the sudden pain knifing into his back became unbearable.
The elevator on the fifth floor was sitting there. He and Sarah had probably been the last ones to use it that night… The final gunman must have gone down the fire exit stairway, the way they had entered. Stefanovitch took the elevator.
Downstairs, the lobby was rapidly filling with tenants. A wall of blank, terrified faces greeted him.
Stefanovitch pushed his way through the milling, frightened crowd. He was oblivious to everything around him, to the frenzy and commotion. All Stefanovitch cared about was the third gunman.
“Open the front door,” he called ahead to the doorman. I’m not useless in the street, he thought. It was some consolation.
Then Stefanovitch was outside in the hot and humid night air. Finding the gunman suddenly seemed hopeless. He didn’t have to think that way for long.
A running figure dashed from the alleyway, abo
ut half the building’s length away. The man didn’t pause to look back; he just sprinted toward Madison Avenue.
Stefanovitch immediately began to follow him up East Sixty-sixth Street. Was it the Grave Dancer?
As he reached the corner of Madison, Stefanovitch could see that the other man was limping. He was wounded, too.
Stefanovitch turned onto Madison, heading south after the gunman, steadily picking up speed. The wheelchair jumped a low curb at the corner.
Then he was out in the street, right out on Madison Avenue.
The street was flat and its surface was a lot faster for the wheelchair. He would be able to sprint—truly to race.
He hadn’t counted on a flurry of traffic at a little past three
A.M. The New York bar scene began to close down at three. Traffic had obviously picked up since then. A burst of yellow cabs and other vehicles was barreling up Madison, coming almost directly at him.
The drivers of the automobiles saw a man in a wheelchair riding the wrong way against traffic—a crazy-looking man in a wheelchair, wearing a bathrobe. A hospital escapee? Even in New York, the sight was completely unexpected.
It instantly got worse.
Stefanovitch pulled the .22 revolver from the folds of his bathrobe. He began firing down Madison.
Stroke the chair, he remembered, not knowing if he had any real hope of closing the distance between himself and the hit man.
Traffic began to swerve wildly in order to avoid him. Taxis and other cars angled sharply out of the inside lane, their angry, blaring horns underscoring the danger he was causing.
Was it Alexandre St.-Germain up ahead? There was no way Stefanovitch could tell. He had to close the gap. He tried to remember everything he’d learned about racing in the Chair.
Stefanovitch found that he was gaining ground as his head rose for another quick look at the running man. His chest was on fire, but he was gaining. Inches, but something. His body was tingling all over. He could feel wetness underneath him, and he knew it was his own blood, pumping out with each heartbeat.
Stroke! he repeated to himself.
Stroke!