The light on Third Avenue was green. The car ahead of me bounced through the intersection. I caught a glimpse of it for a moment under the lights of the avenue. It was the dark car. I rushed after it.
The light turned yellow. The broken line of cars on the avenue prepared to go. The dark car pulled away down the other side of Twentieth. I crushed the pedal under my sole. The Artful Dodge rocketed beneath the light as it turned red, plunged into the darkness on the other side.
I ran fast between two lines of parked cars. Brownstones went by in a blur on either side of me. Then—suddenly—the red taillights ahead of me were growing bigger. Closer. The dark car had stopped short. I was nearly on top of it.
I hit the brakes. My tires locked. The Artful Dodge glided closer and closer to the rear fender of the dark car. I tried to turn the wheel. The angle of the old Dart shifted. I hit the dark car a glancing blow. Its left taillight exploded in a shower of red shards.
I was thrown forward. My head hit the wheel. I went back against the seat hard. I felt blood on my brow. I tried to clear my head. I hadn’t the faintest idea of what the hell was going on.
Vaguely, I noticed the sound of a car door closing. I peered forward. A large man had gotten out of the car in front of me. He was heading back toward me.
“Uuh,” I said. I reached forward for the car’s controls. I knew I was supposed to do something, but I couldn’t quite figure out what. At last, my hand found the gear shift. I wriggled the metal lever. I pushed the car into reverse.
But by then, the man was standing at the window right next to me. Without thinking, I threw up my arm. Something hit me on the wrist. I fell to one side, groaning with the pain.
The thug at the window reached in. He groped for the door lock. I watched him, dazed. He found the lock. He grabbed it.
I rolled up to a sitting position, bringing my fist around in an arc as I came. The fist hammered the back of the thug’s hand.
I heard him grunt. He pulled his hand away. He came at me again—with a sap, that’s what he had, a little blackjack. He flicked it at my face. It glanced off my left eyebrow, driving me back from the window again.
This time, he reached in all the way and grabbed the inside door handle. I got a look at his face. It was hairless, with skin a dull silver color, like fish scales. It had a harelip, as if the whole lower part had been smeared before it had a chance to dry. The eyes stared at me crazily as he pulled up on the handle.
The latch snapped. The thug pulled out of the window, drew back the door. He rumbled toward me like an avalanche, grabbed me by the front of the shirt with both hands. He tried to drag me out. I reached up wildly and took hold of his collar. I held on. Then I stepped on the gas.
The car lurched backward. The thug’s foul face went wide with surprise as he was yanked off his feet. I held on, steering with my right hand while I gripped him in my left. The thug’s feet kicked at the pavement wildly as I dragged him backward.
There was a dull thud. The Dart’s rear end had smacked into a parked Porsche. I was thrown forward again and the thug’s collar slipped from my grasp. I heard him scream. I saw him fall to the pavement. He rolled across Twentieth Street. He lay still.
Tires screeched. One short sound. The driver of the dark car wasn’t waiting around for his muscle man. The red taillights pulled away from me again. They went speeding toward the corner of Second Avenue.
I pulled the door shut and hit the gas in the same moment. I went flying down the street after the dark car.
My head hurt. Blood and sweat ran down the side of my face. My arm felt like the wrong end of a dentist’s drill. My heart was beating too damned hard. My lungs were aching.
I kept driving, but now I eased off the gas. I let the dark car stay ahead of me. I let it turn downtown on Second. I let it pull around the corner out of sight. The light was red when I reached the intersection. I edged into the traffic, trying to lose myself. Maybe they’d think I’d been scared off. It was worth trying, anyway.
The dark car sped down Second. Into the lowlands where the jazz bars sat, and men stood drinking under the darkened marquees of used-up theaters. I followed, keeping my distance. Weaving back and forth amid the other cars, staying lost, staying down. Into the glare of the East Village. The newsstands and delis and restaurants too brightly lit. Down, finally, into the Bowery with its high walls of faceless buildings lowering above streets abandoned to the night. Empty except for the white litter strewn from gutter to gutter. Lifeless except for the bodies of bums stretched out on the sidewalk.
The traffic began to fall away. I dropped back a bit more. The dark car slowed, eased over to the left curb, came to a stop.
I stopped, too, half a block back, on the right-hand side. I killed my headlights, my engine. We were on a broad stretch of Bowery. A wide expanse of litter-dotted black tar. There was hardly any traffic at all here, just a wide darkness before me in which nothing seemed to move.
The dark car idled in the shadow of a squat building. It was an old place with ornate carvings in the concrete ledges around the big unlit windows.
The door of the dark car opened. A man got out of the passenger side and opened the back door.
Georgia Stuart came out onto the sidewalk. She came out fast, stumbling, as if she’d been pushed. The man on the sidewalk took her roughly by the arm. Another man followed her out of the back seat, unraveling through the door until he stood behind her. The three moved together to the building. As they went through the front door, the dark car sped off behind them.
I got out of the Dodge and crossed the empty street. My footsteps sounded hollow on the pavement as I went quickly to the building.
I peered in through the glass doors. The lobby was small, thin and empty. Almost a corridor, with two elevators in the left wall and a heavy metal door in the back. I slipped inside and moved to the elevators. Their silver doors showed me a blurred reflection. Above the doors were bands of numbers. The band to the left blinked as a lighted six went dark and a dark seven lighted.
The idea of riding up to the seventh floor and stepping out into a round of gunfire didn’t appeal to me. I went to the back door instead.
I pulled it open, and stepped through it into a concrete stairwell. The door shut behind me and the lobby light was gone. Up on the first floor landing, though, a red bulb was burning. It sent down a scarlet glow that drew long shadows from everything around.
I started slowly up the stairs. I kept pressed to the wall, trying to see around the landing corner. I came onto the landing and stood under the red bulb. It shone at me from just above the door, just above my head. It lit up a sign on the door which read: REENTRY ON THIS FLOOR. I started climbing again through the mingled scarlet and shadow. On the fifth floor, I stopped for a moment. I peered up the stairs. There was no light on the sixth-floor landing. There was no scarlet glow. There was only blackness.
I took hold of the banister. I climbed. I was breathing hard by now. The sweat had started again. I was covered in it. I went a step and waited, listening. There was silence up there. Up there in the dark. I took another step, listened some more, heard some more silence. I went on, step by step into the shadows.
And then I paused again. And then I heard it.
From beneath me. From the ground floor, it seemed. I heard the door open down there. I heard it swing shut. Then I heard footsteps, climbing the stairs. Slow at first. Then getting quicker. They reached the first floor. They kept coming, quicker still. I listened, breathing hard, covered with sweat. The footsteps came up the stairs faster and faster.
Coming after me.
13
I started my ascent again, but I wasn’t moving slowly anymore. I climbed quickly into the darkness above. I swung around the bend, glad to see the red light on the seventh floor landing above me. The footsteps below kept coming, swift and sure. They were maybe two floors below me now.
I hauled my weary bones up the stairs as fast as I could. I was puffing like a bellows, sm
oking old cigarettes from the inside out.
Then, finally, I was on the seventh floor. I was standing bathed in the red glow, exposed by it. I lunged for the door. I grabbed the knob and pulled. Even before I felt the lock pull back, I saw the sign, two inches from my nose. NO REENTRY ON THIS FLOOR.
The footsteps came on. They were halfway to the dark sixth-floor landing. Three quarters. I shielded my eyes with my left arm. With my right fist, I threw a roundhouse at the light bulb above the door.
There was a sound like a cork coming out of champagne. The bulb imploded, dissolving into a rain of red glass. The filament flared like a torch for a second. Then the blackness closed in on it.
The footsteps stopped. I stood still. I felt the blood start from the knuckles on my right hand. I listened. Under the sound of my own breathing came other breathing from the floor below.
And another sound. The footsteps began again. Slowly, tentatively. They took the last steps to the sixth-floor landing.
I couldn’t just stand there. The landing was small. I had no place to dodge him. If he was armed, I’d be a target even in the dark. I crouched. I started creeping down the stairs.
When I got about halfway down, the faintest outglow of the red bulb on the next floor—the fifth floor—reached me. I saw the sixth landing in a black-red light, like some neglected corner of hell. Into that light came an immense shadow in the shape of a man.
He came suddenly, swinging around the corner as if he expected an ambush. He was armed, all right. He was raising his gun at the landing where I had just been.
I threw myself down the stairs at him. Hit him hard, right in the midsection. I jammed my left arm up against his right, hoping to deflect the fire of the gun. But the gun didn’t go off. As I grappled with the shadow in the darkness, I saw the weapon spinning into the red light of the next landing down. The gun hit the wall, dropped to the stairs. It bounced onto the concrete floor and slid across it with a loud clatter.
Me and my shadow did battle on the landing above. We grabbed each other, slapped and clawed, seeking out pressure points we couldn’t see. My right wrist was locked in his left hand. His fingers tried to tear at my cheek. My thumb tried to find his eye to gouge it. I pressed forward, my teeth bared, hoping to take a bite of him. We wrestled in an eerie quiet of grunts and gasps.
Then he broke free and went after the gun.
He ripped himself from my grasp, threw himself to the side. He went over the edge of the landing, half ran, half stumbled down the stairs as I scrabbled for purchase on his clothes or his flesh. Then I was all over him and, locked together, we went down. We hit the concrete with a force that shook my bones, jarred the wind from me. We slid and bounced down the stairs, clubbing at each other all the way.
Once again we were in the weird scarlet world the light made. The black shadows of it flared and wavered all around us as we struggled to reach the gun in the corner. My lungs burned. My stomach rolled. He was scratching me, slapping at me, pounding at my head. I kept swinging my fist wherever his face was. Now he got in a short, sharp shot to my abdomen. Already breathless, I grunted and doubled up. The thug rolled over onto his belly. He threw out his hand toward the weapon.
I straightened and vaulted over him. I landed lengthwise on top of him, my hand outreaching his by an inch, maybe two. I wrapped my fingers around the warm plastic of the gun’s grip. The thug pulled himself out from under me, but now I had a firm hold on the gun.
That’s when he stuck another gun into my ear.
“Drop it, fuckhead,” he gasped.
I groaned. I released the gun I’d grabbed. I rolled away and sat up against the wall, hacking, gagging. I thought I was going to throw up.
The thug had gotten to his knees. He had a revolver leveled at my head. He was wheezing so hard he sounded like he was crying out in pain with every breath. After a second, he managed to get one foot under him, then the other. He stood over me. I coughed thick phlegm into my mouth as I wondered if he was going to pull the trigger and blow my head apart.
The barrel of the pistol jerked in the scarlet light. “Get up, fuckface,” the thug said, gasping.
It wasn’t easy. I rolled over onto my hands and knees first. I coughed and gasped. I pushed my hands against the concrete and dragged one foot under me. I coughed some more. I gasped some more. I seemed to be bleeding everywhere. I dragged the other foot under me. I took hold of the wall. I pulled myself up.
I faced him. It was the harelip, the guy who’d come at me in my car. He pointed the gun at my belly.
“I thought I dropped you,” I said.
“I got up,” he said.
“I thought I beat you here,” I said.
“I took a cab,” he said.
I looked down at the gun in his hand. I looked over at the gun in the corner, an automatic.
“I thought I had your gun at least,” I said.
“What, that old thing,” he said. “I only wear that when I got nothing to wear.”
He whipped the pistol around in an arc. It slapped into the side of my head. I fell to my knees again. I pitched forward onto my face.
It had hardly been worth the effort of standing.
14
“Where are the pictures, Georgia?” Quietly, almost gently.
“I don’t … I don’t …” She was crying.
There was a slap. A scream.
“Where are the pictures, Georgia?”
“I don’t …”
A slap again. Another scream. Sobbing.
His gentle voice: “This is going to get much, much worse, lady.”
Sobbing and sobbing.
I heard it all before I saw it, before I saw it properly, took it in. It seemed to repeat and repeat without ending.
“Now: Where are the pictures, Georgia?”
“I don’t …”
The blow, the scream, the sobs.
I wrenched my eyes open. I was lying in a corner of a room. A small office. It was brightly lit. It seemed brightly lit to me, anyway. To me, it seemed to be sitting in the center of the sun. I shut my eyes again. The words, the sound of blows, the sobs continued. I forced my eyes open. I squinted into the blinding light.
I saw Georgia. They had her in a chair. An armless swivel chair. She looked very small huddled in it. Her hands were in her lap. Her chin was on her chest. Her shoulders shook with sobbing. I could see the tears running down one of her cheeks. The cheek was purple.
A man in a navy suit was sitting on the edge of a desk in front of her. I could see his profile. It was not a very nice profile. It was long and elegant enough. His hair was slicked back and tidy. But all the features were sharp and cruel. His eyes peered down from the desk at the weeping girl and there was nothing in those eyes except maybe the gleam of pleasure. I knew the man. It was Alphonse Marino.
Right behind Georgia stood a monster. He must have been six foot six, at least. Across. God knows how tall he was. He had a square head like the Frankenstein monster with a face as pretty. At a gesture from Marino, he grabbed a handful of Georgia’s light brown hair. He yanked her head up.
“Where are the pictures, Georgia?” Marino said gently.
She stared at him. She looked scared. Plenty scared. Scared enough to give him anything he wanted, anything she had. But all she did was shake her head. I could see the monster’s grip tightening on her hair.
“Please,” she said.
Marino’s hand shot out. The back of it raked her purple cheek. Her lip opened now. A thin stream of blood dribbled down over her chin. The monster let go of her hair. Her head fell forward. Her shoulders shook. She sobbed.
I saw another movement, turned my head. The hare-lipped thug was leaning against the opposite wall. He looked like I felt. His cheeks were scratched up. His neck was bruised. There was a mouse around his right eye that was bigger than Mickey. All the same, he was gazing down at Georgia and his disfigured lip was lifted in a derisive smile. He snorted at her as she sobbed.
Mari
no stared at Georgia coldly. He began to gesture toward Frankenstein again. I groaned. His eyes shifted to me. I pushed myself into a sitting position. I leaned against the wall. I tried to smile. It hurt. I smiled anyway.
Marino sneered at me. He’d loved me never. I’d made some trouble for him in my time. Did an exposé that scotched a construction bid he had an interest in. Wrote a piece that kept his brother from a political chairmanship. Probably the one that bugged him most was the story I did on Palookaville, a horse he owned. Got her disqualified from the Preakness for drug use.
He had the Artful Dodge’s tires slashed for that one, broke her windshield, dented her doors. That was as close to a confrontation as he and I had ever come. His boss—Dellacroce—did not like making war on the press.
So anyway, he sneered at me. And I just kept smiling. I said: “Well, if it isn’t Alphonse Marino beating up on a helpless woman.”
He lifted one perfect eyebrow. I wondered if he’d had it clipped. “Well,” he said softly, “if it isn’t John Wells lying on the floor like a piece of shit.”
“Why, Alphonse, I do believe you’re offering me a chair in your own slimy way.”
I got my feet under me and pushed my way up the wall. Harelip straightened as I made the move, but a glance from Marino kept him calm. I took a stumbling step and dropped down into a chair beside the desk.
I gestured weakly toward Georgia. She went in and out of focus. She sobbed and sobbed.
“I like this,” I said, gesturing at her. “Politics Dellacroce style. Innovative.”
Marino’s eyes seemed veiled like a snake’s eyes. “Shut up,” he said sweetly.
“How did you find her anyway?”
He sneered some more. “We followed you right to her,” he said. “Sure. We heard your name on the radio and just tagged right after you. Thanks, Wells.”
Georgia sobbed. I studied Marino. He wasn’t making sense, but my head was too rattled to figure it out. “That’s very smart,” I said slowly. “That’s positively brainy.”