“Hey, blanco, come out,” the lanky one says. “We just want to talk.” The other one laughs, giving away his position. They’re closing in from either side, covering all angles of escape.
My heart is racing. How the hell did I end up here? Again, my thoughts turn to my family. No hospital room this time, just an image of my bullet-riddled corpse being scraped off the concrete sidewalk below. I won’t even get an honorable burial. This isn’t getting killed in the line of duty. Not even close.
I’m swelling with anger. I had no business coming here. There was a reason my supply of Switch was almost out. There was a reason why I witnessed what it did to a teenager with no priors. And there was a reason why my gut told me to leave Reggie alone and head home.
All the signs; yet I didn’t pay attention to any of them.
I yank the bundle of dispensers from my pocket. I’m tempted to hurl them toward the edge of the roof. Or better, try to barter my way out of this predicament. The product has street value, although I doubt my stalkers would be interested. As I squeeze the collection of plastic dispensers in frustration, one pops open. Reggie’s cackling fills my thoughts, and his accusation: You’re too slow for the Candyman, white boy.
Too slow.
Craaaazee slow.
My fingers go to work, hinging on a ridiculous idea. I wedge the .22 into my belt and rip the plastic sheath open. I drop the rest of the dispensers on the ground. I grab the whole stack of strips from the open container and bite down. I chomp furiously. The Dominicans are maybe eight or ten paces away. In a few seconds, they’ll have a clean shot. Saliva mixes with film, and my mouth is awash in grape and cardamom. I slosh around the shreds, feeling bits churn into a paste. I chew frantically, trying to get the mixture to dissolve in time.
Within a couple of seconds, my cheeks warm. Two more, and my face flushes.
Then something inexplicable happens.
Time slows, as if each frame of the film reel in my vision is moving a tenth of its normal speed. Yet my mind accelerates in a hundred different directions.
My eyes dart around, picking up the minutest details: bird droppings along the ledge, peanut shells in the gravel, the hoarse breathing of my pursuers, the step of each foot, the position of their bodies, and the intention of each movement.
My .22 is no longer useful, I realize. I rest it on the ground and crouch, leg muscles bunched to spring. There’s a clarity in my thoughts so bright that I could count the strands of hair on my head and still have time to measure my next move. My other senses kick in, and I pick up the scent of unwashed skin, the change in air pressure, the tang of foreign sweat.
I scoop up two large pieces of gravel, and transfer one to my throwing hand. The lanky one clears my line of sight first, just as I hurl the rock. It strikes him in the left eye, and he staggers sideways.
The second guy appears on the other side, momentarily distracted by his partner—enough for me to hit him squarely below the Adam’s apple. He drops his .38 and clutches his throat, wheezing as he steps back.
Everything is happening in slow motion.
I’m after the lanky Dominican, predator urge unfettered.
He fires a blind shot, ricocheting off the ground where my foot was a moment earlier, his good eye blinking reflexively and tearing. A second shot rings out as I dodge to the right. I shift all my weight, calculate the distance to close on him, and spring, taking to the air.
My fist catches his jaw with an audible crack, dislocating it. He shrieks as I land opposite him, grabbing his wrist and wresting his pistol in one fluid motion. He loses his balance, sprawling to the gravel, crying out in pain, neutralized.
His partner is gasping, trying to recover his breath while aiming at me. I’m moving again, a blur, faster than before. I run to the side of the cooler, concealed for little over a second, and skid, throwing up a shower of rocks.
He pulls the trigger prematurely, hitting nothing. By the time I appear on the other side, I’m on him. My brain computes a combination of fatal blows—strike to the temple, elbow to the summit of the nose, hook to the base of the cerebellum. The information is just coming at me, as if my brain has been transformed into a supercomputer.
I opt for a non-fatal blow, and shatter his clavicle instead, pile-driving my fist with agonizing force. It knocks him back into a screaming tumble.
I hold still, both assailants in my peripheral vision. My heart is pumping harder than it’s ever pumped. I’m supercharged, and I know I can kill these men a dozen ways to Sunday if I want to. And I do.
But I need to resist the craving. I’m a vampire, fighting my nature to drain their lives. Thoughts even go to Reggie and what I might do to him. I clench my fists, try to remain rigid and block out the temptation. I’m not going to become a Kurt Rodriguez. I’m not going to indulge, even though I want to snap these creatures to pieces.
I straddle the chest of the second man, startling him. The doorway light catches the dread in his eyes. He’s breathing fast, groaning from the agony of the pressure I’m placing with my knee squashed against his broken clavicle. He’s mine.
I squeeze either side of his mouth with my fingers like a vise. “I’m going to ask you once, and if you lie, I’m going to rip your fucking jaw off. Comprende?”
He nods, scared out of his ever-loving mind.
My voice is a hiss, a venomous hiss. “Where do I find the Candyman?”
There is no coming down from a twenty-strip high, at least not in the first couple of hours. Before this moment, I had no idea what it was like to do more than two hits in a twenty-four-hour period. Now I’m worried the high will never end.
I’ve got the worst case of the jitters, and I’m holding my arms to keep from shaking, braced against an I-beam beneath the elevated transit line that ferries the 7 train to and from Manhattan.
Mullins picks up on the other end of my call. “Hey.” He’s barely awake. A second later and, “God, it’s one in the morning. What’s up?”
There are a thousand things I want to say, blistering thoughts competing at light speed in my overclocked brain. “Rodriguez wasn’t a victim.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“He enjoyed every minute of his high. He wanted to kill those cops. You see, it’s a dark side, Ed. It’s a dark side that wants to control you. And if you don’t have the strength, well, you’re a goner.”
There’s a pause on the other end. Mullins’ voice comes back dead serious. “Hey, is everything okay? This doesn’t sound like you.”
Mullins has it wrong again. It sounds exactly like me. The true me. The unleashed me. “You’re a good guy, Ed. I know you’ve had it rough, but I’m telling you, it’s going to work out in the end.”
“Man, you’re scaring me. You’ve been drinking or something?”
“Ed, I want you to listen for a second, okay?”
He keeps quiet on the other end.
“If anything happens to me, I want you to take care of Suzie and Caitlyn. It’s a partner’s oath. You remember that, right?”
“Of course.” He sounds like he wants to say more, but he’s afraid, I can tell.
“There’s nothing to worry about, Ed. I’ve got something to take care of, and I’m going to follow the rabbit hole. I’m going to dig deep, real deep, and finish this.”
“Finish what?”
“What we started. I’m going to close out the Rodriguez case. I’m going to make it right for Yee’s parents, for the family of the other two officers that were shot, for my brother Tommy, for Mr. and Mrs. Rodriguez. For you, buddy, and the rest of the boys. I’m going to rip out the source and make it right.”
“Jesus, Terry, what the hell is going on? Are you in trouble? Hey, man, I’m here. I’m here, you understand? So talk to me!”
He never calls me by my first name. It gives me a modicum of comfort. “I gotta go, partner. See ya.??
?
“Wait, Terry. Hey—!”
I disconnect and block him from calling back. The L train grinds above me and I let go of my arms. The jitters wrack my body, and I vibrate to the rolling of steel wheels over the tracks. I’m a ball of bottled-up venom, every sedentary moment poisoning my blood a little more. I need to release it. I need to release all of it.
And that’s exactly what I’m going to do.
It’s a fifteen-minute drive to my destination. With each passing streetlight, the pressure builds. I want to uncork the pressure, to let it burst. But I have to hang on a little longer.
I park in the heart of Astoria, Queens, a twenty-four-hour nonstop mini-Manhattan of low-rise apartment buildings and single-story businesses. Spanish, Greek, Arabian and Brazilian clubs and cafés are hopping, showing off the neighborhood’s multicultural personality.
The one I’m interested in is a club called El Toro Loco. My rooftop informant said the Candyman fronts as a legit businessman, using the nightclub scene to traffic product. He claimed he didn’t know which club, but I followed the rabbit hole to its very depths. It’s amazing what you can learn through the Mindnet when your neurons are ablaze.
Reggie was right about the “crazy” part. El Toro Loco translates to “The Mad Bull,” or literally, “The Crazy Bull.” I don’t know if it was his rabid ranting, or he was trying to tell me the answer.
Latin dance music echoes out onto Broadway. Young twenty-somethings are clustered in line, waiting to get into the club while 3-D glyphs advertise drink specials that change in price as demand shifts during the night.
The bouncer at the door is big, like an NFL offensive tackle, close-shaved afro indicative of prior military experience. He’s three hundred pounds easy, with very little body fat. My brain has already calculated six ways to take him down using nothing more than my God-given hands. I’m not dressed for the club, and he makes it a point to tell me to remove my hat and get to the back of the line. I do neither. The young crowd makes no attempt to hide their disgust for my older presence. I don’t care about them. I want in.
There are nineteen people in line at El Toro Loco. A video camera above the door confirms that we’re being watched. The old me would have flashed a police glyph, and the bouncer would have moved aside.
There’s no room for the old me.
I step toward the bouncer.
“Sir, I’m going to ask you again. Please move to the back—”
Faster than he can react, I sock him in the windpipe. He claws his throat, bug-eyed. I follow it up with a knuckled fist to the kidney. His body flexes involuntarily, and he hits the ground, all three-hundred-plus-pounds of solid manpower, down for the count. I step over his mountainous carcass, leaving an astonished crowd behind.
The club is packed. Lasers, stereographs and booming bass thrills my senses. I see two men with the word Security across the front of their black T-shirts quickly pushing through the throng toward me. I’ve been made.
I shove sideways across the dance floor, toward the restrooms and staircase leading up to the catwalk and second bar. People are hanging out everywhere, laughing, talking, drinking and dancing. I don’t want to alarm them. I just want to get to my prize.
I’m rough, pushing people aside, swimming upstream, trying to beat my pursuers. I hit the stairs a couple of paces ahead of them. I punch up the steps, zigzagging precisely between bodies. I’m four strides ahead by the time I catch the top step. It’s less crowded up here, and I bolt toward the back area, past the VIP roped-off access and velour-cushioned lounge chairs, along the black walls toward the solitary door in the very rear. The door opens six paces before I get there. The suited, short Asian man that exits fires a stun gun at me. A pair of electrodes shoot out. Time slows again. I see the dart-like projectiles and conductive wires propel through the air. I bend sideways, eluding their trajectory. It forces me off balance, but my brain won’t let me fall. It tells me to throw my weight into my right foot and push off into a leap. Airborne, I rain down, driving my forearm into the bridge of my assailant’s nose, breaking it and knocking him to the ground with my momentum.
I waste no time getting my bearings. I grab the butt of his stun gun and wheel about, clipping the first bodyguard across the forehead with the carbon fiber grip. He knocks mouth-first into the wall, and pitches heavily to the side. The second guard tries to put me in a bear hug. I smack him upside the chin with the butt of the stun gun, snapping his head back. He’s down a moment later, lights out.
I take an adrenalized pause to absorb my audience, frozen with their drinks in their hands. Their expressions vary from shock to sheer terror. They’re seeing the venom released, the poison of what I’ve become. It triggers momentary remorse. A second later, and I’m ready to engage my prize, any notion of guilt extinguished and forgotten. I told Mullins I was going to finish this, and I am.
I toss the stun gun on the floor and enter the lion’s den.
He’s sitting comfortably behind the solitary wood desk in the small office, stained glass peacock lamp illuminating his face in a wash of yellow light. He’s not some prizefighter, or Olympian, or martial artist or bodybuilder. He’s ordinary, my age, Hispanic mixed with Caucasian, with a medium build hidden beneath a tailored suit. Behind the calm eyes is a storm I recognize, a tidal wave waiting to crash ashore. I wasn’t expecting an amped welcome, but I’m not frightened by it either.
I lock the door behind me. There are no windows, no secondary exit, just the four walls of our cage. He could have chosen any place to wait for my arrival. But he chose here instead. One way in, one survivor.
He loosens his red silk necktie. I’m drawn to the crimson hue as it shimmers against the bright, recessed lights above, but more so by the y-shaped scar on his tanned knuckle. Air conditioning is piping in, blowing down on us. I can’t feel the cool though.
“So, you’re the Candyman.”
“And you’re Detective Sergeant Terrance Parker.” He has an American accent.
I don’t care that he knows who I am. Facial recognition technology in networked video cameras can easily pick up a name. They use it in casinos; why not a nightclub?
“I’m not here to arrest you.”
His eyes are set on me, hungry, seething. “I know.”
“Good. I just wanted to get that out of the way.”
He pulls his tie off, folds it in thirds, and sets it parallel to the edge of his table, same as what I would have done in his place. His jacket comes off next as he remains seated. I’m surprised as he tosses it over his shoulder, letting it land sloppily atop the wastebasket in the corner. I notice the clothing hooks embedded in the cinder-block wall behind him. “Yes,” he says, catching my gaze. “You would have hung it there.”
He unbuttons his left cuff and rolls up his sleeve. My mind is parsing his comment, analyzing its meaning: why he tossed the coat; why he told me that I was expecting it; why he seems so relaxed while I’m nearly quaking from anticipation.
I launch an active pingback. It comes up empty in my retinal overlay. I check the signal strength of my Mindnet connection. It’s at ninety-seven percent, almost perfect. Why can’t I get a read on him?
“You won’t find me that way,” he says, starting on the other sleeve. His movement is steady, but I can tell his blood is boiling. “My name is Jean Le Vau. All you had to do was look up the owner of this club, and you would have found me. Easy.”
I’m surprised that I missed that. Is the Switch finally wearing off? I had left the other dispensers behind on the rooftop of Reggie’s building. I’ve got no backup. It’s just me and the chemical substance in my bloodstream.
Someone bangs on the door. “It’s all right,” Le Vau says loudly. The banging ceases. “Sorry about that.”
“You look Honduran,” I say. “I wouldn’t have guessed French.”
“My mother was Nicaraguan, my father French
. But you didn’t come all this way to figure me out, did you?”
“No, I came to kill you.” I’m surprised to hear myself say it. It sounds like a line from an old James Bond film. Maybe I’m not crashing after all. I can feel the surge of excitement, the tingle in my face, the need to put this man to his end. I quickly remind myself that I’m a police officer. I’m not going to kill this man. Am I?
Le Vau takes off his watch and places it next to the tie. Everything he removes lightens the load, allows him to be more nimble in a fight. I should be considering my own outerwear, but I’m already stripped down to a T-shirt and jeans. I remove my baseball cap.
“Feel free to toss it,” he says. He points at his jacket.
I want to throw the cap, but I need to place it neatly somewhere. I center it on the cushion of the chair facing him. He smiles politely, hateful beast masked by a level of control I can’t comprehend. How does he do it?
Le Vau offers me a seat. “You can always put your hat over there.” Again, he points at his jacket.
“I’ll stand.”
I’m evaluating his physicality, considering all the ways I can take him down. He will have his own brand of tricks, enhanced by heightened senses. Dig deep, I tell myself. Reggie’s advice.
“How long have you been using?” he asks, removing his gold wedding band, which I had failed to notice. I expect him to toss it on the jacket, but he surprises me again and sticks it in the drawer. I would have put it next to the tie.
“Two years. And you?”
“Five.”
I had no idea Switch has been around for half a decade. Hardly anyone knew what it was when I stumbled upon it. Even the wiki didn’t date its origin back that far.
Le Vau responds as if reading my mind. “Yes, it’s been that long. The first generation product was terrible. Liquid drops. It caused violent mood swings. We replaced it with clear tablets, but the stomach acid destroyed a lot of the positive effects, so we went to coated tablets, and even those didn’t do the job quite right.” He unbuttons the top of his blue dress shirt. Curly chest hair spills out. “Your generation has been around three years. It’s very good, but it also has its limitations, as you well know.”