That was it. It had to be.
It was a shot in the dark. Ransome did not know, could not possibly know, that Dave felt … felt what? … felt something that men should not feel about women who are twenty years their junior. Ransome was just guessing, hoping that Dave was foolish enough to feel some sense of obligation to a woman he’d only met twice, and whom, if the ugly truth were told, he’d exploited on both occasions.
Yeah, a shot in the dark, and a long shot at that. The act of a man who was running out of time, running out of ideas, and getting desperate. It was just a cheap trick.
But if it wasn’t …
If it wasn’t, he was going back to Senterex anyway. The secret locked in Bernie’s credenza was reason enough. And if Ransome really did have Marge … well, he’d have to do something about that, wouldn’t he?
* * *
Escalators led out of Grand Central and into the old Pan Am building, newly renamed for its current owner, Metropolitan Life Insurance, but more commonly known to cynical New Yorkers as the Snoopy Building — a sarcastic tribute to Met Life’s advertising spokes-beagle. At this late hour the escalators had been turned off. Dave climbed them anyway, then walked swiftly through a darkened lobby and out onto Forty-fifth Street.
Park Avenue was above him, an elevated roadway that left ground level a block north at Forty-sixth Street. Two dark pedestrian tunnels led from where Dave stood to the corner of Forty-sixth and Park, and Dave could see sleeping bodies stretched out in their shadows. He needed to get to Park Avenue. He didn’t need any incidents.
Disturbing the homeless, annoying the crazies, caused incidents.
Maybe you ought to think about moving to a safer city. You know, Sarajevo, Beirut …
Dave chose the tunnel that looked emptiest, and tried to walk as softly as he could.
He almost made it, but not quite. Just short of Forty-sixth Street something plucked at his foot. Adrenaline spiked his heart. He kicked hard, simultaneously snatching a pistol from his belt. “I’ll fucking blow you away!” The loudness of his own voice scared him.
A surprised rat spun through the air, collided with a wall, and squeaked with indignation. Dave stood, breathing hard, sweating, cursing himself. The rat trotted back toward Forty-fifth Street.
Getting a little hyper, aren’t we, pal?
He slipped the pistol back beneath his shirt, and jogged out to Park Avenue.
The sight stunned him. He had never seen Park Avenue so beautiful, had never thought that it could be. By night, the traffic gone, the sidewalks empty, it possessed a certain peace, a gentleness. Noisily frenetic by day, it now seemed to him to be a woman, dark-haired, napping lightly, and wearing the faintest of slumbering smiles.
He stood momentarily transfixed, wondering how it was that he had never noticed how heartbreakingly gorgeous this city could be.
The central median, dividing the northbound and southbound lanes, sparkled with flowers — not the tulips of spring, but the asters of fall. The colors were muted by the streetlights, turned to soft pastels. To the north the traffic lights changed, blinking their circuit from green to yellow to red and back to green. The buildings were mosaics of light and dark, indigo blue and deep sea green dominating.
Green …
Emerald green … green as a green bottle … green as a small, perfect lake nestled in a high Sierra valley … in the magic evening of a hot summer day … Taffy Weiler wearing a loopy grin … horses standing bowed as if praying to an equine God … David Elliot, his heart near enough to bursting, knowing that no matter how sour his later life might turn …
In the dark behind him someone cursed. A bottle arced out of the shadows and exploded at his feet.
The moment was gone. The Sierras disappeared. The city returned, and night.
In New York, only imbeciles stand still after sundown.
The hair on the back of his neck prickled again. Someone was watching him, sizing him up, wondering about the contents of his wallet. It was time to move on.
Dave trotted north. Four more blocks would bring him to the corner of Fiftieth Street.
The nightowls had long since departed the Avenue, the workaholics left for home at last. Some few random office windows were still lit — largely, Dave thought, the offices of people who had not gone home until after the janitors were through with their chores.
Nonetheless, there were still people in every building, including his own.
He stood across the street, studying its windows floor by floor. On the eleventh floor most of the lights were lit. That particular floor was occupied by the mergers and acquisitions department of Lee, Bach & Wachutt, one of the city’s most notoriously predatory investment bankers. Up higher, on floors 34 to 39, many of McKinley-Allan’s lights were still on. Doubtless, legions of eager young management consultants were toiling the night away, striving to satisfy the perfectionist partners who had long since gone home to bed.
Elsewhere the building was a checkerboard of light and dark, albeit mostly dark. No one floor seemed to be showing more …
Thirty-one.
Dave squinted. The thirty-first floor’s windows were neither bright nor dark. They were merely dim. The curtains had been drawn closed on every window facing Park Avenue.
What’s on thirty-one?
Dave didn’t remember. A reinsurance company? No, that wasn’t right. A trading company? That was it. A trading company with the word “Trans” in its name. Trans-Pacific? Trans-Oceanic? Trans- … something or another.
Promising, very promising. Just the kind of anonymous enterprise the intelligence crowd likes.
“Hi. Wanna date?”
Dave spun, his fist drawn for a punch.
“Whoa, honey! I ain’t no trouble.”
She — he? — was the most improbable transvestite Dave had ever seen. Too tall, too thin, dressed in a silvered Chinese cheongsam, and dripping with rhinestone jewelry.
Dave growled, “Two things. One, don’t sneak up behind people. Two, go away.”
He — she? — the creature cocked its head, placed an electric pink fingernail against its cheek, and smirked. “Aw, don’t be that way, baby. I can tell from just lookin’ at you, you like what I got to offer.”
See, I warned you about your new hairdo.
Dave felt himself blush. He didn’t like the experience. “Get out of my face.”
“Lighten up, hon. Tell you what, seein’ as you gonna be my last customer of the business day, I give you a special price.”
Dave bit his words, one by one: “I. Am. Going. To. Say. This. Only. Once. Go! Away!”
“Oooh. A rough one. Don’t look so rough, but I guess appearances can …”
Dave took a step forward, put his flattened palm against the man’s chest, and pushed. The transvestite stumbled back over the curb and sat down hard.
“Awww!” He pointed at his high-heeled, shiny patent leather sandals. One of his five inch spikes had snapped. “Now look what you’ve done, you animal! Those cost me forty dollars a pair from Frederick’s! Plus shipping and handling!” He started blubbering.
My, my. Turning into a fag basher now, are we?
Dave winced. What he had just done had been too natural, too instinctual — the same as it was twenty-five years earlier. Got a problem? No problem. Just lock and load, my friend, and shortly all of life’s ambiguous complexities will be simplified. And never forget, anyone who’s a little different, anyone who isn’t just like you, well hell, son, in this man’s Army we call that kind of person “target.”
Dave gritted his teeth and started to frame an apology.
A voice came out of the shadows. “Kimberly, you all right, child?” Another luridly dressed prostitute clattered into view. This one seemed to be a woman (or at least a more authentic-looking cross-dresser). She was wearing a black ciré skirt that barely hid her panties, a blood red Victorian bustier, and heels that were as high as the fallen Kimberly’s.
Jesus, where are these people coming fro
m?
“Ohhh, Charlene, he hit me.” This from the crying transvestite.
“I did not. All I did …”
Charlene advanced on Dave. “You some sort of rough trade, huh? Beat up on a helpless little faggot? That your thing, ain’t it, whuppin’ up on ’em? Poor boy Kimberly the nicest boy in the life, mister. He don’t need no business from your kind.”
Dave backpedaled. “Now look, lady …”
“I ain’t no lady. I’s a whore.” Something bright and sharp snapped open in her hand. “An’ whores take care of their friends.”
5
Dave looked around wildly. There wasn’t a cab in sight. No police cars. A lone Toyota sped north on Park Avenue. Its driver glanced in his direction, looked away, and increased his speed. The transvestite named Kimberly was tottering to his feet. His eyes were bright with feral hunger.
Charlene crouched, circling Dave. The thing in her hand was a straight razor, and she held it in a wholly businesslike fashion.
“Now look …”
Kimberly urged her on. “Cut him, Charlene.”
“Yeah, get him!” Another voice. “Take his balls off!” And another.
A pack of them. Seven or eight. Black and white. Dressed to kill, and looking for all the world like a pride of hunting cats. Meat!
Charlene’s eyes sparkled. Her pupils were wide. Dave guessed she was high on some drug. “White man, you about to have the worst experience in your faggot life.”
A gun would solve the problem. All he had to do was pull one out from beneath his shirt. Showing it would probably do the trick.
But if it doesn’t …?
If it didn’t, then it would only make matters worse. And if matters became worse, he’d have to use it.
Charlene’s razor sliced the air beside his cheek. He dodged left. She was a little off balance. He could have taken her easily.
Then you’d have all the rest of them to deal with. Let her go. The others will stay back as long as they think she can handle you.
Charlene hissed. “You move fast for a pussy queer.” She came in again. He felt the wind as the razor flashed past him at eye level.
Not bad, she almost got you that time.
The woman was good. He was going to have to do something about her.
The razor weaved and flashed. A three inch cut snicked open on his shirt.
He couldn’t risk pulling a gun. If she made him shoot her, he wouldn’t be able to go into the building. The corner of Fiftieth Street and Park Avenue had been the center of too much excitement today — bomb scares, twelfth floor muggings, Bernie’s suicide. One more incident, and the police would be all over the place.
While New York City’s finest are willing to overlook a lot, a bullet-riddled corpse on Park Avenue usually gets their attention.
Dave edged back, slowly luring Charlene forward. He heard steps shuffle nearby. Someone was getting ready to give her a hand.
Now or never.
He lurched left, as if trying to flee. Charlene moved in with the grace and speed of a tango dancer. The razor arced down, shining in the streetlights, cutting for his face. He slid under her arm. Her wrist slammed down on his shoulder. The razor clattered on the sidewalk.
Your next move has to be flashy, a real crowd-pleaser.
Dave dropped into a crouch. The woman’s momentum carried her over his shoulder. He cocked his right leg behind her ankle, kicking it forward while he thrust his body upward. Charlene’s feet left the ground. She began to tumble. Dave snatched her arm and twisted, adding velocity.
It was perfect. It was spectacular. She spun like a propeller, turned 270 degrees in the air, and smashed facedown on the sidewalk. She lifted her head, spitting blood.
Dave ran. The gang behind him howled.
He sprinted across Park Avenue, reaching the median before Charlene’s friends worked up the courage to follow. Someone hurled a can at him. It bounced off his hip and clattered on the asphalt. Dave kept running.
To the disgust of the construction industry and the irritation of the developers, New York City requires that high-rises have ample outdoor public space. For this reason, and this reason only, Dave’s building was fronted by an open plaza. The plaza was surrounded by marble-faced planters. Every now and then the landlord tried to grow shrubbery in them. The plants died, poisoned by the air and choked by trash.
Dave vaulted a planter and dashed toward the entrance.
There were — or rather had been — a pair of fountains on either side of the plaza. However, by the end of the eighties, the city’s homeless population had begun treating such decorative amenities as open-air bathrooms. The building management drained them, and erected chain-link fences around their borders.
Behind him someone stumbled into the fence. Dave sprinted toward the steps, cleared them in one leap, and bounced off a window. He saw the night guard inside look up at the sound. The man started to rise from his desk.
Two glass panes had been shattered during the morning’s evacuation. They’d been replaced with plywood. Dave ran by them. There were revolving doors ahead. The first one was closed, a yellow-striped safety barricade set in front of it. Dave flung himself into the second.
He pushed. Nothing happened. There was a sign on the glass: USE CENTER DOORS FOR ENTRY AFTER 9:00 P.M.
Dave darted out. The pack was close. One woman was out ahead of the others. She brandished a broken bottle, and was shrieking like a banshee.
Dave threw the center door open. The guard was up. He had a radio in his hand. It was one of Ransome’s radios, and the guard was one of Ransome’s men.
Dave let his voice rise in fear. It wasn’t difficult. “Help! I’m being …” He ran toward the guard station.
He glanced over his shoulder. There were more than a dozen of them now. They boiled into the lobby behind him.
Dave fumbled for his wallet, flinging it open in front of the guard. “Please! I work here! I’m supposed to be on duty! These animals want to kill me!”
The guard’s eyes flitted from Dave’s face to the approaching mob. When he looked at Dave, he didn’t like what he saw. When he looked at the mob, he liked it even less. He reached beneath the desk. His hands came out holding a shotgun, an autoloader with an oddly shaped choke.
Ithaca model 37. Complete with duckbill choke. Long time no see, old friend.
A popular weapon in Vietnam. Fully automatic. Loads and ejects through the same underside port. The duckbill spreads the shot horizontally, in a nice wide arc. If there’s somebody hiding in the bushes, all you have to do is point in their general direction. A charge of number 4 shot does the rest. The grunts who carry the guns call them “Hamburger helpers.”
Of course if there was a camera crew in the neighborhood, you made sure that your Ithaca was out of sight. Couldn’t have the folks back home know that their baby boys were toting around great big nasty meat shredders.
The guard leveled the shotgun on the crowd. Things went quiet.
“Street-sweeper,” someone muttered, using the Tactical Police Force’s nickname for a duckbilled 12-gauge.
Dave’s inner voice urged him, Ham it up, pal. Ham it up.
He took the advice. “My God! Thank you, officer! Those creatures were going to tear me apart!”
The guard glared at Dave, his face a mask of homophobic loathing. All at once, and for the first time in his life, David Elliot knew what it was to be hated not as an individual, but rather as a member of a class.
“Don’t you listen to that faggot!” A tall Hispanic woman stepped forward.
The guard growled, “What’s your gripe, lady?”
“He beatin’ up on people. He just whupped the hell out of my frien’ Charlene and a poor transvestite boy.”
The guard gave Dave a malevolent stare, his eyes hot with abhorrence of homosexuals. Dave played to the man’s repugnance; it was the only thing to do. “They tried to take my wallet! I pushed her away. I didn’t want to hurt anybody! Do I look like some
sort of brute?” He fumbled his cigarettes out of his jacket and nervously lit one.
The guard scowled at the pack. Virginia Slims. That settled it for him. “No, mister …” He glanced at Dave’s doctored ID card. “… Mister Cohen, you most certainly do not.” He turned to the mob. “You people get the hell out of here. Go back on the street where you belong.”
The Hispanic woman looked over her shoulder. Several of her cohorts nodded encouragement. She rounded on the guard, screaming: “We gonna kill you, prick! You and your faggot boyfriend!”
The guard’s face went bright red. He put the shotgun to his shoulder. “People like you don’t call people like me queer.”
Oh Christ! He’s another goddamn Mullins.
The late First Shirt had once broken the jaw of a buck sergeant who had jokingly called him a “homo.” Too many career military men were the same way.
We definitely do not need a midnight shotgun massacre.
“Queer lover! Pansy boy!” The mob wasn’t helping things.
Dave forced his voice into a high-pitched giggle — Norman Bates sharing a joke with his mother. “Kill them! Nasty whores!” He strutted two steps toward the pack. “He’s going to turn you into Gaines Burger, you bitches!” The Hispanic woman stopped short, let her hands fall, and shook her head. Dave whirled to face the guard. He opened his eyes wide, hoping they glittered with appropriate insanity. “Well, do it!”
The guard’s eyes flicked left and right between Dave and the crowd. Dave swiped at his lips, as if brushing away a fleck of saliva. He jiggled on his feet impatiently, turned and stepped back to the guard desk.
Someone behind him muttered, “Aw, shit. This ain’t worth it.”
The guard’s posture changed slightly. Just enough. He was calming down. “I’m counting to ten.”
Now, while he’s distracted …
Dave drew back another step, moving out of the guard’s field of vision, stretching his hand to where the man’s radio lay.
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