The policeman nodded. "You could be right; maybe they won't come back—at least not for you. They're not used to having their victims fight back." He paused, looked at Zulu. "I was over on Park and this woman came running out into the street and flagged me down. She told me you were in trouble. You don't see that kind of concern for fellow citizens much these days."
Zulu nodded. "She's a lovely lady."
The policeman headed back toward his squad car, called over his shoulder: "Take care, Zulu. And make sure you pay the taxes on the bundle in that pot of yours, or I'll turn you in to the IRS for the reward. The Irish know a silver tongue when they hear it, and you've definitely got one. I'm damn sure you make more money in a year than I do."
"Jim?"
The policeman opened the door to his car, turned back. "What is it, Zulu?"
"I read in the papers that you think the bone-man is the one who's been killing all those people and cutting off their heads."
The other man gave a noncommittal shrug of his shoulders. "It looks that way, Zulu. Homicide says they've got the goods on him."
"He's not the kind of man who would do that, Jim," Zulu said evenly.
"I know he's a friend of yours, Zulu—but you know he's a loony. Have you ever heard him talk?"
"No."
"Well, you tell your stories, and let us take care of the police work. And the next time you swat a member of Lobo's gang with that stick of yours, see if you can't knock his head off. So long."
Zulu watched the patrol car drive off down Fifth Avenue, and within moments a new story began forming in his mind; and this time the words crystallized easily. He struck his staff once on the sidewalk, then, in a booming voice, began to speak of good and evil and the gray marsh between the two where most people live. He began a tale of a great city with thousands of people living on its streets. He spoke of how some men and women, for various reasons, suddenly find themselves with no home, and how they often gather the few smaller valuables they have left—jewelry, family heirlooms, sometimes a map indicating where they have hidden larger valuables—and wear them on their bodies, around the neck or wrist, or carry them in a pocket. Sometimes, Zulu said, even the dirtiest person dressed in the filthiest rags would be wearing a ring, necklace or bracelet of some value, a last memento of another life.
Zulu told of how a particularly vicious, multiracial street gang had discovered that these tiny treasures often could be found on lice-infested bodies, and of how this band of youths had come to specialize in robbing these most helpless of people—often raping and sodomizing them in the process. He described the Wolfpack as a gang which prided itself on its viciousness and what it considered its clever tactics which left them virtually invulnerable to successful prosecution; their victims were usually so helpless, so mentally ill, that they could rarely even remember what happened to them, much less present a coherent report to the police. With so many thousands of potential victims, the Wolfpack always worked quickly, roaming through the night streets, as well as bus and train waiting rooms and the network of tunnels beneath Grand Central Terminal and Penn Station, mugging, robbing, beating and raping, then meeting at dawn at various sites around the city to pool and divide what they had captured during the night.
Laced through Zulu's tale of a great city with merciless beasts of prey and thousands of homeless people living on the sidewalks beside buildings where countless fortunes were made and lost every day was the theme of how this city had a powerful attraction for both the best and worst of people from all over the world, the best and worst of many things; people traveled to see the masterpieces at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on buses, trains and subways stained with the tortured art of the city, graffiti, desperate attempts to forge identity.
The story, a long one, turned out to be one of Zulu's best—and it had fortuitously come to him at the height of the noonday rush. Many people stopped to listen, creating a growing blockade on the sidewalk which in turn caused even more people to stop to see what was happening, and to be caught up in the rhythms of Zulu's words and the near-hypnotic power of his voice. Many of the men and women in business suits or dresses kept glancing at their watches—but they did not move away. Vendors at the corners and down the length of Fifty-third Street ran out of food and soda, and wheeled their carts away; vendors from other sites hurried to take their places. People listened intently to this tale of their city and themselves, occasionally glancing at the others around them, or up and down the stone canyon of Fifth Avenue, perhaps seeing themselves and their environment with new eyes. More than a hundred dollar bills were dropped into Zulu's bowl—and one elderly man climbed to the top of the steps of St. Thomas and began handing out dollar bills to the ragged people sitting in the shadows there, beneath the carved stone statues of Jesus and the saints.
And then the story was finished. It was past one o'clock, and the people began to drift away. Zulu, now standing erect and silent on the sidewalk, waited for the crowd to thin out. He gathered up the money from the bowl and put it into a pocket inside his robe, then went to a vendor and bought hot dogs and soda for the homeless people who remained on the church steps. He had not eaten all day, and as he passed out the food he realized that he was very hungry. He bought two kebabs and a soda for himself, then sat down on the steps near the sidewalk to relax and chat with the people who passed by. He might wait awhile to see if one more story came to him, Zulu thought, and then—as he did on most days—he would spend the rest of the afternoon in the Forty-second Street library, before going home.
He was eating his second kebab and thinking of buying a third when he glanced up and saw Lobo standing on the corner across the street, watching him. Zulu sipped his soda, stared back placidly.
The gray-clad leader of the Wolfpack wore a black patch over the hole where his right eye had been, and even from this distance Zulu could see the pink left eye of the albino gleaming with the kind of unnatural light Zulu had seen in the eyes of so many psychotics, dangerous or not, he passed on the streets. This young man with chalky skin, tightly curled white hair and pink eye was very dangerous, Zulu thought. This boy-man had an aura of savagery about him which was almost palpable, causing pedestrians to make a wide circle around him as they passed. The albino was a little over six feet, Zulu judged; around two hundred pounds, perhaps quicker than he looked; seventeen or eighteen years old. He would carry a variety of weapons, in hidden places.
Zulu unhurriedly finished his kebab as Lobo walked across the street, came up on the sidewalk and stopped a few feet away from where Zulu was sitting on the third step. Zulu wiped his hands and patted his mouth with a napkin, which he put into the paper bag beside him. Then he placed his seven-foot staff across his knees and casually glanced up at the one-eyed albino youth standing in front of him.
"You're pretty good with that stick, nigger," Lobo said quietly, his slight lisp somehow making him seem even more threatening. "You hurt one of my people. When you do that, you hurt me; you make me look bad. I think it's only right that you fork over your money so we can pay his doctor bills. That way, you won't get hurt."
Zulu grunted. "What's the matter, Lobo? The Wolfpack doesn't provide health insurance for its cubs?"
The albino frowned. "How do you know who we are? How do you know my name?"
Zulu studied Lobo, considering the odd question and what it told him about the albino. Finally, he said, "Don't any of you creeps read the papers or watch the news on television? There's a story about the Wolfpack at least once a week."
"I'm too busy to pay attention to the news."
"Too busy doing what? Roughing up and robbing helpless people who can't defend themselves?"
Lobo's reaction was unexpected. Zulu had meant to anger the youth and perhaps provoke an attack with the insult, but the albino with the pale light in his eye merely shook his head. "We're not doing anything to anybody that the fat cats of this city don't do—only they do it worse. Why do you think all those people are homeless, anyway? Somehow,
in some way, somebody else ripped them off good. And if they can't take care of themselves, they shouldn't be out on the streets. This is the United States of America, nigger, and you don't have to read newspapers or watch television to know that in this country it's survival of the fittest. Hey, we're doing the people of this city a favor. If those bums want to clutter up the streets, then I say we have a right to take from them. Whatever they have obviously isn't doing them any good, but we can sure as hell use the money. That's called capitalism, nigger, and that's a word I remember real well from school. If those bums get scared off the streets and into shelters, so much the better for everybody else. They shouldn't be out on the streets; it makes the United States look bad in the eyes of the world. The goddamn communists are laughing at us."
"You should be a speechwriter for the Republican Party."
"What?"
"Get out of my face, asshole," Zulu said evenly, without any change of expression.
Now the albino reacted—first with surprise, then with anger that brought blood to his ashen face, making his flesh appear as if it had been badly sunburned. "What did you say, nigger?!"
"I called you an asshole, and I told you to get out of my face. You're ruining your image with me. From everything I've read about you, I thought you were a real mean guy; now it turns out that down deep in your heart you're really a social reformer and zealous patriot, obviously misunderstood by the people you rob and rape. Now you'd better haul ass, sonny, or I'm going to put out the one eye the bone-man left you."
The albino youth's right hand shot to his eye patch as he Hushed an even deeper red. "You know about that?!"
"I know about a lot of things, Lobo. That was just a rumor going around on the street, but now I can see that it's true. The bone-man did put out your eye, didn't he?" Zulu paused, slowly smiled. "He smacked it right out of your head. Son-of-a-bitch. You city wolves are sure as hell pretty dumb critters. You should be more careful about who you try to bring down."
"I'll kill him when I find him," Lobo said, his lisping voice seething with hatred. "I'll do more than just kill him; I'll take him apart like a fucking chicken. I'll slice off his nuts and feed them to him before I slash his throat—just like the communists used to do in Vietnam. He's been hiding from me, but I'll find him."
Zulu resisted the impulse to laugh; he wanted to know more about the strange landscape of the albino's mind "You think the bone-man is hiding from you, Lobo?"
"I just got out of the hospital last week, and we've been looking for him all over the city. He's hiding, all right. But I'll find him; and when I do, he's dead meat."
"So you've been looking for him for a week?"
Lobo's eyelid fluttered. "That's what I said, nigger. You know where he is?"
"How would I know where he is?" Zulu replied evenly, glad now that the bone-man was in police custody; if he weren't, he'd undoubtedly be dead. "I guess you'll just have to keep looking for him, won't you?"
"I don't know why the hell I'm wasting my time standing here talking to you, nigger!" the albino snapped. "You're just another homeless bum fouling up the streets. Give me your money!"
Now Zulu laughed loudly. "Why don't you tell me a good story, sonny? If I like it, I'll maybe lay a dollar on you. If you want to try to roll me like you do all those other people, you're welcome to try—anytime. Like I said, I'll put out your other eye for you."
The albino's gaze flicked up over the faces of the other people on the steps, then came back to Zulu. He unbuttoned the front of his gray leather jacket, pulled back the flap to reveal a huge bowie knife in a leather scabbard hanging from his belt.
"I don't know whether you're seeing and hearing me, nigger; if you're not, you'd better start. We own these streets, and the people like you who live on them. Think of the Wolfpack as your landlord. Now, I can't have you making me look bad by beating on one of my collection agents. Today you're going to give me all your money to pay for my man's medical bills. After that, it's ten dollars a day, which is what we charge all the street performers; you use our streets, you have to pay for the privilege."
Zulu's heartbeat had quickened at the sight of the bowie knife hanging at the youth's side—not out of fear, but at the thought that he might now know who had been killing and beheading the homeless people. He wondered if the albino was stupid enough to allow himself to be goaded into admitting it.
"If I don't give you my money, are you going to cut off my head the way you did to the others?" Zulu asked evenly.
"I may cut off your balls and feed them to you, just like I'm going to do to that crazy bone-man when I catch him."
It was not the response Zulu had hoped for. "Don't try to tell me you're not the one who's been killing those people, sonny. There's plenty of killer in you, and that knife you've got looks like it would do the trick very nicely. What have you been doing with the heads?"
"I haven't got time to stand around here all day bullshitting with you, nigger; you're crazier than I thought. Hand your money over, or I'm going to come up there and cut you."
Zulu's response was lightning-quick. He leaped to his feet and, in a series of fluid, unbroken movements, swung his staff once around his head, then brought it flashing down through the air fully extended—stopping it at precisely the point when its tip was touching the youth's curly white hair.
There were gasps of astonishment from the onlookers on the church steps and the sidewalks; it had all happened so fast that the albino had not had time to react in any way. But now he began to tremble, and sweat broke out on his forehead as his one eye rolled up to look at the hardwood weapon resting on his head; the pink eye gleamed with humiliation, rage and hatred as the albino's gaze traveled down the length of the staff, came to rest on Zulu's face.
"You have no idea of how close you just came to getting one hell of a headache, sonny," Zulu said easily. "I don't much like being threatened, and I suppose I should have bopped you good, but I'm feeling kindly today."
"I'm going to kill you, nigger," Lobo said in a trembling voice.
"Not with your brains running out your ears, sweetheart. I'm beginning to wonder if you've got a brain up there at all, and I'm really tempted to open up your skull to find out."
"There are too many of us, nigger. I'll be back for you, and I won't be alone. You're a marked man; you can't fight all of us."
"Well, you know where to find me—don't touch that staff!" Lobo had started to reach up to push away the staff, and now Zulu bore down, making the albino's knees buckle. "Move, and I'll break both your collarbones!"
"We'll . . . get you . . . where you sleep, wherever that . . . is. We'll find you. You're a . . . dead man."
The flashing lights of a police squad car were suddenly visible above the heads of the crowd of gaping pedestrians who had formed a semicircle on the sidewalk around the gray-jacketed youth.
"Hear me good, sonny," Zulu said quickly, in a low voice. "You and the rest of your gang are the ones who are marked. I'm declaring this block a Wolfpack-free zone. If you think you can take me on this corner, be my guest—any day. But I tell you that if I see one punk in a gray jacket around here, I'm going after him. If you think there's safety in numbers, you'd better think again, because then I'll just have more skulls to split open. You spread the word, Lobo; any Wolf who doesn't want his bones broken had better stay out of my sight. I have a strong feeling that the police are going to look the other way if and when I start busting you people up. So now get out of my face, like I told you to."
Zulu withdrew the staff from the youth's head as a patrolman pushed his way through the crowd. Lobo flashed one more hate-filled glance at Zulu, then pushed through the crowd in the opposite direction and disappeared.
"Was that the Wolf king himself?" the patrolman asked, taking off his cap and running a hand through thick, unruly locks of black hair.
"None other, Harry," Zulu replied evenly, glancing around him as the crowd began to disperse.
"I was talking to Jim earlie
r; you've had a busy day with the Wolfpack."
"I laid a heavy threat on him, Harry. I told him I'd bust up him or any other member of the Wolfpack I see on this block. I meant it. If I see any Wolf around here, I'm going to break bone. I'm telling you up front, Harry, so you can get a jail cell ready for me, if you've a mind."
The policeman tilted his head back and squinted at the pale sun overhead. "I'm sure you impressed him, Zulu," he said with a sigh. "But it's not Lobo or any of the Wolfpack I'm worried about. You humiliated him, and now he's going to be after you. Lobo's psycho. I'm not asking where you crash at night, Zulu, because it's none of my business, but I just hope to hell it's a safe place where Lobo and his gang can't get at you."
"It is."
"Then they'll try to ambush you someplace else. Killing you, or putting you in the hospital for a good long stay, is going to be Lobo's top priority."
"I can take care of myself, Harry, but I thank you for your concern. In any case, I'm not Lobo's top priority."
"I'm telling you you are, Zulu. Nobody's ever stood up to Lobo like that. He's lost face, and that's one thing he won't tolerate."
"He wants the bone-man even more; the bone-man put his eye out. The papers say you have him in custody; he should be warned about Lobo."
The policeman frowned slightly. "You know that guy?"
Zulu's answer was a curt nod.
"Well, the Wolfpack is the least of that loony's problems. The only place that guy with the bone is going is death row, and I don't think Lobo will be inclined to follow him there."
"He should be warned, Harry."
"How the hell do you know that guy put out Lobo's eye? Did he tell you that?"
"No. As far as I know, the bone-man never spoke to anybody."
"Then who told you?"
"An old woman named Mary—one of the people he's supposed to have killed."
Chapter Five
The dark-skinned Pakistani psychiatrist with the large, soulful eyes and lilting voice listened impassively as Bone told him of his dreams of graves and being buried alive, of a great chamber with bones growing from the walls, floor and ceiling. Bone described the recurring image of a ghostly figure chasing him, a spectre dressed in a shimmering orange cloak that was streaked with blood; he shared his thought that the twenty-eight bodies found so far might be only a fraction of the total, that there might be more in the underground world beneath the city that Anne had told him about—nameless, homeless people whose deaths would go unnoticed.
Bone Page 10