Stripped

by Brian Freeman

  The parapet zoomed up into Stride’s face. He hung on to the railing as the ladder disintegrated, swinging him over the big drop to the street. For an instant, he dangled there, his feet hanging free, and he felt his insides turn to water. The iron squealed and protested and dropped lower. His grip on the railing was slippery from sweat. Stride hunted for a foothold, feeling nothing but space, and then finally he scraped the edge of the wall with his shoe. He shifted his weight and was standing on the parapet, with half of one foot on the ledge.

  For a few seconds that felt timeless, he hung on, caught between the back-and-forth swirls of the wind. Finally, a gust roared in, pushing him toward the hotel, and Stride let his hand slip from the iron. He bent and reached for one of the stone onion domes, but he was beyond that already, tumbling, falling, landing with a jolt and rolling onto the terrace.

  The impact dizzied him, and he swayed as he got to his feet. He looked quickly for his gun but didn’t see it. Then he saw Blake scrabbling across the marble and saw another gun lying almost within the killer’s reach.

  Stride charged, just as Blake curled his hand around the butt of the pistol.

  With a flash of light and a deafening noise, Blake fired. Stride felt a searing pain streak across his leg, and he half dove, half collapsed across Blake. He heard a snap and realized it was Blake’s wrist breaking as Stride’s shoulder fell across his arm. Blake choked back a cry of pain, and the gun dropped from his hand. Stride twisted around, lunging for the gun, but Blake bucked like a bronco and threw Stride off his back. Blake picked up the gun again; he could barely hold it now. Stride rolled away and then stood up. Blake was still prone on the ground, trying to raise the gun, and Stride kicked his broken wrist hard with the side of his foot, causing a new bellow of pain from Blake and sending the gun spinning toward the pool.

  Stride reached down and yanked Blake to his feet. The killer’s body was like rubber, and his face looked bruised and dazed. Stride recoiled to send a fist across Blake’s jaw, then realized he had been suckered as Blake brought a knee viciously up into Stride’s groin. As hot pain raced through his body, Stride staggered back and saw Blake’s left forearm slicing backhand toward his head. He tried to dodge the blow, but it connected hard on his cheek and sent him reeling, stumbling to his knees.

  Serena saw Stride’s gun lying on the ground a few feet from the roof wall, near the twisted remnants of the ladder. As Blake spun around, he followed her eyes, and he saw it, too. They both ran. Serena didn’t have her wind back completely, and she realized that Blake was faster, that he would get there first. She turned and dove for him, trying to take him down. Blake saw her coming and swerved, then leaped to clear her body. His foot became tangled in her legs. Blake pulled free, but he lost his balance, stumbled, and fell.

  She saw that Jonny was on his feet again. He was running for the gun, too.

  Then Serena felt a powerful arm snake around her neck and yank her up to her knees, sealing off her windpipe in a crushing grip. She fought and couldn’t breathe. Blake had her locked in a stranglehold.

  “Stride!” Blake shouted.

  She saw Jonny freeze. It felt as if her eyes were bulging out of her head.

  “I’ll kill her.”

  She wanted to tell him to go for the gun. Fuck Blake. Put an end to this. But she couldn’t make a sound; all she could do was watch the world start to spin and darken. Her limbs felt as powerless as a marionette’s. She wondered if it had been like this for Amira, dying here.

  She heard Blake’s labored breathing. His arm didn’t let loose. He was killing her, choking her second by second. The blood began roaring in her brain, and her nerve ends exploded like firecrackers, causing a headache that made her skull feel as if it would burst open.

  Her eyes met Jonny’s. He floated in her vision and did somersaults. Go for the gun, Jonny.

  Stride took a step toward the gun.

  “I’ll kill her,” Blake repeated.

  Serena felt his other arm slide over the top of her head and grab her hair. He was going to twist her neck and snap her spine. Then through the blackness that was falling down on her, Serena realized that Blake could barely hold her head with his other hand. Snap. His wrist was broken. Fragile. Vulnerable.

  She hoped she could stretch her bound arms over her head. She told her limbs what to do, and somewhere between the confused impulses shooting from her brain, her arms obeyed. She reached up to the top of her head with her bound hands and took hold of Blake’s wrist and clamped down on the bone as hard as she could.

  Blake screamed. Serena jerked on his wrist. For just an instant, Blake’s other arm came loose, and Serena wriggled free, gasping for air, feeling blood rush back to her head. She stumbled, unable to keep her balance.

  Five feet away, Jonny ran for the gun. So did Blake.

  Blake was closer to the gun, but Stride was on him before he could reach for it. He threw Blake against the parapet so hard the killer slammed into it and bounced off. Stride was waiting and threw a sledgehammer punch directly into Blake’s face that snapped his head back. Blood sprayed from his mouth. The killer staggered back into the wall, and Stride followed, hitting him again.

  Stride felt a stinging, bone-deep pain in his hand. He realized he had probably broken a couple of fingers.

  Blake crumpled to his knees, and his head slumped forward. He teetered and then collapsed on the ground, not moving. Stride took a deep breath and reached around behind his back to snag his handcuffs.

  He looked down. Something was wrong.

  Behind him, Serena saw it, too, and shouted, “Where’s the gun?”

  Stride realized he didn’t see his gun anymore. Blake had deliberately pivoted his body to fall on top of it. Stride saw Blake’s arm moving and saw the man pushing himself off the ground, the gun in his other hand.

  Blake aimed the gun, not at Stride, not at Serena, but at himself.

  He pressed it to the side of his head. He could barely keep it steady.

  “Drop it, Blake,” Stride told him.

  Blake dragged himself to his feet. He staggered back to the wall. Stride and Serena edged closer from two sides.

  “Give us the gun,” Serena said.

  Blake gave them a bloody smile. He put his bad hand around one of the onion domes atop the parapet and braced himself, grimacing in pain, as he pulled a leg up onto the wall. The gun wobbled in his grip. He pulled his other leg up, too, and stood, precariously balanced on the slim stone edge of the wall. Blake swayed, the wind toying with him.

  He took the gun away from his head and casually tossed it off the top of the building.

  Stride took a step forward, but Blake held up his hand, stopping him. Blake shook his head. He took a long look at the ground below.

  “Amira,” he said.

  Blake leaned into the wind. He spread his arms wide.

  “Don’t do it, brother.”

  The sharp voice from the terrace stopped him in the moment before he let go. Blake looked around and steathed himself on the wall. So did Stride and Serena. Stride couldn’t believe what he saw.

  It was Claire.

  She was standing by the pool, with Serena’s gun in her outstretched hands. She was pointing it at Boni’s head.

  FIFTY

  Claire, what the hell are you doing?” Serena demanded.

  Claire didn’t look back. She stared down the sights of the gun at her father and walked toward him step by step, slowly, until the gun was an inch from his eyes. Serena saw Claire’s whole body trembling. There was hatred in her face and a world of hurt gushing out like oil from a well.

  Boni didn’t even seem to notice the gun. His blue eyes and her blue eyes were locked in a duel. Claire was crying, and she struggled to keep the gun level.

  “Now you know what it felt like for me,” she said. “Powerless.”

  “What do you want, Claire?”

  “Tell Blake the truth,” she said. “You owe him that.”

  “I don’t owe him any
thing,” Boni snapped.

  Claire shook her head. “You murdered Amira, didn’t you? Because she had the fucking gall to try to get out from under your thumb. Because she didn’t want to be owned and controlled anymore.”

  “I loved Amira,” Boni told her.

  “Everything you love gets hurt,” Claire retorted.

  “I can’t talk about it.”

  “It was forty years ago,” she insisted. “No one can touch you now.”

  “You may as well kill me, Claire, if that’s what you want. I’m not going to say anything about Amira.”

  “Is that what you want? You want me to pull the trigger?”

  ‘For God’s sake, stop this,” Serena pleaded with her. She started to move toward them, and Boni held up one hand to stop her.

  “It’s all right, Detective,” Boni said. He focused on Claire. “Kill me if you want, sweetheart. I just wish you wouldn’t throw away your own life to do it.”

  “Does my life mean more to you?” Claire asked. She tilted her head back and shoved the barrel of the gun under her own chin. “How about now?”

  “Claire! No!” Serena shouted.

  Boni looked at his daughter. Serena thought his eyes were filling up with tears. “You’re so beautiful. Just like your mother.”

  “Do you think that kind of shit will work on me now?” Claire asked. “What’s next? You’ll tell me how much you love me? That doesn’t mean a thing.”

  “I do love you”

  ‘’Do you think I won’t do it?” Claire demanded, pushing the gun harder against her skin. “Is that it? I’m your child. You know I will.”

  “If you thought it would give me enough pain, yes, I know you would.”

  “Look at us!” Claire said. “This is the family you’ve built. Look at your son on the wall. That’s what you did to him. And you know damn well what you did to me.”

  Boni recoiled as if he had been struck. “Please, Claire, don’t go there.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. Am I airing our dirty laundry in public? Am I embarrassing you?”

  “Claire,” Boni begged her. “No.”

  It was as if Claire smelled a wound and steered for it like a shark. “You knew what that bastard did to me.”

  Serena didn’t know who Claire was talking about, but Boni obviously did. He was visibly shaken.

  “It was a terrible misunderstanding,” Boni said.

  “Misunderstanding? You accused me of being drunk. You said I led him on. You knew that was a lie.”

  “I didn’t want to believe what he had done to you.”

  Boni raised his arms, reaching out to her, trying to touch her. Claire stepped back and flung the gun into the pool, where it splashed into the opaque water. She screamed, “He raped me!”

  “Claire, we can’t talk about this. Not here.”

  “Oh, no, no, of course not. It might endanger the empire. It might hurt him. My God, he raped your own daughter, and you covered it up”

  “I’m so sorry. So very sorry.”

  “You had a choice. Me or him. But that was never a choice, was it? It’s always been him. Everything you’ve ever done, it’s been to protect him.”

  Who? Serena wanted to shout.

  “We talked about this,” Boni said. “You told me you understood.”

  “Of course I understood. I was asking you to expose a lifetime of lies. You would have lost everything. Gone to prison. So I was the good girl, and I shut up. I shut up, even though I had nightmares for years. I shut up, even though I was sick and scared every time I saw his face. I shut up, and I saved you.”

  “It was more than ten years ago, Claire,” Boni said. “What can I do? How can I finally make this right?”

  “You can never make it right. But just once in your life, you can tell the truth. You can face up to something you’ve done. What happened to Amira?”

  Boni looked stricken. “I can’t talk about that.”

  “Why not? You say you don’t owe Blake, but you sure as hell owe me.”

  “I know I do, but you can’t ask me that, Claire. You can’t.”

  Claire looked as if she would explode in frustration. If the gun were still in her hand, Serena thought, she would have killed Boni. Or herself. Or both. She turned away, and her shoulders wrenched as she sobbed.

  Boni closed his eyes. His daughter’s pain seemed to stab him and open up old wounds. “It was him, Claire,” he said quietly. “Back then. With Amira.”

  Claire swung back in disbelief. “No.”

  Boni nodded. “That was when it started between him and me. I made him. Like some kind of Frankenstein’s monster.”

  “Mickey killed Amira?”

  Boni’s face contorted as if Claire had thrown open Pandora’s box and all the demons had flown out and scattered. As if, by saying the name, she had taken the gun and shot him.

  Serena’s mind raced, and she mouthed the word at Stride. Mickey?

  Claire stepped forward and slapped him across the face, so hard that the old man lost his balance. “You knew what kind of monster he was. How could you let him near me? How could you ask me to go out with him?”

  “So much time had passed, Claire. I thought he was different. I thought I could trust him.”

  “He’s still more important to you than I am, isn’t he? After all these years. Of course he is. This is still about the empire. The Orient. The capstone to your life, and every brick of it built on suffering and violence and death.”

  “Stop it, Claire.”

  Claire shouted in his face, her lip curling in contempt. “Mickey! That’s our big secret, Daddy. He’s been hung around your neck-and mine-for forty years.”

  Boni shook his head. “He’s still there, Claire. This doesn’t change a thing. You know that.”

  “Yes, it does. It’s over. There’s going to be a trial. Blake’s trial. It’s all going to come out. Amira. Mickey. You. Everything.”

  “I can’t let that happen.”

  “It’s out of your control now.”

  Boni’s voice was weary. “Nothing is out of my control, Claire.”

  He reached into the back pocket of his pants and pulled out a pack of European cigarettes. He slid one into his hand and then hunted in another pocket and emerged with an oldfashioned Zippo lighter.

  “Nothing,” he said.

  He flicked the lighter, and even in the wind, it threw up a tiny flame.

  A second later, on the ledge, Blake jerked up like a toy dancer jolted with electricity, his eyes growing wide. Serena saw him stagger in confusion. A stain of red opened up on his shirt, dripping in trails down his chest. Another instant later, the sound wave of a distant crack rolled across the terrace. Blake seemed to fold in on himself. He sagged, his face went pale, and he vanished backward on the long fall that led to the parking lot below.

  PART FOUR. MICKEY

  ***

  FIFTY-ONE

  Stride knew they had problems when no one took their statements on the roof.

  It was a crime scene. Shots had been fired. A man, however evil, however many others he had killed, lay dead on the ground far below them. Deliberately murdered. They should be spilling their guts now, explaining what happened and how it happened for the inevitable investigation and trial to follow.

  It didn’t work out that way.

  Sawhill arrived and took charge of the crime scene personally, which meant, for the most part, keeping people out. He spent the first twenty minutes talking to Boni Fisso, not his own détectives. The two men hugged like old friends. That was the first bad sign. Then Sawhill asked a uniformed officer to take Claire home to her apartment. Not Serena. Not Stride. Claire looked longingly back at the two of them but allowed herself to be led away.

  “You two,” Sawhill finally said. “Why don’t you go get some sleep?”

  The next bad sign.

  “You need our statements,” Stride protested blandly.

  “It can wait until tomorrow. You’ve both had a hell of a night.
Job well done. You got a mass murderer off the street. Now get out of here, and we’ll talk in the morning.”

  Sawhill smiled at them, trying to act like the proud parent, but Stride knew it was a politician’s smile. He was in damage control mode. The whitewash was coming down, painting over the sins, preparing to detonate them once and for all next week along with the Sheherezade. Stride was too tired to complain. The bandaged flesh wound on his calf was throbbing. He hurt all over. He was happy to leave.

  He and Serena went home. They didn’t have the energy to talk. They fell into bed and were soon unconscious, and the only sensation that managed to penetrate Stride’s brain was that the tangled sheets smelled like Claire’s perfume. He drifted away and had erotic dreams that were interrupted by violence, by people falling, by screams of rape.

  They slept for ten hours.

  It was early afternoon when they made it into the station. There was a buzz of exhilaration inside the building. Case solved. Cops came up to clap them on the back and congratulate them. High fives all around. Blake took a dive. Way to go. Sawhill was there, too, still smiling as he ushered them into his office. It was the same politician’s smile he had worn last night, and Stride knew they were about to be rolled.

  As he closed the door, Sawhill said the unthinkable to his assistant. “Hold my calls.”

  Stride and Serena settled into the chairs in front of Sawhill’s desk. The lieutenant didn’t pick up his stress ball; he seemed to be stress-free today. “Congratulations, both of you,” he told them. “Governor Durand asked me to extend his personal thanks.”

  They didn’t reply.

  “I don’t need to tell you how sorry I am about Amanda,” Sawhill continued. “But you got the guy. Good for you. And the taxpayers don’t have to pay his room and board for the next forty years. Even better.”