Even if they didn’t get the number, it was bound to be a barrel of laughs.
And that was the whole idea. That was as far as it was supposed to go.
But then the Freak saw her. And from that moment on, everything started to go wrong.
They’d found her listed in the phone book. Sport and the Freak had gone to her brownstone on the Upper West Side. They waited across the street for about an hour. All they knew about her was the color of her hair.
But the second she walked out the door, they knew it was her.
“Is that her?” said Sport.
“Christ,” the Freak said. “Look at her. Christ, look at her, willya.”
“That’s gotta be her.”
“Good Christ,” said the Freak. “I mean—Jesus. Jesus, look at her. She looks like a fucking angel.”
That was all it took. That one glimpse. After that, the Freak wouldn’t stop talking about her. They followed her down to the Village, down to the day-care center where she worked. Even after they went home, the Freak just went on and on.
“Christ, the look of her. I mean, the way she—looked. You know?”
Sport got annoyed. “What’re you, in fucking love with her?” he said.
The Freak shook his head. He ran his fingers through his thick red hair. “Look,” he said. “I don’t know about this. Okay? I don’t know I wanna do this. I mean, look: it’s probably all bullshit anyway, you know. The stuff Eddie the Screw told us … I mean, think about it, Sporty. Okay, so he was a big-time drug dealer when he was with the Correction Department. Okay. But you’re gonna tell me that old piss-drunk rummy has got a fortune—half a fucking million? And he hides it away before the feds catch him and it’s still there? I mean, why doesn’t he get it himself? It’s out of a storybook, for Christ’s sake. We should forget about it, that’s what.”
“I don’t believe this,” said Sport. “You take one look at some little cunt, all of a sudden you got a bone on or something? You really are a fucking faggot, you know that?”
The Freak hadn’t said anything after that. Not for a while. He just hung around the house all day, sulky, irritable. Then, that evening, he suddenly piped up and said, “Look, just forget this, all right? Just deal me out. I don’t want any part of this.”
Sport had screamed bloody murder at him. Ditching his friends for some little cunt like that. Ditching his own fucking roommate for some pretty slash. But the Freak would not reconsider. When they moved into Manhattan and set up operations in the brownstone, the Freak stayed behind.
Or so he told them anyway. In fact, while Sport was trying to figure out a casual way to meet up with the girl, the Freak was visiting her in secret, trying to warn her about the whole thing. Unfortunately for the Freak, Sport got lucky. One day, just as he was about to walk down the alley to the place where she worked, the girl came tearing past him and stepped in front of a cab. Sport pulled her out of the way: a perfect accidental meeting. He couldn’t have planned it better. Then he went into the routine he’d worked out about being an actor and all. He even took her into a nearby theater and showed her his picture on the wall (he’d sneaked in and tacked up one of the publicity shots he’d had taken for his singing career). She came to trust him very quickly.
When Elizabeth told him a man had been bothering her, Sport didn’t even think of the possibility that it might be the Freak. The Freak might want out of the project, but he wasn’t going to betray them, for Christ’s sake. Not the Freak. Not just for some little slash.
But when the girl said the man had shown up again, Sport did begin to wonder if someone was trying to cut in on the action. Then came Sport and Elizabeth’s tender love scene in the brownstone on Houses Street. Elizabeth had flipped out. Started screaming. Told Sport he was in danger. Then ran off into the night.
That did get Sport worried. Worried and pissed. What the hell was going on here? What kind of danger was he in? Danger from whom?
Sport called Maxwell, who’d been hiding upstairs. Together, they headed off to the Upper West Side, to Elizabeth’s apartment.
It had been hard getting the girl to buzz him up. When she did, Sport went to the apartment door while Maxwell waited in the hall. Sport knocked on the door. The door opened … And Sport’s jaw dropped as hard as a baby tossed off a rooftop.
There was Freak. Fucking Freak. Standing right there in the girl’s apartment. He had a butcher’s knife in his hand, and a look in his eyes like his guts were on fire.
“That’s it, Sporty. It’s over,” he said. “I’m sticking to her. Wherever she is, I’ll be there. Understand? Just leave her the fuck alone, all right?”
Meanwhile, he had the girl barricaded in the bathroom, a chair propped against the door. She was pounding on the door and screaming. And the Freak kept carving the air with the butcher’s knife and saying:
“Just stay away from her, Sport. I’m sticking to her. Just stay away.”
Sport was pissed, out-of-his-mind angry. This was the Freak talking to him? The fucking Freak?
He reached out and tried to grab the Freak’s arm. The Freak actually tried to cut him. The Freak lashed out at him with the butcher knife; almost cut Sport’s arm right off.
But then Maxwell came charging to the rescue.
The giant creature lunged through the door. He grabbed the Freak’s wrist and Sport heard the bone snap. In another moment, Max had the knife. With one powerful slash, he cut so deeply into the Freak’s neck that Freak’s head fell back as if he were examining the ceiling. A geyser of blood shot out into the room.
And Maxwell didn’t stop at that either. Oh, no. It was Slaughterhouse City then. Sport stood by with his mouth open, watching what Max did. It was just like with the kitten: Max was just too excited. There was no stopping him now.
And in fact, Sport wasn’t sure he wanted to stop him. The Freak had betrayed them, after all. And for some cunt? Just because some slash had sweet-looking eyes or something? It was total bullshit, as far as Sport was concerned.
Anyway, the whole thing was over in seconds. The Freak fell to the floor jerking and dancing around. His arm went out and knocked the chair from the bathroom door. Out tumbled the girl, falling across the dying Freak.
But Sport and Max didn’t stay around to say their howde-do’s to her. By then, the whole building was awake. People were shouting out in the halls. It was panic central. Sport knew they had to get out of there fast. He had to get back to the brownstone and clean the place out before the cops came. He had to take his picture down off the theater wall. And then he had to get home to Flushing so that when the cops came by to tell him his roommate—Robert Rostoff, aka the Freak—was dead, he would be fast asleep, like any good boy in the middle of the night.
Sport practically had to drag Maxwell out the window to the fire escape. The big idiot was too busy watching the Freak die. Rubbing his hard-on and watching the Freak kick and tremble and die.
And so they had to get the number then. It was the only way they could escape, blow the country. With the number—with the money, that is—everything would be all right, they’d be able to do anything they wanted. He talked it over with Dolenko and Maxwell and they agreed with him. Hell, they were more scared than he was. Maxwell was practically crazy with fear. He didn’t want any part of going to jail again. And Sport told them, their only chance to get out of this clean and safe was to get the number. With the number, they’d be free.
Even then, it looked like it was going to be easy. The girl was put in the loony bin, and when Sport made overtures to the director there, Sachs, the guy rolled over immediately. Some cash, the promise of a lot more cash—that was all it took to get him going. Unfortunately, the guy turned out to be a prize asshole in the end. When he asked the girl for the number, she flipped out again. She wasn’t talking to anyone, Sachs said. She wasn’t talking at all.
Sport was pissed. He took Maxwell to see Sachs. The girl better talk, and fast, Sport explained. Sachs was in a panic. He said the only
guy he knew who might be able to get her talking again in a big hurry was the famous Dr. Nathan Conrad …
“Yo!”
The guard’s low cry brought Sport back to the present. He looked over his shoulder and saw the guard at the cruiser’s wheel. The guard tilted his head forward slightly. Sport came around the boat’s cabin and looked up along the rail.
He took a deep breath at what he saw. He stuck a cigarette in his mouth but he didn’t light it. He stood with the cigarette dangling from his lips, one hand in his pocket, one hand on the rail. He watched as the mist parted before the cruiser’s prow, as the black shadow of Hart Island grew steadily closer.
Skeeter and McGee
“Now,” said D’Annunzio.
The long-haired plainclothesman threw open the door and jumped back. D’Annunzio pressed himself against the wall, out of sight. Behind him, the plainclothesman named Skeeter did the same. All three of them had their guns drawn and lifted in the safety position.
They waited, listening. From inside the apartment, there was darkness, silence.
“Okay,” said D’Annunzio in a harsh whisper.
Breathing heavily, he went tromping into the apartment. He leveled his thirty-eight. Skeeter and the long-haired plainclothesman—McGee—came in behind him. Skeeter went to his left, McGee to his right. Both swept the space before them with their pistols. They held their pistols in two hands. They peered into the dark.
The shapes in the room before them were motionless. Standing shadows and crouching shadows: they seemed to be peering back at them.
“Get the lights,” whispered D’Annunzio.
McGee backed up until he reached the wall switch. Then the lights came on, dazzling all three. They blinked, keeping their guns leveled.
But all they saw was furniture. A table, two sofas, a few director’s chairs. The wooden floor gleamed brightly under the toplight. It was discolored in places as if a rug had recently been removed.
D’Annunzio edged in farther, huffing and wheezing. Skeeter and McGee fanned away from him on either side.
They saw a door on the right wall. D’Annunzio jerked his head at it. Skeeter peeled off. He was a young guy and his eyes were very wide and white. He was wearing shabby clothes and three days’ growth of beard. He had been undercover as a bum in Grand Central Terminal when McGee had come by to pick him up.
Skeeter pushed the door in with his fingers. Then he charged through it, disappearing into the other room. D’Annunzio and McGee waited.
Then Skeeter called out, “Empty.”
D’Annunzio holstered his gun at once. McGee moved more slowly. He scanned the room once more before replacing the pistol under his sweatshirt at the navel. He was young too but he seemed weathered and calm. He had long black hair and a handlebar mustache. He was wearing jeans and a khaki windbreaker. He had been driving a cab when he’d gotten a radio call to phone Moran.
His gun holstered, McGee stretched his face and pulled at his nose. “Whew,” he said. “Smells like farts in here.”
D’Annunzio cleared his throat and looked away.
Up until now, he’d been playing it very cautious. Even after he’d found the body of Billy Price, he’d been careful to keep the lid on things. He’d left Price’s apartment and returned to Plotkin’s. He’d used Plotkin’s phone to call in to Moran.
“I just want a couple of guys to check things out,” he’d said. “No uniforms. And landlines only. I don’t know what these guys have.” He hadn’t said anything about the Sinclair apartment. He hadn’t wanted Moran to come homing in.
After hanging up on Moran, D’Annunzio went around the corner. He had a little chat with the doorman at the Sinclair building. Until D’Annunzio mentioned the Sinclair apartment, the doorman was a tall, thin black man with bad teeth. Afterwards, he was a tall, thin green man who was sweating very hard.
“I don’t know shit about what’s going on in that place,” he’d explained. “I don’t know shit, and I don’t wanna know shit. I don’t give a shit, you dig? Because it’s bullshit. Shit.”
“Is there anyone up there now?” D’Annunzio asked him.
“No—and even if there was, I wouldn’t give a shit, you see what I’m saying? I don’t give a shit if there is, I don’t give a shit if there ain’t. It’s all shit, if you ask me.”
“Gimme the key,” said D’Annunzio.
“Shit,” said the doorman. “I’ll give you the key. You can take the fucking key. Shit on this.”
D’Annunzio took the key. Which was when Skeeter and McGee showed up in the taxi. Then the three of them had gone upstairs to check the place out.
Standing in the apartment now, D’Annunzio realized he was going to have to call in the cavalry. The thought made his mouth turn down at the corner. Once Moran got wind of this, he’d be over here like a fucking bullet. Then there’d be task force techs and brass and shiny suits. And finally, the feds, who were the worst of all of them. D’Annunzio had worked with the feds after the Castellano killing. They let the cops do all the legwork so they wouldn’t have to soil their pretty fingernails roughing up street scum. Then when it came time for press conferences, suddenly it’s Efrem fucking Zimbalist starring in “FBI.” D’Annunzio shook his head and gave a little shiver. Moran and the feds and the whole lot: they were the last thing he needed.
Off to his left now, McGee had pulled open the door of a small closet. He had his head inside it.
“Pile of clothes in here,” he called.
D’Annunzio glanced over. He caught a glimpse of the laundry in a messy mound on the floor. The closet was empty otherwise.
“Don’t touch anything,” he said.
He looked away. In front of him, in front of the glass doors that led out to the balcony, there was a canvas chair. As he stepped toward it, D’Annunzio saw a pair of binoculars lying on its seat. He waddled over to them. He stood above them, hung over them, not touching them, just looking down. It was a nice pair, a real piece of work. It must have cost someone hundreds of dollars, at least, he thought.
Hitching up his pants, he started to bend down to pick them up.
“Hey, D’Annunzio.”
The fat man straightened and turned. Skeeter had come out of the other room. He was holding up a pink stuffed animal. He was pinching its ear gingerly between his thumb and forefinger.
“I found this on the bed. It’s a Turtle Tot. My kid’s got one too.”
D’Annunzio nodded. “Yeah, great, well, put it back. You’ll shvitz all over it and ruin it for CSU.”
“Yeah,” said McGee, looking up from the closet. “One drop of stuffing from that, and the lab can tell us who its father is and everything.”
Skeeter laughed. He carried the stuffed animal back into the other room.
“Now let’s see what we got here,” said D’Annunzio softly.
With a soft grunt, he pulled his pants up over his waist. Then he was able to bend again and pick up the binoculars. He held them carefully in two fingers, but the black tubes were pebbled: he knew there would be no prints on them. He lifted them to his eyes, peered out through the balcony’s glass doors.
“Man, oh, man,” he said. “Are these fucking things powerful or what.”
He was looking, he found, right into the Conrads’ apartment. He knew it was the Conrads’ apartment because he could read the address on an envelope sitting on the windowsill. Still holding the binoculars tenderly, he swung them a little to the right.
“Okay,” he muttered to himself. “Okay. Mrs. Conrad, I presume, right?”
By looking straight through the bedroom, he could see her standing out in the hall. She was in the bathroom doorway. Probably waiting for him to come back and talk to her over the heating duct some more, he thought.
She was standing with her arm raised, her hand braced against the doorframe. Her head was lowered, her red hair hanging down in damp strands, hiding her face.
D’Annunzio pursed his lips as he looked at her.
“Nic
e tits,” he said.
Skeeter came hurrying back out of the bedroom. “What? What?”
McGee came out of the closet, moved toward D’Annunzio. “Let me see,” he said.
Specter
Aggie had not expected the buzzer. She’d been standing in the bathroom doorway, waiting for D’Annunzio to start talking through the heating duct again. She was still standing there when the front-door buzzer sounded. She was still standing with her arm raised, her hand braced against the bathroom doorframe. Standing with her head hung and her hair falling in tangles about her face. She was staring at the doorsill, not crying anymore, just staring, feeling wrung and dry. Her anxiety—the thick, twisting grip of her constant anxiety—had wrung her and wrung her inside. She could not cry anymore. She could just stare, just waiting, while it kept twisting her. And then the buzzer rang.
She closed her eyes at the sound. She shook her head. Wearily, she blinked and lifted her eyes. She looked up at the high corner of the bathroom wall, at the heating grate, as if toward heaven. Her lips trembled, but her eyes were dry.
The buzzer stopped. A fist rapped against the door sharply. “Mrs. Conrad. It’s Detective D’Annunzio. It’s all right. You can open up now.”
She swallowed hard but the thing in her throat would not go down. Her heart was hammering so fast she thought it would kill her. She straightened, letting her hand slide off the jamb. She brushed the hair off her forehead. She looked around her as if she did not know where she was. She moved slowly out of the doorway. She shuffled slowly down the hall.
D’Annunzio kept knocking. “Mrs. Conrad?” He kept calling to her. He had a rough rumble of a voice. She recognized it from the heating duct. He kept calling and calling.
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