They were so close now she could smell Chango’s fruity cologne and the skinny one's rank body odor. “Benito, see if choo can grab her hair. I’ll get her around the waist, we’ll drag her back to that platform where we can lay ’er out.” Benito inched forward on all fours, like a dog crossing a frozen pond. “Cool.”
Sara was limited. She had only a single rail on which to stand, maintaining her balance by gripping the side supports that ran the length of the crane. She wished she hadn’t stopped carrying mace. The Witchblade played for keeps, and would probably kill these creeps if it went into action.
Benito paused about six feet away. “What’s that on her hand?”
“Whatchoo got on your hand, guapa?”
“Just a glove, boys, like Michael Jackson. For shaking hands. Who wants to be first?”
“I do,” Chango grunted, lunging forward, head down, reaching for her waist. Her right hand lashed out in a ridge strike, catching him on his cheekbone and slamming his head to one side. Chango reeled back from the blow, gripping a rail with one hand and touching his bruised face with the other. He spit out a tooth.
“That’s all right, guapa." Blood trickled from his mouth. “You just make me harder.”
The one on top got down on his belly and reached for her hair. The Witchblade shot up, index finger poking through the kid’s thorax like a leather punch, hooked around a floating rib, and yanked it loose like a car door handle. The kid gave a little sigh and slumped. Blood poured from the hole in his torso as from a faucet.
Chango got his head in her stomach and his arms around her waist and bulled her down on the single horizontal beam. The Witchblade dug for his eye with a thumb. Chango sprang back, shoving her violently, and she slipped off the edge of the beam. And as she flew toward the ground, her last thought was, Why doesn’t the Witchblade do something?
The change was instantaneous. One moment, she was plunging through the air, seeing faint stars against city glare, the next, the Witchblade had expanded to enclose her entire body in a multi-faceted carapace with a series of extensions, like dogwood petals, facing the earth. It flowed over her skin. Her $160 Prada jeans ripped. Her leather jacket shredded. Sara instinctively twisted, watching the great void rush to her face. The dogwood petals swung around and covered her front, extending, extending...
The petals collapsed. She struck with a sense of rapid deceleration, followed by an elastic rebound. She bounced, spinning gracefully through the air, the petals sprouting again and dancing around her body so that they always faced the earth. The second arc ended on a pile of steel girders that would have cruelly broken an unprotected body. The series of petals formed a heavy cilia that absorbed the collision and pushed away, not so spectacularly this time. She tucked into a roll and landed lightly on her feet, breathing hard.
“Thank you!” she blurted. She was standing in the basin of the excavation, some thirty feet below street level, surrounded by steel and concrete infrastructure, warm breeze chilling her newly exposed body. The Witchblade had done a sushi chef on her clothes. She now wore her Reeboks, panties, a thin strand of denim around her waist, her leather belt with badge, and a sports bra which she had had the good sense to don earlier, expecting action. The corners of the huge excavation receded into blackness. Looking up, she saw the outline of the crane stark against the city lights. Blood dribbled at her feet. Something grew out of the sky, a mote expanding to fill her vision. She jerked back just in time to avoid being struck by a falling body.
The wiry one, Benito, with the hole in his ribs. A shudder rippled through her as she recalled the feeling of her fmger poking through his side.
“Look out!” someone shouted from atop the crane. Her right hand jerked out, grabbed the ridge of a steel beam, and yanked her out from under a heavy piece of meat as it whipped by, grazing her cheek with blood. She stared down. The head and one shoulder of her primary assailant. She stared, trying to make sense of what she saw. Twinkle Toes had been cleaved in two, as neatly as a piece of prime porterhouse at the hands of a butcher. As she stared in horror at the cross-section of anatomy, dark organs oozing black, the other half dropped, one leg bouncing. The two parts of Chango lay together like the aftermath of a train wreck.
Sara looked up. Something glinted in the city light. A sword. A tiny figure held on to the girder with one hand and looked down.
“Sara! Oh, my God.”
Sharpe. Where had he come from? He could not possibly have seen what happened to her, and had to assume she was dead. The construction site stank of set-up. If Sharpe had been there all along, why hadn’t he come to her aid before this? Unless he wanted her dead. For whose benefit was he pretending remorse?
She could have said something. She could have called out to him, told him she was all right. She held her tongue, wanting to see how he’d react to her amazing disappearing body. Where had he come from? Where had that sword come from? What was he doing, moonlighting as a security officer, carrying a samurai sword? Was he nuts? Was he a psycho killer? She could hear him on his cell phone calling for an ambulance.
As Sharpe turned and headed for the vertical strut, a vehicle squealed its tires.
Sara stared at the neatly severed corpse and shuddered. That certainly answered one question. Was Sharpe capable of cleaving a man in two? He’d just done it. Not even the isthmus of the neck. Straight across the continent, Portland to Miami, She could hear him descending the ladder with an occasional clank as his hardware hit the steel. She burrowed back into an alcove formed by the juxtaposition of the steel beams and an immense spool of wire.
Sharpe appeared at the edge of the excavation, looking for a way down. He spotted a series of ladders descending in three stages, with scaffolding at the intervals, and came quickly down, something long, dark, and narrow strapped to his back. When he reached the bottom, he turned on a flashlight and strode swiftly, lightly to where the severed corpse lay. He shined the flashlight all around, unconcerned with his handiwork. The beam touched briefly on a third body, the one the Witchblade had hurtled to the ground.
No. Not the Witchblade. Sara and the Witchblade.
“Sara?” he said tentatively.
“Behind you.”
He whirled, keeping the light low until it found her feet. “Thank God! I’m so sorry... this is all my fault. I saw you fall...”
“I need clothes.”
The flashlight lingered a second, then switched off. “Right. Wait here a minute.”
Sharpe scrambled up the scaffolding like a lemur, returning minutes later with a soft cotton sweatshirt and sweatpants, intended for a bigger person. Sara put them on and emerged resembling a moving pile of laundry.
“Where were you while those ebolas were chasing me up the crane?”
“I was in the control booth.”
“Then why in heaven’s name didn’t you do something?”
“I wasn’t conscious.”
“You weren’t conscious?”
“I know how that must sound. Listen, it’s a long story. I called you down here because I learned something that may be pertinent to your investigation. I am so sorry about what happened... Listen, I have a problem. I had a blackout. I’ve been suffering from blackouts off and on, for about a year now.”
“Excuse me?”
“Periods of time I can’t account for. It doesn’t happen often. I should probably see a doctor or something, but I don't want to get stuck at a desk."
“Stuck at a desk? Man, you’re lucky you’re not in Bellevue! How did you ever get by the screening board?” “I have impressive credentials. My problem has never before interfered with my job. This is the first time, and I’m so sorry.”
“Derek, you’ve got a lot of explaining to do. You cut that kid in half like a breakfast sausage. You think that doesn’t make you a suspect? What are you doing with that thing, anyway?”
They could hear the sirens rising in the distance. When you didn’t hear sirens, that was a rarity.
“I’ll te
ll you. What are you going to say happened?” “Exactly what happened.”
Sharpe gestured to her hand. “Including that?”
Sara looked down and was surprised to see her right hand still enclosed in the gauntlet. Go away, she willed. It obediently morphed into the bracelet with the big stone. Sharpe stared.
“I didn’t see that.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“You going to tell me how you survived that fall?” “Maybe.”
“Okay, mutual defense pact.” He pointed up. “You see that guy wire, running between the steel frame and the edge of the pit? That’s how the gangbang'er got cut in two. And as to how you survived the fall, you see that pile of dirt?"
Sara nodded tersely.
The ambulance arrived, accompanied by a squad car. Sharpe shined his flashlight up at them and waved. “Down here!"
Five minutes later, two EMTs with a folding stretcher reached the bottom, followed by two uniformed cops from the Nineteenth. When they reached Sharpe, he no longer had the sword. One cop took Sharpe aside. The other questioned Sara. She’d seen him before—his name was O’Malley, and he was nearing the end of his twenty-year stretch. Sara told her story, omitting the Witchblade.
“I lost my grip. Fortunately, I landed on that pile of freshly excavated dirt, and it broke my fall.”
O’Malley looked from Sara to the pile of dirt and back. “Uh-huh.”
“Just lucky.”
“And how’d this one get cleaved in two like a piece of pork loin?”
“He fell on a guy wire.”
O’Malley followed her finger, shone a light on the taut cable. ®Ain’t this one for the books.”
It would never stand up to solid police work. A good cop would haul the wire down and try to match DNA samples. But there were no DNA samples on the cable, because Chango had never touched it. Fortunately, the cable was close enough to where the kid had landed as to be plausible. Given a choice, New York cops did not want to believe in Godzilla, the Tooth Fairy, or leprechauns. Okay, maybe leprechauns. By providing a plausible scenario, Sharpe had done their work for them. They weren’t going to push themselves out of shape to prove the deaths of a handful of miserable gangbangers was anything but divine justice.
Benito was easily explained. He’d landed on a rebar mounted in the concrete foundation.
More cops and techs began to arrive. Four of them climbed the crane tower with a portable stretcher, into which they strapped the hapless Tito, who was babbling for crack. As a witness, he was in no position to contradict anything Sara or Sharpe had said. He’d spent the fight writhing on the floor of the platform.
Lupe watched, dumbfounded, as the witch made mincemeat of her Tecolotes. Confident that this time, between Estrella’s efforts and her own hard work revving up the troops, she’d pulled up in front of the gates and parked. She’d seen her Tecolotes get the drop on the bitch, close in on her and then—what was that? Suddenly the witch was climbing the crane. Her boys followed, but a funny thing happened once they reached the crossbar. One by one, the bitch picked them off, until only Chango and Benito were left.
Then, just as Chango and Benito were about to sink their meat hooks into the bitch, something happened, too far away to see. The witch fell, turned into a Christmas tree ornament, and bounced. She summoned her familiar, an eight-foot demon who pitched Benito off and cut Chango in two with a glittering blur.
As the demon descended the crane, Lupe floored it, leaving a four-foot streak of rubber and a fairly reliable tire track and car signature for the cops. She was fearful and furious. Fearful that the bitch would somehow divine her identity, if she hadn’t already done so, and come after her. Furious at her failure to put the bitch away, after so much effort. Furious with Estrella for her impotency. Furious with her Tecolotes. Furious with Jorge for putting her in this situation in the first place.
It was like she didn’t know him any more. The witch had him under her spell. He was obsessed with good deeds, reading up on his karma, practically manhandling little old ladies across the street. Quoting Jesus, Martin Luther, and Martin Luther King, Jr. It was enough to make Lupe sick.
But if they thought Mrs. Guttierez’s little girl Lupe was going to fold her wings and crawl back into the nest, they were mistaken. There was more than one way to skin a cat. By now, it had become not so much a matter of jealousy as a matter of honor. Jorge was ruined for Lupe, anyway. Last night she’d practically begged him to go after the chain around the neck of a woman coming out of a green grocer’s on West 175th, and he’d just laughed. “Jorge don’t play that game no more.”
And she’d said, “You dumb greaser. You think this gon’ get you in that lady cop’s pants?”
She’d half-hoped he’d slap her. He just looked at her funny and walked away.
To hell with Jorge. If he wasn’t going to love her anymore, she may as well get rid of two birds with one stone. Jorge and the lady cop.
She drove erratically across the Brooklyn Bridge, pulling over once at Cadman Plaza to toke up from her crack pipe. When she arrived at St. Patrick’s, vespers were still going on, and she had to thread her way through a pile of vehicles to make it back into the church’s tiny, crowded lot, where there was just room to park the Cel-ica. She sat In the car lot for a minute, shielded by a van belonging to the Archdiocese of New York, and toked up again. She examined her crack stash-enough to get her through the night, if she didn’t want to come down.
And she didn’t. She nurtured her rage from a tiny spark into a devouring blaze. She reached beneath the seat and seized the pistol Bobby had left her, tucked it in her Powerpuff Girls’ backpack, and headed for home.
Finally, they were done. It was half past ten. Leaving her motorcycle locked to the command trailer’s butane tank, Sara accompanied Sharpe across the street to a Chock Full ‘O’ Nuts, where they got coffee and sat opposite each other in the church pew booth.
Sara regarded the tall cop opposite. He had to sit sideways to get his legs under the table. He looked like a fashion model. He suffered from blackouts. As if his body were being borrowed by an outside spirit.
“Where’s your sword?”
“How’d you survive that fall?”
Sara smacked her fist on the table. Sharpe looked down at the gaudy bracelet. Sara tapped it with her left index finger. “See this? You hear funny stories about me when you got here? That I’m a freak magnet? It’s because of this thing.”
“What is it?”
“Some kind of sentient biotech parasite that’s attached itself to me. No, parasite isn’t the right word. Symbiote. It’s called the Witchblade.”
Sharpe stared at the bracelet. Gently, he extended a finger and touched it, leaving a faint moist outline that disappeared as they watched. “Why is it called the Witchblade?”
“That’s what it calls itself.”
Their eyes met. Sara noticed that Sharpe's were an unusual hazel. “It speaks to you?”
“Sometimes.”
“How did you get it?”
“You remember Kenneth Irons-the auction he tried to hold a couple years ago at the Rialto?”
“I was in Yokohama at the time, but I think I read something about it. Big gangland slaying...”
“Yup. I was there, undercover. Irons was auctioning off this artifact that allegedly conferred invulnerability on the wearer, but he didn’t know the damned thing had a mind of its own. It chose me. ”
“Lucky you.”
“You always moonlight with a sword?”
“Security is mostly long stretches of inactivity. I like to work out on my own. I practice kendo and iaido, you know.”
“I saw you do a number on Bratten the other night.” “You were there?”
“Why’d you call me down here, Derek?”
“Do you know anything about swords?”
Do you? She refrained from blinking. “A little.”
“I’ve always been fascinated with them. You know Adrian Hecht has been searchin
g for a particular sword.” “A Muramasa.”
Sharpe’s eyebrows did a complex pas de deux. “This is a huge deal in the world of collectors. Most famous sword makers in history, most experts think the Muramasa of the 1300s never existed. They think he was a mistake made by early sword book writers in the 1500s, since there are none of his blades existent today. For sword people, proving he existed by finding his greatest sword would be like a UFO nut finding the Roswell spaceship in
a government warehouse somewhere. It would be about as big a deal as you could have, short of aliens landing on the White House lawn.”
“Both Bachman and Chalmers claimed to have documented Muramasas in their collections.”
“Those are later Muramasas. The thief can’t tell the difference until he has the sword in his hands. The sword Hecht seeks is called Skyroot, and was made for a rogue samurai named Udo.”
“I’m familiar with Udo.”
Sharpe regarded her with hooded eyes. “You have done your homework.”
“It’s my case.”
“1 took this after-hours gig because I think Hecht’s the samurai killer.”
“I thought of that myself, but come on. The guy’s a bazillionaire. Why would he get his own hands dirty? He could snap his fingers and have a dozen hit men at his beck and call.”
“Hecht’s not a gangster! He doesn’t know those people. But he is ruthless, and totally obsessed with acquiring Skyroot. Well, guess what? The reason I asked you to meet me was to tell you that he’s got it. It arrived two nights ago and he’s showing it at his party next week.” “How do you know this?”
“I got a snitch working Newark International. Thursday morning, around two a.m., Hecht’s private 747 touched down. They had to clear the sword through Customs. It was appraised by the Hon’amis, and valued at $3.6 million. Of course that is a very conservative estimate. It is the first Muramasa from that period the Hon’amis have recognized. This is a huge event in the world of swords and collectors, and hasn’t officially been
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