by Paul Kenyon
She wormed her hand into the loop of soft fabric at the end of the polymer line and cut it free with the little snicker blade that protruded a bare millimeter under her false thumbnail. Dangling one-handed, she kicked upward, feet together like a circus trapeze artist, to get a swing going.
Up there above the taxis and buses she swung in bigger and bigger arcs, snapping the powerful spring of her body each time. Gauging it nicely, she let go at exactly the right moment. She flew through the air in a wide curve. Her body hit the green canopy in front of the building. She bounced once on the canvas and swung herself down to the sidewalk in an easy movement. A strolling couple gaped at her.
She breezed past them with a nod and a dazzling smile. They turned to stare after her: a spectacular dark-haired beauty in a scanty sliplike garment, a gold gun butt protruding from between her breasts and her smooth creamy back bleeding from dozens of little glass cuts.
The doorman tried to stop her. There wasn't time to argue. She stiff-armed him. He sat down on the lobby floor, looking surprised.
Her eyes darted to the elevator lights at the back of the lobby. The elevator was halted at the fifteenth floor. As she stepped forward, the indicator light began to move downward.
A uniformed security guard stepped from behind a plastic palm tree and moved purposefully toward her. She smiled at him. There was only one way a dozen men who looked like hoods could have gotten past the doorman and the guard. They'd been bribed. She didn't have to worry at all about being tender with them. It made things easier.
The guard grabbed her roughly by the arm. A second later he found himself flying through the air. He landed with a thud on the floor and tried to get up. A daintily shod foot caught him under the chin and knocked him out.
Her mind had been working furiously all the while. There were five shots in the Bernardelli VB. She knew her capabilities. That meant five dead men before the first sawed-off shotgun lifted in her direction.
It was after that, that worried her.
The elevator was halfway down now, on the seventh floor. It stopped. Some tenant, walking his dog or going out for a late paper, had just found himself in an elevator with a dozen dangerous-looking strangers.
That was going to make things tough. But the stakes were too high. She'd have to do the best she could. Innocent bystanders sometimes got caught in the middle of wars.
She picked up one of the chrome-and-leather lobby chairs by the leg and dashed it against the floor. The frame went wobbly. Another blow, and she had a metal pry bar in her hand.
The doorman bellowed. He came across the lobby toward her, looking outraged. She whapped him across the midsection with the chair leg. He sat down again, the breath knocked out of him. He wasn't going to get up for quite a while.
She slipped the end of the chair leg through the rubber bumper between the elevator doors. She heaved, putting her shoulders into it. One breast fell out of its jersey triangle. She didn't bother to tuck it back in. She heaved again. Something snapped and she pushed the door open.
She looked up into the shaft. The elevator was only three floors up, coming down fast.
She gathered the muscles in her legs and sprang into the shaft. A hand like a vise shot out and grabbed the elevator guide rail. She hooked a bare leg around the counterweight guide rail next to it and braced herself. The elevator loomed above her, trailing its loop of traveling cable. In just a moment the steel roller was going to lop off her hand, crush her leg at the knee and send her falling to the bottom of the shaft to be ground into paste by the elevator.
She peered down the shaft and found what she was looking for: the terminal stopping switch at the side of the guide rail. That rod protruding from the bottom of the elevator was the switch cam. It was about the same size and shape as the pry bar in her hand.
There was only one chance to make good. She didn't dare miss.
Sighting hastily along the length of the pry bar, she hurled it like a javelin. It struck the terminal stopping switch squarely. The elevator lurched to a stop. She looked at her left hand. The sharp steel edge of the sheave had come to rest less than an inch from her hand.
Above her she could hear angry shouts. Somebody started pounding on the elevator wall. Penelope grasped the loop of traveling cable and swung herself back out into the lobby.
The doorman was getting up again. She sighed, and tapped him behind the ear with the gun butt. He dropped to the floor.
She plucked another pry bar out of the wreckage of the chair and ran up the fire stairs to the third floor. With a quick wrench, she forced the elevator door open. She sat cross-legged at the edge of the shaft and waited.
After a moment the hatch at the top of the elevator opened. The neatly creased crown of a hat rose through the opening. She moved back out of sight.
A pair of square, hairy hands grasped the floor sill in front of her. She could see French cuffs and a pair of glittering gold cufflinks. There was grunting from below.
As the mobster heaved, she helped him. Grasping his wrists, she gave a mighty pull, and landed him flopping like a fish at her feet. He opened his mouth in surprise. Her hand was a blur, its outer edge held as taut and stiff as a blade. It chopped into his throat. The larynx splintered like a cheese box. He was dead before he could make a sound.
She pulled the body away from the shaft and searched it. There was a gun in a shoulder holster: an unwieldy 9mm Browning Hi-Power. She checked the clip. He must have reloaded; all fourteen, shots were there. She laid it beside her within easy reach. Her jade green eyes glittered with anticipation. She wasn't outgunned anymore.
Down below there was a shout. "Hey, Al, give me a hand!" Then grumbling. "Where the fuck is he? One of you guys give me a leg up."
Another hat popped through the opening. She moved back out of sight again.
In a moment there was another pair of hands hooked into the doorsill. The fingers were as brown as breakfast sausages and glittering with a collection of jeweled rings. Penelope got a grip on the wrists and pulled.
"Thanks, Al," the hood said, and then he saw her.
He stared open-mouthed at the cover girl face, one knee hooked over the edge of the shaft. "What the f…"
Penelope smiled sweetly at him and pulled him sharply toward her. Her knee caught him under the chin. It stunned him momentarily. She shifted her grip from his wrists to his throat and hauled him all the way back out of sight of the elevator below. His legs were thrashing. She pressed her thumbnail with the little snicker blade into his trachea. There was a wheeze of escaping air. His eyes had a terrified expression. After a minute or two, they had no expression at all.
She relieved him of his piece, a Hi-Standard snub barrel Sentinel, and set it down beside the other gun. She sat back, waiting.
Another hat appeared. A swarthy mobster pushed himself through the hatch, as agile as a chimpanzee. Penelope faded back out of sight before he looked in her direction.
"Hey, Al! Maurice! Where the hell are you guys?" There was a pause. "There's something wrong up here, guys."
She could hear some kind of a mumbled conference. There were scrambling sounds, as if a second man had joined the swarthy hood on the elevator roof. Then another voice said, "Go on, Manny. I'll stay here and watch."
She watched the hoist cable. It vibrated like a bowstring and Manny came bouncing over the edge, looking like an ape in a double-breasted suit. He crouched in front of her, one big paw supporting his weight, the other wrapped around a cannon of a .45. He didn't waste time looking surprised when he saw her. The hand with the gun came up toward her, the knuckles turning white from squeezing the grip safety.
Penelope shot him neatly through the forehead with the Bernardelli VB. The little gun made a sound scarcely louder than the snap of a branch underfoot. Penelope grabbed his white silk tie to keep him from falling over backward. He collapsed in front of her.
"Manny, what's going on?" There was a trace of hysteria in the voice from the shaft.
Pe
nelope sprang to the door opening, the Browning in one hand, the Hi-Standard in the other, the Bernardelli tucked once more between her breasts. A thick-bodied mobster in a cream-colored fedora was crouched on the elevator roof, a submachine gun cradled in his arms. She shot him in the chest twice with the Browning. It slammed him against the shaft wall. He went down kicking. The entire clip went off, spraying the elevator shaft with bullets. After a moment there was a rattling rain of lead from above.
A head and arm emerged from the elevator hatch. A revolver spat three times, looking for a target in her general direction. She shot the man in the face with the Browning. The mobster sank back down into the elevator.
That was five of them. There wouldn't be any more coming out. She thought of the shotguns and hoped they wouldn't be panicky enough to use them in the enclosed space of an elevator.
She had to move fast now, while she had the initiative.
"She thrust the two confiscated guns into the panels of the halter top. They felt cold against her breasts. She hooked strong fingers under the collar and belt of the gorilla named Manny and heaved him over the edge onto the top of the elevator.
Instantly there" was a string of popping explosions. A fusillade of bullets ripped through the roof of the elevator. The two bodies lying on top did a little jerking dance.
As soon as the firing stopped, Penelope lowered herself to the elevator roof, holding onto the guide rail, careful not to make the elevator bounce. She inspected the two bodies. They were both a mess, but the one named Manny still was relatively untouched around the legs. No one inside the elevator had seen her. They had no idea that their invisible nemesis was anything but a man. Or men.
She got her arms around Manny's thick chest, heedless of the blood. It was warm and sticky on her bare flesh. She worked the body to a sitting position facing the open hatch. She paused to listen. Inside there was a lot of excited conversation. A small dog was yapping. It suddenly gave a yelp, as if someone had kicked it.
She pushed Manny's body, feet first, into the hatch. It hung there surrealistically for a moment, protruding from the waist up. There were shouts and gunfire inside the metal cage. Manny's body slid down. The edges of the opening caught him under the armpits, flinging his arms upward in a grotesque imitation of a drowning man going under. There was a thud below, and an hysterical outburst of shooting.
The two heavy pistols in her grasp, she levered herself over the opening, using the heels of her hands. As she dropped, she took it all in in a flash: There was a frightened-looking elderly man cowering in a corner, clutching a small white Scottie to his chest. The Scottie was barking furiously. There was Manny's body sprawled on the floor, with four gangsters firing bullet after bullet into it.
Four gangsters!
There should have been seven.
Before she had time to think about it, her lightning-fast reflexes went into action, all her deadly training behind them. The Browning .45 spoke, sending a gob of hot lead into the base of one mobster's spine as he leaned over, still firing at Manny's body. The bullet must have been a boon stopper, its nose cut off flat. Something that looked like a red custard pie mushroomed through the silk suit. The body, already dead, careened off the gilded metal cage as if someone had kicked it in the keister.
The second hood was turned half around before Penelope's next bullet caught him in the lower ribs. The expanding lead stirred his liver, stomach and spleen into an obscene stew. He tipped over sideways.
Before he hit the floor, she had snapped four quick shots from the Hi-Standard into the chest of the third man. They made a small circle over his heart, the holes less than an inch apart. His gun hand, pointing at her, fired reflexively. The bullet twanged past her, its hot passage singeing her cheek.
The fourth man was trying to bring his sawed-off shotgun up, forgetting about the revolver he had in his right hand. In that fraction of a second there was time for Penelope to feel a chill at what the shotgun could do. The hood remembered to drop the pistol when his right hand wouldn't fit the stock and trigger guard. She emptied everything she had into him before he could crook a finger around the trigger. The man stumbled backward in a series of violent spasms, oozing blood from the holes that opened up one after the other in his chest and belly. Somehow the collar of the jacket became hooked on one of the metallic leaves that grew out of the imitation trellis of the elevator wall. He hung there, his dead eyes staring, a little gilt bird perched just above his head.
Penelope wiped a forearm across her forehead. It left a streak of Manny's blood there. She threw away the smoking cannons and pushed the little Bernardelli automatic farther down between her breasts. It made a small bulge at her midriff, as if she had secreted a pack of cigarettes there.
She turned around. The elderly man with the Scottie was holding out his wallet with a trembling hand.
"Take it," he said. "I don't want any trouble."
She looked around the litter of bodies and guns on the elevator floor. The fiberboard film cases weren't there.
The elderly man said, "I mean, I've been mugged twice in this building and now this. It just isn't worth it." The Scottie growled at her.
Penelope frowned. Three of the hoods were missing. They must have ridden down in the service elevator. One man to carry the loot, and two sidemen to guard him. The nine soldati she'd just killed were supposed to make a getaway on their own.
The elderly man was shaking his head. "I mean, when they start coming after you in huge gangs, with shotguns and machine guns, then it's time to get out of this city." He waved the wallet at her. "Please, lady, just take it."
Penelope climbed the golden trellis and eased herself through the hatch. There was a body on the elevator roof, and two more spilling over the edge of the shaft. She sprang for the doorway and hauled herself up into the corridor. There was a fire exit at the end of the corridor. She slipped through the door, feeling the eyes staring at her through the spy holes on the apartment doors, and climbed the stairs all the way to the fifteenth floor.
Baynard Warren's apartment was a bloody shambles. A score of people lay dead, amidst broken glass and fallen plaster. Another dozen were wounded, or wandering around vaguely, looking as if they were in shock.
The movie equipment stood in the middle of the rubble, dented by flying lead. There was no sign of the fiberboard cases containing the film.
A freckled redheaded man whose custom-tailored denims were streaked with blood and plaster dust grabbed her by the arm. "They killed everybody," he said. "They just came in and killed everybody."
She shook him off and headed for the archway that led to the bedrooms. She found Terence in the little hallway outside the guest bedroom.
He was lying on his back, the long handsome jaw hanging open in death. There was a single bullet hole over his heart. His reddish-blond hair wasn't even mussed.
She knelt beside him. His body was still warm. She ran her fingers through his hair. His blue eyes stared up at her, unclinking. She closed them.
There were voices coming from one of the bedrooms. She sidled along the wall until she came to the door. It was open a crack. She peered inside.
Baynard Warren was sitting on the bed, his face buried in his hands. His entire body was trembling. He was making little hysterical snuffling sounds.
Mitchell Lloyd was standing over Warren, his back to her. In contrast to Warren and the dazed guests, he had no stains or plaster dust on his clothing. The lines of his body were taut and confident.
"Dead!" Warren blubbered. "At least twenty people dead. The place a wreck. I'm ruined."
"Pull yourself together, man!" Mitch snapped. "This thing can be taken care of."
"Taken care of!" Warren's voice was suddenly angry. "How the hell can you take care of a massacre like that?"
"Take it easy, man," Mitch said. "Look, the Syn is a business. A big business. They want good customer relations. They don't want bad publicity. And they don't want the cops looking into anything. They've got
a customer service department. Call 'em up. Tell 'em you've got problems. Tell 'em they've got problems."
"There's twelve, fifteen people out there who'll talk."
"Talk? About what? That they've been to a pornographic movie? That they can identify a bunch of button men? Look, the Syn knows how to handle things. I've seen them do it before. They'll send a clean-up squad. They send a public relations man along with them. The public relations man talks to all your guests. He makes sure they understand how unhealthy it would be for them to talk. They won't talk, believe me."
"But the bodies!"
"The clean-up squad takes care of them. They'll pack them up in trunks, have 'em out of here by morning. They'll even clean up the bloodstains, shampoo your rugs, patch the plaster and repaint. You get new furniture, free of charge, to replace anything that got smashed. By morning, nobody — I mean nobody! — will be able to tell that anything happened here."
"But the missing people! They'll be traced!"
Mitch laughed scornfully. "Think they told anybody where they were going tonight? Forget it! Half of them won't be missed for weeks anyway. Actors. Drifters. Weirdos."
"Terence O'Shea is big time. And so is Ray Faye."
"Ray's alive. Flesh wound. The Syn will send a doctor I along to take care of him. He won't talk. I guarantee it. His career wouldn't stand it."
"But Terence?"
"Terence has a reputation for being unreliable. Last thing anybody knows, he took off from a movie he was making in Corsica. Nothing to connect him with your party."
"Except the girl he brought here."
"Who is she?"
"Penelope Orsini, the model. Very rich. She's a baroness."
"The Syn's customer service department talks to baronesses too," Mitch said. "Go on, make the call."
"I don't know…"
Mitch's voice grew cold. "Make the call, buddy boy."
Through the crack in the door, Penelope saw Mitch lift the bedside phone off its cradle. He held it out to Warren. Warren hesitated, finally took it and began to dial.