‘Don’t you know who I am?’
‘I’m sorry, sir?’
‘Don’t you know what my name is?’
‘Sir – I regret—’
‘You can’t remember who I am but you’re here to help me. You’re still trying to think of my name but it won’t matter if you do what I ask. You’ll be able to relax. You want to relax, don’t you?’
‘Sir – I—’
‘Relax. You don’t have to worry about what I’m saying to you. I’m going to ask you some questions and all you have to do is let your unconscious mind answer.’
‘Yes.’
‘There are some packages here. Do you know who they belong to?’
‘Mrs Labrea, sir. She asked for them to be taken up to her room.’
‘What’s Mrs Labrea’s room number?’
‘Seven one one, sir.’
‘That’s very good. You see how easy it is, how relaxed you feel? Now I’m going to take these packages up to Mrs Labrea’s room right away and Mrs Labrea will be very pleased with you because you’ve done your job so promptly.’
‘Yes, sir. Very good, sir.’
Cautiously, Conor picked up the blond woman’s shopping. He handed two of the bags to Sebastian, including the Charles Jourdan shoes. Sebastian took one of them out – a strappy purple evening number – and said, ‘Look at these! They’re gorgeous! I wonder if they do them in my size?’
Sidney touched his finger to his lips. He had been watching Conor carefully and he could tell that the trance which Conor had been able to induce was very superficial. One noisy distraction and the concierge would wake up and catch them in the act.
‘In exactly one minute from now you’re going to come out of your trance,’ Conor told the concierge. ‘You won’t remember that I took Mrs Labrea’s shopping. The bellboy did it. You’ll feel happy and satisfied and not at all anxious.’
Carrying the shopping, they walked toward the elevators. Conor glanced back but the concierge had returned to his phone call and seemed to be completely unconcerned. They stood back while a small gaggle of women in Armani and Chanel came out of the elevator, leaving behind them an atmosphere so heavily laden with designer perfume that it was almost visible, like a heat haze.
‘You all have your scarves?’ asked Sidney. ‘Good. Any sign of Hypnos blowing that burundanga at us, cover your nose and your mouth with your hand, and then pull up your scarf. Stay calm. Don’t allow Hypnos or Hetti to distract you. You’re going in there for one reason only: to rescue Lacey. Also, if possible, to retrieve the papers that were stolen from Spurr’s deposit boxes. Any other consideration: ignore it.’
The elevator pinged to a stop at the seventh floor.
‘Seven-eleven’s to the left,’ said Conor. ‘Trust Hypnos and Hetti to pick a room that sounds like a convenience store.’
They hurried along the silent, chilly corridor until they reached the room marked 711. There was a room-service tray on the floor outside, with the congealed remains of fried chicken, shoestring potatoes and a Russian salad.
‘So how do we get in?’ asked Sebastian. ‘I’m good, but I’m not good enough to kick a door down.’
‘We knock,’ said Conor. He approached the door and gave three sharp raps. Then he indicated to Sebastian that he should hold up Mrs Labrea’s shopping in front of the spyhole.
There was no answer for a very long time. At last a voice demanded, ‘Who is it? Whaddya want?’
‘Concierge. I brought up your packages.’
‘I can’t see your face.’
‘What?’
‘Put down the bags. I can’t see your face.’
‘Look – I’m very sorry, sir, but I’m extremely busy here – and Fm just about to drop all these packages – so if you don’t mind—’
Conor heard a woman’s voice snap, ‘Charlie? Is that my shopping? Open the door for goodness’ sake.’
The door unlatched. Conor waited until he heard the chain slide away, and then he kicked the door inward with all the strength he could muster.
‘Go-go-go-go-go!’ he roared, and shoved the man standing behind the door with both hands. The man stumbled, hit his head against the wall and flopped heavily onto the carpet.
‘Charlie!’ screamed the woman’s voice.
Conor strode into the sitting room, with Sidney, Sebastian and Ric following close behind. The room was large and gloomy, furnished with expensive reproduction antiques. Hetti was sitting on a chair with her shoes off. Hypnos was standing by the mini-bar on the opposite side of the room, a miniature tequila bottle poised in one hand. Mrs Labrea was half rising from the couch.
‘Who are you?’ she demanded. ‘How dare yew-all burst in here like this? Ramon – take a look at Charlie, make sure he’s OK.’
‘Ramon, stay where you are,’ Conor warned him. ‘Brought your shopping,’ he said to Mrs Labrea. He took the bags from Sebastian and tossed them onto the floor.
‘Ramon – call security,’ snapped Mrs Labrea.
Ramon took a step toward the phone but Conor waved his finger at him in a ‘no-no’ gesture.
‘What is this, a robbery?’ asked Mrs Labrea. ‘What do you want, cash? I have plenty of cash.’
‘Where’s Lacey?’ Conor demanded.
‘Lacey? Who’s Lacey?’
‘Don’t play dumb with me. Where are you keeping her?’ He walked across to the bedroom, opened the door, and looked inside. The bedroom was empty, except for a peach-colored négligé spread across the bed.
‘Come on, Ramon, where is she?’
‘Not here, Mr O’Neil. Sorry about that.’
‘Then where?’
‘You don’t think that the Reverend Branch would be quite so obvious as to keep her here, do you?’ smiled Magda. ‘His mind is not so simple, like yours.’
‘Who is this yahoo?’ Mrs Labrea wanted to know.
Ramon put down the tequila bottle and stepped smoothly forward. A real stage professional, thought Conor. ‘Let me introduce you, Mrs Labrea. This is Conor O’Neil, one-time captain of detectives, New York Police Department, one-time security chief at Spurr’s Fifth Avenue.’
‘I see,’ said Mrs Labrea. She wasn’t beautiful. Her eyes were bulbous and her nose was slightly hooked, but she was so expensively groomed that she had a compelling aura about her: an aura of power and wealth and always getting her own way. A titanium magnolia. ‘So this is the man who everybody is blaming for stealing the safety deposit boxes?’
‘This is the very man. How did you find us, Mr O’Neil? Clever bit of detective work.’
‘I think you’d better leave, don’t you?’ said Mrs Labrea, picking up the telephone. But Ric came around and snatched the receiver out of her hand. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, but Ric tossed it from one hand to the other and wouldn’t let her have it.
‘Give that here, you faggot!’ she shouted, losing her temper.
‘Where’s Lacey?’ Conor repeated. ‘If you’ve done anything to hurt her, I swear to God I’ll hunt all of you down until I find you, no matter how long it takes, and I will personally dismember you.’
‘Hey – that doesn’t sound like the self-styled arbiter of justice to me,’ said Ramon.
‘Just tell me where Lacey is.’
Ramon shook his head. ‘It’s not possible, Mr O’Neil. This whole thing is much bigger than you know. Best not to make a fuss. Best to go along with it. Do what the Reverend Branch wants you to do, and then we’ll let your Lacey go.’
Conor pushed his way around the couch and seized hold of Ramon’s purple silk necktie.
‘Tell me where she is, or so help me—’
‘So help you what?’ asked Ramon. ‘What are you going to do? Hit me?’
‘Conor—’ Sidney warned him.
Magda snapped open her small black crocodile purse. Sidney turned to see what she was doing and she ostentatiously produced a lipstick. As soon as he turned away again, she dropped the lipstick and took out a small foil package.
‘
Watch her!’ Sebastian shrieked.
He lunged across the room and seized her wrist, shaking the package onto the floor. Ramon saw it and made a grab for it, but Conor punched him hard in the side of the jaw, a cracking right-hander, and he hurtled back against an occasional table, knocking over a large brass lamp.
Mrs Labrea stood up and screamed, ‘Stop! Stop! I order you to stop!’
Conor took hold of Ramon’s fawn cashmere coat and hauled him onto his feet. Then he twisted his arm behind his back in a fierce half-nelson.
‘Tell me where Lacey is or I swear to God I’ll pull your arm off.’
‘What’s the use? Why can’t you accept the fact that you’re totally fucked?’
Without warning, the bedroom door flew open and Victor Labrea appeared, still wet, with a large white bath towel wrapped around his middle.
‘You – hold it right there!’ shouted Conor, but without saying a word Victor Labrea slammed the door shut again.
‘Sebastian – Ric – go drag him out here,’ said Conor.
Sebastian skirted the couch and approached the bedroom door. He rattled the handle. ‘He’s locked it. We’ll have to kick it in.’
‘You can’t do this,’ Mrs Labrea insisted. ‘This is against the law.’
‘I am the law,’ Conor retorted; the way he always used to, when he was captain of detectives, and although Mrs Labrea probably hadn’t understood what he meant, he immediately wished that he hadn’t.
Sebastian knocked at the bedroom door. ‘You’d better come on out, sir. I don’t want to lose my temper. You haven’t seen me when I lose my temper.’
There was no answer, so Sebastian carried on knocking, even more furiously. ‘You’d better come out, I’m warning you!’ Victor Labrea opened the door, stiffly pointing a Beretta 9 mm pistol with a silencer. He shot Sebastian straight through the upper arm, ffwhutt! and a piece of bright red muscle slapped against the dado. Sebastian collapsed onto the carpet, shuddering like a run-over stag.
Ric howled, ‘Sebastian!’ and vaulted over the couch. Victor Labrea fired again, hitting him in the shin. Ric rolled over with a feminine cry of pain.
Conor held Ramon in front of him and held up his hand. ‘Labrea! Drop the weapon! Drop it on the floor now!’
Victor Labrea said nothing. There was an expression on his face of swollen contempt. He had watery blue eyes, a sweeping-brush mustache, and cheeks that were blotchy with broken veins. Still wearing his bath towel, he stepped over Sebastian and put his arm around his wife’s shoulders, ushering her back toward the bedroom.
‘Come on, Labrea, we need a doctor here! Do you know who I am?’
Victor Labrea took two or three deep breaths, and then wheezed, ‘Sure I do. I know exactly who you are. You’re one of the lowest creatures on God’s good earth. You’re a blasphemer and an adulterer. What gives you the right to break into my private hotel room and terrorize my friends and my wife?’ He glanced toward his bodyguard, still lying by the door. ‘Charlie?’ he called. Charlie groaned and tried to lift his head, but Conor had obviously concussed him.
Ric, behind the couch, was weeping from pain. Sebastian was suffering in agonized silence.
Conor said, ‘I’m going to call for the paramedics.’
‘You’re going to stay where you are and do nothing until the rest of my people get here.’
‘Or what?’
‘Or else I’ll shoot you, too.’
‘Right through Ramon?’
‘If that’s the way it has to be.’
‘Well, muchas gracias,’ said Ramon.
Sidney stepped forward. ‘Can’t we come to some arrangement here?’
Victor Labrea gave him a poisonous glare. ‘What are you-all talking about – “arrangement”?’
‘Think about it, Mr Labrea. You’re in a real bind here. You’ve just shot two unarmed men.’
‘This is my hotel room. I’m entitled under the law to defend myself.’
‘Well, sir, to be frank, what you’ve done here goes way beyond the bounds of self-defense, even in New York. Surely you want to resolve this matter without any more unpleasantness.’
‘So? So? What do you suggest?’
‘I want you to calm down, that’s all. Right now you’re very excited and you don’t enjoy being excited. It makes your heart beat faster but you want your heart to beat slower … and slower … and slower. You want to relax.’
‘Don’t listen to this guy, Mr Labrea,’ Ramon interrupted. ‘He’s one of the best hypnotists in America. Don’t you realize what he’s trying to do to you?’
Conor forced Ramon’s arm so far up that his fingers touched the back of his hair. Ramon said, ‘Shit, O’Neil, that hurts!’ Victor Labrea pointed his gun at them, and then at Sidney.
‘You think you can hypnotize me, old man?’
Sidney shook his head. ‘I was trying to defuse the situation, that’s all. I wanted you to relax, so that you wouldn’t do anything you might regret.’
‘You think you can make a fool of me, is that it?’
‘My only intention, Mr Labrea, is to pour oil on troubled waters. I want you to think of one of those times in your life when you felt most at peace. Think back, tell me about it.’
Victor Labrea was silent for a moment. His eyes were quite blank and gave nothing away. His tongue was running around inside his mouth as if he were trying to dislodge food particles left over from lunch. Then he shot Sidney in the chest, twice. The impact forced Sidney to take two or three steps backward. He turned to Conor, looking vaguely baffled. The front of his shirt was suddenly flooded with scarlet.
‘He’s killed me,’ he said. He dropped onto his knees. Then he toppled sideways, hitting his head against an armchair.
Conor’s vision was blotted out with rage. He forced Ramon across the room in front of him and collided with Victor Labrea so violently that Labrea was thrown against the opposite wall. He rolled over, losing his bath towel as he did so. That split second of vulnerability was enough: Conor pushed Ramon down on top of Victor Labrea and made a grab for his gun. He managed to grasp Labrea’s hand but couldn’t pry his fingers apart. A shot hit the ceiling, and another shot ricocheted off the radiator. Ramon tried to struggle free but Conor gripped his thick, greasy hair and banged his forehead against Labrea’s forehead, as hard as he could.
Grunting, cursing, Labrea tried to twist the Beretta around so that it was pointing at Conor’s head, but the length of the silencer made it almost impossible. For almost a minute, all three men were locked motionless, straining against each other’s muscles like a classical sculpture of Greek wrestlers. Then Victor Labrea forced his hand down and fired – just as Conor pulled Ramon’s head up. The bullet went straight into Ramon’s mouth, shattering his teeth and blowing up his tongue like a plum tomato. It exited out of the back of his head, missing Conor’s hand by less than a quarter of an inch.
Conor snatched the gun out of Victor Labrea’s grip and pressed it hard against his left temple. Labrea’s eyeballs rolled up like a frightened dog, but he didn’t speak. He didn’t beg for mercy.
Conor heaved Ramon’s body onto the carpet and stood up, still pointing the gun at Victor Labrea’s head, his chest rising and falling with effort and emotion.
Mrs Labrea stood in the open doorway of the bedroom, the palms of her hands pressed together as if she were praying. Hetti had retreated right back against the brown velvet drapes, her face as white as an oriental mask.
‘I ought to execute you here and now,’ said Conor. He was so shaken and brimming with rage that he didn’t even recognize the sound of his own voice.
‘Don’t kill him,’ said Mrs Labrea. ‘Please. You can have anything you want. Money, is that what you want? Anything.’
Conor went over to Ric, who had stopped sobbing now and was stroking Sebastian’s forehead. Conor had never seen Sebastian look so white. ‘Don’t worry, Ric … I’ll get the paramedics to take care of the both of you.’
‘I won’t dance aga
in, will I?’ whispered Ric. His face, usually so angelic, was ashy and haggard.
Conor gripped his shoulder to reassure him. ‘You’ll be OK. Before you know it, you’ll be back in Buffalo, dancing A Chorus Line. And this time I’ll come to see you.’
Conor picked up the phone and dialed 911. ‘That’s right. There’s been a shooting. Three people down, one dead. Room seven-eleven, Waldorf-Astoria.’
He went back to Victor Labrea. He was still lying in the same position, his torso sprayed with Ramon’s blood. He was still naked and he made no attempt to cover himself.
‘I want to know where my girlfriend is being held and I want to know what you’ve done with all of the property that was stolen from Spurr’s safety deposit boxes.’
‘I’m not going to tell you,’ said Victor Labrea. ‘What you’re trying to interfere with here, it’s bigger’n you, and it’s bigger’n me. It’s paving the way for the Second Coming, and whether you kill me or not, well, that won’t make a ounce of difference.’
‘If you don’t tell me right now, God help me, I’ll blow your head off.’
‘Tell him Victor,’ Mrs Labrea pleaded. ‘I don’t want you to die.’
‘No,’ said Victor Labrea. ‘I don’t believe this fellow is up to killing me in cold blood, and if he is, and this is the moment that I’m going to meet my Maker, well, that’s the will of the Lord, and who am I to argue with that?’
Chapter 21
He returned to Sebastian’s apartment with such reluctance and dread that he stood in front of the door for almost a minute before pressing the bell.
Eleanor answered almost immediately. ‘Who is it?’
‘Conor. Can you let me in?’
The door opened and Eleanor saw at once that Conor was alone.
‘Something’s happened, hasn’t it?’ she said, her hand rising to touch her throat.
Conor nodded. He entered the apartment and closed the door behind him. He had promised himself that he wouldn’t cry but he couldn’t help it. He had brought Eleanor and Sidney back together again after all these years; and now he was responsible for Sidney’s death. It was almost more than he could bear.
‘Conor, tell me,’ said Eleanor. She reached out and held his hands, both of them, and the look on her face reminded Conor of a picture which used to hang in his grandmother’s hall, of the Blessed Virgin taking Christ down from the cross. O clemens, o pia, o dulcis Virgo Maria.
Holy Terror Page 22