A pause in the conversation. Marlene checked her watch. It was taking them a damned long time to respond. Walker said, “I should go back and watch the service entrance.”
“Yeah, go. We’ll wait here for the cops,” Marlene agreed.
Walker left the car and loped through the traffic, disappearing around the corner.
“A good guy,” said Segovia. “He’s tickled about the stock. He wants to buy a boat when we can sell it.” He shook his head. “It’s amazing. I never thought I’d be hanging on the damn stock ticker. Every time I come home, Stella says, ‘Hey, we hit fifty-eight and three-quarters today,’ or whatever.” He looked at her, grinned. “Hell, if I’m happy with twelve hundred shares, you must be out of your head.”
Marlene did not want to discuss the money, however. “You going to get a boat, too?”
“Me? Uh-uh. Stella’s got that earmarked for the college fund. How high do you think . . .” He stopped, stiffened, stared across the street. “Oh, shit! There he is.”
Marlene followed his gaze. Through the moving cars she could make out a short man in a red jacket and baseball hat. It was the familiar livery of a large Madison Avenue florist, and naturally the man was carrying a long white box wrapped in red ribbon. The man had the hat pulled down low, but she saw the eyeglasses and the familiar profile. Jimmy Coleman. He was carrying his flower box in a peculiar manner, narrow end against his chest, left hand high, right hand low and hidden underneath. A thought flashed through her mind: people don’t carry flower boxes that way; that’s the way they carry rifles.
Segovia popped his door. “I’m going to nail the little fucker,” he said, and was out of the car and dodging across the street before Marlene could say a word of warning. Without thinking, she snatched up her bag and followed him. She had to wait for a couple of trucks to go by, and while they passed and she bounced on her toes in frustration, she heard the first shot.
Holding up her hand, she crossed in front of a cab, made a car slam on its brakes and honk furiously. When she got clear of the roadway, she saw the doorman lying in a heap at the entrance to the Daumier with a dark stain spreading on the back of his maroon uniform coat. She ran into the lobby just in time to see Coleman shoot Wayne Segovia through the chest and disappear into the mail room.
Marlene knelt beside Segovia, who was gasping and expelling bits of bloody froth. She yanked off his tie, popped open his shirt. In the right side of his hairless, tan chest was a red-black hole just southeast of the nipple. Hideous, bloody foam was drooling from it, and every labored breath produced a raw plumbing noise. Osborne had insisted that everyone who worked in the field take a serious first-aid course every year, and so Marlene knew immediately that this was a sucking chest wound and that she had to get something to patch it or Wayne would die of anoxia in a few minutes. Something airtight, waterproof . . . She upended her bag and studied the jingling heap that fell out onto the floor. Lipsticks, compact, wallet, date-minder, cell phone, pack of tissues with one remaining, a folded sheaf of twenties. She shoved the twenties inside the tissue package, held it to the wound, hard. The sucking noise diminished. She yanked off Wayne’s tie, ran it under his body, and bound the expensive dressing into place. Then she called 911 again and demanded an ambulance for two or more, reported the shots fired, and briefly described an incipient hostage situation. Nine one one wanted to chat some more, but she cut them off.
“Hang in there, Wayne,” she said. “The cops and the ambos’ll be here real soon. I’m going after him.”
She rose. He grunted something, waved weakly at his left chest.
“Oh, right,” she said, and removed Segovia’s pistol, a serviceable Beretta nine, from its shoulder rig. Then she headed for the elevator.
When she got to seventeen, the small lobby was empty, but the door to 1702 hung ominously open. Inside the door was the hapless Pete, lying in a blood pool of unlikely extent, a surprised expression on his dead face. The flower box, with its red ribbon, lay discarded beside the body. Coleman certainly didn’t need it anymore.
Marlene ran directly to the hallway that led to Kelsie Solette’s bedroom. Another body lay on its side, half out of one of the bedroom doors, a woman, blonde, spiked hair. Marlene’s heart froze. She knelt. No, not the client, someone else, a girlfriend of the band’s, a groupie. Marlene checked the bedroom. A man lay half-sitting against the bed, his head lolling, his T-shirt black with blood.
Marlene moved on, holding the pistol in front of her. She had not touched a weapon in over two years, except for the firing practice Osborne demanded. She had stopped carrying. She had sworn an oath that she never would again. She nudged the door to the master bedroom open with her foot. There was the bed, and she could hear the frightened yips of Kelsie’s dog, but muffled as through a door. The room was L-shaped, she recalled; a little corridor led to a dressing table and, beyond that, to the private bathroom.
She paused at the corner of the L and looked around it cautiously. He was sitting there, at the little dressing table, with his rifle across his knees, talking in what sounded like a reasonable voice to the closed bathroom door. Marlene examined the weapon. Some kind of cheap military-surplus job, a Mauser bolt-action with a box magazine, the stock and barrel cut down to about eighteen inches, and wrapped roughly with silver duct tape. A deadly piece of shit, she thought, like its owner.
Who was toying with the cosmetics spread in messy array across the table. As he talked, he occasionally lifted an item to his face and sniffed. He was in paradise, along with his beloved, surrounded by her intimate life and her scents. “Kelsie, I love you. Don’t you understand that? I’m the only one in the world who really loves you.” From behind the door, nothing but yapping.
Marlene said, “Jimmy, put the gun down on the floor.”
He turned his head. She saw that his glasses were fixed with Scotch tape at the temples. He licked his lips.
“Jimmy, real slow now, grab it by the barrel with your left hand and lay it on the floor. Come on, it’s over now.”
She could see it working in his eyes before it happened. He stood, whirled, fired a shot through the bathroom door, and Marlene shot him neatly through the right shoulder. He staggered, went down on one knee, still clutching the weapon. He rested the sawn-off butt on the floor. Marlene heard the bolt work, heard the tinkle of the spent round. She rushed forward. His back was toward her, but she could see what he was doing.
“Jimmy, please put it down, please—” she cried, stepping closer, bracing herself to kick the stock of the rifle.
Coleman called out, “I love you, Kelsie!” He had the muzzle under his chin, and when he pulled the trigger, it blew his blood and brains all over Marlene.
Lucy Karp handed the priest, Mike Dugan, a Phillips screwdriver. An associate pastor at Old St. Patrick’s on Mulberry Street, he was lying on his back with his hands deep in the entrails of a beat-up Champion UH-100 commercial dishwasher someone had donated to the parish kitchen. St. Pat’s was Lucy’s regular church, although she had not been by as often in recent months and had switched her volunteer work entirely to Holy Redeemer. A pang of guilt here. Father Dugan had been her main man in the religion area ever since her first communion, and she did not want him to feel abandoned. Or so she imagined. In truth, she was feeling abandoned herself.
Dugan slid out from behind the monster and grinned at her. An odd bird, this one. He was a Jesuit, had been on the staff of the vicar-general in Rome, and then had fallen, badly, no one knew why, ending up as a second fiddle in a pokey New York parish. Brilliant and mysterious, which is why the mother doted on him, and the daughter, too. He had a broad, lumpy Irish face, a shock of black hair, and blue eyes of the kind called penetrating, although they only penetrated on rare occasions. Mostly they skipped over the surface of life with an amused and kindly look, as now.
“I think we got it, kid,” he said, standing, stretching, groaning theatrically. “Be a priest, Michael, me dear mother said to me, be a priest and you won’t
be breaking yer back like yer father and grandfather before ye. And look at me now!”
“Oh, the shame of it, Faather,” replied Lucy, falling in with the shtick. “And all for a dishwasher.”
“Yes. In the old days, the Church didn’t need dishwashers. We had nuns!”
“So ye did, and they were happy to do it, the good sisters. Oh, the holy Church is in a sorry way, Faather.”
The priest put his finger to his cheek and applied an impish expression. “Well, we have to see if the blessed thing works, and to do that we need some soiled dishes, do we not? And how do we soil dishes? Why, by eating off them, that’s how.”
“Ah, Faather, ’twas not for nothing that you read Aquinas for years and years.”
The priest walked over to the refrigerator and peered in. “Ah, Mrs. Camillo has left one of her famous chocolate cakes, the lovely woman!”
“Isn’t that for the poor, Faather?”
“The poor ye have always with you,” said the priest with a dark look. “And we have milk, too.”
“Would you be wantin’ yer wee drop now, Faather? I wouldn’t mind.”
“I’ll wee drop you on your head, girl. Get us some plates and glasses.”
They ate at the table, cake set out on plates, with glasses of milk.
“Ah, this is the fat life, isn’t it?” said Dugan, smacking his lips. “Free cake, and no man to say us nay. Sometimes I sympathize with old Luther. We’re corrupt to the bone.”
The cake was too rich for Lucy’s taste, but she ate every crumb, to be companionable. They loaded the dirty stuff into the Champion and threw the switch. The machine gurgled and whirred into life, and Dugan cheered, hugging Lucy.
“Well, now, hasn’t this been the grandest day since the cardinal archbishop slipped on a dog turd getting out of his limousine?” Dugan turned to her and looked into her face. The penetration flicked on. “And where have you been hiding yourself, Lucy? We’ve missed you.”
“Oh, going to and fro on the earth,” she said lightly. “Mostly around Holy Redeemer, the soup kitchen. Doing some stuff with the homeless.”
“Well, good for you.” A pause. He smiled. “That’s where David Grale works out of, isn’t it?”
She swallowed and willed the blush to stay off her cheeks. “I guess. I mean, yes, it is.”
Dugan stared at the vibrating dishwasher. “An interesting young man. I understand he’s been in some bad places.”
“Yes.”
“Very romantic, those bad places.”
“What do you mean?”
“Oh, just that it can become something of a habit. I knew young priests like that in Salvador.”
“You were in Salvador? During the war?”
“Yes, I was,” he said in a tone that did not encourage curiosity. “Tell me, does he talk about his experiences?”
“No, not really. I mean stuff comes out. I mean we were talking about the mole people, in the tunnels, and someone said they, like, eat human flesh, and he told me about seeing people doing that in Sudan. But he doesn’t, like, discourse on it.”
Dugan closed his eyes briefly and sighed. “No, he wouldn’t. Does he go down in the tunnels?”
“Sometimes, I think. We’re looking for someone we know, who might be in trouble.”
“This has to do with the poor creature who’s murdering the homeless?”
“Yes, the slasher.”
“You think this friend of yours might be the slasher.” It wasn’t a question.
“I don’t think so, but the cops are looking for him on it.” She dropped her eyes. The penetration intensified.
“And you’re simply dying to go down the tunnels with David, aren’t you, amid the putative cannibals, to search out a mass murderer and bring him back to God?”
“It’s not like that!” Turning sulky. “And he’s not a mass murderer. He’s just a confused and scared guy.”
“Your mother is worried about you, you know that?”
“Yes. But what do you want me to do, stop my life? She’s always worried about me, and ninety percent of it is guilt. She thinks I’m going to turn out crazy and violent, like she is.”
“She’s reformed, you know.”
“Hah! Anyway, I can take care of myself. She knows that perfectly well. She imagines I’m in love or something, and I’m going to do something crazy and stupid.”
“And are you?”
This was her cue to stamp out in a huff, covering her retreat with blasts of denial, but she did not. She did not have to. Dugan was not her parent.
“Oh, not in the way she thinks. He’s not interested, and he’s too old and all, but I do have feelings. I mean literally.” She blushed again and laughed. “You know, thump-a-thump, gasp, tremble. It’s embarrassing.”
“I bet it is. And . . . ?”
“And nothing. I just suffer. But I think it’s connected in some way to, you know . . .”
“Your sense of spiritual abandonment?” he asked. She nodded dolefully.
“You don’t have ordinary connections? With boys your own age? Dating?”
“Oh, please! For starters, look at me! I’m easily distinguishable from Britney Spears, and so, you know, it’s not like I have to set up a velvet rope to keep the crowds back. Second, guys my age, they’re not interested in the kind of stuff I am. I could hang out with the nerdy crowd, but the truth of it is I’m not really a nerd, either. At least I can talk to David.” She sighed dramatically. “Maybe I should just sign up with the Ursulines and put myself out of my misery.”
“You have no true vocation,” he said evenly. “It would be something like a fraud, wouldn’t it?”
She slumped. “I guess. I guess there’s no place for me at all, except lying down in an MRI machine. Maybe I should just let them extract my brain for scientific study. At least then I’d be halfway useful.”
Dugan held his hands in front of her face, brought the thumb and index finger of each hand together and made tiny reciprocal motions with them. “You know what this is? The world’s smallest violin playing ‘My Heart Cries for You.’” He knuckled her on the top of her head.
“Ow! Oh, Faather, don’t hit me agin! I’ll be good and niver will I go behind the pigsty with Kevin O’Flaherty anymore.”
“Seriously, you lunkhead! You are deeply loved, marvelously good, gorgeously talented, and obscenely rich. You should be as happy as God in France.”
“The same could be said about Simone Weil.”
“Oh, would you forget her for two minutes! You’re not Simone Weil, who is also, incidentally, a good argument for some measure of orthodoxy. Listen to me: You were not made to run through tunnels after wretched people with the likes of David Grale. The gift you have, which you acknowledge is from God, is simply too great to risk in that way. And it’s grossly irresponsible for David to tempt you to do so. And don’t give me that stubborn look! Look, you know that St. Teresa, at age eight, went off down a road with her brother to find some Moors and get her head chopped off so she could be a martyr. Do you think it would’ve been a good thing if she’d succeeded?”
No answer. Lucy was doing the teenage clam.
“And anyway,” he added, struggling to control a temper that had often been his undoing, “Grale is not all he seems.”
That got her attention. “What do you mean by that?”
“I mean everybody in a St. Francis suit isn’t St. Francis. There’s a darkness in him that touches on unbalance. Don’t tell me you haven’t observed it? Or do the glands interfere with your judgment?”
“There’s nothing wrong with him!” she snarled with a violence that surprised her.
But not him. He sighed and put his arm around her shoulder. She stiffened, but did not shake it off.
“Okay, we’ll drop it. Just promise me you’ll be careful.”
“Sure.”
“And if you’re really interested in tunnel lore, I can put you with someone who knows them pretty well. Did you ever meet Jacob Lutz?”
“I don’t think so. Who is he, a cop?”
“No, a dweller; a cannibal, too, for all I know. They call him Spare Parts.”
“You know Spare Parts?”
“I do. He comes by occasionally to talk. We play chess, too.”
“Gosh, he’s like the king of the tunnels. I only saw him once, from a distance. What’s he like?”
“A troubled soul; like you, like me,” said the priest. “In mortal form he’s very large and stinks to high heaven, much like some of the early saints, I suppose. I’ll set something up. We’ll have tea.”
10
IN THE AFTERMATH, MARLENE LEARNED THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN WORKING private and being part of a billion-dollar security empire when there were bloody corpses to figure out. The police, for one thing, were a good deal nicer to her than formerly, first, because there was not a boss cop in the city who did not dream of a fat postcareer position with a firm like Osborne International, and second, Osborne itself swarmed the area with lawyers and other helpful people. Ms. Solette, scratchless physically, destroyed emotionally, was spirited away to an undisclosed location, with her dog. Marlene was allowed to change her blood-soaked clothes and take a shower right there at the crime scene, although not in the bullet-holed bathroom. Min Dykstra, her assistant, arrived with a change of clothes and clean undies, and a willingness to provide a broad crying surface on either of her shoulders, if desired.
It was not desired. Marlene’s first (and nearly sole) interaction with her was an inquiry about Segovia. Answer: in critical condition but still alive. The other four victims were dead, but this toll seemed to have little effect on Marlene, who drifted off to one of the three other bathrooms. She then spent a long time in the shower, so long a time that Dykstra, normally as unflappable a young woman as could be found, kept checking her watch and fingering her cell phone and listening at the bathroom door. Was Marlene having a nervous breakdown in there?
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