by Robert Pobi
There were a few triangular puddles on the slate-tiled terrace and he moved slowly. His hip was giving him a lot of trouble lately—he was scheduled for surgery at Cornell—so he took his time. Besides, he liked it out here with his plants. There were in fact very few places on the planet that the old man found as comforting as his garden. When he was with his plants, he forgot the rest of the world. And sometimes even himself, which was a rare thing.
He was almost at the shed when his right foot made contact with the stone and there was a click. Not the meek snapping of a twig or the crunch of an insect, but the sharp report of a mechanical device.
Not knowing why, William Hockney stopped. He stood there for a moment, looking down at his foot.
He had no combat experience.
He had never been exposed to any of the baser experiences of life like war.
He was not a fan of popular films. Or novels.
He didn’t read the product brochures from any of the arms companies he owned.
But he was certain that he had stepped on some sort of a detonator.
80
The Upper East Side
This time Lucas let the cab take him to his front door. It was coming up on midnight and he was worried that he might turn into a pumpkin. The almost snow was still falling, and for a second he wondered if they had snow in Big Bear, then reminded himself to stop. He needed his meat computer—as Maude called it—for other tasks. Like figuring out who was blowing people up.
The driver eyed him suspiciously, but every denizen of the city knew that at this hour the only people out were those unfit for mass consumption. He glanced back every now and then as if he expected Lucas to keel over.
Even before he was out of the cab, Lucas saw that the embassy next door was having another party. This time they had gas lanterns and valets at the curb. And of course, since it was the French, about twenty people were on the sidewalk smoking, champagne glasses in hand.
Lucas keyed in the front door and was met by Lemmy, who seemed both happy and depressed at the same time; he wasn’t used to spending a lot of time alone. Lucas squatted down, his weight over his original hip and knee, and Lemmy hit him in the face with his tongue. They did the I’m-glad-to-see-you exchange for a few moments, and Lucas was grateful for the company.
There was a note on the console from Dingo. He had fed the dog, taken him for a walk and a poop. And for Lucas to let him know what else he needed in the way of help while the family was gone.
Lucas was beat, and he felt like his skin was going to slip off his body if he didn’t lie down. He took the dog out back for one quick pee, then locked up the house and armed the alarm.
He filled a glass with milk, then took off his jacket and draped it over one of the stools at the island. The handcuffs in the pocket clinked off the wood and reminded him of the bag of gulab jamun that Mrs. Nadeel had been kind enough to give him. He sat at the marble for a few moments, munching on the sweets, gulping milk, and watching the almost snow come down outside.
How was this whole convoluted mess cobbled together? The components all worked on their own, but trying to fit them into any sort of a cohesive story line at this point was a lost cause. But definable problems were like that; you could write a neat and sexy mathematical formula that would answer a particular question, but as soon as you tried to apply the same formula to another—similar—problem, the formula lost its legs.
Fuck it. He popped the last honey-soaked ball in his mouth, rinsed his glass and his fingers at the sink, gave Lemmy a liver treat from his cookie jar, then went upstairs.
Tonight he made the effort to take off his clothes. He also removed his arm. But he left the leg on.
He took another shower, changed the bandages on the side of his head, then crawled naked into the sheets. He thumped the mattress with his right stump and Lemmy hopped up, did his fifty-circle samba, then lay down against his hip.
Next door, Lucas could hear the strains of a string quartet easing itself through a Fritz Kreisler piece that he couldn’t quite name because he was already feeling Hypnos tugging at his concentration. Beside him, the dog let out a sigh.
It was impossible to tell who started snoring first.
81
The Upper West Side
He could not remember feeling this cold. Which was accurate, because he had never been this cold. He wondered if anyone had ever been this cold. He checked his watch, and the vibrating dial told him that it was past four in the morning now.
Three more hours.
That’s all he had to do.
Three more hours.
Then help would show up. He had no idea what he would do after that, but calls would go out, the proper people would be summoned, and the correct decisions would be made.
Three more hours.
He had tried yelling, of course. And the yelling had turned into hollering. Then the hollering had morphed to screaming. By which time his voice gave out.
But there was no one to hear him. The help had been sent away for the night; his brother’s apartment—the floor below his—was empty now that Seth had been murdered. And William Hockney had very strict rules about being bothered when he asked to be left alone.
From up here, above the city, no one could hear him scream—not his neighbors; not the occupants of the other buildings; not the people walking on Central Park West at this late hour; not the armed security guards his people had posted in the alley, at the front door, and in the garage; not even the reporters who were lined up three bodies thick down at the entrance hoping to get a glimpse of him.
The snow was still falling, but it was really nothing but slightly gelled rain that melted as soon as it hit him. He was soaked through and shivering.
His leg felt like it wasn’t there anymore, except to send him a jolt of pain every now and then. It had started shaking not long after he had stepped on the device. After an hour in, it started to cramp up. Then the numbness set in. And he couldn’t shift his weight because there was every reason to believe that the thing beneath his foot was weight-sensitive. But now he was shaking uncontrollably from the combination of muscle fatigue, a bad hip, cold, and terror.
Three more hours.
Three.
More.
Hours.
Three.
More.
Hours.
He was over halfway there. And for the past two hours he felt like he couldn’t do another minute. So he knew he could make it until his butler arrived in the morning. Mr. Svensen had not been late a single time in his twenty years of service.
William Hockney had weathered storms that would have dissolved lesser men down to their primordial components. He had battled dragons, vanquished armies, overthrown kings. He was special. Maybe even invincible. So why could he not simply stand here for another three hours? How difficult could it be?
He was old.
He had a bad hip.
He had a pacemaker.
But he had something else—the DNA of titans.
He did not think about what would happen when his butler arrived. He focused only on the goal. Which was to stay alive for three more hours.
82
The Upper West Side Sunrise
AmFetaMeen walked naked into the kitchen. There were two chicks passed out on the sofa, their arms around each other, a single tit hanging out of a silk blouse. Most of the coke had been hoovered up, but what hadn’t now frosted the glass coffee table between the ashtray and bottles of Stoli and rolled-up hundred-dollar bills and cell phones and condom wrappers.
He paused in front of the big window that faced north, and something dropped down from the roof. It took a second for his brain to register that he was looking at a … a … was that a fucking drone?
AmFetaMeen grabbed a pillow and jammed it over his junk; he had enough trouble as it was. Fucking #metoo had put a serious dent in his income and he didn’t need photos of his cock on the cover of the New York Post under the headline DJ Flaunts King Kon
g Ding Dong Morning After Acquittal. That would be some kind of bullshit.
But the drone didn’t hover in front of his window. It crossed the street, stopped just before hitting the wall of the building, then rose up, hugging the bricks like a spider.
AmFetaMeen watched it, mesmerized. He knew he was still fucked up. Nothing was worse than a coke hangover. Except not being able to scare any up when you needed it. But he felt like the inside of an old shoe. His head hurt. His mouth tasted like dirty ass—the bad kind. But he couldn’t stop watching that drone. He wondered if it had anything to do with the crowd of reporters camped out across the street last night. One of the mile-highers in that building must be in some kind of shit, he reasoned. Otherwise, why all the fuckers with the cameras and poor style sense milling around like they were waiting for the food bank to open?
AmFetaMeen scratched his ass, then saw the drone stop at the terrace at the top floor. It hovered, no doubt eyeballing something, and he remembered the telescope.
It was in the corner, with a bra and two pair of panties hanging off it that he didn’t bother to clear away. He tilted it up and screwed the eyepiece into his socket. Everything was upside down—he never could get that fucker right side up, even when he rotated the thing 180 degrees—more bullshit. So he moved around to the side and refocused through the eyepiece. Now the image was at a 90-degree angle, which was good enough.
An old man stood on the balcony across the street. He looked fucked up. Like big-timey fucked up. He musta had a stroke or some shit because his face was making all kinds of weird expressions, like he was crying and coming all at once. And he was shaking. Holy fuck nuggets was he shaking. Like a dog taking a shit.
He turned his head. Saw the drone.
Reached out.
Then he grabbed his chest and took a step back and—
What the fuck?
The old man was gone.
Just.
Fucking.
Gone.
A red mist hung in the air.
AmFetaMeen backed up as the drone swung back across the street and out of sight over the roof above him.
Maybe he should call someone. Who? His manager? Fuck, no. The cops? Sure. The cops made sense. That’s who you were supposed to call when bad shit happened, right? And being blown up was considered bad shit, no?
Then he looked around at the room—at the coke and booze and passed-out chicks—and decided that the last thing he needed was a bunch of cops poking around.
More bullshit.
Fuck it.
He walked into the kitchen, pulled a bottle of Gatorade out of the fridge, then went back to the bedroom.
But not before giving that bitch’s titty a squeeze.
83
The Upper East Side
The insectine chirp of his cell phone woke him up and he rolled over, jamming his eye socket straight into Lemmy’s snout. The dog licked him, then stretched as Lucas sat up.
“Thanks, dummy,” he said, and reached over the dog for his phone.
It was Kehoe’s number. Lucas thumbed the screen. “Dr. Page,” he said with forced calm.
Just then, the doorbell rang.
“Why aren’t you answering the door?” Kehoe asked.
“Because I’m answering the fucking phone.” Lucas hung up and swung his legs out of bed. The sheet was wrapped around his prosthetic and the dog’s weight kept it anchored, and Lucas almost spilled onto the carpet. “Jesus, dummy, move!”
Lemmy gazed over at him with big soulful eyes, then stood up and stretched, pushing all one hundred and twenty-five pounds in different directions for a few twangy seconds. Then he deigned to get off the bed.
Lucas lifted his arm off the stool beside the bed, snapped it in place, but didn’t stand up; his ribs felt like they were connected to an African beehive. After a few deep breaths, he somehow made it to a standing position without falling over or throwing up. He refocused on the task at hand.
Why was Kehoe here?
If Whitaker was dead, he didn’t want to go downstairs feeling like Mary Shelley’s creation. His teeth were less swampy than yesterday morning, but he headed into the bathroom to brush out the funk. Once again, he was surprised at the battered character staring back from the mirror. But apparently people loved you for what was on the inside, not the outside. Or at least that’s what all the screenwriters said.
By now Lemmy was downstairs barking at the front door.
Lucas pulled on a pair of jeans and a shirt that he didn’t bother buttoning, then headed down to the main floor, trying to ignore that his eyes were burning like the batteries in his head were leaking.
He shooshed Lemmy away from the door and opened it.
Kehoe stepped in without being asked, followed by two of his men—one was the monstrous Otto Hoffner, who looked like he had just finished eating a breakfast of car doors. The other was not quite as large, but he made up for it with exaggerated body language and a scowl.
Lucas stood in the entry with his hand on the doorknob. “Did I say come in?”
Hoffner and his companion ignored Lucas and walked through the main floor, like a pair of directors trying to figure out where to put the camera. Or home invaders casing the joint.
Kehoe walked into the den and Lucas said, “What the fuck?”
Hoffner turned to Lucas as if he might be a threat and Lucas said, “I’m sorry, moron, is English your second language? I can speak slowly if you want.”
From off to their left, Lemmy chimed in with a low-frequency growl that had Hoffner’s hand unconsciously inching toward his holster.
“You shoot my dog in my house, you better save a second bullet for yourself.” Hoffner took a step back.
“Page?” Kehoe called from the living room.
Lucas decided that he needed to cool off before he started screaming. “I have to take Lemmy out for a pee.”
He passed not-Hoffner on his way to the back door and uncharacteristically let his emotions get away from him, swinging his metal hand into the man’s thigh. There was a satisfying connection of aluminum with flesh and a grunt. Fuck these guys.
He sent Lemmy out into the yard and watched while the dog pulled his morning routine, complete with another chrysanthemum-destroying poop. It was back to raining now, and the small plot of grass was wet. Lucas realized that all kinds of unexamined emotions were bubbling up, not the least of which was a good dose of resentment. Last year Kehoe had polished off his Dr. Caligari routine to get Lucas back. And it had worked. Then he had done it again in Montauk last week. Again, Lucas had bought it. But not because of Kehoe’s clumsy attempt at manipulation—no, he had gone back because he missed the work. He missed the way his mind fired up some inaccessible computational software that was available to him only out in the field. He missed the excitement and the stress and the fear and the whole fucking thing. But he refused to be used. Or lied to. And he wasn’t going to let Kehoe pull any of that stuff on him again.
When the dog finished, Lucas waved him inside and wiped his paws down, gave him a liver treat from the big cookie jar, and asked him to go lie down on his pillow. Then Lucas went back to the den to rewire their relationship—he was going to put Kehoe in his place. And then throw him and his two flunkies out.
Back in the den, Kehoe was scanning the library.
“Is Whitaker all right?”
Kehoe waved the question away. “Did you go see William Hockney last night?”
Lucas stared at him. “Why?”
“Answer the question.”
“My downtime is none of your business.”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
“You can take that as whatever the fuck you want. Why are you here, Brett?”
“I have a man who can place you at Hockney’s last night. You remember a big ugly guy? Head like Shrek?”
He couldn’t stop himself from saying, “Beauty’s on the inside.”
It was evident from Kehoe’s expression that he wasn’t in the mood for
any bullshit. “Hockney’s dead. Someone blew him up.”
Lucas let the information surge through his chips for a few thumps of his heart, and it upset him. He and William Hockney were not friends. And he most definitely saw the world through a different prism than the old man did. But he hadn’t deserved to die like that. At least not for any reason Lucas could think of. That he had known Mrs. Page no doubt added some undeserved weight to the news of his death.
But at least this meant that Kehoe wasn’t here to deliver bad news about Whitaker. “You fired me, Brett.”
“I was wrong. You were right. It wasn’t only Frosst. And it wasn’t William Hockney. There’s someone left.”
“Maybe Hockney committed suicide.” He hated himself when he got like this, but sometimes he gave in. “Why are you here, Brett?”
“Why were you at Hockney’s?”
“I wanted to talk to him.”
“It doesn’t look good that you were there, Luke.”
“Maybe you should go next door.”
Kehoe looked perplexed. “Why?”
“Because maybe someone there gives a shit what you think.” He headed into the kitchen.
“Where are you going?” Kehoe asked.
“I can’t deal with any more of your stupidity until I’ve had a coffee.”
Kehoe followed him. “How long were you at Hockney’s?”
“Ask Shrek.”
“I’m asking you.”
“Look, get a crew down here, swab my hands. My suit from yesterday is still upstairs. See if I test positive for nitrates, explosive residue, or any other chemicals besides Tylenol.” Lucas was working on filling a coffee filter.
