“You want some?” He offered a plate.
“In a while.” She sipped her coffee as he sat and started on his food. Though neither of them said much in the mornings, the silence today seemed pregnant with unspoken thoughts. Nick ate heartily, casting quick glances at his wife between mouthfuls, but her mind remained elsewhere. He continued eating for a while, then paused as she turned towards the sink, worrying her bottom lip with her teeth.
Twelve empty Rolling Rock bottles stood on the counter next to the empty Kendall-Jackson chardonnay bottle. He’d cleaned up the debris of last night’s dinner as soon as he’d come downstairs, dishes that lay forgotten as they’d set sail on the sexual tide.
“I’m married to a cop,” she said suddenly, “but I’m not going to be married to an alcoholic.”
“You won’t be,” he replied through a mouthful of toast.
“No? What about the two six-packs you put away yesterday? Or the one the day before?”
“Drinking a few beers doesn’t make me a drunk.”
“A few? Don’t kid yourself. You’re drinking every day. Beer, bourbon. And that’s just at home. What’s it going to be like once you’re working the streets? Stopping off at a bar after work with other rookies? It worries me. Cops and booze. They go together.”
“Don’t start.” He put his fork down.
“You’re turning into your father.”
Anger flared inside him. He fought to control it.
“Not true.”
“I can see it.” Her expression was firm.
“Damn it! I like beer, like a shot now and then. That doesn’t mean—” He cut the rest off, aware his voice was rising.
“Doesn’t mean you’re an alcoholic? Not now maybe, but in a few years…denial’s the first sign. Your father denied he had a problem. Now look at him, fifty-seven going on seventy. An old man with one kidney who ignores his doctor and does nothing but drink in front of the TV. A lonely, bitter fool who lost everything because of a bottle.”
“My father’s an asshole who never gave a damn about anyone or anything!” Anger knotted his stomach. He leaned towards her. “That’s not me. You know it!”
“Yes, you’re a good man. Kind. I wouldn’t have married you if you weren’t. But you’ve got the beginnings of a problem—You have problems, problems I can’t deal with right now. And I don’t want to see them pull us apart.”
The eggs tasted slimy as anger turned his stomach to acid. Angry at her, angry at himself. And as always, angry at his father. He looked down at his plate.
“I’m worried about you.” She reached over the table to take his hand, her tone softening. He flinched at her touch.
“Don’t be.”
Sandy sighed, withdrawing.
“I’ve been strong for you, but everything’s changing. And now I need you to be strong for me.”
He turned to gaze out the window, the truth in her words stinging inside. What should have been a bright blue sky was tinged green, an effect caused by the comet’s tail as it blocked the Sun’s ultraviolet rays, a phenomenon the astronomers on TV had stated was exceptionally rare. But what he felt was not. Anger, bitterness, guilt, denial were old friends, sour enemies, an extended family of conflicting emotions found in any alcoholic home. Sandy was right, and at that moment he resented her.
“I’m going to take a shower,” she said.
He continued to look out the window as she left the room, her breakfast untouched. He’d lost his appetite, and the smell of bacon now struck him as cloying. Picking up his plate, he opened the trash can under the sink and swept the food into the sack. The second plate followed. He hated to waste good food, another trait instilled in him by his mother, but he wanted to erase all signs of the breakfast he’d planned to be a quiet, reassuring start to the day. Then he picked up the vase and tossed the roses in, too.
So much for romance.
SUNDAY AFTERNOON.
It had begun.
In the wake of her celestial beauty, Comet Saracen had bestowed upon the Northern Hemisphere a terrible legacy. On Sunday, May 28th, no one knew about it yet. Well, a few thousand people knew. But those who did discover the secret of the comet’s influence didn’t get a chance to share it with the rest of the world because they were dead. Those who survived their encounter with the emergence of Hell on Earth were ignored, the stories they told dismissed as the ramblings of disturbed minds. But the tales they told were true, and the rest of the world would soon find out how deadly that truth was.
By then it would be too late.
In fact, it was already too late. While most Americans enjoyed a quiet Sunday reading the paper, washing the car, eating large brunches, or indulging in whatever they usually did on the last day of the weekend, a cancer of death was spreading with the speed and voracious appetite of a brush fire.
From that day on, there would be no rest, no peace.
Especially for the dead.
Alex Wilson was walking through Washington D.C.’s National Arboretum trying to come to grips with the fact his wife had left him for another woman. He was sipping from a hip flask of Jameson’s Irish Whiskey, trying valiantly to hold back tears and deal with the reality that three blissful years of married life had just been flushed down the toilet, when he noticed two derelicts.
Alex had seen some rough-looking street-people during the five years he’d worked in New York and the six months spent in Pittsburgh before he’d moved to D.C. with Marie. These guys, though, looked like shit wrapped in rags, he thought, as he continued to wander through the trees. Out of the corner of an eye, he noticed them move away from him and continued on his way. Shrouded by his grief and trying to ignore the throbbing pain in his chest, he dismissed them.
Why had Marie done this to him? He’d never had the faintest clue that she harbored lesbian tendencies. Leaving him for another man he could understand. But a woman? That was a joke in a Woody Allen movie. It didn’t happen in real life—not in the lives of the people he knew anyway.
But it had happened to him, and he didn’t know what to do. What was he going to tell them at the office—the truth? They’d laugh at him behind his back, make jokes. Marriages broke up all the time—but not because your wife decided she preferred pussy to penis.
Alex was concentrating so deeply on his confusion that he failed to notice that the two bums had returned and were now following him.
He didn’t even know they were behind him until the older bum hit him with a heavy branch, while the other one gouged his eyes out.
Hundreds of yards away people heard his screams and dismissed them as teenagers just fooling around.
The derelicts tore Wilson’s body apart with their bare hands and began to eat.
In the Baltimore suburbs little Tessy Leone was bored. Daddy was working at the hospital, and Mommy was asleep in front of the TV. If there’d been anything interesting to watch, she would have stayed indoors, but the day was so nice and hot that even if she wasn’t sure she wanted to play with her Barbie dolls, she decided to take them outside anyway.
She had just set Barbie’s Dream Boat afloat in her little plastic pool when she noticed old Mister Rizzo, their neighbor, wandering around his yard like he’d lost something. She hadn’t seen him for two days, and Mister Rizzo looked sick. He was very pale and had a big purple mark around his neck.
He smelled bad.
But Tessy was bored. Daddy wasn’t going to be home until late and Mommy was no fun anyway, so when Mister Rizzo asked if she would like to come over and feed the goldfish, she went with him.
She pinched her nose. The bad smell was even worse in the house. There were lots of flies buzzing around, and Mister Rizzo had a brown stain on his heinie like he’d gone big potty without taking his pants down. He did smell like poo-poo now that she thought about it, and she decided she didn’t want to feed the fishes after all.
Mister Rizzo smiled at her when she said should go home and see Mommy and he said wouldn’t you like to feed the
fishes and she said no and—
In Hoboken, New Jersey, Marc Hellier was working on his second six-pack of the day, trying to think how he could get rid of the body of the dead girl who’d choked to death on her own vomit during the night after they had been doing eight balls of Coke and Smack, when she opened her eyes and leered at him.
He dropped his Bud, spitting beer all over the dirty Indian rug.
The girl raised her half-naked body off the worn couch.
“Hold me. I’m so cold…please…hungry.”
Hellier screamed.
Des Moines, Iowa.
After months of deep depression, Sylvia Harkin decided to end it once and for all with a razor blade.
It wasn’t her first suicide attempt, but, by God it was going to be her last. She was sick of the world and all the people in it. They were vile, selfish fools. The ozone layer was eroding, there were no jobs, and she couldn’t lose weight no matter how hard she tried. Sometimes when she looked in the mirror she thought she saw a beautiful woman staring back at her. Not beautiful in the physical sense, but beautiful on the inside. Other people didn’t see that, however. All they saw was a fat, lonely woman in her thirties with a bad complexion, no job and no one to love her.
Well, screw them. They wouldn’t have to look at her anymore. She was going to take a permanent vacation with Death. Death would be her lover, and he would understand. He wouldn’t play cruel jokes on her like the kids in the neighborhood who left dog turds on the doormat and scrawled obscene things about her on the sidewalk outside her house. Death would be gentle and kind, she thought, as she wallowed in the warm bath.
As she cut her left wrist she bit her lip at the pain. Oh, how it hurt. Ow, ow, ow. And as she slashed her right wrist, she wished she owned a handgun. That would have made it so much quicker, she thought, as she watched the bath water turn red.
Thirteen hours later she discovered what a mistake the razor had been, and how Death had a far sicker sense of humor than the neighborhood kids.
Eleven-year-old Tommy Hamlyn was waiting for the stoplight, worried about being late for dinner and how his mom would be mad at him for not coming home in time, when the white Mercedes hit him.
Tommy went flying off the side of the street a mile from his house on the outskirts of Santa Fe, New Mexico, his right leg shattered by the impact, his ribs crushed like a Coke can. Two of them punctured a lung, and Tommy ended his short life in a ditch beside the road.
The driver of the car already had a rap sheet a mile long and didn’t stop.
Tommy’s last thought was of his mom and the roast chicken dinner he was late for.
When he awoke several hours later, he dragged himself from the ditch, cold, confused, and very hungry. Seeing it was dark, he set off for home as quickly as his right leg would allow him.
Mom was going to be very, very angry.
ALEXANDRIA.
6:01 P.M.
“Summer arrived in New York with a vengeance today, and with it a wave of violence,” anchor Peter Jennings was saying, but Nick wasn’t really listening.
He was slumped across the black leather couch, a cold Rolling Rock in hand, thinking about Sandy, still angry at their breakfast conversation.
The TV screen flashed footage of New York City cops closing off a midtown street as paramedics dragged away bodies on gurneys. The clip cut to a scene in the Bronx. More cops, more paramedics. More bodies.
Urban violence. The cornerstone of American society. He’d be seeing that up close on the streets of D.C. soon enough. Right now though, he didn’t care. The apprehension he’d carried since graduation took second place to Sandy.
Although he and Sandy had parted tenderly at Union Station, the interval between the abortive breakfast and her departure on the noon train had been tense. He’d wanted their morning together to be sweet, to savor the brief time from waking until departure. When she returned, there would be plenty of grief and pain.
He took a pull from the bottle. The beer was cold, refreshing, but he put it down. You’ve got a problem. Right.
He absently flipped channels, picking up a local news broadcast.
“Police are withholding further details of the murder until the body has been identified,” said the newscaster against the background of the National Arboretum. “Which may take some time, according to Detective David Quinn. The body was so badly mutilated, identification may only be possible through dental records.” Nick flipped again. So much for a quiet Sunday. Why did people do that shit to each other? He’d find out soon enough. Every rookie knew that once he stepped out onto the streets he’d be looking straight into humanity’s heart of darkness. That was part of the reason he felt anxious—a fear of unknown horrors. The main reason though, was fear of failure. He was scared he wouldn’t measure up, wouldn’t be a better man than his father.
He stopped at ABC again, Peter Jennings still droning on about more death in New York. Fifteen people dead in Harlem. Cut to footage of grieving mothers. Enough. He turned off the TV in disgust and headed for the backyard, leaving the half-drunk beer—his fifth since lunch—on the coffee table.
WASHINGTON HARBOR COMPLEX, GEORGETOWN.
08:12 P.M.
The framed photograph of Billie Holiday dominated the wall to the left of the large window overlooking the Potomac. The singer in her tight evening dress, slender and shadowy in the black-and-white portrait, contrasted sharply with the Akira on the long right wall that stretched from the entrance hall to the kitchen. A simple white block of canvas, Akira’s rectangle was bisected by a violent red arc of paint resembling the spill of blood on a seppuku mat. The image was tranquil despite the force of the color, the echo of death.
Corvino, dressed in gray sweatpants and a white silk karate gi, was by the window, reclining on a black leather easy chair, his face serene as he tried to meditate on Billie. The day before an assignment, he would focus on the Akira. The ritual formality of the painting made it perfect to reflect on, to still the mind and help focus on what was to come—the explosion of violence required by any mission. After an assignment, however, it was the photograph of the blues singer that helped to calm him, to resolve the tensions which assignment unleashed.
No one sang like Lady Day. The fragility of her voice touched a nerve inside him in a way no other musician could. Certainly, the nature of his work, the index of his experiences, didn’t encourage levity or emotional expression. But although years of killing had stripped his responses down almost to a neutral level, she reminded Corvino that he was still a man, not a machine with a gun. Indeed, sometimes he’d wished he was like Schwarzenegger in The Terminator, an unstoppable killing machine. All his life he’d had a problem expressing his emotions. Through Billie Holiday’s voice though, that human side of him found refreshing release. She sang like an angel with broken wings, a seraph gifted with a voice of glass, for he also knew that her songs of love and life were blown from an existence forged in pain, heartbreak, addiction, and death. It all made perfect sense to him, this uncomfortable duality: beauty from suffering, joy from pain.
Shortly he’d slip her Greatest Hits album on the CD player and lie there losing himself in the alluring sways of her haunted voice. For now, however, he just wanted to stare at her, trying to rid himself of the troubling thoughts nagging him, just concentrate on her beauty, frozen and immortalized by a camera lens.
But the ritual wasn’t working. He kept seeing Mitra’s flayed body on the bed, Harris and Skolomowski on the steps, the mutilated corpses inside the drug cartel house. He couldn’t banish Panama from his mind, allow the smoky image of the blues singer to overwhelm his consciousness, until he saw nothing but the photo, nothing but her dark, sensitive, sad eyes, her thick, delicate lips. Years of Zen meditation had taught him not to waste precious energies worrying about elements outside his immediate control. But his grief and confusion were so great he couldn’t concentrate.
Mitra was dead.
And so were the others.
&nb
sp; Not that he gave a shit about Skolomowski. His death gave Corvino a small measure of satisfaction. The bastard deserved it.
He was sorry about Harris, though. He’d been a good operative, yet his murder was inconsequential in the greater scheme of things. Death was a way of life for an assassin. It didn’t matter whether you were on assignment or not; there was always the chance someone on the other side, whatever side that was—the lines were so blurred you couldn’t define them anymore—could sanction you in retaliation for something you did years ago, or for an assignment you had no involvement with. Covert operatives remained just chess pieces in an endless game of moves and countermoves. It didn’t matter whether you were a pawn or a knight—ultimately, you were expendable.
Fuck it. Take it away, Billie.
He didn’t care that he was suspended pending an official investigation. He was burning out on the killing and he’d been thinking about retirement for some time. Of course, that was easier said than done. You didn’t just put in a request and collect a pension in this game. They’d use you until you had nothing left to offer them. And even then there was no guarantee they’d allow you to live out your last years in peace. If they deemed you a security risk, you ended up in a government-owned sanitarium, drugged to the eyeballs in a cell masquerading as a private room. At best, they provided you with a suite at an anonymous country club in Vermont, Virginia, or Texas, complete with swimming pool, tennis courts, Jacuzzis, and every convenience money could buy, living in a community of former operatives.
Or you took your own life like Nuemann, Jenkins, Jones and some of the others he’d known who, when they looked back on their careers, found nothing of worth in their lives.
Wet Work: The Definitive Edition Page 5
