by Paul Kenyon
The Baroness drifted through the loft for the next hour, as elusive as a shadow, always giving the impression of being on her way somewhere else when someone tried to grab her. She kept a drink in one hand, but sampled it sparingly. She had a hunch she was going to need all her wits, all her lightning reflexes before the night was out. The black cigarette holder was always ready in her hand, with a muggle or an ordinary cigarette alight in it.
The place was cluttered with painting and sculptures, the work of the artists who lived in the loft building. Most of them were abstractions, smeared across large expanses of canvas or plywood. Penelope stopped at one, a depiction of a fifteen-foot strip of bacon. Next to it was a twelve-foot ham.
"That's my early work," a voice said at her elbow. "Meat art I call it."
She turned. A little man with a wispy beard was beside her. "Interesting idea," she said.
"You think so?" he asked eagerly. "Now I'm doing the real thing — painting sides of beef, chickens, hog carcasses. They're meant to be viewed for only a few days, before they go gamy. It's a protest against the impermanence of society. I call it the art of decay."
He gestured toward the opposite wall. A dozen animal carcasses and sides of beef hung suspended from meat hooks. They'd been daubed with paint.
Another artist came over. This one was big, young, and hairy. "That's crap," he said. "This is the wave of the future." He pointed to an eight-by-four panel of raw plywood.
"But you haven't painted anything on it," Penelope said.
"Look again," he said triumphantly.
She bent closer. It was an eight-by-four sheet of canvas, meticulously painted to look like plywood.
"And take a look at this one," he said. It was a blank sheet of canvas. Penelope squinted in the dim light and saw that it actually was a square of plywood, painted to look like canvas.
"Mr. Cremona promised to pack and ship the whole collection tomorrow," the little man said. "He's our landlord, you know. He's been very nice."
He pointed to a stack of packing crates farther down the loft. It towered a good fifteen feet off the floor, enough to house twice the number of paintings she could see.
She went over to examine the crates, leaving the two men arguing about art.
None of the crates was smaller than six feet in length or two feet in depth. The shipping lables were already pasted on. They were going to a place called Sunny Rest in New Jersey. Penelope frowned. It didn't sound like a gallery.
She found a window and peered down into the street. Three enormous moving vans had parked there since she'd entered. The lettering on the sides read: CREMONA AND SONS. FAMILY MOVERS.
The drivers were lounging around outside the cabs, smoking. She frowned again. If the paintings weren't going to be shipped till morning, what were they waiting for?
"Enjoying the view?" a voice said.
She whirled around. It was Vic, the detumescent bodyguard.
"Hello, Vic," she said. "Don't tell me I'm getting a rise out of you."
His face grew dark with fury. "For a broad who was so interested in action, you haven't been doing much of anything so far."
"I'm getting in the mood, Vic dear." The cigarette in the holder was a joint. She sucked the acrid smoke sharply into her lungs. Vic's eyes followed her chest expansion.
"Something wrong here, Vic?" It was Cremona himself, stepping out from behind the pile of packing crates.
"This lady's more interested in the view outside than what's going on here, Mr. Cremona. I been watchin' her. She's just been walking around nursing a drink. She talked to the artists, that's about all."
"So," Cremona said, his voice all old-world charm with a sting behind it. "You're not enjoying our little party. What a waste. It cost you a thousand dollars."
"It cost her ten grand, Mr. Cremona. Angelo says she paid for her whole group."
Cremona's eyes were on her like a snake's. "You must have been very interested in getting inside."
"I heard about the Big E," she said levelly.
"The Big E is a fairy tale." He pointed at the writhing bodies on the mattresses and couches. "That isn't." He laughed. "At least most of it isn't."
Penelope took another drag on the joint. She blew the smoke in his face. He recoiled. Like the good family man he was, he didn't touch grass himself.
"I believe in fairy tales," she said.
A vein throbbed in Cremona's forehead. He smiled, showing gold teeth. "I want you to have a good time," he said. "I'll take it as a personal affront if you don't."
"I'm choosy," she said.
"There's plenty to choose from." He looked meaningfully at the other guests. There were a few talkers, but most were either getting exercise on the mattresses, or zonked out and watching from the sidelines.
Something rang a bell in Penelope's skull. The hoods! They were all gone from the loft floor. Earlier there had been a dozen mobsters working the orgy, performing as studs or joining the combination groups, their pants down but their hats and wide-shouldered jackets still on.
Now they were standing at one side of the loft, their pants back up, watching the freaks and revelers.
One side of the loft!
And at the far end, the three bartenders had spaced themselves out along the thirty-foot bar. Each of them had a hand under a towel, as if they were about to uncork bottles of champagne. Except no one was at the bar waiting for champagne.
The mandolin player was still singing and strumming. But there was something about it that didn't seem quite right.
All at once Penelope realized what it was.
He was out of synch.
He was strumming, but the plinking of the mandolin wasn't quite in time with his movements. And his lips seemed to be moving a split second behind the words of his song.
Penelope flashed her eyes over the area behind him. There it was — a small, not-quite-concealed loudspeaker. It wasn't part of the rig that was broadcasting the rock.
Vic said, "Mr. Cremona is talking."
Penelope knew she had to be very, very careful. She let her face go a little slack, not overdoing it. She unfocused her eyes, and used the yoga discipline that diated the pupils.
"Talking," she said blearily. "Don' wanna talk. Wanna ball."
She turned unsteadily and began walking away from them. If only she could make it in time.
The biggest pile-up was at the far end of the loft, near the entrance. It was the one started by the college kids. Now it had grown into a heaving mass of naked bodies, fifteen or twenty of them. At the top, like twin mountain peaks, she could see Infra Red's buttocks sticking up though the flap of the scarlet union suit.
She picked her way through the smaller orgies, shedding her clothes as she went. She shrugged out of the blouse and dropped it beside a mattress that was occupied by two women and a hairy man who were sexually performing. She stepped out of her shoes near a fat middle-aged man who was being ridden by a tiny Oriental girl. Her skirt was discarded between two mattresses holding solo couples. The panties were snatched from her hand by a fetishist before she could throw them away.
She walked the last twenty feet stark naked. She could feel Vic's eyes and the eyes of Anthony Cremona boring into her back with every step.
The black cigarette holder was still smoldering in her hand.
Just before she got there, she felt her ankle gripped by a strong hand. "Join the party," a voice said. It was the hairy painter, stretched out on a mattress beside a snoring girl and a freckle-bodied red-haired kid with an enormous erection.
She smiled and bent over. Three hands grabbed for her breasts. She pressed the end of the burning reefer into each of the hands, one after another. There was an outraged cry of pain, and the hand holding her ankle let go.
She made it just in time. Bunny's chubby face poked out of the tangle of bare flesh, between someone's thighs. "Come on in, Penelope, he said, "the water's fine!"
She dove for the bottom of the pile and began wriggling her w
ay inside. Eager hands groped for her breasts and buttocks. It was warm and steamy in the middle of all the bodies, smelling of sweat and semen.
She could see the mandolin player and the bartenders, framed in a window of flesh. She pushed aside someone's pendulous breast which was partially blocking the view.
There was a pop, like a champagne cork. The mandolin player stopped strumming. His hand moved, and the entire front of the mandolin swung open. Inside was a stubby M-3 machine gun with sawed-off barrel and stock.
The bartenders' hands emerged from under the towels. They were holding flat, ugly Uzi submachine guns with folding skeleton stocks. The three white-jacketed hoods snapped the stocks into place simultaneously.
"Crazy!" giggled some freak, spaced out on acid or meth. "This is the scene with the shootout in it."
The four automatic weapons opened up. There was hardly any noise because of the silencers; just a juttajuttafuttafutta like a sputtering acetylene torch. A dozen merrymakers were dead or dying before the first scream was heard.
The scream triggered other screams, as good trips abruptly turned into bad trips. Some of the frolickers, naked or partially dressed, tried to run for the exit. They were all gunned down before they'd gone more than a few steps.
It was like shooting fish in a barrel.
The Baroness burrowed deep into the bottom of the pile of bodies, hearing the 9mm slugs from the Uzis and the .45-caliber M-3 bullets thud into the flesh around her. Something hot landed on her back and burned her. It was a spent slug.
All around her she could hear screams and groans. Limbs twitched in their death throes. Rivulets of blood began to spill down from the outer layers of the human mound, warm and sticky when they dripped on her.
The St. Valentine's Day massacre was kid stuff, she thought grimly. She made her body into a smaller ball.
Then she thought: They're going to have to get rid of more than seven tons of bodies.
That was the reason for the packing cases and moving vans outside.
Something smashed into her wrist numbing it and making her drop the black cigarette holder. She gritted her teeth against the pain. After a moment she found she could move her fingers. The slug had been almost spent — not traveling fast enough to break the bone. She groped among the tumbled limbs until she found the weapon.
The shooting stopped. The Baroness found a peephole in the bodies around her. The three bartenders were disassembling their Uzi submachine guns and wrapping them up in towels. The mandolin player fitted the M-3 back into its padded nest and put the instrument into the mandolin case. If a cop ever opened the case, he'd find a mandolin.
The mobsters, at least a dozen of them, were advancing in a broad line from the far wall, guns in their hands. They were the cleanup squad. They kicked or prodded each body in turn. When they came upon one that groaned or moved, they put a bullet through its head.
Penelope tightened her grip on the cigarette holder. She squirmed to the far edge of the pile of bodies, temporarily out of sight of the approaching execution squad, trying not to disarrange the corpses. She wanted her limbs as free as possible.
"Baroness," someone wheezed. It was little Ralphie Pardon. The side of his face was torn away by a slug and thick blood was welling up from a hole in his chest. "Why did they do this?"
She froze. Some of the approaching hoods must have heard the voice. But there were other voices, sobbing or groaning or calling out for help. The executioners were methodical. They ignored the voices till they came to them.
Ralphie moaned. The half of a face that was left suddenly was drained of life. He was dead before he could let anyone know that she wasn't. Poor Ralphie had got his wish. He'd been shafted by the mob.
She risked another peep. The line of gunmen was only a few yards away. At the far end of the loft, the bartenders were polishing glasses and putting them away. The mandolin player and two moving men in coveralls were beginning to unstack the wooden crates.
Penelope began to hyperventilate, forcing oxygen into her bloodstream. Deliberately she concentrated on every muscle and tendon of her body in turn, applying to each the strength-amplifying prana of the Kung-Fu exercises. She had no intention of ending up in the packing cases.
She opened her eyes and stared without blinking. The Kung-Fu prana would let her keep it up for at least four minutes. She stopped breathing.
"Hey, this one's still alive," a voice said in her ear. The pile of bodies shifted. Nina's voice said, "What kind of a bum trip is this?" and a gun went off deafeningly.
There was a shadow at the periphery of her vision. "Hey, here's the broad who gave me the lip," a voice said. It was Vic. "Will ya look at them tits!"
"Ah, she's dead," another voice said.
"I don't care. I'm going to put a bullet in the left one, then the right one. Right through the old nipple. Watch this."
He leaned over her. She could feel the cold muzzle of an automatic poking at her breast. He was straddling her. His thighs shielded her right hand. She pointed the cigarette lighter like a finger, one end braced against the heel of her hand. She squeezed.
There was a sharp phhhht. Vic's hand clawed in agony at his crotch. The other hand, holding the gun, jerked upward in an involuntary spasm and emptied the whole magazine through the skylight above. Vic gave a bloodcurdling scream and dropped twitching to the floor.
The black-widow venom must have stung like a thousand bees in the three-fifths of a second it took him to die.
Penelope was on her feet before the rest of the second was out. The mobsters were staring openmouthed at Vic, trying to figure out what had happened. Only one of them had wits enough to swing his gun in her direction. Fortunately, he was within arm's length.
In a continuation of the same smooth surge that had brought her to her feet, Penelope swung with the stiff outer edge of her left hand and drove the splintered bones of the bridge of his nose into his brain. He died in a cloud of pink foam.
Another was beginning to raise his gun. In Penelope's right fist, the expended cigarette holder became a yawara stick, the ancient weapon of fighting Buddhist priests. It hit him under the chin, snapping his head back and breaking his neck.
So far, the Baroness had been in action only three seconds. The other gangsters were still paralyzed by the sight of the naked woman, covered with blood, hair flying and breasts quivering, moving like a streak of lightning among them.
Their hesitation let her reach the Don, Anthony Cremona. He flung up a thick forearm to block the blow that seemed to be aimed at his face. But it was his wrist Penelope was after. She got it with his unwitting cooperation and carried it around behind his back in the same lunge that put her in back of him. Her other hand balled into a bone-hard fist and punched him in the upper arm, paralyzing the nerve center there. His arm dropped, useless as an empty sleeve.
She pressed the cigarette holder into his eyeball. He moaned with fear.
"You've seen what this can do, Don Anthony," she hissed in his ear. "Now do exactly as I say, or you'll get a poison needle right through the eye."
He nodded eagerly. He didn't know the black holder was empty.
The mobsters shuffled about uncertainly. A woman was by definition an inferior being, in their society. To see one manhandling their Don was an impossibility. Their minds were slow to comprehend it.
"Tell them to move back," Penelope said. She poked his eyeball for emphasis.
"Back, back, get back!" he said, sweating.
They moved away a few steps. The Don had given them orders. This was something they could grasp. The Don would have things under control shortly.
"Walk!" Penelope said.
She pulled him along backward, keeping his massive bulk between her and the ten guns. He balked. She kneed him, expertly, in the testicles. He made a retching sound, then staggered backward with her.
She made it to the door before they were able to recover then wits. On the landing she swung Cremona around. Two bulky men in coveralls tha
t read "Cremona Family Movers" were coming up the stairs.
The gunmen inside would be coming after her within seconds. The only way was up.
She planted a bare foot on the small of Cremona's back and pushed with all her strength. He shot forward and tumbled down the stairs like a bocci ball. The moving men went down like tenpins.
She didn't wait to see. She sprinted up the stairs toward the roof exit. It was barred.
A face poked out of the loft room. It looked downstairs where all the commotion was. Penelope tugged at the bar. It wouldn't give.
The man on the landing below chose that moment to look up. "The bitch is up here!" he yelled, raising his gun. Penelope fell backward. A .45 slug ripped through the door where her head had been. Her hands shot behind her to break her fall. Her legs kicked up at the bar, catching it with two hard heels.
It was a double karate kick, powerful enough to break bricks. The bar across the door was only wood. It splintered and the door flew open. Penelope did a reverse flip and plunged through the exit before the hood below was able to snap off a second shot.
The night air was chilly on her bare skin. She looked around. She was on a crazy rooftop landscape, sprouting chimneys and skylights and water tanks as far as the eye could see. To the north the skyscrapers of mid-Manhattan rose like glittering sentinels. They were dominated by the Empire State Building, a thousand-foot stone phallus in the foreground.
There was no time to plan. She was naked and weaponless. She could kill any man foolish enough to come within striking range of her fingers or feet. But they had guns. They could kill from a distance.
Penelope sprinted for the nearest cover, a shedlike structure topping an airshaft. The hard gravel of the roof bit into her bare soles.
Crouched in its shadow she saw half a dozen men spill out of the doorway she'd just left. Five of them held pistols in their fists. The sixth held a mandolin case.
"Careful, Al," someone said. "I don't know how she did it, but she killed Vic and Eddie."
"She's just a broad," Al said.
