The giant, a reformed racist and Jew-baiter who now considered himself a kind of hit man for Christ, was down-but definitely not out. The kick I had delivered to his head would have broken the necks of most men, but it hadn't even knocked Tanker Thompson unconscious, only dazed him slightly. But it was enough-I hoped.
The tire iron had fallen perhaps fifteen feet to his right. With rage still fueling my muscles, I darted to the tire iron, picked it up with my hands on both ends, then ran to Thompson, who was just getting up on his knees. I jumped on his back, pressed the length of the tire iron up against his throat and pulled. I didn't want to strangle him, only knock him unconscious without the risk of breaking open his skull. I had no real idea of what I was going to do with him then, but I knew that I could not-would not-be finished with Tanker Thompson until I had found out where Garth was being held prisoner, or one of us was dead.
Thompson's answer to my grand strategy was simply to get to his feet, carrying me right up in the air with him. I pulled even harder on the steel bar, but the muscles in his neck were like steel cords. He brought his left hand up, wriggled his fingers between his throat and the bar, began to push the tire iron away.
I decided it was time to get off Tanker Thompson's back and go for the Seecamp strapped to my ankle. But it was too late for that. His right hand had come across his body to where the heel of my left foot was digging into his side; thick, powerful fingers wrapped around my ankle. I had no choice but to go along for the ride as Tanker Thompson marched toward the edge of the platform. I dropped the tire iron, started yelling and pounding on the top of his head, but that had about as much effect as someone trying to stop a locomotive by dragging his heel in the gravel. Thompson never slowed his purposeful pace, and I stopped yelling just in time to suck in a deep breath as we plunged off the end of the platform, went crashing through the ice, and slipped into a black, gelid, wet night that hit my body with such a shock that I half expected to die right then of a heart attack. My heart didn't seize up on me, but I knew that I couldn't last long in that icy, underwater darkness; in perhaps twenty seconds or less, the cold would paralyze me and drain away all my energy, I would go into shock, and I would drown.
And Tanker Thompson still had hold of my ankle.
My first reaction was blind panic, a desperate need to try to struggle back toward the surface-but I knew I would certainly die if I tried that. Tanker Thompson was obviously perfectly willing, indeed eager, to die to further his purpose, namely to kill me, and he could easily hang onto a panic-stricken dwarf for the few more seconds it would take me to drown.
I had lost almost all feeling in my body, yet I managed to reach down and, using both my frozen hands as a kind of clamp, pull the small pistol from the holster on my right ankle. As we settled into the muck in the shallow water, I pushed the barrel of the Seecamp between his hand and my left ankle, pushed. The fingers came off. I twisted around, planted both my feet on his barrel chest-and then felt his fingers wrap themselves around my right calf. But Tanker Thompson had had some of the zip taken out of him; he'd absorbed my kick to his head, and he too was freezing, drowning. I pushed with all my strength-and the fingers slipped off. I shot to the surface, bumping my head on floating chunks of ice, and the pent-up breath escaped from my lungs in an explosive, gasping moan.
Seconds were all I had before I lost the ability to move, and then I would sink back down below the surface to join Tanker Thompson in icy death. I clawed at the bobbing chunks of ice, flailing with my arms and legs, and finally made it back to one of the pilings supporting the concrete platform. I gripped the wood, at the same time as I felt my feet touch gravel. I pushed and pulled, made it up over the lip of the platform, and flopped on the concrete. With my clothes and body steaming in the air, I crawled on my hands and knees across the platform to where the wreckage of Beloved still lay smoldering against the concrete support pillar. There was little smoke now, and still no sound of sirens; the wreck and explosion, muffled by an envelope of concrete and steel, had gone unnoticed. However, there were still some flames flickering in the wreckage. There was no feeling at all in my fingers, and there was no way I could manage to handle zippers and buttons, but I was able to use jagged pieces of metal literally to tear the clothes from my body to the waist. Then, slapping and rubbing my hands together, I leaned over the flames, so close that the hairs on my forearms and chest began to sizzle. More steam rose from my skin, and I backed away just before the flesh began to burn-but sensation had begun to return. I stripped off the rest of my clothes, then huddled, naked and shivering, next to Beloved's life-saving flames.
After ten minutes or so of slowly basting myself on all sides, I finally started to feel relatively warm, and I knew that the danger of hypothermia from a precipitous drop in core temperature had passed; but I was still in danger from delayed shock. And Garth would be in even greater danger if and when his captors discovered that I had prematurely dispatched Tanker Thompson off to Paradise. That could be soon, which meant that I had to get moving, no matter how unappealing the thought. I picked up the remnants of my clothes, found that they were still soaked. The fire was almost out, which meant that I had a problem or two. Even if I didn't freeze to death, the sight of a naked dwarf hippety-hopping down the West Side Highway just might attract a tad too much attention, and questions from the police.
I slipped on my shoes, squished my way across the platform to the Cadillac with the smashed front end. I was looking for something-anything-with which to cover myself, for I was already starting to shudder with cold again, and I no longer had a fire to warm myself up with. I peered in, and my eyes went wide when I saw, crumpled on the floor in the back where it had landed when it had slid off the backseat, a quilted jacket bearing the logo of Thompson's former football team. I snatched up the jacket, slipped it on. It was only about a dozen sizes too big for me, which, for my purposes, made it just right. I wrapped myself in its folds, was just starting to zip up my down and wool cocoon, when I felt ice cold hands wrap themselves around my neck. I screamed.
I grabbed a thumb that felt like a nub of frozen steel, twisted it back. The grip loosened. Still screaming in a kind of terrified series of hiccups, I wheeled around, gazed in horror at the dripping, steaming figure of Tanker Thompson. The exposed flesh of his face and hands was blue-white, the color of ice, and his clothes were covered with ooze from the bottom of the Hudson. I could not understand how he could possibly be alive, but he most indubitably was; he couldn't stay alive much longer, certainly, but as long as he was alive it was quite obvious what was on his mind.
I'd had quite enough of Tanker Thompson, who reminded me of nothing so much as some great mythical giant, a cruel Antaeus who gained strength from contact with the elements, and who could not be killed. As he again reached for me, I ducked under his arms, then ran as fast as I could in my oversize coat and water-filled shoes off the concrete platform, scrambled up the rutted dirt access road to the West Side Highway.
I'd once again lost all feeling in my feet, and it felt as if I were hobbling on stumps as, holding up the bottom of the jacket so as not to trip over it, I managed to extricate one arm from the folds and used it to try to flag down a car.
Fat chance. This was New York City, and I wouldn't have been picked up even if I were dressed and looked like Mother Theresa.
What I got was a cop-which, considering the fact that I was close to freezing to death, was probably just as well. I knew him; his name was Frank Palorino.
"Mongo?" he said uncertainly as, shuddering inside Tanker Thompson's massive jacket, I managed to open the door of his squad car and slide into the front seat. "What the hell's going on?"
"Thanks for stopping, Frank," I said through chattering teeth. "I, uh. . I had a little accident."
Suddenly the cop with the close-cropped black hair with matching permanent stubble on his chin and cheeks began to chuckle; the chuckle quickly grew into a full-fledged belly laugh. "A little accident? What the hell? Did you fall
in the river?"
"As a matter of fact, I did," I said stiffly as I reached out and turned the heater in the squad car up to full blast. "Listen, would you mind-?"
"Where the hell did you get that jacket?" Palorino managed to say between bursts of giggling. "I didn't know you'd played professional football."
Frank Palorino was beginning to try my patience; I could still feel the icy cold of the river-and fear of death-in me straight to my bowels. "A passing fisherman," I stammered. "Look, Frank, give me a break, will you? Get me home."
"Sure," he said, still chuckling as he accelerated and moved into the left lane.
A few minutes and a couple of miles later, as he was pulling up in front of the brownstone, it seemed to occur to my jolly chauffeur that perhaps something not so amusing was afoot, as it were, and that perhaps he should make further, more sober, inquiries into just what a soaked dwarf swaddled in a decidedly oversize athletic jacket had been doing stumbling alongside the West Side Highway on an otherwise peaceful Sunday morning in the middle of winter.
"Mongo," Palorino said seriously as he pulled the car up to the curb, "tell me just what happened to you. How did you happen to fall into the river?"
"Thanks for the ride, Frank," I said as I got out of the car.
"Mongo, hold on. I'm serious. What's going on? What were you doing down by the river?"
"Listen, Frank," I said, shaking violently now inside the jacket as I turned back to the policeman. "Call Lieutenant McCloskey. Tell him I'll be in touch with him just as soon as I get myself a little more warmed up, and a little more together. Tell him everything I said to him in our earlier conversation goes double now. In the meantime, you can go down to the waterfront off Eighty-sixth Street. You'll find a couple of wrecked cars, and you'll probably find a frozen stiff somewhere close by. The stiff's name is Thomas Thompson. Tell Lieutenant McCloskey that it was Thompson who killed William Kenecky."
Palorino's stubbled jaw dropped open. "What? What the hell are you talking about?"
"Frank, I'm really too cold to repeat it all."
"The lieutenant's going to want to talk to you right now, Mongo."
"Frank, it's not as though you don't know where to find me," I said, then slammed the door shut and headed for the entrance to the brownstone.
I half expected Palorino to start banging at my door, but he didn't. I got in the elevator in the vestibule, kicked off my soggy shoes, and headed for the bathroom when I got up to my apartment. I turned on the hot water in the tub, shuffled back to the bar in my living room, and poured myself half a tumbler of Scotch. I shrugged off the jacket, headed back into the bathroom. The water in the tub felt like it was just this side of boiling as I eased myself down into it, which was just about the temperature I was looking for. I sat in the steaming water, gulping Scotch, until I felt a new kind of numbness, a warm sensation of comfort, slowly oozing through me.
And with the returning warmth inside and outside my body returned the realization that there was no time even to rest, much less get drunk. Garth was still the prisoner of men who thought nothing of killing themselves, and thus would undoubtedly kill him in the wink of an eye if the mood so struck them; I had to find him before the mood struck. It was not yet noon; now that I was out of danger, I certainly could not waste time sloshing around in a tub and getting wasted. I set the remainder of my drink down on the floor, got out of the tub, and toweled myself off as I reflected on the thought that there was only one place left to go. As far as I was concerned, the police should have gone there in the first place-but they hadn't, and probably wouldn't.
Lieutenant Malachy McCloskey and the rest of the NYPD could do what they wanted, but I was going to find a way to drop in on Mr. Big himself.
Constantly feeling like I was moving in a dream, I carefully cleaned, oiled, and reloaded my Seecamp, which I'd somehow managed to hang onto. I was just putting the gun in the pocket of my parka when the phone rang. I hesitated, then picked up the receiver.
"Yeah?"
"Frederickson?! What the fuck's going on?! What were you doing down by the river, and where's the stiff you were talking about?!"
Suddenly I started getting a fresh chill. "You didn't find him, Lieutenant?"
"Find who?! Frederickson-!"
"Tanker Thompson-the ex-football player. He killed William Kenecky, and he tried to kill me. Have you spoken to Henry Blaisdel?"
"Frederickson, you stay right where you are! I'm sending a squad car to pick you up. You're coming over here to the precinct station, and then you and I are going to have a long talk."
"You bet, Lieutenant," I said, and hung up.
I started for the door, suddenly felt my head begin to spin, and promptly fell on my face. I didn't pass out, but for long moments I felt as if I were clinging to the edge of a void, about to fall in. I clung to consciousness, taking deep breaths. Finally my head cleared. I managed to get to my feet, although I swayed. Mr. Big was obviously going to have to wait until I'd had some proper rest and my body had had time to recover from the pretty good shock it had been given during the course of my battle with Tanker Thompson and subsequent dousing in the icy Hudson.
But I couldn't do my resting in the apartment, because, if I did, I was more than a little likely to end up resting in a jail cell. Moving slowly but deliberately, I packed a gym bag with a couple of changes of underwear, toilet articles, some tools of the trade, and a clean shirt. Then I took the elevator down, locked up, and started hoofing it toward the Sheraton Hotel, a few blocks away. I was just turning a corner when I heard the screech of brakes behind me. I looked around, saw two squad cars, lights flashing, pull up to the curb in front of the brownstone. I kept walking.
11
I slept right around the clock, and then some, and finally woke myself up with an enormous sneeze, followed by two or three lesser sneezelets. I wrapped myself in an oversize bath towel for a robe, called room service, and ordered a pot of coffee, French toast, home fried potatoes, bacon, a bottle of aspirin, and a bottle of vitamin C. I needed to keep up my strength-or get it back. While I was waiting for the food to arrive, I shuffled off to the bathroom to brush my teeth and shave. I didn't feel all that hot, and I was convinced that I could sleep for another week if I really put my mind to it. On the other hand, considering what I'd been through, I decided I wasn't feeling all that bad; I knew I was slightly feverish, but that beat being dead.
My order arrived about the time I finished getting dressed. I took two aspirins and a thousand milligrams of vitamin C, followed that with the food and coffee. By the time I'd finished eating and drained the pot of coffee, I was ready to roll.
It was time to go visiting.
I dressed in jeans, a sweat shirt, and sneakers, strapped the Seecamp in its holster to my ankle, then double-checked the other items in my gym bag to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything in my rush to get out of the apartment and escape the long arm and time-consuming inquisitiveness of the law. Everything was there. I zipped up the bag, called down to the desk to tell them to send the bill to my office, then left.
The Blaisdel Building was only a few blocks away, but I had the hotel doorman hustle me up a cab anyway; I assumed Malachy McCloskey was more than a bit irritated with me, and I didn't want to risk being spotted on the street and picked up by the police. I told the cabbie to stop a half block away, and I looked around before getting out; there were no police around. When a large knot of pedestrians came by, I hurriedly paid the driver, settled in with the crowd of walkers, then darted into the entrance to the Blaisdel Building.
Although I had strongly disapproved at the time, I was now grateful that Garth had checked out the building's security system; now I knew what I was up against as I searched for a way to get up to Henry Blaisdel's penthouse triplex. I was going to have to be wary of all sorts of sophisticated alarm devices. Still, there had to be a way to get up there, short of scaling the building, and if I had to shoot a few Born Again Christian Athletes for Christ on my way up, I
was more than ready.
But first I wanted to check out the Nuvironment offices-or what used to be the Nuvironment offices-on the off chance that Peter Patton, before he had been so unceremoniously ousted from office and life by Tanker Thompson, might have left something behind that could lead me to Garth, or Vicky Brown, or both.
I hurried through the lobby and down the narrow, far corridor to the locked door at the end where Patton had taken me on my initial visit. I looked back down the corridor to make sure nobody was watching me, then took a set of lock picks out of my gym bag, huddled over the lock, and went to work. It wasn't an expensive lock, and I got lucky on my third try; the door clicked open, and I went through. The private elevator in the vestibule was down, its door open. I stepped in, drew out my Seecamp, then pressed the single button that would take me to the Nuvironment offices on the ninth floor.
The first thing that hit me when the elevator door sighed open was a blast of hot air. It must have been ninety degrees in the gold-carpeted reception area, and I couldn't understand why anyone would have turned up the thermostat before they left.
The second thing that hit me, as I passed through the heavy door of smoked glass, was the smell of rotting flesh. I gagged, took a handkerchief out of my pocket, and put it over my nose and mouth. Then I started down the central corridor, giving Peter Patton's spacious office a cursory glance. Nobody was home.
There was a lot of square footage in the Nuvironment offices, including what looked like research labs of various sorts and open workplaces. Somebody-Tanker Thompson, I presumed, acting on instructions from God-had really trashed the place; every computer on the floor had been reduced to a tangle of steel and plastic, smashed circuitry, dangling wires, and all of the drawers in the desks had been pulled out and emptied. As far as I could tell, there wasn't a scrap of anything, anywhere, that would afford the slightest clue as to why Nuvironment had closed up shop, what they thought-or knew-was going to happen on New Year's Eve, or where they might be holding Garth.
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