Then she sped away, the Hummer’s chrome gleaming in the oppressive sun. Geo dropped a gear, lurched over two lanes to fall in behind her. Not many cars this hour, and an easy, straight shot. Kept his eyes mostly on her tail. Shiny chrome. Vanity plate. ROSN80. What had Eddie called it? An oxymoron? He’d said it didn’t—shit! Brakes!
Geo glanced in the rearview. A black SUV but pretty far off. To the side? Enough space to maneuver if he had to. The yellow Goliath sprang away! Geo’s foot pressed heavy on the gas pedal. The engine whined just a little. As they passed the 14 exchange their speed topped 100.
The 5 crossed into the valley and flattened out to the 405. Chrome BUMPER! He hit the brakes, gripped the wheel. In front of the Hummer, an 18-wheeler. The yellow monster broke right, sped past two cars, shot over one lane then zipped back in front of the truck.
Geo tore right. Got honked at. His exit came up. He ignored it. Fell back in behind the Hummer. Stayed what seemed like inches from that shiny bumper. At the 101/405 interchange she kept on the 405. Sped up. He followed, nearly drove over a blue mini-cooper. Got cursed at, but fell in behind the Baroness again. He was going wherever it was she went. Straight to hell? So be it.
Traffic thickened. Inches between them. Her bumper rose. He hit the brakes. Slowed smooth, no rubber squeal. The chrome dashed away again. Geo’s cell phone buzzed. Shit! Keeping his eyes on the road he fished it from his pocket. Glanced at the ID. Eddie!
He flipped open the phone. “Where you been, man!”
Bumper! Coming up fast, yet slow. No mud this time. Shiny and clean. Same pattern in the brake lights. Next lane: minivan—no way out. Shit shit fuck screeeeeeeeeeeCRUNCH!
* * *
Geo regained consciousness, still in his Jeep. He felt heavy and immobile. He couldn’t feel his left leg, and the toes of his right foot tingled. The alarming spider-web of cracks in the windshield blocked his vision but he could make out some sort of chaos, people milling about and cars stopped at crooked angles on an expanse of freeway where they should have been moving, they had been moving, moving very fast.
He swallowed which was difficult but not exactly painful, turned his head slowly and found the Baroness standing outside his Jeep. Close to him, watching him, her eyes wide, pupils dilated.
“Don’t move,” she told him gently. “The EMTs are on their way.”
He leaned back despite her advice, put a hand to his achy forehead. It came away sticky. Red. From the tangle of cars, he made out sounds, phones ringing and people angry, yelling. Somewhere through the noise he heard a sound like muffled sobbing and it made him sad. He smelled a cigarette, saw that the Baroness was smoking.
“You shouldn’t have tailgated me,” she said softly. There was no anger in it, no mockery.
Geo gestured loosely to her cigarette, something long and oval-shaped smelling rich and decadent. “Can I get one of those?”
His voice sounded scratchy.
She nodded quickly, pulled the cigarette from her mouth and placed it to his lips. He took a puff and she moved it away again. It had been nearly five years since he’d smoked and the effect was like a harder drug. It tasted wonderful, made the crash-dizziness pleasurable and floaty.
He released the smoke in a deep sigh. “Thank you.”
“Of course.”
Despite the pain, he turned his head to look at her. Concern furrowed her brow. Her violet eyes didn’t stray from his face, regardless of the surrounding cacophony. She put the cigarette to his lips again.
“I warned you,” she told him. Her voice held an odd quality, something akin to regret.
He savored and exhaled the delicious smoke. Looked into her disquieted violet eyes.
“You shouldn’t have tailgated me,” she said again, this time in a murmur. She placed a cool palm against the blood-wet heat of his face.
Geo swallowed, closed his eyes. “I’m sorry.”
CHAPTER 11
Sydney Scalinescu stood on the corner, waiting for the light to change. Sporadic late-morning traffic kicked up grime in the hazy Bronx morning, already shimmering with heat. Southbound cleared with the streak of an angry Yellow cab. The Beastie Boys hollered from their newly released album: “NO! SLEEP! TILL BROOKLYN!!” spilled out of his walkman headphones as Sydney glanced north—red van, blue Chevy, fist full of taxis. He frowned, peered at his watch. The fake leather band already made a damp ring around his wrist in the sticky heat, while the face told him he was ten minutes late for his first class. Second week of junior college and already he was a fuckup.
He didn’t see the limo until it stopped in front of him, a slick line of black silk whose grace reminded him of a stingray. “Good driver,” he thought. “Maybe I should do that.” The passenger door snapped open, revealing a lush crimson interior. A tall, broad guy in a dark suit came at him.
Sydney backed away, shaking his head. “No way, man!” He spun around to flee but after just two steps, knocked into the big guy’s twin. “I didn’t do it!” The twin shoved a pillowcase down over Sydney’s head and the world went white.
He waited for blows, or the sound of a gunshot, but the two men jammed him into the back of the car. The car moved, graceful and silent. The cool leather of the seats relaxed him a little, felt nice against his bare calves, and the pillowcase kept him safe from seeing whatever awful things might share back of the car with him.
But he could hear. Quiet, garbled voices filled the cramped space, low and growly like a tape run backward. This made Sydney nervous, which made him laugh.
A ham-sized hand seized the pillowcase, twisted it into a tight knot around Sydney’s throat. “What the fuck you laughing at!”
Sydney, smartly fearing for his life, swallowed his reply.
The car slid to a smooth stop. Rough hands pulled Sydney from his seat, and a solid foot in the center of his back launched him from the car. He tumbled onto concrete, scraping a knee, yanked the pillowcase off his head. The car slid away, curving out of the circular driveway and into the steamy morning.
Sydney found himself at the foot of a flight of broad, shallow steps, bright white and a story high, like the entrance to a museum. Two lions flanked the stairs at the top. Between the lions stood a man wearing a tuxedo and carrying a silver tray.
“Master Scalinescu, I presume,” the man called. He had an accent, Austrian or something. He pronounced Sydney’s name right, which was rare.
Sydney looked to the left and right.
“Yes, you, with the pillowcase. Come on up.”
Sydney scratched his head, stuffed his hands in the pockets of his knee-length, black corduroy shorts and loped up the stairs. He counted them as he went, twenty-five in all. As he approached the man with the tray, Sydney saw that he wore a blond crew cut and that his muscles bulged through his well-tailored tuxedo jacket.
The tuxedo man bowed slightly. “Do you take lemon in your cola?”
“Nah, that’s okay. I actually prefer Mountain Dew.”
Tuxedo Man’s lips pursed.
Sydney reached for the glass. “But thanks! I appreciate it.”
The soda was nearly as cold as the ice that floated in it, and the sweat on the glass ran down Sydney’s hand when he tilted it. Crisp. Bubbly. Fountain soda. He emptied half the glass, paused for a breath. His knee itched and tickled; Sydney looked down to see he was bleeding into his socks.
“Damn.”
“It seems you need a bandage.”
“Naw, I don’t care about that. Look,” he pointed to a long scuff in the tan suede of his boot. “These Timberlands are brand-ass new, man. Like, Saturday I got ‘em.”
“Come inside,” the Tuxedo Man directed.
“And this shirt, you like this shirt?” He plucked at the short-sleeved red plaid he wore unbuttoned over his tight ringer T-shirt.
“Mister Scali
nescu, senior, is expecting you.”
“I’m not big on plaid but…senior?”
“Your father.”
“My father? No way! I live in the Bronx, man. No way anybody related to me lives here.”
“Hmmm.”
“My ma? She don’t even speak English right. She’s some kinda Romanian Gypsy or something.” He set the empty glass back on Arnold’s tray. “Thanks for the soda. I gotta go to school.”
Sydney started down the stairs. But a voice grabbed him, stopped him, shook him.
“Sydney Ratkovitch Scalinescu!” Pronounced correctly, with the rolling R in Ratkovitch, and said skoo instead of skew at the end of Scalinescu. Nobody did that.
Sydney turned to face a well-built man in a stylish suit. The grey pinstripe in the man’s black suite matched his wild shock of hair.
“I know because I named you,” this elegant stranger said. His voice held just a dusting of an accent, but something in his diction announced him as a foreigner. “Your middle name is your mother’s maiden. The rest of it is mine.”
Sydney stared hard at this stranger who looked like Don Juan and sounded like a Long Island Dracula. This man who indeed seemed to be his father. And inside little Sydney, something snapped.
“Just where the hell have you been!”
“Right here.”
“In this mansion. While I grew up in the Bronx?”
Sydney senior nodded.
“That’s beautiful. That’s something to be proud of. You dress like that all the time? Like a goddamn mafia pimp?”
“Usually. Just as you typically dress like a stage hand.”
Sydney ran a hand through his thick, chestnut hair, made a mess of it. “Some of us gotta be out in the heat, you know? Working.”
His father only cocked his head.
“Fine. Enough insults and small talk. What is all this, dragging me here and shit?”
“I wanted to meet my son.”
“You waited 18 years to meet me? The anticipation was just killing you, I guess.”
“What stopped you from coming to me?”
“Let’s see, uhm, not knowing where the hell you were?”
“What did your mother tell you?”
“That you were in California. I’ll tell you what, how about you give me some cash, we call it even? ‘Cuz it would really help me with school, you know? You could, like, sell that tray Arnold’s holding there, probably pay my whole college tuition.”
Senior linked his hands behind his back. “I’m giving you nothing.”
“Oh. Yeah, I can see you don’t have too much to go around.” Sydney chewed his lip, shook his head. “You’re a real bastard, you know that? Real mysterious bastard. Wait all this time and then…have me brutally…escorted to your…creepy house.”
A sound came out of Sydney’s father, something low and mean. But a smile twisted the man’s face. He was laughing. “You are the bastard.”
Sydney stuffed his hands in his pockets. “That’s right. That’s right, I am. You abandoned me, and now I’m outta’ here.”
He moved for the door, but two men bigger than the ones from the street materialized, glaring. Sydney’s shoulders slumped. “Now he’s gonna’ shoot me. I wasn’t killed growing up in Shitville, so now Mobster Daddy’s gonna’ shoot me. Couldn’t you at least wait till I’m sleeping?”
“You’ve got some amazing attitude, boy.” His father sounded genuinely impressed. “Don’t you have any questions for me?”
“I had one. I asked it.”
“What about the money?” His father leaned in, dropped an arm over Sydney’s shoulder. “Don’t you want to know?”
“Let me guess. You mailed it to Ma and she refused it.”
“Incorrect.”
“She was your maid. You were embarrassed of the pregnancy, sent her away.”
“Incorrect.”
“She’s not really my mother.”
“That’s three strikes, as they say. Come on in. Have a seat, we’ll talk.” Sydney Senior pulled Sydney along with him into a giant room filled with heavy, wood furniture and lined with books. An enormous white bearskin covered the floor by the entrance, its ferocious, fanged head threatening would-be visitors. The cool, dim room made the city disappear, erased the heat and noise.
Sydney ran a finger along the leather-bound book bindings.
“You read all these?”
“I used to.” Senior shoved Sydney into a leather chair across from an ocean of desk.
Sydney petted the vicious rug. “How about this bear? You kill this bear?”
“Your grandfather did. My father. He hunted with Hemmingway.”
Syd senior took the high-backed wing chair behind the desk. “Let me tell you something. I’m your father. Maybe you have not seen me, but I’ve been around.”
Sydney cocked his chin at his father.
“That’s right. Who do you think got you off that murder charge?”
“What murder charge!” Sydney’s voice snapped up in pitch.
“When you inject a man with drain-unclogging liquid because he owes you money for drugs, you murder him. Are we on the same page?”
Sydney felt the warmth drain from his face, knew he was pale white. “I didn’t do that! That wasn’t me. That was Ian did that.”
“A killer and a snitch. Bad combination.”
“I’m not neither of those things. Ian ain’t no pal of mine. He sells drugs to whoever, whatever age, he doesn’t care. Plus, yeah, he gets nasty when people owe him dough. I don’t do that. None of that. We get high together sometimes, that’s it. We used to.”
“And you rob liquor stores together.”
Sydney crossed a leg over his bleeding knee. “It sounds bad when you say it like that.”
“How would you say it?”
“Shoplifted? We shoplifted a few forties, ‘cuz we couldn’t find nobody to buy ‘em for us. It’s not like we took a gun to anybody. We didn’t even take cash!”
“Fine, you and Ian shoplift together. You and Ian are also going to die together. Did you know that? Did you know there’s a price for you?”
Sydney stared at his father for a long moment. Then he cracked a wide smile. “You’re making this shit up. To scare me into doing whatever it is you want, whatever you dragged me here for. You some kinda’ gangster, Dad? You trying to convince me to join your little Mafia? Count me in. I want one a’ them suits, though.”
His father didn’t smile. “The man you say you did not kill was the son of a Senator. You’re in a lot of trouble. Trouble I may be able to protect you from.”
Sydney’s grin widened. “Wait, wait! Did the Senator call you? Like, hire you to kill me and Ian? Come on, Dad! I saw that movie, too.”
Syd Senior arched over the desk and slapped his son’s face.
“This is your last chance! I can get you out of here or you can die.”
Terrible silence. Sydney put a hand to his face, more out of surprise than pain, found to his horror that he wanted to cry. He took a deep breath.
“What’s the…ah, offer?”
“I own a company. Survivanoia. Know what that means?”
“Fear. Of living?”
“Sur, as in superior. Vive, as in life. Noia, as in mind. Superior-life-minded.”
“Only the strong survive.”
“We are purveyors of the post-apocalypse. We don’t flinch at the wild truth. We manufacture and sell it.” His father seemed to drift into salesman mode; he stood and ambled around the room as he spoke. “We distribute some obvious things, like gas masks and civilian bio-suits.”
“Civilian bio-suits are obvious?”
“Our suits are the best. They’re pathogen-killing,” he said with pride. “They
’re made of a sponge-like polymer that traps bacteria and viruses, and then disinfectants in the fabric kill them.” The man’s dark eyes sparkled.
“Then there’s our high-tech line,” he continued. “The Mighty Mass, which is a portable mass spectrometer. Amazing. They took a dragon of an instrument, bigger than my desk, and squashed it down to the size of a lunch box.”
“They?”
“My scientists. My research team. Best in the world. My favorite of their inventions is the Apoc-Owlypse.”
He opened a desk drawer and from it handed Sydney a small metal rectangle the size of a penknife. “Listen to it.”
Sydney lifted the cool bit of metal to his ear. It hooted peacefully, like a tiny, distant owl.
“It’s a single living nerve cell,” his father explained. “It makes noise until something kills it. A modern day canary in a coal mine. That little scrap of metal detects and distinguishes between seventeen separate bacterial and viral toxins, including the Plague, Botulism, Ebola—”
“What about AIDS?”
A soft V creased his father’s brow. “AIDS is spread in a way that makes such an object obsolete.”
“So how about the others? I mean have you solved, like, Ebola?”
“Touchy subject. Technically, we have. But we’re one of three companies working on it. Also there’s a sort of gentlemen’s agreement to let the government take the credit. We’ll no doubt get distribution, though. So the smart money is still on us.”
Sydney suspected that people, men in striped business suits eating lobster and steak, really were placing bets. Survivanoia, before the 100th death. Get me another martini, I’m hitting the head. He couldn’t discern if the lump in his belly was thrill or fear.
“Where do I fit into this?”
“You’ll start at the bottom, in data entry. You’ll work your way up. That way you’ll know all there is to know about the place. And when you’re in charge, it will be because you deserve to be in charge.”
“What if I don’t deserve to be in charge?”
“Then you’ll be in data entry until you drop dead or quit. That’s up to you.”
Baroness Von Smith Page 17
