I heard footsteps, then felt a hand on my shoulder. I looked up into
Emily's stricken face. Margaret and Sharon Stephens stood on either side of her, staring at me intently. In Emily's trembling, outstretched hand was a single black-and-yellow capsule. I shook my head. "He's gone."
"There was an extra capsule in my bag, Mongo," the girl sobbed as tears streamed down her cheeks. "I think Michael must have put it there. He gave up his last med so that Margaret and I could each have one more day."
I nodded, then bent down and kissed the chess master's bloody forehead. And then I wept.
Chapter 14
Sharon Stephens, who could not stop crying, helped me wrap Michael Stout's corpse, which we would properly attend to at a more propitious time, in a shower curtain. While the women cleaned the floor of the living room, I stripped off my bloody clothes, showered to wash the blood off my face and hands, dressed in clean clothes, and went down to my office. Struggling to put the horror of Michael's death out of my mind, I tried to concentrate on his exquisite and incredibly heroic act, the gift of his life so that two people could live at least another twenty-four hours.
I picked up the phone and began calling the medical specialists I had contacted earlier, double-checking to make sure they would be in the emergency room of the nearest hospital by six o'clock to meet us all when we arrived sometime later in the evening. When I had finished doing that, a tearful Francisco and I went back upstairs to join the others, including the two guards, for our own private memorial service for Michael. When that was over, I scoured Garth's apartment and my own for dark glasses, woolen caps, mufflers, and anything else we could use to provide suitable disguises for the psychiatrist and Emily. At five-thirty, accompanied by Veil, we left the brownstone and, to the sounds of Christmas carols provided by a Salvation Army group and a steel band and a lone violinist stationed along the route, headed through the streets toward Rockefeller Center. A light snow, the first of the season, had begun to fall.
This time out I made sure I was armed, with my Beretta in a shoulder holster and the small Seecamp strapped to my right ankle.
I had Veil and his students escort the three women down to the coffee shop adjacent to the rink, while I stayed up above on the promenade, below the magnificent Christmas tree and above the great, prone figure of Prometheus, checking out the people on the skating rink below me who were whirling about in the snow flurry to the sound of Christmas music. There were hordes of people walking around the promenade, standing around the rink, or gathered to admire the towering, brightly lighted tree behind me. The skaters of both sexes came in all sizes, ages, and races, and there were upwards of three dozen of them, including one understuffed Santa Claus zipping around the rink carrying over his shoulder an understuffed laundry bag with something lumpy in the bottom. There were a number of uniformed policemen patrolling the area, but there didn't seem to be more than the usual contingent. By now I assumed that Bailey had told MacWhorter the whole story, and I wondered how many of the people in the crowd were plainclothes detectives-or killers.
There had been a dozen patients who had originally escaped with Sharon Stephens. Punch and Judy had killed one, and the killers who had come to the laboratory said a woman had been captured, and she was presumably dead by now. Michael Stout was dead, and Emily was with us. That left eight people to round up, and I fervently hoped they were here in the crowd, or soon would be, because there was no time to waste. I had to get them to the hospital so the doctors could examine and start working on them, and then every minute would count in the day or two they had left to them before they ran out of their medication and I had pinched out the last of the precious powder in my pocket.
And then, of course, there was the wild card to consider-Raymond Rogers. Obviously, Rogers had snatched his own supply of the black-and-yellow capsules from the infirmary; when he ran out, he would presumably die. However, from his hidden perch on top of the bus, he may well have overheard the psychiatrist and the other patients making plans to meet on Christmas Eve. If that was the case, he too would be here, somewhere in the crowd, hoping Sharon Stephens had obtained more of the drug, and looking to grab his own lifesaving handout.
In fact, there had been a dramatic decrease in the number of ice-pick killings over the past ten days. Much of that good news was probably attributable to the fact that people in the city had grown eyes in the back of their heads and were extraordinarily cautious in their comings and goings, but I also thought it possible that Rogers was being much more cautious so as not to be caught before Christmas Eve; his description had been printed in all the newspapers, and posters with his likeness and a warning were up all over the city, and at every subway station. There was also the possibility that his medication had run out and he was dead in some alley in a lake of his own blood. But if he was somewhere here in the crowd, watching and waiting, I assumed I would know about it before the end of the evening, and I was going to keep an especially sharp lookout for tall, rangy men.
I watched Santa and the other skaters for a few more minutes to satisfy myself that none of them looked suspicious, then wandered around the promenade, trying very hard to look like your average, everyday New York City dwarf. I felt more than a tad self-conscious, which I thought understandable in light of the fact that Lorminix or Chill Shop assassins in the crowd certainly had my description. I could end up a target marker, a danger to my charges, but it couldn't be helped; I had to be able to communicate with the others. From this point on I intended to stay out of sight, let the psychiatrist and Emily do the spotting, and Margaret and Veil the gathering in of the lost flock.
I went down to the coffee shop. Margaret, Sharon Stephens, and Emily were sitting at a table in a corner in the back, and Veil and his two students were standing in front of them, forming a shield.
"This is how I propose to do this," I said to the women as I pulled up a chair and sat down at the table. Veil immediately moved in front of me to shield me from view. "The tree is on the promenade above us, to our right. It's easy to see the people gathered around it, but it's too open; we can't just stand around up there. I suggest we make this table our home base; it's a relatively closed area, and it's easier for our friends here to keep an eye on everybody. We can't see the tree from here, but we can see the statue and a section of the promenade above it. The people we're looking for will expect to find Dr. Stephens at the tree; when they don't find her there, I think the chances are good that they'll come to the railing to look down at the skaters. Sharon, you and Emily will keep an eye on that railing. If you see one of our people, holler out-in a manner of speaking. Margaret, nobody else knows about you or has your description. If you don't mind, we'll use you as a messenger. You go to the person, tell him or her where we are, and then keep walking. Make sure you don't come back down here together-and when you talk to them, do a lot of pointing at the ice, as if you're talking about the skaters. Can you do that?"
"I certainly can, Mongo," Margaret said in a firm voice. Her pale violet eyes glittered with excitement.
Veil said, "I'll ride shotgun for Margaret every time she goes out. Jack and Moira will stay here on guard."
I nodded. "Once each hour, Veil will take you, Sharon, up to the area around the tree. You'll act like lovers; he'll keep his arm around you so that you can hide your face against his coat and just kind of glance around every once in a while. If you see any of your people, don't approach them. Come back here, and Margaret will go contact them. Okay?"
"Okay," the psychiatrist replied.
"We'll collect as many as come in until ten, and then we'll walk together to the University Medical Center over on the East Side. Maybe I can arrange for a patrol car to escort us. There's a team of medical specialists waiting for us at the hospital. With luck, we'll have everybody at the hospital long before ten. On the other hand, we have to be realistic about no-shows. Considering the importance of this rendezvous, I think it's safe to assume that anybody who doesn't show up by ten
o'clock is. . isn't coming. How does that sound to you folks?"
Sharon Stephens, Margaret, and Emily glanced around the table at each other, and it was the psychiatrist who finally said, "It sounds like a good plan to us."
"Good," I said, leaning back in my chair so that I could see around Veil, toward the front of the coffee shop and out at the great, golden giant on his pedestal across the rink. "Now let's see who shows up."
"There!" Sharon Stephens said excitedly. "It's Phyllis!"
I grabbed the psychiatrist's arm, pulled it back down to the table. "Don't point; just describe."
"She's at about two o'clock, on the promenade almost directly above the head of the statue. She's at the railing looking down at the skaters. She's wearing a gray hat and coat. There's a young couple standing to her right."
I glanced around Veil, spotted the woman the psychiatrist had described, turned to Margaret. "You see her?"
"I see her," Margaret said determinedly, rising from the table as Veil pulled her chair out for her and took her arm.
"Remember; don't hang around up there. Just deliver the message while you point to the skaters, and then get back down here. Don't walk back with her."
"I understand, Mongo."
"Go. Be careful."
I watched as Margaret, with Veil a few steps behind her, walked out of the coffee shop and disappeared to the left as she headed for the stone stairs leading up to the promenade. They reappeared in my line of sight, up on the promenade above Prometheus, a minute or two later. Veil was still walking behind Margaret, and he stopped to the patient's left and leaned on the railing as Margaret walked up to the woman and began speaking-all the while pointing down at the rink as I had told her. The woman suddenly slumped and would have fallen if Veil had not quickly grabbed her arm. He led the woman back to the left, while Margaret continued walking on in the opposite direction. They arrived back at our table, by their separate routes, at almost the same time.
There was a tearful reunion between the patient named Phyllis and the other women-a celebration cut short at my insistence because I didn't want to attract any more attention than we already had.
I rose to get the new arrival some food, and the rest of us another round of coffee and hot chocolate. I was already feeling exhausted from tension and anxiety, and the evening's activities were just beginning.
By eight-thirty we had gathered in all but three of the lost flock, not counting the woman Before and After said had been captured, and whom I assumed was dead. I would have allowed myself to begin feeling some measure of elation, or at least satisfaction, were it not for the fact that gathering the survivors was only the beginning; there was still a long and perilous journey to take if this was not to be the last Christmas for these men and women, and there was precious little time in which to take it.
Veil and I kept buying food-a lot of food; all of the patients were half starved, and some were dressed in thin rags that were hanging off them, but at least they were alive. Sharon Stephens had done an excellent job in equitably dividing up the capsules; the people we had gathered in had made it this far, but nobody had more than two capsules left, two people had only one, and I didn't consider the few ounces of nameless powder I had left in my pocket to be any kind of a real buffer. Everything would depend on what the doctors could do, and how fast they could do it, once we reached the hospital.
By nine-fifteen, two more emaciated but excited patients, both men, had been gathered in, and there was only one left to find-one of two middle-aged women. At nine-thirty Veil and Sharon Stephens left for their periodic tour of the area around the Christmas tree. They had been gone less than a minute when Emily grabbed my shoulder and pointed excitedly in the direction of the rink outside.
"That's Alexandra!" Emily said in her small, breathless voice. "She's the woman sitting on the bench on the other side of the rink! She's wearing a blue coat!"
I looked in the direction where Emily was pointing, but my view was momentarily obstructed by a cluster of skaters-all of them new faces, except for the athletic, seemingly indefatigable Santa with his lumpy sack-gliding past. Then there was a gap in the moving bodies, and I could see a black-haired woman who appeared to be in her late forties or early fifties sitting stiffly on one of the wooden benches that had been set up on the walkway surrounding the rink. She had a blank expression on her face as she stared straight ahead of her. All of the other patients had remembered to go to the tree, and I couldn't understand what this one was doing sitting on a bench on the lower level. It didn't feel quite right to me, and I felt my stomach muscles tighten.
"I'll go get her," Margaret said, rising from the table.
I reached out and grabbed for the woman's coat. "Hold on, Margaret. Wait for Veil. He should be back in a couple of minutes."
"Don't be silly, Mongo," Margaret said, pulling out of my grasp. "She's right over there, and I'll just walk around and get her. Nobody knows who I am, but somebody might recognize her, and she's sticking out there like a sore thumb."
"That's the point, Margaret! There's something wrong with-!"
But she had already left the table. As she exited from the restaurant and turned right to walk around the rink, I motioned for the young guard named Jack to follow her. Jack nodded, then quickly walked away. I did not want to leave the second guard, Moira, alone to watch over so many people, but I walked to the glass wall at the front of the coffee shop, where I had a clear view of the entire skating rink. I absently touched the Beretta under my parka, but I knew that the gun was virtually useless in such a crowded area; if any shooting started, a lot of innocent people would surely die.
Presumably only one member of the lost flock was left to gather in, and she was sitting directly across from me, separated by only a few dozen feet of ice. So near, and yet so far. I didn't like the situation, or the look on the woman's face, at all.
I watched tensely as Margaret threaded her way through the people who were standing on the walk on her way toward the woman named Alexandra. Jack was about ten paces behind her. She stopped by the bench where the woman was sitting and began talking to her. Suddenly a man in a gray overcoat who had been standing at the steel railing a few feet away swung around and grabbed both women by the arm. I glanced toward Jack just in time to see a man in a bomber jacket step into his path. The next moment the young man, taken completely by surprise, doubled over, and I knew he had taken a knife in the gut.
The shortest distance between two points is a straight line, and so that was the way I headed, vaulting over the steel railing outside the coffee shop and slip-sliding across the ice toward where Margaret and the woman named Alexandra were struggling with the man in the gray overcoat and the second man in the bomber jacket, who had come over to help. As I slid and staggered on the ice, with startled skaters swerving to avoid me, it occurred to me that these assassins, whether employed by BUHR or Lorminix, had probably been here all evening, mingling with the crowds, waiting and studying our routine while Veil, Sharon Stephens, and Margaret did their work for them, gathering in the lost flock, putting all this living evidence of the horrendous crimes that had been committed into one place where they could be more easily exterminated with a grenade or burst of fire from an automatic weapon. It was Alexandra who had been captured; when Veil had left with Sharon, Alexandra had been used as bait to draw out another guard, thinning our forces further; or, if Margaret hadn't gotten up to go over, it would have been Veil and Sharon who would have been ambushed, and I presumed they were probably being attacked now up on the promenade. And if I hadn't gone to the window to look out, I wouldn't even have known what was happening.
I was aware that it was probably a mistake for me to be scrambling across the ice, knew that my place was back in the coffee shop defending the greater number, but my reaction had been instinctive, and now I was committed to this course of action. Margaret Dutton was the most innocent of innocent bystanders, and she had shown great courage. She was my patient, in a manner of speaking,
and if it hadn't been for Mama Spit and her faith in me I wouldn't have had a ticket to this dance in the first place. I couldn't turn my back on her when there was the likelihood she was about to be summarily executed along with the woman she had ventured out to rescue.
I was startled when the sounds of laughter and applause suddenly erupted all around me, and then I realized that the hundreds of spectators thought I was part of some special Christmas show, or a drunken dwarf who had seriously lost his way, or both. I kept pumping my arms, struggling to get across the ice to the women and the two men they were struggling with. Margaret was scratching at the eyes of the man in the gray overcoat, and he was drawing back his fist to punch her.
There was a flash of color and movement above them, and then I saw Veil vault over the wall of the promenade, plummet down through the air, and land with his feet on the backs of both men. At almost the same precise moment I felt a strong hand grab me by the seat of my pants and lift me in the air. There was more laughter and applause, but there were also scattered shouts and screams as it dawned on some of the brighter onlookers that this was no show, and that something was seriously amiss on the skating rink at Rockefeller Center.
Dangling rather ignominiously in the firm grip of the very unfriendly skater who held me, I thrashed and tried to get to my Beretta, but it seemed I was about to lose not only face and my free ride but also my race against death, for even as I wrapped my fingers around the stock of the Beretta I could feel the bore of my captor's gun pressing against my rib cage. I was about to take a bullet through the heart.
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