Running of the Bulls

by Christopher Smith

  He looked up at her, saw that she was ready and eased his head so he could look up the staircase.

  Nothing.

  He motioned for her to look. And when she did, nothing changed to something.

  The floor started to creak. They could hear the distinct sound of something rolling. It was coming quickly, so quickly, in fact, that Marty got to his feet and looked up at the staircase with Maggie. And when they did, there was the sound of something igniting, a fresh blast of heat rolled down the staircase, and then a large bloom of fire mushroomed toward the second-floor ceiling as it came into view.

  What they saw was a grand piano. It was engulfed in flames and it stopped just short of going over the staircase. Behind it was Wolfhagen, his face caught in the curling cascade of flames.

  He was grinning down at them. Maggie took a shot at him but missed. Marty ran to the other side of the staircase to see if he could get a better view, but it was worse here. Wolfhagen was hidden behind the growing fire.

  And then came Wolfhagen’s voice. “You want to fuck with me? Then you better have the balls to fuck with me. Tonight, I win.”

  Maggie took aim and shot again just as he gave the piano a massive push.

  * * *

  It was as if it came from hell.

  Ablaze and dripping liquid fire onto the staircase’s old carpet, which quickly caught with flame, the piano teetered for a moment at the top step before it started to thump and bump down the staircase. Flames sprayed and sparks flew as it shook the building and built momentum. And then there was the sound it made--thousands of notes playing at once, wires snapping, wood splintering. It was a concerto of the damned and the music it made filled the space as if a madman was directing it.

  Transfixed, Marty and Maggie watched it come toward them. They watched it jump over stairs and gather speed as it flew through the air like some fiery, misshaped, musical comet. In the vacuum of heat building within it, the piano’s lid blew off and shot toward the ceiling, where it hung in the air just long enough to catch the ceiling on fire before it smashed back onto the piano.

  “Run!” Marty shouted.

  The piano slammed into the wall at the base of the stairwell. The force was so great, it blew the piano apart, but the fire remained and it quickly spread, licking the old wallpaper and moving with surprising speed up the walls, over the ceiling and into the room on the second floor, where Wolfhagen now was trapped and would bake if he didn’t get out soon.

  Maggie looked at Marty, who was peering up the stairs, and when she did, she saw Carra Wolfhagen’s face emerge faintly in the room behind him.

  Given the veils of smoke, the debris and the fire billowing up from the piano, Carra appeared to be an orange ghost hovering behind him in the dark room. At first, Maggie wasn’t sure why she was here. Was it to see her husband burn? But as Carra drew closer and Maggie saw that she was holding a gun, she knew differently and took position.

  The next few moments were a blur.

  The flames were growing. Pieces of the ceiling were crackling down onto the piano and the stairs. It was difficult to see clearly. Worse, Marty couldn’t hear Carra walking behind him because of the fire’s roar and the falling plaster.

  Carra was an encroaching funnel of orange light. She looked across the haze at Maggie, cocked her head at her and then quietly lifted her gun to Marty’s head. A large chunk of the ceiling gave way and smashed onto the piano. Hot air and flames fanned out, creating a blizzard of smoke and ash as Maggie took aim at Carra’s chest.

  But too much smoke was blowing into the room. It was almost impossible to see. Time slowed. She held her hand as steady as she could and fired at Carra just as another piece of the ceiling dropped. Marty turned away from it and moved into Carra’s path.

  And when he did, the bullet cut through him, he sank to his knees and fell hard on the floor.

  * * *

  For an instant, Maggie stood there, unbelieving. She shot him.

  For an instant, Carra looked down at Marty and then through the smoke at Maggie, unbelieving. She shot him.

  Carra turned to run, Maggie fired off a shot but missed.

  She was about to run after her when she heard footsteps running across the second floor. She looked up at the staircase and watched, stunned, as Wolfhagen leaped from the top step and fell through the smoky air.

  His legs scissored beneath him.

  For balance, he kept his arms held out at his sides.

  In one of his hands was a gun.

  His shock of white hair turned increasingly orange as he neared the fire.

  He was heading straight for the center of the burning piano, where the lid was burning. She reared back when he smashed on top of it. The lid broke but Wolfhagen was invincible. He leaped out of the pit and into the room. He came face to face with her and lifted his gun, which she swatted away with her own. She punched him hard in the face with her free hand and then hit him harder with her gun against his left cheek.

  He stumbled back, but Wolfhagen was nothing if not quick. He fired at her and missed. The room was smoky, he couldn’t see. Neither could she. Eyes and lungs burning, she pointed her gun where she thought he was standing and fired. She listened but didn’t hear him fall. Instead, she heard him running toward the door that was across the room. Freedom was there. They both knew it.

  But she wouldn’t allow him freedom. Rage drove her forward. At the front of the room, the air wasn’t as smoky. There was a distinct breeze and the sound of traffic mingling with the sound of flames. And Maggie knew--Carra Wolfhagen was gone. She’d run out and left the door open.

  Maggie ran faster and as she did, she began to make out all of him. He turned over his left shoulder to see how close she was. His face appeared to her--that face that she hated. He was breathing hard, panting like the animal he was, his crowded teeth bared into a tight smile of triumph. He knew he was going to make it. She could feel it. She swung around one of the tables in the center of the room, lifted her gun and steadied her aim.

  She heard Mark say something behind her, something about the smoke. But he wasn’t her focus. This was her chance. She was taking Wolfhagen. He charged forward and then turned toward her again. “Love your face,” he said.

  “Love yours more.”

  When she fired, his head exploded. But she was running so quickly, she ran straight through it as it exploded. She felt blood and brains and bone collide against her face. He went down and she jumped over his falling body. One look told her what she needed to know. He was dead.

  At last, she was rid of him.

  * * *

  But what of Marty?

  She shook and wiped off Wolfhagen’s remains. She turned the corner and sprinted into the other room. She screamed for Jennifer to get herself and Mark outside. She could see Marty glowing from the fire at the far end of the room. Next to him, the piano was snapping, crackling. Marty was in a heap. The building was going up quickly. Too quickly. If she didn’t hurry, either the second floor would collapse on top of them or the smoke would kill them.

  She stopped beside Marty, pulled him away from the heat and saw that her bullet had hit him in the chest. He wasn’t moving or breathing. She could hear Jennifer rolling Mark forward. They were coughing. She called to Jennifer and told her to get an ambulance.

  With a chest wound, she knew the procedure of reviving him had to be done differently and so she lowered her mouth to his, covered the wound with the palm of her hand and forced air into his lungs while Roberta’s words rolled through her head: You’re going to shoot him, my friend is going to die and there’s nothing I can do to stop it.

  But the dead could be brought back.

  Applying more pressure to the wound and aware of the sound of sirens coming near them, Maggie spoke to Marty between breaths. She knew he was dead but she wouldn’t stop. She breathed air into his lungs and was aware of the blood seeping up through his chest each time she did so.

  And she knew. His lungs were filling with b
lood. He was drowning.

  Before each breath, she spoke to him.

  “Don’t die,” she said with a raised voice. “You come back. I know you can see me. Jennifer is safe. You don’t have to leave. Come back.”

  All around her, the walls were starting to give. Chunks of the ceiling gave way and smashed to the floor while fire on the second floor started to reveal itself and tumble down from above. Jennifer and Mark were at the door now. They stopped to look inside and then Jennifer started to run toward Marty.

  “Go!” Maggie said. “Get him out of here. Don’t come back--you won’t have a second chance if you do. Marty’s fine, Jennifer. I’m getting him out of here now. Wait for us across the street on the sidewalk.”

  Reluctantly, Jennifer stopped.

  “Come with us, Maggie.”

  It was Mark. She found him and now she was certain she’d lose him again. The building was going to give way. She knew it. She felt it. It took everything she had within her to say, “Just go. We’re right behind you. I promise.”

  “I love you,” he said.

  “I love you, too.”

  They left.

  She gave Marty another shot of air, but nothing was working. She increased pressure on the wound and then, in her despair, she realized she was crying. All around them, pieces of the ceiling continued to fall. The house was shifting, weakening. The walls were alight with flame. The heat was intense. She leaned over him and held his face in her hand. She gently shook him. “Come back.”

  The police, fire department and EMTs broke into the building. Maggie looked at them as they raced toward her. She turned back to Marty. “You’re not going to die,” she said. “Your girls need you. Do you hear me? Your girls need you. You can’t do this to the girls.”

  And then, in spite of the smoke closing down on her, she pressed her scarred cheek to the hot floor, took a lungful of clean air and breathed whatever life was left inside her straight into him.

  ~~~~

  EPILOGUE

  SIX MONTHS LATER

  AMSTERDAM

  Smelling of cannabis and feeling a bit high because of it, Vincent Spocatti left the Speak Easy Coffeeshop on Oudebrugsteeg, where pot was smoked as freely as the coffee was poured, and took a right on Warmoesstraat, a narrow street whose origins began in the 13th century.

  As such, surrounding him was a bizarre hive of the old and the new. This was a popular street and now, on the tip of dusk, it was teeming with clutches of people walking close and in the midst of chatter. He listened to them as they passed--a cacophony of Dutch voices lifting and lilting.

  He loved it here.

  It was February, he was bundled against cold, there was a loaded gun in his pocket and his two marks were walking ahead of him.

  One was an international banker pushing sixty, the other was his international mistress pushing thirty. Back home in the States, the banker’s longtime American wife was pushing to have each murdered by nightfall.

  He could smell the Amstel river in the distance and he could hear the familiar clatter of the Central railroad, which occasionally made the pavement tremble when a train passed. And then, in his pocket, he felt a vibration of another sort--his cell phone.

  He reached for it, saw that it was an email and opened it to a photograph of Carmen, who was in Bora Bora resting in a hut that reached into the South Pacific deep. She was on a deck, in a bikini and looking tan and fit. Beneath the photo were a few words: “Paradise ending. New job tomorrow. This one’s big. You might hear from me.”

  He turned off the phone and looked ahead of him, where his marks were walking arm-in-arm, her head on his shoulder. She was blonde and she was pretty, with a smooth complexion that was just this side of pink given the chilly air. He heard her laugh and, as she turned her head to whisper something in the man’s ear, he saw just how delicate she was, just how fine her jaw line.

  He had orders to get a photo of her face after he’d blasted it into nothingness.

  Carmen.

  The last time he’d seen her was in New York, when they decided to be nobody’s fool and turn the tables on Carra Wolfhagen and Ira Lasker when it was revealed that they lied to them and put them at risk. And so, just for fun, they found rope, put nooses around their necks and strung each up by their throats above the bar.

  Wolfhagen and the reporter joined them.

  When they left them behind, scrambling and gagging and choking as they fought to stay conscious, there was a sense of redemption. Maybe they’d live, maybe they’d die--neither he nor Carmen cared. What mattered is that Carra and Ira have time enough on those nooses to know why they were there. They’d think about their mistakes and wish they’d been straight with them from the start.

  Later, Spocatti read in the Times how the scene unfolded. Carra Wolfhagen was caught by the police when she ran out of the building and down the street. The next day, Mark Andrews identified her and Lasker as the masterminds behind framing Wolfhagen. She now was facing prison. Spocatti read that Lasker died in the fire, as did Wolfhagen, who was burned so deeply beyond recognition, his remains were identified by his crowded set of teeth. All in all, a good ending in which he and Carmen learned valuable lessons while pocketing millions for their trouble.

  Now, the day had tipped into night. Storefront windows illumined the stone sidewalks. Above them, street lamps flashed and created warm umbrellas of amber light. Tonight, he would end this job, likely by busting into their apartment and taking them by surprise, and then he’d move back to New York City, where another job was waiting for him.

  Two years ago, he had been involved in a coup to take down the billionaire George Redman and his family, among others. Things hadn’t gone as planned and now Spocatti was being brought back to finish the job thanks to a provision provided by a man’s will. He was so intrigued by the situation--at the sheer freshness of it--that he agreed on the spot to take the job.

  He would finish what should have been finished, and in the absence of one man’s ego and unwillingness to listen, he’d be free to kill in ways that were efficient, precise and, if he was in the mood, likely creative.

  * * *

  NEW YORK

  The cat, Baby Jane, walked across the piano keys to the sound of her own music.

  She stopped in the middle of the keyboard, reached out her paw and pressed down on one of the keys. Curious, she did so again, this time more firmly. And then, delighted that she possessed the gift of music, the cat reared up on her hind legs and crashed down in an eruption of sound.

  Maggie Cain swept into the room and hooked the cat with one arm. “You’re no Chopin,” she said. “You do, however, have the aggression of a young Rachmaninoff. But do me a favor and work it out later, when I’m not writing.” She scratched the cat’s chin. “Okay?”

  Unfazed, the cat squirmed out of Maggie’s arm and ran across the room to the window. She leaped onto the sill and looked out at the falling snow. New York was in the midst of a Nor’easter. They were predicting eighteen inches, but as Maggie moved behind the cat and looked out at the barren street, she knew they were in for more because the snow already was that deep. But she didn’t mind it--right now, everywhere she looked was bright and white and seemingly brand new.

  She went back to her office and stared at the words on her computer monitor. Her new novel, a thriller, was nearly finished. She’d never attempted the genre before but given what she’d experienced six months ago, she felt uniquely qualified to give it a shot. And she was enjoying it. Three more chapters, a second and a third draft to hone the text, and then it was off to her agent Matt, who encouraged her to write it.

  The phone rang. She glanced over at the lighted dial and saw that it was Mark. She weighed whether she wanted to be interrupted by him, and decided that she didn’t. She let him slip into the gray world of voice mail and waited for him to leave a message.

  “It’s me,” he said. “You up for company? I could grab a cab, stop by the market and get the fixings for a roasted
tomato, basil and garlic soup. Let me know soon--I know you’re probably writing and haven’t eaten. The soup would do you good.”

  He severed the connection and she looked back at the screen. She tried to concentrate, but it was difficult. He was making every effort to win her back. What still surprised her is that he even had to try. If she had been told the night she found him alive in that safe house that there would be any question they’d be back together again, she would have scoffed.

  But then Mark went to Wolfhagen’s funeral and when he did, a part of her saw him in a different light. Regardless of what Wolfhagen had done to her and to the millions of people whose financial lives he ruined in the stock market crash he helped to create, Mark still revered the man, which she couldn’t accept or understand.

  When she confronted him with it, he shrugged it off--Wolfhagen once meant a lot to him. He taught him what he knew today. He forgave him for what he’d done in the past. She should, too. After all, he’d done his time. He wasn’t responsible for anything Carra and Ira did. It was healthy to move on.

  But for Maggie, that wasn’t the case--her scar wasn’t just emotional, it was physical. And how could Mark overlook the fact that Wolfhagen tried to shoot her?

  She dropped Mark then. Months passed without a word. And then, two weeks ago, he called with an apology and asked if they could work this out. He told her that he loved her. He said that he missed her. He wanted them to be together. But in spite of the fact that a part of her still loved him, another part of her wondered if she was for him. Not knowing, she built up roadblocks. She still hadn’t agreed to see him.

  Words on the screen. She read them again and added a sentence. He was pulling out all the stops with that soup. He knew it was her favorite. And the weather was perfect for it. She typed a line of dialogue, screwed up her face when she read it and then deleted it. Words on the screen. She stared at them so long, they went out of focus. For a moment, they could have been ghosts.