Not there yet. Photographers were, though. Oh good, and the light is perfect. It’s minutes away, the big time.
“C’mon, move it,” said a different waiter coming over. An irritated big black guy griping about more cups and saucers.
Haven helped heft in a flower arrangement he could barely see over. Sunflowers and lilies. Tall, with heavy foliage. Vague shapes of people were starting to drift in – just women and a wheelchair – and he was grinding his teeth, trying to see around the flowers, getting yelled at.
“Watch it! That vase is Waterford!” the big waiter yelled at him. “Haven’t you ever handled good stuff?”
Haven glared at the guy. He wanted to yank out his gun and shoot his ugly face, but he restrained himself. And was stuck holding this big vase of flowers that wouldn’t fit, had to go right in the table’s center. Someone rushed over to move things, make room. He couldn’t drop the goddamned thing; he’d attract attention, blow his cover. Security guys over there had seen his four-years-ago face, he couldn’t chance it.
At least the doctors hadn’t started arriving, including his former pal who had so betrayed him. Annnny minute, he’d be here, easy to pick out from a crowd. Oh the joy, the ultimate win of blasting him away!
Head shot or torso? Head, he decided. Right between the eyes like Levine did the other guy, that would be too perfect. A shot even better than his.
Would dear David be in a suit or his scrubs and white jacket?
A place for the vase was cleared now, and the big waiter was scolding him as if dealing with an idiot. “You’re sloshing the water. Hold it up. I said up!”
Haven glared harder at him. You’re so close to dead, he thought.
And then thought, Cool it. Wait for the target.
40
Jesse saw the glare.
Tricia and Jill, one-handed holding him, were getting Beth situated at their table near the podium.
“Mammy, scawee,” Jesse breathed, pointing toward the long table by the wall, just yards away.
“Huh?” Jill followed his gaze and looked back at him. “Aw, honey, those people are waiters.” She repeated the word. “Those uniforms mean they bring people food.”
Beth glanced to where Jesse pointed, saw waiters’ busy backs, and patted Jesse’s knee as he balanced on Jill’s hip. “It’s a big, unfamiliar room,” she consoled.
Tricia was distracting Beth by re-positioning her chair and fussing with it. Beth protested again that she didn’t need the damn chair. “But you’re a doll,” she added. “Thanks anyway.”
Jesse started to fuss, emit a high little wail. “Mammy scawee!” he insisted, pointing again to a waiter hefting a floral arrangement.
Jill straightened, followed his gaze, and her heart dropped. Her hand went out fast, enclosed his and brought it down.
Suddenly Beth was tugging frantically at her. She’d looked again to where Jesse had pointed. Her face had gone white.
“It’s him,” she told Jill in a frantic whisper, her arm around her and turning Jill and Jesse both away. “Haven. To the right of us. Don’t look, don’t look…”
Jill spun completely away holding Jesse, and with trembling fingers speed-dialed David. “Where are you?”
“In the kitchen dressed as a waiter. Be right out.”
“No, Haven’s here,” she whispered urgently. “Beth just saw him, dressed as a waiter by the wall adjacent to the kitchen. I’ll call the cops, leave your phone on.”
A second’s silence, then: “Copy that.”
Half a minute later a large coffee urn sailed out of the kitchen, hoisted on the shoulder of a tall waiter, with a slightly shorter waiter helping to balance it. The taller waiter’s face was hidden behind the urn. He peeled off as the other waiter hefted the urn onto the end of the long table, and bent to plug it in.
A quick look to Jill, and David circled around, subtly holding his Glock.
It was Haven, all right. The fake teeth didn’t hide those staring little eyes under his big brow. They’d gotten the flowers placed and he’d turned, darting looks around the room. David sidled up behind him – peripherally, just another waiter – and stuck his gun into Haven’s back.
“Raise your hands,” David said. “You’re done.”
Activity froze around the long table as they saw.
Haven’s body stiffened. His eyes narrowed and his face turned hard. He raised his hands.
“Higher,” David said, and told the others to step away.
They did. Far away. Eyes bulged. David reached with his free hand, found Haven’s gun in his pocket, and put it on the table next to the flowers.
“Whoa,” the big waiter said, and slid the gun further away.
Jill was meanwhile on her phone, hunched in a seat over round-eyed Jesse and calling the cops. The two stunned security guards moved forward, pointing their guns too and barking into their phones.
Beth and Tricia sat, eyes wide and frozen.
To a security guard feet away David said, “Empty the kitchen. Pull everyone out.”
People in hairnets and white uniforms ran out fearfully.
“Go in,” David ordered Haven, pushing his Glock into the killer’s back. “Touch nothing or you’re dead.”
He saw Haven’s body relax. Bad sign. Psycho was re-calculating.
“You wouldn’t shoot a man in the back,” Haven smirked, turning his head slightly.
“Wanna bet? Move.” David pushed him through the swinging doors to the wide room of stainless steel cook tops, ovens and counters. Some of the counters had knives on them. Not good.
The two security guards were behind him, guns drawn, their radios crackling. “SWAT team’s coming,” one said. “We got him, go back.”
“No, this guy’s slippery,” David muttered. “Wait till they get here.”
This was no time to worry about hurt feelings, but the security guards were middle-aged and overweight. David could almost feel their tense shrugs as they followed, close behind him.
“Keep moving,” he told Haven, his gun hard in the killer’s back, shoving him past a last counter lined with salmon and knives. Get him away from the knives. He pushed Haven over six feet further, to the end of the kitchen and a wide window lining a hall. Haven stood, too damned relaxed with his hands still raised, facing out the window to the flat, graveled roof beyond. David saw him shoot a glance up and down the hall; start to lower his hands.
“Keep ‘em up,” he snapped, realizing Haven had seen the near door marked EXIT EMERGENCY ONLY.
“My arms are getting tired,” Haven said, boldly turning to leer at David with his hands still raised. His hate-filled eyes surveyed the security guards. “Jeez,” he sneered. “You guys should work out or something.”
In the dining room Jill clutched Jesse and hunched tight to her phone, hearing everything. “They’ve got him,” she said low, still worried, to Tricia and Beth. They both gaped at the closed kitchen door.
Just as all hell broke loose in there.
A blur of a kid emerged from the hallway, saw the security guards and David’s gun and the guy with his hands raised. “Ay, que pasa?”
Haven grabbed him. Got one arm tight around his neck and yanked him backward, away from David, who lunged after him. Haven ducked further back and squeezed the squealing boy’s neck harder. “Hey, watch!” he roared. “I squash his carotids any tighter and he’s dead.” He hunched down behind the shorter, struggling figure and screamed at David, the guards, “Back! Move back!”
They did.
Enough for Haven to reach, dragging the kid, grab a long knife, and hold it to the boy’s throat.
Just as the SWAT team burst through a side door, circled, and froze.
Jill did too, hearing. Whispered desperately to Trish and Beth, whose hands reached to clench her chair’s wheels.
The kid struggled, managed to get out a mewling, “Estuve solo en el batroom!”
“All of you,” Haven ordered, his knife now sweeping the armed men before h
im. “Put down your goddamn guns.” His blade went back to the boy and drew a first, superficial cut across his gasping throat, drawing a line of blood.
The kid shrieked in pain and terror. “Ay, mama! Dios!”
David, his heart exploding, lay his gun down.
The others did too and stood, clench-bodied, clench-faced. Haven laughed at the men standing grim and unarmed in their flak jackets. “Ha,” he roared, his wild, crazed eyes swinging to David. “Now I’m in command! I win!”
He dragged the kid toward the Emergency door, threatening the men who tried to follow. “You wanna see him sliced?” he roared, gripping the kid and pressing his blade harder. “Wanna see his blood splash all over this nice kitchen? Not another step if not!” The boy was crying and squealing in Spanish.
Haven hadn’t seen the lithe figure crawl uncomfortably behind a parallel counter, and come out at an angle. A good angle, clear of the boy.
Beth raised her gun, aimed for Haven’s head, and pulled the trigger.
41
Her shot raked his brow and he spun, howling in pain. The surprised cops could do nothing; he was still clutching the kid. David to the side lunged his gun from a counter. Beth’s shot enabled him to shoot, a perfect hit missing the boy and tearing into Haven’s upper arm. Mistake! Should have aimed for his head but the kid was… In the second between the boy leaping free and the cops retrieving their guns, Haven dove shrieking at David, twisting him, sending his gun flying and his brow smashing into a counter. Haven’s bleeding arm now held his knife to David’s throat.
“Back, fuckers!” he roared behind David, pressing the knife hard. “Move goddamn back!”
They did, cursing, fixed on white-faced Levine, half conscious, getting dragged to the Emergency door.
Tricia screamed, on her knees, her hands to her face. In a crawl she had caught up to Beth.
Weakly, reflexively, David tried elbowing Haven’s solar plexus and kicking his feet out from under him, but Haven held and pressed the blade harder. Reached with his free arm, got the door open, and yanked David out to the roof.
Jill was up.
Gary Phipps had just come in and she handed Jesse to him. “Keep him occupied. Open sugar packets, he loves that,” she told surprised Phipps. In a blur she saw Sam and Woody arriving too, and others in suits and conservative wear filing in, yakking, taking their seats, picking up printed reports placed by each plate. The room had been getting noisier.
Sounds from the kitchen were barely audible.
She ran.
David’s feet worked as Haven dragged him out. He had to move, the dragging made the knife’s blade sink deeper. The pain in his head was excruciating. That counter he’d hit… The SWAT men were behind them, following close, and Haven screamed at them.
Something David couldn’t make out. Everything was blurred. Blood seeped into his eyes. Haven was dragging and dragging him. Why? He was aware of the cops, yelling and trailing them...
Then, rising through the murk, he realized what Haven had screamed: I’m gonna slice him and throw him off the roof!
Rising too through the murk was remembering that Haven was wounded. Twice. Bless you, Beth. Haven’s wounded arm holding the knife to him was oozing blood onto his shirt. He felt it, warm, sticky and spreading on his skin. Then felt his back scrape the low brick safety wall, and Haven trying to hoist him over it – madly, awkwardly, his wounded arm still clutching his knife. Bullets whined and cracked near them, splintering cement. “Stop! They’re too close!” he heard someone scream.
David sucked in a gasp of air, and with his last, desperate surge of adrenalin, kicked Haven’s feet out. The killer fell howling on top of him, raising his knife. They were sliding, both about to go over.
Jill had burst past the cops, ignoring their frantic shouts to stay clear, bending to grasp something as she raced.
Haven’s knife was coming down on David. Jill, sobbing, clenched one fist and furiously punched his bleeding wound. He shrieked; glared wildly at her as her other hand threw her fistful of soot and gravel in his eyes.
He screamed in pain, dropped the knife; writhed and struggled onto his back on the wall, rubbing particles hard into his eyes…and slid away.
David twisted, tried to look. Where’d he go?
Then caught himself, head and shoulders hanging over the edge.
Jill and a cop and then another cop pulled him back. He could still see over the edge, though. They all could.
Haven lurching across a swaying awning, sliding, falling into the street…
No, not the street.
“Jesus,” breathed cops just reaching them.
They could see it happening. A big garbage truck was outside the Madison Deli, its huge hydraulic blade already in operation. Haven had landed in the truck’s giant maw crammed with garbage. The operator was near, boogying away to something coming through his ear buds; couldn’t hear the cops yelling “Turn it off! Off!” A raised Dumpster avalanched more garbage onto Haven. The hydraulic blade swept him in further, and as he screamed and screamed, the truck’s insides swallowed him.
Cop revulsion sounded, but David was just aware of them pulling him away from the wall, and then Jill, holding him and crying. The reality of what had almost happened seemed to overwhelm him. He felt Jill’s wet cheek against his, saw EMTs emerging from the blur, and then a crowd of two Sams, two Woodys, two Tricias, Kerri and Alex…all of them yammering “Gurney!” “Emergency!”
“Don’t need ‘em.” He closed his eyes.
Felt Jill crying and shaking worse. Felt Woody and Sam getting his eyes open, checking his reflexes.
“Pupils round, regular and equal”….“React to light and accommodation.” Both of them yelling like the place was on fire, poking him with their penlights.
“Get those lights outta my eyes,” he complained, and somebody laughed in relief. Then he saw Dan DeMayo craning over Woody, compassionate, horrified.
“Sorry about your shirt, Dan.”
He barely heard his own voice, and passed out.
42
Jesse stole the show.
Before it began, even, guests arriving were quick to spot him standing in his little red socks on Gary Phipps’s lap, laughing, tugging at his hair while Gary, gripping him with one arm, hunched into his phone getting hollered updates from Sam and Woody.
The thrilled guests converged.
“Ohh, how he’s grown,” said a blond pediatric neurologist from Boston to a grinning pediatric hematologist from London. They’d met for a previous researchers’ visit, open to few. Others gathered behind and around them, thrilled, quickly spreading to circle the table.
Photographers got close too, snapping.
“Isss really him?” said an incredulous neonatologist from Tokyo, peering from behind someone else’s shoulders, and the blond pediatric neurologist bobbed her head to him like a schoolgirl who’d just seen Elvis, turned back to Jesse and said, “Honey? You won’t remember me. I held you when you were three weeks and made you cry, my stethoscope was cold.”
“Mammy ‘scope!” chortled Jesse, beaming his two-teeth grin at her, wowing the crowd. Gary clung to him, getting a few odd looks as he hunched away with his phone to his ear. He was hearing from Jill, sounding tremulous.
Then Jesse turned, his little eyebrows puckering in the direction of the kitchen door. “Mammy?” He’d seen both his parents go through that door, and not reappear. Belatedly, guests’ expressions looked with confusion at the wide round table, empty except for Jesse and the intense young scrub holding him, just pocketing his phone.
But Willard Simpson had appeared briefly at the podium to say there’d be a delay, that explained it. Good. More time to crowd the table, gape and grin at the miracle kid, exchange astonished comments with each other.
“Mommy’s coming,” Greg reassured Jesse, hiding the fact that he was a nervous wreck and wanted to run to Emergency. Jesse was distracted by the others. “Soon as she can,” Greg added. “You don’t k
now the word ‘soon’ yet, do you?”
“Ooh,” Jesse mimicked him, his eyes wide in mirth.
“Estupendo,” somebody exclaimed; and someone else breathed, “Crikey.”
Now Gary turned, gave a drained smile to the others just as Willard Simpson approached, made his way through and lowered himself, heavily, to a seat next to Gary. He’d been on his phone too.
“It’s over, David’s okay,” Simpson said low.
Gary nodded. “They’ve all gone to Emergency with him.”
It was 9:30. The waiters were in motion again, the kitchen staff had returned to their stoves and microwaves, and such was the clamor over Jesse that not a sound had been heard from the crisis.
Simpson put a hand to his head and groaned, “My blood pressure.”
“What now?” Gary asked. Jesse had plopped to his lap and was playing with a spoon.
A shrug, a helpless glance at the little fingers exploring the spoon. “The five of them were going to start it. Describe interacting with Jesse at six months gestation, seven months, eight …”
Gary thought for a second. “I can do that,” he said a bit nervously.
Simpson blinked at him. “Serious?”
“Serious. I was there for most of it.”
Simpson smiled, inhaling at last. He leaned back and picked up a spoon to clink his glass.
“Tables, everyone!” he said, clinking again. “We’re about to begin.”
People rushed back to their places and the printed reports left by their plates. Folders flipped open. Other gazes watched Gary get up rather awkwardly, holding Jesse who was still holding his spoon.
“Take him with you,” Simpson said, smiling.
Gary did.
To a flash of cameras he sat Jesse on the podium right in front of him. Jesse looked around, surprised. Gary did too, for a second: “What am I doing? Where to begin?”
CATCH ME (EMBRYO: A Raney & Levine Thriller, Book 4) Page 18
