His final thinking on the matter had led to the final destruction of anything “people of taste and discernment” who couldn’t smell what was right under their upturned noses, would have considered valuable in the hall.
***
Adrian had barely made it down the steps from Altreman’s building and onto the sidewalk when he noted the blue four-door sedan burning rubber towards him, a guy, not the driver, leaning out the window on the same side with a rifle aimed at him. Strangely, that sight was less disturbing than seeing the man standing in the middle of the street with a bazooka aimed at the shooter gunning for Adrian. He fired the bazooka and sent the Ford four-door flying into the air. It landed upside down. The shot fired from the rifle missed Adrian by a good bit as a result.
The agent with the bazooka lowered the weapon and ran towards Adrian as other agents in black suits swarmed the upturned car. “Sorry about that, Adrian.”
“What the hell was that about?”
Scenario Guy took the dart from another fellow, a more portly agent who had just run up to him, who shouldn’t be running at all unless he was inviting a heart attack. Portly had pulled the dart out of the rifle aimed at Adrian earlier. Scenario Guy held it up to Adrian. Portly ran off to reinforce the team containing the two in the car, although they looked beyond anybody’s help anymore. “It’s a tranquilizer dart,” Scenario Guy explained. He reminded Adrian of that black actor who did the Prudential commercials. “Only it’s not carrying a knockout drug. The serum is meant to make you smarter, and spread to anyone you come in contact with, making the whole world ultimately smarter.” Adrian turned to see where the part of the team not containing the car incident, dressed in hazard suits, was spraying and decontaminating the wall where the dart had impacted.
“Please tell me that damn thing works,” Adrian said. “I could stand for the chick at Wal-Mart counting out my change to do so correctly for once. Never mind she has the cash register to tell her how much change to give me. It doesn’t spell out how many quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies that includes exactly. Sorry, that probably sounded uncharitable.”
The agent standing with the dart in front of him huffed. “Tell me about it. I…”
Adrian waved him off. “Just tell me whether the serum works or not.”
“Nah. It does for a time, then it eats your brain out, turns it to jelly. Great for filming a zombie movie the way they do some slasher films.”
“Promise me you and your guys will keep working on that formula until you get it right. Sounds like a great way to upstage me.”
Scenario Guy, aka Prudential Commercial Man, smiled. “Will do, sir. You know how we all live to upstage you.”
“Yes, I do,” Adrian smiled back a bit more cheekily before moving on.
He was really filling up fast on his quota of high drama for one evening.
At least Dart Man was trying to make the world a better place instead of putting an end to it, even if the result would have been very much the same. It was just more evidence that even the well-wishers needed monitoring, and that this kind of science concerned with turning humans into trans-humans needed to get into the public eye—the right way.
TWENTY-TWO
Monique’s place was high-end, classy, spacious, well-lit, but ultimately sterile. It looked like no one had lived here long enough to lend it character. It was one long rectangle. One side of that rectangle was a very expansive, stark white wall. And behind that wall was a wardrobe closet to match anything on a Hollywood set. You had to know it was there, of course, and there was no way of knowing that unless she cued you. If you looked for a traditional closet, you’d find one, but you’d find the clothes could have gone with any of her personalities. Whereas, the clothes in the never-ending wardrobe closet only went with her different personalities. It wasn’t quite like living with the one dissociative disorder patient with the most personalities in the world—unless she wanted to fuck with you. But her spy game did take the age-old twist of the French Maid outfit in the closet next to the nurse’s uniform for sexual roleplay to a whole other level.
Fortunately for him, his in-ear hearing-aid, the size of a pencil eraser, had also been modified to translate for him as she slipped in and out of various characters. Because he only spoke English, not the crazy amount of languages she did, with accompanying regional dialects and cultural affectations. Most spies were happy to blend seamlessly in one or two countries. Not her. Her photographic memory was much like Adrian’s, but wired up very differently—wired up to produce this. A spy of spies.
She let him fix their drinks as she went behind the wall.
He was already smiling, just wondering what was going to come out again from the other side.
It didn’t feel like a minute had elapsed. Maybe it had been two, tops, as he was lost in mixing her piña colada. She probably assigned him the drink to mix so he could futz with cutting the fresh pineapple, and dick around with the blender, wash things up and put them away, and have her drink all prepared and waiting for her to give her the time she needed to change. Okay, so maybe it was three minutes.
Out sauntered the Russian chick. She didn’t even have to open her mouth and speak Russian. He just knew she was Russian by how she comported herself. Her clothing. Her hairstyle. Her mannerisms. The way she snapped her purse closed. Since most Russian women wore the same damn thing as modern Europeans, these days, the real giveaway was that ridiculous black sable hat, big and round, and rimless. It had more of a collar than a rim, made of the same sable, and it looked like it might be masking enough hair to waterfall down to her butt, if she took it off. Though all that showed was a swath of teasing strands of blond to either side, echoing the waterfall-like diamond earrings that hung to the same length.
Her black gloves traced up to just above her elbows. And her sleeveless black matching dress of the same stretchy, seamless fabric, drew a line just above the bottom of her modest breasts and around behind to her lower back. A thick diamond bracelet adorned her left wrist, wrapped around the left glove. The black, almost frictionless fabric of the dress and the black hat had been chosen to highlight her flawless skin, ever so lightly-tanned and pink with healthy color. Her supermodel facial features were just ridiculous—no one would suspect she was anything more than a trophy wife—but in this outfit, they were all the more hypnotizing.
“Why are you looking at me like that?” she said in Russian, Moscow’s Red Square province Russian, to be precise. She must have been preparing to segue to English at some point, as most citizens in that region were quite fluent in it and more used to speaking it than their native tongue. “I thought we agreed we were going to the theater.”
He swore she had stepped out from behind the wall at the precise moment the setting sun could sparkle off those diamonds. He smiled impishly at the juxtaposition of her clueless face, her “impulsive” act, and the brute calculation underlying both. “True, but I’m far more interested now in seeing you eat a peanut butter and jelly sandwich in that getup without dropping a crumb on yourself or messing with those perfect teeth one bit.”
She chuckled. “Maybe we should see if I pass the piña colada test first.”
“Absolutely,” he said, pulling the stool back for her. “Should make the peanut butter and jelly test all the more formidable.”
She set her purse down on the counter and worked the drink as he worked the fridge and the cupboards. After opening a few of the latter to no avail he said, “Okay, caviar and smoked fish on bread it is.”
She smiled, amused by his mock frustration. Then she took the remote out of her purse, pressed a combination of buttons on it. The shelves in the opened cupboards rotated. There, in the first one above the counter, was the peanut butter and jelly. Now that she’d gone all-American. She rolled her eyes as he glared back at her. “I swear you are vorse for srowing a girl out of character zan ze instructors at Langley,” she said in perfectly Moscow-accented English. At least for someone hot off the boat.
&
nbsp; “So…”
“Sasha.”
“So, Sasha, what are some of your favorite Russian boy bands?”
She snorted. “You mean ozer zan Kino? Well, zere is zat Chizh and Co,” she swooned. That was when he decided to change the topic of conversation.
He slid the slice of bread with peanut butter on top in front of her with a wicked smile. After her Chizh and Co comment he had decided to forego the jelly. This way it was even more likely to get stuck in her throat. “Remember, I expect to see those sparkling teeth smiling the whole time.”
She gestured to the drawer with the knives and forks to cue him. “That’s right. Forgot you guys eat European style.”
“No you didn’t.”
Maybe he hadn’t. He handed over the knife and fork.
Biting her lip, “Sasha” laughed her quiet laughs at all his silliness as she cut into the sandwich with the knife and fork. She made sure her wrists rested on the table when not actually cutting, in true European fashion, which was how they did it in Russia. And then there was of course the coordinating of piña colada sips to wash down that peanut butter and whole grain bread so she could talk without mumbling and without any crud sticking to her teeth. It was the perfect time to pepper her with questions in his sick take of blondes can’t talk Russian and chew peanut butter sandwiches and recall Moscow pop culture at the same time.
“I bet you Russian girls can’t wait to land a foreigner, especially an American like me?”
She smiled, mostly to show off her still perfectly glistening teeth, and the fact that she could eat and drink and fend off his torturous questions all at the same time. “Russia has been doing better under Putin, despite what zey tell you in ze Vest. So foreigners are not the hot ticket item zey once were. Wiz all ze financial trouble in Greece, ze talk of Russian wives marrying Norwegians and Swedes only to find zemselves beaten to deaz… let’s just say Russians are looking a whole lot better.”
He snorted. “I bet.” He leaned in over the counter. “Of course they don’t have any of my charms.”
“Like?” She couldn’t have sounded more clueless if she tried.
“We’ll get to that. Not fair to ask you to put anything else in your mouth just yet.”
That wedge of peanut butter and bread went down hard. She sipped her piña colada to keep from choking. “I, I have to show refinement under duress. You, you get to be as crass as sandpaper.”
“No, I’m trying on crass, like you’re trying on,” he gestured, “whatever this is.”
She’d been speaking in perfectly accented Russian English the whole time. But for this latest offense, there was no brooking it in anything but Russian. “I’m the gold-digging trophy girlfriend showing off how she can handle the poshest of social venues so long as you can keep feeding her diamond fetish. Really, Adrian, is it that hard to play along? Maybe if you could get into character any better…”
“Maybe if I were the type to keep you in such high style.” His voice had taken on an edge sharper than a scalpel and harder than a diamond.
She sighed mock surrender. “Perhaps I did pick zis character to play on your eensecurities.”
“Oh, I have gobs of insecurities, sweetheart, just none of them pertaining to how rich I am, or am not, as the case may be.”
“And zis is you making fun of all my social refinements,” she said, staring at the half-eaten peanut butter on whole grain bread.
“Maybe. Maybe I just don’t like being played by Russian would-be countesses or by whomever?”
“Really? I would never have guessed zat.”
“Really?”
She set down the knife and fork, dabbed her mouth with the napkin. “So, can we get around to ze angry sex now?”
He smiled menacingly. “Why, yes, darling, I think we can.”
He vaulted over the counter. He took her by surprise so much she was gasping and screaming in excitement in one as he swept her up around the waist in one arm and carried her into the bedroom area in the open floor plan.
***
“Adrian?”
“Yeah.” It was a bark more than an utterance.
“Where the hell have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you since this time yesterday?”
He checked his phone and realized that the settings had changed to “silent ring”, probably jostled into the gear shift by his sprint over to Altreman’s. “No comment.”
“Klepsky says he needs me to get the golem formula to work, like right now.”
Adrian sat up in bed, his cell phone to his ear. It was about three in the afternoon, evident by the sun streaming through the window full blast. He looked around for Monique, saw that she was fixing herself in the bathroom. Just his luck she did most of her best work at night. Out of his bed and out of arm’s reach. It was throwing out his back as much as his sleeping rhythm. Typically, he had a no fucking during the daytime policy, the same way champion athletes didn’t have sex before a big game. He needed his mind fresh for his murder investigations. Still, Monique put up a good argument for getting over himself, if the daylong festivities were any indicator.
Adrian paced the side of the bed trying to figure out a solution for Celine, all the while looking at Monique going from long, straight-haired blond to short-black-haired Chinese American. “There’s only one real chance you have of pulling off this hat trick. You need to focus on getting the bodies to maintain their integrity. He doesn’t need to be unkillable; he just needs to not melt like candlewax as soon as he’s back from the dead. Since bringing the dead back to life isn’t your concern, nor is keeping him alive forever once he’s back from the dead, and kill-proof, ninety-nine percent of the formula can remain out of your hands. If I wanted to keep Golem Guy from turning into Melt Man, I’d focus on the cellular scaffolding. The molecules that maintain the cell’s shape.”
“Yes, of course. That I can definitely do in our timeframe.” Celine hung up the phone on him, presumably to not waste any more time on their ticking clock.
There was one other thing they needed for this plan to work.
They had every reason to believe they were being monitored by the serial killer, so he would already know they were trying to pull a fast one on him. Still, they needed him to feel satisfied that once Adrian had completed his first slaughter of an innocent, that his end of the deal was complete. Adrian would have developed a taste for blood that would need further quenching. Regardless of the rationale he gave himself for why performing the act really didn’t matter.
He’d have to act the part of the blood-crazed killer well enough to get his partner in crime to want to meet up with him so, going forward, they could kill together.
The question was, would Adrian really be acting at that point? Or would his blood lust be real?
“You oppose a thing long enough, you become it.” He forgot who said that about police work. Maybe it was him.
TWENTY-THREE
They all got the kill order at the same time. Ed, Klepsky, Adrian. All of them.
The name and the address came over Adrian’s cell phone. The others got the same text sprawling over their big screen monitors at the FBI-FD, the FBI’s Futurist Division.
New York City that night was experiencing a biblical deluge. If Adrian waited any longer for a cab, a homeless guy could row him uptown in his floating cardboard box of a refuge.
It was just as well. The weather suited his mood. He was heading off to kill somebody who didn’t deserve to be killed, after all.
The puddles and oil slicks on the road illuminated by neon and passing car headlights reflected back funhouse mirror renditions of his face. When they gave it to him straight, his mug was erased by a bicycle messenger tearing through the puddle or one of the urban acrobats come out to play, crashing into it with his skateboard, using the hood of a car as a jumping off point.
In case the symbolism wasn’t thick enough, he passed Wall Street’s Charging Bull, the bronze sculpture adorning Bowling Green Park, on his way to his
mark. The bull thrusting his horns at him was no doubt emblematic of his higher-self telling him to stand down.
The tower Ray Bright lived in was largely shrouded in darkness except for the floor Ray lived on. The entire suite shone like a search beacon trying to rescue the citizens of New York City stranded in the downpour.
Klepsky met up with Adrian outside the building before he could enter the turnstile.
“You remember to call off my surveillance team?” Adrian said. “I’d rather they not have all this on camera.”
“Why? Because we’re going to kill someone in the name of the public good? Grow up, Adrian. The hard part will be swallowing the medal afterward.”
He was shouting something else at him but it was impossible to hear over the honking horns and the rain pelting the sidewalk, the brims of their hats, and their trench coats like machine gun fire. The din had picked up just then to erect the perfect acoustic barrier between them. Adrian signaled to save it for when they got inside.
Once in the lobby, Klepsky stomped his feet on the polished-to-perfection floor and jumped up and down to get the last of the rain off him. He reminded Adrian of a dog fresh out of a bathtub.
“It’s just water, Klepsky.”
“I don’t want any more weighing me down than the thought of you going in there to kill somebody who we should be raising a statute to.”
“That bad, huh?”
“The guy has single-handedly revitalized more rundown neighborhoods across the world than the international bankers in bed with military industrial complexes have torn down countries. And that’s saying a lot.”
The codger manning the lobby was already taking the mop to Klepsky’s feet. The mop bumping up against Klepsky’s patent leathers was becoming a subject of some consternation, despite his doing his best to ignore the old coot.
“You have the rest of your life to berate me, Klepsky, why all the rush to get it all in now? Me thinks you doth protest too much.” Adrian was talking as he watched the lights tick down the numbers above the elevator doors as the cart descended to the first floor.
Unkillable Page 21
