I’m ready for the next one, his partner, but there’s nothing doing in the stairwell. So the cop’s alone. My left ear pulses, this sort of push and pull of pain. More gunfire. Somewhere down the hall, it’s party central: maximum rock’n’roll. What’s left of the U Street kids shooting up the 9 Bravos and trading fire with CK’s little army. A three-ring circus. Insane.
I stay right where I am, because this is no time to move. Either they’re coming this way or they’re not. I say not, but I’m taking no chances. I shake out the magazine on the Glock in my right hand, pull a fresh one from my suit coat, and snap it in.
Footsteps.
Shadows first, then some guy in an Atlanta Braves sweatshirt and fatigues, and then a kid in an oversize shirt and droopy jeans. A couple Bravos. Probably the only ones still vertical. They’re waving Uzis back down the hallway and lighting things up pretty well until the sweatshirt guy gets lifted off his feet and blown back out of sight, his right torso pretty much torn away by what has to be some heavy-duty fire. The droopy jeans guy doesn’t seem to notice, just runs the mag, tosses the Uzi to the floor, and tears ass down the hall.
I hear him take five shots in the back and then finish the dead man’s dance.
Time, gentlemen.
It’s CK, and it’s one pissed-off CK.
Time is up. Let’s move.
I flatten into the wall of the stairwell and they sweep past me, down the hall, dragging the body of the Bravo warlord and one of our guys who’s wounded.
I’m trying to think this through, trying to think what comes next, trying to know, trying to know what CK knows and as I’m trying to know I suddenly wish I didn’t know, because I don’t want to hear these words, but they come, they come, they come:
Fire in the hole.
I don’t hear and I just barely see Mackie, moving doorway to doorway in a crouch, coming right toward me, and fuck if he isn’t ready, with a Benelli Black Eagle shotgun.
There’s a body at his feet, a gangbanger, and he pushes at the kid with the toe of his shoe and then he pushes again. He sighs and lets his shoulders sag. The Benelli swings down, right into the kid’s head, and when the shotgun kicks, a clot of brains blows up off the carpet and onto the far wall.
Yeah! he yells out, like this is some kind of football game. Yeah, yeah, yeah! He waves the shotgun at someone down the hall. Now go! Go!
I probably look like a ghost, rising up off the stairs, covered in plaster dust, pistol in each hand. But no one is watching; no one can see me but the dead kid, the dead cop. Mackie has his back to me, stepping over the mess that used to be the kid’s head.
Mackie.
Just saying his name is enough to get him to turn back into my line of fire.
Mackie.
And when he comes around, not wanting to see what he sees, these are the last words that he hears:
Fuck you.
Because that’s when I shoot him in the face.
underworld
One down, ten or more to go. Real nice odds. But I’ve got one thing in my favor:
Their plan is to get out of here alive.
The simplicity of this knowledge keeps me moving. CK’s not the suicidal type. An escape is in progress. There is a plan and there is probably a backup plan and there is quite possibly a backup to the backup plan.
Confusion is king. It’s been five, maybe six minutes since the shots from the windows. The assault on the hotel is coming but it’s yet to come. The dead cop was a loner, unlucky, maybe a would-be hero. Whatever, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, without any backup. Guys like that deserve what they get.
Problem is, right now I’m one of those guys.
Footsteps to the back of me, but they’re running away. Getting away; but how? Elevators? No way. Stairs? Not these stairs. Fire escape? Too open, too obvious, unless there’s something on the alley side. Must be another set of stairs at the hotel’s alley side.
I will not bunker down, let them come for me. Because they aren’t coming, they’re on their way out; and coming in … well, coming in we’ve got the wrath of God.
Still, confusion is king. Ten floors below, on the street, it must be madness, the lid of sanity blown off just like the Reverend’s head. A mob scene, a world of screams and sirens, and not enough badges to handle the traffic. Whoever’s out there—NYPD for sure, maybe a couple FBI guys, and probably some trigger-happy members of the Reverend’s personal security force—they’re rushing into the lobby of the hotel. If they can agree that the shots came from here. I can see them ticking off the same old options: elevators, stairs, probably even the fire escapes. All covered. So where is CK going? Where am I going?
There isn’t even a choice: I have to go up.
Taking the stairs two and three at a time, breathless before I clear three floors, I hear a commotion and decide to haul in a second and have a listen.
Someone else is making time on the steps. I have to think cops, but the echo is getting to me; the echo’s not right. And at last I realize why: The echo’s coming down.
Down, for Christ’s sake. But that’s impossible. No SWAT team on the roof, not yet, so it’s one of us. Meaning one of them. And then I remember CK’s briefing: Meehan on the roof. Meehan, with the U Street kid, what’s-his-name, Lil Ace, on the roof.
The footsteps are coming closer, and there’s no doubt it’s just one guy. Which means that Lil Ace went horizontal on the roof.
I start back down the stairs, reach the mess coming up from the ninth floor, and keep going, taking a quick peek at the cop I put down and damn if it’s not a cop. I mean he looks like a cop, NYPD blue with red roses of blood blooming out of his shoulder, but his name is Ernie Gonsalves and he’s one of CK’s drivers.
Doors slam open somewhere below and a lot of feet are doing a hustle on the steps. More drama.
It’s time to move. Success or six feet.
This time I go slowly, only trusting the muffled sound of things. I holster the Glocks, slip the shotgun from my duffel bag, take a deep breath and then pump. Mossberg Model 500 combat 12 gauge, with a folding stock. A fat kerchunk chambers the first of seven rounds. Heavy shot. Double-ought buck. I’m ready to rumble.
I shrug the duffel onto my shoulder and I turn the corner, don’t even look, just fire once, pump, fire again. The shots blow the far wall into pieces but that’s about all. Someone’s crouched beneath the cloud of plaster dust, and he lets loose with a pistol and I pull in, use the doorframe for cover, and the numbers are still running through my head, ten of them—ten of them, at least ten of them—and then I remember the guy coming down the stairs, the guy coming right down on my back, and that’s when I start to think I hear more footsteps. Footsteps from below, a lot of them, running hard.
I lean the muzzle of the shotgun around the doorframe and fire again. It’s a 12-bore question, and the answer is a torrent of firepower that sends me right back, almost tripping over Gonsalves’s body, as I watch the doorframe and half the surrounding wall ripped into splinters.
My fucking brothers in arms.
Down. It’s got to be down. I dance over Gonsalves and down the stairs, push through the door and look up, they’re no doubt coming for me now, and I empty the shotgun into the ceiling. Electrical wires flail, sparking, and the lights go out on nine.
I duck into the first of the rooms, as deserted as the rest, and I reload the Mossberg. The barrel is hot, and a little curl of smoke flies in front of my eyes.
It’s left or right, and since there are a half-dozen guys with burners coming from the left, I don’t really have a choice. A deep breath, and then I run.
Nothing happens.
But only for a moment. I hear someone yell an indecipherable string of words that ends in now, and then I hear some pistol shots and I’m thinking I’m okay, I’m thinking I’m going to make it.
Then I hear the Uzi. And I keep on running.
The rounds buzzsaw to the left and over me. Too close. Too, too close.
&
nbsp; That’s when I realize: I’m at the end of the hall. And there are no doors, no stairs.
No way out.
Fuck that. I’m no rat and this is no maze. I pull a pistol and fire wildly back down the hall, just making noise. Then I kick at the wall, and the plaster and wood fall into shards and sand. Worm-eaten, dry rot, termite damage, ancient, and it’s my fucking life.
I tuck the pistol back into my belt and get busy.
I don’t even aim, just swing the mouth of the shotgun toward the wall and let go. The first shot blows a triangle of softball-sized holes through the plaster, the second one turns the holes to the size of basketballs, and by the fourth and fifth pump I start to see light, I see something on the other side, and that’s when I look back, shadows moving, shadows coming from the doors, the stairs, so it’s now or never, and I turn back on what’s left of the wall and I fire and I fire and I fire again and when I click on empty I just run, I duck my head and I lead with my right shoulder, and I run straight into that wall and I feel the plaster, the wallboard, the bricks, the whole ripped and rotten thing tear apart, I feel like eight people are hitting me and then none, there’s nothing, and I hit the floor, the floor on the other side, in the building next door, and the shotgun goes sliding down the floor.
Ahead is another hallway, this one bright, wallpapered in white and yellow, and as I pull myself up, a door on my right opens, and this old black guy looks out at me like I’m room service and he says:
Did you hear that noise?
Yeah, I say, crawling back to my feet. Yeah, yeah. I heard the noise. Listen, we got a problem.
Dear Jesus, he says, shaking his head. Blessed Jesus.
I’m past him, and when I kneel to get the shotgun I can feel the pain coming on—I just went through a fucking wall—but I pull up and stagger to the next door and I slam the butt of the shotgun into the thing twice. Guy comes to the door, a greyheaded grampa, looking bewildered. He can’t take his eyes off the Mossberg. I tell him the first lie that comes to mind:
Police. You got to get out of the building.
What? he says.
I glance back at that tear in the wall and I can see the flames licking away. Fire. No one speaks but I hear the word. Fire. I can hear, tucked in some little place in the back of my head that’s reserved for such nightmares, the voice calling:
Fire in the hole.
I said you got to get out of here.
Now this frail little woman, his wife, I guess, is standing next to him, squinting at me through eyes filled with tears and she’s saying, John Henry Mason, who is this man? What is going on here?
Fire, I tell them. The building is on fire.
She looks at him. He looks at me. Not a clue. Then she says: They’ve killed the Reverend Parks. They’ve killed the Reverend Parks. They’ve—
Don’t you understand? I tell her. There’s a fire. I’m shouting now, and farther down the corridor, another door opens. Another pair of black faces looks out. They’re afraid. So afraid.
Burning, I call to them. On fire. The building is burning, and you’ve got to get out. You’ve got to get out now.
And the little lady is pulling a blur of drab fur, some kind of poodle or something, up into her arms and she’s saying, John Henry? Do something, John Henry. The building is on fire.
That’s when I see the red box, the alarm, by the elevators. I hustle down there and I break the glass and I pull the alarm and there’s nothing.
I turn back to the old-timers, six or seven of them by now, and say, Get out of—
There’s this fierce whoop-whoop-whoop as the alarm finally kicks in and that really gets things going, whoop-whoop-whoop, and people are out of their apartments and into the hall, people are yelling, and now smoke is wheezing through that black hole from the other building, and people are grabbing things, people are putting on jackets and coats and robes, people are starting for the steps and I stuff the Mossberg back into the duffel bag and I’m ahead of them and all of a sudden there is this spike of pressure like someone slapping at my ears and I trip, I fall, I try to stand, and that’s when the sound of the explosion rips into me and I fall again and when I finally find my feet a wave of heat blows over me and then the screams, those awful screams, start echoing all around me, but by now I’m down the hall and I kick through the door beneath the exit sign and I’m running, I’m running down the stairs, and I listen to my feet striking the concrete, a distant sound, hollow and muffled, and when I pull up the number on the door reads 3 and I don’t hear a thing and I don’t know whether the ringing is in my ears, there’s just this whoop-whoop-whoop, but it can’t matter now, nothing matters now, nothing but getting out out out, and I take the next flight of stairs slowly, people are moving into the stairwells, people with dull eyes, people with questioning eyes, people hurrying down the stairs, wondering aloud at the whoop-whoop-whoop and the second explosion that suddenly rocks our world, and on the next flight I wait for a moment, everyone is going down, no one coming up, and then I run down that set of stairs, run past the door marked LOBBY and on down the next flight of stairs and then the next and then I’m at the door marked garage and I start to straighten my tie and when I look down at my clothes I know why the guy upstairs was looking so hard at me, I see this kind of ghastly hobo haberdashery stained with plaster dust and blood and I think:
Fuck it.
I pull my pistol. Into the garage, back underground again. I walk out into the fluorescent dinginess like I own the place, looking for my Nissan Sentra or whatever I happened to park down here after I took the grandkids to school, and the light is low and I’m looking for an attendant but I don’t see one, I don’t see anybody and that’s the way I like it.
This is no suburban parking lot but an inner-city boneyard. Cars, left and right, and most of them road-weary and worn. Half of them look like they’ve been parked here for years. Not many choices. I stand there, dusting off my suit coat, my pants, trying to put myself back together again, and I think maybe the beat-up Vanagon but that won’t help me if I have to play stock car, so I decide on an old Buick Regal instead. I switch the plates with a Caddy, looking good, looking real good, and now there’s nothing left to do but boost this baby and find my way back home.
I bend down and start to work on the lock of the door. Jam the blade of my pocketknife into the lock, work it side to side until I hear the metal plate inside go click. And then the footsteps.
That’s when some motherfucker shoots me in the back.
And the light shineth in darkness;
and the darkness comprehended it not.
—The Gospel According to St. John 1:5
city of the walking dead
It’s no big thing to take a bullet. Especially the ones you don’t see coming. The ones from a distance. The ones in the back. In places like Manhattan and Detroit and Dirty City, people do it every day.
The tough thing is getting back up.
I have no idea how long I’m horizontal, eating the filthy concrete of that garage. I have no idea why no one checks me out, why no one kicks me in the ribs. Why no one shoots me in the back of the head. Maybe people are in a hurry and maybe I look very dead.
I don’t feel dead. My life doesn’t flash before my eyes. I don’t float up to the ceiling, look down, and see my body. There’s none of this walking toward a bright light, no tunnel with my mother standing at the end, waving me back: It’s not your time, it’s not your time. No pearly gates, no dancing with angels, and I sure as shit don’t get a glimpse of Heaven.
What I see is the weirdest thing:
It’s this dog, this tiny dog, and the dog comes limping out of the shadows beneath the Buick Regal. I had this dog when I was a kid. I haven’t thought about him for years. I must have been eight, nine years old when I had this dog, and I had him for all of maybe a summer. He was this little, and I do mean little, runt, probably weighed in at all of ten pounds, part Pekingese and part confusion, with what my grandpop called a coat of many colors
. He had one eye; that was the way he was born. And not many teeth. Then he got hit by a car or something and his back was twisted up so bad he couldn’t walk, so he just sort of hobbled around. The only thing going for him was that somehow, despite it all, he was the best dog a kid could have.
His name was—what else?—Lucky. I loved that little pup, and when he went away it was the worst day of my life. What can I say? I didn’t know then how much worse it was going to get.
But now, see, Lucky is back, he’s wandering out from under that Buick and since my face is on the pavement, he’s looking right at me. With his one eye. At first he limps over and starts licking my nose. Then he sort of sits back and he cocks his head to one side and he says to me, he says:
You left me.
Now it comes as no surprise that my dog, who’s been dead for maybe thirty-five years, can talk or that I understand what he has to say. The whole thing makes perfect sense. I even recognize his voice.
It’s just that I have trouble talking back.
You left me, he says again.
I try, I really try, but I can’t find any words and I can’t tell Lucky he’s wrong. I try but I can’t tell him I was at school that day. The day he went away. That I went to Little League baseball practice and didn’t come home until six o’clock. That when I came into the kitchen, my mother was cooking chicken and dumplings and my father was paying bills and after they ignored me long enough my grandpop took his nose out of the newspaper and told me that a chicken hawk had flown down from the sky and taken Lucky away. As if I was going to believe that’s what really happened.
Lucky licks my nose again. That eye of his cuts into me. Gospel truth: It’s not blinking.
I want to kiss his forehead. Give him a cookie. But I can’t. I can’t move. I can’t speak. That’s when he bites into my face and I can feel the skin slice open beneath my eye, I’m crying blood, and he winks at me and runs away, the limp is gone, his back is straight and he’s dancing, Lucky’s dancing, and then he’s scampering back under the Buick, back into the shadows.
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