In the Mood - [Millennium Quartet 02]

by Charles L. Grant

  * * * *

  In the Mood

  [Millennium Quartet 02]

  By Charles Grant

  Scanned & Proofed By MadMaxAU

  * * * *

  Part 1

  * * * *

  1

  A

  comfortable night in the city.

  Clouds, but no rain; warm enough to sit on the stoop after sunset, a pleasant chill on the breeze in case someone forgot it was only a day shy of October. No sirens, no screams.

  Harsh light and traffic at both ends of the long Chelsea block made the area seem much darker than it was. Trees lined the curb, most of them short, most of them still full enough to shatter the streetlamps’ glow and drop shifting speckled patterns onto the tarmac and pavement. A glitter of broken glass in the gutter to mark the remains of a broken bulb. A few windows still lit.

  The buildings were more brick face than brownstone, and a few still had the weathered grimaces of gargoyles and stone lions above their narrow lintels. A handful of false balconies on the upper stories, studded with potted plants; bars on the lower windows, hidden by the night.

  No music; no shouting; and the voice of the city so constant it was silent.

  Midway down the block, on the wide top step of a four-step stoop, two men sat on folding lawn chairs on either side of the wood-and-glass-door entrance. A dim light in the foyer gave them outline, without substance.

  They had been there for two hours, as they were most every night, watching the occasional pedestrian, sneering at the cars cutting through from Eighth Avenue to Ninth, speculating on the few silhouettes they could see on the shades across the way. Long stretches of conversation broken by long stretches of silence. Staccato condemnations of the Yankees and the Jets, dirges and sighs for the Giants and Mets. Neither cared about hockey, so the Rangers were ignored; both thought basketball an overpaid game, so the Knicks were never mentioned at all.

  Best friends for half a century, in this neighborhood and others, with too many birthdays and funerals between them to bother counting.

  “I think,” said Tony Garza, “I’m going down to the Korean’s for something to eat.”

  “Eat? What are you, nuts? It’s nearly midnight, for God’s sake.”

  “I’m hungry.”

  “You’ll get heartburn.”

  “I never get heartburn.”

  Ari Lowe shook his head, rolled his eyes. A short man in loose dark trousers, white shirt, open vest, open cardigan. A slight triangular head that deepened his cheeks and pointed his chin, with wavy white hair he touched once in a while as if to make sure it was still there.

  “Heartburn,” Garza told him, “is for little men like you, who don’t trust their stomachs.”

  Lowe was short, with a genteel paunch; he was seventy-four and looked it.

  Garza was not tall, but everything about him made it seem so. He was large without a suggestion of fat, his long heavy face barely marked by wrinkles. Far less hair than his friend, still dark and combed straight back from a high forehead. A deep voice somewhat rough; a smile that always exposed his still-white teeth. Even when silent, he talked with his hands.

  “I trust my stomach to tell me I’m an idiot for eating so late at night.”

  “Bah.” A sweep of an arm. “Live, Ari! You got to live, otherwise what’s the point?”

  “I’ve been living. I need a vacation.”

  “You went to Florida in June.”

  “You call that a vacation? You ever been to Florida in June? Don’t answer. Hot as hell, bugs you wouldn’t believe, and they got more old people down there than pelicans, for God’s sake. They depress me.”

  Garza wore a collarless pinstripe white shirt rolled up twice at the cuffs. His pants were baggy. Lowe wore regular shoes with laces; he wore running shoes with the laces wrapped around his ankles.

  “What you need, you know, is to go see that woman up on Thirty-first.”

  “What woman?”

  “You’ve seen her.” Hands moving, sketching. “Chest and hips, legs to crush your ribs if you give her half a chance. Mabel, or Miriam, something like that.”

  “Oh. Her.”

  Garza laughed. “What’s the matter?”

  “Sex.”

  “Sex? What’s the matter with sex?”

  Lowe scowled as Garza lit a cigarette; he had quit twenty years ago, when the doctor told him it would kill him. “Sex is the matter with sex. I see all those movies on the cable, I keep thinking, is that the way it was? I sure don’t remember it that way.”

  “That’s because you never got any.”

  “Hey. I was married, remember?”

  Left hand in the air, right hand with the cigarette. “So was I. Five times. Believe me when I tell you, that’s not sex, you old bastard. That’s producing progeny, doing your duty. When the honeymoon’s over, it’s something you gotta do so your wife won’t keep nagging you all the time.”

  Lowe muttered, “You’re crazy.”

  “Now, sex. Sex is...” He squinted his concentration. “Sex is feeling each other up in the movies, in the car, running up the stairs and not even making it to the bed. Sex is sweat, Ari. Sex is fun.”

  Lowe snorted.

  “You’re jealous.”

  “Of what?”

  “That I still get it and you don’t.”

  “Jesus Christ, Tony, you’re damn near eighty! How the hell can you still get sex?”

  Garza thumped his barrel chest, then leaned over and poked a finger at Ari’s stomach. “Eighty-one, and I get it because I don’t give up, my friend. I don’t give up just because I’m getting old.” He tapped a finger to his temple. “All in the mind. All in the mind. You think you’re too old ...” He snapped his fingers. “Poof, no sex. All in the mind, Ari. All in the mind.”

  “Yeah, well, you’re outta yours.”

  Garza laughed again, loudly, stretched out his legs, and folded his hands across his stomach. Sighed. Sighed again. Looked to his left and saw a little woman on the sidewalk, wearing a scarf over her hair and a long black coat. She puffed behind a small dog more hair than meat that insisted on checking out every tree on the block and every section of the wrought-iron fencing that fronted most of the buildings. She had a newspaper tucked under her arm, and as she passed he cleared his throat.

  “Good evening, Mrs. Lefcowitz.”

  She didn’t stop, but she looked over. “Mr. Lowe. Mr. Garza.”

  The dog yipped and tried to climb the stairs.

  Lowe nodded toward the paper. “They catch him yet?”

  “No,” she snapped, and hurried away.

  Another killer loose in the city. Nothing new, Garza thought; comes with the territory, even in the suburbs. Even in the country. This one cut throats, Slasher they call him. This one showed up all over the damn place, from Chelsea to the Villages. No one had seen him yet. The cops didn’t have a clue.

  “You remember that thing last year?’’ Ari said, scratching between the buttons of his shirt.

  “Which thing? I’m a mind reader now?”

  “In Jersey. When it was hot. Some gang took out practically a whole town?”

  He remembered.

  “Jersey, Nebraska, who cares?” He flicked the cigarette into the street. “The place is going to hell in a handbasket, we got troubles of our own.” He patted his breast pocket, decided it was too soon for another smoke. “End of the world is coming, my friend. And I’m still hungry.”

  Ari, who never sagged, always sat straight, shook his head in disgust. “Are you talking that Millennium thing again?”

  “When it happens, you’ll be sorry.”

  Ari chuckled, sniffed, pulled a folded h
andkerchief from his hip pocket, and blew his nose. “My daughter says she can’t wait, she hopes it’s true. That Millennium thing happens, that what do you call it—the Rapture?—then all you damn Christians will go away and leave the rest of us alone.”

  Garza drew himself up, mock indignant. “Did it ever occur to your daughter that if it’s true, there isn’t going to be anybody left to be left alone?’’

  Ari grinned. “Sure. She says she’ll take that chance just to get rid of you.”

  “Bad influence.”

  Ari nodded. “Corrupting me, she says.”

  Garza wondered what the chicken-leg bitch would say if she knew that her father was in charge of a traveling gambling show, which, no thanks to her and her cheapskate husband, was the only way he could stay here on that damn pension he had.

  “Then get off your ass,” he said, “and come with me. You want corrupting, I’ll give you corrupting. We’ll find Mabel, or Miriam, and get laid.”

  “Again the sex.”

  “Again and again, my friend. As many times as I can.”

  Ari flapped his hands in lieu of something to say, stared at the sidewalk and shook his head. His voice was soft: “I’ll tell you, Tony, we got the cable and the goddamn Madison Square Garden and the goddamn... the goddamn ...” Frustrated, he let his hands drop weakly into his lap. “People starving, Tony. People dying all over the place, it ain’t fun anymore. It ain’t fun getting up anymore.”

  Garza kept silent.

  A lone figure down at the corner, the way he was shifting, he wasn’t sure whether to use this block to go cross-town or go up another one.

  “How many kids you got, Tony? Six, seven?”

  “Maybe more.” He grinned. “You never know.”

  “One daughter, two grandkids.” Ari blew his nose again. “You’d think they’d come up to see me once in a while, instead of the other way around.”

  Two or three times a week lately Garza heard the same song, and he began to wonder if his old friend was getting ready to die.

  “How many grandkids you got now, Tony?”

  “I can’t keep track.”

  “You count the adopted ones?”

  “Kids are kids, Ari.”

  Ari paused before he said, “Not all of them, Tony. Not all of them.”

  Garza looked at him sideways, just a glance.

  “Go to bed, Ari,” he said gently.

  Ari shrugged wearily.

  “Go to bed. Tomorrow we’ll go up to Times Square and watch them arrest hookers.”

  He could see the man fighting against a smile.

  “They got rid of the hookers, Tony. Disney’s buying up the whole damn place. It ain’t no fun up there anymore.”

  “Then we’ll watch somebody mug Goofy.” He reached over and briefly grabbed his friend’s too-thin wrist. “Go to bed.”

  The figure at the corner had decided this block would do.

  A long moment passed before Ari nodded. He stood, groaning, and folded his chair. “You coming?”

  “I’m hungry. The Korean will feed me.”

  “Heartburn.”

  “Screw the heartburn.”

  “Mazel tov, you bastard.”

  “Same to you.”

  They shook hands, and Ari went inside, the old glass in the door distorting him before he was gone through the heavy inner entrance.

  Garza rubbed his stomach and stood, stretched his arms out sideways, and yawned. He rubbed his stomach again and checked the figure coming toward him, not very fast. For a second he wondered if he should bother, shrugged, and decided he would let Fate do all the thinking. If it worked, it worked; if it didn’t, it didn’t.

  What the hell.

  By the time he had folded his chair and propped it up against the door, then stepped down to the sidewalk, it looked as if the timing would be right.

  Then again, maybe not.

  What the goddamn hell.

  There were blocks, he knew, scores of them all over the world, that had blind spots, like that place in the rearview mirror where a car in another lane comes up on you and you can’t see him. On many blocks in most neighborhoods, all the conditions being right, it was the same principle— walk along, reach the spot, and no one can see you from any window on any floor in any building.

  He walked down toward Ninth, right hand in his pocket, left swinging loosely. Maybe he would get roast beef for a change. It was expensive these days. Cows dying all over because the grain wasn’t growing right, and they had to ship the meat in; he read someplace it came from Argentina or Australia, he couldn’t remember which. Some kind of riot down in Philly because a guy was accused of hoarding, even though it wasn’t illegal. At least not yet.

  It didn’t really matter when you could barely afford it, anymore.

  Even bread cost too much, for crying out loud.

  The figure passed under a streetlamp. A young man in a sweatshirt and fatigue pants, his boots slamming on the pavement like he owned the place.

  Garza couldn’t figure out why kids just didn’t wear ordinary clothes anymore. What was so wonderful about looking like you were in the army? He grunted softly.

  He checked over his shoulder; his stoop was quiet. Ari hadn’t come back out.

  For most buildings, like his, the iron fencing was less decorative than to keep people from falling down the flight of concrete steps that led belowground, to the basement apartment. Trash cans were stored there, under the main steps. Litter was tossed there. He smiled as he remembered a time a couple of years ago when he and that blonde he’d met at St. John’s had a little fun down there, just to see if they could do it without getting caught.

  The dance of danger, he had called it.

  He did the dance again now, because the timing was perfect and because he had never done it on his own street before.

  His right hand left his pocket and pressed lightly against his leg, thumb caressing the mother-of-pearl handle tucked in his palm.

  The young man heard him approach, looked up, didn’t even nod a hello.

  Garza, however, smiled.

  As soon as they were abreast, the dance began.

  * * * *

  Four easy steps.

  * * * *

  Silently, smoothly, he turned as his left hand grabbed the young man’s hair and yanked the head back; his right hand brought up the straight razor and slashed it deeply across the exposed throat; he shifted the razor hand to the back of the kid’s neck, grabbed the seat of his pants, hoisted him effortlessly over the fencing, and dropped him into the well.

  Into the dark.

  Not a sound but a startled grunt, and the dull thud of the body landing.

  Not a single wasted motion.

  Not a single pause.

  * * * *

  He stood for a moment, staring down, absently folding the razor into his pocket.

  Then he blinked, once, and walked away.

  When he reached the streetlamp, he didn’t look down, didn’t check for blood.

  He didn’t have to.

  It was never there.

  Horseradish, he thought then as he headed for the corner; if he was going to have roast beef, he couldn’t forget the horseradish.

  And maybe he’d bring a little something back for Ari.

  * * * *

  2

  T

  he rain had already been through once that night; not a steady shimmering sheet, but a vicious barrage of pebble and stone that ricocheted off cars, smacked against cobbles, stung flesh, and raised twisting specters of steam along sagging side-street gutters.

  And it had, just for a moment, made the night a bit cooler.

  It didn’t last.

  As water dripped from ironwork railings, hanging ferns, sagging eaves, the temperature crept back out of the shadows and made it all much worse than before.

  Lightning still forked on the far side of the Mississippi.

  And ghosts filled the hotel room, two at a time.

  Their
voices were soft, unnervingly clear.

  Outside, there was thunder. Distant, little more than a grumbling, just loud enough to be heard through the large windowpane and the dark, heavy drapes.