by Paul Monette
“Where do you want her, boss?”
“Put her in my room,” he said, reaching out a hand to smooth her hair. “I ain’t gonna be sleepin’ there. I’m givin’ up sleep.” He chuckled ruefully at his own joke, gathering the hair at the nape of her neck as if he was going to make a ponytail. The slight tug stirred her awake. She stared into Tony’s eyes, peacefully blank for a moment. Then something triggered her memory, and her face collapsed in agony again. She drew a breath, and it seemed she would scream, but she spat in her brother’s face instead.
He stood there and took it, making no move to wipe it away. She sank once more into stupor, as if she could only handle consciousness for seconds at a time. Ernie picked her up in his arms and carried her toward the stairs. As they mounted, Tony looked more shaken than he had all night. He’d lost them all, every single one, deliberately it seemed, but none of them was more innocent than Gina. Her innocence filled his house with horror. She was like a light brought into a slaughterhouse revealing all the instruments of death, the rivers of blood, the slabs on hooks, the carrion stench of money.
The lights blazed on throughout the house as he stumbled up to his office. He went to the closet and pulled out a plastic kilo bag of coke. As he slumped on the sofa, a faint cloud of the drug rose off the velvet like a snow scene on a Christmas card. It was in all the creases of the house now, just like it was in his bones. He slit open the bag with a razor blade. Then with a desultory gesture, almost bored, he dumped the whole two pounds on the black marble coffee table. It mounded there like a sand dune, like a strange crystalline anthill.
Tony opened a humidor box where he kept his paraphernalia. He drew out a silver tooter and sat staring a moment at the dope, breathing rhythmically like an athlete psyching up. Nick walked into the room as he bent to snort. Perhaps it was having an audience that made him go for broke. He sniffed up a truly giant amount, burying the silver straw in the mound and breathing in great heaves. He was like a kid with an ice cream soda, greedy to get it all in one gulp. He shifted now to the other nostril and sucked on the straw as if it was pure oxygen he was breathing in. As he burrowed deep into the mound, his face brushed over the snowy surface. When at last he sat up to let it sink in, the cocaine clung to his brows and lashes and patched across the bloody scratches left by Gina’s nails. He looked like a man who’d just been baptized, who’d drunk from the waters of the Fountain of Youth.
Nick said: “Hey Tony, why don’t you go easy, huh?”
Tony laughed effortlessly, his head rocking back and forth. “You think I oughta save some for my old age? Is that what you think, Nick?”
“What are we doin’, boss? What’s the plan?”
Tony gestured with the tooter at the mound of coke. “This is the plan, chico.”
Nick was fiercely loyal. He wasn’t a king, he wasn’t even a prince. Mostly he was just an old soldier who followed orders. Now for the first time a shiver of fear passed across his face, like he’d suddenly turned gun-shy in the middle of a pitched battle. Tony was tilting forward toward the table again, ready for another hit. Nick backed away to the door and slipped out, because he didn’t know what he might say if he stayed.
About a half hour later it started to rain, a pelting tropic downpour that blew in out of nowhere. The wind swung open the balcony doors, and the rain swept in on the carpet. Tony watched for a while from the sofa, staring dully as puddles began to form in the doorway. He could hear the monkeys screeching in the jungle below, and the cries of a hundred exultant birds who preened their feathers in the rain and forgot they were in a cage, for the moment anyway. Tony found himself leaning forward, craning to hear if the Bengal roared at the tempest.
At last he stood up, drawn to the wildness below in spite of his catatonic state. He bent to the table and scooped up a handful of coke, a whole snowball’s worth, and dumped it in his jacket pocket. He sniffed the residue off his hand and stumbled out of the room. When he got downstairs he found Chi-Chi posted at the front door, Ingram in hand. Nick was in the living room on the phone, trying to call in their most trusted men, but as it was late they were all out partying. Ernie was on the front steps in a fireman’s slicker, talking into a two-way radio, in constant touch with the guards at the gates.
Nobody made a move to stop Tony as he swayed across the yard and through the hedges to the zoo. It was raining so hard that his clothes were soaked in a minute. Already the coke was melting in his pocket and running away in streaks down his pants leg. He didn’t seem to notice or care. He went first to the high circular cage where all the exotic birds were perched in the branches of a banyan tree. He swung the door open and left it wide, clapping his hands for a moment to call their attention. Not a single one flew down to him. The rain was freedom enough for now. Tony didn’t take it personally—they’d go when they were ready.
The monkeys were smarter. They knew that something was up as soon as they saw him stagger up to the cage. He pulled open the gate, and a half dozen marmosets came scampering out. They took off every which way, splitting up so they couldn’t be captured in a clump. The monkeys poured out of the monkey house and swung through the trees, making for the chain-link fence that rimmed the whole property. They counted on the rain for cover as they scrambled away through Coral Gables, heading home. Home of course was Madagascar, but that didn’t seem to stop them.
Tony stopped at the edge of the flamingo pond. These birds were free already; they were here by choice. They strutted back and forth, stretching their long necks in the rain. Tony dipped his hand in his pocket, but the coke was all sop and disintegrated. He sucked his fingers for a moment, then cocked his head at what he thought was the sound of a shot. It was only a branch cracking and falling by the canal, but his mind seemed to clear for a moment, and he wondered what time it was.
What he meant was how much did he have left.
He wandered across the Japanese bridge and parted the tree ferns. Across the moiling water of the moat the Bengal paced his island. The rhythm of his constant motion was unaffected by the storm. A jungle burned in his brain, and in that jungle where he was king the rains came and the wildfire and the plagues and the hunters, and nothing diminished his power. His cage was a man’s idea. With the yellow light in his eyes, the roll of his massive shoulders, his bared teeth and his moaning growl, he soared free of the traps of men and the traps of time. Tony drew the Baretta from his pocket and pointed across the water. For several seconds the gun raked back and forth, following the moving target. Then all of a sudden the tiger seemed to understand, and he stopped. He turned his huge head and gazed at Tony on the opposite shore. They saw how alone they were.
Then Tony fired once. The bullet smashed into the Bengal’s nose and drove right to his brain. He collapsed with a weird grace, falling over onto his side. The jungle erupted in screeches. Birds came pouring out of the open cage and whirred away through the driving rain. Tony retraced his steps through the zoo, ignoring the rest of the animals. One of the guards had come running around the house when he heard the shot, but he stood back when he saw Tony, asking no questions.
Ernie and Chi-Chi barely nodded as Tony returned to the house. As he dragged upstairs in a kind of trance, he pulled off his soaking jacket and let it fall to the landing. Then he tore off his shirt and flung it behind him. He was shivering with gooseflesh as he regained the office. The rain had soaked half the carpet, and the wind had scattered most of the kilo. The cocaine lay filmed on the marble table and the velvet sofa like an early frost.
Tony closed the balcony doors and went to the closet. He hauled out the other canvas bag and the suitcase full of twenties. Then he retrieved another kilo from the vacuum cabinet behind his desk. He razored this open like the other and once again dumped it on the table. He knelt on the floor, dipped his tooter and snorted. His hair was still wet and his pants, but he felt terrific, like he’d just stepped out of the shower. This feeling only lasted about two minutes, but he acted fast. He stood up and worked open the
canvas bag. He dumped the money on the carpet, twisted-up twenties and fifties, here and there a hundred like a Cracker Jack prize. He kicked the pile with his foot, and it flew up and scattered like fallen leaves.
He chuckled as he walked around in it, kicking it further afield till it was spread a couple of inches deep around the floor. But then the high evaporated, and he stood there slightly bewildered, like he’d set up the game and didn’t know what the game was. Of course it was a great idea, to see all your Midas money littered around you, but he couldn’t seem to get behind the idea. In fact he had started to cry.
“Oh fuck Manolo,” he said, sobbing when he spoke his friend’s name, “how the fuck do I get outa here?”
Just then, out beyond the trees, the first figure came over the chain-link fence. No one detected his coming because the electronic circuits were all fouled up by the storm. They were relying on nothing more than a grim patrol of the borders, four or five men disgruntled by the rain, and nobody really believed the engine of revenge could act so quickly. This first one had a single terrorist mission, and he darted from tree to tree till he came to the peacock shelter on the grassy slope behind the guardhouse. He took an object about the size of a baseball out of an armored metal container, pulled a pin and tossed it through the rear window.
There was a white explosion, and the roof blew off. The walls were stone and withstood the shock, but both men inside were instantly mangled, and the whole communications system was out. The next second the phones in the house went dead. The noise of the grenade could be heard all up and down the street, but none of the neighbors did anything but draw down the shades. Luckily everyone had enough acreage, and a man could keep his distance.
Upstairs Tony was doing more coke. He had stopped crying, but all he could think about was Manolo. He didn’t really hear the grenade. Oh, he heard it, but only a part of his mind registered it, as if an opponent had nodded to him and murmured: Shall we begin? He nodded in acknowledgment, but mostly he bent to the mound of coke and gasped in more and more. And he’d gone beyond his grief now, beyond even his guilt. He spoke to Manolo as if his friend was in the room, the way he spoke to Bogart when they were huddled beneath the overhang.
“You remember what you said, chico? Trust in the gods, huh? Yeah well you were fulla shit, look what happened. What the hell happened, huh?”
Completely disconnected now, he reached for the suitcase stacked with cash. He staggered out the door of the office and made for the upstairs landing.
“I said to you, I remember, I said I’ll never go crazy, remember? And you said . . .” Here Tony cocked his head as he reached the railing, groping back to a scene that seemed to have taken place a thousand years ago. “You looked at me kinda funny, chico, and you didn’t say nothin’. If you knew, why didn’t ya tell me?” He looked down into the foyer, where the front door was wide open. Chi-Chi stood on the steps outside, covering Ernie as he made his way down the drive to the guardhouse. “Those were the days, huh?” said Tony as he flicked open the suitcase. “Banks, groceries, stores, hey nothin’ could stop us. We were the best.”
He dumped the suitcase over the railing, and the stacks of twenties tumbled and fell to the floor like a shower of bricks. The loose bills fell like manna from heaven. The wind picked them up and bore some into the living room, some out the door to the rain-swept drive. Tony smiled to watch it snowing money, and he began to descend the stairs to get down there with it.
And just then Gina stepped out of the bedroom, stark naked, holding a Baretta in two hands. Her eyes were pitiless, full of rage and hate. She walked with the gun held out in front of her, and when she fired the first time the bullet went wild, hitting the wall five feet to the left of Tony. Tony ducked and began to scramble down the stairs. The second shot clipped the chandelier and showered the stairs with crystal. Tony jumped down the last four steps and slipped on the cash and went sprawling.
“You want me, Tony?” cried Gina. “Why don’t you come and make love to me, huh? Isn’t that what you want?”
She advanced down the stairs, methodically shooting out the clip. She hit the mirrored wall and shattered a panel six-by-four. She winged a brass figurine on the table by the far wall. She got better with every shot. Tony scrambled to his feet and made a leap for the living room, and her last bullet hit him in the thigh. He landed hard in the archway, gritting his teeth and clutching the wound.
Just then a burst of machine-gun fire ripped through Ernie and flung him off the pavement, so he died fast and sprawled dead in the fishpond. Chi-Chi turned around to run into the house, and they tossed a grenade that blew a five-foot hole in the ground where he’d been standing. He ran up the stairs and almost made it in, but a figure with a high-powered rifle took a hunter’s aim and blew him through the front door. He landed in the money with his guts blown out.
Gina’s gun was empty. She tossed it aside and bent to pick up Chi-Chi’s Ingram. Tony was hobbling away across the living room. Gina stalked through the foyer, trembling with power. She stood in the arched doorway, a weird grin on her face, as if nothing in the world was so sweet as watching her brother run scared. She certainly wasn’t innocent any more. But she wasn’t a pro either, and she didn’t fire when she had the chance, and a moment later the first of the hitters stepped in at the front door. He was a scrawny punk barely twenty years old, but he was a pro. He raked his Ingram across her body, and she never even knew he was there. Her torso was ripped to pieces, her spine severed. She was dead before she hit the floor.
The punk darted forward to the living room. Tony had ducked behind the sofa, but he was unarmed. The punk advanced, his face lighting up in a drunken glow. He was going to kill one of the kings, and when the smoke had cleared he would be a kind of king himself. Then suddenly the big picture window exploded as Nick barreled in like a grizzly bear. The punk turned a second too late, just in time to have his head blown off.
“You okay, boss?”
“Hey, never better,” said Tony, hobbling to his feet.
A grenade exploded on the terrace outside. There was a rapid exchange of gunfire on several sides at once. They appeared to be surrounded. Nick handed Tony the punk’s Ingram, and they began to move toward the foyer. Tony’s mood was buoyant now, as if he liked nothing better than a hopeless situation. He had waited all his life for a dead-end standoff.
“We got ’em now, Nick,” he said. “We’ll eat ’em for breakfast, huh?”
Nick tried to swing the front door closed, but a bottle bomb exploded on the threshold, sending up a roar of fire that sent them staggering back. Nick had no more ideas. He turned and looked into Tony’s eyes, terrified at last. Tony didn’t even notice. He stood in the foyer almost exulting as the fire consumed the door and began to eat at the silk-covered walls. Two hitters were in the living room now, and they strutted forward, spraying the field with machine-gun fire. Nick, good soldier that he was, managed to heave Tony out of the line of fire, sprawling him on the stairs. Then Nick walked straight into it, kamikaze-style, spraying his own fire. He brought one of them down, and then they got him.
Tony knew his only chance was to get upstairs. As the hitter came around the corner from the living room, Tony sprang for the first landing, not even aware of the pain in his thigh any more. Machine-gun fire exploded up the stair wall, but Tony stayed low and shot through the wrought-iron banister. One lucky bullet hit the clip on the killer’s machine-gun, and it blew up in his face. He went screaming out the front door, holding his blinded eyes, and his own men finished him off with a burst of fire because nobody really knew who was who any more.
“We’ll get ’em, Fred,” said Tony hoarsely. “We’ll get ’em this time.”
He looked down from the landing at the carnage below. He could see Chi-Chi and Gina and Nick, each twisted up in a knot of death, dark circles of blood under them. The carpet of money was tossed and savaged, but still it lay like a bed of roses beneath the bodies. Tony didn’t seem to understand it was his own b
lood kin down there. He laughed in triumph as if he had witnessed the slaughter of his enemies.
He stood up and shouted, waving his gun in the air. “Come on, you scumbags! Come and get it! I’m gonna fuck you all, you hear me!” He mounted the steps to the second floor, not even limping now.
Another grenade was tossed in at the front door, exploding among the dead and making the corpses dance. The concussion unhinged the chandelier, which fell to the floor below in a great burst of crystal. Tony did not even turn around to look. As he slipped into his bedroom, a squad of three hitters advanced and entered the house.
It was strangely quiet in the bedroom. Not a single window was broken, and the air was still thick with Elvira’s fragrance. He crossed to a built-in cabinet in the far wall. He hauled out a shoulder-fired rocket launcher and a canvas bag of refill rounds. It had always seemed an absurd weapon, too cumbersome for the work they had to do, without the handling ability of the Ingram. More suited to war than crime. But Tony had kept it ready the way other rich men in Coral Gables kept bomb shelters. It was the last resort.
He lumbered back across the bedroom, hefting the launcher onto his shoulder. On an impulse he stopped at the bedside table and pulled open the drawer, but there was no coke. If only he could get back to the office, he thought, he could hold them off till dawn and stay wrecked besides. This plan seemed to energize him, and he focused all his attention on it. He had no memory of the slaughter downstairs. He seemed to feel if he lasted the night, the others would all regroup in the morning. Elvira, Manolo, Gina, Nick, Chi-Chi—it was as if they were all in hiding somewhere, waiting for Tony to make it safe.
A grenade exploded just outside the bedroom door, blowing it off its hinges. A couple of the hitters had decided to storm his fortress, and now they advanced in a spray of fire. Tony smiled as he pointed the launcher at the smoking doorway. He fired once, and the shell whined into the upstairs hall, exploding like Armageddon. The two hitters were blown to smithereens, and the whole house shook to its foundations.
