Holy Terror

by Graham Masterton

  ‘Is Lacey all right?’

  ‘For the time being, yes, she’s in the best of health. But if you try to pull any more stunts like you pulled today … well, I wouldn’t like to give you any guarantees about her future sex appeal.’

  ‘What the hell do you want me to do now?’

  ‘I want you to have patience, that’s what. Most of the money has been wired to Norway already, but we do need two more personal appearances like you did today, just to reach our target figure.’

  ‘You don’t seriously expect me to go out and raise more money for you?’

  ‘Has to be done, ol’ buddy. Crusades don’t come cheap.’

  ‘I’m not doing it unless you let me speak to Lacey again.’

  ‘Well … I can do that, but not just yet. I’m still at the Waldorf, waiting for my baggage to be taken up to my new suite. Couldn’t stay in the old one, could I, on account of all of that blood sprayed around.’

  ‘You make sure that you call me. Otherwise, next time, I won’t hesitate to pull the trigger. Not for one instant.’

  ‘Don’t get yourself all hot and bothered, Mr O’Neil. I’ll call you in twenty minutes to give you your next assignment. You can talk to her then.’

  Victor Labrea broke the connection. Immediately, Conor called Luigi Guttuso.

  ‘Who is this?’ asked the same slow, suspicious voice.

  ‘Conor O’Neil. I need to speak to Mr Guttuso right now.’

  ‘Nobody of that name here.’

  ‘For Christ’s sake it’s Conor O’Neil. I was talking to him only a couple of hours ago.’

  ‘Oh, right. Mr. Guttuso mentioned your name. Wait up a moment, OK?’

  Conor sat on the couch with his head bowed, waiting for Guttuso to answer. Eleanor came and sat next to him, and took hold of his hand. ‘Don’t let this get to you. Be strong.’

  Luigi Guttuso answered the phone. ‘Conor? How’s it going? How do you like the apartment?’

  ‘It’s great, Luigi. It’s much more than I could have asked for.’

  ‘Hey – you screwed the Forty-Ninth Street Golf Club. You don’t have to ask for nothing.’

  ‘Listen, Luigi. I think that Victor Labrea is just about to leave the Waldorf-Astoria and I think he’s headed for the place where he’s holding Lacey hostage.’

  ‘We’ve got half a dozen soldiers outside of the Waldorf, don’t worry. Wherever Victor Labrea goes, we’re going to be right on his tail.’

  ‘Don’t forget to call me when you find out where she is. Please. Don’t do anything until I get there.’

  ‘Didn’t I promise you that already? What do you think I am?’

  Conor didn’t know what to say. Murderer, extortionist, loan shark, drug dealer, pimp?

  ‘Just don’t forget to call me,’ he said.

  Chapter 22

  He fell asleep while he waited for Victor Labrea to call back. He had a dream that Dennis Evelyn Branch was standing in the half-open doorway, watching him. Then he heard a whispery voice saying, ‘Two into one do go, and when they do, you’d better watch your ass.’

  A bandaged, filth-crusted hand was held up in front of him, jingling a persistent little bell. ‘Unclean,’ whispered the voice. ‘Unclean.’

  Another filthy hand reached out toward him and he shouted, ‘Don’t touch me!’ and sat up with a jolt. He found himself back on the bed, next to Eleanor. It was 8:15 p.m. and the phone was persistently ringing in the living room.

  ‘Mr O’Neil? It’s Victor Labrea. You got a pen ready? I’ll tell you who you’re going to meet tomorrow.’

  ‘OK. But let me talk to Lacey first.’

  ‘Sure,’ said Victor Labrea, and handed over the phone.

  ‘Lacey? How are you, sweetheart?’

  ‘I’m all right. I’m all right.’ She sounded close to tears. ‘But please get me out of here, Conor. Please.’

  ‘Listen, try to stay calm. Everything’s going to be fine, I promise you. If you can hold out for another hour or so, this whole thing’s going to be over.’

  ‘Just get me out of here, Conor, please.’

  Victor Labrea took the phone back. ‘You heard the lovely Lacey, Mr O’Neil. Just make those two meetings tomorrow, and we’ll all be happy.’

  He had only just hung up when the phone rang again.

  ‘Conor? It’s Luigi. We found your friend’s little nest for you. It’s a hotel on West 29th Street, half a block away from the heliport – some dump called the Madison Square Marquis. Labrea’s checked into room 525 under the name of Mr and Mrs Tapatio. The desk clerk said that “Mrs Tapatio” was blond and tall and good-looking. His actual words were extremely complimentary but I wouldn’t say them in front of my mother, God bless her, if only I could.’

  ‘I know the Marquis,’ said Conor. ‘Tell your guys to stay where they are and I’ll come right over.’

  ‘Glad to be of assistance. And – you know – may God be with you.’

  Two shiny black Buicks with darkly tinted windows were parked opposite the Madison Square Marquis, with two men in each of them. The evening was insufferably hot. Conor approached one of the cars and tapped on the window. The window slid down and released the chilly air-conditioned aroma of Cerruti aftershave. A smooth-looking young man appeared, with black slicked-back hair and a lime-green A. Sulka shirt.

  ‘Good evening, Mr O’Neil. How are you doing?’

  Conor recognized him: Tony Luca, one of Luigi Guttuso’s cousins and a particularly vicious enforcer of the Guttuso family’s protection rackets. Luca had been arrested two or three years ago for stabbing a Chinaman in the eye, but the case had been dropped for the lack of any witnesses rash enough to testify against him.

  ‘Labrea still in there?’ asked Conor.

  Luca nodded. ‘From what the manager said, there’s another two dudes up there, too. He didn’t know what the hell they were all doing. He thought it was an orgy maybe.’

  ‘You want to help me ride to the rescue?’

  ‘That’s what we’re here for.’

  Luca climbed out of the car and a thin, beaky man in his early forties climbed out of the driver’s seat. John Convertino, another snappy dresser with perfectly sculpted scimitar-shaped sideburns and a record of extortion, drug dealing, arson, malicious wounding and suspected (but unproven) vehicular homicide.

  ‘Pleasure to see you again, Captain O’Neil,’ he said, although his face was expressionless and his eyes were like two steel nailheads. ‘It’s been a while, hah?’

  They were joined on the sidewalk by the two Guttuso soldiers from the other car. Conor only recognized one of them: Frank Garibaldi, a dim but amiable palooka who usually worked as a doorman at one of Luigi Guttuso’s nightclubs. He looked like Jay Leno in a woolly black wig. The other man was huge, with a flattened boxer’s face and a tight blue suit from Harry Rothman, who specialized in large, tall and unusual sizes. Conor had never seen him before, but he had a strong psychopathic aura about him, as if he were capable of pulling a chihuahua’s legs off and seeing how far it could run.

  ‘So, what’s the plan, captain?’ asked John Convertino. ‘Mr Guttuso said these guys was holding the love of your life in there.’

  ‘We can’t be confrontational, otherwise there could be shooting. That means we can’t go charging into their room. We have to confuse them.’

  ‘OK,’ said Luca, ‘and how are we going to do that? You got CS gas? Shock grenades? Barry Manilow records?’

  Conor said, ‘Follow me,’ and the five of them crossed the street to the Madison Square Marquis. The hotel was even further away from Madison Square than Madison Square Garden. It had been built in the mid-1950s and it had a decrepit, diseased look, with rusting metal window-frames and water-stained concrete. Its entrance was squarish and ill-proportioned, with rough-cast concrete pillars, and there was grit beneath the revolving doors so that they made a grating noise when they pushed their way through them.

  Inside the flatly lit lobby, a young spotty man in a shiny maroo
n coat and a grubby white shirt was standing behind a reception desk that was upholstered in tan padded vinyl, cigarette-burned and ripped in places to expose the leprous yellow latex foam beneath. A television on the wall was tuned to Scooby Doo. The young man was watching the television and talking on the phone and laughing a silly, high-pitched laugh.

  ‘No – you’re putting me on! No – you’re putting me on! You’re putting me on! No! Really? You’re putting me on!’

  ‘Did you ever hear such an excellent grasp of the English language?’ remarked John Convertino, and pinged the bell right under the desk clerk’s nose. ‘Hey, kid – how about some attention here, please?’

  ‘OK, OK – just a minute. You’re putting me on! You – are – putting – me – on!’

  John Convertino took the receiver out of the young man’s hand and gently replaced it on its cradle. The young man stared at him in alarm. Then he looked at Tony Luca and Frank Garibaldi and the man with the flattened boxer’s face, as well as Conor with all of his bruises, and he opened and closed his mouth two or three times.

  ‘I’m sorry, gentlemen. What can I do?’

  ‘You can stay there and keep your trap shut and don’t say nothing to nobody. There is nothing wrong with your life. We control the vertical and the horizontal. In other words, you want to stay vertical, you do what you’re told. You want to be horizontal, you just try giving me shit.’

  ‘Whatever,’ the young man told them.

  ‘Nice to know we have an understanding. Now, what are we going to do, Captain O’Neil?’

  ‘We’re going to go up to 525. Where’s the fire alarm on that floor?’

  ‘Right at the end of the corridor,’ said the young man, sweating and visibly shaking, ‘Next to the ice-making machine.’

  ‘OK … you’ll hear the alarm go off, but there won’t be any fire. You understand me? You don’t have to evacuate rooms, you don’t have to panic. All you have to do is call the fire department and tell them that you’re experiencing a false alarm. Some drunken guest, something like that.’

  ‘I got it. Whatever you say.’

  John Convertino added, ‘You won’t try to call the cops. In fact, you won’t call nobody. You’ll stay here and act as normal as you can, which by the look of you isn’t very normal.’

  The young man dumbly and violently nodded his head.

  ‘Let’s go,’ said Conor. ‘Frank – can you stay down here and watch the door. That’s what you’re good at. Anybody tries to get in here, delay them, OK?’

  ‘You got it, Captain O’Neil.’

  As they walked toward the elevator, Conor thought how incongruous it was, not only to be walking in the company of wise guys, but to be addressed by his former rank in the police department, not sarcastically, in the way that Drew Slyman did it, but with respect.

  They crowded into the elevator and waited while it chugged up to the fifth floor. The light-bulb was on the fritz and it flickered like a strobe. ‘So what’s this all about?’ asked Tony Luca. ‘How come these guys are holding your old lady?’

  ‘It’s a long story. But believe me, they’re going to pay for it.’

  ‘You know what, Luigi used to have a contract out on you once, captain. Quarter of a million bucks. Just think about it, if I’d whacked you, I could be in Florida now, sitting on the beach, instead of doing this?’

  ‘You’d hate Florida. You try getting a decent maccheroncini alla saffi in Fort Lauderdale.’

  The elevator arrived at the fifth floor. The corridor was narrow and dimly lit and drab, with a patterned olive-green carpet that looked as if it had been salvaged from a fire-damage sale. There were framed prints all the way along the walls like the Stations of the Cross, except that these were photographs of various heavyweight boxing matches at Madison Square Garden, Primo Camera and Joe Louis and Rocky Marciano, mountainous men in voluminous boxing shorts. Most of the photographs were blotched with damp.

  They reached 525. ‘Quiet now,’ Conor cautioned. ‘They’re not expecting us. I don’t want them getting jumpy.’

  Without a word, Tony Luca and John Convertino took out their guns. They were so huge that Conor couldn’t think how they had kept them concealed: a .357 Magnum revolver and a .44 automatic. The corridor smelled of mold and gun oil and danger. Conor reached around and pulled out the Browning that Luigi had left on the kitchen table at Bleecker Street. He had also left a note: ‘Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God. That shall be better to you than light and safer than a known way.’ Deep man, Luigi Guttuso, Conor had thought, as he checked that the automatic’s clip was full.

  He took Sebastian’s mobile phone out of his shirt pocket and pressed out the number for the Madison Square Marquis. After a few moments the spotty young man answered and Conor said, in a whining voice, Tut me through to five two five, will you?’

  There was a crackling pause. Then Conor heard Victor Labrea’s voice on the phone.

  ‘Yeah, what is it?’ Labrea demanded, as if he had his attention on something else altogether.

  Conor kept up the whining voice. ‘I don’t wish to alarm you, sir, but we have a small fire emergency in the hotel and I must ask you to vacate your room immediately and make your way to the stairway which you will find situated at the end of the corridor on your right-hand side.’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said, the hotel is on fire, sir, and you must leave your room at once. Make your way to the fire escape at the end of the corridor on—’

  ‘Who is this?’ Labrea demanded, suspiciously.

  ‘Desk clerk, sir.’

  ‘Desk clerk, hunh? And you’re trying to tell me this hotel is on fire?’

  ‘That’s right, sir. It’s on the third floor, directly beneath you. We have to evacuate the entire hotel immediately.’

  There was silence. Conor could almost hear Labrea thinking. ‘Sir—’ he began. But then the door to room 525 opened up, and he and Luigi Guttuso’s men flattened themselves against the wall It opened only on the security chain, however, and was held open, and it was obvious that whoever had opened it was listening, and listening, and then Conor heard two or three deep sniffs, too. A few more seconds passed, and then the door was closed.

  ‘Sir—’ Conor repeated.

  ‘I don’t hear nobody else leaving their rooms,’ said Labrea. ‘I don’t hear no fire alarm and I don’t smell no smoke.’

  ‘Well, sir, it’s only a small fire. But we’re concerned that it might get out of control.’

  ‘You’ve called 911?’

  ‘Sure. They should be here any minute.’

  ‘I don’t hear no sirens.’

  ‘You’re sure you don’t hear sirens?’ said Conor, in a flat, expressionless tone.

  ‘What the hell are you talking about? Of course I don’t.’

  ‘You’re sure you don’t smell smoke? Remember all those times when you’ve smelled smoke before. All those burned-out buildings.’

  Labrea sounded baffled. ‘I know what smoke smells like, for Christ’s sake.’

  ‘Yes – and you can smell it now, can’t you? You can smell smoke and you’re worried that the hotel is on fire. You have an overwhelming urge to leave the room.’

  ‘I can smell smoke. You’re right. I can smell smoke.’

  There was a critical moment when Conor thought that he almost had him. But then he heard somebody else in the room say, ‘Mr Labrea? What’s the matter with you? What are you talking about? There isn’t any smoke!’

  Labrea hesitated; and then he said to Conor, ‘I don’t know what kind of a stunt you’re trying to pull, Mr Desk Clerk or whoever you are, but me and my friends are staying put.’

  ‘Sir – I have to warn you—’ Conor said, but Labrea hung up.

  ‘What was that all about?’ asked John Convertino.

  ‘I was trying to hypnotize him into believing that the place was on fire.’

  ‘Hypnotize him, for crying out loud?’

  ‘Say wh
at you like, it nearly worked. The trouble was, one of his pals interrupted me and broke his trance. That’s why it’s difficult to induce hypnosis over the telephone. You don’t have any control over anybody else – only the person you’re talking to.’

  ‘So what now?’

  ‘Plan B, and quick. We make him believe there’s a fire by starting a fire. Tony – do you want to get me that chair from the end of the corridor. And your big friend here – what’s his name?’

  ‘Bruno,’ said the man with the flattened face, obviously irritated that Conor had asked Tony Luca instead of him.

  ‘I’m sorry, Bruno. But here’s what I want you to do. You see that fire alarm down there? When I give you the signal I want you to break the glass and set it off.’

  ‘Fine by me,’ said Bruno.

  Tony Luca brought the chair back and Conor set it right outside the door to 525. It was a plain black metal-tube chair with a red padded vinyl seat. Without being asked, John Convertino took out a butane lighter and handed it over. Conor struck it and turned the flame up full Then he played the flame along the edge of the seat, and underneath it, too.

  The vinyl shrank like burning skin. Beneath it was gray foam rubber, which flared up almost immediately, and began to pour out thick black choking smoke. Like all the furniture and fittings in the Madison Square Marquis, it had probably been made long before fire regulations insisted on flame-resistant plastics.

  As soon as the chair-seat was blazing, Conor gave Bruno a thumbs-up signal and Bruno smashed his elbow into the glass of the fire-alarm box. Instantly, the corridor was filled with a harsh shrilling, and Frank Garibaldi clamped his hands over his ears. The alarm didn’t seem to disturb any of the hotel’s other guests, however, if there were any. Neither did the rapidly thickening smoke. No doors opened, no anxious faces looked out.

  ‘Jesus,’ shouted Conor. ‘If this was a real fire—’