But the guard’s not talking to Bellarmine.
The first thing Simon does is he vomits. All over himself, all over the bed, all over the wires and tubes and sensors and screens, in great heaving gushers of vomit that far exceed what you’d think one human body could contain.
Then, spent and vomit-soaked, Simon looks up at Mina, his face as gaunt as a cadaver. Still snarling, though. And eager to get back to the action.
Says to her.
Thank you, Mina. And I’m sorry about the scar.
She says nothing. Stays poised.
He shrugs.
I deserve that.
Settles back into the bed. Says to Mina.
Whenever you’re ready.
The wake-up call.
It’s a sudden searing overwhelming pain that accompanies tapping out and coming out of bed-rest. As all your physical senses suddenly come back online.
It’s bad.
Can be very bad.
Depending on how fast you come out.
Even at the best of times, it usually takes several minutes to recover.
Simon came out fast. And he doesn’t have several minutes.
Ergo the vomit.
A responsible nurse would never, ever tap someone out, especially rapidly, then tap them back in right away. The shock to your system alone is too much, like hitting all your five senses with maximum wattage, then cutting the power suddenly, then hitting them all again. You’ll blow your mental breakers. Short the fuse box. Could cause yourself permanent damage. Definitely cause yourself temporary pain.
For her part, Nurse just stands back with her hand over her mouth. Like she and Mina are grave robbers who just opened up a tomb and found someone still alive inside. Nurse’s seen a lot and she’s not a squeamish woman. But she’s never seen this maneuver done before. And right now she looks ready to faint.
In driving, they call it the bootlegger’s turn. Crank the hand-brake at highspeed, spin the steering wheel, fishtail the car, then peel out in the opposite direction.
This maneuver is kind of like that, but for your brain.
Simon, sweat-sheened, says sharply now.
Mina! Do it!
Mina hesitates.
Knows she could jerk Simon back and forth like this, in and out, for an hour if she wanted to. For a lifetime. Hit him hard with the wake-up call so many times he’d heave himself dry.
Kind of like Rick did. At Simon’s hand.
No, she hasn’t forgotten. Thought maybe she’d forgiven, but as it turns out, she hasn’t done that either.
Cross-shaped scar on her forehead aches.
But Mark’s still in there. And she still likes Mark.
Simon she can settle with later.
Simon barks.
Mina!
And she taps Simon in again.
Nurse hits him with another load of drugs as he goes down.
And just before Simon goes under, his snarl finally dissipates, and he looks at them both like a lost soul dredged up from the shadows of the sea.
Looks about to say something sorrowful.
But then his eyes roll back in his head and he sags back into the bed and he’s gone.
Do-Better looks left, right, left again, as if maybe Simon just scrambled off and hid beneath a bench like some mischievous little kid.
Looks for a blood trail.
Mark’s trying to rise behind her but she’s not too worried about him.
Plenty of time to finish him off.
Not too worried about Simon either, but she’s curious, so she wanders down to the end of the car. Toward the door where the two of them entered.
Makes no sense he would retreat backward.
Nothing back there now. The cars behind them have all disappeared.
That’s how the black-room train works. Last car vanishes once you leave. Each new car you enter becomes the caboose.
Maybe he managed to get himself tapped out, she thinks. Yank the rip cord. That would be one bumpy ride, though. And pretty cowardly to leave his friend behind. To take the brunt of her frustration.
Which is mounting.
While she’s thinking all this, she idly slides the subway car door open and looks out into the retreating tunnel, just out of curiosity, mostly.
As the door slides open, the subway roar doubles.
She leans out and peers out into the darkness, then shrugs.
Oh well, she thinks. If he did somehow sneak out here, there’s nothing out here for him but track.
As she thinks this, something rustles behind her.
Not something.
Someone.
Simon’s back.
Looks like hell, and he’s barely breathing, and he’s not even sure he’s strong enough to raise his leg and kick her through that door and out into the tunnel.
Nope. He’s wrong.
Turns out he’s plenty strong enough.
Short scream swallowed by the shrieking of the subway.
Then back to the normal rhythmic rumble as the train rattles on.
Simon hoists Mark to his feet. Says to him hoarsely.
That won’t stop her, just delay her. I bought us maybe three minutes, tops.
Mark steadies himself on a pole. Folds his bloodied wings back. Says to Simon.
I’m good.
Then Mark reaches out and grabs the knob to the door that leads to the next car. As they walk through the doorway, Mark’s thinking, Three of them. Simon said there were three of them. Do-Good.
Do-Better.
Do-Best.
Ready?
The female guard in the tent on the waterfront nods, then reaches to her belt and unhooks her handcuffs.
In the half inch of skin that’s exposed between her dress-white gloves and her dress-coat sleeve, a sliver of tattoo peeks through.
Same tattoo. Snakes and flames. Matching set with the male guard.
Loyal bodyguards both.
Loyal.
But not to Bellarmine.
She flips open the handcuffs and Bellarmine half looks up from his handheld and then, his attention snagged, shoots her a quizzical look, then starts to speak just as the other guard, the man, takes a quick half step behind him, loops his arms deftly through Bellarmine’s arms, yanks them up, and pins him.
Handheld drops to the tent floor.
Nearby factotums note the rustle and rise in surprise. Drop their clipboards with a clatter.
Bellarmine squirms. He’s much too strong to be held like this for more than a moment.
But all they need is a moment.
Bellarmine struggles, jerks, sputters, says aloud.
What the fuck—what—you think you’re going to arrest me—?
The female guard holds the one cuff cocked open, its small pointy catch exposed. Then she swings it, scythe-like, and digs it deep and buries it into the softest part of Bellarmine’s neck.
Aiming for the artery.
Cuff cuts deep.
Second guard unpins Bellarmine.
Bellarmine drops to his knees. Shocked.
Cuff still stuck. Neck spurting in rhythmic arterial spasms.
The female guard sidesteps to avoid the halting geyser.
There’s a shout. Then a gunshot. Then a second gunshot.
The female guard goes down, like she fainted. Maybe at the sight of all the blood.
But she’s down.
More shouts and confusion.
Bellarmine’s suited security detail, who’d been busy securing the grounds, now turn on the two guards, drawing, taking aim, firing, advancing, taking aim, firing.
The male guard backs away slowly from Bellarmine, his white gloves, no longer spotless, held high in surrender.
His tattooed arms now half-exposed.
Snakes and flames.
Finally, from elsewhere in the tent, one last gun crack from a crack shot.
Second guard’s head jerks sideways from the headshot. Topples sidewise.
Hits the grass.
/> But Bellarmine has long since bled out.
Bellarmine’s dead.
So it’s done.
Mark slides open the door to the next car.
The third car.
Together he and Simon enter.
Mark spots a man at the far end of the car, but it can’t be Do-Best, Mark thinks.
This man’s in a suit, tied down to a chair, arms behind him, legs splayed wide, just sitting, waiting, in the middle of the aisle, with a white hood covering his head.
Must be Lesser, Mark thinks.
Lesser. Finally.
Simon looks at Mark. Nods. Simon’s thinking the same thing. Pats Mark on the back.
Okay. We’re almost home.
One Times Square.
The door at the end of the hallway is locked for some reason but two kicks easily splinter the frame. Then I give it a shove with my shoulder to dislodge the deadbolt, which dangles as the door swings free.
I figure I’ll probably walk in, find maybe one more Teuton, maybe a bored-looking nurse flipping through a copy of People, probably an elaborate black-room bed obscured by a coil of tubes and monitors and securitized sensors. And in the bed, Lesser. All that’s left then is to tap out Lesser, and make sure to time it with Mark and Simon, assuming they’ve found him in the limn. That’s what I expect to find.
I do not expect what I actually find, once I kick in that door. An empty office.
Fluorescent lights.
Gray wall-to-wall carpeting.
Floor-to-ceiling windows.
And just one man, in a suit, tied down to a chair, arms behind him, legs splayed wide, just sitting, waiting, in the middle of the floor, with a white hood covering his head.
Sitting.
Waiting.
For me.
Wiggles his shoulders. Wriggles his wrists.
Like Houdini.
The ropes binding him drop to the ground.
Wrists free, he raises his hands.
Reveals a chunky metal watchband.
Then reaches up and pulls off his white hood.
No bed.
No black room.
No bodyguards.
Just Boonce.
Looking up at me.
Says one word.
Boo.
36.
Dumb silence under the buzz of ancient midtown fluorescents.
Until I finally ask.
Where’s Lesser?
Lesser’s dead.
Since when?
Since about five minutes after you left his apartment in Stuyvesant Town last Saturday night. Since however long it took me to get in there and get him to tell me everything he knew, which he did, under maximum duress. I don’t know. Maybe ten minutes? I wasn’t timing it.
But what about the black room—
There is no black room, Spademan.
But who—
Me.
Why?
Boonce stands. Adjusts his suit.
Because I wanted what Lesser had. What he developed at Near Enemy and then kept from me and then stole from me. I wanted to know what it was and I wanted to take it from him and I wanted to use it for myself. And I did, and I did, and I will.
But Lesser didn’t know anything—
That’s not true. He just didn’t know what you thought he knew. Or, frankly, what I thought he knew. But he knew something else. Something better.
Boonce shrugs off his suit jacket. Folds it over his arm.
You know, the funny thing is, Spademan, if you’d actually just killed him that first night in Stuyvesant Town, before I could get my hands on him, none of this would have happened. In a weird way, if you had killed him that night, you would have saved him. If you’d just done the one and only thing in this world that you are good at.
Boonce drapes the suit jacket over the chairback.
It would have been terrible timing for me, of course, and I would have been very angry, and I would have tracked you down and dumped you in the river and found that bitch of yours and her baby upstate and left them buried in the woods. But at least you would have kept what Lesser had out of my hands. Which, of course, is what I assume the person who hired you to kill him was hoping to do all along—
Boonce undoes a cuff link.
—hoping to keep what he had from my hands, I mean—
Fingers the tiny NYPD shield.
—and it almost worked. Almost.
Pockets the shield, out of sight.
Do you know who that was, by the way? The woman who hired you to kill Lesser?
No.
Boonce thinks a minute. Fidgets with the other cuff link. Shrugs.
Me neither, to be honest. Though I have a hunch.
Undoes the second cuff link.
That’s what I like about your friend Simon, Spademan. Even though he fucked up my plans back in the woods.
Something about my face at that moment makes Boonce pause.
Then smile.
Yeah, that was me. I hated to get in bed with Pushbroom, but I figured I needed to set a fire under you. Increase my leverage. Then Simon intervened.
Pockets the second shield.
See, I like Simon because he’s like you, Spademan, except he’s always willing to do what needs to be done. Without reservation or hesitation. You, not so much.
Boonce starts to fiddle with his watchband. While he does this, I reach into the pocket of my coat. Check for the box-cutter. Still there.
Ask Boonce.
But what about Bellarmine?
There is no more Bellarmine, Spademan, as of about—
Checks his watch. That fucking watch.
—four minutes ago, give or take. Great tragedy. The city’s last protector, cut down in his prime, right before his big announcement. Looks like some rogue cops did him in. No doubt he’s the victim of some vast terrorist conspiracy. But the city will survive, of course. And our beloved mayor will win yet another term.
So you work for the mayor.
Boonce laughs.
Oh no.
Tugs at the knot of his silk tie.
Are you beginning to understand at all, Spademan? Even a little bit?
Loosens the tie and slides it out from under his stiff white collar.
I have to admit, Spademan, I had no more idea than you did who Lesser saw in there that night, this crazy burqa woman running around and blowing herself up in the limn. And I was definitely curious. I mean, if that had actually been true? Someone had actually cracked that problem? Killing people in the limn? I worked years on it and I couldn’t crack it, despite all my best efforts and my whiz-kid protégés. It’s too bad it all just turned out to be a hoax perpetrated by some coven of hysterical fanatics, living together in a drafty castle in a park, trying to spook a bunch of hoppers into waking up the world.
Boonce folds the tie. Hangs it over the chair.
That part of the story I only found out thanks to you, Spademan. So all your running around the city wasn’t totally for naught. Chasing that nurse like a lovesick kid. I hope she was worth it.
Chest clenches when he says this. I tighten my grip on the box-cutter in my pocket.
You’re wrong, Boonce. She’s not—
He holds up a hand to cut me off.
Spare me.
Then unbuttons the top button of his white dress shirt at the collar. Works his way slowly down through the buttons, taking his time. Relishing this. Letting the silence linger. I grip the box-cutter and wonder just how much longer I should listen. There’s no one up here but the two of us, as far as I can tell. Just us, at the top of One Times Square. And I’m not sure if Boonce’s got some new surprise waiting, some further twist, some gang of guards in the wings about to pounce, but I don’t really care. Whatever happens, there’s not enough space between the two of us now that I can’t finish him before I go down. I only need a head start and two or three good swipes at a soft spot.
Last rule of the Jersey schoolyard. Last rule, and the most important one, but
the hardest one to learn.
There’s no one you can’t take down, no matter how big or fast or strong, as long as you yourself don’t care about ever getting back up again.
Boonce unbuttons the last button on his shirt.
You took me for a pretty buttoned-up guy, didn’t you, Spademan?
I did.
Well, here’s your lesson. Your last lesson. Before we part ways.
Boonce shrugs the white shirt off.
Sometimes there’s more to people than what you see.
Boonce folds the shirt over the chairback.
Then he straightens up, bare-chested. Inked with tattoos from neck to waist. Every inch of his torso, covered. Down both arms to the wrists too. Looks like a freak in a circus sideshow.
Like the star of the freak show.
Snakes and flames.
Hoboken.
Puchs and Luckner sit in the patrol car, watching.
Puchs yawns. Stretches those tattooed arms again. Scratches them.
Luckner stares straight ahead.
Luckner’s phone buzzes.
She looks down.
Checks the phone.
Then stows it.
Says to Puchs.
That’s it. Let’s go.
Puchs perks up.
What’s the order?
Luckner checks the chamber of her automatic.
The whole building.
Everyone?
Everyone.
Puchs nods, smiles to himself, then checks his pistol too.
Then they get out of the car, walk briskly across the street, and head inside into the lobby of the building.
Some hapless neighbor loiters in the lobby, by the mailboxes, shuffling through junk mail. Barely glances up when the two cops enter. Maybe feels a little safer when he sees them, actually.
Luckner raises her pistol toward him and fires twice. Drops the neighbor and dents the mailbox with a double clang.
Then Luckner runs a finger down the intercom directory.
Finds the apartment number.
Buzzes.
Persephone’s voice crackles in the speaker box.
Hello?
Luckner leans in.
Ma’am, it’s Officer Luckner from downstairs. We’ve got shots fired in the lobby. Hold tight. We’re on our way up.
And Persephone buzzes them in.
Last car.
Train lurches.
Mark and Simon hobble aboard and let the door slide shut behind them.
Near Enemy Page 19
