Alpha Kill - 03 (17 page)

She was about to say no, she was tired, she wanted to be alone, when a sudden surge of anger flared within her.

Enough of this uncertainty, and conjecture, and mistrust. She was going to come out with it. Ask Paul frankly if he knew of any underhand activity with regard to the Bonnesante Clinic, and if he was involved in it. She’d watch him carefully, to judge whether or not he was giving her honest answers.

And if he convinced her, she was going to call Venn and tell him he was wrong. That his jealousy was distorting his judgment, and that he needed to lay off Paul.

“Yes,” Beth said. “I’d like that.”

“Okay.” Paul sounded like he was still driving. “Can I pick you up?”

“No, I’ll make my own way there,” she said.

His apartment was in Tribeca, a fifteen-minute trip away on the subway. She headed for the nearest station.

*

D
rake started with the guy’s belly, driving the barrel of the shotgun into it like he was using a bayonet.

The man jackknifed and rolled on to his side. He puked thinly on the carpet, coughing and wheezing and gasping for breath afterward.

Drake followed up with a kick to the man’s kidney on the exposed side. The man let out a howl and tried to bring his hands across to protect his flank. With his loafer, Drake kicked him again, in the back this time, arching the guy as if he’d been electrocuted.

Before stooping so that his face was close to the man’s, Drake glanced at Gudrun and Herman. They stood and watched, their expressions rapt, their eyes shining.

The guy’s face was the gray of wet putty. His eyes glimmered with tears.

“Do you know who I am?” Drake stage-whispered.

With an effort that made him wince, the man nodded.

“Who am I? Say my name.”

The man’s voice came out in a hoarse, unintelligible rasp.

Drake knelt beside him, grabbed his hair to pull his head back, and jammed the end of the Remington under his chin.

“Louder.”

“You’re...” The man faltered, swallowed dryly, tried again. “You’re Eugene Drake.”

“Correct. So I am.”

Drake released his hair and stood up. He let the shotgun hang down loosely from one hand, and prodded the guy with it: his leg, his chest, his face. The man jerked his head away, but kept his eyes fixed on Drake’s.

“Dr Paul Brogan,” Drake said grandly. “Psychiatrist extraordinaire.” He wrinkled his nose, peered at the guy’s trousers. “Whoops. You appear to have pissed yourself, Doc. A little undignified for a man in your elevated position, wouldn’t you say?”

Skeet snickered, hopping again from one foot to the other. Drake wished he’d put the gun away. He probably didn’t even have the safety on, and it could go off accidentally.

To Brogan, Drake said: “Well, Doc, normally I’d let you head on into the bathroom and get yourself cleaned up. But, see, it would be waste of time and effort. Because your clothes are going to get stained a whole lot more, very shortly. And not with piss. You understand what I’m saying?”

Brogan, who’d been keeping his mouth shut, began to blubber. His eyes were wide with terror. Despite the agony he was in, from the blows to his abdomen and side and back, he started to scramble backward across the carpet on his elbows.

His head bumped into Herman’s feet, and he looked up sharply. Herman beamed down at him.

“Just a few friends I’ve brought along with me to enjoy the party,” Drake said conversationally. “Ah, yeah, I forgot. Where are my manners? I didn’t tell you we were going to be dropping by. Sorry about that. Well, we’re here now, so I hope we’re not putting you to too much inconvenience.”

With a gasp, Brogan rolled over onto his front, and began crawling away toward the kitchen.

“Going to get us some drinks and snacks,” Drake said. “Hey, Doc. Make mine a big old helping of revenge pie. Straight from the refrigerator. After all, I hear it’s best served cold.”

This time Gudrun tittered.

Skeet jabbered mockingly: “Hey, man. I think he’s gonna get himself a carving knife. Jeez. What are we gonna do?”

Drake watched Brogan slide off the carpet and onto the stone floor of the small kitchen. He began to feel impatient. He’d wanted to scare the guy, and there was no doubt he’d done that. Hell, just the sight of him and Skeet and the twins would be enough to freak any normal person out.

But now he felt the bloodlust rising in him like a drug. He didn’t want to torture the psychiatrist, carve him up and dismember him alive the way Herman and Gudrun would probably go about it.

No. He wanted to
kill
him. Noisily, violently, and spectacularly. That was one of the reasons he’d gone over the top in choosing guns from the arms cache. He wanted Paul Brogan to face a massive, explosive end. A blast of shotgun fire, followed up by a hail of handgun bullets so that his body shredded and jerked and twisted.

Drake raised the Remington. Ratcheted back the slide.
Ch-chak.

A collective sigh escaped Skeet and the twins. This was it.

“Hey, Doc,” called Drake.

The man had grabbed the handle of a drawer and was hauling himself upright. He turned at Drake’s voice.

Stretched his mouth wide.

“No -”

And the buzzer sounded, beside the front door, so loud and so startling Drake nearly pulled the trigger of the shotgun back in a reflex action.

*

D
rake was on the kitchen floor alongside Brogan in an instant, once more seizing him by the hair and shoving the shotgun barrel under his jaw.

“Who’s that?” he snarled.

Brogan’s eyes rolled like a wounded horse’s, his lips working soundlessly.

Drake shifted the end of the shotgun so that it loomed close to the man’s eyes.

“Dammit to hell.
Who’s out there? Who’s at the door?
”

Skeet hissed from the living room: “Hey, boss. Phone.”

Drake looked round, saw Skeet lob the phone toward him. He let go Brogan’s hair and caught it.

Rosenbloom said at the other end, “For God’s sake. Why didn’t you answer? I’ve been calling for like the last sixty seconds.”

Drake cursed inwardly. He’d left the phone on the couch. In all the excitement, none of them had heard it vibrating.

“There’s a woman at the door,” Rosenbloom went on. “Pressing the buzzer. Don’t know if it’s the apartment you’re in, but -”

“Yeah,” said Drake. “It is.” Watching Brogan’s face, he said to Rosenbloom: “Describe her.”

“Youngish, maybe thirty. Auburn hair. Difficult to see for sure, but she’s kind of hot.”

The woman from the photo by Brogan’s bed.

Sweet.

“She alone?” asked Drake.

“Yeah.”

Drake tossed the phone aside. He stood, gazing down at the man on the floor.

“Well, well. Looks like your girlfriend has arrived.”

The buzzer sounded again, a longer note this time. Brogan stared about him, his feet scrabbling on the stone floor.

Then he yelled, his voice a croak but surprisingly loud: “Beth! Beth, get the hell out of here. There are –”

Drake reversed the Remington and brought the stock down on Brogan’s face. The man’s nose exploded with a crack, blood gouting down his shirt and spattering the floor. He slumped, sliding down the counter he was propped against, his legs splaying.

Drake crouched.
Shit.
He shouldn’t have hit the guy so hard.

Brogan was alive, semi-conscious, his eyes fluttering, his mouth moving vaguely. Drake let him slide until he was almost supine on the floor, only his head upright against the counter.

Turning, Drake said, “Herman. Buzz her in. Say something briefly, so it’s like this guy talking.”

In two strides Herman was at the entryphone beside the door. He lifted the receiver and said, “Yeah. Come on up.” Drake had to admire the way he did it. Herman had barely heard Brogan speak, but he’d captured the man’s voice accurately. Herman pressed the buzzer to release the  mechanism of the building’s front door.

Gudrun stood by calmly, but her eyes shone. Skeet had, bizarrely, dropped to his knees on the carpet, laid down his gun, and had his hands clasped together in an attitude of prayer.

Crazy fuckers, all of them,
Drake thought, with not a little fondness.

He watched the front door of the apartment, waiting.

––––––––

W
hen Paul didn’t answer the buzzer the first time, Beth assumed he was in the bathroom. She stood on the top step and waited, giving it a minute or so.

He was home, this she knew, because she’d seen the light on in his window on the second floor. Also, he’d asked her to come round, and she’d said she was on her way, so it was unlikely he would have gone out.

She pushed the button a second time.

After ten or fifteen seconds, she heard his voice. He sounded terse, distracted. Not his usual cheerful self.

Then again, it was difficult to tell a person’s tone over an intercom.

She pushed the door open and went inside, heading for the stairs rather than the elevator. As she mounted the steps, the door to his apartment came into view on the right. It was shut. That was odd. Normally, he opened it as soon as she announced her arrival.

Beth reached the landing.

From somewhere, definitely on the other side of Paul’s door rather than one of the adjacent apartments, came a thump.

Beth paused.

Was Paul okay? Had he tripped over or something? The thud had sounded heavy, like it was made by a human being colliding with a hard object, or the floor.

Two things happened next.

First, Paul’s voice came, horribly high-pitched and anguished. Three words run into one syllable.

“Bethgetout -”

Second, the very door seemed to rock in its frame as a colossal, awful explosion crashed behind it.

Beth felt herself propelled backward, realizing only afterward that her legs were carrying her before her conscious mind had a chance to react. She teetered at the top of the staircase and almost toppled over before her clawing hand grabbed the banister and she was able to swing round and steady herself.

Through the ringing in her ears, Beth registered men’s voices, several of them, trying to keep their volume down but failing.

For a moment, Beth was rooted to the floor at the top of the stairs, clutching the banister, as if some delayed effect of the sudden thunderclap from within the apartment had turned her to rock.

Then an ancient instinct kicked in and she began taking the stairs down, two at a time, her mind shrieking at her to get away, put as much distance between her and the apartment as she could and as quickly as she could.

Just as her head was disappearing below the level of the landing, she saw two doors fly open at almost exactly the same time.

One was the door to Paul’s apartment.

The other was the next door along.

Despite her panic, she slowed for an instant.

An elderly man emerged from the next-door apartment, thin legs protruding below a bathrobe and a look of bewilderment and fear on his face.

Through Paul’s door came a denim-clad, wasted-looking younger man.

For a moment, his eyes made contact with Beth’s. They were the eyes of a nightmare creature from an Hieronymous Bosch painting, the corneas more yellow than white and visible all the way round the pupils.

Then his gaze snapped sideways to the old man.

His arm came up and something bucked and roared in his hand and there was another blast, even louder this time because there was no door between it and Beth.

Beth screamed as the old man was punched back through the open door of his apartment.

She leaped the remaining stairs, landing painfully on her feet and stumbling forward onto the lobby floor, losing her balance and then regaining it and hurtling toward the entrance of the brownstone. Behind her she registered yelling, several voices now, and her back tingled dreadfully as she sensed the gun taking a bead on a spot between her shoulder blades, the terrible wrenching impact of the bullet only a split-second away.

The next explosion of gunfire came just as Beth hit the entrance door and thumbed the release button and shoved against the door with her other hand. As the heavy door swung open and she felt the sucking of the chilly night air, she heard a crash and turned involuntarily to see a bulky man tumbling down the stairs, head first.

From behind him came more yells but she didn’t linger, just flung herself down the sidewalk to her right.

A car door was starting to open ahead of her and Beth tried to shout and warn the person emerging, to tell him to get back in and get out of there because there were armed men about to pour out onto the street and they seemed to be shooting people indiscriminately. She tried, but although her mouth opened, no sound came out apart from the sawing of her breath. Instead, she waved her hands like a crazy woman, gesturing him away.

The man was tall, dressed entirely in black, with a smoothly bald head that gleamed under the streetlamp.

His eyes were dark and shadowed.

Oh God
, Beth’s mind gibbered as the realization hit her.
He’s one of them...

She was ten yards from the man.

His arm came up, braced itself across the open door. In his hand a gun glinted dully.

Without hesitating, Beth threw herself to her left, between two other parked cars and straight across the road. She didn’t look to see if there was any traffic, simply relied on the fact that she couldn’t hear any car coming. At the same time she stooped to a crouch, a distant part of her giving thanks that she’d worn sensible, flat shoes to work that day rather than anything with the slightest hint of a heel.

The first shot sang behind her, terrifyingly close, and smashed through the windshield of one of the parked cars. The second followed in quick succession, disappearing off down the street.

Beth reached the other side of the street and turned right, because there was a corner close by up ahead. She kept low, using the line of parked cars as cover, cringing from the knowledge that the tall man would be across the street at any moment and then she’d be an easy target.