Strange Flesh (51 page)

“I understand.”

“You do?”

“Yeah. It will be better if no one knows you were there.”

“Uh-huh.” Blake’s tone is wary; perhaps he was thinking he’d have to sell me harder on the virtues of forgetting his presence. Now he tests how far he can push it. “So I guess the police may want to speak with you. This is very serious, but if I could just—”

“I won’t be here.”

“Wait. What do you mean?”

“Blake, call McClaren. I know where your fuckhead brother is.”

S
lipping out of the hospital without the normal exit processing is liable to raise some questions, especially when my injuries were sustained in a pretty noteworthy case of arson. And since I was just here after being Tased, maybe I really should stay put to make sure there aren’t any parts coming loose. But catching Billy seems more important, so I devise a rickety plan to blame my erratic behavior on PTSD and make my escape.

At first I was puzzled that Billy had holed up in Washington Heights, but on mapping the GPS coordinates spit out from his phone, it made more sense: he’s not at a new apartment, he’s at the Cloisters.

As good a place as any to contemplate the enormity of one’s crimes, the Cloisters is a branch of the Metropolitan Museum of Art dedicated to medieval-period pieces. Set on a hill in Fort Tryon Park and overlooking the Hudson River, it stands as one of the most serene and beautiful places in the city, possessing all the enchantment of an actual medieval abbey. I recall finding in the folder where Gina stored her own NOD models a lovingly detailed replica of the entire complex. Maybe a favorite place of hers. Maybe even the site of a rare RL excursion with Billy.

My GPS fix is good enough to tell me that he’s in a gallery in the North Cloister that houses an impressive set of illuminated manuscripts. One of the most famous has a lovely depiction of the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah.

After a brief stop at home, I hurry uptown. Blake wanted me to wait for instructions from McClaren confirming that his extraction team was in place. But despite having sent two messages, I’ve yet to hear anything back.

I arrive to find Billy striking a reflective pose on a bench facing the water. His attitude makes me question whether he knows the outcome of his fratricidal attack. A tree on the other side of the path provides a suitable screen as I settle in to wait.

Several minutes pass. I send increasingly shrill messages to McClaren, but they’re flying into a void. I get antsy.

Billy fishes his phone out of his jacket pocket, presses some buttons, and reads. He doesn’t like what he sees and shakes his phone as if he’s going to chuck it into the water. But he restrains himself and just slams his fist into the bench’s wooden slats. He then shoots up and casts around as though he’s not sure where to go. He elects to return toward the galleries, and I decide I can’t take any more of this.

The wind is loud and the clouds prevent any revealing shadows, so I’m able to stalk right up to him and seize him by the shoulder. He freaks, wrenching himself away so hard that he falls down. Gone is the smug hipster who grinned at me when I fell for his tricks at our earlier meeting. Now he’s a skinny geek looking up in naked terror. I squat over him, making sure he sees the pistol clipped to my pants. To ensure docility, I hammer my fist down on his nose.

“We’re going to start with that,” I say.

He yelps, his eyes filling with tears. He takes a second to recover and tries to blow out the blood filling his nasal cavity.

“Where the fuck is Rosa? What did you do to her?”

“No. No, man. She’s fine. That’s her
job
.” This answer is so preposterous I hit him again. But he continues desperately. “Dude, she’s a
body modder
. They hang her up like that at tattoo conventions. I swear to God.” He starts coughing again while I think about this. Something about it actually seems credible.

Of course: the ripped earlobes. Sewn-up holes from extender plugs.

I can’t spare the time to beat myself up for being taken in, since now
that I have him, Billy has a whole litany of other crimes for which to answer. I ask, “How do we shut down the
Unmasking
?”

He gasps, “You don’t. It’s out there. And it’s not coming back.”

I press my hand over his mouth. “Wrong answer. You’re going to fuck with someone you just set on fire?”

He starts coughing blood out his nose. I release my hand.

He says, “Look, man, I didn’t know you were going to be there. By the time I saw you, I’d already set it off.”

I slap him hard across the face. More blood pools at the corner of his mouth. “You might have killed Olya, you little twat.”

“You should thank me. She was—”

I grab him by his shirt and rap his head against the ground. Then I pull his face close to mine. “Are you so nuts as to believe that
they
are responsible for your friend’s death? They deserve to die because Gina acted out something from one of
your
sick little movies?”

Billy’s eyes had jammed shut on impact, but now they pop open. He gapes at me like I’ve informed him that headless ogres are rampaging through Central Park.

“Wait . . . You mean . . .” He shakes his head, trying to clear it. “You’re telling me you don’t know? You
gave
me the video, man.”

“You stole it.”

“But you’ve seen it. How can you not know?”

I drop him back to the ground. “Know what?”

He props himself up by his elbows, an incredulous look on his face. “They killed her. G never did that to herself, they tied her up . . .” He trails off, suddenly focused on something behind me.

I twist around for a quick look, see nothing, and turn back to him, thinking he’s trying to distract me. But he’s still staring north up the pathway. He tries to scramble to his feet, a new sense of panic in his eyes. I let him up but grab him by the hair so he can’t run.

Something isn’t right. I glance behind me again, and this time I see it: two shadows off to the right of the path moving toward us.

Finally the cavalry show up
.

But immediately I know I’m mistaken. These guys aren’t McClaren’s people. For starters they’re both too big: one looks like he’s six foot six with a giant head, goatee, and leather Kangol cap, wearing a black Adidas
tracksuit, for Christ’s sake. The other is shorter but proportioned like a kettle bell. He’s got on dark sunglasses and a leather trench coat, underneath which he’s carrying something long and unwieldy. Surely not a shotgun.

Who the hell are these guys?

Billy has concluded that whoever they are, they mean him grievous harm. He tries to hurl himself away from me even though this results in a fistful of his hair ripping free. I snatch his right arm and pin it behind his back. Billy is physically weak, but he flails around like a gaffed shark. I wrench his arm upward, which freezes him briefly. He whines, terror-stricken, “Please, not yet. You don’t understand . . .”

I only half notice this because my mind is going a mile a minute. I can’t escape the conclusion that Goatee and Shades are a hit team. I never had any illusions that Billy was going to be forgiven for trying to kill his brother. He’s in for some rough treatment.

But gunning him down in a public park? This was never part of the plan. It’s insane.

They’re within twenty yards. Goatee is smiling at me. He reaches into his jacket.

Does Blake really want his brother dead? There was a symbolic, mad-scientist quality to the GAME fire. Olya was really only injured because she went
back into
the room. If he’d used a normal bomb, which would have been easier than his napalm sprinkler, all three of us would be dead.

All that aside, could Blake possibly want a police investigation into his brother’s public murder?

Shades pulls his coat away from a sawed-off twelve-gauge.

Do I?

No way. This cannot happen.

I push Billy as hard as I can so that he topples over the low wall separating the path from an overgrown slope. I then turn and pray I can clear my Glock before they start shooting. Their reactions are slowed by disbelief, but Shades gets his shotgun trained on me first.

I’m fucked.

Thankfully Goatee has read the situation and swipes his hand under the barrel, knocking it up away from me. I’ve got my gun out but decide not to risk pointing it at anyone.

Instead, I ask, “Who the hell are you?”

But Goatee ignores me and runs over to the wall, searching for their target. Billy has disappeared into the trees.

Shades has his gun trained on me again, looking like he’s dying to use it. But Goatee stares at me with amused contempt, and maybe a little bit of relief. “You just
fucked up
.”

T
hat turns out to be Blake’s perspective as well.

Shades detains me while Goatee converses briefly with an irate Mondano. They then drive me down to Amazone, empty at this hour, and install me at one of the tables near the main bar.

I simmer through twenty minutes of cheek-chewing tension before Mondano and Blake walk in. As he flops down on the seat next to mine, Mondano smirks like he’s going to relish this. Blake just looks bewildered. All over he’s showing signs of deep strain. Dark bags under bloodshot eyes combine with jerky movements to signal nervous exhaustion. To be expected, I guess, when, while all this is going on, he’s trying to run part of a major conglomerate. The effort must be costing him. I’d have given myself over to bourbon and barbiturates long ago.

He shakes his head like he’s trying to understand a misbehaving child. “James . . .”

I’m a little bewildered myself. This is the second time I’ve been responsible for losing his brother, and yet I feel like I’ve saved Blake from a catastrophe and don’t deserve his scorn. I decide on aggression.

“Blake, if you want to murder your brother in cold blood, think maybe you could do it when I’m not standing right next to him in a public park?”

Mondano says to Blake, “I told you this guy was a fucking fruitcake.” I notice he’s abandoned his world-weary Mafia boss shtick in front of
Blake. Someone who knows him from the old yacht-basin neighborhood.

“So your guys were just there to check out the tapestries? And they needed a shotgun in case, what? They were attacked by squirrels?”

“They were there to take control of the situation, which you then intentionally fucked up. That little prick offer you more money?”

“Actually, he offered to spare all three of us a twenty-to-life sentence at Sing Sing.”

“Already planning to rat on us, Jimmy?”

“Well, Benny, I’ll need someone’s ass to rent out for cigarettes, and I can’t think of anyone better suited to the work than you.”