Upgunned (35 page)

The in-gun clip and two spares were full of jacketed Hydra-Shoks—picture a hollow point with a tapered post of harder lead in the center. On impact, the post uses clothing, tissue, and body fluids as a wedge to force the bullet to expand. Muzzle velocity of 1,100 feet per second at 445 foot pounds. Sledgehammer hit, then it treated your insides to a weed-whacking.

Glasses and gloves, check. Building security was nothing my LockAid kit could not rape quietly. I stashed my scope after wiping it down. If it chanced to fall out of my coat, it needed to be print clean, like everything else I carried. It was tough to find latex gloves in “nude”—like panty hose—but essential so that some stray or bystander would not remember seeing a man wearing gloves.

Okay: a large subdivided, retrofitted loft space, probably fed by an elevator on the west end, which meant fire stairs somewhere in the back of the building on a less-stylish emergency exit route. The interior of the building would most likely be a maze; easy to get confused if you did not know which way was north. Decades of tenants had added or subtracted walls to taste. There might be blind access, or a sealed-off doorway or two.

Probably. Most likely. Might
. The total scenario was what tac guys quaintly called “controlling unknown space.”

I could
probably
have waited a day to reconnoiter the space,
most likely
would lose track of Elias once more, and
might
have gone a little more blind during all that wasted time. Or I could attack frontally, demote maximally, and assess threat potentials as I tightroped through that wet worker's version of interpretive dance—the run-and-gun.

I had him in my crosshairs. It was time for us to meet again.

*   *   *

Fifty-five-odd stairways and four locks later, I came out into the elevator foyer of the building's twenty-sixth floor. I had encountered four security cameras on the way. I lacked the luxury of reconnaissance, floor plans, or Blaine Mooney's lovely roundabouts. I did not even have pieces of tinfoil and earthquake putty, which could be stuck to the coaxial collars to make static. So, I smudged the lenses with hotel soap. The water pipes visible in most New York stairways provided my ladder, and when I reached up, I found each camera frosted in dust. Once installed, they were rarely maintained except for periodic checks by the security company—like elevators. Think of the last time you were in a spastic elevator with a duly dated checkup slip. These things frazzed out all the time and nobody called the cops. At most, the desk guy downstairs would whack his monitor as if it was an old rabbit-eared TV set, bitch and moan, and then scribble a note to have the goddamned screwed up system checked tomorrow, by somebody else. Security officers in buildings like this were unionized, and not eager to run into potential life-threatening situations for thirteen bucks an hour. If they panicked and whistled up the NYPD, I had a good thirty to forty minutes to work. Plus, this setup was middle ground, not top skim. The illicit nature of the Salon would require certain bribes and a subradar profile. In English: yeah, the building had “security,” but only just.

The other thing I encountered in the twenty-sixth floor elevator foyer was Richard Fearing, bodyguard to Mason Stone. His station gave me the correct suite door, and his manner upon my entry told me he was an obstacle that needed to be put down quickly. He was six foot two of shaved pate, black trench coat, and zero warmth. On my way up the stairs, I had decided I needed him.

“Hey there,” I said, all sunny. “Building security. I'm the rover.”

“No, you ain't,” he said. As last words go, it was sad. He was staring at my glasses.

Like a nightclub magician, Fearing had one hand out to distract me while his other hand snaked into his coat. It didn't work.

One would have sufficed, but I gave him two—throat and forehead—with the already-drawn
SIG
. Throat to shut him up, head to collapse him. He dropped like a clipped marionette. Both slugs stayed inside him, minimizing the mess. The silencer worked like pure gold; modern magic. No more noise than two loud coughs.

The reason I needed Dick Fearing was for an extra firearm; I wanted one for each hand when I tackled the room. His still-parked gun turned out to be a two-tone Browning Hi-Power nine, a weapon particularly abusive to the web of the hand. He carried it cocked and locked. Interestingly, he had loaded the mag with alternating rounds—Gold Dot hardball and Golden Saber hollow points, all high-performance cartridges. One to perforate, one to destroy.

Fearing was—had been—one of those “lighter and faster” guys who used nines or .357s, conscious of the overpenetration factor of bigger guns and more beefy ammo. You wanted your bullet to stay inside the target and wreck some mayhem, not drill cleanly through the far end. Clearly the man had lent some thought to how best to fuel his firepower … and came up with a compromise, knowing that he would probably never have to field-test it. How many times have you seen a celebrity bodyguard actually pull a hot weapon? Not many, if there's a camera around, and there always are. Politicians, yes—they're making a political point, after all. For Mason Stone's club, having an obvious pistol-packin' posse would be counterproductive to image. You had to be in the music biz to get away with that.

The foyer was done in fake marble veneer, black with jagged white veins, floor to ceiling. It was akin to standing inside the brain of a lunatic. The suite doors were done in a gilt-edged, antique style whose sloppy brushwork betrayed them, too, as equally fake. Despite all the brass hardware, you could blow these open with a sneeze.

I gave the double door to the suite three smart, no-nonsense raps, just as Fearing might have.

The door was opened by the midget in the W. C. Fields suit. His eyes and mouth made a perfect inverse triangle of zeros.

“Shh,” I said, backing him into the entryway with the
SIG
.

“Kleck?” A feminine voice caught up with us. Another little person.

“Shh,” I said, covering her with the Browning.

My eyeline was hampered. Holding three-foot-tall people at gunpoint was new to me.

They went into fear clinch, grabbing each other, just as another person rounded the archway—Mason Stone.

“Hey, Kleck, do you think it would be possible to—” Stone's mouth stalled at midpoint. To his credit, he reacted quickly, backpedaling the way he had come. If he was going for a weapon I needed to know about it.

“The photographer,” I said as I trooped the short people backward through the archway and into the main room. “I'm here for the photographer. Not you.” Stone was in a half crouch in front of Artesia Savoy, who was seated on a mushroom-shaped pedestal divan near the crescent bar. The back of the bar was toward the curtained windows. Was Stone trying to shield her? He obviously was not packing.

It was difficult to make out the other occupants, due to the size of the room and the dimness of the light. A big fireplace threw dancing shadows. I was facing a circular sofa that sat between the two archways. It was gaudy and velvet, a giant padded donut with a spire in the middle, like something picked up at a brothel fire sale. Turban Guy had risen from it, and seemingly, kept on rising. He was huge, at least six-five without the headgear.

“Please…” said the little man in the W. C. Fields suit.

“What the fuck is this?” said Stone, grabbing for command. “Who the fuck are you and what the fuck
is
this? Where's Dick?”

“Dick has gone away,” I said. “Shut up. Sit down. Now.” All warm bodies were inside my forty-five-degree cover sweep.

Turban Guy kept coming. His carriage said he would not stop until he grappled me into a headlock. I cross-elevated the
SIG
and stuck a pill into his sweet spot. He grunted on impact and kept coming … so I did it again and he fell face forward, trying to keep his blood inside. Mildly amazing, that he could absorb the carnage of two Hydra-Shoks and keep thrashing.

It also froze everyone in tableau. Peripherally I saw them looking for openings, thinking I was distracted by Turban Guy.

Kleck—the dapper midget—got a half step toward the fallen giant and yelled out “Uno!” before he remembered to hold still. His distaff partner began weeping.

Artesia Savoy had flinched as though bee-stung with each silenced shot. She would offer no resistance whatsoever, and Mason Stone had to concentrate on appearing to protect her.

“Everybody listen. Photographer. I need him. I saw him here. Where?”

On the floor, Turban Guy stopped squirming and made my argument for me. The pool around him widened.

Off to my immediate left, a row of doors punctuated the long wall opposite the window side. Two of these had opened in response to the ruckus. In the nearest was Spider Girl, who got the special attention of the Browning. She did a fast fade and slammed the door.

“Any other way out of there?” I said.

“No,” said Kleck. “Leave us alone.”

“Give me the photographer. Elias, Julian, whatever he calls himself, I want him
now
. Don't wait for me to say
please
.”

That was when Gator Guy pushed past a nearly naked normal human in the second doorway, roared like a T. rex, and actually fucking
charged
me.

The firelight edged him in feverish orange. I thought:
That's not a mask
. Real teeth showed inside his mouth, which was open wide—impossibly wide. Flinging spittle, his talons chittering on the marble floor, he charged me.

Rather, he charged the Browning, which was closer by one arm's length.

I disliked shooting left-handed, but at this distance it didn't matter. He took five in the torso, nipples to navel, before he lost his trajectory and crashed into the bar, knocking it over. The racket of the unsilenced Browning meant that palaver was done. The lizard-man rolled amid shattered bottles and pungent liquor but did not seem intent on getting up. He did not seem to possess nipples
or
a navel.

Kleck was pointing mutely at another door, the one I'd seen nearest the window in the corridor.

I moved sideways to maintain cover and gave the door my foot. Too much tough guy … it wasn't even locked. But violent, declarative actions would keep everyone else on edge, and therefore transfixed for a few more vital seconds. The frame was cheap crap and the door banged open with a satisfying amount of telegraphed threat.

The whole room was aglow with low-frequency hydroponic lamps, the kind used to nourish plant life. The air was thick and humid. From behind a translucent drape, I saw Elias's now blond head snap up. He was flat on his back on a gauzy canopy bed. Something else was on the bed, too—something with flashing silver eyes, like dog or cat eyes.

I brought both guns to bear and started shooting.

 

PART TWELVE

ELIAS

My next session at Salon was even more disorienting than the first, and I was supposedly in charge. All it took was a phone call to Tripp Bergin to divorce me from
Vengeance Is
for another day. No celebrities were on set and nobody needed shots of the crew wrapping and striking for a company move.

“You tell me if the heat's off,” Tripp had said earlier, from beneath the bill of a cap for
Invisible Enemies
. “You decide to tag along or not. You've turned out to be pretty good at this second career, the whole unit photography thing. But it's one of the first gigs that gets cut as production winds down. Your job is only safe through last day of principal photography. After that, I don't know where to stash you. If there's a problem, let me know now.”

“There's still a bad guy out there who wants my blood,” I said. “I'm looking over my shoulder every second, except when I'm at the Salon.”

Tripp popped three pieces of citrus-flavored gum. “They say this sugarless crap makes you fart. Some chemical in it.” He frittered. “Cops are looking for Elias McCabe. That makes me an accessory if you really did something wrong, just so you know. No—I'm not looking for an apology. Just know what you're doing, hear me?”

“Roger that. ID my body if I don't make it.”

“Boy, you're just a bubbling fountain of good cheer. You got any kind of fallback plan?”

“Cap's been teaching me to shoot.”

“Whoa, stop right there, I don't want to know any more. The only thing you can shoot worth a damn is a camera.” He doffed his cap and raked his diminishing crop of hair.

“That's Cap's opinion, too.”

“Just make my life easier and don't try to bring a piece onto the set, willya?”

“I already got the lecture.”

“Nah, I mean … look, we're in friggin New Jersey; anybody here without a gun in their glove box is called a
victim
.”

Here was a side of Tripp I had not yet seen. “You have a gun in your car?”

“Shh!” He scanned around for potential eavesdroppers. “I'm just sayin. If I was in your position, I'd be strapped, too.”

“Strapped?”

“Packing.”

This was fun, in a perverse way. “You mean you would have a gun.” I was surprised he didn't call it a gat or a roscoe.

“That would be way illegal.”

“Said the master of phony ID cards.” I actually cracked a smile. It felt ill fitting and foreign to my face. “Mister ‘call me from a pay phone.' Mister ‘lose the whiskers.'”

“Ah, who can talk to you when you get this way?” Now he was frittering around in place as though he needed a urinal. “Listen, I told you everything I needed to tell you. I'm your friend, not your keeper.”

“Thanks, Mom.”

He came in close, mouth to ear: “Just do me a solid and explain it to me when it's all over.” Then, more generally: “I've gotta go make sure Hunnicutt can transpo his birds across state lines.”