Fifth Ave 01 - Fifth Avenue (87 page)

Maybe he was dreaming.
 
Maybe none of this was real.
 
Maybe he hadn’t gone through with any of it last night.
 
Maybe he’d run like hell, as Hayes had.
 

He brought a hand to his chest and felt the bandage they’d wrapped around him.
 
This was no dream.
 
He’d done everything they’d told him to last night.
 
This was real.

But where was he now?
 
Was this his bedroom?
 
His home?
 
He didn’t know.
 
He didn’t care.
 
He drifted off.

He was awakened by a loud metallic clanging.
 
This time it was he who moved, not the bedroom.
 
He sat up in bed and looked around.
 
His head ached and he was exhausted, his body drained, as though he had been ordered to run a marathon, forced to win.
 

Clang, clang, clang--coming from downstairs.

He swung his legs around and put his bare feet on the cool hardwood floor--perhaps too quickly, because he became dizzy, disoriented.
 
He licked his tingling lips and fought the urge to lie back down.
 
He wore no clothing.
 
Bandages covered his chest in a bloody patchwork quilt.
 
He was a rich man who had enjoyed a life of excess and greed, and he weighed over 300 pounds.
 
His stomach--hairless and pale and dimpled with fat--rested in his lap like a great ivory-colored balloon, taut and ready to burst.

Clang, clang, clang!

Cole stood, tentatively at first, and shaded his eyes from the resilient sun.
 
Every window was open, every shade was up.
 
It was the middle of winter and the bedroom was freezing.
 
He could see his breath forming before him in little white clouds, could feel his skin shrinking against the cold.
 
He was a man used to comfort and this was ridiculous.
 

Clang, clang, clang!

“Bebe!” he shouted.
 
“What the hell is that noise?”

Clang, clang, clang!

“Bebe!”

Silence.

“Jesus.”

He had to pee.
 
He looked across the room to the closed bathroom door and thought he’d never make it.
 
But he was stubborn.
 
Resolved, he set off toward the bathroom, but one leg seemed shorter than the other and he stumbled.
 
What had they given him last night?
 
Meth?
 
He couldn’t remember.
 
He hadn’t wanted any drugs.
 
He wanted to experience everything with a clear mind.
 
Had they given Bebe that opportunity?
 
He couldn’t remember that either....

Almost there, almost to the bathroom, his feet shuffling like sandpaper along the cold floor.
 
He reached out a hand to push the bathroom door open but missed it and bumped into the wall.
 

“Christ,” he said to himself.
 

He groped his way inside, found the toilet, lifted the seat, lifted his stomach and relieved himself.
 
The house was quiet.
 
All he could hear was his own sigh and the urine shooting into the toilet’s dark blue well of water.
 
He was exhausted.
 
His eyelids were heavy.
 
In the moment he closed them, he heard the urine hit the rim, splash onto the tile floor.
 
Fuck it
, he thought.
 
Let Angel clean it up.
 

He shook himself dry, flushed and reached behind him for the white terry cloth bathrobe hanging on the door.
 
He pulled it around his enormous frame, tied it tight around a stomach that had been flat in youth and shut out the cold.
 
He wanted to brush his teeth, wash his face.
 
He wanted to get rid of every trace of what they’d done to him last night.
 
But when he stepped in front of the marble vanity and looked at himself in the spotless mirror, all Cole could do was stare.

His face was swollen and bloodied and bruised, as though they had beaten him.
 
But all Cole could remember were the hands and the smiles and the screams and the joy and the eyes shining like quicksilver through the darkness.
 
He couldn’t recall being beaten, couldn’t recall any pain.

Tentatively, he brought a hand to his face, touched his numb, bloated right cheek and recoiled when his fingertips met the tender edge of bone.
 
How would he ever explain this?
 
Eventually the media would find out.
 
Eventually all of New York would know that something had happened to Kenneth Cole, the first of twelve who years ago had sold out to the SEC and sent Maximilian Wolfhagen to prison.
 
The press would be all over this.
 
There was a time when his testimony had helped destroy the greatest insider trading ring in financial history.

Clang, clang, clang!

He turned away from the mirror.
 
“Bebe?”

Silence.

Was she drunk?
 
He left the bathroom and stepped into the cold hallway, heard nothing, gently stroked his cheek.
 
In front of him, a winding staircase swung down to the sunny foyer.
 
“Bebe!” he called.

Clang, clang, clang!

Clutching the handrail for support, he descended, already knowing that if he found her sprawled beneath van Gogh’s White Roses--as he had so many times before--he would finally have to get professional help for her.

The library was enormous, paneled in dark oak, so dim in the curtain-drawn light that it seemed almost gas lit.
 

Cole stood in the doorway and took it all in.
 
It was here that he and Babe used to entertain.
 
It was here, as one of Wall Street’s golden boys, that he first supplied Wolfhagen with privileged information on impending takeovers.
 
Now, as Cole looked across the room to the illumined van Gogh, the famous painting Wolfhagen made him buy anonymously at auction, promising Cole that its $40-million price tag would help seal his place in society--which, for a time, it had--he realized once more that Wolfhagen never had been his friend.
 
He had only used him to make himself a billionaire.

The silence was heavy.
 
The room was too dark.
 
Moving tentatively across the Aubusson rug, wondering where his wife could be, Cole turned on a lamp.
 

He saw his wife first.
 

Strapped to a Queen Anne chair in the center of the room, her carefully dyed blonde hair tousled and hanging in her face, Bebe was surrounded by video cameras.
 
She was naked, shivering and gagged.
 
Her eyes were wide with horror.
 
There was a scrape on her forehead.
 
She moaned.

Alarmed, Cole took a step back.

Bebe shook her head, tried to spit out the gag, but couldn't.
 
She struggled to release herself from the heavy rope that bound her hands and legs to the antique chair, but it was impossible.
 
She writhed in frustration and looked wildly to her left.
 

Cole followed her look.
 

Sitting in the shadows in a matching Queen Anne chair, dressed entirely in black, was a stranger.
 
The man rose from his seat, lifted his eyebrows at Kenneth and started smashing the priceless Tibetan funeral doll in his left hand against an Egyptian brass urn--clang, clang, clang!
 

He tossed the ruined doll to the floor and stepped beside Bebe, who followed his every move with her terror-filled eyes.
 
“Well,” he said to Cole.
 
“It’s about time you woke up.
 
We’ve been waiting hours for you.”
 
He kissed the top of Bebe’s head.
 
“Haven’t we, dear?”

Bebe jerked away from him.
 
She thrashed in her chair and looked at Cole for help.

Amused, the man leaned forward and removed the gag from Bebe’s lipstick-smeared mouth.
 
He reached behind his back, withdrew a gun and pressed it against her temple.
 
Bebe gasped.
 
Her shoulders drew in and she looked imploringly at her husband, whose own mouth had parted in shock.
 
The gun, Kenneth saw, had a silencer.
 
He looked at the four video cameras surrounding Bebe and could hear them humming.

Cole forced himself to think, willed himself to act.
 
Behind him, in the top drawer of Bebe’s writing table, would be a loaded gun.
 
He took a step back toward the table, his eyes level with Bebe’s, his hand reaching out.
 
But the man was having none of it.
 
He shook his head at Cole and pressed the gun harder against Bebe’s temple, pulling the trigger just as she uttered her last words:
 
“Wolfhagen!” she gasped.
 
“He’s hired--”

The shot was flat, muffled, the sound of steel striking bone.
 
Bebe’s eyes grew huge with sorrow and disbelief, her body jerked from the sudden impact and she slumped slightly forward in the chair, dead.
 

Kenneth’s knees sagged.
 
Bile rose in his mouth and he gagged.

Suddenly a hand was on his arm, strong and firm.
 
Kenneth turned and saw the woman just as she jammed the gun into the small of his back and urged him forward, toward his bleeding wife, the man in black, the humming cameras.
 
“Fight me and I promise you won’t die as quickly as your wife.”

He was pulled across the library by a hand far steadier than his own.
 
The man had dragged Bebe off to one side and now was placing a matching chair where she had sat.
 
Here the floor was polished oak and it gleamed darkly with his wife’s spilled blood.
 
Cole was led to the middle of it, his bare feet resting in the warm pool that had kept her alive.

Now, the cameras surrounded him.
 

They’d murdered his wife.
 
They’d do the same to him.

He looked at the woman.
 
Tall and attractive, thick brown hair framing an oval face of cool intelligence, her eyes the color of chestnuts and just as hard.
 
She wore black leggings and a black shirt, no jewelry.

The man moved behind her, his face partly concealed behind the video camera now poised on his right shoulder.
 
“Open his robe,” he said to the woman.

She opened his robe.

“Now get rid of the bandages.”

She ripped them from Cole, who stared straight into the camera’s opaque lens and saw his own bruised, bloated face floating up at him from the dark, rounded glass.
 
The equipment was small and sophisticated and digital.
 
He knew the contents would probably be put on a DVD, and Wolfhagen would view them.

But would he view the other DVD?
 
The one being recorded by the camera hidden in the wall above the fireplace?
 
The one his insurance company demanded he install in the event that someone tried to steal the van Gogh?
 
Would he see that?

The woman took a step back.
 
She looked with revulsion at Cole’s bloody chest and then looked at him.
 
Cole held her gaze and willed himself to remain calm.
 
It wasn’t too late for him.
 
Everyone had a price, everyone could be bought.
 
Hadn’t Wolfhagen taught him that much?