The Vaults (39 page)

A line of partygoers were waiting for the incoming taxis, so Smith hoofed it down the street, past a line of idling limos whose drivers carried on muted conversations in groups of two or three. It felt good to work off some of the adrenaline. Smith passed the mayor’s Phaeton and saw the driver—couldn’t remember the name—talking to a man with his hat pulled so low that Smith wondered how he could see out from under it. Another man leaned against the back of the car with his back to Smith. Something about him was familiar. But then again, anyone friendly with the mayor’s chauffeur was probably around quite a bit. Smith walked on, though unable to shake the feeling of something about those two men . . .

He flagged down a cab on Buchanan Avenue and had him drive to Feral’s apartment in the Theater District. He had the hack drop him a block from the building and gave him a five, suggesting that he forget about the fare. The cabbie nodded in silent agreement and drove off.

Sidewalk traffic was sparse; the usual theatergoers were at the armory or watching the shows, which were under way. The streets, he noted with disgust, were littered with garbage. He kicked an empty can at a stray cat and watched it jump and then cower, hissing, in a doorway.

Smith strolled to the door of Feral’s apartment building, found the right key on his crowded key chain, and eased his way in. The mayor made sure that all of his triggermen had access to each other’s flats or houses, thinking that this lack of security would encourage obedience. This was true to a certain extent in Smith’s case. He certainly didn’t relish the thought of that little freak Feral creeping around his place. On
the other hand, Smith was confident that he could take care of himself, no matter the circumstance.

He took the stairs to Feral’s floor and listened at his door, trying to ascertain what was going on inside. Hearing nothing, he unlocked the door and slipped into Feral’s flat.

The ASU station was in turmoil that had Poole’s escorts glancing nervously at the sergeant. Gray-suited officers were leaving the building in pairs and fours, while others bustled around the station, faces grim. The two officers led Poole through this confusion, one on each arm with the sergeant walking point.

The sergeant stopped a young officer and asked, “Where’s Martens?”

“Don’t know, sir. But I bet he’s either on the street or headed that way.” Poole watched drops of sweat roll down the kid’s temples.

The sergeant asked, “What’s the rumble?”

“You don’t know? Word came down straight from the mayor. We need to bring in that union gink Dotel and that woman. The mayor wants them tonight. However we can get them. Everyone’s on it,” the kid said, eyes wide. “Everyone.”

Poole felt the blood drain from his face. He sagged a little and his escorts tightened their grips to hold him up. He fought back a torrent of panicked thoughts, trying to focus, think clearly. He needed to address this step-by-step. The first thing was to get out of the station as fast as possible. Without thinking, he pulled against his handcuffs. But they were too strong, of course.

The sergeant motioned for his officers to follow him as he walked farther into the station. He asked a couple of other officers about Martens before someone pointed toward an open door off the squad room. The sergeant led Poole through the door into an interrogation room, where three men sat around a metal table in a haze of cigarette smoke. One, a small man with a receding forehead and a weak chin, was doing the talking. He stopped as Poole followed the sergeant into the suddenly cramped room. The small man turned, glaring, to face the two newcomers. Poole noticed the military mustache.

“What the hell is this?” the small man said with undisguised annoyance. The two officers stayed outside. The room was too crowded as it was.

“Ethan Poole,” the sergeant said significantly.

“Why is he here?”

“He claims that someone is out to assassinate the mayor tonight.”

The little man, who Poole assumed was Martens, looked thoughtful for a moment. “Poole, yes. The name . . . we were looking for you . . .” His voice trailed off, then he found himself again with a start. He barked, “There’s not time for this tonight.” He ground the lit end of his cigarette into the table.

“The mayor . . . ,” the sergeant said.

Martens turned to Poole. “What is this? Someone is trying to kill the mayor tonight? Who? Who’s trying to kill him? For God’s sake, how do you know?”

Poole had been thinking about which answer to this question would be most likely to get him back on the street as fast as possible. Nothing better than the truth had presented itself. “Whiskers McAdam.”

Martens coughed out a laugh. “Whiskers McAdam? He won’t see the outside of a cell for another twenty years. My God. What do you take us for?”

Poole shrugged. He had to play this out a little further; make it look as if he were really trying to convince them. “It’s what I’ve heard. People say they’ve seen him on the street.”

Martens regarded Poole as he might have a dumb and intransigent child. “I don’t know what your angle is on this, Poole, but it’s a bunch of horseshit.” Martens turned to the sergeant, waiting.

“I should lock him up?” the sergeant suggested.

“Christ.” Martens was reddening. “Are you suggesting that you spend tonight at your desk typing up a report that you brought Poole in because he claimed that Whiskers McAdam was going to kill the mayor tonight? Is that it? While the rest of the goddamn unit is out complying with a direct order from the mayor? Is that what you’re suggesting? Whiskers McAdam?”

The sergeant looked back miserably.

“Let him go,” Martens growled. “Let him go.”

Frings watched the big man run through the possibilities in his mind. He knew that Red Henry was smart and that self-preservation would be his first priority. But Henry was drunk, and Frings knew that this was unusual. It added an unpredictability that Frings had not anticipated coming into the confrontation. As the options were laid out, the rational thing for Henry to do was to give up Nora and save his own skin. But this would only be true based on some assumptions that Frings was not at all certain Henry would make. The first was that Frings would, indeed, not run the article if Nora was released. Henry had good reason not to trust him, since Frings fully intended to run the article regardless. The second critical assumption was that Frings would be able to substantiate his allegations in the face of Henry’s denials. This, in Frings’s mind, would be a close one. But people were willing to think the worst of their leaders, and Henry would most likely not be given the benefit of the doubt. But would Henry make the same calculation?

Another critical assumption that Frings was making as well was that he knew all the cards that Henry had to play.

Henry looked at Frings with furious, drunken eyes. Frings maintained his air of self-assurance, trying to intimidate Henry with his attitude because there was no hope for it physically. Henry’s next action had him wondering if he had miscalculated. The big man picked Frings off the ground by the lapels of his suit, Frings sinking so that the coat bunched up around his neck. Henry turned him and propped him against a wall, holding him up with one hand by the chin. Frings stared at Henry with bulging eyes. Half the room turned to them and the band stopped. Frings felt helpless and humiliated. Henry leaned forward and put his lips next to Frings’s ear.

“I will let your quiff go. But if you publish that article, I promise you that you will be killed soon, and you will be killed painfully. And then the same will happen to your girl. Don’t doubt that I can make that happen.”

Henry let go of Frings’s jaw, and Frings fell gasping to the ground. Henry turned to the onlooking crowd and smiled a terrifying smile. “Please return to your goddamn drinks,” he bellowed. “The Poles are not coming tonight. They’re leaving town tomorrow and they’re not coming back. Through treachery and dealing in bad faith, they have whetted our appetites for their presence and then withdrawn it at the last hour. It is my greatest wish that they leave the City safely because I know that there will be great anger among our citizens.”

Frings watched from the floor, recovering. Henry was absolutely in the bag. Henry swayed slightly as he ranted. The guests looked on nervously. Frings noticed men at the fringes of the crowd who seemed amused but kept their mirth quiet. No one wanted to be the target of the mayor’s wrath.

Peja materialized from the crowd and spoke into Henry’s ear. Henry pushed him aside, then turned back to loom over Frings, who was still sitting on the floor.

“Don’t forget what I said. Kill that goddamn story,” Henry slurred. “You can find Nora Aspen at Draffert’s Pub in an hour.”

Henry lumbered toward the entrance, Frings watching as the crowd parted in front of him. The attention of the whole room was on the big man. The band had begun to play again, this time at a dirgelike pace that might just have been mocking Henry’s slow progress.

Frings stood up and pushed through the crowd after Henry.

Nora was still reading when she felt the room’s atmosphere change, turning electric. The small, dark man was listening intently, his head cocked to something she could not hear. She began to speak but was hushed by a wave of the man’s hand. He was up, moving silently across the room. He turned the knob of the door with two fingers, inching it open. From her bed, Nora could not see the hall, but the man’s demeanor did not indicate any trouble. Then, without seeming to move, he was gone and the door was shut.

Odd, she thought, returning to her book. She heard sounds from the hall and put her book down. Voices. Too muffled to be understood. This was the first time since her incarceration that she had known of another person in the apartment except her captor.

There was a thud and the floor shook, the motion magnified by the springs in the mattress she reclined on. She sat up on the side of the bed with her feet planted on the floor, her heart racing. She prayed for it to be the police. The alternative scared the hell out of her.

Footsteps approached in the hall. Not the little man, who did not make any noise when he walked. Nora fought back nausea. The door swung open hard, the knob banging against the wall and the door rebounding back. Through it came a big man, his face a mask of determination under his fedora as he advanced on her. He held a pistol by the barrel, brandishing it like a club. She had seen plenty of actors simulate a pistol-whip on the screen. She lay back, bracing herself for the real thing; pulling her knees up to her chest and putting her arms out to protect her face. He was standing over her now, trying with his free hand to knock her hands out of the way so he could get in a clean strike with the pistol.

She didn’t scream, but flailed with her arms and kicked out with her feet, trying to fend him off. He was patient, working to clear himself for the first, solid blow that would enable him to inflict the rest without resistance. Behind him, his grace belying the brutality of his intentions, the little man struck. He came into the room with speed, his arms crossed at the
elbows and a thin rope dangling from his hands. He flipped the rope around her assailant’s neck, then pulled his hands apart so that they uncrossed, pulling the cord tight around the bigger man’s throat.

The big man’s eyes went wide and he staggered backward, turning slightly. From this angle, Nora could see her captor with his knee in the big man’s back, giving him leverage to pull the cord tighter. The big man clawed at the rope around his neck with increasing desperation. With his free leg, the little man kicked hard into the back of the big man’s knee, and he went down on his face, the gun slipping from his grasp. The little man now was on top. The effort he was putting forth did not show on his face, but the banded muscles of his arms were fully tensed.

Nora slid from the bed and picked the gun off the floor. She knew how to use one, a requisite part of growing up in the sticks. She stepped around the two men. The fight was gone from the bigger one, and her captor continued to pull on the rope, dropping his ear to the man’s back, listening for his heart to stop beating. When at last the little man judged his job finished, he straightened up, and for the first time saw Nora, holding the gun confidently, the barrel aimed at his chest. The head, she had been told, was too easy to miss.

The little, dark man who had been her captor for nearly two days; who had kept a vigil, watching her as she read, for God’s sake; who had reminded her of Tino, the gentle man who practiced the savage art; the little dark man sat, deflated, on the bed. His mahogany eyes showed not fear but hurt. Had he really thought that he’d been courting her?

“I’m going to walk out of here, and if you follow me, I’ll kill you. I’m a good shot.”

The man nodded. “I believe you. I will not attempt to keep you here.”

If he thought his acquiescence was going to lower her guard, he was mistaken. She took a last look at the room that had briefly been her prison. It was not, from her perspective now, an imperfect model of her room, but a parody. All the details were right, but the whole was wrong.

“What’s your name?”

The man did not answer. He had retreated within himself.

She leveled the gun at him. “What’s your name?” she asked louder. Something about this detail was important. She didn’t want to live the rest of her life without even knowing his name.