The Vaults (40 page)

He looked up at her with sleepy eyes, considered for a moment, and said, “Feral.”

Minutes later she was on the street, hailing a cab, the hack’s jaw dropping when he realized who she was. She hadn’t experienced the adulation—Feral’s spooky attentions were not the same—for almost two days, and she realized that for all the lines she gave the magazines about intrusion into her private life, she loved it.

Red Henry, the mayor of the goddamn City, lumbered unsteadily out into the night air, pausing at the top of the steps to survey the lines of cars, looking for the black Packard Phaeton that came with his office. The guests queuing for taxis looked up as he emerged, and he realized that he was cursing aloud. He smiled at the queue, reminding himself that they were voters, and finally located his car. The driver was chatting with two men, their hats hiding their faces. The drivers tended to socialize with each other while they waited, but the men his driver was talking to clearly weren’t fellow drivers. Something about the way they held themselves. And their fedoras. Henry wondered who the hell they were. He took the steps slowly, careful not to reveal the extent of his inebriation with a stagger or hesitation.

He needed to get back to his office. He needed to get Feral to take that singing bitch to Draffert’s. He needed to find out exactly what the fuck had happened to the Poles and decide whether he wanted to give them the scare of their lives before they left the City. He had a reputation to maintain. He needed to hear about the fire in the goddamn Vaults, though as he thought about it, it might not be the worst thing that had ever happened. But it infuriated him because it had not been part of his plans. Someone would have to be held accountable.

He needed to figure out a new strategy for Frings. He’d always assumed that it would be counterproductive to have him bumped, but now he wasn’t so sure that Frings was more trouble dead than alive. He was too drunk to assess it clearly.

He needed to get Smith out into the country to find out where those Navajo Project psychopaths had disappeared to. Come to think of it, where the hell was Smith? He hadn’t seen Smith as he left the gala. Smith was usually the type to be right there, ready to cause whatever mayhem Henry would allow. Then he remembered Smith’s leaving the hall with a sense of purpose about him, and he wondered if he shouldn’t have his driver take him directly to Feral’s place.

A panhandler came up to him and rattled the coins in his cup. Henry stopped and glared at him. The panhandler backed away, mumbling slurred, semicoherent curses.

His driver was no longer talking to the men from before and had the door open for him. Henry remembered that he had a question to ask him but could not, for the life of him, recall what it was. Fucking alcohol.

“Feral’s. Quickly.”

“Feral’s, sir?”

“That’s what I said.” Was it a complicated request?

“Of course.”

Henry rested his head on the leather seat back and let his lids drop, willing himself to sober up. Willing himself to consider his problems one at a time rather than deal with the flood of anxiety that was threatening to overwhelm him.

There was a crash, maybe a foot away from his head, and he opened his eyes to see glass shards littering the seat, reflecting the streetlights like tiny stars. Hands appeared from outside, tossed a package on the seat next to him, then disappeared. He heard the sound of footsteps running away.

Poole hailed a cab and, after wading through a snarl in traffic caused by the mass deployment of ASU squad cars, headed toward Little Lisbon. He stared out the window, exhausted and concentrating. He needed to continue to take things in order, just as he had done in the ASU station. The primary thing now was to find Carla—and Enrique. He was going to Enrique’s apartment first because that was where Carla was headed when Poole went to St. Mark’s. He was not confident she would still be there, but it was a place to start.

He forced himself to put off thinking about the next step. It seemed too dependent on the circumstances when he finally found her.

He had expected it, but was still dismayed to find a dozen or so ASU officers on the sidewalk as the cab pulled up to Enrique’s building. The officers were conferring, not in a hurry, getting their plan straight before heading in. Poole walked past them, head down, and through the front door. He took the stairs three at a time up to Enrique’s floor, heart racing. His mind was getting ahead of him, thinking about where they could lose themselves in this neighborhood. The obvious places were out, since that was where the ASU would look first.

He pounded on Enrique’s door with his elbow. No one answered at first and he yelled, “It’s Poole.” Footsteps sounded in the apartment, and the door opened to Enrique, wearing slacks, a white shirt, and an anxious look.

“Enrique, is Carla here?”

Enrique nodded.

“Where?” Poole nearly shouted.

Carla emerged from a back room looking unkempt, her hair askew, her face flushed. “Ethan?”

Poole closed his eyes briefly in relief. He looked to Enrique. “Where’s your wife?”

“She’s at her mother’s,” he said carefully.

Poole nodded, understanding. He closed his eyes for a moment, pinching
the bridge of his nose. “Listen, the ASU are here for you. Orders direct from the mayor. A group of them’s down on the street. We need to get out of here.”

Enrique and Carla exchanged a glance. Some of the tension seemed to drain from Enrique as his shoulders relaxed.

“It wouldn’t be the first time I’ve been brought in.”

“It’s different this time. Any means possible.”

Carla spoke. “What does that mean, Ethan?”

Ethan shrugged impatiently. There wasn’t time for this conversation. “Dead or alive.”

Enrique looked at Poole. “You still have my gun?”

“No. I was picked up by the ASU. They kept it.”

Enrique nodded. Poole was impressed with the man’s nerve.

Enrique said, “There are three ways out. The front door.”

“Too many men out there.”

“Fire escape.”

“Too visible. They’d be waiting for us before we got down.”

“Then the service entrance out back.”

“Let’s go.”

Carla said, “You don’t think they’ll have that covered?”

“Of course they will,” Poole said. “But there’s nothing else.”

They took the back stairs, Poole in front and Enrique last. At the ground floor they found the service entrance and Poole put his ear to it. He couldn’t hear anything, but that wasn’t surprising. He looked back at the other two. “You ready?”

Carla and Enrique nodded. Poole grabbed Carla’s hand and gave it a squeeze. He pushed open the door to a landing three concrete steps above an alley. Dirty light shone in from the street. Two ASU men, hands on their holstered guns, leaned against the far wall. Poole thought about turning back into the building, but this alley remained their best hope. The three of them walked down the stairs as the ASU officers walked toward them, guns out.

One, a tall, thin kid, walked up to Enrique. “You Dotel?”

Poole watched, wondering how Enrique would play it; looking for an opening.

Enrique nodded. “I’m Dotel.”

The officer lowered his voice. “My brother, Victor, is in the union. We
need to get you out of here. I don’t think you’ll make it back to the station alive.”

Enrique looked over at the other officer.

“Kevin’s okay,” the kid said. “He owes me.”

“How does this work?” Poole asked the kid, but watched the other officer. Something wasn’t right.

“Just go. Quickly. Down that alley and then right. Get lost. They’ll do a search, find nothing, go to the next place. You just need to get out of here now, before they send more men.”

Poole shifted his gaze to the kid, calm while pulling off this bit of subterfuge. Enrique was already walking down the alley. Why wasn’t the other officer watching for ASU reinforcements? Surely they’d be—

Carla tugged at Poole’s sleeve. “Come on.” Poole allowed Carla to pull him down the alley, but kept his eyes on the officers, who exchanged glances. This wasn’t going down right. He wrenched his arm free from Carla’s grasp. “Keep going,” he whispered.

“What?” She looked at him, startled.

“Go,” he said louder, and pushed her down the alley. Enrique was thirty feet or so farther along. Poole turned back toward the officers. They had their guns drawn, aiming down the alley.

Over the top of the trench.
Poole had less than a dozen yards to cover to reach the officers. He moved fast, but their guns were ready. He took a shot in the shoulder and one in the groin and stumbled, the pain overwhelming him. Thoughts started to become hazy but he focused on one thing:
Keep them busy for a couple seconds more
. Let Carla and Enrique get around the corner.

He pushed with his hands and feet toward where he saw the two officers’ legs. Behind their legs he could see trash cans and empty beer bottles and the bricks in the opposite wall. He felt it was important to look up, to see the men’s faces, but somehow he couldn’t. His arms and legs seemed only partially under his control. He couldn’t bring to mind what he was trying to do. There was just the imperative—move forward. Another searing bolt of pain—hard to tell where—and a brief moment, less than a second, when Poole realized, at some level, that it was all over.

People didn’t clear out of Frings’s path the way they did for Red Henry. Frings pushed through the throngs, who eyed him curiously. He’d made quite a spectacle of himself. People talked. Why had the mayor assaulted the newshawk Frings? Where was his jazz-singer girlfriend? People spilled drinks on him as he jarred them in his haste to get to the door. He muttered insincere apologies.

Two ASU men intercepted him twenty feet or so from the door, one on each arm.

“Get your mitts off.”

“Sorry, bo, the mayor needs his space.”

Frings couldn’t shake them off.

“What, are you just going to hold me for the rest of the night?”

He followed their eyes as they looked to Altabelli, arms crossed defensively, his face pale and oily. They stood as they were for two full minutes, Frings furious, before Altabelli finally signaled the men to release him. Frings pushed away and ran for the door.

He was at the top of the armory steps when the two men crossed the street to Henry’s car. Even from that distance Frings recognized the gait of one of the men. He had spent the morning walking behind him, and the slight bow of the legs and the angles of his feet were as easy to identify as a mug shot. The other man was familiar from the morning as well, his menace somehow undiminished over this distance.
Otto and Whiskers
.

Frings watched, knowing the men’s intent, but not sure how it would play out. Samuelson got to the car first and smashed the rear driver’s-side window with what looked like a brick. Whiskers followed, pulling a parcel from his coat and tossing it through the open window. Both men turned and ran, and Frings ducked below the low granite walls.

The explosion made a short, loud thud, followed by the rain of glass and steel shrapnel tinkling on the sidewalk and street. Frings stood up and saw
the twisted mass of metal that had once been the mayor’s car. He thought he could see inside the flames a mass that might have been the mayor in black silhouette, burning and lifeless. But the smoke became too dense and he put it down to a trick of the eye.

On the street, the cars nearest to the mayor’s burned. Drivers, injured by their proximity to the blast or from shrapnel, lay in the street and on the sidewalks. The line of socialites had been far enough away to escape injury, but Frings heard traumatized sobs from some of the women, and a few had fainted and were held by their stunned escorts.

A cop came bounding out into the night, panicked. “Oh, dear Lord.” He looked around, found Frings. “Did you see what happened?”

“Two men, one smashed the window, the other dropped the bomb in the backseat.”

The cop looked over Frings’s shoulder at the commotion beyond. Frings could see in his face the struggle to take in what had just happened.

“Do you know who they were?”