Fifth Ave 02 - Running of the Bulls (25 page)

“Plus another grand?”

They paused at the bottom of the stairs and looked left.
 
The basement was as cavernous as it was captivating.
 
Low ceilings were strung with spinning lights, thick rotting beams jutted at odd angles from the dirt floor, crowds of naked people were twirling to the music.
 

In one of the twelve metal cages lining the walls, someone in a Bush mask was sucking face with Obama's twin.
 
In front of them, a train of men trotted past, their identities smeared and distorted by the plastic wrap wound around their grinning faces.
 
In the moment before he left her, Spocatti looked at Divine and saw on her face the wall she’d been building since childhood.
 
Anger.
 
Despair.
 
Resentment.
 
A surprising vulnerability.
 
Never had she suspected that this would become her life, yet here it was.

Her tough luck.

He moved through the shifting wall of bodies and saw Maggie Cain almost immediately.
 
She was across the room, her face pressed between the bars of a metal cage.
 
Inside the cage, a heavy-set woman with nothing but a ball gag in her mouth and a pink ribbon in her hair was circling an elderly man lying naked on his back, his Tinker Toy legs lifted and parted in stirrups.
 
Cain was talking to the man, who seemed disinterested in what she was saying.

Spocatti was interested.

He pushed forward and stepped within earshot, but he was too late--Maggie Cain was already pulling away.
 
“You’re a fool, Alan, just like the rest of them.”

As she turned, Spocatti turned with her, showing her his back as she slipped into the crowd.
 
He waited to make sure she wasn’t moving toward the exit before turning to glance at the man in the cage.
 
He pressed a coke inhaler against his nostril and made kissing noises to the woman while he snorted the drug.
 
He giggled and he laughed, and Spocatti, who never forgot a face, recognized him from the photographs Wolfhagen sent months ago, when the job was initially proposed and accepted.
 

He was Alan Ross, another of Wolfhagen’s former moles, who had testified against Wolfhagen for his own personal immunity.
 
He’d stolen confidential information for Wolfhagen but he’d done no time in prison for the millions he’d ripped out of the world’s hands.
 
He was on Wolfhagen’s list and he was to be murdered along with the rest of them.

Had Maggie Cain come here to warn him?

He looked around for her, saw her talking to a man at the makeshift bar, and knew that if she had warned Ross, he couldn’t let the man leave here alive.

He also knew that if he didn’t do this quickly, he’d lose her.

He moved to the rear of Ross’ cage and swung open the door.
 
The woman looked around and growled a low warning at Spocatti as the club’s lights fanned out and dimmed to blackness.
 
Ross’ head jerked up.
 
“Who’s there?” he whispered.

Spocatti stepped right, eyes on the woman.

“Mama?”

The lights again, all of them, lifting from floor to ceiling.
 

“Tell me it’s you.”

Spocatti bent down and gripped the woman by the throat.
 
"Get out of here.
 
Now.
 
I'm fucking him, not you."

The woman started to laugh, but Spocatti stopped her with a slap across the face, which startled and thrilled her.
 
He could see that she was high, so he slapped her again, this time so hard that the ball gag sprang free from her mouth and for an instant, her eyes became clear.
 
"Get out."

The woman left on all fours.

Spocatti leaned down and cupped Ross’ face in his hands.
 
He brushed away the sweaty white hair cobwebbing the man’s forehead and traced a finger around the man’s mouth.
 
He kissed him, felt Ross’s tongue slide across his lower lip, tasted the man’s self-hatred on his breath, sensed him relaxing beneath his touch, and became aware of shapes and shadows moving closer to get a better look at the man in street clothes kissing the freak.
 
One by one, they left, disinterested.
 

Spocatti waited for the lights to dim and finally they did.
 
He pulled out his iPhone, set it to record and discretely put it next to Ross.
 
He shielded it with his lowered body so nobody could see it.
 
Now, the camera faced Alan Ross' head.

He curled his lips away and said just loud enough for Ross and the camera to hear, “You sent Wolfhagen to prison and now he’s having you murdered.
 
Tell me how it feels, Alan.”
 

The man blinked in recognition at the sound of Wolfhagen's name.
 
His eyes flicked up to Spocatti, then across to the iPhone, where the room’s lights were causing an electrified firestorm to gather and crash in the center of the device's glass panel.

"Who are--?"

Spocatti gripped the man's head and, in an instant, twisted it.
 
The sound of neck bones breaking was dulled only by the sharp blast of music.
 
But Spocatti heard it and, as he gently rested Ross' head back onto the table, he slipped the iPhone into his pocket and stepped away just as the man lost control of his bladder and colon.

Lights still low, Spocatti moved away from the cage and into the crowd.
 
He glanced back and saw pooling on the floor all of the rotten life that was leaving Ross.

He stared at it for a moment and knew that in this crowd, it wouldn't go to waste.
 
It would attract an animal of a different sort.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

In Heaven, Maggie Cain’s scarred profile, caught in the ceiling’s spinning lights, flashed across the blackened walls in a million jigsaw shadows that would never fit if pieced together.
 

She was sick from being here.
 
Revolted.
 

She looked up at the woman hanging above her from the black trapeze and wanted to snap the damn cords.
 
But why bother?
 
This woman would feel nothing if she fell.
 
Her eyes were wide open yet unseeing, windows that looked into empty rooms.
 
The things she’d seen, the secrets she knew, were stamped within the lines of her face.
 

Fool.

Maggie looked at her watch and again around the club.
 
He wasn’t coming, even though he’d sent his driver to pick her up and bring her here.
 
She was disappointed but not surprised.
 
When they spoke, she’d warned him what was going on, but didn’t answer his questions.
 
She wanted to see him in person to tell him the rest of it, if only so she could try to reach him with the gravity of the situation before it was too late.
 
Although he told her he came here every Saturday at this time, he’d obviously backed out.

Something soft and fleshy brushed against her leg.
 

Startled, she looked down and saw an enormously fat woman walk past her on all fours.
 
She stopped to rest beside a man with a glass slipper perched atop his head.
 
Maggie watched him reach down to pat the woman’s head, then she turned and looked in the direction from which the woman came.

She saw him almost immediately--the man from the street.
 
He was leaving Ross’ cage, closing the door behind him, now sliding along the walls as he moved in her direction.
 
He passed through ribbons of red light and Maggie saw with a start that he was looking at her.
 
His mouth tightened, their glances crashed, hers fell away.

He was following her.

She’d seen him at the bookstore, the post office, her agent’s office on 13th Street.
 
She’d dismissed him as a curious fan.

She stepped back into shadow.
 
He wasn’t FBI, didn’t have the look.
 
Who, then?
 
And why had he been in Alan Ross’ cage?

Two hundred feet and a wall of bodies separated them.
 
She moved away from the bar and in the direction of the exit, where a tall black transvestite with a teased platinum wig turned to look at her with interest.

The queen’s lips parted in what could only be a look of recognition and now real fear burned in Maggie’s throat.
 
He’d blocked the only exit with a sidewalk whore, who straightened and looked briefly behind Maggie before coming down the last step and staring her hard in the face.

Heaven’s lights dimmed to blackness.
 

The crowd surged to the right in a tidal wave of flesh and Maggie felt hands on her body, hips and shoulders slamming into hers.
 
She started to rush back when one of the hands reached out and snagged her arm, hooked it in a death grip, pulled her forward and held her firm.
 
Maggie twisted back, struggled against the man, and was about to scream when his deep voice hissed in her ear:
 
“Shut up, fool."
 
It was the transvestite.
 
“You wanna live, then you better move your ass outta here now.
 
Right now.
 
Hear me?
 
There’s a crazy fuck in here that wants to kill you.”

*
 
*
 
*

Spocatti knew the moment Divine leaned toward Maggie Cain’s ear that she was telling her to run.
 
And so he ran through the crowd, leaping over the fat woman pretending to be a dog and a dozen other people behaving like dogs as he sprinted toward the exit.
 

But in the wild maze of flashing lights and twirling bodies, he couldn't see clearly, couldn't seem to move forward without someone getting in his way and slowing him down.
 
With mounting frustration, he saw Cain look over her shoulder, spot him and then, with fear on her face, she rushed up the stairs, which led to open air and freedom.

Spocatti ran toward the white light wavering at the exit, saw the cool glare that was Divine’s face as it slid into shadow and disappeared, but he had no time to seek out that face and bash it in.
 
He hit the stairs as Maggie Cain shot past Frankie the doorman and burst through the door.
 
He caught a glimpse of her dark hair in the sudden blast of sunlight and knew that she was his.
 

But Frankie, foolish in the bravado of his high, stood in front of the door, pulled off his leather mask and folded his arms around his muscular chest in an effort to create some kind of intimidation.

Spocatti raced toward him, the gun in his hand exploding along with the back of Frankie’s head.
 
Frankie collapsed in front of him but Spocatti didn't lose momentum.
 
He was through the door, up the stairs and on the street.
 
Heart hammering, eyes blinded by the white-hot sunlight, he saw only shiny trucks rumbling by and the three whistling whores walking alongside them.

He whirled in a complete circle.

Maggie Cain was gone.

*
 
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