Ladies' Night (11 page)

Cindy was by the fireplace.

He knew instantly why.

He felt sudden panic and looked for a weapon.

She turned, poker in one hand and tongs in the other. Foam drooled and bubbled on her lips. He picked up a stool. Hurled it at her. It glanced off her shoulder and crashed into the clock behind her. She came on fast, snarling.

He vaulted the bar. The poker cracked down across the bar just above his head, splintering the wood.

Bailey was beside him just inches away. The woman on top of him was the one he'd hit with the coffeepot and there was blood flowing from the side of her face but it was not enough to stop her. His hands were on her shoulders trying to force her back but the woman's strength was amazing. Her legs were wrapped around him, squeezing, she was gaining on him by inches, crawling over him like an insect, mouth seeking his neck and fingers gripping him like fierce talons.

He got to his knees. He straight-armed the woman as hard as he could, the open palm of his hand slapping so hard against her forehead it jarred him to the shoulder, breaking her neck — so that her eyes rolled up white and a bubble of blood burst across her lips and Bailey shoved her off him like something contaminated, like a sac of poison.

The poker grazed his forehead and slammed into the shelf where Bailey kept the wineglasses, showering him with broken glass. Tom fell over on his back and somewhere behind him back in the restaurant heard more glass breaking like an echo and a long deep agonized cry. He looked up and saw the room painted in crazy swinging shadows, a dozen overhead lamps lurching and whirling all at once. He saw Cindy leaning over the bar like some sort of gargoyle leering down at him, the tongs in her left hand raised for another try.

He got to his knees and tried to move back but the tongs came down across his shoulder. He felt a sick dizzy pain rocket through his body. He started to fall again and put out his hand.

He felt a second bright slash of agony as a long sliver of glass slid seamlessly into the palm of his hand.

He howled and pulled the hand away. Pain wrenched at his stomach. He raised the hand and got to his knees again, fully expecting the next blow to fall and end him but he couldn't bear the glass there and the blow never came and fingers trembling he gripped and pulled away the gleaming shard and dropped it and pressed his hand to his thigh to stop the pulsing ooze of blood.

~ * ~

Bailey had come up fast behind the bar, a fifth of Dewar's in each hand.

The grinding helplessness he'd felt beneath the woman had turned to anger and even excitement now that open warfare had erupted all around him. He had Tom Braun to thank for saving his ass. He owed him one and that meant keeping the woman with the tongs and poker, the Cindy-thing, at bay. He'd seen Tom go down and the Cindy-thing come after him and he hefted the bottles.

She looked at him and stepped back, wary, her eyes full of fathomless calculation, a hunting animal faced with one of its kind. She took a small step back toward the jukebox and he pitched a bottle at her, a full unopened
litre
. Her reactions were good. She stepped away and brought the poker down and smashed the bottle, filling the air at once with the heavy reek of whiskey — but the move had skewed her balance and he heaved the second bottle and she couldn't move away.

It hit her in the neck and sent her sprawling back against the juke and Bailey thought
I've got you
. He grabbed a bottle of cognac and scrambled across the bar. On the jukebox Elvis started singing
Blue Hawaii
. He broke the cognac bottle across her face and that was that.

He had a moment to look around. The bar was careening its way to hell and the only thing left was to get out of there. There was a man lying face up across one of the front tables, the television set with its tube broken lying across his chest where they'd left it after using it to smash his skull. Another sprawled across the floor with a carving knife from the kitchen embedded in his back and Rita was just moving off the body.

The little bald man's drinking buddy was probably worst of all. They had him dangling from a coat hook mounted on the wall, the hooks embedded in his back, arms and feet still twitching, blood sliding down off his chin. Erica stood gazing up at him admiringly.

There were only three of them now
. Three men left in the bar — Tom and him and some poor bastard huddled against the far wall — with six of them converging on him like dogs on a dying bull.

He was a big man but they had him whining. You could see on his cheeks where they'd been at him with their nails or a fork or something, long straight scratches that looked deep. He was holding a chair in front of him like a lion tamer in a circus but it was just a matter of time. Patty was leading them, leaning forward, squeezing her bared breasts in some passionate, hallucinatory mockery and hissing like a snake. Behind her, Chris was slashing the air with a butcher knife. The others crouched together like a grim silent slavering pack awaiting the kill.

The stench of insanity climbed high above the whiskey and fouled the air like heavy musk.

It was bad to leave him that way but there were too many.

He bent low and moved to the open panel under the waitress' station. Tom was still on his knees gripping his bleeding hand like that was the only thing in the goddamn room that mattered.

Shock
, thought Bailey.

"Tom," he said. "
Braun
."

Bailey watched the glassy blankness in his eyes slowly vivify into recognition.

"Stay low. We've got to get out of here. Come on."

Bailey moved him through the panel and out in front along the row of barstools. Behind him the man was screaming. The sound vibrated through his bones. A wail of the stockyards, the screams of dying cattle. Tom froze ahead of him.

"Move, dammit!"

He wondered where the bottle in his hand had come from.

"Take it slow. Nice and easy. When we get outside head for Broadway. I'll be right behind you."

The screams stopped suddenly.

He heard footsteps pounding toward them and tables and chairs pushed over and thrown aside and he pushed Tom hard ahead of him.

"Go!"

He turned and Patty was coming at him with a broken whiskey glass, hands and face and breasts covered with blood, bloody handprints on her breasts, and the others were right behind her. Knives threw shivers of light across the ceiling. Lurid faces, incomprehensible.

He swung the bottle at her head and heard it smash and saw her fall away stumbling over Cindy's body beside the jukebox, back into the rest of them crowded into the narrow
barspace
. He had the fraction of a second he needed and he stooped and retrieved the tongs from under Cindy and turned and kicked the poker back to Tom at the door and heard him scoop it up.

Then they seemed everywhere at once.

He came up swinging and felt the tongs connect. Rita tumbled away from him clutching her forehead. He shoved the woman beside her and brought the tongs down behind her ear. The woman grunted and fell like a sack. Tom's poker nearly clipped his shoulder as it cracked down on Erica's wrist. Her knife clattered to the floor and Bailey chopped at her with the tongs, shattering her nose.

He had the tongs up again when Chris pushed the carving knife into his shoulder.

He heard the scrape of blade against bone. It seemed to vibrate through his body. For a moment he was blind in its awful clarity and felt himself start to fall. Thick acid filled his throat. He felt hands on his face, reaching for his eyes, his hair and he smelled the spice of much too much perfume and then two hands grabbed him from behind and flung him through the doorway.

He crawled through the cool breeze on scraped, bloody knees, heard a door slam shut and the sound of metal on metal. He was on the sidewalk. He gave in to the feeling inside and vomited. He felt Tom's hand on his shoulder and then he was lifting Bailey to his feet. He heard glass breaking as Tom pulled the tongs from his hand —
he'd been clutching them all the time
— glanced back and saw that Tom had shoved the poker through the door's double handles and was beating at Chris with the tongs as she tried to crawl out through the window, slashing with the knife, her mouth drooling long white trails of spittle.

He felt a wave of anger and disgust and stepped toward her. Her knife darted out at him. He avoided it easily. He took one more step and kicked her in the chin as though she were a football, snapping her up through the jagged glass above and tumbling her back down into the bar.

He looked at Tom.

"Two points," he said. "Jesus."

"Can you run?" Tom was looking at his shoulder.

He heard them screeching inside, pounding at the door. Saw another appear at the window.

"I'll have to. Where?"

And suddenly it dawned on him. He knew what Tom would say before he said it. It froze and sickened him.

"Andy," he said. "My apartment. Andy's there."

Bailey did what he guessed Tom couldn't do and completed the thought.

Andy's there.

With Susan
.

When the call came through
Lederer
was in his Brooklyn apartment, lying on his bed. Straddled by his wife Millie.

"Aw, for chrissake," she said.

He reached for the phone and
Horgan
started talking and Millie stayed put for a while, but then he could feel himself recede inside her like some time-lapse movie of a water-starved plant and she got off him and lit a smoke.

He listened to
Horgan
, wondering if the guy had gone completely
batshit
loony on him since he'd left the precinct and then hung up the phone.

"That was the damnedest call I ever heard."

If it was possible for somebody to smile disgustedly then that was what she did.

"What?" she said.

"We've got a citywide mobilization on your hands.
Horgan's
jabbering about the National Guard. He was his usual articulate self so it's hard to say what the hell's going on. And I was only halfway with him anyway."

Her smile brightened.

"I bet it's that goddamn tanker," he said.

"What tanker?"

"I told you. Over on Riverside. The one with no route sheet and the phony plates. But get this. They've got Lieutenant Anderson and Sergeant Dickenson in the cooler down there."

"Why?”

"That's what I said. Why? So
Horgan
says, 'they're women, aren't they?' Now what the hell do you make of that?"

He zipped his pants, found his shirt on the chair and put it on. He leaned over and kissed her cheek.

"That was nice," he said.

"While it lasted."

"Next time it'll last."

"Make it soon. I'm not getting any younger,
y'know
."

He smiled. "You're young enough."

He turned ready to leave and she reached over from the bed and slapped his butt.

"You take care of that for me," she said.

"Sure," he said.

It was love.

In the distance down Riverside, a convoy of prowl cars spread from corner to corner and out of sight down the block. They could hear guns popping like a string of firecrackers and muted howls and screams. They hurried up 72nd like a pair of scared rats.

All Tom could think of was Andy.

That he'd left him again. Maybe for the last time.

Coward. Cheat.

Fool
.

The first one was alone across the street near the pastry shop and she was so damn old and fat it was impossible to take her seriously at first, half running and half waddling across the street with her arms held out to them, the flabby flesh of her upper arms bouncing, fingers clutching like mottled claws.

By the time she stepped over the curb he had the tongs up. The old, frail skull split open like a melon tossed in the gutter.

He felt his stomach heave. His legs felt rubbery. It was not the same as inside the bar. This was cold and brutal. This was execution. He stared down at her.

"Easy," said Bailey.

He pulled him into the darkened doorway of a discount drug store.

There were four of them close by, all young girls — the oldest couldn't have been more than sixteen. They were dragging the man from the all-night deli out into the street, squealing delightedly as they threw him down over the double yellow line and two of them stepped on his hands while a third kicked him in the ribs and the fourth kicked his face.

They slid from one doorway to the next, stopping under the canopy of a restaurant. The restaurant was dark but it looked safe and there was a terrible urge to hide there, to simply get off the streets.

They moved to the lingerie boutique next door.

And they might have heard the women inside had not the pig-squeal screams of the man in the street become so horrible just then — because the women were making plenty of noise too. All the noise a dozen women can make in a riptide of destruction. They were tearing the place apart.