A Rush to Violence (23 page)

“Please?” Beth said.

A red laser beam flashed down the staircase.

Gloria put her hand over her mouth and looked at Jack, who now had the rifle in his hands and was looking down the long end of the barrel, which was pointed at the stairs. He was prepared to shoot, but if there was any sound of gunfire, she knew that would be it for them. The others would come running. She wasn’t sure how many more of them there were, but she knew getting additional backup, if they needed it, was just a phone call away.

“I’m armed,” the man said.

“I can see that,” Beth said. “And obviously, we’re not. I just want to use the bathroom. He won’t let us. I’m asking you just as nicely as I asked him. Will you please take me to the bathroom when he comes out, because I’m here to tell you that he refuses to do so. He won’t let any of us go.”

The laser beam sliced a bit in their direction. Another footstep and this time his shoe and part of his leg were revealed to the room.

“Come over here where I can see you,” he said. “Put your hands in front of you and hold your palms open. Nice and slow.”

But Beth Spellman wasn’t playing nice of any sort. She stood and held the gun in front of her. She said, “I’m walking over,” and she started to walk over. Slowly. He took another step down. He obviously was holding his gun low, because now the laser’s beam arced even more in their direction. It nudged toward them, getting uncomfortably close to Gloria.

“I’m almost there,” Beth said.

“I hear that. Show me your hands.”

“Please, don’t shoot. I just need to use the bathroom. We need to get my sister cleaned up before she develops a rash. We have—”

The sound of the gun going off didn’t surprise Gloria. What stunned her is that it didn’t come from Beth’s gun. Instead, Beth went down hard, but so did the man on the stairs. His ankle blew apart and he toppled over them, his gun’s red laser beam winking on and off and crisscrossing around the room as he shouted out in pain and fell to the bottom of the stairs.

Jack stood and hurried over to the man, shooting him once in the head before the man had the presence to fire back. He grabbed his gun and tossed it over to Brian Moore, who already was on his feet and prepared to catch it. A wild flurry of footsteps sounded above them, but they stopped the moment they reached the closed door.

Beth started to stand—the sound of the rifle going off behind her had instinctively made her drop to the ground. Katie flew into her mother’s arms and held her tightly while Barbara Moore moved closer to them.

“We hear you,” Jack said. He was leaning against a wooden beam near the stairwell. “We know you’re at the door, so here’s the situation. Two of your men are dead. We now have three guns and probably more if your friend here is carrying another on his body, which we plan to search. If you come down here, we will kill you. Do you hear me? We will kill you.”

A silence passed

“I asked if you heard me.”

“Let’s just say that you’ll be hearing from us,” a deep, muffled voice said from behind the door. “Give yourselves hugs and kisses and promises of seeing each other in heaven, if you even believe in that shit, because as of right now, none of this is going to end well for you.”

Jack turned to Beth and took her by the arm. He was on the cold rails of his control right now and it showed. “You’ve put us in this position. I suppose you have a plan for getting us out of it?”

He was mocking her. Gloria could hear that along with the anger in his voice. But Beth was calm. She shook herself free and pointed to the rectangular basement window behind the man slumped dead in the chair. “We use that,” she said, keeping her voice just above a whisper. “We use that window or the window at the other side of the basement.”

“Those windows have bars on them. None of us could fit through them, not even Katie.”

“That’s not that point.”

“Then what is the point?” Jack said. “They’ll be outside soon if they’re not outside now. They know about the windows. They’ll target us from the windows. We need to keep away from all windows.” He waved everyone to come closer and they did.

“That’s true,” Beth said. “But when the time comes to act, what’s beyond those windows is critical. In fact, I think it’s enough to get us out of here.”

“What are you talking about?” Gloria said.

Beth told them.

Barbara Moore was first to react. “It won’t work. It’s too dangerous.”

Jack was second. “If we do that, we could die. You know that as well as I do, Beth.”

“You’re not seeing the big picture,” Beth said. “If we do it, the police will have no choice but to come here. That’s how we get out.”

Gloria put her hand on her daughter’s back. “It’s risky,” she said, looking at Jack and the others. “But what choice do we have?”

“We wait them out,” Brian Moore said.

She turned to him. “To what end? For how long? They’re going to bring an army of men here, if they haven’t made the call already, which I’m sure they have. Beth’s idea could work. The trick is going to be getting to one of the windows.”

But even as Gloria said this, a door swung shut above them, there was movement outside the building and as she turned to look over at the window above the dead man, she first saw what looked like a shadow and then, fleetingly, a man’s face peering inside before it quickly disappeared.

She caught her breath and took a step back to look at the far end of the basement, where Beth had committed murder. She saw another face and this time she wasn’t alone in seeing it. Jack also saw it. So did Beth.

“They’re surrounding the house,” Jack said. “They’ll figure out a way to get inside. What have you done to us?”

“Oh, please,” Beth said. “I did us a favor, so stop being dramatic. Against some pretty stiff odds, we’ve already taken out two of them. It’s obvious that you’re good with a rifle. What we need to do now is strategize.”

“Really? That’s all we need to do? Your mother’s right. They’re only going to bring in more people.”

“Let them. We’ll be prepared.”

“How?”

Beth ignored him and bent to the dead man at their feet. She patted him down and found another gun tucked behind his back. She took it, checked the magazine to see if it was loaded, checked his pockets for another magazine, found two and stood, satisfied. Gloria just watched her in wonderment. Through and through, she was her father’s daughter. This is exactly how Marty would have behaved.

“First, I’d recommend turning off that light so they can’t see us,” Beth said. “Our eyes will adjust. I found that out at the other end of the basement, when I was putting a hammer through that bastard’s back and then his head. Second, I need you to get on board and start thinking straight. My plan will work. We just need the opportunity to get to one of the windows. Everything we need is right outside. You know it as well as I do. We just need a bit of luck.”

“It won’t be that easy.”

She glared at him. “For God’s sake, Jack, what part of this has been easy?”

Before he could answer, she turned, rushed over to the light bulb, and smashed her gun against the side of it. The bulb exploded in an orange blast of fire and smoke. Gloria watched her daughter duck from the glass just as darkness overcame her and the rest of the room.

There was a disturbance in the air, the sound of feet on the dirt floor. Then Beth’s voice was next to them.

“Get used to the darkness,” she said. “With the light, we were as good as dead. Without it, we stand a chance. What we need to do next is get to one of those windows.”

But as she said this, something broke through the window behind the shattered bulb. Glass tinkled into a room in which nobody could see.

Or so they thought.

Beyond the window, a new voice: “Can you see them?”

It was an older man’s voice. Distinguished, nothing like Gloria had heard in the voices of the brutes who took them here.

“I can see them,” another man said. “They’re all huddled by the staircase. Six green blobs with six orange cores. Breaking that bulb was the worst thing they could have done. Do you want me to take one out? To make a point?”

“Your gun has a silencer?”

Gloria’s heart hammered in her chest. She reached out and drew Katie close. She felt around her for Beth, but only connected with a man’s arm. She wasn’t sure if it belonged to Jack or to Brian Moore. She didn’t know where Beth was and the not knowing terrified her.

“It doesn’t, but I can get one.”

“Then get one. Kill one of them. One of the girls. Can you see them?”

“The smallest blob is with an adult.”

“Then kill that person, too.”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

Sophia Miller lived at 37 West Seventieth Street in a grand four-story brownstone that was steps from the park and boasted seventeen rooms, one of which was reserved for her longtime assistant, Carla, who had been with Sophia ever since her days at Studio 54, when Carla served Sophia the best martini she ever had, so much so that she proclaimed to the room, “This is the best martini I’ve ever had. It’s a work of genius. My God.”

Of course, Sophia was doing rails of cocaine that night and everything was magical, even her belief that she could conceal the herpes on her lips with an enthusiastic use of concealer and lipstick. But she didn’t attribute the taste of the martini to the cocaine when she watched Carla—who then was known as Carl before she became a woman—shake and pour her the finest drink of her life.

Their friendship began then and lasted to this day. “You’ll be my assistant,” Sophia said all those years ago, when Carl became Carla and was worried about discrimination and the potential difficulty of finding employment in the workplace. “Like me, you have exacting tastes. You have an eye and the attention to detail I need. You’re also a loyal friend, which is a blessing because there always will be some son of a bitch who wants to tear me down because I’m Kenneth Miller’s daughter. Please say you’ll accept the job. I can’t do this without you.”

Carla wasn’t exactly sure what “this” was, but she accepted and it proved the most substantial relationship of Sophia Miller’s life, which was riddled with the kind of botched romantic disasters that had kept the tabloids busy for three decades.

Now, at fifty-three, Sophia Miller was preparing for a late dinner with acquaintances she’d rather not be having dinner with, but she had no choice. She sifted through the clothes in her massive dressing room on the third floor and selected a dress that was chic and shimmery. She handed it to Carla, who in turn handed Sophia a martini.

Sophia sipped.

“You still have it,” she said. “Amazing.”

“I make it a little dirty,” Carla said. “Just a touch.”

“It’s the touch that makes the difference. Anything more would ruin it. But you know that. You’ve always known.” She appraised Carla over the rim of her glass. “Did you do something new to your hair? It looks different.”

Carla smiled at the recognition and touched her shoulder-length blonde hair. “Christian freshened my highlights this afternoon.”

“You’ve always listened to me,” Sophia said. “It’s what I admire most about you. Christian is the best in the city. I need to see him soon myself. Did you put it on my account?”

She nodded. “I hope you don’t mind.”

“Of course not. We’re not broke yet.” She took another sip. “Was Christian ‘showing’ the way he does?”

“I don’t know what you mean…”

“The hell you don’t.”

“His pants can’t contain him,” Carla said. “It’s ridiculous. But then he’s Brazilian, so we know what’s packed in there.”

“Sometimes, when he’s standing very close, he rubs it against my arm. Have I ever told you that? It’s very subtle, but he does it. I have all I can do not to reach out and grab it.”

“I’d die if he did that to me. He’s not erect when he does that, is he?”

“No. He’s soft. And it’s massive. A python.” Sophia’s eyes sparkled and she held up her glass. “If nothing else, we’ve always been a couple of size queens, Carla.”

“Who are you dining with tonight?”

“The Pepperfaults.”

“Oh, them.”

“I know,” Sophia said. “They’re boorish and awful and noisy and dumb. You could throw bricks at them and they wouldn’t feel it. New money at its worst. But with my money so tight, I need to keep those connections and lines of communication alive in case other avenues don’t work out. Who you know still matters and knowing the Pepperfaults, as stupid and as ugly as they are, might come in handy one day should I need to start some meaningless, tax-sheltered nonprofit that works to profit us. A check from them would be large and showy, just what our ‘organization’ would need.”

“You’re so smart, Sophia.”

Sophia sat at her dressing table and put the martini down next to her, but not before taking another drink. She lifted her brown hair up and away from her face so she could touch up her makeup with the wealth of beauty supplies placed strategically in front of her like a war chest. Not that she really needed them. Sophia always had been a beauty and even in middle-age, with the subtle use of fillers and Botox, she still looked naturally young. “What I am is a survivor, Carla. I told you I’d find a way around how my father screwed us and I plan to do so, regardless of what it takes.”

“That letter he wrote still stings because I know how much it hurt you.”

Sophia shrugged. “I expected something personal, but not an all-out attack like the one he delivered. He never cared for us the way Mother did. When he was alive, it always was about Camille and that bastard daughter of hers.” She waved a hand in the air and snapped her fingers. “What’s her name again?”

“Emma?”

“Right. Emma. When he died, his will underscored exactly how he felt about them and also how he felt about the rest of us.”

“Even if it didn’t work out, you were so right to contest it. I’m glad Scott could pay for it.”

“What else could we do? Our father shut us out.
We
were the ones who cared for mother when she was dying, not Camille.
We
deserved that money. We
earned
that money.
We
were there holding her hand when she passed, for God’s sake, while Camille was living her boring Bohemian life in the Marais.”