Lowland Rider (26 page)

Coming to Enoch, you little fucker, that's what it's coming to. It's all coming to Enoch.

The man came walking alone down the street, a half hour before dawn. He was short and seemed frail, and carried a bundle in his right arm. He never looked up, never saw her as he got closer, never even raised his head as she stepped behind him and drove the knife into his back. He made a gargling cry and fell to his knees, still clinging to his bundle. She wrenched out the knife, feeling the
tick
tick
as it ratcheted along the man's ribs like a stick on a picket fence, and drove it in again, this time into the flesh at the back of his neck. Another gargle of blood and spit escaped him, yet he remained on his knees, continued to clutch his parcel. She yanked the knife sideways, ripping through the muscles of the neck, then came back again into the side of his body beneath his right arm. The blow drove him over onto his left side, and what he was holding at last left his arms, flopping onto the pavement with a soft crack and a muffled cry that lasted only a moment.

Baggie was aware of the peculiar sound the package had made, but she could not investigate it immediately. She was solely possessed by the violence of her attack, by the fact that yes, she was
doing
this now, that she was no longer afraid, and the swing of her arm up and down and in and out were like great gestures of praise to Enoch, the blood spraying up and over her head like palm branches, and blessed is she who
killeth
in the name of the Lord . . .

And she laughed and swung the knife until what she sank it into felt like a sack of pus, with no resistance except when the blade slipped on bone and felt like fingernails on an old chalkboard. Only at the end, only when she was totally exhausted, did she remember the parcel and the quick whimper that had come from it.

Glancing up and down the street, she roughly pushed aside the wrappings and saw a baby, its eyes closed, a bruise discoloring its forehead, but breathing, still breathing. Her breath caught, and she pushed the wrappings back further, exposing a paper diaper, which she frenziedly tore apart.

A boy. It was a breeder.

One of those
goddamed
, fucking breeders.

And this would be her sacrifice. The whole carcass, as she had wished for, dreamed of. Her gift to Enoch. She needed no eye now, no balls, no cock from the man who had died so easily for Enoch's glory. She had all those and more.

Now, if she could only find a bag . . .

While Gladys H. Mitchell, carrying her sacrifice, was looking for a shopping bag, Duke Sinclair was standing in the hall outside the alcove that housed locker number 4602. Tucked behind his back was his .38 police special, and in the pocket of his lightweight jacket was a .32 caliber Saturday night special Montcalm had given him to put in the dead man's hand. His orders were simple: When a tall man about thirty-five years old went into the alcove, Sinclair was supposed to follow. If the man opened locker number 4602, Sinclair was supposed to say something to him and, when the man turned around, shoot him, then put the .32 in his hand and move the money from locker 4602 to locker 4614 next to it, and lock it. If anyone came in after the shooting, Sinclair was to declare himself a police officer and go for assistance. Otherwise, he could simply walk away. Montcalm could come back later to get the money.

Sinclair waited, one hand in his pocket clutching the key to locker number 4614 so tightly it hurt. His bowels were full, and he wished he could go to the lavatory, but he was afraid that he would miss the man he was looking for. He had never killed anyone in the line of duty, though he had killed, he supposed, in Vietnam, even if he had never seen what the shells from his mortars actually did to those human targets. Still, that was different, that was war. This was shooting a guy face-to-face, a guy who would probably be unarmed, who Duke Sinclair didn't even know and didn't give a shit about, and
goddam
, he wondered,
why the hell am I even doing this?

Because of Montcalm, he decided quickly. To show Montcalm he wasn't afraid, to stay on
Montcalm's
tit, to maybe make an impression on Rodriguez and the others. Hell, if they knew he could pull off something like this, maybe they'd be willing to expand his opportunities. There was little enough on the transit police, that was for damn sure. Thankless fucking job. He didn't understand how ninety-nine-plus percent of his colleagues went from day-to-day without messing in the kind of stuff he was messing with. Jesus, they even had families to support, and Sinclair couldn't figure out how they did it. No, he sure as shit wasn't going to be a transit cop all his life. Get into the drug business, that was the ticket. Buy in bulk, sell to the dealers, that was where the money was. Middleman. Never touch another gun, never hustle butt down in a tunnel again.

Montcalm would never be able to do that. Montcalm was nothing but a fucking toady. And although Sinclair was
Montcalm's
toady
, Sinclair knew he had something Montcalm didn't—he had ambition. No, Montcalm was too old for that. He'd die in the tunnels if he didn't get his ass caught first and go to prison. Sinclair smiled in spite of the pressure in his gut. Montcalm wouldn't last two days in jail. There were too many people he'd sent there. No, Montcalm would probably take the crooked cop's hara-kiri if things came to that. A bullet in the head. Sayonara.

Sinclair tensed as he heard footsteps coming down the hall, but it was only a businessman in his fifties who poked his head in the alcove, then asked Sinclair if he knew where the rest rooms were. Sinclair told him, wished he could go there, and allowed himself to relax a bit as the man walked away. Christ, he couldn't let himself get this tense. If the guy did come down the hall and saw Sinclair poised there like a coiled spring, he'd know right off something was fishy. Relax, that was the key. Look like some dude waiting for a deal or something. Look cool but not threatening. Just look cool.

Duke Sinclair waited for another five hours before he decided that he either had to go to the lavatory or do it in his pants. He chose the former, and scurried down the early morning halls into the men's room and the nearest booth, unbuckling his belt as he went, so as to waste no time. If the
sonovabitch
came and went while he was taking a crap, he'd never even know it. Shit, he might have to hang around for days before he got another crack at the guy.

He defecated as quickly and forcefully as possible, cleaned himself up, and started out, but paused when he realized he hadn't washed his hands. Wash my fucking hands, he thought with wry humor. Mama, I learned my lessons well. He chuckled and went back out into the hall.

A few feet from the alcove, he heard the rattle of keys and froze. A quick glance up and down the hall told him there was no one else around, and he moved quietly to the door of the alcove. He looked around the corner and saw a man standing at the row of lockers, fitting a key into number 4602.

Jesus, he thought, taking out his pistol. This is it, so damn fast. Shoot him in the head, shoot him in the
goddam
head. Kill him quick so he'll never talk.

The key turned, the locker opened. Inside he saw a leather bag, which the man grasped and started to remove. It was halfway out when Sinclair said, "
Hey
," softly but sharply.

The man turned, and there was fear in his face. Sinclair shot him, the explosion surprisingly loud. They were so close that he saw the bullet go in, right above the man's left eye. The head snapped back, and the man collapsed, Sinclair thought, just like a gray, burst balloon. It was almost funny, the way all the air went out of him at once. Whoosh—and gone.

Sinclair stood for a second, looking at what he'd done. He had no doubt that the man was dead. A foot was twitching, but nothing else moved, and blood trickled freely from the hole in the forehead. The eyes were wide open.

Footsteps pattered down the hall, or so Sinclair imagined. The noise of the gunshot had deafened him for a moment, but now he shook his head and took the smaller pistol from his pocket, wiped it on his jacket, and pressed it into the dead right hand. Then he grabbed the leather bag, zipped it open, and looked inside.

Clothes. Nothing but clothes. There was no money at all. Just a T-shirt, a pair of jeans, some underwear and socks.

Sinclair rummaged frantically through the items, his fingers crooked into claws, scrabbling for a wad of bills, but there was nothing to find, nothing to jam into locker 4614, hell,
goddam
,
shit
, no money at all! He stood up, shoved his pistol into his holster, and ran out of the alcove, right into two uniformed policemen.

There was a brief scuffle, and the officers grabbed Sinclair by the arms, roughly frisked him, and took away his .38.

"Police officer,
goddam
it!" Sinclair wailed. "
Police
officer!"

"Yeah, we'll see . . ." growled the larger of the two officers, as they manhandled Sinclair back into the alcove where the body lay.

"Holy shit," said the other officer, a thin but wiry black man whose grip Sinclair was not able to break. The pair shoved Sinclair face down on the floor, his arm pressed behind his back. The black officer pulled out his service revolver and jammed it behind Sinclair's neck. "You just ease off now, just relax."'

"I'm a fucking
police officer
," Sinclair said again.

"Yeah, okay. He dead, Sam?"

"Dead as hell," said the big officer. "Better pat him down again."

Together, they emptied Sinclair's pockets, and the black cop looked in the wallet. "He is a cop, Sam. Transit."

"That's what I
said
, man! Now will you let me the fuck up?"

The cop holstered his revolver and released Sinclair, who pushed himself painfully to his feet. "What the hell happened?" asked the white cop the other had called Sam.

"I saw this guy out in the hall . . . thought he was acting suspicious, looking around and all," Sinclair babbled. "So I followed him in here and he's standing at the locker. He turns around and sees me and all of a sudden he takes out this pistol, see, there, he still has it, and starts to point it at me. Well, shit, I mean, the guy's gonna
shoot
me, so I got out my gun and shot first."

The big white cop made a sour face. "You always shoot in the head?"

"I . . . I didn't have time to aim, for
crissake
. . . I mean, the guy could've killed me . . ."

The big cop shook his head. "I don't think. Not this guy."

"What . . . what do you mean?"

"Why were you
running
out of here?"

"I … I was going for assistance, what the hell else?"

"Uh-huh." Sam showed the locker key he had taken from Sinclair to his partner. "4614," he said. "Quite a coincidence."

“I…”

"Read him his rights, Tony. We'll take him downtown and see if he can explain what this is all about.”

“I just
told
you!"

"Yeah, you
wanta
tell us about that key? About why your locker and his locker are side by side? You
wanta
tell us why you shoot station janitors in the head?"

"Station . . . station
janitors
?"

"You maybe got mixed up and thought the gray uniform meant he escaped from prison?"

It was ten o'clock in the morning when Jesse Gordon put two more quarters into the locker at Grand Central Station that held his nearly fifty thousand dollars in cash. He smiled as he pocketed the key, and wondered if Montcalm had figured a way to get into his old locker. He hoped that his jeans would fit the man all right.

Jesse had seen Montcalm following him, had figured that he had somehow learned that it was Jesse who had taken his money and given it away. He was surprised, though, that he had been found so easily in the labyrinth of tunnels that honeycombed the city. It seemed like more than luck. It seemed like a miracle. But it would surely be a miracle to Montcalm when he found that Jesse's money was no longer there. He had taken the rolls of bills out of the locker right in front of the lounging policeman who had apparently scared off Montcalm long enough for Jesse to lose him. He knew, though, that Montcalm had seen what locker he'd been in, and that would be enough to keep him busy and off his trail, at least for a while.

At least until he found Enoch.

In the past few weeks, the rumors had been increasing among the skells, and most of them were scared. There was something that was down there in the tunnels, they said, something that had always been there, but which was now growing in power and influence until it threatened all of them, anyone who lived beneath the city.

Anyone who was not already part of it.

Part of what? Jesse had asked the skells who were willing to talk to him. Part of Enoch, they would answer, telling him what he already knew. Part of Enoch.

Enoch was the power and the evil. Enoch, Jesse thought over and over again, was the reason he had been drawn below. Enoch and his white, glowing angel's face, a mask behind which lay the horror of the city. It was all in him, all in Enoch.

Jesse's destiny. Enoch.

It was because of Enoch that Jesse could not take the menace of Montcalm seriously. Montcalm, despite his own corruption and the extent to which it corrupted others, was unimportant compared to the absolute horror that was Enoch's domain. At the thought of Montcalm, Jesse shook his head in pitiful disgust. Small change. But Enoch…