The Lure (53 page)

Before anyone could register a reaction, he was at the door, had it open, was in the middle of the party again. After the quiet, cool calm of the office, it was like being inside a hurricane composed of lights, sounds, people, motion, insanity. He was trying to see a way around the dance floor over to the escalators when he felt a tug at his right shoulder, turned, saw Alana, her lips moving. He couldn’t hear what she said, couldn’t make out anything but the intense thumping bass of the music. He pointed toward the middle of the room, felt her hand slide down his back and latch onto his belt. She was going with him.

Pushing through the dizzying, dancing smash of bodies proved almost impossible. He couldn’t get anywhere near the escalators. Those he did try to shove aside gave angry looks. Some even pushed him back. This was not the way to do it. He turned around to her and motioned up, jabbing with one finger, up.

“The elevators!” she shouted, her mouth right near his ear. “Follow me.”

They had to go back the way they’d come. Precious moments lost was all he could think. And the acid was sweeping through him again periodically, although never quite coming to a crest like before. He still had to stop and try to keep it under control.

They had arrived at one of the circular lobbies outside the main dance floor. Alana reached up to tap on the curved window of the ticket taker’s booth. The frizzy-haired blonde inside looked up, and smiled, recognizing Alana, waved her comprehension when Alana pointed to what seemed to be a flat bare wall, and pressed a button.

The wall slid open, revealing an elevator. Noel almost dragged Alana inside, waiting on pins and needles for the door to close.

“What’s wrong, Noel?” she asked again in the sudden quiet of the elevator. She held a hand over the button panel.

“Eric’s in trouble. That coke connection he’s doing. It’s a trap. A setup to bust him. I can’t explain it all to you. You can’t come with me. Go back to the party.”

As an answer, she pressed the button for the fourth floor. The doors closed, the car began to rise smoothly. Noel had to lean against the wall in the sudden double rush of ascent and acid. When it stopped, he was leaning forward, poised to rush out. The doors stayed closed. Once more she was holding her hand over the button panel.

“Let me out, Alana!”

“You are certain of this?”

“Of course, I’m certain. Let me out. Go back downstairs.”

“You are very high, Noel. Higher than you’ve ever been before. Sometimes strange thoughts occur when you are this high. Fantasies. Paranoia.”

“I know I’m high. But it’s not paranoia or fantasy. Believe me, I wish to hell it were.” How could he explain without explaining everything, which would take time, precious time?

“But Eric is with Geoff,” she protested. “Geoff Malchuck.”

“I know. I know. Let me out.”

She didn’t move. Was he going to have to force her to?

“Look, Alana, I just know that something like this is supposed to happen tonight. I can’t go into all the details right now. But I know. Geoff Malchuck or not.”

Her look of concerned baillement dropped. The mask that remained was pale with conviction, understanding, anger.

“Then Eric was right. You are a spy. An enemy.”

“A spy, yes. Enemy, no. He’s in trouble. Look, Alana, I’ll explain later on…”

Her hand shot out, slapping his face hard, stopping what he was going to say next. She was shouting something at him that he couldn’t make out. She slapped him again, this time knocking him to the wall of the elevator. He felt as though he were going to crest over again and slide into the white light. He couldn’t afford to now.

As her hand darted out again, he managed to catch it, push it aside, and reach for the button panel. The doors slid open as he tried to keep her from hitting him again.

“Stay here. Go downstairs. This may be dangerous,” he said. He pushed the panel button and leaped out just as the doors closed. He could hear her hammering on them as the elevator dropped.

He located Eric’s office, tried the handle. Locked. He jiggled it, tried to force it. Then he began shouting through the door, kicking at it, trying to get in. Still nothing. Banging on it now with both fists. Then he backed up to the wall behind and charged the door, shoulders first, knocking every cell within his body to smithereens it seemed to him. Managed to collect them, backed up again, and rushed the door once more.

This time he almost knocked himself out. He heard a sick crack he thought at first was a rib, then realized was a door panel, and gave another hard shove.

The door gave. He staggered into the room, tumbling to the floor in just enough time to see the two full-length windows thrown open, and three men standing there as though in a
tableau vivant
: two he’d never seen before, Eric between them, handcuffed, being prodded from behind onto the fire escape. Eric yelled something Noel couldn’t make out, as the crest he had tried so hard to control swept over him and he couldn’t resist the long deep slide into it.

“He’s all right,” someone said. “Leave him.”

He must have been out for only a second. Everything seemed as before, except that Eric was gone now. One window was closed. The second of the two men was just stepping out onto the fire escape. The catch! And he wasn’t stopping it.

He got to his feet, rushing to the window in time to grab one of them by the belt and pull him back hard, so that he stumbled, couldn’t catch himself, hit the side of the desk, fell.

“We’ve got some trouble,” the one outside shouted down to someone else. Noel crawled out onto the fire escape, felt the grating underfoot, found a handhold, swung into the man, catching him as he turned, smashing him in the stomach. He turned to get Eric and couldn’t find him in the darkness. He shouted his name. There were lights now, from across the airshaft, from below—searchlights. He shouted again for Eric. Suddenly, so suddenly he couldn’t keep his balance, he was being pulled backward.

“What in hell is wrong with you?” someone muttered behind him. Noel was dragged off the fire escape back into the room.

“I thought you said this one was all right?”

“He’s supposed to be.”

“Son of a bitch, he just bit me.”

Noel felt a blow to his kidney from behind.

“Loomis said to make it clean,” the other one said as Noel twisted back. He was pinned now. “Nice and clean,” the man said in front of him, then hauled off and punched Noel’s chin just as a new crest was coming. He felt it and the acid wave connect together. He didn’t go out, although he pretended to, slumping suddenly so that he was dropped to the floor.

“Hey, wait a minute, sister! Where are you going?”

“She’s the one!”

Noel tried to get up, to get from around the desk so he could see. Pain caused him to hold on to the corner to try to catch his breath, to fight off the dizziness.

“He’s up again,” one of them said.

Noel could make out the sound of a struggle. When the pain and dizziness subsided enough for him to stagger over to the window, he was grabbed from behind again, both arms pinned to his sides. He tried struggling, felt helpless, weak. He thought to relax completely, allowing the other to ease his grip, then Noel could jump out.

In front of him, through the thrown-open windows, the other man was trying to grab hold of someone who was fighting back hard. It took Noel a minute to realize that it was Alana. He tried to shout to her to stop. Tried to struggle free. Heard blows exchanged between them, heard her voice uttering soft, indignant, angry sounds. Saw the two bodies writhing, saw someone else appear on the fire escape, grating, saying, “Now now now now” like a rapid-fire gun. He was let go from behind and leaped up to the window frame.

Alana had gotten free. Both her assailants seemed to have let go of her. She turned to him as he reached out for her, calling her name, trying to get her inside, then saw one of the men dive forward into her, hands out in front of him.

Click. Click. Click. Everything stopped, froze, but the white of her arms flying up into the air, clutching for the railing, the grating, something, anything to hold on to in the air, before her head disappeared from sight, and her midsection and legs fled after them backward, slowly as though in a ballet, backward, like a bizarre throw in the air from some modern ballet’s pas de deux.

Everything stopped, and replayed again: the hand in the air, in the water, reaching up and up, over and over. Over and over, the hand reaching for air out of the water. His groggy awakening in the rocking boat, seeing the hand clutching for air, getting up, waking with the icy plunge into the water, reaching for her, reaching for her, feeling the utter fucking helplessness of not being able to reach her in time, and the only thought he could put together was,
No, this can’t be happening, not again, this can’t be real, it must be the drug.

Click. Click. Click. It went.

And ended in a short piercing scream that tore from her insides, into her mouth, and rushed at Noel, tearing the fabric of his night vision with that hand in the air before him still, now and forever, that hand clutching for air, as he heard the deep, awful sounds below halfway between a thud and the splat of a smashed melon.

He was hurling himself down the iron fire stairway, suddenly released, he didn’t know how or why, racing, swerving to get down, reaching the place where the fire escape ended in a ladder. He jumped onto it, dangling on it, seeing the wet paved alley below him, people in uniforms and jackets standing around, red flashes over the opposite walls, on faces, as though a hundred flashlights were bobbing, shaking. He let go of the ladder, dropped with a thud to the ground, pushed through them all to get to her.

She was a broken doll. Her dress ripped up to her hips. One leg bent under her, the other at an angle that couldn’t be right. Her head turned away from him, as though spurning him once more. Hair covering her face like a black cloth.

Someone was kneeling beside her. He looked up, shouted to someone else. Nothing he yelled made sense to Noel.

Eric was there, too, facing him across her body, not looking down at her. His hands were still bound. Two men held his shoulders from behind. He was looking at Noel with utter contempt.

“She’s still alive,” someone said loudly. “Where in hell is that ambulance! Radio the hospital to be ready for her!”

Another siren was approaching. The crowd was shifting now, moving to let some people through. He saw Eric staring at him, accusing him, indicting him for what had happened, knowing that Noel had done it, all of it, from the beginning to now, to this. Men in white were sliding around on either side of her. Everyone forced back away from her. Something like cloth slid under her. Then lifted, it must be a net. Her body jiggled slightly, her face was still turned away, still covered with her beautiful hair. The crowd dispersing now. People muttering around him. Eric just standing there, standing there, accusing him.

The acid came on him again, making him shut his eyes to the glare. He was still standing when he opened them. Only now something was in his right hand. Stupidly, dizzily, uncomprehending, Noel looked at it—a glittering curved edge of sharp metal. Pointed. Deadly.

“Now’s your chance,” someone whispered.

“He killed your girl,” someone else said, then stepped back.

The red lights picked out Eric’s figure. Flashlights wavered, only on Eric.

“I’d tear him to pieces,” another voice said, receded fast.

“He’s all yours.”

“He killed her.”

“Get ’im, Lure.”

“He’s to blame.”

“You let her die.”

“Get him. He deserves it.”

“Rip him up. He made you a queer.”

“We won’t stop you.”

“He’s all yours.”

“Get him.”

The knife felt like a burning ember melded to his hand.

“Get him back for all the others.”

“Kill him, Lure.”

“We won’t stop you.”

The heat of the knife was unbearable. But he couldn’t drop it, couldn’t shake it, couldn’t let go of it.

“Kill him now.”

“He made you a fairy.”

“He made you kill her.”

“You let her die.”

“He’s to blame.”

Nothing to cool off the heat in his hand, racing up his arm, burning his elbow, his shoulder, his neck, his fingers. Nothing to ease the burning but to push it into something soft, wet, fleshy.

“Rip him to pieces.”

“Get him, Lure.”

“Kill him.”

“Kill him.”

“Kill! Kill! Kill!” the chorus whispered around him insidiously as he lunged around Eric, trying to stop them, to shut them up.

“KILL! KILL! KILL!” they whispered into every pore of his skin, every nerve ending of his muscles, as Noel reeled forward to sink the knife where it would stop the voices and cool the incredible burning heat in his hands. The voices urging him, urging him, insisting, insisting, before he went mad from the pain and the heat-and Noel lunged…

He saw Eric’s face only inches away, not the mask of monstrousness, not the icy presence of death, but a terrified brother, held-down sacrificial victim, lamb ready to be slaughtered.