The Nervous System (28 page)

“Clarence.” Nic is coming apart, pleading with his friend. “Listen now. As much as I owe you, my pal, you owe me twice over. I broke this city in half for you and your people. Hell, Clarence, we cleared out tremendous populations,
nations,
for your fucking lawyers, your people to come in and do your—”

Senator Howard waves his paws like he's battling wasps. “Nicholas, that is enough, you will stop your blathering this instant! You benefited more than any man on God's earth from these arrangements, and don't you dare say different! That is enough, sir!” booms the big man.

Me straining, digging the snipers, thinking one shot there, one shot here … it's doable.

Nic spins his head my way, shifts gears. “And that devil,” he snaps, thrusting his jaw at me, “did things in my employ that no other man I've known would
contemplate
. No hesitation.” Nic speaks faster and faster. “He's a goddamn psychotic, is what he is, plain and simple. And what's more, the bastard has all manner of unholy … medical enhancements that make him that much more dangerous, and that much more
unpredictable
.”

Unbidden, it's the DA again:
“Decimal. Your file. The stuff they did …”

The stuff they did
… shake it off, stay now, soldier. Don't be played. Let the haters hate.

We inch forward, my coiffed hostage and I. My priority here is Rose Hee.

And the girl is looking at me, to me … With great fucking effort I maintain my multiple foci, Kathleen, Nic, snipers ahoy. Does the tiny machine in my neck squirm a little? Brain playing with itself …

Saint Nic is now officially on a rant: “… good reason to believe this bastard is completely and utterly insane. He comes out of the goddamn woodwork and you are going to take his word over mine? After all these years? Two-time Purple Heart? Medal of Honor?”

“Nicholas!” bellows the senator. “I will not listen to you debase yourself further! We are all aware of your service to the New York Police Department, and the government of the United States—”

“I AM the goddamn government, Clarence!” Nic snarls. He knocks Rose aside and moves in the senator's direction. “I AM the goddamn United States! We OWN this country, Clarence, together, as a unified body! Let's not pretend …”

Nic closing in on Howard, lifting his arms as if for an embrace. Me thinking: unwise, Deluccia.

“That's enough. Take him down,” says the senator quietly.

There's a faint
thwipp
from overhead, Nic Deluccia puts his hands over his throat, head bobbing, blank-faced, he sways in our direction, spins back toward Howard, nodding, and collapses facedown, blood pooling out the bullet hole in his neck.

Howard steps forward, stands over him. Shakes his head gravely. Looks like he's getting misty. Or is suppressing a yawn, hard to tell which.

I tense, getting ready to grab Rose. Clarence indicates Nic's deflating corpse and says, “He was a great American patriot. Let us never forget that. Let us remember him as he was.” Howard pauses, smiling crookedly, many levels to that smile, looks sideways at Deluccia's body as it bleeds out. “A great …” This is the first time I've heard the senator hesitate. “A great patriot,” he finishes. Looks toward me. “Kathleen. Let her come to me now.”

Contemplate the two shooters, thinking it remains possible I could take them out and still be prepared for whatever might pop out of the chopper … or come from below. No. Suicide jag.

Fuck it.

Wordlessly, I nudge Kathleen toward her husband, and thus 50 percent of my leverage. Howard's file sticking out of my pants. The other 50. But it's Rose, nobody else, who I've got a constant eye on. Frantic for an opening.

As Kathleen wanders forward, an Aryan Secret Service agent is coming up the stairs from the motorway, presumably having been in the limo.

His wife comes into range and Clarence air-kisses a smudgy rouged cheek, making no effort to remove the duct tape from her mouth. Kathleen appears catatonic, gives no visible reaction to being released, to the presence of her husband. It's an empty moment, a loveless exchange of zero.

“Tom,” Howard addresses the agent, tilts his head in the direction of the waiting limo.

Tom guides Kathleen across the walkway and down the stairs. She's staring at a point in the middle distance, zombified, and disappears below deck, still gagged and bound, as if simply transferred to another hostile agency.

Two Cyna-corp soldiers in full regalia float around the main pillar and move to collect Nic's corpse. Howard looks off toward the Statue of Liberty, as if it's just another day at the office. Or out of discretion. Or whatever.

Must be getting simple cause I just cannot fathom how any of these motherfuckers are behaving. Plenty of time to ponder this later, as my only objective now if to snag Rose and get her off this bridge alive, second priority to do the same for myself. Primed to blaze, but Rose has her own plans, stepping forward to …

Woman spits on Deluccia's body, the back of his head. A big hocker. “Piece of shit,” she hisses.

The soldiers point their visors toward Howard for guidance, but the senator is leaning on his cane and studying southern Manhattan island. One of them glances at the other and shrugs. The drones commence scooping up Deluccia, a leaky bag of fluid and fat in an overcoat.

Do this, Decimal. As if in a stop-motion nightmare, I'm trying to close the distance between myself and Rose, still just too far away to touch … calculating the odds of surviving a swan dive into the East River from this height …

Hobble barely two steps and the senator barks, “Move no further lest you be struck down. Fire on my say so.”

A red point of light, so small and tremulous, appears above Rose's heart. Spiky shivers down my back, me saying, “Senator, we don't need to get all agitated, right? You got Kathleen, right? Let's put a fork in this one, everybody go home. How about it, Howard?”

Clarence is unresponsive. Lock on Rose Hee, voice lowered, steady now.

“That's all right. That's all right, Rose. Almost over.”

But Rose, icy cool, doesn't seem to need reassurance.

“Drop that gun, son,” Clarence says to me. “Kick it over the side there.”

What can I fucking do, but do like I'm told. Bye-bye, 99.

“Emotional,” mumbles Howard. “I get emotional, Lord knows. It's my nature …” His back to us. The man has not turned during this entire exchange.

Nobody saying shit as the chopper comes to life, lifts off, and banks away, taking with it the body of a man I once knew, and the spotlight that had allowed us to see properly.

Now the prick of red is even brighter, wavering over Rose's breast. In the half dark, she begins to speak.

_______________

I was fifteen,” says Rose to nobody in particular. “Song was, oh I don't know, maybe three or four years older, probably eighteen or nineteen, but of course at that age it's a big deal, you know. The gap is huge.”

Shifts in my direction, the dot shifting with her.

“Mister Decimal, listen. Song was like my big sister and I loved her. I want you to know that. I am telling
you
this. I am not talking to him.”

By which I assume she means the senator. Who is still showing us his back, seemingly fascinated by the view, and seemingly uninterested.

“I loved her,” Rose continues. “I would sit up at night and do my makeup like her and get in bed and sing to myself like she did. But I was so goddamn jealous too, in that way you are at fifteen, it all seemed so easy for her, despite her problems with the language, having just come over and all. And this extremely dangerous job, you know. But she kept it pretty clean. I mean, there was some coke and shit but this was just kid's stuff. She was intensely Catholic too, in this twisted way, but on Song it made sense.”

The wind flares up for a moment, causing the flags overhead to whip angrily.

“Always had men around, of course.” Rose makes no attempt to free her hands and scarcely adjusts her position. “I mean, you should have seen her, real grown-up men, some of them pretty scary, the kind of men you're drawn to, though, at a certain point in your life, you know? Always taking her to restaurants, white places with fancy white-people names like Pravda or Le Cirque. Flashy cars and all. My dad did everything he could to keep me away from her, said she was a bad influence, and she probably was. But what I couldn't explain then is that none of it seemed dark to her. She was so totally alive, open, always laughing. Singing. Otherworldly. She was like a fairy, or an angel. I know how that sounds. And she really listened. You could feel her listening, and just that she would listen to me and my stupid shitty fifteen-year-old problems made me feel very special. It wasn't just that she was beautiful either. It was … the Kanji word is
myokon
. Life-force, prana, you get me?”

I nod. All this I saw on the videotape, plus.

“And her voice. Her presence. I don't know what she thought she was doing but she could have easily been … a pop star, oh that sounds so fucking cheap, or run her own business, any kind of business. Be important. Whatever she wanted.”

“And enter Nic Deluccia,” I say, gently now, because Rose is crying in that honest way grown-ups cry. The laser doing a happy little dance on her breast. I'm thinking if I rush and tackle her, we just go off the side like a pair of doves …

She rallies, takes a couple deep breaths. Says, “Well, no Nic yet. Song told me about one man in particular. He was a black man.” She sniffs, casts a glance at Howard. “She'd been with other black men before, which, well, we're all adults here, was considered not acceptable, but she was dating one of the Knicks, so I assumed it was another athlete. But at one point she said no, he was some kind of very powerful person, a politician, and she told me they had this chemistry and this almost … religious kind of connection. She never used the word
love
. They would have this intense sex and then intense prayer session. I didn't get it, but it was clear he was different than her usual guys. Said his name was Howard. Said he was famous.”

The senator leans on his cane, still focused in the opposite direction. Me thinking we just run for it, get clear of the tower … but no, we wouldn't make it five feet without getting straight ventilated. Best to hold steady, wrack my deeply compromised brain for angles.

“So.” Shows me a cheerless smile. “Nic Deluccia. I mean, come on, I'm fifteen and this is a fucking NYPD police chief. He was famous too, I'd see him on TV and my dad would turn it off. I'd ask why he turned it off and my dad wouldn't answer. So Nic is smart as hell, as you well know, Mister X, just picks me up off the street, very officialseeming and scary. You know, a squad car on the way home from school kind of thing. Like I'd done something wrong. But he was extremely kind as well. I mean, that was how he got to me.”

Maybe it's just a passing breeze, but I get a wave of chills. I know all about Nic Deluccia's brand of kindness. Dig. His manner with kids.

“Kind but clear about what he wanted to happen; I was to feed him information on this Howard as it came in from Song. Simple. I was to do this or …” Rose falters, looks over at the senator. Returns her eyes to me as they well up. She lifts her cuffed hands and presses her thumbs there. And I am reminded that I just met her the other day, which now seems deep in the distant past.

“Rose, you don't have to—” I begin, but am cut off as she says, “Or he'd take away my father. Destroy him. Had everything he needed to do it. I didn't want to know about some of the stuff he claims my father did, I still don't, but remember I'm fucking fifteen, he says my dad will get life, just gone forever. He even talked about the death penalty, which hadn't been tossed in New York yet … told me about lethal injection, described death row, told me what it would be like for my dad. I … it was just so unreal.”

“So you did what you had to do.” What she needs to hear. “Protect your family, shit, you did your best, sweetheart. How you did that, it doesn't matter anymore.”

The lady nods. “What else was there? I didn't see an option. Chief Del … Nic, he told me he'd kill my mother if I told anybody. Said he'd know immediately, he had people watching. At school, everywhere. Oh sure, he didn't want to do it. And he knew he wouldn't have to, cause I was such a good, smart girl.”

“Yeah,” I say quietly, “I know how the motherfucker did.”

Rose takes me in. “So you know I didn't feel like I had a choice.”

Think about a fifteen-year-old child, wrestling to wrap her brain around these terrifying uniforms, this sense of complete helplessness, these softly expressed threats. I've seen that movie.

“Yeah,” I say. “Let it go. You had no choice, Rose.” It's what she needs to believe.

Gratitude is creeping into her grim smile now. Fresh tears, but she appears at least partially released. Cleansed.

“No, Rose. No indeed, dear,” says Clarence.

Senator Howard speaks at the river, then pivots and saunters our way, slowly, head lowered. I cannot see his eyes. Start moving too, wanna get between them.

“He was not a perfect man,” says the senator, his voice liquid sugar. Fat finger my direction. “Stay where you are, son, that'll do.”

Crimson dots doing a jig, one on me and one on my girl. Fuck.

Rose snorts and pulls her shoulders up. “Nic Deluccia was an ruthless, evil fuck. Stepped on everybody in his life, acted like he was doing them a favor. He was a user, a parasite.”

Tell myself if the senator comes closer, I'll go for my other gun, shoot him dead, sniper or no.

“He ordered a human being be killed and cut to pieces,” says Rose. She looks swiftly at the senator. “A woman you claim to have loved.”

“And an infant. Your own goddamn child, sir,” I add through my teeth, everybody always forgetting about the baby, which to me is perhaps the most demonic aspect of this whole crime.