Wild Cards V (65 page)

She tried the knob. The door was unlocked. She pushed it open onto the room and its occupant. The man who had been described to her as Croyd stood there, about to leave.

“Who the hell are you?” He was obviously surprised to see a woman. With the gun Rosemary gestured for him to sit back down on the iron-framed bed. She kept her back against the wall beside the door. “Christ, you're Maria Gambione!”

“I need to know what you actually found out.” Rosemary leveled the gun on the man across the tiny room, holding it firmly just as she had always practiced. “You're not going anywhere.”

Outside on the fire escape Chris waited for Rosemary to go down with the virus. Mentally he urged her to get closer to Croyd. He could not hear what they were saying. It did not matter as long as Croyd did to her what he had done to the capos. Chris knew Croyd had to have access to the virus somehow. Nothing else could have done
that.
Why didn't she close in?

He saw her gun go up. Croyd moved faster. Before Chris could get out of the way, Croyd had thrown the bedside lamp through the window and followed it out onto the fire escape. Chris scrambled backward, but in his haste to get away from Rosemary, Croyd was across the iron grating of the landing. Seeing Chris at last, Croyd tackled him and threw him down the next flight of steps. Chris gagged and tried to crawl away down the steps. A shot narrowly missed Croyd, and he clambered up the ladder two steps at a time.

Rosemary had frozen when Croyd went through the window. As the echoes of the crash rang through the flophouse, she heard her bodyguards coming for her. She followed Croyd out the broken window and saw him start up the fire escape. She fired at him more to keep him moving than to kill him. The only way out was down the escape. Chris was coughing and convulsing on the landing below her. As she heard her men break down the door behind her, she was running down the steps and jumping over her lover. She did not stop.

“Bastard!” she hissed at him as she left him behind. She was headed for the ground. She knew now that Chris's men would kill her on sight. It would take luck and fast moves, but there was just a chance she could lose the bodyguards and the men out front. It was her only chance.

 

Concerto for Siren and Serotonin

VI

CROYD TOOK A TAXI
crosstown, then hiked a circuitous route to his Morningside Heights apartment. There were no lights on within, and he entered quickly and quietly, painkillers, antihistamines, psychedelics, and a five-pound box of assorted chocolates all gift-wrapped together in a gaudy parcel beneath his arm. He flipped on the hall light and slipped into the bedroom.

“Veronica? You awake?” he whispered.

There was no reply, and he crossed to the bedside, lowered himself to a seated position, and reached out. His hand encountered only bedclothes.

“Veronica?” he said aloud.

No reply.

He turned on the bedside lamp. The bed was empty, her stuff gone. He looked about for a note. No. Nothing. Perhaps in the living room. Or the kitchen. Yes. Most likely she'd leave it in the refrigerator where he'd be certain to find it.

He rose, then halted. Was that a footstep? Back toward the living room?

“Veronica?”

No reply.

Foolish of him to have left the door open, he suddenly realized, though there had been no one in the hallway.…

He reached out and extinguished the lamp. He crossed to the door, dropped silently to the floor, moved his head outside at floor level, and drew it back quickly.

Empty. No one in the hall. No further sounds either.

He rose and stepped outside. He walked back toward the living room.

In the dim light from the hallway, as he rounded the corner, he beheld a Bengal tiger, and its tail twitched once before it sprang at him.

“Holy shit!” Croyd commented, dropping Veronica's present and leaping to the side.

Plaster shattered and fell as he caromed off the wall, an orange and black shoulder grazed him in passing, and he threw a punch that slid over the animal's back. He heard it growl as he leaped into the living room. It turned quickly and followed him, and he picked up a heavy chair and threw it as the beast sprang again.

It roared as the chair struck it, and Croyd overturned a heavy wooden table, raised it like a shield, and rushed with it against the animal. The tiger shook itself, snarling, as it batted the chair aside. It turned and caught the table's flat surface upon a smooth expanse of shoulder muscle. Then it swung a paw over the table's upper edge. Croyd ducked, pushed forward.

The big cat fell back, dropped out of sight. Seconds crept by like drugged cockroaches.

“Kitty?” he inquired.

Nothing.

He lowered the table a foot. With a roar the tiger sprang. Croyd snapped the table upward, faster than he could remember ever having lifted a piece of furniture before. Its edge caught the tiger a terrible blow beneath the jaw, and it let out a human-sounding whimper as it was turned sideways and fell to the floor. Croyd raised the table high and slammed it down atop the beast, as if it were a giant flyswatter. He raised it again. He halted. He stared.

No tiger.

“Kitty?” he repeated.

Nothing.

He lowered the table. Finally he set it aside. He moved to the wall switch and threw it. Only then did he realize that the front of his shirt was torn and bloody. Three furrows ran down the left side of his chest from collarbone to hip.

On the floor, a bit of whiteness.…

Stooping, he touched the object, raised it, studied it. He held one of those little folded paper figures—origami, he remembered, the Japanese called them. This one was … a paper tiger. He shivered at the same time as he chuckled. This was almost supernatural. This was heavy shit. It occurred to him then that he had just fought off another ace—one with a power he did not understand—and he did not like this a bit. Not with Veronica missing. Not with his not even knowing which side had sent the stranger ace to take him out.

He locked the door to the hallway. He opened Veronica's present, took out the bottle of Percodans and tossed off a couple before he hit the bathroom, stripped off his shirt, and washed his chest. Then he fetched a beer from the refrigerator and washed down a French green with it, to provide the Percs with some contrast. There was no note propped against the milk carton or even in the egg drawer, and this made him sad.

When the bleeding stopped, he washed again, taped a dressing in place, and drew on a fresh shirt. He was not even sure whether he had been followed or whether this had been a stakeout. Either way, he wasn't going to stick around. He hated abandoning Veronica if someone really had a make on the place, but at the moment he had no choice. It was a very familiar feeling: they were after him again.

Croyd rode subways and taxis and walked for over four hours, crouched behind his mirrorshades, crissing and crossing the island in a pattern of evasion calculated to confuse anybody. And for the first time in his life he saw his name up in lights in Times Square.

CROYD CRENSON, said the flowing letters high on the buildingside, CALL DR. T. EMERGENCY.

Croyd stood and stared, reading it over and over. When he had convinced himself it was not a hallucination, he shrugged. They ought to know he'd stop by and pay his bill when he got a chance. It was damn humiliating, implying to the whole world that he was a deadbeat. They'd probably even try to charge him for a bed, too, he guessed, when broom closets should be a lot cheaper. Out to screw him, the same as everyone else. They could damn well wait.

Cursing, he ran for a subway entrance.

Heading south on the Broadway line, sucking on a pair of purple hearts and a stray pyrahex he'd found at the bottom of his pocket, Croyd was amazed and impressed that Senator Hartmann actually did seem a man of the people, boarding the train at the Canal Street Station that way. Then another Senator Hartmann followed him. They glanced his way, conferred for an instant, and one leaned out the door and hollered something, and more Hartmanns came running. There were tall Hartmanns, short Hartmanns, fat Hartmanns, and even a Hartmann with an extra appendage—seven Hartmanns in all. And Croyd was not so unsophisticated as to fail in realizing, this near Jokertown, that Hartmann's was the Werewolves' face of the day.

The doors closed, the train began to move, the tallest Hartmann turned, stared, and approached.

“You Croyd Crenson?” he asked.

“Nope,” Croyd replied.

“I think you are.”

Croyd shrugged. “Think whatever you want, but do it someplace else if you want my vote.”

“Get up.”

“I am up. I'm a lot higher than you. And I'm up for anything.”

The tall Hartmann reached for him, and the other Hartmanns began a swaying advance.

Croyd reached forward, caught the oncoming hand, and drew it toward his face. There followed a crunching sound, and the tall Hartmann screamed as Croyd jerked his head to the side, then spat out the thumb he had just bitten off the hand he held. Then he rose to his feet, still holding the Werewolf's right wrist with his left hand. He jerked the man forward and drove the fingers of his free hand deep into his abdomen and began drawing them upward. Blood spurted and ribs popped and protruded.

“Always following me,” he said. “You're a real pain in the ass, you know? Where's Veronica?”

The man commenced a coughing spasm. The other Werewolves halted as the blood began to flow. Croyd's hand plunged again, downward this time. Red up to the elbow now, he began drawing out a length of intestine. The others began to gag, to back toward the rear of the car.

“This is a political statement,” Croyd said as he raised the gory Hartmann and tossed him after the others. “See you in November, motherfuckers!”

Croyd exited quickly at the Wall Street Station, tore off his bloody shirt, and tossed it into a trash receptacle. He washed his hands in a public fountain before departing the area, and he offered a big black guy who'd said, “You
really
a Whitey!” fifty bucks for his shirt—a pale blue, long-sleeved polyester affair, which fit him fine. He trotted over to Nassau then, followed it north till it ran into Centre. He stopped in an
OPEN ALL NIGHT
Greek place and bought two giant styrofoam cups of coffee, one for each hand, to sip as he strolled.