"Come on. Come on! Put your money down. Not on an ugly joker he's going to get creamed."
The cop giving a convulsive jerk as Blaise twitched the cord binding the human to the quarter-Takisian child.
"He's not going to help the joker. He hates them too. I know. I'm in his head."
"Soon after an army of police arrived, and Blaise discovered the limit to his power," continued Polyakov, not realizing that Tachyon had read it all.
A chill, like an icy finger, traced down his back as Tach considered that at the end Blaise had been controlling nine people. Tachyon's limit was three for full control, and that took a tremendous toll on mind and body. Nine. And he was only thirteen. And I've been training him. His eyes met the flat implacable gaze of the sullen boy.
"Chaiken was an interested spectator to all of this, and he found it interesting that my current identification did not match his memory of me. I gave them a story about changing my name as I changed my life, but if they are not complete fools they will check."
"Your papers?"
"Are very good, but a question to the wrong place. A photo shown to the wrong man…" Polyakov shrugged expressively.
"You have to get out of here. Out of the country. If you need money I'll give it to you-"
"No. I came here to do a thing. I will not leave."
"What about me!"
"You don't matter any more than I do. What I do I do out of a perhaps pathetic belief in an ideal. A familiar concept to you, Tachyon. You curse with it, believe in it. We're not so very different. We both have our honor. Unfortunately, it is always purchased with blood."
There was again that fleeting glance between the Russian and Blaise. Tachyon slipped beneath the teenager's imperfect shields.
"You may not use Blaise. I forbid it!"
An infinitesimal arch of the eyebrows. Polyakov's mouth twisted in a slight, bitter smile.
"I'll do whatever Uncle George wants," shrilled Blaise. "I will kill you first," said Tachyon, eyes locking with the Russian's.
"I'm not your enemy, Dancer. He is." A pudgy forefinger thrust at the ceiling, and the Hartmann suite seven floors above.
8:00 P.M.
Standing with the fronds of a fern falling across his face like bangs, Mackie Messer watched Sara and the big fuck leave the restaurant.
She'd been keeping him at bay all day, keeping to the crowds, never letting him have a shot at her alone. He'd thought surely she'd go to the room she shared with the nigger to take a shower; women were crazy about keeping clean. He'd never seen Psycho, so he didn't realize that was the last thing a woman of Sara's generation would do in circumstances like these.
The memory of offing the natty nigger made his lips smile. It had felt good, his hand on bone. But the rush had faded. He was hungry. He hadn't spotted Sara till midmorning, over in the joker park. He hadn't even had a chance to phase into some restaurant's kitchen and rip off a bite to eat. Hunger was feeding the frustrated anger that had been building in him all day.
The bitch. I have to kill her. I can't let the Man down. He was going to have to do something soon, something violent, to let out all that feeling.
And now she and her new boyfriend headed for the elevators, arm in arm. Going upstairs to fuck; women were all alike.
He followed, weaving among delegates who didn't deign to notice a twisted boy, got to the elevator stand in time to see them go into one and the doors close. He laughed out loud: "Yeah. Baby, baby."
All he had to do now was see what floor they got off on. Then he'd find them.
He licked his lips. I hope they're doing it when I catch them. He thought of the man's big cock going into Sara, and his hard hand going into him, and almost creamed his jeans.
Drinks, exhaustion, and a heavy meal had done their work on Sara. Her knees had gone rubbery, and she leaned on Jack as they shot upward in the glass elevator. Jack closed his eyes against a surge of vertigo. Then he thought of the bottle of Valiums in his luggage and gave an inward smile.
Sara was clearly on her last legs. She'd be out like a light within hours, and some time toward morning Jack was going to creep out of bed, find the Valiums, crumble a couple of them in a glass of room-service orange juice, and feed them to her with breakfast.
That, he thought, should keep the loose cannon from rolling around for most, if not all, of Friday.
Jack led Sara along the curving atrium balcony, then down a short hallway to his suite. "Piano Man" echoed up from the floor of the atrium. Sara stepped through the door and stood there, her heavy shoulder bag pulling her off balance. Jack put the DO NOT DISTURB sign on the door, closed and locked it, and put his arms around Sara from behind. Despite the alcohol her body was taut as a watchspring. He brushed the disordered hair from her neck and began to kiss her nape. For a while Sara didn't react, then she gave a sigh and turned toward him. He kissed her on the lips. She took her time about responding, finally put her arms around his neck, opened her mouth, let his tongue flicker against hers.
"There," Jack said, grinning. "It's better when you help." Which was the line that Bacall gave Bogart in To Have and Have Not.
Sara didn't smile. "I've got to go to the bathroom. I'll be right back, okay?"
Jack watched her walk unsteadily toward the toilet. A sinking feeling was beginning to envelope him. This was playing too much like his second marriage.
He took off his jacket and poured himself a whiskey. He could hear water running in the bathroom, then silence. Maybe she was fixing her hair or makeup. Maybe she was sitting on the commode, reliving the death of her friend.
Jack lit a cigarette and thought about the first time he'd seen violent death, when his company was caught in a German counterattack down Highway 90 between Avellino and Benevento, and he remembered that the experience hadn't made him feel very sexy, either.
Damn, he thought. This had the potential to be a very depressing night.
The bathroom door opened and Sara gave him a brave smile as she came into the room. She'd fixed her hair and makeup and looked quite different from the scarecrow who'd sat opposite him at dinner.
Jack stubbed out the cigarette and walked toward her. He was about to take her in his arms when a young hunchback in a leather jacket walked right through the wall behind her, grinned, and lunged forward with a hand thrust out like a spear.
Without thought, Jack picked Sara up, made a half turn, and tossed her gently onto the sofa behind him. The air burned with Jack's golden light. There was the shrieking sound of a buzz saw hitting a spike buried in a tree, a sound that brought Jack's hackles erect and sent a surge of adrenaline pouring through his body. Jack turned back to the intruder and saw a look of shock on his young, pale face. Jack flipped a fist at the little man, a gentle backhand strike, and in a flare of yellow light the leather boy was flung against the bathroom wall with a bone-breaking crash. The boy dropped to the floor like a rag doll.
Sara screamed as she turned and saw the assassin. Jack jumped involuntarily.
"I got him, Sara," Jack said. She'kept on screaming. He heard the sounds of her struggling to her feet.
Jack stepped forward toward the leather boy and leaned over him. The boy's eyes snapped open and his hands sliced out, flashing as if they were knives, and when they connected with Jack there was a flare of golden light, the screaming buzz saw noise, and bits of Jack's clothing flying like the fur of a fighting cat.
Jack didn't even feel the blows.
He picked up the boy by his leather jacket and held him at arm's length. The hunchback, as if he couldn't believe what was happening, kept hacking at Jack's arm, cutting the paleblue Givenchy shirt to ribbons.