“Oh, a second ago you wanted to kill me and now you want to talk money.”
“You put me and my friends in harm’s way, and right now I am the only one left standing. I got shot. Mutilated. Hospitalized. My friends died around me.”
“Please. Who recruited them? You did. Hence, they are dead because of what you did — your little revenge mission. Feel better, yes or no? Besides, I think your hands are rather elegant.” She fingered an expensive jade choker on her equally expensive neck. “May I see them without those gloves?”
“No. What happened to the money?”
She exhaled nasally, piqued at this talk of money when she would rather be involved in a seduction. “Five million, in three cases, in the bedroom. That works out to a bit more than a million and a half per case, and change. Take any one of them. And go, if you’re going to be dull. Take one for your trouble, and consider yourself fortunate.” She flitted her hands at him. “Go on; they’re not short-count or booby-trapped or anything.”
Barney did not move.
A tiny line of frustration creased her brow. “Oh, come on,” she said. “Don’t tell me you haven’t fantasized about fucking me. Especially if I am so goddamned dangerous. Men like you are addicted to risk, and risking your life makes you horny, don’t bother to deny it. You and I are survivors; we are the last people standing. That’s why I wanted to meet you. That’s why we have all the time in the world. The war is over, lover. You could forget the gun-waving and penetrate me with something better than a bullet, and it would be worth it. I guarantee it. I’ve been looking forward to it as much as you have.” She was stimulating herself with her own speech, going lubricious right there in the chair. “Or you can be a bore and just take your little suitcase of money and split... and wonder for the rest of your life what it would have been like.”
She really was a consummate businesswoman, except for one infinitesimal detail.
“What’s to stop me from taking them all?” said Barney.
In response, she laughed. It was a fluting sound, rich and sonorous, the kind of laugh that could make royalty sacrifice a kingdom. “Oh, doll...”
Then from out of nowhere she leveled a Charter Arms Bulldog at him and smooched a quartet of .44-caliber rounds right into his chest.
Part Five
Blowback
She was leaning over him to check for blood when he grabbed her by the throat. She was so shocked she actually dropped the Bulldog revolver, which had one round left in its cylinder.
They were all here, Barney thought. Karlov, Armand, Sirius. He was wearing Karlov’s gloves and special neck strap. The ammo in his gun’s magazine had been manufactured by Armand. And Sirius had supplied the floppy green body armor he wore under his clothing, which had just spared his life.
He felt as though he had been kicked in the solar plexus by a Clydesdale, then run over by a semi, then dragged. His vision was aswim and he was unable to sit up yet. But he’d managed a lock on her beautiful neck, and he’d die before he’d let go.
She clawed his face open with lacquered nails, white foam actually accreting at the corners of her mouth. This was her real face, the face nobody ever saw, the visage beneath the human mask, her cunning mimic of human behavior.
She tried to roundhouse him in the balls, something the body armor was not specifically designed to prohibit. He lunged. They rolled. She went for an eye gouge and he feinted, feeling his ear tear halfway off. Then she spotted his .40 on the floor — much closer than where her Bulldog had fallen — and made a wide, swinging grab for it in spite of his chokehold. Barney’s face went right into the valley of her perfect breasts. Her porcelain skin was trying to push its scent right into his brain.
So he bit her.
It was a grotesque parody of sex: her bucking and gasping as though she was coming her brains out, skirt hiked up past her waist, knees straddling him; him red-faced and straining, thrusting against her, his face buried in her cleavage. Barney’s teeth clamped down on soft tissue and tore free a wet, crimson mouthful which he spat out. She did not scream. She was not a screamer. The sound that burst from her was closer to a growl.
Barney’s insides felt like broken fruit. Within his chest, gears ground — something was busted in there. The rounds from the Bulldog were no joke, capable of whisking away an arm or leg at close range, and Barney had been caught at less than ten feet. Worse, Erica had manipulated the gun as though she knew what she was doing, not losing her sight picture to the recoil of the first round and plugging all four on target.
She had collected her gun at the bar and concealed it masterfully, or had it planted in the chair cushions the whole time, and yet had pinballed Barney through her idea of an inquisitor’s confessional. He was reminded of the way cats toy with still-living prey before sundering it to bloody strings and tatters and a hot spill of exposed organs.
Apparently people paid as little attention to gunshots in a ritzy hotel as they did everywhere else. Erica had waxed Tannenhauser with three neat from the Cobra and dealt Barney four from the Bulldog, no silencers. Cops had never truly existed in Barney’s world, and they did not swing in to make everything academic now. Both he and Erica had run out of allies.
They were like an ungainly, multi-limbed alien, spreading one tentacle toward one gun on the floor, then another, flopping about as though in dicey gravity. She did not waste a hand clutching her chest wound and expended her effort on keeping Barney contained as he fought to marshal his own strength.
She swung wildly, trying to punch him in the neck, but he had a crucial few inches of reach on her and her fist fell short. Her tongue was out as she labored to breathe. Unexpectedly he yanked her closer by the throat so he could slam the flat of his other hand into her forehead, right between the eyes. That rocked her badly but she persisted, still full-up with fight. Her shoes had gone flying into a lover’s discard on the floor. One was close enough to snatch up and she tried to bury the five-inch, steel-tipped heel into his fore-brain. It came down like a hammer and skidded off his temple, excavating a fresh furrow and rebounding off his ear wound. Blistering, molten pain; the right side of his head felt afire.
Barney remembered the gear-up at the Pantera Roja, when the couple had been busily (and vocally) humping in the next room. If there were any neighbors up here on the suite floor, through the walls it probably sounded like more people making big sweaty whoopee. It’s what hotels were for: Anonymity behind numbered doors and privacy locks.
So people could kill each other in secret.
Past the green fury in her eyes was a darker taunt: Why don’t you just fuck me and get it over with?
Barney’s grip suddenly went on vacation, as though his battery for hand-strength had just petered out. Blood was leaking in rivulets down his arm, from under the glove. His traitorous hand released her and she sprawled back, gasping.
He rolled and grabbed the fallen Bulldog with his left hand just as she collected his SIG from the floor.
“Whoops.” She said it around a snarl. She pointed the gun at Barney’s head and cycled the trigger through a full double-action pull.
Click, nothing.
The ammo in Barney’s magazine had indeed come from Armand’s dies, but that magazine was in his pocket. Ever since the elevator he had been packing an empty gun. He had known what he was walking into, and had expected to be disarmed on arrival. For the first time, he had not relied upon his own weapon but counted on opportunities in the room as they would reveal themselves — something he had learned in Mexico. He had begun thinking like her, prepared to morph the plan in unexpected ways, since moving in expected ways was what had gotten Sirius and Armand killed.