DaBlonde got up. “Go take your shower.”
“Yeah, sure.” Tacko rolled out of bed and started collecting his clothes from the floor (shirt, briefs, jeans, one sock, Clarks boots, second sock) while DaBlonde fingered apart two thin blinds and looked out the window. That side of the condo faced a gutted brass foundry covered by construction company signage.
“It’s still raining,” she commented. “Listen to that.”
“It’s supposed to stay like this till midnight,” said Tacko, just to say something.
He picked up the Amboys’ framed wedding picture. They were both laughing with their toothy mouths open. He set it down and thought he might not shower after all, just get dressed and go home. But since he was already standing naked at the bathroom doorway, he went in and turned on the faucet in the tub. This was so weird. The whole thing. Being here. Taking a shower now. Using their shampoo, their liquid soap, their scrubby.
As soon as he turns off the water, Tacko hears voices raised in an argument. The Amboys quarreling? But no, the man’s voice isn’t Louis’s. Tacko can’t make out what he and DaBlonde — it’s definitely DaBlonde’s voice — are hollering about. Then he hears the guy shout either “disgusting” or “disgust me” and feels a spurt of jangling dread. He starts to put his clothes back on without drying himself.
That’s a shot. Fuck.
Somebody just fired a gun, out there. Beyond the bathroom door, beyond the bedroom, out there in the loft.
And that’s a second shot.
He’s fully dressed now, but paralyzed, unable to decide whether to move — to investigate, to implicate himself — or to stay put.
He opens the door a crack and Louis Amboy’s hysterical voice carries in.
“Scott, please. Scott, please. Please, Scott.”
He makes cheap furniture. And empty threats.
“Scott, please, for God’s sake!”
Why isn’t DaBlonde saying anything?
It’s still raining hard and downstairs the band is still playing. Tacko quietly closes the door and locks it.
Three more shots in a burst. Silence, and then another shot. Then silence.
The first slap against the bathroom door is percussive enough to shake it; the second is the merest scratching tap.
Now a spot of dark red glistens in the narrow gap between the bottom of the door and the saddle. The spot widens, liquefies — blood. In its flow, carried along, comes an inch-and-a-half-wide sodden strip of black silk.
A tie end from DaBlonde’s Chinese robe.
Straddling the pool of blood, one foot planted on either side, Tacko unlocks the door, eases it toward him, and her huddled body insistently pushes it open the rest of the way. He glances down for only a moment, but long enough to register DaBlonde’s fixed eyes. His head goes groggy, and he wills it clear, staring through the bedroom and out into the living area, seeing part of the black-and-white sectional and a row of blue screen monitors on a molded glass table.
The only sound now is the rain lashing at the building, the windows, the roof. The band has finally taken a break.
Now Tacko is standing at the bedroom door, now he’s creeping out into the loft, and now crouching beside Louis Amboy sprawled on the floor, a bullet hole at the base of his skull. Blood runs down the back of his neck into his collar. Tacko’s mind fills with strobing light and he bolts for the front door.
“Hey!”
It’s a young guy, thirtyish, full head of brown hair, filthy tan barn jacket, short barrel revolver clutched in a fist streaked with mahogany wood stain. He steps out of the kitchen, or glides from behind a bank of computer monitors (sound on, DaBlonde groaning), or just leans forward in a flexible mesh chair, and says, “You’re disgusting.” Or maybe, “You disgust me.” And squeezes the trigger. A hundred times, like it’s a fucking machine gun.
“Hey! Tacko!” DaBlonde: tapping on the shower glass. “You want to leave me some hot water?” She pulled open the door, shed her robe, and stepped into the spray, smiling as she nudged Tacko from under it. “Can I have the shampoo?” He plucked it from the caddy, Elizabeth Arden, and handed it to her. “You can stay. We can share.”
But he was already out. “No,” he said, “I’m done.”
Louis Amboy was conveying a French press and three ceramic mugs on a service tray from the kitchen to the coffee table when Tacko came out of the bedroom fully dressed and grabbed his leather coat from the sectional.
“You’re not leaving, I hope.”
“I should.”
Louis carefully set down the tray. He cocked his head. “Well, if you have to.”
“This was fantastic.”
“Tell me something, Mr. Tacko. Would you be interested in making it a regular thing?”
“Sure. I guess. I don’t know.”
“Ah,” said Louis, seeming abashed. “Can I loan you an umbrella?”
“No, that’s okay.”
“Well then. Good night.”
“You too.” Tacko would’ve had to walk all the way around the mammoth sofa to shake hands, so he just waved to Louis. But it wasn’t like he wouldn’t shake hands. It wasn’t like that. Even so, riding the elevator down, he felt like a real shit, then had an abrupt impulse to push the button again and go on back up, saying he’d changed his mind, he’d wait out the rain and have that cup of coffee now, if they didn’t mind. Because you can do anything you want and nobody can stop you — wasn’t it true?
He’d have to think about that some more.
“Vincent!”
Tacko flinched. He’d flipped up his collar, hunched a little, and stepped outside into the gusting rain, but hadn’t gone three steps across the sidewalk before someone hailed him. Shit.
It was Dave Sandlin, a VP at the Eury Agency, wearing a tux and smoking a cigarette in a doorway not ten feet down the block from the Amboys’ street entrance. Tacko felt he had to go over. Had to? Had to.
“How you doin’, boy? Haven’t seen much of you lately.” Sandlin transferred his cigarette to his left hand and they shook. “Keeping busy?”
“Not really.” Tacko glanced past Sandlin into the gallery, saw the musicians picking up their instruments again, the drummer sliding behind his kit, an all-white, dressed-up crowd drinking and talking, and large abstract paintings, black the dominant color, hanging on the walls. “Just enjoying life.”
“Fuck’s that mean?” Sandlin laughed but looked skeptical. “I thought I’d hear back from you.”
Tacko, who’d been standing in the rain like an idiot, finally stepped under the overhang. “I’ve had a few personal projects I’ve been taking care of.”
“Yeah, well, you don’t want to stay out of sight too long, Vinnie. People forget you. Look.” Sandlin tossed away his cigarette and pulled out his wallet, extracted an embossed card. “Give me your hand.”
“What?”
“Put out your hand.” He placed the card in Tacko’s right palm, then tapped it. “Fax me your damn resume. What’s today, Friday? I want it on Monday. All right? Okay?”
Looking at the card, looking at Sandlin, looking at the people, many of whom he recognized, dancing now in the gallery, Tacko felt disgusted. You disgust me. You’re disgusting. “Thanks,” he said. “Monday. Promise.” Pocketing Sandlin’s card, he put out his hand again. “Well, let me run.”
“What the hell’re you doing down here anyway?”
“Visiting friends.”
“Fax me.”
Tacko dashed across Decatur Street and walked along the chain-link fence to the parking lot entrance. When he’d arrived there were only about a dozen vehicles, now there must have been close to a hundred, most of them Beemers, Lexuses, and SUVs, and he couldn’t immediately remember where he’d left his. Rain drilled on a diagonal through the vapor lights. As he peered up and down the lanes, then jogged to a red Cooper he thought was his but wasn’t, Tacko noticed a man sitting in a parked Saturn that was at least ten years old and badly dinged. The interior dome light was on. The man was rummaging through a leather satchel on his lap, but glanced up at Tacko. He looked about twenty-five, had stringy long dark hair and a soul patch. Tacko nodded. The man did not.