“It wasn’t easy.” A fanny pack was fastened around her hips, and as she took another step closer to him — the motion as smooth and lithe as a panther’s — it rose a little, then fell.
Keronda’s mouth had turned instantly dry. What was it about this woman — this girl with the ridiculous piercing — that aroused such fear in him? She couldn’t have been taller than five foot three, while he weighed at least twice what she did. And yet he was panicked. It was something about the coldness of those blue eyes — that, and the sly, cruel smile. He’d noticed these things the first time they’d met — and the memory had stayed with him ever since.
“You left the dealership,” she said.
“I had to,” he said. “I had to!”
“You were paid to stay. Instead you left the gate ajar, the office unlocked — and a lot of blood on your worktable. Now the police are interested.”
“He hurt me. He threatened me.” He held up his injured hand beseechingly.
“You were well paid to let him hurt you, let him threaten you — and then stick to the script we gave you.”
Keronda was babbling now, almost crying. “And I did. I stuck to it! I told him what you wanted. Exactly as you said. I gave him the Land Cruiser. I made sure he took it.”
“Then why did you run like a scared rabbit?”
Again he held up the bandaged hand. “Look what he did to me!”
As her blue eyes wandered over the bloody dressing, her smile deepened. “Quite the stigmata. But that still doesn’t explain why you deviated from the plan. The plan you were paid a lot of money to keep to exactly.” She stopped, as if to let the lesson sink in. “What did we tell you? Clean up any mess. Get treatment. Stay on the job. Business as usual. But what did you do instead? Leave a mess and run.”
“Look what he did to me!” Keronda repeated, both hands up now.
“What do you think we’re going to do?” was the silky response.
When there was no answer but a whimper, the girl shook her head sadly. “We promised you he wouldn’t be back for at least a week, maybe never. You should have listened.”
“I—” he began, then stopped. With a movement that seemed casual, almost desultory, and yet was terrifying in its speed, the girl reached into her fanny pack and drew out a knife. It was like no knife Keronda had seen before: a multi-barbed blade, like four curved arrowheads in series, with a narrow, neon-green handle.
Seeing his terrified gaze on the weapon, her smile widened further. “Like the knife?” she asked. “It’s called a Zombie Killer. I like it, too — especially the barbs. It’s like the dick of a tomcat — hurts more coming out than going in. So they say.”
“Dick?” Keronda repeated uncomprehendingly.
“Never mind.” Then — with an even swifter movement — her hand darted forward and plunged the knife between his ribs. The blade was so sharp he barely felt the thrust but, looking down, he saw that it was buried to the hilt.
“I’m pretty good at anatomy,” she said. “Almost as good as I am with a blade.” She nodded at the handle. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s just severed your phrenic artery. Not one of the major arteries — but you’re still going to bleed out in five minutes, give or take.”
She paused, surveying her handiwork. “Of course, you could always pull out the blade, put pressure on the wound — good luck with that — and call for an ambulance. If you did that right away, like this instant, I’d give you a fifty — fifty chance of pulling through. But I don’t think you will. As I said: hurts more coming out than going in.”
Keronda’s only response was to sink back into his chair.
The girl nodded. “I thought so. Another nice thing about the Zombie Killer — it’s cheap. You can leave one behind without regrets.” She zipped up the fanny pack, tugged fastidiously at her gloves. “No parting words? In that case: have a nice day.” And with that she turned on her heel and strode out of the apartment, leaving the front door wide.
26
Diogenes Pendergast waited in a small, straight-backed chair in the little room at the top of the steps spiraling down to the sub-basement of 891 Riverside Drive. The door to the staircase stood open. He had set a taper into a wall sconce, and it threw a flickering, friendly light over the old stonework. At least, he hoped it was friendly; he knew very little about such things.
He had been careful not to place his chair directly before the doorway. He did not want to appear Cerberus-like: a threatening figure guarding the downward portal. He had worked hard to make sure everything about himself had been as friendly and unthreatening as possible. He was dressed simply in black wool pants and a black-and-gray tweed jacket… or so they appeared to him. He did not like tweed — it was itchy and unrefined — but it radiated sincerity, hominess, and affability.
Or at least — once again — he hoped it did.
These fragments I have shored against my ruins…
With an effort, he pushed this voice — a voice of the old Diogenes, which now and then came bubbling up unexpectedly, like methane in a tar pit — back down from whence it came. That was then; this was now. He was a changed man, a reformed man — and yet the Old Voice still returned in moments of extreme agitation, as now… or when, for whatever reason, his blood was roused…
He tried to focus on the tweed.
He had prided himself on his sophistication and worldliness for too long, despising the opinion of others. The only time he ever considered how others might view him was when he was engaged in social engineering. Or when, out of boredom or irritation, he deceived, punked, or trolled others for his private amusement. He was finding it difficult to show Constance the sense of vulnerability and affection that he genuinely felt for her. He was like a man who, having taken a vow of silence for half his life, suddenly tried to lift up his voice in song.
He adjusted his position in the chair. He’d had to drag it out of storage from one of the basement vaults, and its ancient silk-and-velvet cushions had been heavy with dust. As the creak of the chair subsided, he listened once again, his senses ready to capture the faintest sound, the least variation in air pressure, that would indicate her approach up the staircase that corkscrewed down into the sub-basement.
He glanced at his watch: quarter past ten in the morning. He had said good-bye to Constance a few minutes before midnight. He had been sitting here, waiting, for her — and for her response — ever since.
The degree of planning and money and time necessary to bring last evening’s meeting to fruition — a meeting in which he could bare his soul, without fear of interruption — had been tremendous. But it would all be worthwhile — if only she said yes.
At another time, in another life, he could have found amusement in how well he’d pulled it all off. The handling of Proctor, for example, had been perfect: right down to Gander airfield, where he’d arranged things so that the devoted bodyguard would land just in time to see him force “Constance”—actually a disguised Flavia — into a waiting jet. Proctor had, of course, raced off to Ireland in pursuit… while he himself had immediately exited the Bombardier, boarded a different plane, and returned to New York. He’d been back in the city before seven o’clock, barely six hours after leaving it in the Navigator. Sending that alert, clever man on a wild goose chase to the ends of the earth had been a brilliant piece of work.
The refrigerated coffin had also, he felt, been an inspired touch. Proctor would not know what it meant — not that, in reality, it meant anything — but it would surely have put his imagination to work… and inspired him to the most extreme of measures.