And D’Annunzio looked into those eyes of hers. Blue and tearful, wide and deep. He smiled a little.
Then, as Special Agent Calvin stared, D’Annunzio knelt down next to McIlvaine, his gun in his big paw.
This kneeling down thing: it wasn’t easy. He had to tug his pants up on his stubby legs. He had to lower himself carefully. He breathed hard with the effort. But finally, he was kneeling on the floor in front of McIlvaine. McIlvaine kept gaping at him, gaping at his revolver.
D’Annunzio pressed the barrel of the piece against McIlvaine’s left knee.
“You have the right to scream in unbearable agony,” he said. “And then writhe around the floor and whimper.”
He pulled back the gun’s hammer.
“Two twenty-two Houses Street,” McIlvaine said. He spoke in a dull voice that seemed to rise up, echoing, from the bottom of him. “Two twenty-two Houses.”
It was now five minutes before midnight.
Maxwell
At just that moment, the little girl finally woke up. Maxwell sat in the canvas chair and watched her.
First, her eyelids lifted, but her eyes were white. She made snorting noises. Her body stiffened again. Maxwell licked his lips. He leaned forward in the chair, waiting to see what would happen.
Finally, though, the child’s eyelids had fluttered closed, then open. Her blue eyes had reappeared, staring out at nothing.
Maxwell smiled.
He shifted in his chair, braced himself to stand up. But in a moment, the little girl went under again. Her eyes rolled up again so that only the whites showed. Her eyelids fluttered down over them.
Maxwell lowered himself into his chair and waited. He had his hands still braced on the chair arms. He had to work to swallow. His throat was tight with the suspense.
The child opened her eyes. She stared at nothing. This time, Maxwell waited. A minute. Maybe two. A long time, it seemed to him. The girl’s eyes shifted. She stared at Maxwell. She stared at him but she didn’t move or react. She seemed, Maxwell thought, to be looking right through him.
So Maxwell waited. Just to make sure. Just to give her a chance to come all the way around. The man and the girl stared at each other across the gloomy little room. The air was thick around them and smelled of dust.
The little girl took a deep breath through her nose. Then another. She did not close her eyes. She lay on the mattress and stared at him dully. After another minute or so, Maxwell nodded to himself. She was definitely awake now. He stood up.
Uh-oh, she didn’t like that, he thought.
The moment he stood up, she just went crazy. Thrashing around on the mattress. Kicking her little legs at him. Backing away, up against the wall, making muffled noises under the tape: Uh, uh, uh.
Maxwell was startled at first—just by the suddenness of it. But then it was good. His penis stirred again and hardened. He began lumbering toward her.
The girl cried out again behind her gag. She kicked her naked legs. Her nightgown rode up around her thighs. Maxwell could see her thing, her crack. It made his breath rasp in his throat. He touched his cock through his pants.
He lowered himself to the mattress. He sat next to the girl. Tears were pouring down her cheeks. Her round baby cheeks.
Maxwell reached out and grabbed one of her kicking legs. He wrapped his hand around her soft calf. He felt the warmth of it. He dragged her toward him.
“Mmp, nmp … ,” the child said behind the tape. Her chest heaved. The tears kept streaming down her cheeks.
Holding on to her leg with one hand, Maxwell took hold of the tape on her mouth with the other.
“It’s all right,” he cooed to her in his dull voice. “It’s all right.”
With one quick motion, he tore the tape off her mouth. The girl sucked in the air greedily. She coughed. She twisted away from Maxwell on the bed and made harsh retching noises.
His fingers massaged her calf as he watched her. His eyes were bright.
After a moment, the girl’s retching subsided. She turned and looked up at Maxwell. She was crying hard now. A sickly red had risen to her cheeks under the black bruises. She kept shaking her head—no—her sandy hair whipping back and forth. Her whole body shivered with crying. Maxwell watched her shivering with his bright eyes.
“Please … ?” the girl managed to whisper.
Maxwell let out a low moan. He released her leg. He touched his cock with one hand. He reached out and put his other hand around the girl’s throat. He felt her pulse. It seemed to beat right into his hand, right up his arm, right into his own heart. He sucked in a breath.
The window behind him shattered.
Maxwell swung around where he sat. A voice went off in his head like a siren.
Police. Police. They’re going to jail I shouldn’t have don’t wanna police jail …
The window burst in at him in a sparkling spray. The body of a man came hurtling through it. The glass, the man, seemed to explode into the room and then hang there a second before Max’s terrified eyes.
Then the glass rained down upon the floor. And the man fell.
He fell with a thud. He lay on the floor. He did not move. His shirt was covered with blood. Glass sparkled on it. It glittered in his thin, sandy hair.
Police, po … isn’t prison is it shouldn’t have?
The voice in Maxwell’s head was starting to grow fainter. It was starting to subside.
Slowly, painfully, the man on the floor shifted. He was just a little man, Maxwell saw now. He glanced up at the window. There was no one else there with him. It was just him, just this little man.
The little man raised his head off the floor and looked at Maxwell.
Wait a minute, that’s, it’s that, what’s his, that guy, the guy … He heard a noise behind him. He turned and looked at the little girl.
She had rolled onto her side. She was looking at the man on the floor. She was gazing at him dreamily. Her lips were parted. Tears kept streaming down her cheeks, but she was no longer sobbing. She licked her lips. She shook her head as if she could not believe what she was seeing.
And then, as Maxwell watched, she smiled weakly.
“Daddy?” she whispered.
Maxwell turned around again. He looked down at the little man lying on the floor. The little man was staring up at him. His legs and hands were moving around in the broken glass. He looked like a baby trying to crawl.
Maxwell laughed heavily at that, his shoulders moving up and down.
Then he began to stand.
Midnight
Oh, God, thought Conrad, it’s standing up.
Frantically, he moved his hands through the litter of glass around him.
Broomstick …
He had lost his weapon, his broom handle, in the fall. He moved his hands back and forth, looking for it. He peered up through the spangles and blotches that burst and played upon his vision. This thing, this creature, was rising off the mattress like a pillar of smoke: up and up, the shadow of him climbing the wall.
“Shit,” Conrad whispered.
Forget the broom handle.
He had to get up.
Get up now!
His leg burned with pain as he bent it toward him, as he tried to rise onto his hands and knees.
Oh, Christ, he thought wildly, after this, no more windows.
Letting out a groan, he got his knees under him. He pushed up off his hands.
“Daddy!”
At his daughter’s hoarse cry, he raised his eyes again. The thing was towering over him, the black pillar of him blotting out the dim light. It stepped toward him.
Conrad got his left foot on the ground, pushed off his knee. He started to wobble upright.
And then the creature grabbed him around the throat.
Conrad had not seen the body of Billy Price. He had not seen the way Price’s neck had been flattened as if in a steam press. If he had, maybe he wouldn’t have been shocked by the inhuman, the machinelike, pressure that began to
strangle him. A black suffocating cowl dropped over him with such suddenness that his limbs were going slack, his bowels loosening even before he fully understood what had happened.
“Daddy Daddydaddy Daddydaddy …”
Jessica’s hysterical shriek pierced his brain like a dagger—but only for a moment. Then it seemed to fade into a vast silence that was bleeding in toward him from the edges of the room. Everything seemed to be fading into that silence, into the darkness that crept in with it. Everything—except the weirdly small, blocky face of the animal that had him. That face—it filled Conrad’s vision as Maxwell lifted him off the ground, as Conrad’s legs dangled and kicked in the empty air. There was nothing but silence and darkness gathering in on him—and that face, bright at the center of the closing aperture: that face with its thick, dreamy smile, its heavy brow, its deep bright eyes …
… bright eyes …
Conrad lifted one of his rubbery arms. It jerked up into the air like the arm of a marionette. He struck out at one of those eyes with it. Two of his fingers found the mark.
“Ow!” said Maxwell.
His hand opened. Conrad spilled out of it to the floor.
The psychiatrist tried to stay on his feet. But he couldn’t find his feet. His feet, the floor, the world—he couldn’t find any of it. That silence, that darkness still closed in on him as he wobbled there. Then a single sound crashed in to him.
“Daddydaddydaddynonononono …”
Jessie … ? Baby … ? Baby … ?
He saw her there, bound on the mattress. He saw her in the glare of the bare bulb in the corner. He saw her through the red clouds drifting and exploding. And then she was gone.
She was blotted out. Everything before him was blotted out as this giant man, this creature, lumbered in front of him again.
Maxwell was holding his eye in one hand. He was frowning severely with his thick lips.
“That hurt,” he said. And he struck Conrad down.
It was a single wild blow, thrown out in rage. Maxwell’s anvil-heavy hand slammed into Conrad’s face full force. Conrad’s head snapped back. He went flying backwards, his arms pinwheeling in the air.
“Daddydaddy … Ohnoohnodon’thurtmydaddy …”
Conrad heard his daughter’s scream become a wild, inarticulate wail. Then he slammed into the wall. The air rushed out of him. Something swelled up inside his head: he felt the thing would burst out through his eyes.
“Daddyhelpmydaddydaddypleasepleaseplease …”
Jess …
There was a roar. An animal’s roar. As Conrad, stupefied by the blow, looked on, Maxwell stamped across the room at him. The hulking beast moved with uncanny quickness. Before Conrad could even push himself upright, before he could clear his head, it was on him.
“Fucker!” Maxwell shouted.
He clubbed Conrad with his fists. Swung them like mallets from either side. The first blow knocked Conrad over. Before he could tumble to the ground the second caught him in the face. He felt his jaw crack. He felt his nose burst. He tasted a gush of thick blood. The fists hammered down on top of him as he crumpled to the floor.
“Aaaaaaaah …” The five-year-old girl kept screaming wordlessly from the mattress. Again, the scream faded from Conrad’s consciousness. Consciousness itself began to fade. Vaguely, through fog, through a dream of fog, he saw the massive figure of the beast lumbering away from him.
Jessica kept shrieking.
Baby … , Conrad thought weakly.
“Shut the fuck up!” Maxwell roared.
And he stomped across the room to get her.
Stairs
D’Annunzio grabbed McIlvaine by the lapels. He dragged him off the floor to his feet. McIlvaine’s legs were rubbery under him. D’Annunzio held him upright. He jutted his leathery face close to the prisoner’s.
“There are rooms on Rikers Island that no lawyer’s ever seen,” he growled into McIlvaine’s eyes. “I’ve seen them. I’ll see you in them if you lie to me now.”
“Two twenty-two Houses,” McIlvaine repeated quickly. “I swear. The second floor. He’s gonna kill her. He’s crazy. He’s gonna kill her.”
“Oh, God,” Aggie Conrad cried out.
D’Annunzio looked at Special Agent Calvin. “Let’s go,” he said.
The fat detective burst into the living room shouting.
“We need units at two twenty-two Houses Street in Tribeca. Tell ’em to use caution, we got a possible hostage situation on the second floor and the bad guy’s armed and dangerous.” He glanced at a patrolman as he went past. He pointed back at the bedroom. “Bring the skell so I can blow his nuts off if he lied.”
“Right,” the patrolman said.
Yes, thought D’Annunzio. Yes. He felt good. Like a train. Like a steamroller. Going to get the man. Yessir. He could feel Aggie Conrad behind him. He could feel her tagging after him like a lost puppy.
He glanced back, and sure enough, there she was. Rushing along behind him, her tits bouncing under that sweatshirt. This was great.
“You can come with me,” he said.
She nodded and kept following.
D’Annunzio marched down the hallway swiftly, his head erect, his belly out before him. He huffed and wheezed in time to his step. Behind him came a small parade of people. Aggie Conrad followed him. Elizabeth Burrows followed her. Special Agent Calvin was trying to catch up with all of them. And the patrolman, doing his best to tag up, was dragging Lewis McIlvaine along.
D’Annunzio marched in the lead proudly. He was panting as hard as if he were tugging the others on a rope.
He reached the elevators. Both doors were closed. The police had commandeered one of them but some tech had just taken it downstairs. D’Annunzio stopped. He cursed. He was about to reach out and push the call button.
But he felt Mrs. Conrad’s eyes on him. He cleared his throat.
“Okay,” he barked breathlessly. “We’ll have to take the stairs.”
Jesus Christ, he thought.
And he led the way to the stairway door.
The Broom Handle
“Daddydaddydaddydaddyaaaaaaaaah …” That long, mindless wail broke into Conrad’s darkness.
… baby … ?
The wail seemed to go on and on endlessly, breathlessly. Conrad could not tell whether it was coming from the outside world or from somewhere inside him. He pushed himself off the floor. He peered through a dim, shifting corridor of vision.
… baby …
He saw the hulking bear of a man starting to kneel down on the floor beside his daughter. He saw his daughter …
Oh … oh … oh … my baby …
The child was backed up against the wall, frozen against the wall. Her face was scarlet. Her mouth was wide open as she bawled and bawled …
Conrad blinked away the red clouds and black fog for a moment. And in that moment, he saw the broom handle.
It was lying on the floor. The thin, dark shape of it. It was lying amid a sparkling pile of glass. It was not far from him. He could get there, he could reach it.
“Shut up! Shut the fuck up!” he heard Maxwell shout.
Conrad began to drag himself across the floor.
He pulled himself with his hands. He tried to push with his legs too. The electric pain in his knee shot up his thigh, into his crotch, into his balls. The pain jolted him awake, and as he came around, he became aware again of his broken jaw, the searing agony: it ballooned inside his head. His head felt as if it were all one raw and open nerve. He was aware suddenly of blood spilling from his open mouth, running down his chin. Of glass cutting into his belly. Of the wound in his side opening again, bleeding again. He dragged himself forward. And he reached out …
And he had it. His hand closed around the raw, splintery wood.
Have to get up … have to …
“Come here!” Maxwell was shouting angrily. He snatched at Jessica’s leg. He grabbed hold of her ankle. He dragged her toward him.
“Pleeeeeeas
e,” she howled.
Conrad got up.
In a single excruciating motion, he pushed to one knee and launched himself. He stumbled toward Maxwell, the broom handle gripped in his hand.
Maxwell was only half turned away. He caught Conrad’s movement in the corner of his eye. He let Jessica go and spun around. He rocketed to his feet … Christ, it was like a demon shooting up out of the earth. Before Conrad could reach him, the whole massive weight of the man was driving into him full force. The broom handle flew out of Conrad’s hands. It clattered to the floor in the far corner. Conrad himself was flung backwards, knocked down hard. He hit the floor like deadweight. And then Maxwell was on top of him, Maxwell was pounding at him, his daughter’s wild cries were surrounding him, filling him, there was nothing but those cries and Maxwell’s animal roar and Maxwell’s fists …
Conrad was hit in the belly. He doubled over, vomit spurting up into his mouth, mixing with the hot blood. Another fist drove into his balls. He curled up on his side. Another blow struck him in the face and then another. He was driven onto his back. He lay there, spread-eagle, limp.
Jessica wailed and wailed without ceasing.
Maxwell roared. He stood up, one fist pounding wildly at the air, the other pounding heavily against his chest. His mouth was contorted with rage, his lips white with froth. His eyes were rolling crazily. He roared and roared over the sound of Jessica’s wailing.
“Fucker!” he roared. “Motherfucker!”
He kicked Conrad hard in the side. The doctor’s body lifted a little, slid a little across the room. But Conrad didn’t feel the blow. He did not hear the roaring. He lay on his back in a warm blackness, a deep nothing.
“Shut up. Bitch!” Maxwell screamed. He started for the child again.
“No! Please! Mommy! Mommy! Mommy! Pleeeease!” Jessica shrieked.
Conrad lay still on his back, his arms out, his legs spread.
“Pleeeeease …”
… baby …
Ho Sung’s Chow Mein Palace
By the time D’Annunzio reached his old Pontiac, he was gasping for breath. He coughed deeply and thick phlegm rose up in his throat. Aggie Conrad and Elizabeth Burrows were still behind him. The others—Calvin, the patrolman with McIlvaine—had tailed off. They had gotten into other cars, their own cars, to head to the scene.