—No need to say anything further, Mrs. Vandewater. When you are right, you are right. And I can complete the thought for you. There is, indeed, no room for any lack of discipline in this life of ours.
The floorboards vibrate as a body thrashes against them. Thick fluid leaks onto wood.
—And you are, as ever, correct in most things. You were correct in thinking that you would soon be released from any obligation of answering to my authority.
Metal scraping on bone, sawing.
—But giving myself some credit, you were off by several months in your estimation of how soon your release might come.
And a sound not often heard in the natural course of things, but one I’ve had opportunities to hear on more than one occasion: the soft but solid thump of a human head being dropped to the floor.
—My only regret being that I cannot ask you how the view of the path appears from where you are now.
Footsteps striding down the room toward me, stopping.
I open my eye and look up as a lean, dark shadow leans over me. It kneels, whisking a handkerchief from its breast pocket and using it to ream the caul of blood from my eye.
—Open your eye, Pitt, I have a job for you.
I blink as he comes into focus: smooth-faced, a fall of glossy brown hair across his forehead, a painfully flawless bespoke suit splashed generously with blood.
—Hey, Mr. Predo.
I rest my head on the floor and sight down the room at the beheaded corpse lying in a spreading red pool.
—If it’s her old job, I think I’ll pass.
He’s not going to kill me.
It’s not that fact of him telling me he’s not going to kill me that assures me I’ve got some time to breathe. Predo could look me in the eye and tell me whiskey’s good and cigarettes are better and I’d still need a drink and a Lucky to believe he’s not lying. The man breeds lies. He spawns them asexually, with no need for any assistance. He exhales and lies fill the air. Alone in a room, he mutters lies to himself to keep from falling into the trap of truth-telling. In the day, sleeping in his bed, deep in the safest heart of Coalition headquarters, he dreams in lies. The better to keep his left hand from knowing what betrayals his right has planned.
Stretched on the rack and burned with hot irons, Dexter Predo will be in no danger of revealing the truth. Living so far beyond its borders.
—I’m not going to kill you.
Said as we watch two of his own burly enforcers, black rubber aprons, galoshes and gloves protecting their suits, while they bag Mrs. Vandewater’s remains and mop her blood from the floor of the rotting ballroom around us.
I finish the big bag of blood Mrs. Vandewater had taken from Lament’s fridge, and that Predo has given to me to speed the Vyrus through my wounds.
—I can’t make the same promise, Mr. Predo.
I toss the empty bag into the bucket containing Mrs. Vandewater’s head.
He finishes wiping the last of the blood from his hands and neck and drops the towel in a bag held open by one of his men.
—No, Pitt, nor would I expect you to. But seeing as you spent this evening being waylaid by teenage delinquents, and having your anatomy masticated by the crippled and the aged, you will understand my lack of alarm as regards your threat.
I feel my pockets for a smoke.
—Yeah, fuck you too.
He looks down at his blood-ruined suit.
—Would you excuse me for a moment, Pitt.
He starts for the door, the question not actually being a question.
I settle in my chair, feeling the drug dealer’s blood slide deeper into my wounded guts, burning cold as the Vyrus colonizes it and recoups strength.
—Take your time.
I raise a hand.
—Hey, don’t suppose you’ve started smoking since the last time I saw you?
The door closes, leaving me with the two button-lipped enforcers, the squeak of their rubber boots and the swish of their rags in the bloody mess.
Naw, he’s not gonna kill me. He was gonna kill me, he wouldn’t have given me the blood to put me right and get me on my feet. Not that he and his boys couldn’t still gang me and take me down, but blooded up like this I’d be sure to make it hurt. Not like Predo to make a job harder than it has to be. He was gonna kill me, he would have done it while I was wrapped in barbwire and leaking all over the fucking place. Or at least he would have left me that way till it got to be daylight so they could pitch me easily out of doors and watch me blight in the sun.
The last of old Mrs. Vandewater goes into the bags and bucket and the enforcers take a look around for anything they might have missed before hauling the remains away.
Of course, figured another way, it would be just like Predo to fill me with blood and get me back to something like health and wellness. Figure he might play it that way if he wanted to keep me kicking while these cleaning laddies found what few bits I have left to hack off. But figure he’d only bother with that kind of production if he had questions to ask me.
The door opens and Predo comes back in, a suit, all but identical to the one he was wearing before, cinched into place on his narrow frame. Really, it is identical, just without an old lady’s blood all over it.
He waits at the open door as the enforcers exit, closes it behind them, comes to the circle of light cast by the bright floor lamp set next to the desk and two chairs here in the middle of the ballroom, and settles into the chair on the boss side of the desk.
—So, Pitt.
He makes a slight adjustment to his silver tie bar.
—Let me ask you a few questions.
I wait for the arms to encircle me from behind, for the garrote to drop around my throat, the gun to be placed at my temple.
And when none of the above occurs, I let the knife Predo used to kill Vandewater slide from the sleeve where I’d tucked it after the enforcers clipped me from the barbwire and dragged me across the floor past where it had been dropped, and I throw it sharp and hard and straight and it wings past Predo by a good two feet and thunks into the wall outside the light.
He raises an eyebrow, turns, looks off at the gleam of the blade in darkness, and turns back to me.
—You’ll find it, I believe, Pitt, somewhat of an adjustment now that your vision is no longer triangulated.
I scratch the side of my neck.
—Well, if you’ll just sit there while I go fetch the blade, Mr. Predo, I’m pretty sure I can do better the second time around.
Just because he’s not going to kill me right now doesn’t mean he doesn’t want me dead.
He wants me dead.
I’m not saying my name is at the top of his list, but it is in the upper ten percent. Yeah, he’s the kind of guy who keeps a list. That comes with running the Coalition’s security arm. An organization like that, they just love lists.
List of friends. List of enemies. List of subversives. List of agents. List of counteragents. List of those at the top. List of those at the bottom. List of people they can kill with impunity. List of people they need to take a little care with before they kill. List of those on the inside. List of those on the outside.
Being inside the coalition means buying the line. The line is secrecy. The line is we don’t exist. The line is the people out there who don’t know about the Vyrus, they should never know about the Vyrus because if they know about the Vyrus they’ll build camps and open labs and start rewriting all kinds of laws and redefining what it means to be created equal.
Frankly, I think they got it pretty much right.
It’s not the line I disagree with so much. It’s that they got no room for anyone who does disagree with the line. Disagree with the line and you’re on that outside list. That list, it’s pretty much identical to the People to Kill as Soon as Possible List.
So while it’s an interesting turn of events to be in Predo’s presence without someone nearby stirring a pot of molten lead to be poured in my nostrils, I know the ultimate outcome to a scenar
io like this likely allows him to scratch my name off that list when all is said and done.
He opens a drawer and takes out a slim automatic with polished wood grips. One of those guns that looks designed by the same kind of people who dream up the hardwood and leather interiors of luxury sedans with obscure Italian names.
He sets it on the desk.
—In hopes I might make you a bit more attentive, Pitt.
I look at the floor around my chair.
Predo edges up a bit to peek over the front of his desk.
—Lose something?
I look up.
—No. Just checking to see if your flunkies left any other lethal weapons lying around. Seems I’m out of luck.
I fold my arms.
—Guess I may as well listen to you.
He flips open one of the folders on his desk.
—Gracious as ever. But just so we can be certain you don’t grow bored with what I have to say, why don’t I make it more interesting for you by including some visual aids?
He draws a photograph from the folder and slides it to the edge of the desk.
—Like a picture book. So that you may follow along more easily.
—I prefer a pop-up book.
He rotates the photo so that it faces me.
—I’m certain this will grab your attention.
Light gleams off the glossy finish, hiding the image from me. I scoot my chair forward, the feet grinding on the floor. I take the photo from the desk. I look at it.
I look at Predo.
He nods.
—We can dispense with wit now and speak of things concrete?
I look again at the photo.
A very young woman. Younger than you’d imagine a person has a right to be. And beautiful. The photo is tinted in a manner that hides the color of her hair, but it looks like she’s not dyeing it anymore. The natural color would be a complex shade of blond, much like her mother’s was. She is exiting one of those cars suggested by Predo’s gun, the door held for her by another woman, older, black, muscled in a way that promises the clean and abrupt snapping of a neck. The tint is greenish. The photo taken through a night filter. The only thing missing is a crosshairs painted across the young woman’s face.
I set the photo down.
—Yeah, tell me something concrete.
—She has gone quite out of control.
—Interesting. I never knew she was ever under control. Last I checked that was how I got involved in the first place.
Predo taps the end of a pen against a thumbnail.
—I am not talking about the delinquencies, teenage drinking and underage sex her parents fretted about. Her actions are on a new order of magnitude.
The hole where my eye was is throbbing. I knuckle it.
—Guess the new scale of troublemaking goes hand in hand with becoming filthy fucking rich at a young age.
He drops the pen.
—Do not pretend nonchalance, Pitt. If I was not certain you cared, we would not be having this conversation. Whether you would feel some responsibility for the girl had you not killed her parents, I cannot say. But you did. And I trust your year here among the uncivilized masses has not changed your nature so much that you can shrug off such things. However sentimental.
I look at my bare foot, rub the stump that used to be my big toe, flaking away scab.
—I only killed her mom.
He squints.
—So you’ve claimed before.
He leans back, his chair giving a little squeak.
—A persistent little lie, that.
—I only killed her mom.
—A lie I have some trouble penetrating. Why you should be reluctant to take credit for her father’s death. Repugnant man.
—What can I say, I take credit where it’s due. I only killed her mom.
I look out of the light, into the darkness, back into the light.
—The other thing got her dad.
He picks his pen back up.
—Other thing. Gullible as you are in so many things, I am still somehow disappointed that you embrace that particular bit of superstition.
Nothing else to say. Seeing as I’m not superstitious.
He puts the end of the pen to his chin.
—Another time then.
I peel an especially long and stringy bit of dead skin loose from my foot, look at it and drop it on the floor.
—The girl is out of control?
He grips the pen in both hands, flexes the shaft.
—Yes.
He bends it just to the breaking point, holds it there, relaxes, looks at it as it springs back into shape, and sets it aside.
—Yes. She is out of control.
—In what way?
He aligns the pen with the right-hand edge of the desk.
—She has declared a new Clan.
He shifts the angle of the gun, bringing the length of the barrel true with the top edge of the desk.
—Using her wealth to disseminate word through the community. Bribing otherwise loyal members of the Clans to help spread word of this new “Clan.” She has made it clear that any and all are welcome in her…
He looks through the gloom to the ceiling.
—Her new organization.
He looks back at the desk, tapping the stack of folders flush with one another.
—Uninfected herself, she is enlisting other uninfecteds to carry word off the Island. Daylight travelers. Renfields and Lucys.
He brushes some unseen fleck of matter from the corner of the desk.
—She is, in all these dealings, loud and highly visible. We do not exist within a vacuum. The uninfected world is the medium in which we are forced to live. Vibrations cannot reach us without first traveling through that medium. Yes, those vibrations must be decoded, but that does not mean that others cannot learn the code. She is putting us all at risk. This is not solely a matter of Coalition doctrine being controverted, this is a case in which the concerns of all the Clans are being drawn under fire by the willful hand of a child who is not even of our ilk.
I stop fiddling with my toe and give him a look.
—Of our ilk? Christ, Predo, is that a little racism I hear?
His fist shatters the desktop, pen and papers flying, gun dropping to the floor.
—She is trying to find a cure!
His foot lashes and the desk skitters down the ballroom trailing splinters and kindling.
—A cure!
His fists ball, knuckles whiten.
I point.
—Your tie’s a bit askew there, Mr. Predo.
He closes his eyes and his mouth twists slightly.
His eyes open.
—Word will spread.
I nod.
—Yeah, I know.
He lets a breath drop in, lets it out.
—Infecteds that know no better will flock to her. There will be desertions from the Clans. Refugees from off the Island.
—I know.
He opens his fists, flexing his fingers back, relaxing them.
—Our careful balance will be undone.
—I know.
He shrugs the collar of his jacket back into place.
—And when she fails, there will be chaos and discord.
He runs fingers through his hair, brushing his bangs back into place.
—And finally.
He touches the knot of his tie, pulls it straight.
—We will have war.
He tugs at the French cuffs of his shirt.
—And we will all die.
The throbbing where my eye was comes from the nerves regenerating. I’d be better off if the Vyrus left them dead. Not like they’re gonna have anything to plug in to. Without that eye, they’ll just be raw and disjoined. Something that can cause pain while serving no real purpose.
I look at him.
—You say that like it’s a bad thing.
He waits.
I look at the floor, see the picture. A
manda Horde. Changeling child living somehow in the infected world. Genius. Mad. Not as in angry, but as a hatter. I look at the designer gun that’s come to rest next to the photo. Wonder how many shots I could get off if I got to it before him. Wonder if I could get any of the bullets into his head with my one eye. Figure he did Mrs. Vandewater easy. Figure I’ve felt what it’s like when his fist hits my jaw. Figure he can take me anytime and anyplace. But I look at the gun for a bit longer anyway.
Then I look at him.
—I won’t kill her for you, Predo.
He smiles.
—I don’t want you to kill her, Pitt.
He bends, picks up the photo, looks at it, looks at me.
—I want you to join up.
The Andrew Freedman Home was finished in 1924. Endowed by an eponymous millionaire with ties to Tammany Hall and subway financing. And if that doesn’t suggest something about the nature of his fortune and how dirty his dollars likely were, nothing else will. But pretty much everything you need to know about this guy you can tell by the house. A massive limestone palazzo on the corner of One Sixty-six and the Concourse, he left pretty much all of his fortune in trust for the thing to be built as a home for the elderly.
Exclusively for the elderly who had at one time been rich, but who had lost their fortunes.
Luxurious in the manner of a Gilded Age private club for rail barons, the Home kept the busted rich in a manner to which they had become accustomed.
Good old Andrew Freedman, looking out for the little people.
Whatever, it was his money. Man should spend it how he wants. Especially after he’s dead. Besides, whatever Andy’s wishes may have been at one time, the place ended up a broken-down community center for run-of-the-mill poor old folks.
Proving again that time gives fuckall about who you are or what you want.
I manage to glean this knowledge from a plaque as Predo leads me from the subsiding ballroom on the third floor through several corridors artfully decorated with sagging plaster and rat droppings.
—Dregs.
He points ahead and one of the enforcers flanking us moves to a door and opens it.
—That’s what she’s collecting.
We pass through the door into an echoing stairwell, climbing.
—Rogues. Off-Islanders. The dross clinging to the fringes of the Clans. All those who lack the wherewithal and fortitude to understand that the Vyrus has made us different.