“I need you in mine, too.”
“My father can’t keep us apart forever. But I can’t be with a killer. I can’t do that. If you go—if you kill him—we’re over.”
Silence. She longed to let it stretch out, to force him to respond, but she found that she couldn’t bear the mute emptiness from the other end of the line.
“Remember what I told you before? If you kill him, he wins.”
“And I told you: If I kill him, he’s dead.”
She was openly sobbing now, grief at war with rage, pissed at his stoicism, at his control. They were right at the cliff’s edge. They’d come this far, survived four different madmen to get to this very moment, and he couldn’t back down, couldn’t join her on the solid ground. He should be crying, too. He should be a wreck.
“He wants you to do this.” She sniffled and felt the heat rise within her. The anger. “You’re being stupid and selfish and blind. He wants you to lose yourself by killing him. Or by trying.”
“I know.” His voice was hushed. She imagined his breath at her ear. “I know, Connie. I’ve told myself the same thing over and over. It’s the only thing he wants from me. And I have to give it to him.”
And then he was gone, the connection severed. Connie didn’t even try to call him back.
CHAPTER 18
Jazz needed clothes. Hustling past people on a cold night, he’d been lucky enough that no one noticed his bare ankles under Hughes’s overcoat, but the lightning of luck would fry him sooner or later. He also needed to give his leg some time to recover. Once out of the hospital, he’d run as best he could for several blocks, turning down alleyways, climbing over the occasional fence or low wall. If he didn’t have a destination in mind, then he figured the cops couldn’t predict his moves. Crazy thinking, he knew, but it was all he had.
Calling Connie had been equally crazy. He should have known she wouldn’t understand. She knew him better than almost anyone else, but life as Billy Dent’s son stretched the most elastic tolerance far beyond the breaking point. What would come next wasn’t a matter of intellect or reason or even mere emotion. It was as basic as biology. It was blood and sinew and brain matter. Raw.
He couldn’t turn himself in. Couldn’t give up the pursuit of Billy. Any more than Howie could wish away his hemophilia.
He’d escaped the hospital. Now, escaping the cold was his top priority. Then he could figure out how to escape the city.
At this time of night, most places were closed. Light, warmth, and frivolity leaked out onto the street from a variety of restaurants, sorely tempting him. But restaurants were too well-lit. And wearing the overcoat at a table would make him dangerously conspicuous.
And there was the need for clothes.
A bar was a better bet. There was one at the end of the block, dark and noisy. Perfect for his purposes.
The bouncer at the door, a titanic mountain eroded and sculpted into human form, imprisoned by a black turtleneck three sizes too small, sneered at Jazz. “ID,” he grunted.
Jazz knew he looked older than seventeen, but it was too much to hope that he looked old enough not to be carded. In any event, his ID was in an evidence lockup somewhere, and he was pretty sure that even a bouncer with a neck as wide as his head wouldn’t believe it if Jazz showed him Hughes’s ID instead.
“Designated driver,” Jazz told him, and feigned a yawn, just to prove how unconcerned he was.
The bouncer paused, clearly caught off guard. He peered around.
“Assholes are always late,” Jazz complained, shivering a little. That much wasn’t faked. “And I had to park all the way over on Hoyt.” He jerked his thumb in that direction. Always notice street names, Billy had instructed. Makes it seem like you belong when you can rattle ’em off. He stamped his feet for effect. “C’mon, man. I’m freezing my nuts off.”
The bouncer shrugged and gestured with a hand stamp. “Gotta stamp you so the bartender knows not to serve you.”
“No problem.” Jazz offered his left hand—the knuckles on the right one were scraped raw from when he’d punched the security guard.
With a bright blue DD stamped on his hand, Jazz stepped inside. The place was crowded, which was good. Made it easier to disappear. He fought through the crowd and found an open spot at the bar. He needed to sit for a moment. Rest his leg. Gather his thoughts.
“Just water,” he told the bartender when she looked his way. She sighed, then noticed his stamp and nodded.
Sipping the water, he considered his options. A part of him wanted to follow Connie’s advice—turn around and walk out of the bar, straight to the closest cop he could find. Turn himself in and get the cops to rescue Mom. They were cops—that’s what they did, right?
But he couldn’t rely on the police now. They weren’t his allies anymore. He didn’t necessarily blame Hughes for pinning Morales’s death on him. If he’d kept his nose out of the investigation and let Hughes take things at his own pace, Dog would have been caught nonetheless. Morales would still be alive.
But Dog probably would have killed someone else in the meantime. And Hat would probably still be out there.
Another thought occurred to him, chilling him colder than the frigid January night air could ever hope to: If I didn’t get shot in that storage unit, Billy wouldn’t have come to help me. And Connie never could have escaped.
He would deal with the police another day. Right now, what mattered was rescuing Mom. No one else could do it. Like it or not, he was a fugitive. He hadn’t killed Dog or Morales, but now he could add multiple counts of assault (on police officers, no less) to his future rap sheet, along with the initial breaking-and-entering and theft charges from his inspection of Belsamo’s apartment. The NYPD wouldn’t listen to him. They had their dragnet, their moves, their rule book, and they were going to chase Billy their way.
What they refused to understand was that “their way” had failed spectacularly and gruesomely for twenty years as Billy crisscrossed America, writing his name in the history books in the blood of one hundred and twenty-three innocents. “Their way” wouldn’t work. He was willing to bet that Billy was already out of New York, already on the way to his next safe house.
Somewhere, there would be a Crow willing to help him. Because that, Jazz knew now, was what Crows did. They were the Billy fanatics, the Dent worshippers, the ones who’d congregated to protest his imprisonment, wrote the fan letters, the people like the Impressionist. Anything Billy needed, they would provide, and getting Billy out of New York would be just one more favor.
Jazz scanned the crowd with a practiced eye. Billy’s advice over the years had most often slanted in the direction of plucking from a group the most vulnerable woman, isolating her effectively, and then removing her from the world. A woman was no good to Jazz right at the moment. He needed clothes, which meant he needed a man. Fortunately, Billy’s lessons were adaptable.
Look for the one who’s alone in the crowd. The one not fully engaged. The one moving from group to group or person to person. It’ll take longer for that one to be missed.
Altered states are good, too, Billy went on. You get yourself a drunk or a little girlie on X, and you’re halfway home.
Someone distracted. And distractible.
Most important of all: Just like a carpenter, you measure twice and cut once. You don’t get do-overs. You don’t get to rewind the clock and start from scratch. Once you commit, you’re in. You do it. So make damn sure the one you pick is the right one. See yourself taking her in your mind over and over. Watch the angles. Figure the possibilities. Do it all with precision until you know you can do it. Then wander it in your mind again, just to be sure.
There was a drunk guy who was about the right size, in a cluster of people at the other end of the bar. The guy kept forcibly inserting himself into conversations, clearly a beat or two behind the thread. The indulgent shoulder shrugs and occasional eye rolls of those around him made it obvious he didn’t belong with the group, but that
no one was willing to confront him. Which meant no one would ever miss him. Perfect.
Jazz lingered, nursing his water. Sitting at the bar took the weight off his leg; the relief was almost as palpable as the pain.
This would be a waiting game. Jazz kept tabs on the guy he’d begun to think of as Ryan. He didn’t know why Ryan. But he knew that he had to give the guy a name. Thinking of him as Drunk Guy was one step removed from thinking of him as Victim #1. Which was one step from thinking of him as something less than human.
People matter. People are real. Even Ryan.
He ordered a Coke when the bartender raised her eyebrow at him, managing to indicate both his near-empty water glass and the actual paying customers who would kill for his spot at the bar. The last thing he needed was to be kicked loose. Or to have her paying attention to him. Better to buy something. Fortunately, there was a sheaf of bills in Hughes’s wallet. As she sprayed the Coke into a fresh glass, he tipped her noticeably, but not extravagantly. He didn’t want to be memorable.
In the next instant, he had no choice but to be memorable. His picture was on the TV over the bar.
JASPER DENT ON THE RUN! exploded from the screen like fireworks to Jazz’s dark-adjusted sight, along with a gigantic logo reading SPECIAL REPORT. They had pulled his driver’s license photo, which—sadly—was an extremely good likeness. He’d sweet-talked Lana, the sheriff’s office assistant who also handled the local DMV, into retaking the picture until he had one that didn’t look as though he’d just woken up from a bad dream. If he could, he would kick Past Jazz in the nuts. The damn photo was perfect. He felt eyes on him, vision crawling over his body like spiders. Everyone in the bar was looking at him.
Stop it. No one’s looking at you. No one is even paying attention to the TV. The sound is off, so no one can hear what I’m sure are blaring trumpets announcing the manhunt for yours truly.
No one at the bar had looked at him, so he kept his head down, sipping his Coke. He just had to wait for the report to end. The bar had been playing some kind of soccer match before. Not the kind of channel to linger overlong on a local crime issue. Soon enough, they’d wrap up their socially conscientious reportage and get back to men in knee socks preventing one another from scoring.
He risked a glimpse at the TV, only to realize that the bartender was staring at him.
Don’t react. That was the most important thing. He couldn’t let her know that he’d noticed her looking at him. The recognition in her eyes presaged an imminent cry of Holy crap! It’s the guy on TV! There was only one way to preempt that moment, and he acted instantly:
“Holy crap!” he said in a self-consciously loud voice. “That guy looks just like me!” And pointed to himself on TV.
The guy next to him, deep in a mug of beer, goggled at him and then at the TV. The bartender blinked and turned from Jazz to the TV, then back again, and back once more.
“Isn’t that crazy?” Jazz punched the shoulder of the man next to him and adopted a tone of bemused disbelief. “Just like me! Can you believe it?”
The drunk shrugged. “Lotta people look alike,” he mumbled.
The bartender approached him. “You do look like him,” she said.
“Like?” Jazz sneered. “That guy could be my twin! That’s creepy as hell!” He shuddered in deep revulsion at the depredations scrolling on the screen under his own name. His New York accent—liberally borrowed from the cops he’d been around over the past few days—seemed to be working. “I wouldn’t want to be whoever the hell tonight, that’s for sure! I better stick around here until they catch him, huh?”
The bartender considered, then nodded. “That might not be a bad idea,” she said, and topped off Jazz’s Coke with her beverage gun. Jazz nodded his thanks and reached for Hughes’s wallet, but she shook her head. “On the house. I do it for all the fugitives.” She grinned at him.
Jazz flashed his most winning smile. His megawatt Charmer. The bartender was the only person in the room. The only woman in the world. She actually blushed, barely visible under the bar’s red-black lighting.
“I get off at three,” she mentioned.
Jazz nodded. “Like I said—I’m not going anywhere tonight.”
He watched her as she walked away, an alternate plan forming. If Ryan never went to the bathroom, he would need another way to get some clothes and get out of Brooklyn. Maybe it made sense to stick around and let the bartender—he decided her name was Doreen—take him home. The police wouldn’t look twice at a couple walking home together, hunting as they were for the desperate loner known as Jasper Francis Dent.
That could work.…
Just then, though, Ryan broke away from his cluster of sort-of friends and made an unsteady, weaving, lurching path for the bathroom. Jazz casually slid out of his position at the bar and pushed through the crowd, timing his arrival just after Ryan’s. Ryan stopped, hand on the knob, sensing Jazz there. With the goggle-eyed, jelly-necked courtesy of the abjectly drunk, he essayed a little bow and gestured to Jazz, offering him the first use of the john.
Jazz declined, and Ryan, with a shrug, went into the bathroom.
Once you get her alone, Jasper, you got any number of ways to make her yours. Quick and quiet’s best. Most women, you show ’em a weapon or even just your intent, they’ll clam up real quick. They know they’re weaker. They all been taught: Give him what he wants and he’ll let you live. So you let ’em think it’s a robbery or such, and by the time they realize what they’re really in for, you’ve already got her trussed up or gagged or both.
Course, if she looks like she’ll put up a fight, you just blitz her. Overwhelming strength. Overpower her right away. Shock and awe. Shocking and awesome.
Ryan was drunk, but he was Jazz’s size and he was a man. Jazz decided on blitz attack.
Before Ryan had the chance to lock the bathroom door behind him, Jazz shoved it open and stepped inside, shutting it quickly. The bathroom was tiny, barely big enough for a toilet and a sink, lit with the same hell-on-the-eyes crimson bulbs as the bar. Ryan moved as though in slo-mo, lidded eyes registering Jazz’s presence, even as his brain attempted to process that same presence. His fly was already down.
“Sorry,” he slurred. “Thought this was the men’s—”
He didn’t get to finish, because Jazz jabbed at him with the Taser, hoping that Ryan wouldn’t piss his pants when the voltage hit. Ryan’s whole body seized, and he went down in a satisfying heap.
Jazz locked the door and removed Hughes’s overcoat, then the hospital gown, standing naked over Ryan, who, groggy, now panicked and tried to move his frozen limbs.
“Don’t worry,” Jazz promised him, “I’m not going to take your virtue or anything.”
Moving swiftly, he tore the gown into strips and used them to gag Ryan. Then he used Finley’s handcuffs to fasten him to the pipe under the sink, maneuvering carefully in the confines of the restroom.
Once Ryan was secured, Jazz stripped off his clothes, leaving the poor guy the dignity of his skivvies at least. Ryan had, thankfully, not pissed himself—maybe the electricity clamped down on his urethra. Whatever the reason, Jazz was grateful that he wouldn’t have to explain away urine stains on the pants he’d already begun thinking of as his.
The clothes were a bit too big, but better too big than too small. He dressed in Ryan’s socks, shoes, pants, and shirt, then threw the overcoat back on over it all. He added Ryan’s cell to his collection and rummaged in his wallet for cash, discovering nearly a hundred bucks as well as learning that Ryan’s name was actually Mark.
“Sorry to do this,” Jazz said. “I would explain, but you’re pretty drunk. Someone will eventually find you in here, so just hang tight.”
He paused, about to leave, when a thought occurred to him. Kneeling down, he set his cell phone on Ryan/Mark’s heaving, terrified chest. “You hold on to this, and I’ll trade it back for yours someday. Assuming I get out of this alive. If I don’t, well, keep it to make up for me steal
ing yours.”
Since the bathroom door opened inward, Jazz hooked his hand inside as he left, knocking the trash can over. It would make it harder for someone on the outside to open the door and give him a little more time.
He made sure that the bartender wasn’t looking his way. The TV was back to soccer already.
He threaded through the bar and slipped outside.
CHAPTER 19
There was a ridiculously hot blond on Fox News blaming Congress and the mayor of New York for Billy Dent’s reign of terror. Those exact words—BILLY DENT’S REIGN OF TERROR!—flashed in a migraine-red box under her as she ranted.
Home from the hospital but confined by the Parental Annoying Authority Act to his bed for the time being, Howie couldn’t quite follow the logic. Still, the blond was hot, and when Howie muted the TV it was easy to pretend that he could lip-read her saying, Howie, you are so dashing, what with your bruises and your stitches. I can feel my panties sliding right off me.
Then again, Howie thought, maybe he shouldn’t bother checking out the talent. The last woman he’d wanted to give his heart and (more importantly) his loins to had turned out to be a serial killer.
She could have killed me as I lay on the floor, unconscious. I got lucky. Maybe she doesn’t kill men, just women. I don’t know. I can’t figure out serial killers or women. Combine them and I got nothin’.
He blinked as he realized that Jazz was on TV. Unmuting the TV, he heard:
“… after assaulting members of the NYPD. The younger Dent is believed to be armed and almost as dangerous as his father.…”
As he watched and realized that Jazz was on the run and wanted for a string of crimes, he decided that fame was a double-edged sword that probably shouldn’t be handled by hemophiliacs or their best friends.
“And let me just say this,” the commentator went on. “If New York City let its citizens carry firearms, we’d see the Dents either locked up or—better yet—dead already.”
Howie imagined the city of New York armed to the teeth, terrified neighbors blowing one another’s heads off as fear set imaginations afire and itchy trigger fingers on the highest alert. Sounded like the most moronic idea ever, and that was coming from a guy who’d put the moves on a serial killer.