At one o'clock exactly, showered, shaved, dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, and striped tie, John Gavin, attorney-at-law, presented himself and his brand-new card to the doorman at the Millennium Towers on West Sixty-seventh Street. A call upstairs confirmed tbat he was expected, and he was pointed toward the elevator.
The Butler condo was on the twenty-first floor. On his way up Jack reviewed his options. He hadn't yet worked out just how he was going to handle Butler—hang him out the window for a while or maybe break his other leg—a lot would depend on how Jack felt when he saw him again. Right now he was in a pretty good mood. A shame to spoil it like this, but some things you could let slide; other things you couldn't.
A private nurse, her black skin seeming even darker against her white uniform, greeted him at the door. Jack recognized her accent from his phone call. She led him to the study and left him with Mr. Butler.
Jack felt the old fury scald his insides again as he stared at the bastard. Butler wore a Princeton sweatshirt and matching sweatpants with one leg cut off at mid-thigh to accommodate his cast. And he still looked like Porky Pig.
"Gavin, right?" he said, thrusting out a hand. "Bob Butler. Thanks for coming over." When Jack didn't shake hands, Butler said, "Something wrong?"
"Don't I look familiar?" Jack said.
"Not really." He smiled apologetically. "I assume you're a Barny if you're working for the alumni association, but I can't recognize some of the guys in my own class, let alone—"
"Last night," Jack said through his teeth.
Butler's smile faded. He averted his eyes. "Yeah. Last night. I suppose you want to know about that."
"I know all about it," Jack said. "I was there, remember?"
Butler looked up at him again. "You were?"
Jack leaned closer, pointing to his face. "Remember?"
"No," Butler said. "Everything's kind of a blur."
If he was lying, he was damn good at it.
Butler rubbed a hand across his stubbled jaw. "I remember being at the reception hall. Because it was our twenty-fifth, we mixed up a batch of our traditional 'everything punch.' We lugged in a galvanized tub and filled it with blocks of ice, fruit juices, and bottles of the cheapest vodka and rum we could find, just like in the old days. I remember downing a couple of glasses of that; I remember some of the guys getting loud and a couple of them even swinging fists at each other. After that…" He shrugged.
"You don't remember being in a mob that terrorized a bunch of people on the museum steps?"
He sighed and nodded. "I remember being in the street, then on some steps, fighting with… someone. But that's pretty much it. I don't remember details, though. I'm told I had a concussion. I woke up in the hospital with a broken leg and no idea how I got it. You say you were there. Did you see me?"
Jack nodded, watching for the slightest hint that he was lying.
"Did… did I do anything… bad?"
Jack forced calm. "You tried to kill an eight-year-old girl."
"What?" The depth of horror in Butler's expression could not be faked. "I did what?" His eyes pleaded with Jack. "Tell me she's all right! Please tell me I didn't hurt a child!"
"Somebody pulled her away from you just as you tried to chuck her off the top of the steps."
"Thank God!"
Butler's genuine relief cooled Jack's anger, hut that didn't let him off the hook.
"You guys had to be doing more than cheap rum and vodka to mess up your heads like that."
"We were, but we didn't know about it. At least most of us didn't. But that bastard Dawkins did."
"Dawkins?"
"Yes. Burton Dawkins. Didn't you hear?"
"I'm afraid not."
"That's why I thought you were here—about Burt. The police were immediately suspicious that the punch had been drugged, so they tested it right away and found out it was. That's why we were released without being charged. They arrested Dawkins for spiking the punch." He shook his head. "Who would have thought a dweeb like him would do something like that. But the cops caught him red-handed with a whole bag of the drug."
"What drug?"
"They haven't said yet, but I called someone I know down at the commissioner's office, and he told me they think it's some new designer drug that's been popping up all over the country the past few months."
"What's it called?"
"He said it's sold under lots of names. They didn't have the lab report back yet, but he suspected it was a highly concentrated form called Berzerk."
"Sounds appropriate."
"I'm told it's spelled with a z."
"Like the old arcade game."
Butler flashed a smile. "Yeah. I remember that. Used to be my favorite when I was a kid. But there was nothing fun about this stuff. Potent as all hell. Between you and me, I smoked my share of weed in my younger days, snorted coke once or twice, did some speed-rite-of-passage stuff, you know? I've been high before, but I've never felt like I did the other night. I remember this sensation of awesome power, as if I were king of the world. It was truly wonderful for a while, but then it turned into this anger, this… this rage because this was my world and everything in it belonged to me and there were these other people around who were keeping me from what was rightfully mine." He grinned sheepishly. "I know it sounds insane now, but at the time it all made perfect sense. I felt like a god."
Jack hadn't heard of anything that did that to your head, but then he didn't hang with druggies.
"Sounds like you had a whopping dose of whatever it was."
"I guess so. I just know I don't want any more. Ever." He shook his head. "Imagine… trying to hurt a child. I've never even spanked one of my own kids—not once." He set his jaw. "Let me tell you something: Burt Dawkins is not going to get away with this. When the criminal courts are through with him, I'm going to haul him into court and sue his ass for every penny he's worth."
"You do that," Jack said, feeling deflated now that his anger had leaked away. He stepped toward the door. "Well, I've learned what I came for. I'll be in touch."
"Wait," Butler said. "You were there. Did you see how I got hurt?"
"Um, yeah. When someone grabbed the little girl from you, you, um, tripped and went down the steps yourself."
He paled. "I could have been killed. I guess I'm pretty lucky."
"You've got that right," Jack said, turning away.
7
"You're not hungry?" Mom said in her thick Gdansk accent. "Or you don't like my cooking no more?"
Nadia stared down at her half-empty plate. "You still make the best pierogies in the world, Mom. I'm just not that hungry."
Her mother sat across the rickety table from her in a kitchen where the smells of cooked cabbage and boiled kiszka permeated the walls. A thin, angular woman with a heavily lined face that made her look older than her sixty-two years, but her bright eyes still had a youthful twinkle.
Mom had already finished eating and was working toward the end of her second boilermaker. She nursed two of them every night, sitting there with a bottle of Budweiser and a shot of Fleischman's rye—"Flesh-man's," as she said it—alongside. She'd pour an ounce or two of beer into a tumbler, sip it down, then pour a little more; every so often she'd nip some of the rye. Up until a few years ago she'd have been smoking a Winston as well. Nadia had got her off the cigarettes, finally convincing her that they were what had done Dad in, but Mom wasn't about to give up the boiler-makers. This was how she'd learned to drink, and no one, not Nadia or anyone else, was going to change that.