"Stop, stop! Take what you want!"
"Warned you I was cranky. Now get flat on your belly and stay there." He complied, leaving the patterned soles of his sneakers facing Carole. Lacey turned and gave her a nod.
Carole knelt beside the open canister of powdered eggs and removed the lid. It was three-quarters full. A heavy metal scoop lay inside. She pulled the bag of sodium fluorosilicate out of her backpack and began scooping the egg powder into its place.
"You could have been nice, you know," she heard Lacey saying. "All we wanted was something to eat. Didn't your mother ever teach you to share?"
"I'm sorry," the cook moaned. "I'm sorry!"
"Now we'll have to take it."
When Carole figured she'd scooped out about two pounds of egg, she zipped up the backpack, then emptied the pound of sodium fluorosilicate into the canister. The chemical was white and the powdered egg was a pale yellow. She used the scoop to mix them into a consistent color, then replaced the lid.
God forgive her. She'd just sealed the fates and numbered the hours of dozens of men. Vicious, evil men, but men nonetheless.
"All right," she told Lacey. "I've got the eggs."
Lacey had the big chrome refrigerator door open and was peering inside.
"What have we here?" she said. She reached in and removed what looked like a pepperoni and half a wheel of white cheese. "Looks like cookie's got his own private stash!" She turned to the cook and squatted beside him. "All right. We're leaving. Don't even think about moving or making a sound until we're gone or I'll bust your head wide open and fry your brains on the grill. Capisce? "
The cook moaned and nodded.
Lacey looked at Carole and waggled her eyebrows. "Let go."
JOE . . .
Joe could see the kitchen doors through Houlihan's plate glass windows. He'd watched Carole and Lacey push through them only a few minutes ago, but it seemed like an hour.
"Come on, ladies," he whispered. "Come on."
The idea was to make this look like a food raid—desperate people risking their lives to take food out, not leave something behind. That was why he'd asked Lacey not to show a gun unless she had to. All it would take was one shot to bring the Vichy running. Let them think the thieves who'd hit them were amateurs armed only with nunchucks and knives.
Am I doing the right thing? he wondered for the thousandth time since they'd arrived in New York. He had a feeling he wasn't.
They were following his lead, trusting him with their lives. Was he, as the phrase went, exercising due diligence? He didn't know. All he knew was that once the idea of targeting Franco in his aerie had taken hold, he couldn't uproot it. He'd considered other options, but none of them held a candle to this. Because this was unquestionably the best tactic or because he'd become fixated on Franco? Part of him argued that he should have sent either Carole or Lacey west, to try to cross into unoccupied territory with the secret. But a stronger part had countered that he needed both of them along to take Franco down, and that argument had prevailed.
And he knew why. He had a secondary goal in mind, one he dared not tell Carole and Lacey. They'd never let him go through with it.
But he had another concern. Joe was noticing wild mood swings. In life he'd been prone to periodic lows that usually responded to a couple of stiff Scotches. Now he found himself experiencing surges of rage at the slightest provocation. He'd managed to control them so far. Like early this morning when Lacey had questioned him about some minor point in tonight's plan, he'd had this sudden urge to grab her by the throat and scream at her to stop asking so many goddamned questions.
He'd managed to fight it off, but that urge still frightened him. Was it the stress, the responsibility of what they'd planned, or was he edging closer to the darkness in his daymares? What if—?
Movement in the SUV's side mirror caught his attention. A Vichy, bearded and denimed like so many of them, had rounded the corner and was approaching the Navigator with a raised pistol. Then Joe recognized him: the one who'd been with the head Vichy in the Armani suit when Joe was dropped outside the front entrance.
He'll recognize me! This will ruin—
Wait. He won't recognize me.
Joe had forgotten momentarily how his face had been disfigured by the sun. Easy to forget when you'd never seen it, when mirrors gave back only a smeary blur.
"What the fuck is this?" the Vichy said, stepping up to the open driver window and leveling his semiautomatic at Joe. "Who are you and what the fuck you think you're—shit! What happened to your face?"
That voice ... Joe remembered it taunting him in the long elevator ride to the Observation Deck.
I'm glad I ain't you. Holy shit, am I glad I ain't you.
"Good morning," Joe said. "Just waiting to pick up a friend. And the face? An industrial accident."
"Who gives a shit. What're you doin here, man? You think this is some kinda taxi stand?"
Joe turned his head and showed his right earlobe. He flicked the dangly earring. "Hey, I'm in the club."
"That don't mean shit. Who you waitin for?"
Joe cudgeled his brain for the name of this guy's buddy, the one in the suit who'd called him "god-boy."
"Barrett," he said as it came back to him. "He told me to meet him here at sundown."
The Vichy's eyes narrowed. "Barrett's on night duty with me. Should be here any minute." He pulled open Joe's door. "Let's go see about this."
As Joe stepped out of the car, he saw movement in Houlihan's over the Vichy's shoulder: Carole and Lacey leaving the kitchen.
Joe reached for the man's pistol and was surprised by how fast his hand moved. It darted out in a blur of motion; he grabbed the weapon and twisted it from his grasp. The Vichy jumped back with a shocked look and stared at his empty palm. Then he opened his mouth to shout but Joe's other hand reached his throat first, fingers gripping the nape of his neck while the thumb jammed against the windpipe. The man made a strangled sound. Joe pressed harder, hearing the cartilage crunch as it began to give way.
Stop, he told himself.
They'd decided no killing tonight, it might rile the Vichy too much, send them out hunting instead of staying close to Houlihan's and tomorrow's breakfast.
But this felt too, too good. And oh this man deserved dying for how he'd taunted him. Worse yet, he'd seen too much.
A crushed throat might raise too many alarms, though.
With a heave Joe lifted him off his feet and hurled him head first toward the sidewalk. The back of his skull hit the concrete with a meaty crunch; his arms stiffened straight out to either side, then fell limp beside him.
"Joseph?" It was Carole, stepping through the revolving door. She stared at the body with the blood pooling around its head. "What—?"
"Hey, Unk," Lacey said. "I thought we said—"
"In the car, both of you!" he snapped. "We've wasted too much time already!"
Their fault. If they hadn't dawdled so damn long inside, this wouldn't have happened.
The two women piled into the back seat as Joe slipped behind the wheel. He wanted to slam his foot against the accelerator and burn rubber out of here, but a quiet departure was best. When he reached Sixth he turned uptown one block, then raced east on Thirty-fifth. Mostly pubs and parking garages along this block. He pulled into a multi-level garage and parked far in the rear. If the Vichy went hunting for the thieves who stole their food and killed their man, they'd never expect them to hide just one block away.
As he shut off the engine he noticed a foul odor emanating from the back seat.
"What is that?" he said.
"Just some snack foods we picked up," Lacey said. "A pepperoni and what looks like provolone."
"The pepperoni—does it have garlic in it?"