That was it. Yakov had what he needed. The sirens loomed closer. He moved to the window and looked down again. Three men and a woman stood around Carla's body.
Another woman knelt at Carla's side.
"Leave her," Yakov shouted. "She looks beautiful."
They looked up at him, startled, transfixed.
Yakov shook his head at then" stupidity. He rummaged through the bag of CDs, finding one by Sting. Carla had liked it. Yakov hated it. She could have it. He hurled it down, launching it with a flip of the wrist. The silver disc sailed past the windows below, skimmed the top of the car Carla had hit, and shot over the head of the kneeling woman. The people scattered, and Yakov wasn't sure whether to find another expendable disc, take another capsule, or just get out.
He was reluctant to simply leave. Carla had given her life for this moment.
The other movie Jerold had shown him, the other one Jerold liked, the one with James Cagney. Jerold had said that Yakov looked like James Cagney. This did not please Yakov at first, but he had gradually grown used to the idea.
Yes, standing in this window, he was ready to explode. "Look, Mother. On top of the world," he shouted in English.
But Yakov was not going down with the building. He turned away from the window and headed for the door. The CD was still playing. How could that be? He had fought with Carla about it, and she had been dead for hours or minutes.
His hand was reaching for the knob when someone knocked once.
Yakov pulled his hand back as if the knob were white with heat. He knew who was at his door. Death was at his door. He should welcome Death. Better, he should kill Death. Then everyone would live forever. Rules would have to be made so there would be no more babies or the world would overflow.
Yakov looked at himself in the mirror next to the door, the mirror in which Carla spent so much time admiring herself. The gnome with orange hair arranged in five spiked points grinned at him. His orange shirt, which matched his hair, was buttoned at the collar, and his jeans were properly faded.
Death knocked again, and Yakov shouted, "Wait a moment. I'm thinking."
What would happen to someone you killed if Death died? This was profound. Jerold should hear it. If the sirens would stop, if the music would stop, if Death would be patient, Yakov would have the riddle of life solved. Before he was even eighteen, Yakov Krivonos would be famous, or he would be if he chose to be, if he chose to share his secret with the world.
"Fuck them," he said. "It's mine."
"Police," the voice of Death said. "Open the door."
Yakov reached into his canvas bag for a trick and came up with his Sturm.44mm Blackhawk revolver. Yakov had to put his canvas bag down so he could hold the nearly three-pound gun in both hands. He leveled the 7 1/2-inch barrel at the door and waited for Death to knock again.
There was no knock, and Yakov sensed that he had little time. Death might not be so easy to stop. He put the revolver down and reached back inside the canvas bag for a second weapon, a compact rifle he held at his side, his left hand on the pistol grip, his right steadying the stock of the weapon.
He fired, holding the rifle steady, as Jerold had taught him. A hole appeared in the door, and the bullet sang across the hall and through the door of the next apartment. He fired again. Another hole. From outside in the hall a woman screamed, and a man shouted at her to shut up.
Yakov moved to the door and fired twice more. And then he opened it and stepped out. Death was not on the right but standing at the end of the corridor on the left, blocking the stairwell about twenty yards away, a small pistol aimed at Yakov, whose rifle hung at his side in his right hand.
"Drop the weapon," Death said, and Yakov sighed.
It wasn't really fair. Carla had been twenty-three. She had lived five years longer than Yakov would, for Yakov knew he would not drop the weapon, that he would lift it and aim and fire and that the man who was certainly Death would shoot him before he could do so.
The shot came before Yakov could get his weapon into both hands. It came howling over the nearby siren, the music, the crying woman in the apartment across the hall. Yakov paused. The bullet had gone through him or missed. There was no pain. Death turned and fired down the stairwell at his right. Yakov raised his rifle and aimed at Death, who stepped away from the stairwell, raised his right foot, and kicked at the door of an apartment. The doors, as Yakov knew, were made of thin pressed wood. He had kicked his in three times in the month he had been using the apartment. So it was no surprise that Death disappeared into the apartment as Yakov fired, blowing a fist-sized hole in the corridor wall.
"Yakov," Jerold called.
"Yes," Yakov called back, firing again.
Jerold stood at the top of the stairs, gun in hand. Jerold, so confident, a bearded aristocrat, a gangster, a real gangster, just as Yakov wanted to be.
Jerold was teaching him many things, weapons, organization. Jerold was teaching him English so that Yakov could live in the United States, in Las Vegas, when it was over.
"Come on," Jerold called.
"My discs," Yakov called.
"No time," Jerold said calmly. "Come with me. We'll get more."
"You can't get Madonna," Yakov said, looking back at the apartment but walking toward Jerold. Tears were coming to his eyes. The loss of Madonna was too much to bear, was too unfair, given the miracles of this night.
"Yes, I can," said Jerold, who had his gun trained on the door of the apartment through which Death had plunged. "Let's go."
Something stirred inside the apartment. Jerold fired and nudged Yakov down the stairway.
"Hurry," Jerold commanded without the slightest sign of panic, although the police siren had stopped very close by.
Jerold covered their retreat to the next landing and urged Yakov down the hall to an apartment that was unfamiliar to the young man. Jerold tucked his pistol away, took out a key, opened the door, and ushered Yakov inside. The room was dark. Jerold closed and locked the door.
"Stand still," he said, and Yakov could hear Jerold's feet move across the wooden floor.
Yakov's stomach gave a first warning. He was coming down, coming down from whatever height he had reached with the help of the capsules. He did not want to come down. He wanted to remain in the dark and float, upside down, right side up, until there was no up or down. And then came a panic.
"Lights," he said. "Lights."
A light came on from a kitchen alcove on his left, and he could see Jerold, and behind Jerold he could see a woman seated at a small table. The woman's arms were taped together and then taped behind her head. Her legs were taped, too, as was her mouth. Her eyes were wide, tear-filled and frightened.
"Come," said Jerold, who turned to a window behind the woman.
Yakov moved past the woman, pausing to stare into her eyes. His nose almost touched hers, and he tried to smell her fear and see himself in those frightened eyes.
"Carla is dead," Yakov said in English, following Jerold to the window and slinging the rifle over his left shoulder. A wooden plank about two feet wide lay between this window and an open one in the next building, four feet away.
"I know," said Jerold softly, also in English. "I saw her. Go ahead."
"Shouldn't we kill her?" Yakov said, pausing to look at the woman, who whimpered.
"There's no reason," said Jerold. "The policeman saw us both."
"It was a policeman," said Yakov with a laugh, gripping the shoulder strap of the rifle. "I thought it was Death."
"Crawl," said Jerold.
And Yakov went through the window, and over his shoulder and the barrel of the rifle, against which he rubbed his cheek, he whispered, "You can get Madonna?"
"Yes," said Jerold. "You'll have much more than Madonna after Thursday. Just be ready."