HOLLIS RETURNED TO his hotel late in the afternoon and was able to sleep for a few hours. When he opened his eyes, he was looking at a strip of four black-and-white photographs that he and Vicki had created in a “pose yourself” booth. An enormous cockroach approached this private altar and started waving its antennae, but Hollis flicked the insect onto the floor.
He picked up the photographs, held the strip beneath the lamplight, and studied the last image. Vicki had turned to look at him and her face showed both love and understanding. She truly knew him-knew the violence and selfishness that had claimed his past-but accepted him anyway. Her love made Hollis want to march out and slay monsters; he would do anything to justify her faith.
Around eight o’clock in the evening, he got dressed and took a cab downtown to the meatpacking district-a twenty-block patch of industrial buildings west of Greenwich Village. Mask, the dance club, occupied what had formerly been a chicken processing plant on West Thirteenth Street. It had been operating for three years, a fairly long time in this peculiar world.
The large central room was divided into two parts. Most of the building was occupied by an open space for dancing, two bars, and a cocktail area. Toward the end of the room, a staircase led upward to a separate VIP area that overlooked the main dance floor. Only the pretty people-those with beauty or money-were allowed upstairs. The ground floor was for the bridge-and-tunnel crowd, customers who had either driven a car or taken a crowded train to get to Manhattan. The men who owned the club were obsessed with the ratio between these two groups. Although the bridge-and-tunnels made Mask a profitable business, they were drawn to the club by the actors and models who drank for free upstairs.
Without flashing lights and thumping dance music, Mask felt like it could easily be converted back into a factory for plucking dead chickens. Hollis went into the tiny employees’ locker room and changed into a black T-shirt and sports jacket. A hand-lettered sign over the mirror announced that any employee selling drugs to customers would be fired immediately. Hollis had already discovered that management didn’t mind employees selling drugs to one another-usually various uppers that kept the security staff alert until the end of the evening.
Hollis slipped on a radio headset that connected him to the other bouncers. He returned to the main room and walked upstairs. The employees at Mask saw the club as an elaborate device to squeeze money out of the customers. One of the most lucrative jobs was guarding the VIP area, and a man named Boodah currently held this post. Boodah had an African-American father and a Chinese mother. His nickname came from his enormous stomach, which appeared to protect him from all the craziness in New York.
The bouncer was arranging the chairs and cocktail tables inside his kingdom when Hollis came upstairs. “What’s up?” Boodah asked. “You look tired.”
“I’m all right.”
“Remember. If anyone wants to go through the rope, they gotta come to me.”
“No problem. I know the rules.”
Boodah guarded the main entrance to the VIP area while Hollis stood at an exit on the opposite side. This exit was only used by pretty people who wanted to go to the downstairs bathroom or if they decided to rub shoulders with the sweaty crowd on the dance floor. Hollis’s job was to keep everyone else out. Being a bouncer was about saying no all night long-unless you got paid to say yes.
HOLLIS HAD PERFORMED his job like an obedient drone, but he felt that something different might happen tonight. A walkway protected by a railing ran from the VIP area to the private room. Inside the room were leather couches, cocktail tables, and an intercom to order from the bar. A mirrored window overlooked the dance floor below. Tonight the private room was going to be occupied by some hustlers from Brooklyn who liked to use drugs at nightclubs. If the Tabula came to the room looking for Gabriel, they were going to get an unpleasant surprise.
Hollis leaned against the railing, stretching his leg muscles. He returned to his post when Ricky Tolson, the club’s assistant manager, climbed the back staircase. Ricky was one of the owners’ distant relatives. He made sure there was toilet paper in the bathroom and spent most of his time trying to pick up drunken women.
“How you doing, my brother?” Ricky asked. Hollis was too low in the club hierarchy to have a name.
I’m not your brother, Hollis thought. But he smiled pleasantly. “The private room is booked, right? I heard that Mario and his friends were coming tonight.”
Ricky looked annoyed. “No, they called up and canceled. But there will be someone else. There always is…”
A half hour later, the club deejay began the evening with a Sufi religious chant, and then gradually brought in the thumping beat of house music. The bridge-and-tunnel crowd arrived first and grabbed the few tables near the bar. From his vantage point above the dance floor, Hollis watched young women wearing short skirts and cheap shoes run to the bathroom to check makeup and tease hair. Their male counterparts strutted around and waved twenty-dollar bills like little flags at the bartender.
The voices of the other bouncers whispered into his right ear from the radio headset. The security team had a continual dialogue going on about which man looked like trouble and which woman was wearing the most revealing dress. As the hours went by, Hollis kept his eye on the private room. It was still empty-but maybe nothing would happen tonight.
Around midnight he escorted two fashion models to a special bathroom that required a passkey. When he returned to his post, he saw Ricky and a girl wearing a tight green dress heading down the walkway to the private room. Hollis walked over to Boodah and shouted over the noise, “What’s Ricky doing in the room?”
The big man shrugged as if the question barely deserved an answer. “Just another little girly. He’ll give her some coke and she’ll give him the usual.”
Hollis looked down at the dance floor and saw two men wearing athletic jackets entering the club. Instead of checking out the women or buying a drink at the bar, they both looked up at the private room. One mercenary was short and very muscular. His pants looked too long for his fireplug body. The other man was tall and his black hair was pulled back in a ponytail.
The two men walked upstairs to the VIP area and the short mercenary slipped several bills into Boodah’s hand. It was enough money to buy immediate respect and entrance past the red velvet rope. Within a few seconds, the men were sitting at a table and staring at the narrow walkway that led to the private room. Ricky was still there with his girlfriend. Hollis swore beneath his breath and remembered Sparrow’s advice: Plan to jump left although you’ll probably go right.
A drunken woman started screaming at her boyfriend and Boodah hurried down the staircase to solve the problem. The moment he left the area, the two mercenaries got up from the table and headed for the private room. The tall man moved slowly down the walkway while his partner stood guard. Lights hanging over the dance floor grew brighter and began flashing in rhythm with the beat. The tall mercenary turned and a sliver of light was reflected off the blade of a knife held tightly in his hand.
Hollis doubted that they had a photograph of Gabriel. Their instructions would be to kill whoever was in the room. Up until that moment, Hollis had started to believe that he could act like Maya and the other Harlequins. But he wasn’t like them. None of the Harlequins would have worried about Ricky and the young woman, but Hollis couldn’t stand back and let it happen. To hell with it, he thought. If those two fools die, their blood stains my hands.
With a courteous smile on his face, he approached the shorter of the two men. “Excuse me, sir. But the private room is occupied.”