"What's keeping you?"
Vickers turned, firing. The Yasha blared its high-speed snake hiss. His teeth were bared and he was snarling. He savored the instant of complete atavism and then he became coldly practical. The steriod woman had been blown across the room. She was a mess. There was blood on three walls. He stood perfectly still and listened. There were no running feet. No one was beating on the door. Perhaps he hadn't been heard. His next move was clothes. Joseph Pope's daytime suit wouldn't do. He was on the run until further notice. He selected a leather space jacket with built-up shoulders that was of ample enough cut to hide the Yasha. He pulled his spare IDs from under the carpet and stuffed them into his coat. The case and the detector could stay where they were. So could the 9mm. It had no serial number and the steriod woman's fingerprints were all over it. It would add a token confusion. At the door, he hesitated and hurried back to the bathroom. He grabbed the bag of eighty-eights, swallowed two and dropped the rest into his pocket.
He eased carefully into the corridor. It was always possible that the steriod woman had brought some backup. Nothing happened. There was no alarmed Plaza security or lurking bounty hunters. Vickers quietly closed the door and started toward the elevators. He turned a corner and was startled by a maid with her pushcart of mops, brooms, cleaning materials and fresh stationery. She looked at him with complete indifference. It seemed impossible but apparently she'd heard nothing.
Once inside the elevator, he felt safe enough to take his hand off the Yasha under his coat. Three floors down, a pair of middle-aged women filled the car with Chanel No. 5. They glanced at him briefly but again the looks were indifferent. Every time that he killed, he expected the first people he encountered to smell the death on him but they never did. He walked swiftly through the muted sparkle of the cut-glass lobby, whirled through the revolving doors and started down the steps. On the nearside of the street, yellow cabs were coming and going, on the far side, chauffeurs lounged against a line of limos. Beyond them, tourists sat on the steps of the fountain. A couple was feeding the pigeons. One of the Plaza doormen was looking enquiringly at him. Did he want a cab? Vickers realized that he had no plan. He hadn't thought ahead. He started toward the first available cab. It was a yellow Mercedes. There seemed to be more of them each time he came to New York. As he reached for the door handle, he spotted a face among the tourists by the fountain. Recognition was a shock. It was one of the whores from the night before. In the same instant, she spotted him.
She nudged a companion, a man in nondescript overalls. They were both looking at him. It all fell into place. The hooker must have made him for a corpse. She, the man and the steriod woman had decided to go after the sixty-five thou. They'd been confident. Steriod woman had thought she could handle him on her own. Vickers twisted away from the cab. The world went into slow motion as his reflexes took over. The doorman looked confused. The whore's companion was holding some kind of gift-wrapped package. He was desperately ripping it open. He was shaking the wrapping from a squat military-green object. It was a gun, one of those Brazilian frag guns that fired exploding .50 caliber plastic bullets.
Vickers was on his knees. The man had to be mad. A frag gun was a ludicrous weapon to use in a crowd unless you wanted to kill the whole crowd. They were wildly inaccurate and slaughtered en masse. The hooker's companion had laid it across the roof of a limo. A chauffeur turned to protest and caught the first bullet. The second hit the Mercedes cab. The third exploded somewhere behind Vickers as he hit the ground and rolled.
Would anyone notice that he had started for cover before the shooting began?
The main entrance to the Plaza was instantly turned into a scene from a nightmare. One of the revolving doors had been blown apart. Five people were dead and at least twice that number injured. Art Nouveau glass cascaded down from the big decorative awning. The hooker, her companion and three innocent tourists were cut down in a crossfire from Plaza rent-a-cops and regular NYPD. The companion's final shots had gone wild.
When the gas tank of the Mercedes exploded, Vickers was blown against the wall. He began to crawl. The sidewalk was made of blood and glass. A blown-apart suitcase had strewn a weird top layer of stockings and lingerie. He reached 58th Street. He got to his feet and fled, heading west at a desperate trot. There was sufficient panic for him not to be conspicuous. At Sixth Avenue, he slowed to a walk. The air was filled with sirens shrieking and whooping like every emergency unit in New York was running to the carnage at the Plaza.
He turned down Seventh. His mind was numb. He just kept walking. The air was steamy and the sidewalks were choked with people. He noticed that they were starting to step out of his way as though he was a psycho or a crazy drunk. At 49th Street he ducked into a bar. The bathroom stank of the battle between urine and industrial strength disinfectant, the walls were caked with graffiti but at least there was a functioning sink and a cracked mirror. He looked bad. His face was filthy and beaded with sweat. The patrons in the bar probably thought he was a junkie. There was a tear in the shoulder of his leather coat.
After washing up, he looked a little better. He swallowed two straight scotches and another eighty-eight and he hit the street again. On the big screen that floated at the southern end of Times Square there were already pictures of the bloody front of the Plaza. A giant microphone was thrust into the face of an equally giant cop. The cop shrugged. There was too much background din to hear the audio but the caption read "… but, did the bounty hunter's victim die in the massacre?"
Vickers halted. This was all getting far too close. It came frighteningly closer. The screen was filled with an enormous blotchy photograph of himself. It was almost certainly taken by a security camera. It was followed by a gruesome shot of the interior of his room and the dead steroid woman. Then the screen lost interest in his problems and switched to a story about Tomoyo Nakamora, the Japanese porno star who had contracted to fuck with a mountain gorilla on live television. Vickers felt himself hemmed in. All around him were the disorganized mobs of slowly shuffling gawkers. The sharks that preyed on them darted and briefly flashed. Vickers knew that he had to get away. He had to get off the streets. He had to put himself on ice until the incident at the Plaza had become old news. He pushed his way to a pay phone and deposited a dollar. He tapped out the number from memory. It rang four times before anyone answered.
"Yeah?"
"Joe?"
"Yeah, I think so. Who is this?"
"It's Mort."
"Mort? Where are you? Are you in New York? I'm groggy. The phone woke me."
"Yeah, I'm in New York. Can I come over?"
"Now?"
Vickers glanced around. A tail, skinny black man in dreadlocks and a lot of gold was staring at him intently. Had he recognized him or did he just want the phone?
"Yes, now."
"Are you in trouble?"
"Turn on the TV news."
"What?"
"Turn on the TV and I'll see you in as long as it takes."
Vickers could almost hear him shrug,
"Okay."
Joe Stalin was the closest thing that Vickers had to a friend. The name wasn't real. He'd adopted it years ago in the days when he'd been a bright young cultural rebel. It had stuck. The black man in the dreadlocks and gold was moving in his direction. Vickers ducked through the crowd, scanning the street for an available cab that would actually brave the area's reputation to make a pick-up.
Down the block someone started screaming. Another head-case had popped. Vickers could feel the anxiety that spread like a wave through the crowd. You never really knew who might be next. It might be the guy next to you. A couple of local merchants' association goons with kamakazi headbands pushed past him heading for the source of the disturbance. They carried short black billy clubs. Therapy was rough in this area.