Near Enemy (26 page)

For me.

Wiggles his shoulders. Wriggles his wrists.

Like Houdini.

The ropes binding him drop to the ground.

Wrists free, he raises his hands.

Reveals a chunky metal watchband.

Then reaches up and pulls off his white hood.

No bed.

No black room.

No bodyguards.

Just Boonce.

Looking up at me.

Says one word.

Boo.

Dumb silence under the buzz of ancient midtown fluorescents.

Until I finally ask.

Where’s Lesser?

Lesser’s dead.

Since when?

Since about five minutes after you left his apartment in Stuyvesant Town last Saturday night. Since however long it took me to get in there and get him to tell me everything he knew, which he did, under maximum duress. I don’t know. Maybe ten minutes? I wasn’t timing it.

But what about the black room—

There is no black room, Spademan.

But who—

Me.

Why?

Boonce stands. Adjusts his suit.

Because I wanted what Lesser had. What he developed at Near Enemy and then kept from me and then stole from me. I wanted to know what it was and I wanted to take it from him and I wanted to use it for myself. And I did, and I did, and I will.

But Lesser didn’t know anything—

That’s not true. He just didn’t know what you thought he knew. Or, frankly, what I thought he knew. But he knew something else. Something better.

Boonce shrugs off his suit jacket. Folds it over his arm.

You know, the funny thing is, Spademan, if you’d actually just killed him that first night in Stuyvesant Town, before I could get my hands on him, none of this would have happened. In a weird way, if you had killed him that night, you would have saved him. If you’d just done the one and only thing in this world that you are good at.

Boonce drapes the suit jacket over the chairback.

It would have been terrible timing for me, of course, and I would have been very angry, and I would have tracked you down and dumped you in the river and found that bitch of yours and her baby upstate and left them buried in the woods. But at least you would have kept what Lesser had out of my hands. Which, of course, is what I assume the person who hired you to kill him was hoping to do all along—

Boonce undoes a cuff link.

—hoping to keep what he had from my hands, I mean—

Fingers the tiny NYPD shield.

—and it almost worked. Almost.

Pockets the shield, out of sight.

Do you know who that was, by the way? The woman who hired you to kill Lesser?

No.

Boonce thinks a minute. Fidgets with the other cuff link. Shrugs.

Me neither, to be honest. Though I have a hunch.

Undoes the second cuff link.

That’s what I like about your friend Simon, Spademan. Even though he fucked up my plans back in the woods.

Something about my face at that moment makes Boonce pause.

Then smile.

Yeah, that was me. I hated to get in bed with Pushbroom, but I figured I needed to set a fire under you. Increase my leverage. Then Simon intervened.

Pockets the second shield.

See, I like Simon because he’s like you, Spademan, except he’s always willing to do what needs to be done. Without reservation or hesitation. You, not so much.

Boonce starts to fiddle with his watchband. While he does this, I reach into the pocket of my coat. Check for the box-cutter. Still there.

Ask Boonce.

But what about Bellarmine?

There is no more Bellarmine, Spademan, as of about—

Checks his watch. That fucking watch.

—four minutes ago, give or take. Great tragedy. The city’s last protector, cut down in his prime, right before his big announcement. Looks like some rogue cops did him in. No doubt he’s the victim of some vast terrorist conspiracy. But the city will survive, of course. And our beloved mayor will win yet another term.

So you work for the mayor.

Boonce laughs.

Oh no.

Tugs at the knot of his silk tie.

Are you beginning to understand at all, Spademan? Even a little bit?

Loosens the tie and slides it out from under his stiff white collar.

I have to admit, Spademan, I had no more idea than you did who Lesser saw in there that night, this crazy burqa woman running around and blowing herself up in the limn. And I was definitely curious. I mean, if that had actually been true? Someone had actually cracked that problem? Killing people in the limn? I worked years on it and I couldn’t crack it, despite all my best efforts and my whiz-kid protégés. It’s too bad it all just turned out to be a hoax perpetrated by some coven of hysterical fanatics,
living together in a drafty castle in a park, trying to spook a bunch of hoppers into waking up the world.

Boonce folds the tie. Hangs it over the chair.

That part of the story I only found out thanks to you, Spademan. So all your running around the city wasn’t totally for naught. Chasing that nurse like a lovesick kid. I hope she was worth it.

Chest clenches when he says this. I tighten my grip on the box-cutter in my pocket.

You’re wrong, Boonce. She’s not—

He holds up a hand to cut me off.

Spare me.

Then unbuttons the top button of his white dress shirt at the collar. Works his way slowly down through the buttons, taking his time. Relishing this. Letting the silence linger. I grip the box-cutter and wonder just how much longer I should listen. There’s no one up here but the two of us, as far as I can tell. Just us, at the top of One Times Square. And I’m not sure if Boonce’s got some new surprise waiting, some further twist, some gang of guards in the wings about to pounce, but I don’t really care. Whatever happens, there’s not enough space between the two of us now that I can’t finish him before I go down. I only need a head start and two or three good swipes at a soft spot.

Last rule of the Jersey schoolyard. Last rule, and the most important one, but the hardest one to learn.

There’s no one you can’t take down, no matter how big or fast or strong, as long as you yourself don’t care about ever getting back up again.

Boonce unbuttons the last button on his shirt.

You took me for a pretty buttoned-up guy, didn’t you, Spademan?

I did.

Well, here’s your lesson. Your last lesson. Before we part ways.

Boonce shrugs the white shirt off.

Sometimes there’s more to people than what you see.

Boonce folds the shirt over the chairback.

Then he straightens up, bare-chested. Inked with tattoos from neck to waist. Every inch of his torso, covered. Down both arms to the wrists too. Looks like a freak in a circus sideshow.

Like the star of the freak show.

Snakes and flames.

Hoboken.

Puchs and Luckner sit in the patrol car, watching.

Puchs yawns. Stretches those tattooed arms again. Scratches them.

Luckner stares straight ahead.

Luckner’s phone buzzes.

She looks down.

Checks the phone.

Then stows it.

Says to Puchs.

That’s it. Let’s go.

Puchs perks up.

What’s the order?

Luckner checks the chamber of her automatic.

The whole building.

Everyone?

Everyone.

Puchs nods, smiles to himself, then checks his pistol too.

Then they get out of the car, walk briskly across the street, and head inside into the lobby of the building.

Some hapless neighbor loiters in the lobby, by the mailboxes, shuffling through junk mail. Barely glances up when the two cops enter. Maybe feels a little safer when he sees them, actually.

Luckner raises her pistol toward him and fires twice. Drops the neighbor and dents the mailbox with a double clang.

Then Luckner runs a finger down the intercom directory.

Finds the apartment number.

Buzzes.

Persephone’s voice crackles in the speaker box.

Hello?

Luckner leans in.

Ma’am, it’s Officer Luckner from downstairs. We’ve got shots fired in the lobby. Hold tight. We’re on our way up.

And Persephone buzzes them in.

Last car.

Train lurches.

Mark and Simon hobble aboard and let the door slide shut behind them.

Head toward Lesser, seated at the far end, in a suit with a white hood over his head.

Lights go out.

Lights come up again.

And now, between them and Lesser, sitting in a seat, or not sitting exactly, but coiled, hunched, is a huge mound of knotted muscle. They can only assume it’s a man. It’s bald-headed and hairless. The rest of it just looks like a gnarl of scarred flesh. Skin the color of something that’s been left out to spoil. Faint foul odor in the car now too. The beast before them wears no clothes, save for some rags wrapped clumsily around its midsection. Some needless nod to modesty.

Turns its bald head, which looks like a thumb bent on top of a clenched fist.

Beast squints.

Spots them.

Grunts.

Begins to stand.

Fold upon fold of muscled flesh unfolding.

Beast rises.

Regards them both.

This hairless creature with pinprick black eyes and a mouthful of splintered teeth.

Looses a kind of strangulated cry.

A wheezing roar.

And around the splintered teeth, something like a foul smile forms.

Then it stretches out its two corded arms and wraps its thick fists around the poles on the opposite sides of the subway car. Sets its feet.

Gets its grip.

Snarls.

Tugs.

There’s the shrill sound of metal buckling.

As the subway car starts to fold in on itself.

The foul smile widens.

Do-Best.

I finger the box-cutter in my pocket again. Grip it. Get ready.

Boonce checks his watch again. You can barely see it now, that big chunky watch, lost against the backdrop of all his fancy tattoos. Now that I look closer, I realize how elaborate the tattoos are. Not just snakes and flames twining up each arm, but a whole panorama of apocalypse etched across his chest, and back, and neck. An ink-black swirl of snakes and flames and horses rearing and pale cloaked riders with skeletal faces shrieking and sinners wailing and lost souls writhing in final agony as the Earth is rent open and damnation is loosed upon the world.

Boonce looks up from his watch.

Admiring my ink?

Nods to his chest, his neck, his arms.

Took years. Painful as fuck, I will say that. To the kids watching at home? Do not get tattoos.

Looks back to his watch.

Okay, so your friends in the limn should be arriving in the last car right about now, assuming they got through Do-Good and Do-Better, which I think is a pretty good bet. To be honest, Do-Good’s a bit of a hayseed and Do-Better—well, my money might be on her, she’s good, but then, all due respect to Simon and that angel friend of yours. In a different world, I’d like to think that Simon and I could have worked together. Accomplished great things.

Looks up at me.

Ah, well. Regrets.

As Boonce talks, he walks the perimeter of the office, which is floor-to-ceiling windows on all sides. Behind him stretches the backdrop of dead Times Square. Towering neon billboards that haven’t been lit for years, sitting blind and dead-screen gray. On other buildings, the signs that no one bothered to turn off still cycle through old ads no one will ever see. Ads for canceled sitcoms, forgotten blockbusters, Broadway spectacles long since closed. There’s one ad on repeat in the background, for some kind of newfangled circus. The ad must have played fifteen times while we’ve been standing here. Some kind of circus starring clowns with long chins and white faces. Acrobats in leopard prints. Panthers leaping through burning hoops. Just playing to a dead square now. To emptiness. To nothing.

Boonce watches it too. Then turns back and says to me.

So let’s just assume your friends made it through. As for your lady-friend with the baby back in Hoboken, well, the odds are a little worse for her. I’ve got my best men on that case. Well, best man and best woman.

Stage whispers.

That Luckner is a beast.

My chest clenches again when he says this, twice as hard as before. Feel Boonce’s fist wrapped around my heart. Tightening.

Say to Boonce.

Don’t. They’re just—leave them out of it.

He smiles. Says nothing.

Boonce, please. Please. Leave them alone.

His smile dissipates.

No, Spademan, you leave them alone. Again and again and again. You left them alone in the woods and you left them alone in Hoboken. That’s what you do, apparently.

You don’t need to hurt them to hurt me.

He cuts me off again.

Sorry, but it’s done. My people tend to be pretty quick, if that’s any consolation.

Checks his watch. Waiting. Still. For something. So I ask him.

Why, Boonce?

He looks up at me. Impatient now.

Do you know what I’ve learned in my time in law enforcement?

What?

There are fingers on triggers in this country, Spademan, and all they need is an excuse to pull. That’s what they’re born to do, that’s what they’re trained to do, and it’s what they live to do. That’s all they are—fingers. And without triggers, these fingers have no meaning. Triggers, and a reason to pull.

Boonce checks his watch again.

So these fingers, Spademan, they lie in wait. For a reason. A story, really. A story to tell you, to tell me, to tell themselves.

Boonce gestures to the city.

To tell them.

Checks the watch again. Not yet time. So he continues.

That’s what I do, Spademan. I’m a storyteller. I write stories.

Looks back out over the skyline.

More specifically, I write endings.

Boonce slips his hands in his suit-pant pockets.

Here’s my latest story, Spademan. Tell me what you think. It’s the tale of an Arab exile who comes to a fallen city and works to recruit others to join him. Let’s say he’s a brilliant prodigy with a tragic past, with a reason to hate America, and now he’s found a way to tear into the one last refuge that’s left to any of us. The magical limnosphere. Our beloved last hiding place. Those of us who matter, anyway. Good so far, right?