Nightlife (53 page)

Or so they thought, anyway.

He kept his mouth shut until they hit Kennedy, then:

“You guys mind if I lie down? I had a long night.”

“Go ahead,” the driver said.

“Yeah, I don’t think
too
many people’s pissed on that seat.”

Two miles to the river. Tony lowered himself on his side, folded his legs onto the seat. It wasn’t likely they’d be rubbernecking around to check on him. So far as they knew, what was to see?

And so, turning his face down toward the seat, which exuded the pungent whiff of a public urinal, Tony willed the change. It was already champing at the bit like a winning racehorse. He trembled with the exertion of keeping it a silent process. Head elongating, flesh thickening, scaling over. New teeth bursting from hiding.

He exploited the increased elasticity of bones and joints by stretching his handcuffed arms, nearly wrenching his shoulders loose at their sockets.
Stretch.
He bucked his arms down once, twice, a third time—shoulders flaming and molten— and managed to slip his wrists beneath his rump. Slowly wriggled them forward beneath his thighs. And finally, one by one, working each lower leg and foot back through the loop of his arms.

Cuffed in front now. Which opened up worlds of possibilities.

He lifted his wrists to his mouth, fit the manacle bar into his protruding jaw. Chomped down. It parted like soft lead. He drew his wrists apart, free at last. The bracelets he could worry about later. For now, time was growing short. The Hillsborough was less than a mile distant.

And the zero hour had drawn nigh.

Tony popped up in the seat, all savagery and instinct now, and hurled himself at the tiny chain link fence. Jaws open wide, he hit like a torpedo. Even the burliest of felons could shake the fence all they wanted to no avail, but piranha jaws are among the the most powerful in the whole of nature, and Tony’s were considerably larger than what nature allowed her own. The partition was no match for several tons per square inch of rending pressure. He sheared through it as easily as he might a lace curtain.

At the moment of impact, both cops swiveled their heads about, to check the commotion. The driver was secondary in Tony’s mind. Take out the unoccupied man first. Alvie’s irritable expression melted into unglued fear, and by the time his hand unsnapped his service .38 free of its holster, Tony was halfway through the fence.

Exceedingly upset.

And the screams were exceedingly loud.

Tony took out Alvie’s throat with a single lunge of bear-trap jaws. Black slacks and blue uniform went red. The driver bellowed and pressed against the door, too little too late. Draped over the seat back, Tony squirmed through another foot, rocking as the cruiser weaved beyond control.

Another lunge, and Tony clipped off half the driver’s right ear and gulped it down whole. Through the windshield, Kennedy Boulevard tilted across like a crazed mural. Tony seized the wheel with one webbed hand and hauled himself further, more room to maneuver. Room to kill. Blood sprayed the dome light.

With his left hand, Tony shoved the dying driver’s leg forward. Push the gas pedal with a cane, like hell. He jockeyed the foot into place and powered it down. The driver gurgled, tried to fight. Tony wrested the wheel away from him.

The radio had erupted with a barrage of static, distress calls from the other cars, shouts and panic and entropy. Music to his ears.

Tony had the cruiser up to sixty as he neared the University of Tampa on the left, the main building that was once a luxury hotel topped with onion-shaped minarets. Saturday drivers were sent into panicked skids, or looping out of the way as he barreled through like a runaway train that had jumped its tracks. Sirens from the escort cars wailed all around, while in their midst, he raged. An unmarked car drew along the right side, trying to box him in and bring him to a grinding halt. Tony jammed the twitching leg all the way down, his nails piercing the regulation black slacks until they drew blood; the V-8 engine roared. He yanked the wheel and broadsided into the unmarked, sent it ricocheting away.

Sixty-five and climbing. While sweet chaos reigned.

Past the university. Past the park and its sculpture, bent steeples erupting from the earth. The cruiser began to crest the rise leading to the bridge spanning the Hillsborough. A drawbridge affair, built to split in the middle for approaching boats. The center section was forged into a vast steel grate, with railings along either side. No concrete retaining walls, no curbs—just an unobstructed path into the rails.

Tony twisted the wheel and aimed. Tires screamed, and so did the driver. The radio caterwauled into fever pitch.

Tony released the wheel, snatched up the fallen .38 in Alvie’s lap. He aimed at the windshield and jerked the trigger as quickly as he could, unleashing a deafening volley within the tight interior and etching a pattern of starbursts across the glass, side to side.

Let the bullets pave the way.

An oncoming car in the westbound lane locked into a skid as the cruiser rocketed past its nose. And Tony braced.

Impact.

Grillwork mashed into steel like aluminum against a sieve, the back end wrenching a yard off the bridge. The driver screeched his last and took out the pile-driver steering wheel with his chest.

Poised over the seat, Tony was catapulted straight at the windshield. He roared triumph, crossed his forearms before his head, and exploded through the weakened glass. Bursting free, free, sailing out over the hood and beyond in a blizzard of crystalline glass, a hailstorm of flying metal.

He straightened his body, curving into a graceful arc against blue, blue sky. Arms thrust before him, fingers straining for distance.

The glitter of glass, the heat of the sun, wind in his face. Life was grand.

Free fall.

Twenty-five feet down, the glimmering surface of the Hillsborough River beckoned. He dropped, as pure a missile as a falling arrow, and splashed down. Water enveloped him, cocooned him, nourished him, protected him.

With no need whatsoever to return topside.

He skimmed the silt of the bottom, dazed and shocky but his head clearing by the moment. Exchanging one world for a completely new one was always disorienting. Water rippled past gills, and he was ecstatic. He swam north, upstream, and the current was no great foe. The sunlight through water was comfortingly murky.

Flitting images, plans for the next hour, two, three. With any luck, back on the bridge they’d think him dead. Never surfaced once, drowned for certain if not killed by the impact. For the next few hours, the absence of a corpse wouldn’t be terribly unusual. The river’s current could have sucked it down into the channels, then out to Hillsborough Bay.

Swim, then. The river would eventually put him less than a mile from the safe house near the airport, where they had suckered Justin into thinking the mule was picking up a load of coke.

Perfect. There he could rest up, dry off. Exchange the glass-tattered shirt he wore for a new one. Lie low for a while. Make a phone call or two to put together the twenty grand in flash money he’d need. Then commandeer a car, or grab the Lincoln. It was still in the downtown parking garage where Lupo had switched it for the dirty-work Olds last night. He could switch the plates on it, just to be safe. He always carried a spare set of tags, registered in the name of a time-tested lady friend, in its trunk for emergencies.

And then he could be his usual punctual self.

And by tomorrow, the world would truly be his.

Justin and Kerebawa and April arrived far earlier than needed, at Justin’s insistence. Busch Gardens, three hundred acres of theme-park Africa, simmered in heat sufficiently wicked for the real thing. He didn’t know which was worse: walking in the open beneath the sun and its negligible mercy, or keeping to shaded walkways where the vegetation wove a blanket for humidity.

Go early, get a renewed feel for the place. They had parked east across Malcolm McKinley Drive after turning north off Busch Boulevard. Left the car in one of the auxiliary lots and caught a tram on one of its endless circuits. Twenty-two and a half dollars a head got them through the main gates, and as with his previous visit, some employee in Indiana Jones clothing snapped their picture together—all a part of your day at Busch Gardens. A claim receipt was thrust into his free hand—the one that wasn’t carrying a gym bag and he was told he could pick up the print later that afternoon. Only five additional dollars.

Bad memories, he didn’t need this. He wished he’d sprung the few extra bucks for the picture of himself and Erik. One final memory, assurance that once upon a time, life had promise.

Justin looked around at the other park visitors. Families, couples, groups of friends, all of whom seemed determined to have a fine time despite the sweltering heat. He felt like a mutant in their midst.

Check the time; four o’clock. Two and a half hours to showtime, so to speak. Here in late May, Busch Gardens was on a nine-thirty-to-seven-thirty schedule. Hopefully the place would be a bit more thinned out by six-thirty.

Didn’t want to traumatize any more kids than necessary.

After the rigors of last night, the day already felt long and wearying. A trip to a sporting-goods store to buy the gym bag, plus a box of 7.62mm cartridges for the AK-47—which would hopefully be unnecessary. Then the airport’s long-term parking lot to recover the five kilos. Finally, hardware and drug stores for the last few odds and ends. Ready, set. The rest was up to sheer dumb luck.

“When you meet Tony here inside the main entrance,” Justin said to April, nodding at the rough desert-hued portals, “take the lead. Bring him on through the park to meet us. Soon as you can get off by yourselves, get a little privacy, make him show you the cash. You don’t do that, he’ll know something else is going on.”

She squirmed, uneasy, but nodded as he unfolded the brochure map given to him by a parking-lot attendant along with their permit. The graphics were cartoonish and very simplified, but the overhead layout was all he needed. His finger pinpointed their own location, then traveled a gradual path to the northwest.

“Now, we’ve got to get him up here in this corner, but if you walk it the whole way, it’ll be tough getting him around to that rock hill without him realizing what’s on the other side.” He flicked his finger near the center of the map. “Take him to the Nairobi Station and get on the train there.”

He followed the tracks’ path to the east, then as it curved north, and finally back to the west along the top of the park. Most of the route looped what was dubbed the Serengeti Plain, a large preserve of free-roaming animals. Zebras, giraffes, impala, gazelles, water buffalo, more. His finger lit in the northwest.

“Take him off the train here at the Congo Station. Then all you do is bring him down this little path, and to the rocks the back way. We’ll run the course just to make sure, but you got all that?”

April nodded. “What if he’s not alone? He might have someone following.”

“That’s a chance we’ll have to take. But I’m betting he’ll be alone. I mean, why bring backup when you can do what
he
can do?”

“Watch his eyes,” Kerebawa offered. Half grudgingly, but a marked improvement. It was the first thing he had said to her since last night. “Watch who he watches, where he watches. The eyes will tell you if he comes alone.”

Justin led them through the entire circuit, from entrance to train to disembarking to the spot where Tony had to be brought. They moved in somber contrast to everyone else around them, no joy, no delight, no interest in rides or gift shops or animals.

An hour had passed by the time they strolled south along the middle of the park and left April near the entrance. She waited beside a fountain, and Justin felt unexpectedly cold upon leaving her there. He felt her eyes at his back while he and Kerebawa set off the same way they’d come from. He would not turn around,
could
not.

You brought this on yourself.

Soon they were out of sight, and he decided the two of them should take a little time trying to enjoy some sights. Justin led Kerebawa to a shallow fenced pond stocked with alligators. Most lazed like olive green statues; a few glided through the water, prehistoric tails slowly whipping side to side.