The Syndrome (23 page)

“Police.”

“Hello!”
Bonilla exclaimed, and turned to Adrienne. “I’m impressed. Looks like you got some pull.”

Not likely
, Adrienne thought. When she’d filed the complaint against Duran, the cop who’d taken the report had practically fallen asleep.

Opening the door, Duran found two men in overcoats standing in the hallway, looking grim. One of the men flashed an ID of some kind, and asked if he was talking to Jeffrey Duran. Duran said that he was, and the shorter man wondered if he and his partner might come in. “There’s been a complaint,” he said. “We were hoping you could clear it up.”

Duran made a
be my guest
gesture, and the men walked in.

The first cop was short, with alert green eyes, reddish hair and a face strewn with freckles. A real leprechaun. Behind him was a much bigger man, with broad shoulders and a shuffling walk that reminded Adrienne of a bear. Neither of them was in uniform.

“
Two
dicks!” Bonilla remarked. “I’m amazed.”

The Leprechaun cocked his head. “And who are you?”

“Visitor Number 1,” Bonilla told him. “She’s Visitor Number 2. You got some ID?”

The Bear shifted his shoulders, like a boxer waiting to begin. The Leprechaun smiled in a way that was meant to be ingratiating, and asked, “Is this your apartment?”

“No,” Bonilla replied. “That’s why they call me Visitor Number 1. You got some ID?”

The cop grinned in a patronizing way and, with a sigh, produced a small carrying case emblazoned with a badge.

Bonilla peered at it. “The reason I’m askin’ is, I never saw two plainclothes assigned to a misdemeanor report, y’know?”

The Leprechaun shrugged, and turned to Duran. “Maybe you should go into the other room,” he suggested.

“I think we ought to leave,” Adrienne said, and started for the door. The Bear stepped into her path. She stepped to the left. So did he.

“What
is
this?” Duran asked, glancing from one to another.

Bonilla kept his eyes on the Leprechaun. “So what precinct you with?”

The freckle-faced man hesitated for a moment, and then replied, “The 23rd.”

Bonilla chuckled. “‘The 23rd’,” he repeated. “Like Hawaii’s the 59th province.”

The Leprechaun frowned, certain he was being dissed, but not quite sure how.

Bonilla was happy to clarify it for him. Taking a step toward the cop, he stood chin to chin with him, and said, “You been watchin’ too much television, my man. ’Cause we don’t
have
precincts in Washington. It’s ‘districts,’ you dumb fuck—next time, do your homework.” Then he nodded suddenly and forcefully in the cop’s direction, driving his forehead into the freckled bridge of the Leprechaun’s nose.

Something snapped, blood flew, and the cop cried out in pain as Bonilla spun him around, then clasped him in an awkward embrace, the Duke pressing against the soft flesh under the cop’s jaw. “Be cool,” Bonilla whispered, then turned to the Bear. “Why don’t you just turn around, and put your hands against the wall. And you—” He nodded toward Duran. “—get over here where I can see you.”

Adrienne was frozen, her back to the wall. She might as well have had pins through her arms.

Bonilla turned to her. “Call 911,” he said, then seeing the Bear reach into his jacket, shouted at him. “Against the wall, asshole, I told you!”

But the Bear wasn’t listening. With almost supernatural calm, he pulled a large black handgun from the shoulder sling under his coat. Holding it in one hand, he removed a fat, metal cylinder from his coat pocket, and began to screw it onto the end of the gun barrel.

Completely incredulous, Bonilla laughed—nervously. “I don’t believe this guy.”

But then the silencer was in place, and the Bear took a step
forward. Raising the gun, he began firing in a slow and deliberate way.
Pop. Pop. Pop.

Adrienne couldn’t believe it, and neither could Bonilla. The big man had put two bullets in his partner’s face and a third in his chest by the time Bonilla realized what the Bear was doing—which was clearing a path to
him.
And, by then, it was too late. The Leprechaun was sagging to the floor, one-hundred-forty pounds of dead weight, and there wasn’t time for Bonilla to get more than a single shot off. His gun was not silenced and the noise was deafening. But the shot was useless. Plaster fell to the floor as the Bear’s fourth round tore into the right side of Bonilla’s chest, spinning him around. The next slug swept his legs out from under him, even as Duran came flying, slamming into the Bear and sending him crashing across the room.

Adrienne tried to scream, but there was nothing—her voice had gone as quiet as the Bear’s gun. Running to Bonilla, she crouched by his side, and did her best to comfort him—while Duran wrestled the big man for his weapon. And lost.

With one hand on Duran’s throat, holding him hard against the floor, the Bear put the gun to Duran’s temple—then drew back. Instead of firing, he brought the butt of the gun down against Duran’s forehead, knocking him senseless. Then he climbed to his feet and, brushing himself off, crossed the room to where Adrienne was crouching over Bonilla. Without a word, he drove his foot into her side, then kicked her again as she rolled away, moaning in pain and fear. Turning back to Bonilla, he saw that the detective had begun to crawl toward his gun, which lay on the floor a few feet away. Walking silently beside him, the Bear waited until Bonilla’s hand reached out, then put three bullets in his back—in slow succession.

Pop … pop … pop.

Finally, he turned to Adrienne, who was sitting on the floor with her back against a chair, digging her heels into the carpet, pushing backwards. Putting the barrel of the gun against her forehead, he pulled the trigger.

Click.
Adrienne flinched as if a mousetrap had gone off inside her head. But not the Bear. He stood over her in such a way that she couldn’t escape, making noises that were supposed to be reassuring. Ejecting the empty magazine, he found a fresh one in his coat pocket, and jammed it into place. Then he leaned over her for the second time, and placed the barrel’s maw against her temple. “It won’t hurt,” he promised.

Then a spray of blood flew into her face as Duran slammed a desk lamp into the back of the big man’s head, driving him into the floor like a stake. This time, she found her voice, and the yelp of terror that came from her mouth nearly rattled the windows.

By then, Duran had jerked her to her feet, and they were moving toward the door, splashing through the blood that lay in pools around Eddie and the Leprechaun. For Adrienne, it was like a bad dream. She seemed weightless to herself, an inflatable person whose legs were barely in contact with the floor. Then they were out the door and running down the corridor. Behind them, they heard a roar and a crash, as if an animal had woken in pain to find that he’d lost a leg in the night.

Turning the corner, they found themselves in front of the elevators. Duran slapped the call button, which flared and chimed as the doors wheezed open. Releasing Adrienne’s hand, he stepped inside, leaving her alone in the corridor.

She couldn’t believe it. She was bereft. He’d saved her, and now—she could hear the Bear shambling toward them down the corridor.

Then Duran came out of the elevator, as quickly as he’d stepped in. Grabbing her hand, he pulled her down the corridor as the doors rattled shut, and the elevator began its descent. Turning a corner in the hallway, Duran tried one door after another until he found one that opened. Darting inside, they found themselves in the trash room that served the sixth floor.

As the door closed behind them, Adrienne saw three
plastic bins lined up against the far wall, half-full of bottles and cans, with stacks of newspapers on the floor, and a little opening in the wall—the trash chute. Then the door swung shut, and there was just the stink of it, an overripe, organic smell that filled the near darkness.

She wanted to scream, but what good would that do? It might bring someone into the corridor, but the man who was following them wouldn’t be stopped—he’d killed his own partner just to get at Bonilla. So she stood where she was, staring at the light behind the ventilation grid under the door.

Down the hall, she could hear the Bear coming at a run, then turning back, and running the other way. She heard the palm of his hand slap at the elevator button, heard him curse, heard him breathe.

Then, quite suddenly, his legs were visible behind the ventilation grid. Instinctively, her hand tightened upon Duran’s arm. But just as quickly as the Bear had come, he was gone, footsteps padding down the hall. She heard the stairwell door open with a pressurized
whoosh
—followed by a stillness in which she could imagine him standing, stock-still and listening for her. Then he was moving again, stumbling back past their doorway, his legs momentarily obliterating the light.

The door’s hydraulic mechanism was obviously set so that the heavy fire door would close slowly and gently, rather than with a crash. And when, after what seemed a long while, it swung shut with a loud, metallic
click
, Adrienne’s heart leaped and a sound fell from her mouth. To her ears, standing in the darkness, it seemed as if she’d cried out. And for a long moment, she was sure that the Bear had heard her, and that he was on his way back to kill them both.

But, no. The elevator chimed. The doors rattled open. And, moments later, she could hear the cables’ whir as the conveyance sank toward the ground floor. She took a step.

“Not yet,” Duran whispered.

It seemed as if they were quiet for a very long time, but maybe not. Standing in the dark like this turned seconds into
minutes, minutes into hours. Adrienne’s side hurt—where the big man had kicked her. She tried not to think about it—the pain or that moment when the man held the gun to her head and her heart fell through the floor.
It won’t hurt.
After a while she began to wonder why the police weren’t there.

Or had they been?

She dismissed the thought as soon as it occurred to her.
Those weren’t detectives
, she thought.
No policeman would do what the big man had done. They were killers, pure killers. “It won’t hurt …”

And Bonilla … She felt stricken because she couldn’t get the image of Bonilla out of her head. It kept playing over and over again behind her eyelids: the soft sound he made, lying there, the pink froth in the corners of his mouth. And it was all because of her, because she’d insisted on coming here.

And she hadn’t taken his pulse, and she hadn’t called 911—there hadn’t been time.
So maybe he isn’t dead
, she thought.
Maybe … Of course he’s dead. He was shot five times, front to back.
And now she was on her own, crouching in the dark with this psychopath who’d killed her sister—and saved her life.

More than once, bags of trash hurtled down the chute from the floors above. The sound didn’t so much startle her as set her to thinking that there was a parallel universe just beyond the door—a world of ordinary people doing ordinary things. While she—

“Let’s go.” He was still whispering.

Together, they stepped into the empty corridor, and looked around. There was no one. She followed Duran down the hall to the stairs, where they went up, instead of down. She was climbing blindly, without thinking, emerging finally on the ninth floor. In front of them was a set of double doors emblazoned with the words health club.

Inside, a single man in a wet, gray T-shirt sat on the back of a LifeCycle, pedaling furiously in front of a television set.

Glancing at Adrienne and Duran, he looked startled. Then his eyes skidded away, back to the screen. He was the room’s only occupant, besides themselves, and he was wearing earphones.

“It’s usually crowded,” Duran said, his voice filled with disappointment. “I was hoping … c’mon.”

He grabbed a towel from a stack by the door, wet it in the water fountain and handed it to Adrienne. “You have blood on your forehead.”

She scrubbed at it furiously, and looked at the pink residue on the towel, then tossed it into the bin. A moment later, they were in the corridor again.

“Where are we going?” Adrienne demanded.

“We gotta get out of the building,” Duran told her. “He’s still here. I’m sure of it.”

For a moment, she was tempted to pull away from him. But no: he was all she had, the only game in town. “He’ll be watching the lobby,” she said.

“Then we’ll take the stairs. There’s a service entrance on the ground floor,” Duran told her. He started off.

“But what if he’s watching the stairs?”

He stopped. “Then we should take the elevator.”

“But—”

“Got a coin?”
he asked, sarcasm vying with urgency.

She shook her head.

“Then which is it?
You
decide.”

She thought about it. Finally, she said, “The lobby. There’s a security guard, right? And it’s a public place.” She reached out and gave the call button a decisive push, although when her fingers touched the metal, she got a sensation like a shock. Three floors down,
Duran’s
floor, she realized, the elevator stopped—and so, for a moment, did her heart. She felt as if all her nerve endings had migrated to the surface of her skin—the tension unbearable as she waited for the doors to open.

But when they drew back, there was only a pimply kid from Domino’s, holding a red, white, and blue plastic pizza
warmer. Stepping into the elevator, he glanced at Duran, and leaned against the wall. “Three pizzas, and they give me half a buck.” He shook his head. “The bullshit I go through …”

“Where to?”

The taxi had just deposited an elderly gentleman on the front steps of Duran’s apartment building, when the two of them piled into the backseat as if it were the last chopper out of Saigon. “Police station,” Adrienne gasped.

The cabbie eyed them in the rearview mirror. “Which one?” he asked.

“Any
one,” Adrienne told him.

“There’s one on Park,” the driver suggested.

“Park would be good!” Duran said.