Darkman (33 page)

Darkman shrugged. They were close to the steel-and-plywood box, stepping around huge slabs of concrete where re-bars stuck up twelve feet high, awaiting their entombment in cement. Now he could see a set of taut cables attached to the roof of the structure, balefully reflecting in the moonlight. It was a construction elevator, the kind with no front door.

Strack unhooked the chain that was the elevator’s ersatz door. When they were inside, he clipped it back together and worked a lever on the wall.

Gears clanked. Something whined. They rose with a heavy lurch.

“It is the tragedy of my life,” Strack said suddenly, as if asked, “that I must kill the ones I love most. My father’s death nearly stole my heart away, but it was a necessary evil to have him killed.”

Wild-eyed Julie moaned something as the layers of pitch dark and moonlight zipped past the steel girders and rolled down her face.

“My wife,” Strack went on, “the one who died so tragically, well, she held deeds to certain properties I needed. I sent her on a plane trip over the Great Smoky Mountains, and, well, let’s just say the pilot and I landed on our feet.”

He chuckled as the steel beams whizzed past. It occurred to Skip that he ought to be laughing, too, so he did. The rage seethed inside, a giant tapeworm of hate gnawing at his guts. Julie moaned again.

“Ah,” Strack said, turning to her, “not to worry. Your boyfriend pops up when he’s least expected. I’m sure he’ll be here shortly. It seems he created an amazing amount of chaos today. The hospitals are full of his innocent victims, and many have died. He has killed at least five of my most trusted associates, and is determined to kill me. Imagine this, Julie! Your bumbling, educated boyfriend is a mass murderer! Skip, tell her what happened to our friend Durant.”

Darkman squirmed, his mind suddenly blanking out. Wait a minute, wait a minute . . . how did Strack know Durant was dead? Evening news? A late paper? That innocent?

“His chopper got blown to shit,” Darkman said, sounding, to his own ears, a lot like John Wayne and nowhere close to Skip. He put on a feeble grin and massaged his throat with his cool fingers.

“You betcha,” Strack said, and then the elevator clunked to a stop and he unhooked the chain. “Now, Julie,” he said, pulling her out onto a plywood floor, “you have a rendezvous with Mother Earth. Skip? Your pleasure or mine?”

“Do your dirtiest, boss.”

Strack produced a pistol from somewhere inside his jacket and edged her out onto a single beam, like a lady condemned to walk the plank. Behind the mouthful of cloth, she wept and screamed, staggering on the narrow beam.

Rage.

“Just jump right off, Julie. Ours could have been a lasting relationship, if it weren’t for your high moral principles. Baby, I despise principles, and I can’t stand morals. So do us and everybody else a favor and take a long hike on a short beam.”

Darkman . . .
rage.

Darkman . . .
rage!

Darkman . . .
RAGE! RAGE!! RAGE!!! RAGE!!!!

“You murdererrr!”
he screamed, nearly tearing all the cords in his neck and throat. His rush job of a Skip-face split from the real skin at his neck and began to peel upward like cheap wallpaper.

Strack turned. He smiled knowingly. “Ah, Mr. Westlake. You make a lousy Skip because, though you look like him—and the voice isn’t all that bad—the real Skip would not know what happened to Durant because I, myself, didn’t know what happened to him. And most importantly, the one-legged slob never would wear a suit.”

He took a breath, smiling hugely. “Time for the unmasking, Westlake. Show us just who you really are.”

Darkman walked toward him on a long and solid beam, where two hundred feet below the dirty river reflected colorful lights. Vertigo swept over him like a wave of terror, and he sidled back, panting.

“So glad my father made me work high steel,” Strack said. “At the time I hated him. Now I love him for it. Watch what I can do.”

He jumped up and clicked his heels together, then landed solidly on both feet again, arms outstretched for balance. “It took me sixteen months to get the courage together for that. Do you know what it’s like now? Death ready to grab you at any moment? Sure you do. So come on and get me.”

Darkman ground his teeth. The rage was still there. But so was the fear, and if it were up to him, he would flop down on the girder and hang on until the crew arrived in the morning.

But . . . it wasn’t up to him. It was up to a man named Rangeveritz.

Darkman jumped for Strack, launching himself skyward, a flying wonder in a cut-rate suit, parts of his face disintegrating in the cold wind. He smashed down onto the girder where Strack had been, but Strack was gone and Julie was alone on this bleak beam, wavering and bobbing to stay in place, her eyes twin lamps of terror. Darkman swung around, hands ready to stab and claw, but Strack was in the moon shadows of the interior, chuckling.

“Bravo, Mr. Westlake. I applaud your clumsiness. I would love to shoot you right now, but for all the trouble you’ve caused me, I will wait to hear your screams when you fall. Know how long it takes to reach the ground in free-fall? A long time, Westlake. A long, long time. Plenty of time to consider what I did—with Julie—while you were away. Did you know about the mole on her inner thigh, the left one? I know. I know a lot of things.”

Darkman jumped toward the voice, a ragged scream of hate barreling past his lips. He landed hard on a stack of plywood, breaking another finger bone. He went up on all fours and searched the dark with Skip-eyes that were small and slitted.

“Look around yourself, Westlake. Look at the new construction going up. Remember when this place was a pile of filth where the drunks came to puke and sleep and get rolled by teenage punks? All of that is changing. Someday this river will run pure and clear, good enough to stick your face in and drink forever. This is the dream. And here you are, a circus freak let out of its cage, a murderer, a destroyer trying to crush my dream. What do you really look like, Westlake? As bad as the riverfront used to be or worse?”

Darkman swiveled his head, noting that Julie was sidestepping back off the plank, retching on the red cloth with saliva dripping from the corners of her mouth, moving slowly. For now, at least, she was okay.

“You want to know how I look?” Darkman shouted into the darkness. “I look like you, Strack. You hide behind money and lies and false faces, and all I’ve got is the false faces.”

There was a pause. Then, gently: “I guess we both belong to the same club, Westlake. Let’s call it the pretenders’ society. I pretend to be nice and admirable and generous. You pretend to be human. I live a lie, you live a lie. Who’s worse?”

Damn, Darkman thought, damn, damn, damn. The bastard had brains, unlike his partners, and he knew how to use the shadows. “Why are we arguing morality, Strack? I believe you said you don’t like the word.”

Silence. Julie came to a vertical beam and leaned against it, a white ghost against the sky and the stars. Strack was silent, possibly moving, possibly not, possibly anything.

“Strack!” Darkman shouted.

The reply sounded weary. “You are a killer, Westlake. I live only to build—skyscrapers, malls, office buildings, whole towns. I put stuff up, but all you can do is tear stuff down. But you know what?”

“What?” Darkman answered, swiveling his head to find that voice. “Go on, what?”

“No one ever said being bad didn’t feel good. It grows on you, gets better every time. Pretty soon you’re hooked on it, needing to shape the world just the way you want it, eliminating anybody who stands in the way, feeling oh so fine. If I guess right, you’ve killed all five of my men. Skip was the last one, right? What did you do to him? Stab him? Smother him? Does it even matter to you?”

Darkman kept his mouth shut, looking without seeing.

Seconds passed. A minute. Two minutes.

Strack sighed. “I’ve got a little job for you over in Atlantic City. I want you to do your mask thing, impersonate someone for me. If you do it right, I’ll pay you a quarter of a million dollars and give you Julie as a bonus. Sound good?”

This time Darkman waited, still madly trying to pinpoint that voice.

Something winked in the darkness just to the right, some golden metal touching a moonbeam. A cuff link? A belt buckle? A ring? The gun? “Not even if you could give me back my life, Strack,” he growled, then gathered himself and pounced toward the light.

His fingers brushed against soft fabric, and then there was nothing but air. He snatched out wildly and caught the side edge of a girder. The moon was a cold white beacon, the man in the moon looking on without interest as Darkman tried to keep his artificial finger pads from slipping. Strack leaned over and began pounding his hands with the butt of his revolver. Slivers of bone burst past the slipping skin, raining down on Darkman like ghostly sawdust. He looked down, looked for something to land on, but there was only cold air and steel and one hell of a drop.

He tried to pull himself up. Strack kept pounding his fingers. It was a minor irritation, not painful at all, but when Darkman brought his head into range, Strack started pounding it too. It didn’t hurt much, but it was growing very tiresome. He swung out and captured one of Strack’s ankles with a fist. Strack let out a whoop and grabbed a vertical beam while Darkman clambered onto the girder, breathing hard, balanced between rage and fear.

Strack jerked, trying to free his foot. Darkman pulled, managing to tear Strack’s shoe off. It tumbled out of sight. Nice going, Darkman thought sourly, chiding himself. The poor bastard will certainly miss that wing tip.

He tore Strack’s sock off, just for the hell of it. Strack grunted, stretched taut between his captured girder and Darkman’s hands. The artificial skin ripped free with a squelch, and the mushy Skip-hands pinwheeled out of sight. Strack looked at Darkman’s scorched claws, his eyes growing wide in the moonlight.

“If your face looks as bad as your hands,” he said, noisily straining to stay in place, “I’d sure hate to see it. You are just a damn carnival freak.”

Darkman growled. It’s not nice to call a freak a freak. He pulled one hand free of Strack’s bare foot, beginning to feel the extra strength, the partner to his anger. He considered twisting Strack’s foot until something snapped, but a better idea surfaced, a more fitting punishment for this creature made of money and lies.

He tore the Skip mask and wig off, glad that the moon was shining directly in his face. Strack let out a loud gasp.

“Go ahead.” Darkman sneered. “Pass out, go blind if you want to. You did this to me, Strack, stole my future and my girl. I hope you’re happy with the results.”

Strack put on a false smile. “They have a carnival going in town, part of the Octoberfest. You could get a job, a free cage, straw to sleep on.”

“Never lose your nerve, do you? Mr. Smart Guy to the end.”

Strack nodded, his own face strained as his grip on the girder weakened. “Get yourself a bag, cut an eyehole in it, and you can be the Elephant Man. Of course, a big jug of formaldehyde would preserve you longer.”

Darkman twisted his foot. Strack groaned, his hold on the girder getting weaker. Anklebones crunched as Darkman rearranged them. Strack gritted his perfect white teeth, the pistol still in his fist but quite useless unless he let go.

Walking practically on tiptoe, Julie edged toward them, the front of her white blouse stained from the flow of saliva, the wind blowing her hair, making it shift and billow. Darkman turned and saw her. He turned his head quickly away, not wanting her to see him unmasked.

“Stay away,” he said, unconsciously easing his hold on Strack’s foot.

With a huge jerk Strack pulled himself free. He aimed the gun, hopping on one leg. “Say good-bye, Westlake,” he crowed triumphantly. “This bullet’s for you!”

Darkman ducked in time. The bullet thunked against steel and bounded away, whistling crazily. Both Julie and Darkman went into a squat while Strack fired again, and again. Julie wobbled, retching against the cloth, almost ready to fall. Darkman reached out and caught her elbow, steadying her.

The moon showed her eyes as they shifted down to his hand. She emitted a bloated, terrified screech.

“Do you see now?” Strack shouted at her. The wind picked up, whooping past the unyielding steel, moaning with a hundred cold voices. “He isn’t a man anymore, Julie. He isn’t even human. Look at him!”

Darkman snatched his hand away from Julie and covered his head and face with his arms.

“A freak, Julie. A nightmare, a spook. Is that what you want? Come back to me and we’ll forget that this Peyton creature ever existed. Forget, too, that damn Bellasarious memo that caused all this.” He extended a hand. “Together, Julie. You and I, just us. All grudges set aside. In other words, a declaration of peace.”

She stared at Strack with her hugely gaping mouth drooling, her hair tousling back and forth. Darkman peeked through his arms and saw her nod. She sidled toward Strack, stopping where Darkman blocked her path on the beam. Strack reached out and steadied her as she stepped past him. Strack was smiling gently. He pulled her close and jerked the soggy cloth out of her mouth. He tossed it away while she recovered.

“Mr. Westlake,” he said, “I believe our business is almost ended. There is only one more thing to do and we will all be released from this silly bondage.”

Darkman turned his back. Julie should not remember him as Darkman but as the Peyton she had loved.

“Only one thing left to do, Mr. Circus Freak,” Strack said. “Julie will live, but only if you can prove your love for her.”

Darkman shuffled around, uneasy, shielding his face from the light.

“You will take an extended hike off this building, Mr. Nobody. I want you to jump.”

He spun Julie around and hooked an arm around her neck. “Either you jump or she does. Which will it be, Romeo?”

Darkman stared at him.

Anger . . .

“Once you are in the coffin you deserve, I will make Julie my bride.” He stroked her breasts with his free hand. She stiffened but said nothing.