Floating City (72 page)

She entered today as always without a word, placing an audiotape in the stereo – Enya’s ‘Shepherd Moons.’ He heard the water running as she washed up, then the soothing scent of rosemary as she opened a bottle of oil and, warming her hands by rubbing her palms briskly together, got down to work.

The placid music washed over him as her strong, capable hands began kneading the tension from his neck and shoulders. As always, as he sank deeper into the growing lassitude, memories of his childhood surfaced like long-buried artifacts at an archaeological dig. The comforting smell of bread baking as his mother hummed a Sicilian tune under her breath; her forearms covered with flour and confectioners’ sugar, white as a ghost’s, thick as a plowshare.

The sharp odor of rosemary reminded him, too, of the acrid smoke of the crooked, hand-rolled cigars his father used to make from Cuban leaf down in the dank cellar. The one time he snuck down there to have a look around, his father beat him senseless. That was okay; he had been stupid, straying into a man’s world before he was a man. His taciturn father, who spoke infrequently about sports but never about his job in a dingy factory across the river in Weehawken where he was daily exposed to the chemicals that one day killed him like that, wham! Better than a decade of emphysema or a year or two of lung cancer, Tony overheard a neighbor say to his mother at the funeral. Later on, when he got into Princeton, Tony D. realized that his father never spoke about his job because he was ashamed of it, ashamed of his lack of education. And when Tony graduated law school, his only wish was that his father had been there to witness his triumph.

He grunted now as the masseuse’s fingers dug into the nerve complex at the base of his neck. His breathing deepened as he relaxed even more.

The rosemary reminded him of Sunday dinners at his brother’s. Marie knew how to cook, you only had to look at her to know. But she was sweet and she had given Frank two strapping boys. More than Margarite ever gave him. Besides, Marie didn’t know the meaning of back talk. She knew a woman’s place and kept to it, let Frank bring home the bacon. While he was just a glorified messenger boy, a stooge, fronting for Margarite. God
damn
Dominic and his obsession with women!

‘Relax, Mr Tony,’ the masseuse said in a gentle whisper. ‘You’re tensing up again.’

Yeah, well, who wouldn’t, Tony thought as he felt her fingers kneading deeper. Christ almighty, the humiliations he had to put up with. A bossy wife who thought she was a man, who couldn’t – or, worse, wouldn’t – give him a son. A daughter who was happier away from home in some place in Connecticut where Margarite had stuck her, wouldn’t even tell Tony where. And then there was this thing she was having with that fucking ex-cop Lew Croaker. It was enough to drive any real man insane.

But Tony D. knew he had to be cool. Patience, never his long suit, was the key. If he could be as patient with Margarite and Francie as he was in his contract negotiations with the studios, he’d be okay. In like Flynn. The bitches would have to respect him, after a time. A reconciliation would come. Margarite would see how idiotic this fling with Croaker was and he could bed her again, maybe even get her to pop out the son he wanted so dearly. You weren’t really a man until you sired a male child, that’s what the old man had said, his hands filthy from the Weehawken chemicals, and he was right.

He turned his head from one side to the other to ease the strain, and that was when he saw the heavy curtains move. He lay very still, his heart thudding slowly and heavily. He blinked, looked again. Stirring still. But that was impossible. This building was like so many of the city’s modern skyscrapers: the windows did not open. A breath of fresh air came to him, stinking of soot and car fumes. He moved his arm, so slowly the masseuse did not detect it.

‘Doris,’ he said softly, ‘I think I’d prefer the lavender.’

‘Yes, Mr Tony,’ the masseuse said, lifting her hands off him and moving silently to her equipment bag where her containers of oils were grouped with a thick rubber band.

As she bent over her capacious bag, the curtains billowed outward and Tony sat up. They parted to reveal a large circular hole cut in the window glass. The precisely cut glass lay like a gigantic lens, gripped by a pair of powerful suction cups, on a wooden scaffold that window washers use.

The man who had cut the glass took one step into the room. He was dressed in the anonymous denim overalls of a window washer. His right hand was filled with a .38 fitted with a snub-nosed silencer. He grinned at Tony D.’s nakedness, showing crooked yellow teeth. ‘Bad Clams says, “Good-bye, Tony.”’

Phut! Phut!
The sounds were insignificant, much as if Tony had passed wind, but their effect was anything but. The grinning man spun backward, his mouth frozen in that same smirk, but his eyes opened wide, registering shock at the silencer-equipped Colt .45 in Tony’s oily fist. He grabbed onto the curtains, pulling them half off their track, blood spurting from chest and throat. Then he pitched to the floor.

‘Too bad you won’t be able to tell Bad Clams anything,’ Tony said into eyes already beginning to film over.

He heard heavy gasping and turned, seeing Doris with one hand in her mouth, the other clutching something white, perhaps the bottle of scented oil she had just taken from her bag. Her eyes were wide and staring as she backed up against one wall.

‘It’s okay,’ he said reassuringly. ‘It’s all over.’ He got off the table and, holding the .45 at his side, walked toward her. ‘You’re safe now.’ He tried a smile, but still panicked, she was fixated on the gun. Just like a woman. The last thing he wanted was anything to alert the building security. His was a strictly legit business, and any event to the contrary could kill his reputation. Hence the silencer on his .45.

He lifted it, placing it gently on the massage table, coming toward her with his hands raised and open. ‘See? There’s no problem. It’s over.’

He was within a pace of her and he could see her breathing calm. She took her hand from her mouth. Tiny white ovals were imprinted on the skin where she had almost drawn blood.

‘Doris!’ He touched her. ‘Okay? Are you all right?’

‘It’s not me I’m thinking of,’ Doris said as she buried the four-inch stiletto blade in his sternum.

‘Oh, fuck! Wha –?’ He fell against her, then opened his mouth to scream and found her fist jammed into it.

‘Bad Clams says you should take better care of yourself, Mr Tony,’ she said, staring intently at him as if he were a frog she was about to dissect.

He wanted to curse her, to reach for his weapon, but he could manage neither. His legs had turned to jelly and his extremities had turned to ice. He grunted instead, as she quite expertly dragged the small but razor-sharp blade up through his lungs and into his heart and his full mass came against her.

Dead weight, Doris thought as she pushed him down to the floor. She wiped the handle of the blade, then dragging the would-be assassin over, pressed his still-warm fingers around the folding handle. Looking around, she used a towel to drop the Colt between the two bodies. She picked up the white tampon within which she had secreted the stiletto. She jammed it into her bag, gathered up the rest of her equipment. Shouldering her bag, she ducked through the neat hole in the windowpane, clambered out onto the scaffolding, and was gone.

Available now

First and foremost, to Jeffrey Arbitol, for invaluable assistance in the creation and handling of 114m and all matters nuclear.

To my own Washington and Southeast Asian Information Central: Sichan Siv and Martha Pattillo Siv.

On matters pertaining to Saigon and Vietnam: Sesto Vecchi.

To Katy, for her company and for her perfect present,
The Ink Dark Moon.

To Nick Sayers, for his assistance in the details of the London section.

To Tomomi-san.

Nicholas Linnear’s air transportation is scheduled exclusively by Bob Kunikoff, Valerie Wilson Travel, N.Y.C.

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