Winner Take All (34 page)

Her bitter reverie was interrupted by someone calling, “Ms. Brandt?”

The driver was a stranger, not uncommon in a city where the limo listings took over ten pages of the phone book. He was standing alongside a new-style town car, which she particularly detested. “Yes?”

He opened the rear door. “I was sent to collect you.”

The guard took a step forward. “Do I know you, man?”

The driver was an odd-looking character, even for this town of bestial abnormalities. His red hair descended in a gradual slant to almost meet his eyebrows, leaving the impression that his frontal lobe had been compressed into apelike proportions. He raised both hands, bunching his dark coat around shoulders like knotted melons. “I just go where I’m ordered. My call sheet says this car’s been laid on for a Ms. Brandt.”

Suddenly all she wanted was away. “It’s all right, Greg.”

“Jimmy was gonna call somebody around from the front.”

Which would be just another stranger, and one she would have to pay herself. Another item on her much-loathed list. “This man is already here. I may as well go now.” And if she waited Dale might find her and make another scene.

Greg hovered alongside until she was in the wash of air-conditioned air. This was New York. Lincoln Center guards were uniformed, alert, and everywhere. Which was why she was not particularly worried about
the redheaded man shifting himself behind the wheel. Even when she caught a whiff of his scent, which was atrocious. “Who sent you?”

“City Services, ma’am.”

“I meant who ordered you to pick me up.”

He halted by the exit onto 65th and checked his clipboard. “All I got here is the place, the name, and the time.”

“Never mind.” She relaxed into the black leather seat, and was instantly enveloped by the smell of cold ashes. Another reason why she hated these American limos. Cigarette smoke clung to them for centuries. And the man’s odor really was too much. He smelled like one of those grease-laden men who populated the waterfront bars back in Wilmington, blind to any turn the world might have taken since rockers all wore white socks. “Take me to the Plaza.”

But the driver continued one block farther toward the park, then halted by an entrance to another parking garage.

“Where …”

Her unformed question was answered by the rear door pulling open. An all too familiar face leaned over and said, “Going my way?”

“Not you. And especially not now.”

“This won’t take long.” He slipped into the seat beside her. “Drive.”

She slid as far from him as she could. “You really are detestable. If you had any idea how difficult a day I’ve had, you wouldn’t dare disturb me.”

“
Your
day is difficult?” His laugh had deteriorated more than any other external component. He still managed to hold on to his looks and his power and his rage. She had always found his wrath most appealing, particularly when she could harness and exploit it. But his laugh sounded like something unearthed from a very old grave. “My dear, this is just too rich.”

Instead of turning onto Central Park West, the driver powered through the light and entered the park on the 65th Street transverse. Erin demanded, “Driver, stop this car.”

In reply, he took the turn onto West Park Drive so hard the car rose up like a boat in heavy seas. Turning
away
from the Plaza and safety.

“Driver!”

“Save it, my dear.” The man beside her propped his briefcase in his lap and flipped the catches. “He cares for you about as much as I do. Which of late is hardly at all.”

The knife he drew out was long as a scimitar. She would have screamed, but all she could feed into her lungs were ashes and fear.

“I don’t suppose you’d care to tell me where you’ve stowed the little darling.”

She could not take her eyes from the blade. “You’re insane.”

“No, I thought not. My mistake to have waited on you this long.”

He laughed in a most peculiar manner, the phlegm-filled chuckle of one delighting in the morgue. “Never you mind. I shall find her. Of that you can be absolutely certain.”

Erin aimed a high-heeled kick at his face. He batted it away and laughed again. When she tried a second kick, he shoved the blade into her thigh and snarled, “Come now, surely you can do better than that.”

The pain was hardly as shocking as the sight of her blood and the ragged tear running from her right knee up into the bunched and crimson silk. She heard a small child’s voice protest, “You’ve hurt me.”

“Have I indeed.” He jammed the blade through her middle, the thrust so savage she became pinned to the seat. Erin looked down to see her own life staining her dress and the haft and his hand.

He required both hands to heave the knife free. Her flesh gave way with a rude sucking sound.

Then the pain struck, a brutal incandescence that sent her writhing out of the seat and onto the limo’s floor.

“Think of it this way.” He leaned over her, the knife poised for yet another blow. “At least you shall miss the diva’s inevitable decline.”

M
ARISHA
’
S FEET ACHED TERRIBLY
. This was nothing new. Her feet and ankles hurt all the time. The doctor she visited last year said the bones were beginning to separate and she needed to lose weight and put both legs in casts for three months. The cartilage and ligaments needed to heal before they split completely, he had told Marisha, and at her age this would take time. She had thanked him and paid the nurse the seventy-five dollars and left. She might as well have given the money to her daughter. When the girl had been nine Marisha had carried her from Kiev to Prague and then on to the refugee camp in Vienna. Which of course was why her feet still hurt her today, the fact that they had walked the entire nine hundred miles. Only now her baby was seventeen and they no longer spoke to one another. For this she risked the border dogs and the wire and the guns? For her daughter to sleep until three and paint all the portions of her body that were not pierced and bring home stray dogs with spiked hair and sneers and the laughter of maniacs? If she had the journey to do over again, she would have remained in Lodz. Better to have starved or been beaten to death by the neo-Communists than see what has become of her precious baby girl.

Her feet did not bother her as much as the heat. The temperature had to be above forty degrees Celsius. She heard the newscaster speak of a hundred-plus Fahrenheit, but the numbers meant nothing to her. As did so much of this harsh new world and its blaring noise and idiotic habits. Violence and drugs and sex everywhere. No respect for the
proper order of things. The Ukraine’s neo-Communist leaders who had stolen power after the Soviet downfall were almost better. At least they tried to justify what they did. Here in America it was take and snort and eat and steal and grab and beat. They even ate their own language, spitting out the half-mangled remnants. But none of that mattered now.

She had spent money this day like water. And why not? What difference did it make if they were cast into the street next month? She had dreamed of this moment for eight long years. Ever since the refugee camp in Austria, when the language class she was attending had distributed tattered copies of
Hello!
magazine. There on the cover was the diva Erin Brandt. Of course Marisha knew her diva’s voice already. Her parents had been opera fanatics. Good people of passion and order. All the elements Marisha had been unable to pass on to her daughter. But today not even that mattered.

Marisha had followed Erin Brandt’s career ever since her arrival in America. Nine scrapbooks contained every item she had ever come across. She had learned to use the library’s computer so that she could track Erin’s career in different countries. She had made friends with neighbors who could translate for her. Her daughter sneered at her interest and called it a sick obsession. But her neighbors were kind and helpful and understanding. It was just such a neighbor that read her the article about how Erin Brandt had been brought in at the last moment to sing.

In her excitement to meet Erin Brandt face to face, Marisha had not given thought to the heat. The flowers she carried for the star were wilting. There was little chance Erin Brandt would arrive for hours yet. Marisha decided to move into the shade. She left the Fisher Hall stage door and entered the doughnut-shaped tunnel beneath Lincoln Center Plaza. She walked with the swaying gait of a vessel fighting vicious crosscurrents. At nine o’clock in the morning, no one was about save a pair of guards lounging inside the air-conditioned basement foyer. They watched her limping progress with somnolent gazes. She mounted the curb as she did the stairs of the restaurant where she cleaned, heaving herself up. One of the guards leaning against the glass doorway said something and the other laughed. She could feel their careless gazes and knew they mocked her in the way of all barbarians. She walked farther into the cavernous parking area, expecting them to
come outside and call her back. But it was too hot for them to move, and what damage could a fat old woman with an armful of flowers do?

Then she spotted the shipping crate.

The crate was three feet high and perhaps eight feet long and rested back behind the first Dumpster. The top and sides were stamped with the words “Property of New York Metropolitan Opera House.” The odors were fiercer here, trapped by the windless morning. But the heat was less oppressive in the shade, and she was used to bad smells. She eased herself down onto the crate, and sighed with relief as the weight came off her aching feet.

She huffed with frustration when the lid fell off the front. It probably meant nothing, since the crate was resting here by the refuse bins. Marisha debated whether just to sit there awhile longer, but there was the risk that some bored guard would use it as an excuse to move her back into the light and the heat. Gingerly she set down her bouquet and eased herself off the crate.

She groaned as she leaned down for the lid, then groaned a second time when she saw what was inside.

Erin Brandt’s face was far too serene for anything other than gentle repose. But the diva’s frock was pushed up high upon her thighs and her cloak was bundled about her shoulders. And the crate’s interior walls were stained with shadows that glistened in the dim lighting.

One hand was cast up and over the diva’s head, reaching out to Marisha in wretched appeal.

Marisha permitted herself only a pair of sobbing moans. Even in this first instant she knew what was required. The world could not be permitted to gape at the diva in such an unkempt state.

She leaned into the crate and adjusted the dress. Marisha settled the diva’s hands upon her chest, then draped the cloak over the sodden dress. Marisha fought to stifle her sobs. There would be time enough to weep when she had performed this service.

She pushed herself erect and reached for her bouquet. Marisha cast aside the wrappings and scattered flowers all over the corpse.

She remained there a moment longer, surveying her handiwork. Then she leaned over and kissed the diva’s brow.

Marisha hobbled back toward the sunlight and the harsh exterior
world, blinded now by more than sunlight. She stopped by the glass doors and wiped her face clean. One more task, then she could give herself over to mourning.

She waited until the guard unlocked the glass door and pushed it open. Then she announced, “An angel has fallen.”

D
ARREN
’
S PATROL CAR
was parked outside Marcus’ house when he returned from his Saturday morning run. The deputy kept his distance as he completed a walk around Marcus’ house, probably because he knew Marcus would have had something to say about the special treatment. Darren climbed back into his car and drove off without a word, leaving Marcus swamped by a gratitude that shamed him.

He showered and breakfasted and spent a comfortable fifteen minutes by his back porch, surveying the day in his mind. That afternoon he wanted to make a start clearing some of the rubbish and growth that stretched from the first line of trees back to a gravel path bordering his property.

The sound of squealing tires and a honking horn barely managed to dent the pattern of his thoughts. Somebody began shouting out front, but he was not quite ready to give up on the day’s goodness just yet.

Then Deacon Wilbur came flying around the corner, legs churning and hands waving. “You gone completely deaf?” He raced over and made a desperate grab. “Come on, we’ve got to be moving!”

“What’s the matter?”

“No time, no time!” He flung Marcus at the passenger door of his paint-spattered truck, climbed behind the wheel, and laid rubber the entire way back down the drive. The truck was a good thirty years old and took the dip where the drive met the road like an elephant on a ski jump. Marcus barely managed a saving clench on the dash and ceiling. The gears ground angrily before Deacon managed to find first.

“Take it easy!”

“You just hush up and let me concentrate!” Deacon’s nose almost smacked the windshield when they crested the rise at the end of Marcus’ road. Two boys playing kickball were so dumbfounded by the truck’s flying appearance they scarcely made it out of the way. A trio of happy dogs shouted them down the street and through a four-wheel skid around the corner. Marcus kept a grim hold and decided his questions could wait.

The truck’s original color was time-washed to a monochrome gray. When Deacon hit the highway headed east the speedometer needle maxed out at a quivering seventy-five. The engine roared as though it was ready to leap out from under the hood and eat them both whole.

Outside of town they raced over a hilltop and spotted a sheriff’s car flying up from the opposite direction. Marcus felt pure relief over being saved from careening death, until Deacon began honking his horn and blinking his lights. The sheriff’s car whoomed by them, made a controlled skidding turn, and raced up to where Deacon was shouldering the truck onto the verge.

The old preacher only started wheezing as he tottered toward Amos Culpepper. The sheriff called, “You gonna make it, Deacon?”