9

The Admiral was ecstatic. “It is not the kind of thing you believe when it is described to you,” he whispered fiercely into the mouthpiece of the public telephone. “You’d have to see it with your own eyes to fully appreciate it. Your man Friday worked the levers like a man. First, we destroyed the stairwell between the fifth and sixth floors.” The Admiral filled his cheeks with air and mimicked the dry burst of an explosion. “One second it was there, the next it was gone. There was no way they could get down. After that it was only a matter of systematically demolishing the upper story of the building. The walls disintegrated in clouds of dust. I’ve never witnessed anything like it in my life. It was”—he racked his brain for the appropriate word—”teratogenic.”

“Tera what?”

The Admiral tore the word into its component parts, savoring each morsel. “The prefix, terato, is from the Greek. It means ‘monster.’ The suffix, genie, means ‘producing.’ Monster producing! You see what I’m reaching for?”

Wanamaker managed to get another word in edgewise. “You are one hundred percent sure our little problem has been solved?”

“One hundred and fifty percent! Two hundred even! The workmen will discover their mangled bodies in the rubble when the rest of the building is demolished. They will surely be impossible to identify. If you want my opinion, the police will not know one was a man and one was a woman. Rag dolls. Broken bodies. Limbs, heads, sexual organs all over the place.” The Admiral let out a cackle of high-pitched laughter. “They may not be able to identify the corpses as human. They may think some animals got trapped up there.”

Wanamaker said, very gently, “Can I have a word with the jackass-of-all-trades?”

Toothacher was taken aback. “You want to speak to the jackass?”

“If you don’t mind.”

“I’ve already told you everything there is to tell.”

“I need to talk to him about some housekeeping chores.”

“Housekeeping chores?”

“If you don’t mind.”

Wanamaker could hear the Admiral cough several times in confusion. Then he heard Toothacher’s voice, pitched high, almost hysterical in fact, call, “Huxstep, front and center.”

There was the dull thud of the phone banging against metal. Huxstep came on the line.

“Yeah?”

“Can you talk?”

There was a pause. Wanamaker, his ear glued to his phone, heard the door of the booth slamming.

“Yeah, I can talk.”

“What the fuck is going on with you-know-who? He sounds like he flipped his lid.”

“He’s on a high, is all. It happens when you’re not used to it.”

Wanamaker thought Huxstep was referring to a drug the Admiral had taken. “Not used to what?”

Huxstep cleared his throat in embarrassment. “Violence.”

“Oh.”

“He was real calm while it was going on. Directing traffic, you might say. More to the left. More to the right. But he got sort of carried away when it hit him what had happened. You got to understand, all his wars have been fought out in his head up to now.”

“Will he be all right?” Wanamaker asked anxiously. The last thing he needed was a crazy retired admiral on his hands.

“It’ll pass,” Huxstep said. “It almost always does. I’m gonna give him a night on the town to sort of celebrate. Take his mind off it, focus on pleasures of the flesh, like they say.”

“If there is any chance of him having a breakdown,” Wanamaker warned, “I want him under lock and key.”

A note of affection crept into Huxstep’s voice. “Don’t go worrying your head about it. I’ll baby-sit him till his pulse is beating normal. Then I’ll bring him in.” Huxstep seemed to be talking to himself now. “A man like him you come across once in a century of Thursdays. Underneath the spit and shine he’s genuine leather. Leave him to me,” he added gruffly. “You-know-who is the keeper of the flame. I’m the keeper of you-know-who.”