MAREK NAJOWSKI SAT IN the kitchen of the small summerhome belonging to his former adviser, William Holtz, and stared between pale yellow curtains at the raw spring day. The small yard, extending less than forty feet before surrendering to the winter forest, revealed no hint of the caressing warmth that had inspired Marie Porter on the previous day. This far north and west of the Atlantic coast, the cold days usually stretched out until mid-May. True, a few hyacinths, short and spare, hugged the earth, waiting for intrepid honeybees despite the weather, but their colors were muted, their fragrance smothered by a ground fog that refused to lift.
Not that Marek Najowski was aware of the scenery or the weather. In his own way, he was celebrating. Celebrating the death of William Holtz. He’d spoken to Holtz’s personal secretary less than an hour before and, though details were scarce, it was clear that Holtz, the last person able to link Najowski to the violence at the Jackson Arms, was dead. At one time, Najowski had wanted to eliminate Holtz the way he’d eliminated Blanks (he’d enjoyed that tremendously) and now fate had stepped in to do the job for him. Holtz’s accident (or his suicide), had miraculous overtones; Marek felt like a child waking up to find a hated rival moved to another state.
In a few days, he’d return to his home in Brooklyn Heights. When the authorities put the name of Marek Najowski to the Jackson Arms and its twins (it wouldn’t take long; with Holtz dead, he’d have to reveal himself to Precision Management immediately), he, as an absentee landlord, would shrug his shoulders and point to William Holtz.
“I trusted the man…”
Marek began to imagine the scene, fleshing it out with detectives (real detectives, not like the private cop who had Marty Blanks peeing his pants). The interview would take place in the offices of his lawyer (his new lawyer) and the detectives would be suspicious: “Do you mean to tell me that you weren’t involved in the day-to-day management of your own property?”
“That’s why I used a management company, officer. Because I didn’t want to get involved. I’ve never been the sort of landlord to go from door to door collecting rents. Finding good, efficient management is the key to success in real estate.”
The cops, of course, would know that he was lying, they could tell that much from his sneering smile, but they’d write their reports and go back to more profitable investigations, leaving Marek to congratulate himself on the first decision he’d made after deciding to pursue the adventure. Except for the literal ownership of stock, he’d never put anything in writing, never spoken to anyone, but William Holtz or Marty Blanks. Now that he was free and clear, with sole possession of Bolt Realty—Holtz’s last act on behalf of his client had been the transfer of Blanks’ stock to Marek Najowski—he would move to put space between himself and Jackson Heights as quickly as possible. He would sell the property, count his profit (and his blessings) and move on.
The idea of profit warmed him as surely as the coffee percolating on the kitchen table, and he began to drift into his favorite daydream. It was ten years into the future, a year or two after the moral majority woke up to assert its might. America’s southern border was sealed now, except for official checkpoints. Sealed by an army committed to fire at anything moving through the deserts of northern Mexico. Legal immigration was limited to white Europeans who would eventually become white Americans. The founding of America had always been the historical and spiritual mission of Europe.
There were camps, of course, but not the death camps predicted by the doomsayers. These were work camps, created for the tens of thousands of junkies when America decided it couldn’t afford to support a permanently unemployed, (permanently stoned) underclass. There was plenty of work to be done in America. The cities were filthy with human garbage while the countryside was dotted with toxic dumps. Inner city bridges were falling apart; the interstates were dotted with crater-deep potholes; the nation’s rivers were polluted with the detritus of industrial profits.
It was nearly noon and ferociously hot in the desert. The convicts, mostly black, though there were nearly as many women as men, were stumbling out of the buses. Wasn’t it amazing how quickly most of them had lost that ferocious look? How their innate aggression had been transformed into fear and confusion? They’d been packed in for days and, unlike the Jews of Germany, the stronger ones had refused to share a daily ration of water sufficient for the needs of all. In fact, the dominant males had doled out food and water like jailhouse kings dealing passes to the evening movie.
The young women, girls, really, had suffered especially. He watched them, dazed and frightened, as they looked to something or someone for support.
When the order to strip followed immediately (the de-lousing process began, as it should, before the animals were brought into the zoo), they looked up in despair. Most of the bitches, as Marek expected, were heavy. Their breasts sagged to where the smooth skin of their abdomens should have been, while their abdomens, in a parody of modest concern, hung down over bloated thighs. Fortunately, there were a few teenage girls with lithe muscular bodies that begged for humiliation: miraculous bodies, bursting with sexual vitality.
The sergeant walking alongside Marek noted the numbers as he pointed to this or that girl. They would be brought to the special barracks (his barracks, his due as Camp Warden) where he would confront them with the hope of escaping the worst aspects of the camp. Yes, they could live comfortably, sleep in a real bed, eat enough to maintain body weight, but the requirements were strict. Obedience, immediate and absolute, of course, but beyond obedience, a (hopefully feigned) sexual enthusiasm vigorous enough to convince a nasty old cynic like Marek Najowski.
Leaning back into his chair, Marek looked at his watch and calculated the time until Marie would appear. His crotch was on fire.
Stanley Moodrow, sitting in the front seat of Jim Tilley’s Buick, with the engine running and the heater on, was parked behind a thick stand of young hemlocks a hundred yards from the cottage where Marek waited for Marie Porter. Despite the short distance, the car, enclosed by the heavy forest, was invisible from the house. Moodrow, in the driver’s seat, was close to the road, but he couldn’t see the rented car Marie Porter drove toward the front door. He could hear her, though; the transmitter concealed between her breasts was broadcasting an amazingly clear signal. It had been designed to work in the unpredictable canyons of New York, where signals echo crazily and contact with street cops is routinely broken.
Marie had the car radio tuned to a light rock station and Moodrow listened quietly while John Lennon advised the world to “Imagine.” He was at the end of the chase, as he’d been so often in his career, and he could almost taste the exhilaration. And the triumph. He’d given up the badge—they’d made him give it up, that was the truth of it—but he could still hunt. It might not be the only thing that mattered to him, but without the hunt, he wouldn’t be able to enjoy the rest. Food, sex, love, friendship—all depended on the administration of justice. His administration. His justice. It was stupid, but he’d long ago stopped denying it, especially to himself.
Not that Marek Najowski was gift-wrapped and ready for the Grand Jury. Moodrow would have to be even more senile than he suspected to believe Marie’s story about Marek confessing to her. They were into some kind of master-slave bullshit, all right, but Marie wasn’t exactly dressed like the master. That’s why Moodrow had left Jim Tilley in Manhattan. He wasn’t sure what Marie was planning to do to Marek Najowski and he didn’t particularly care. As long as it was bad.
“I thought I told you to take a cab?” It was Marek’s voice, hard and commanding. “Don’t you like to obey me?”
“Yes sir, I do like to obey you.”
“I won’t continue to ask why you brought the car, because I know that you don’t know why you do anything. Get started in the kitchen and stay there until I get off the phone.”
Moodrow managed to pay attention for almost three minutes. He listened to Marie fill a bucket and begin to scrub the floor, before he shook his head in disgust. So much for voluntary confession. He inserted a pair of Sony earphones into the side of the transmitter and turned off the tape recorder. There was one possibility left and that, of course, was violence. Not that he minded. As long as the right person was on the receiving end, violence was a perfectly acceptable way to end a hunt. In fact, when you thought about it, it was almost traditional. Unconsciously touching the butt of his .38, he opened the door and stepped out into the cold, wet, mountain air.
When the Freak pulled a straight-backed, dining room chair into the kitchen and settled himself directly behind her, Marie Porter felt the excitement buzzing through her body. It sang like the relentless hum of energy rushing through high tension wires. Slowly, deliberately, she dredged up memories of all the times she’d put her body on the line, of the various fingers, mouths, and cocks that had been thrust inside her in the name of pleasure. She’d never known Moodrow’s glib justice; she’d never known luck or fairness, either. Her fortune had been earned by surrendering pieces of herself and the fact that George Wang made it easy couldn’t restore what she’d given up.
“How come you colored folk got such big asses?” the Freak asked, as he always did at some point in their visits together.
“I don’t know, sir,” she replied for the hundredth time. “It must be God’s will, sir.”
The Freak smiled, then knelt beside her, running his fingers over her flanks. “How would you like to stay with me permanently, Marie? There’s a lot of work around here and I need a good slave to get it done.”
“No, sir. I can’t do that. I’ve got appointments, sir.”
“Oh, Marie.” He shook his head like a parent humoring an imaginative child. “You’ve got to stop fibbing. I know you don’t like me. I know that’s why you won’t stay here.”
“I like you fine, sir. But I’m so busy, I…”
“Guess what, Marie? I’m not really asking you to stay.” The Freak’s voice was perfectly calm, as if he was talking to a machine that just happened to understand language.
“What do you mean, sir?”
“What you’ve got to remember, Marie, is that you’re a junkie whore and not really entitled to make your own decisions.”
“I thought this was a free country, sir.”
“You’re ignorant, Marie. That’s your problem. America is a free country, but you’re not in America. You’re in Najowskiland. How do you like it?”
“What about George Wang?”
She allowed herself to drop the “sir” for the first time, but the Freak didn’t seem to notice. He began to laugh loudly, his sharp features narrowing even further.
“You mean ‘Chung King’? All that slanty-eyed pimp thinks about is money. If you disappeared off the face of the Earth, he’d calculate your value and settle out of court.”
Marie smiled to herself, remembering her conversation with George. The Freak really was insane; he was (she recalled the term from the only psych course she’d taken) deluded. He thought he was in control, that he could manipulate her as he chose.
“Are you going to hurt me?” she asked, drawing up a voice that hinted of barely repressed terror, that promised the authenticity of nightmare.
“That depends on you, Marie. It depends on whether you’re a good girl or a bad girl.”
Marie saw a glow of desire rise into the Freaks eyes, just as she’d seen it in the eyes of so many of her tricks. She used this desire as a measure of her own success, because it inevitably made its appearance when the tricks bought her act.
“I’ll be good, sir,” she said, her eyes slowly rising to Najowski’s waist, then holding steady. “How long do I have to stay here, sir?”
“Until I let you go. Don’t you want to stay with me?”
“Yessir, I do. But when will you let me go?” She persisted as a dog might, scratching at a closed door to get to a bone. She persisted dumbly, without letting any hint of defiance touch her voice. Only her eyes, even with the Freak’s chest, might have warned him.
But the Freak didn’t read the warning. The Freak turned his back and laughed, shaking his head in wonder.
“You don’t understand. It doesn’t surprise me, of course, but you don’t understand. Your stay will be somewhere between the next minute and eternity. It really depends on you.” His smile dropped away as he put on his most dangerous face. Narrowing his eyes and tightening his lips in imitation of every Camp Commandant in every WWII movie, he turned back to face Marie Porter and the .38 she held in her hand.
When Marie Porter pulled the .38 from her purse, Stanley Moodrow grunted in satisfaction. Now the cards were on the table. Marie Porter had no way to persuade Marek Najowski to confess. She could force him into it, of course, but the confession would never hold up. Which was just as well. Moodrow didn’t much believe in confessions, anyway.
“Do it now,” he whispered to himself. He was kneeling in the wet mud of the garden, peering through the window curtains. His knees already hurt and the longer he stayed the worse it would be. Marek’s back was to the window and his attention was riveted to the gun Marie held, but Moodrow kept his head down anyway. “Don’t wait. Don’t talk,” he advised. “Just do it. Get even for all the humiliations.”
He tried to will her into pulling the trigger, pushing the message out to her through the closed window, but she began to talk and he groaned in frustration. She probably thought she was working herself up, but the words would dissipate her energy, like opening the window on a fart. Moodrow could hear her clearly, even through two panes of glass, and what she did was entirely expected. She began to question Najowski.
“Do you really think you own me? Did you really think I came up here without knowing what you wanted to do with me?”
Marek took his time answering. As if the question was meant to draw a response. “If you knew all about it, then what are you doing with that gun?” He was still playing the tough guy. Trying to be the master despite the intensity of his slave’s rebellion. Moodrow thought there was a chance that he would do something really ugly. Ugly enough to make Marie pull the trigger without thinking about it. The notion cheered him, but, of course, he couldn’t allow himself to rely on it. Without taking his eyes off Najowski, he pulled a small Browning automatic, a double-action 9mm, from an ankle holster and drew back the hammer. Najowski was less than ten feet away from the window and his back was turned.
“Maybe it’s for the old lady you burned up in her bed.”
Marek shook his head paternally. “Ignorance, Marie. Remember? It’s your biggest problem. The old bitch didn’t burn. She was smoked out. Get it? Like that fish her people smear on bagels? Smoked out?”
Marie sat back in her chair and Moodrow read her reaction in the slump of her shoulders. She looked stunned and angry at the same time. Like Marek’s glib admission was the only thing she wasn’t expecting.
“What about the others?” she asked, the gun still aimed straight for his chest.
“What others?”
“I was in the bedroom. I heard you talking to your partner. The things you were going to do. The things you did.”
Marek smiled, and Moodrow read the future with the precision of a Gypsy psychic. Marek was going to make a try for the gun. He was just waiting for his best shot. Moodrow reminded himself that Najowski had almost certainly killed Marty Blanks, a man who knew something about self-protection. Marek might be too insane to be afraid, but he wasn’t too insane to kill Marie Porter.
Moodrow was also sure that Marie wouldn’t be able to pull the trigger. No matter what she thought. Killing looks so easy in the movies. Bang! Bang! Bang! Blood spurting everywhere. She’d probably spent the night imagining Marek’s death, playing out the scene again and again. What she hadn’t imagined was the difference between her dreaming and reality. She knew nothing of the special quality that allows some people to kill in cold blood and she therefore couldn’t know that she lacked it altogether. Unless, of course…
“I was only a cook,” Najowski said. “Using a tried and true recipe, I mixed various insects together and the heap took care of itself. The heap provided the explosion. Which is no surprise. Am I right, or what?”
“What you are is crazy.”
Marek took a step forward. A quiet, unhurried step, designed to cause no anxiety whatsoever. “You think I’m nuts? Well, I think that any slave who rejects the path to freedom—the only fucking path there is—was born to be a slave.”
Moodrow struggled to his feet. There was a time, he noted, when he could have jerked his 250 pounds upright without a second thought. Now it seemed that each piece required a separate effort. He assumed a shooter’s stance, square to his target, both hands supporting the automatic, and sighted down on the left side of Marek’s back. A bullet off to one side would spin Najowski away from the prostitute. A second and third shot would finish him. “If I had half a fucking brain,” he said aloud, “I’d do it now.” But he couldn’t shoot an unarmed man. Like Marie, he had to wait for justification.
“Ya know, Marie,” Marek continued, “the truth is that I didn’t actually control who went into that building.” He took another half-step forward. His belt buckle was almost touching the gun. “That was my partner’s end of the deal.”
“Why are you telling me this? Don’t you know that I came here to kill you?”
“What I was telling you about was how my partner was too good for our mutual good.” Marek knelt in front of Marie’s chair, bringing his shoulders level with the gun; he gestured with his hands as he spoke, ignoring her comment altogether.
“Get back away from me. Get back.” Her hand shook, the barrel of the revolver bouncing slightly, but her finger remained frozen on the trigger.
“I came at him in a totally unexpected way. He thought I was gonna use lawyers and I used a Weatherby. It was a nothing shot. Just like Blanks was a nothing. Am I right, or what?”
Marie leaned back in the chair, trying to put some distance between Najowski and the barrel of the .38, but the few inches she gained didn’t put her out of reach. Marek slowly raised his left hand above his head and Marie followed the movement with her eyes. Then Marek’s right hand swept across his body. He grabbed the gun and yanked her forward onto her face.
The .38 exploded once, discharging a harmless round into the ceiling. The sound was still echoing when Stanley Moodrow fired into Najowski’s left shoulder, spinning him around. Marek dropped the revolver as he spun, though Moodrow couldn’t tell whether he meant to surrender or was in too much pain to hold on to it. It didn’t matter, anyway, because Marie, all barriers down, picked the .38 off the floor and began to fire it from point blank range. Tiny fountains of blood pushed back through the wounds as the slugs broke up in
Marek’s body, tearing the veins and arteries in his neck and back, splattering Marie’s face, soaking into her hair and her dress.
“Not a bad shot,” Moodrow said to himself as he eased down the hammer. It was too bad, of course, about Marie’s ammo. Through-and-throughs usually bled out the exit wound. Now she was gonna have to take a shower and find some new clothes before they got out of there.