Upstairs, downstairs.
Like that TV show his wife had hated, saying it didn’t reflect Brits well, even though it was made by Brits, wasn’t it? Yes, it was, she conceded; but was every TV show made by Americans a good reflection of America? March didn’t have to answer that one. The fifties hadn’t really been like Happy Days, that was for sure. And probably the thirties hadn’t been like The Waltons.
Speaking of which.
March scanned the portion of the upstairs lounge area he could see from the entry hall by the elevators, half hoping he’d spot the son of a bitch, half hoping he wouldn’t. In any event he didn’t. He hoped Healy was having better luck downstairs. Worse luck. Whatever.
He turned to Holly. “Just wait here. I’m going to take a look around.”
“I want to help!”
“You can help by staying put,” he said, and she crossed her arms in a huff.
“Promise me you’ll get the film?” Holly said.
“Yeah, sure, I promise,” March said, gazing around, trying to notice faces. It was crowded. John-Boy could be up here somewhere.
“Pinky promise?” Holly asked, holding up the relevant digit, already crooked for him to take it.
He hesitated, but there was no saying no to that face. He linked fingers with her. “Pinky promise.”
She smiled, satisfied. Her dad might break his vows to anyone else—everyone else—but not a pinky promise to her.
“Fuck,” March muttered under his breath, and headed off, scanning the crowd to either side of him.
“Hey, pal,” a voice called as he passed one bar, “what can I do you for?” The man behind the counter, a bullet-headed bartender in formal vest, black tie and shirt sleeves, waited for his answer.
March did his best Jackson Healy impression and turned him down with a wave. He was working, there were killers on the loose, he needed to keep his wits about him.
The bartender came right back at him: “Free drinks. What are you having?”
Well, free drinks. He supposed one wouldn’t hurt.
Hell, you never knew, the bartender might know something.
* * *
Downstairs, Healy had missed by no more than ten minutes a scene that the bartender down there was now describing to him. Yes, a man had come by, a tall, good looking man with a bad haircut and a big mole on the side of his face. Yes, he’d been looking for Chet. Yes, he’d found him.
“You the projectionist?” he’d said, or words to that effect—the bartender hadn’t been paying too close attention, understand?
Healy understood.
Chet had swallowed a good mouthful of his drink before responding, a Manhattan, as the bartender re-called—no, a Rob Roy, that was it, a dry Rob Roy, he remembered the kid had been very particular about it, like he knew fuck-all about cocktails at whatever he was, eighteen? If that. For heaven’s sake, did you know what your drink was at eighteen…?
Healy had been kind of partial to all of them, actually. But that wasn’t the point right now. He tried to steer the bartender back: So, the kid had gone with the tall man…?
Well, not at first—he had half his drink left, remember. But the tall man had gotten into it with him, saying stuff like “We have a problem on nine” and “Someone knocked over the projector, the film’s all over the floor.” The kid had gone, “Film’s on the floor, really?” and the tall man was like, “Yeah. It’s a mess.”
And then the kid had gone with him…?
Well, he took one more swallow of his drink first, his dry Rob Roy, but then, yeah, he’d gotten up and followed the big guy.
Which way?
The bartender pointed—and Healy pounded off, right through the side door he was indicating.
It was a service door, and behind it Healy found a loading dock full of wooden pallets stored on end and metal galley racks waiting for kitchen trays to fill them up. A blustery union man sitting with half his capacious ass on a stool (Capacious, adjective: large in capacity, spacious) pointed him toward the far end of the dock.
Healy jogged down to that end, peering into the shadows, calling out, “Hey, Chet? Chet?”
He heard a groan in response, muffled, as if the person doing the groaning was covered under a pile of laundry or something. It turned out to be a pile of garbage, heaped high in a dumpster by one wall. The groaning got louder as Healy approached. He tossed broken-down cardboard boxes to either side and some leftovers from the evening’s kitchen prep: wilted lettuce leaves, carrot peelings, onion skins. Halfway down he found Chet, his face a bloody mass of bruises and broken bones.
“Hey—hey, Chet?”
“Uhhh,” the kid moaned. His eyes were closed. Closed, hell—they were swollen shut. Healy had seen fighters who’d gone a dozen rounds that looked better than this kid. Losing fighters.
But then they’d fought in their own weight class.
“Amelia’s film,” Healy said, feeling lousy about pressing, but figuring he didn’t have much time—not just because John-Boy was on the move again, also because this kid didn’t look like he had more than a sentence left in him. “Where is it?”
The kid told him.
It only took a sentence.
Which was just as well, since he was dead by the end of it.
* * *
John-Boy’s voice came out of the walkie-talkie, and just hearing it again made Holly’s skin crawl. She sat up straighter and listened. “The film is in the projector,” John-Boy said, his voice low and crackling with static. “Repeat: in the projector.”
“We already checked that,” came the response, and this voice Mr. Healy would’ve recognized, and maybe her dad, but Holly did not. She peered over her shoulder, trying to make it look casual as she did so. The guy speaking into the walkie-talkie was older than her dad, older than Healy, but not old old—just a regular-looking older guy, black, wearing a red three-piece suit, and walking around with a limp, like maybe he’d injured his leg sometime recently.
John-Boy was talking again: “It’s spliced into the middle, right in the other film.”
“Tell Tally, she’s the closest.”
The voice crackled from the speaker. “She’s not answering.”
“On my way,” said the older man, sounding concerned. As he flicked off the walkie-talkie, he spied Holly looking at him. She turned away, bent her head forward, imagined herself a turtle huddling inside its shell. Maybe he hadn’t actually seen her—she could hope. And if he had, maybe it wouldn’t mean anything to him. She was just a girl who’d noticed a guy talking into a walkie-talkie, that’s all. There was no reason he’d recognize her. People always said she looked nothing like her dad.
When nothing happened for a minute, she began to relax.
Then a voice whispered at her ear. “Don’t you know it’s rude to eavesdrop?”
* * *
Sadly, the bartender hadn’t known anything other than how to keep pouring piña coladas. But he’d done that skillfully and March was now thoroughly lubricated. Maybe that’s why he didn’t show any reaction at all when the guy in the red suit sidled up behind him and said, “I’ve got a gun pointed directly at your daughter’s spine.”
“A gun…? Why’s that?” March said. He looked up, saw the two of them in the mirror behind the bar, Holly in front looking downcast, the black guy behind her in his Santa suit—or was it Satan? Someone who dressed all in red, anyway. “Hey, Holly, your buddy here wan’ a drink? They’re free.”
“Mr. March,” said Red Suit, “I want to know what you and your friend did with Tally—”
March spun on his stool to face them. Holly’s heart fell when she realized he was smashed. Absolutely smashed.
“Squee-dap!” March squeezed his eyes shut and sang, a poor echo of the jazzy melody playing over the bar’s loudspeakers. “Boo-do-bup-ba! Bippity boo dat boo… How does that song go?”
Holly sighed in disgust.
“Get up,” the man said. “Right now. We’re taking a walk.”
March alit from the stool, teetered a little when he landed. “Lead the way, Santa baby.”
“No,” the man said, “you lead.” He prodded Holly in the back with his gun. She took her father’s arm and fought to keep him upright as they walked toward the other side of the roof. The empty side.
“Where we goin’?” March said with a grin. “We gonna watch the birds…?”
The man cocked his gun. “We’re gonna clear your head. One way or another.”
* * *
Down on the ninth floor, in the projection room, a little device with a numbered dial on the front clicked and the dial rotated one step counter-clockwise. There was a notch on the dial above the number zero, and above that, on a metal ring surrounding the dial, there was a red arrow, pointing downward at the top like the flapper on a wheel of fortune. The notch had been two clicks away from the arrow. It was now just one click away. Deep in the guts of this little device, an even littler motor was humming away.
A wire ran from the base of the device along the floor past where Tally lay, head still on the pillow, and up along the leg of a table. From there, the wire ran into the back of one of the movie projectors aimed out the open glass door of the balcony.
The one bearing the threaded reels of Motor City Pride.
* * *
The older guy had walked March and Holly at gunpoint to the edge of the roof, where a waist-high railing was all that stood between them and a thirty-story drop. The breeze was sharp here. There was just one bird around, and it took off when it saw them coming, flapping away into the night.
Holly held on tight to her father’s arm as long as she could, but when the man gestured with his gun to let him go, she did. March flopped forward onto all fours. “Ah, Christ. Help him up,” the older man said, and Holly went back to his side and lifted him by one elbow again.
“Where’s Tally, damn it?”
March was breathing deeply, his eyes still unfocused. “Tally who?” he mumbled. “Tally ho…” He wagged a finger in the direction of the gun.
“Why’d you have to bring the goddamn kid?” the older guy said. He seemed genuinely angry about it.
It seemed to wake March up a little. “I fucked up,” he slurred.
“Yeah, you fucked up.”
March started crying. Holly stood there holding onto him, biting her lip. She had to do something. It couldn’t go down this way, it just couldn’t.
“Go on,” March slurred. “Leggo. I c’n stand.”
The man waved her away with his gun and she stepped back, trying hard not to think of it as what it was, namely stepping out of the line of fire.
March swayed a bit, but stayed upright this time.
Holly looked around desperately, searching for something she could use as a weapon. But there was nothing in her reach. There was a folded wooden chair leaning against the housing of a giant ventilation fan that was maybe in her dad’s reach—but a whole lot of good that was right now.
She could shout, call for help, but the bar seemed so far away, and the music was loud there, and even if she were heard, which wasn’t likely, a couple of bullets could silence them both before anyone could come to their aid.
She steeled herself to do the only other thing she could think of: run at the guy, try to jump him, and almost certainly get killed in the process.
* * *
Down in the projection room, the little dial turned.
This time, a bell went ding! and the projector came to life, fan turning, light on, reels beginning to rotate.
In the courtyard nine stories below, a dozen loudspeakers boomed with the sound of an announcer’s polished voice: “Welcome, Los Angeles, to the finest suite of automobiles Detroit has to offer!”
John-Boy went rigid, then turned his face toward the giant screen towering overhead, where an image of Bergen Paulsen standing beside an industry insignia was being replaced by footage of a 1978 Ford, first rotating in a showroom, then planted in a suburban driveway. “The word luxury redefined,” the announcer recited. “In addition to the most distinctive stylings, we are bringing you interiors that are comfort assured, combining velour, leather, wood paneling, and improved…”
Up on the roof, Holly had been about to launch her run at the gunman, but the film starting below had startled her. She looked over at the gunman, hoping maybe it had startled him too, but he was a professional and didn’t seem to have budged an inch. He didn’t even budge when the announcer’s voice abruptly cut out and the car footage ground to a stop, replaced by a counting-down film leader, the radar-sweep hand circling past 3, then 2, then cutting to a frame containing the words “THIS PICTURE IS SUITABLE ONLY FOR ADULTS.”
Over the railing, Holly saw two naked bodies on the screen, a man and a woman, the man thrusting between the woman’s upraised legs, and the words “A SAVAGE SID SHATTUCK PRODUCTION” emerging from the middle of the screen.
It was nothing she hadn’t seen before, most recently at Shattuck’s party, and it didn’t faze her too much—she had more pressing things on her mind. But down below, the crowd responded with a mixture of gasps, laughter, and anger. Was this deliberate? A gag of some sort? A mistake?
The naked bodies were replaced by a medium shot of a busty brunette in a blue pinstripe outfit and black-framed glasses, sitting in a brown leather chair behind a desk that looked remarkably like Judith Kuttner’s. The picture freeze-framed and went monochrome as text appeared on the screen: first Misty Mountains in, and then, below that, How do you like my car, Big boy?
Somewhere in the crowd, Bergen Paulsen exclaimed, “Oh my god.”
John-Boy turned away from the screen, his steely eyes following the projection beam back to its source, the brightly lit balcony on the ninth floor. What the hell was Williams doing? This had to be dealt with before it went too far.
And up on the roof, Holland March was blubbering, wiping his eyes with his forearm.
Kingsley Williams thought it was unseemly in the extreme. He would be glad to put an end to it, frankly. Not just because it was his job to do so, not just because there was clearly no time left, but because a man like this was no man at all. Dragging his daughter into a situation she should never have been in, and then carrying on in front of her like a weakling. “You want her to see you like this? You fucking drunk.” March was bawling now. “Oh, don’t start that crying shit…”
March struggled to get words out between soggy gulps: “I want…”
“You drunk motherfucker, you.” Williams raised his gun, aimed it squarely between the man’s eyes. It was better than this asshole deserved.
March whined in Holly’s direction, “I love you…”
“It’s embarrassing,” Williams said.
“I’m sorry baby…duck…”
“What?” Holly said.
Suddenly Holland March wasn’t drunk anymore. And the wooden chair was in his hands. “Duck!” he said.
She did, and March swung the chair like Mr. October, smacking Kingsley Williams’ gun out of his hand and his hand practically off his wrist. The pistol flew off into the night the way that bird had.
But it took more than a broken wrist to stop a man like Williams, and he was on March in an instant, grappling with him, forcing him bodily back, socking him with a vicious left to the midsection and a headbutt to the throat. “Motherfucker,” he spat.
March tried desperately to reach his holster, and Williams tried equally desperately to pry his hand away.
If Williams hadn’t been using his left against March’s right, if March hadn’t been only inches from his gun to start with—well, who knows. You can ask what if all night long. Point is, Williams was and March was, and the gun slid out and into March’s hand, and then three bullets—one, two, three—shot out of the barrel and into the center of Williams’ vest. Which got redder and redder.
Williams staggered back, arms flailing, gasping for breath. He was a dead man, just hadn’t quite got there yet. Fuck. So much for raising the foundation and patching the roof, so much for the trip to Tahiti he’d been putting away for, little at a time. So much for Tally’s scholarship fund. A man could hope to raise his goddaughter right, could pinch and plan, but it’s the Lord decides, yes sir.
And this bastard—this March, this fucking drunk, this faker—who knew but that he’d already shot poor Tally, same way he’d just shot him?
As he fell backward, he saw Holly beside him and in an instant of vindictive fury that would cost him his entrance to Heaven, but fuck it, Saint Peter’d probably had him on a no-fly list for decades now, he grabbed Holly’s arm. She was going with him, and see how Mr. Quick Draw liked that.
* * *
Without an instant’s thought March launched himself at the falling man. A missile, he was a fucking missile.
He shouldered Holly out of the man’s grasp, barely registered it as she dropped heavily to the roof.
Barely registered it because he realized with horror that there was nothing under him but the bullet-riddled body of a middle-aged killer in a red suit and thirty stories of air.