They entered that area of the Spanish Steps where, because of the burned-out bulb, shadows billowed out across the stone and concrete like ink from an overturned bottle.
'Where are you taking me?' Calla asked. 'Have we been there before?'
'It's a surprise,' was all he said to her. 'I promise you'll like it.'
Huge trees rose far above their heads, the skeletal branches scratching the sky, as if trying to dig the diamond-hard stars out of a setting made milky by the District's million lights. In among this winter bower Calla shivered again, and Kray held her tighter, one arm around her waist.
All of a sudden, he lurched against her, as if his left ankle had turned over on a stone. She stumbled against the trunk of one of the trees and, as she did so, Kray stabbed her once in the back. So precise was the thrust, so practiced the hand, so unwavering the intent, the wickedly sharpened paletta did the rest.
Kray held her lifeless body and glanced around. Had anyone been looking, they'd have seen a man holding his drunk or ill wife, but as luck would have it, no one was about. Kray slowly laid Calla's body at the bole of the tree. With quick, practiced movements, he snapped on surgeon's gloves, pulled out the cell phone he'd taken from one of Alli's Secret Service guards, put it into her hand, pressed her fingers around it, then threw it into a nearby evergreen bush. Then he picked up the paletta. It was such a superb implement; it had penetrated through cloth, skin, and viscera with such ease, there was hardly any blood on it. He pocketed the weapon and, his mission accomplished, vanished into the shadowy forest of swaying trees.
THIRTY — ONE
IT'S A universal law of teenhood that the bully always returns for more. Maybe he's drawn to what he perceives as weakness, because other people's weakness makes him stronger. Maybe he's a sadist and can't help himself. Or maybe he just can't leave well enough alone. In any event, Andre returns to Jack's life, stronger, meaner, more determined than ever.
It's as if he's been biding his time, accumulating power, calculating his return like a general who's been forced to make a strategic retreat from the field of battle. The source of his newfound power isn't only his patron, Cyril Tolkan, but a supplier he's found on his own-a man named Ian Brady.
'One thing fo' sho,' Gus says with a fair amount of scorn, 'Ian Brady ain't no black man. Shit, Ian Brady ain't no American name, no way, no how. But, shee-it, he a ghost, that man, 'cause none a my snitches know shit 'bout him. I mean, who the fuck is he? Where he come from? Who's his contacts? He got so much fuckin' juice, he could light up alla D.C.'
This tirade occurs one evening when Jack and Gus are at home, listening to James Brown. Jack has made a couple of purchases at the local record store and is eager to both hear them and share them with Gus. In the wake of Gus's rant, he wonders whether he should keep the LPs under wraps, but having brought up the subject during dinner, he has no choice.
'Huh! I mighta known!' Gus says, holding the cardboard sleeves in his massive hand. 'Elvis Presley an' the Rolling Stones. White boys, jus' like you. And some of 'em look like they ain't eaten in weeks!'
'Just listen, will you? You're such a hard-ass!'
'Well, I heard Elvis, an' he ain't half-bad. So play this here other, so's I can see whut yo' taste in music's like.'
Jack carefully slides the James Brown disc back in its sleeve, then rolls out the black vinyl disc of
Jack puts the needle back on the first cut, and Mick Jagger starts it up.
Gus shakes his head in wonder. 'Shee-it, fo' skinny little white boys, they sho-nuff do shout.'
JACK NOW goes regularly to the library on G Street NW. At first, he went because Reverend Taske urged him to, but lately he's realized that he likes going. Because of Taske's training, he's tamed his fright of reading new texts; it's become more of a challenge, a way out of the strange little world his dyslexia shoved him into.
He loves the dusty air, golden with motes of history. He loves opening books at random, finding himself engrossed, so that he goes back, starts at page one and doesn't stop until he's devoured the last word. Unlike movies and TV that show him everything, even if he doesn't like it, books transport him into the world of his own imagination. As long as he can create pictures from the words he reads-scenes filled with characters, conflict, good and evil-he can build a world that's in many ways closer to the one other people inhabit. And this makes him feel less like an outsider. He feels he is that much closer to rubbing shoulders with the passersby on the street. This is the atmosphere that draws him day after day into the dusty quietude, calm as a still lake. But in those depths something waits for him, as it does almost every teenager: the fear that recurs, the fear that needs to be faced.
Jack comes face-to-face with his one Monday afternoon. He's back in the stacks, pulling down massive treatises on his latest passion: criminal psychology. A head in the book precludes vigilance. But who would think to be vigilant in a District public library? That's how Andre thinks, anyway. He's been following Jack to G Street every day for a week, until he's familiar with the schedule. It says something about just how deep his feelings of vengeance run that he's been on surveillance for five straight days when he could be negotiating his next shipment of smack from Ian Brady.
But some things are more important than H, more important than greenbacks, because they cry out to be resolved. And, frankly, Andre can't rest easy until this particular matter is resolved to his satisfaction.
Jack doesn't hear him as Andre creeps up from behind. Andre, in crepe-soled shoes he's bought for the occasion, approaches slowly, relishing the end to the ache that's been inside him ever since Cyril Tolkan delivered his punishment.
At the very end, he makes his rush, silent, filled with the power of righteous rage. He grabs Jack by his collar, lifts him bodily into the air, slams him against the rear wall. Shelves tremble; books spill onto the floor. Andre, his eyes alight with bloodlust, jams a forearm across Jack's windpipe both to silence him and to subdue him as quickly as possible. Though he's filled with a desire for vengeance, Andre is nothing if not pragmatic. He doesn't want to get caught in here with a dead or dying body. He has no intention of going into whitey's slammer, either now or ever.
With a tiny
JACK'S HANDS, down by his sides, have not, however, been idle. His left hand has kept its grip on the thick hardcover book he's been reading, and now, as he hears the telltale
As Andre begins to double over, Jack's windpipe is freed. He sucks in a great lungful of air, brings the book up, jams its edge into Andre's neck. To maintain the maximum force, he's obliged to keep both his hands on the spine of the book and so lacks the means to force Andre to drop the switchblade. This weapon now swings back and forth like a pendulum with a razor's edge, grazing first Jack's ear, then his shoulder. With each wild pass, Jack feels searing pain, and hot blood begins running down him. The next arc could find his carotid artery.
Gritting his teeth, he jams the book harder into Andre's throat, hears a crackle like a sheet of paper being crumpled prior to being thrown away. Then Andre's mouth opens wide, emits a sound like a grandfather clock about to break down.
Jack, staring into Andre's bloodshot eyes, begins to cry. Part of him knows what's happening, what the outcome will be, but that part must stand aside while the organism is in danger. Andre, in a last, desperate attempt to kill, brings the edge of the switchblade up to the level of Jack's ear. He points it inward, aiming for the canal opening. Jack, terrified, shifts his weight. The corner of the book penetrates into the hole made by the fracture of Andre's cricoid cartilage. All air is cut off.
Andre's knife hand moves. The point of the switchblade is almost at the canal opening. Jack leans in with all
