Delaney: “Hold it. Check out Tiger One’s radio.”
Barbara: “Tiger One from Barbara. How do you read?” Tiger One: “T-One here. Lots of interference but I can read.”
Delaney: “Tell him to cover. Understood?”
Barbara: “Tiger One, cover Lieutenant Fernandez on the other side of the street.
Tiger One: “Right on.”
Delaney: “Bring in Bulldog Three.”
Bulldog Three: “They’re both walking toward us, slowly. Fernandez is passing the Castle, turning his head, looking at it. Tiger One is right across the street. No action. They’re coming toward us. Walking slowly. No sweat. Fernandez is crossing the street toward us. He’ll probably want to use our mike. Ladies and gentlemen, the next voice you hear will be that of Lieutenant Jeri Fernandez.”
Delaney (stonily): “Get that man’s name.”
Fernandez: “Fernandez in Bulldog Three. Is the Captain there?”
Delaney bent over the desk mike.
Delaney: “Here. What is it, lieutenant?”
Fernandez: “It smells, Captain. The door to the Castle is half-open. Something’s propping it open. Looks like a man’s leg to me.”
Delaney: “A leg?”
Fernandez: “From the knee down. A leg and a foot propping the door open. How about I take a closer look?”
Delaney: “Where’s Tiger One?”
Fernandez: “Right here with me.”
Delaney: “Both of you go back to Bulldog Two. Tiger One across the street, covering again. You take a closer look. Tell Tiger One to give us a continuous. Got that?”
Fernandez: “Sure.”
Delaney: “Lieutenant…”
Fernandez: “Yeah?”
Delaney: “He’s fast.”
Fernandez (chuckling): “Don’ give it a second thought, Captain.”
Tiger One: “We’re walking south. Slowly. Fernandez is across the street.”
Delaney: “Gun out?”
Barbara: “Is your gun out, Tiger One?”
Tiger One: “Oh Jesus, it’s been out for the last fifteen minutes. He’s coming up to the Castle. He’s slowing, stopping. Now Fernandez is kneeling on one knee. He’s pretending to tie his shoelace. He’s looking toward the Castle door. He’s-Oh my God!”
Daniel Blank awoke in an antic mood, laughing at a joke he had dreamed but could not remember. He looked to the windows; it promised to be a glorious day. He thought he might go over to Celia Montfort’s house and kill her. He might kill Charles Lipsky, Valenter, the bartender at The Parrot. He might kill a lot of people, depending on how he felt. It was that kind of a day.
It took off like a rocket: hesitating, almost motionless, moving, then spurting into the sky. That’s the way the morning went, until he’d be out of the earth’s pull, and free. There was nothing he might not do. He remembered that mood, when he was atop Devil’s Needle, weeks, months, years ago.
Well, he would go back to Devil’s Needle and know that rapture again. The park was closed for the winter, but it was just a chain-link fence, the gate closed with a rusty padlock. He could smash it open easily with his ice ax. He could smash anything with his ice ax.
He bathed and dressed carefully, still in that euphoria he knew would last forever.
So the chime at his outside door didn’t disturb him at all.
“Who is it?” he called.
“Package for you, Mr. Blank.”
He heard retreating footsteps, waited a few moments, then unbolted his door. He brought the long, white florist’s box inside, relocked the door, He took the box to the living room and stared at it, not understanding.
Nor did he comprehend the single red rose inside. Nor the card. Albert Feinberg? Feinberg? Who was Albert Feinberg? Then he remembered that last death with longing; the close embrace, warm breath in his face, their passionate grunts. He wished they could do it again. And Feinberg had sent him another rose! Wasn’t that sweet. He sniffed the fragrance, stroked the velvety petals against his cheek, then suddenly crushed the whole flower in his fist. When he opened his hand, the petals slowly came back to shape, moving as he watched, forming again the whole exquisitely shaped blossom, as lovely as it had been before.
He drifted about the apartment, dreaming, nibbling at the rose. He ate the petals, one by one; they were soft, hard, moist, dry on his tongue, with a tang and flavor all their own. He ate the flower down to the stem, grinning and nodding, swallowing it all.
He took his gear from the hallway closet; ice ax, rucksack, nylon line, boots, crampons, jacket, knitted watch cap. He wondered about sandwiches and a thermos-but what did he need with food and drink? He was beyond all that, outside the world’s pull and the hunger to exist.
It was remarkable, he thought happily, how efficiently he was operating; the call to the garage to bring his car around, the call to a doorman-who turned out to be Charles Lipsky-to help him down with his gear. He moved through it all smiling. The day was sharp, clear, brisk, open, and so was he. He was in the lemon sun, in the thin blue sac filled with amniotic fluid. He was one with it all. He hummed a merry tune.
When Valenter opened the door and said, “I’m thorry, thir, but Mith Montfort ith not-” he smashed his fist into Valenter’s face, feeling the nose crunch under his blow, seeing the blood, feeling the blood slippery between his knuckles. Then, stepping farther inside, he hit the shocked Valenter again, his fist going into the man’s throat, crushing that jutting Adam’s apple. Valenter’s eyes rolled up into his skull and he went down.
So Daniel Blank walked easily across the entrance hall, still humming his merry tune. What was it? Some early American folksong; he couldn’t remember the title. He climbed the stairs steadily, the ice ax out now, transferred to his right hand. He remembered the first time he had followed her up these stairs to the room on the fifth floor. She had paused, turned, and he had kissed her, between navel and groin, somewhere on the yielding softness, somewhere…Why had she betrayed him?
But even before he came to that splintered door, a naked Anthony Montfort darted out, gave Daniel one mad, frantic glance over his shoulder, then dashed down the hall, arms flinging. Watching that young, bare, unformed body run, all Blank could think of was the naked Vietnamese girl, burned by napalm, running, running, caught in pain and terror.
Celia was standing. She, too, was bare.
“Well,” she said, her face a curious mixture of fear and triumph. “Well…”
He struck her again and again. But after the first blow, the fear faded from her face; only the triumph was left. The certitude. Was this what she wanted? He wondered, hacking away. Was this her reason? Why she had manipulated him. Why she had betrayed him. He would have to think about it. He hit her long after she was dead, and the sound of the ice ax ceased to be crisp and became sodden.
Then, hearing screams from somewhere, he transferred the ice ax to his left hand, under the coat, hidden again, and rushed out. Down the stairs. Over the fallen Valenter. Out into the bright, sharp, clear day. The screams pursued him: screams, screams, screams.
They were all on their feet in the radio room, listening white-faced to Tiger One’s furious shouts, a scream from somewhere, “Fernandez is-”, shots, roar of a car engine, squeal of tires, metallic clatter. Tiger One’s radio went dead.
Captain Delaney stood stock-still for almost 30 seconds, hands on hips, head lowered, blinking slowly, licking his lips. The men in the room looked to him, waiting.
He was not hesitating as much as deliberating. He had been through situations as fucked-up as this in the past. Instinct and experience might see him through, but he knew a few seconds of consideration would help establish the proper sequence of orders. First things first.
He raised his head, caught MacDonald’s eye.
