The plainclothesman said, “I don’t think I recognize you.”
“Come on, Toomey.” The new man took a worn leather wallet from his pocket, flipped it open, held it open with both hands for the plainclothesman to see. “You’ve seen me around,” he said.
The plainclothesman—Toomey—nodded doubtfully, but still seemed reluctant. “Our orders are to stay with Mr. Farrell,” he said.
“Fuck,” the new man said, sounding disgusted, and took a gun out from under his jacket. Everybody in the elevator tensed, moving involuntarily backward, and the man said, “Hands on heads. Fast.”
The plainclothesmen had relaxed sufficiently before this to no longer have their hands anywhere near their own guns. Farrell, who immediately placed his own hands atop his head, saw the plainclothesmen hesitate, saw the second man out there also draw a gun, and saw the plainclothesmen angrily realize there was nothing they could do but obey.
”You too,” the new man said to the elevator operator, who had been merely staring open-mouthed at everything that was happening. The operator at once put his hands straight up in the air.
The first man gestured with his gun at Farrell. “Come out here,” he said.
“D-don’t kill me,” Farrell said. He was terrified, but he tried to speak calmly, rationally, tried not to blubber. “There’s no reason to, I’m not—”
“Shut up, you horse’s ass. If I wanted to kill you, you’d be dead now. I want to talk to you.” To his friend, he said, “Hold them. I’ll make it fast.”
“Too bad we couldn’t do it the other way.”
“It’ll work out.” He glared at Farrell; he was very angry that his scheme hadn’t worked. “Get the hell out here, I said.”
Farrell moved jerkily forward. It was true, they weren’t going to kill him. Unless something went wrong. But what did they want?
“Put your arms down. Walk easy. Down to the right there.”
Farrell obeyed, leaving the elevator behind, walking along the empty hallway, sensing the man coming along behind him. They reached a stairwell door, with its red light glowing above it, and the man said, “In there.”
Farrell opened the door, stepped through into the gray-metal stairwell. He stood on the landing, not knowing whether he was supposed to go up or down the stairs, and the man came through the doorway behind him, shut the door, touched his arm to turn him around, and punched him very hard in the stomach, just below the belt.
Farrell bent over, falling backward against the wall, his forearms folding over the sudden flowering pain in his stomach. The pain seemed to rush out like rips in a stocking—lancing up through his chest into his throat, down into his genitals, down his legs to make a tingling weakness in the back of his knees. The breath had whooshed out of him when he was hit, and he opened his mouth wide, trying to replace the lost air, but his throat seemed to be closed, air scraped in slowly and painfully.
The man stood waiting for him, his expression cold and grim, clinical, detached. Farrell struggled to breathe, swallowed down a feeling of nausea, waited out the pain. Gradually his lungs filled with air again, the turmoil in his stomach settled, the pain eased, he could straighten himself. Blinking, mouth open, he stared at the man, wondering what he would do next, why this was happening.
The man said, “I wanted you to know I’m serious. Do you know it now?”
“Yes.” Farrell’s throat was raspy, it hurt a bit when he talked.
“Good. Who’s financing you?”
Farrell couldn’t begin to understand the question. “I don’t—” He coughed, which also hurt, and pressed a hand to his throat. “What?”
“One of Adolf Lozini’s sidemen is financing you,” the man said. “Which one is it?”
Scandal: that was the first thought that came to Farrell’s mind; this was some sort of insane reporter or scandalmonger, out to verify a rumor he’d heard somewhere. The unlikelihood of a reporter holding people up with a gun or asking his questions with his fists didn’t occur to him until later. It was thinking in terms of a reporter, in terms of scandal, that he answered, saying, “No, you’re wrong about that.”
The gun was in the man’s left hand. He lifted it, chopped the barrel down on the top of Farrell’s right shoulder. Farrell screamed at the sudden pain, the sound echoing in the stairwell. The man clapped his free hand over Farrell’s mouth, bouncing his head back against the wall, holding him there till the echoes died, while Farrell clutched at his burning shoulder. He felt his jaw trembling, knew the man could feel it in the hand pressed against his mouth, and felt angry and ashamed of himself for displaying weakness.
The man released him and stepped back. “I don’t want to waste time,” he said. “I’m in a hurry. I know where you’re getting your financing. I know which of Lozini’s people it could be and which ones it couldn’t. I’ve got it narrowed down to just a few. Now you tell me which one it is or I’ll break you apart in here and go ask somebody else.”
He knows, Farrell thought. He’s narrowed it, but he doesn’t know which one. Could I lie, give him a false name? Which ones has he narrowed it to? What if I told him it was Frank Faran, from the nightclub?
“If you lie,” the man said, “I’ll come back and kill you. And I’ll get to you just as easy as I did this time.”
Farrell trembled all over his body. His mind skittered back and forth, torn by fear and the need to work out too many complexities. How could he dare to tell this man the truth? Of course he could deny it later, but still . . .
The man’s hand drew back, closing into a fist.
“Buenadella!” Farrell shouted. “Louis Buenadella!”
Twenty-four
