'Can't you get him quiet?' Edward asked.
The killer awoke. She felt it stir within her, like a heavy shadow. Edward was writing a book about the Storm Front. Writing a book to tell everything to the Mindfuck State. Going to spread the Front's blood, sweat, and tears out on the woodpulp pages to be licked by dumb jackals. A reunion, he'd said. I guess I was curious.
No, that wasn't why Edward Fordyce had put the message in the papers and magazines. 'You wanted to find the others,' she said, 'so we could help you write your book.'
'Background material. I want the book to be a history of the Storm Front, and there's a lot I don't know.'
Mary's hand went into her bag. It came out with the Magnum, and she trained the gun on him, a stranger in enemy colors.
'Put that down, Mary. You don't want to shoot me.'
'I'll blow your fucking head off!' she shouted. 'No way are you making us whores! No way!'
'We were always whores. For the militant press and the rabble-rousers. We did what they dreamed of doing, and what did we get for it? You've turned into an animal, and I'm a forty-three-year-old failure.' He swigged from the beer again, but his gaze stayed on her gun. 'I was a stockbroker a few years ago,' he said with a bitter smile. 'Making a hundred K a year, living on the Upper East Side. A fast-tracker. Had a Mercedes, a wife, and a son. Then the bottom fell out of the market, and I watched everything go to pieces. It was like that night in Linden, but even worse because it was a house I'd built getting blown apart. Couldn't stop it. Couldn't. I spiraled down to where I am right now. So where do I go from here? Do I figure the books for Sea King the rest of my life and retire to an old folks' home in Jersey? Or do I take a gamble that a publisher might be interested in the Storm Front's story? It's past history, Mary. It's ancient and dusty… but blood and guts sells books, and you know we waded through the blood and guts together. So what's so wrong about it, Mary? You tell me.'
She couldn't think. Drummer's crying was louder, more needful. Her brain was full of machinery that had lost its purpose. One squeeze of the trigger and he would be dusted. Everything was a lie; Lord Jack was not here, and he couldn't receive his son. This thing standing before her in Mindfuck State clothing vomited out bile and brimstone, but one fact remained: he had saved her life on a long-ago night of pain and fire.
That alone kept her from killing him.
'I've got an agent,' Edward went on. 'Big knocker in the business. He got me a contract on an outline. The manuscript's due at the end of August.'
Mary kept the gun aimed at him as Drummer wailed.
'I don't want it to be just my story. I want it to be about all of us. Everybody who died and everybody who got away. Do you see?'
'I see a traitor,' Mary said, 'who deserves execution.'
'Oh, crap! Forget the drama, Mary! This is the real dollars-and-cents world!' He slammed his bottle down atop a bureau, and beer sloshed out. 'If we can make money off the hell we went through, why shouldn't we? I'd be willing to share the profits with you, no problem.'
'Profits,' she said, as if tasting something vile.
'Jesus! Can't you shut that kid up?' Edward walked toward Drummer. Mary stopped him by putting the Magnum against the side of his head and grabbing his red power tie at the knot. She wrenched at his tie, and Edward's face reddened. '… Choke…' he gasped. 'Choking… me…'
Brrrring.
Telephone, Mary thought. Again: Brrrring.
'Door… buzzer,' Edward managed to get out. 'Downstairs. Somebody… wants in.'
'Who're you expecting?'
'No-nobody. Mary, listen… you're choking me. Come on… stop it… okay?'
Brrrring.
She stared into his too-blue eyes and his mottled face. He was small, she decided. A small person who had given up and been seduced by the Mindfuck State. He was to be pitied. She didn't want to kill him, not yet. Drummer was crying and someone wanted in. She released Edward's tie, and he gasped in a shuddering breath followed by a coughing fit.
Mary pressed the pacifier into Drummer's mouth. His eyes were angry, and big wet tears had rolled down his cheeks. He looked the way she felt. She finished changing his diaper, the gun beside him on the bed.
In the front room, Edward gave a last ragged cough and pressed the intercom button. 'Yeah?'
There was no answer.
'Anybody down there?'
Nothing.
He released the button. Neighborhood kids screwing around, he figured. About three seconds later Brrrring.
He hit the button again. 'Hey, listen up! You want to play, go play in the middle of the stre -'
'Edward Lambert?'
A woman's voice. Sounded nervous. 'Yeah. Who is it?'
'Come downstairs.'
'I don't have time for this, lady. What're you selling?'
'Damaged goods,' she said. 'Come downstairs.' She clicked off.
'Who was that?' Mary stood in the bedroom's doorway, freshly diapered Drummer in her arms and the Magnum automatic in her right hand.
'Nobody.' He shrugged. 'Bag lady, probably. They're all over the place trying to get handouts.'
Mary went to the window and looked out. The air was hazed with falling snow. And then she saw the figure standing down on the sidewalk, staring up at the apartment building. The wind had picked up, whipping at the figure's gray overcoat. There was a black cap on the person's head, and a long woolen muffler the same color around the neck.
Mary's eyes narrowed. She recognized the outfit. She'd seen this person before. Yes, she was sure of it. On the boat coming back from Liberty Island. This person had been standing at the stern, hands in pockets, next to the blond-haired girl in the leather jacket. As Mary watched, the figure began to walk slowly away from the building, bent against the wind. A few more steps, and a crosscurrent of winds snatched the cap and lifted it off the person's head.
A mane of red hair spilled down. A woman, Mary realized. The woman caught the cap before it could spin away, pushed her tresses up under it, and mashed it down again. Then she kept walking, shoulders slumped as if under a terrible burden.
Red hair, Mary thought. Red as a battle flag.
She had known another woman with hair that color.
'Oh my God,' Mary whispered.
The red-haired woman turned a corner and went out of sight, snowflakes whirling behind her.
'Hold my baby,' Mary told Edward, and she put Drummer in his arms before he could say no. She jammed the pistol down into the waistband of her jeans, under her baggy brown sweater, and she headed for the door.
'Where're you going? Mary! Where the hell are -'
She was already out the door and racing down the second-floor stairway. She ran out onto the street, into the cutting cold and snow. Then on to the corner where the red-haired woman had turned off Cooper Avenue, and Mary could see her about a block away. She was opening the driver's door of a brown compact Ford.
'Wait!' Mary shouted, but the wind was in her face and the woman couldn't hear. The Ford pulled out of its parking place and started coming toward Mary, who stepped into the street and walked forward to meet it. Flurries of snow swirled between them. Mary lifted her right hand and made a peace sign, and she strode toward the car as it came on.
She saw the woman's face through the windshield. Like Edward's, it was not a face she knew. And then the woman's eyes widened, her mouth opened in a cry Mary couldn't hear, and the Ford skidded to a stop on the gleaming pavement.
The woman got out, and the wind took her black cap, and the red tresses danced around her shoulders. Mary lowered her peace hand. Was this or was this not someone she knew? The hair was the same, yes, but the face was different. Bedelia Morse had been as lovely as a model, her nose small and graceful, her mouth and chin set
