Spares - Michael Marshall Smith [135]
By the time I made it into the anteroom, a stream of people was already ahead of me, sprinting toward the exit. I became part of the crowd again as it surged like a river in flood down the massive staircase to the entrance to the Maxens’ property on the 200th floor. It didn’t look like many people were sticking around for the reception.
Instead of making for the xPress with the others, I slipped out of the current and backtracked along the corridor to an emergency staircase, which I knew must run from a point a couple of hundred yards away. I didn’t think anyone else would know where it was—they don’t get a lot of practice at emergencies above the 200th floor. I felt untouchable, and it seemed I was, because no one got in my face. A little way down the corridor I passed Louella Richardson’s mother, standing by herself. Her hands were shaking but her face looked clear. She was staring straight ahead but didn’t seem to recognize me.
The staircase door was unguarded, presumably because all of Maxen’s men who were still breathing were otherwise engaged in the chaos upstairs. When I reached it I turned and looked back the way I’d come. At the far end I could see the hurtling mass of people, hear the shouts. A smear of faces. It was all taking place in an odd land far away.
Then I opened the door and a hand immediately reached out and pulled me through.
“How did you get up here?” I asked, though I’d lost most of my capacity to be surprised. Howie stood in front of me in the darkened stairwell, armed to the teeth and pumped up in a way I’d never seen in him before.
“Up the stairs,” he said. “Sort of.” He should have looked absurd, perhaps, with spiked hair at forty and his considerable weight wrapped round with guns, but he didn’t. He looked pretty formidable.
“How did you know I’d come this way?”
“I didn’t. There’s guys of ours on all the exits looking for you. Just dumb luck you ran into me.”
“You knew this was going down?”
“Yeah. Vinaldi talked to me last night. I’m going to be working a little more closely with him from now on.”
“Congratulations,” I said, vaguely. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because you would have fucked it up, and found some way of getting yourself killed in the process. Look,” he said, putting his hand on my shoulder, “I’m not saying I necessarily think this was a great thing to do. But I work for Vinaldi. And something else. This was the only way I could think of it going down with you standing a chance of coming out alive. You were going to try to whack Maxen by yourself. They would have cut you in half. Instead, Vinaldi did it, and you’re still walking around.”
His face was dark, and I knew there was something else on his mind.
“But?” I said.
“But Yhandim and the others are going to come for you now, and you alone, Jack. They don’t work for Maxen anymore, and they hate you more than they hate Johnny. Those guys have been comrades for nearly twenty years. You killed three of them, and now the rest can’t get back into The Gap. They’ve got a hard-on for you like you won’t believe.”
I knew what was coming. Howie winced at what he had to say. “You got to run, Jack. You got to get the fuck out of New Richmond and maybe never come back.”
We heard a shout out in the corridor then, about fifty yards away. I reached out and shook Howie’s hand.
“Thanks,” I said, wishing there was some proper way of saying good bye.
Howie said it.