The Midnight Club_ A Novel - James Patterson [107]
“I’m going to tell you how it goes from here on,” Parker said. His voice stayed low, but kept an edge. “Then we’ll be even, you and me sitting here in this hot box. You’ll know as much as I do.”
“You’re in control now, my friend.”
“Yeah, that’s right.”
Isiah Parker raised the black, snub-nosed submachine gun. The Frenchman’s dark eyes registered the slightest confusion. Alarms seemed to go off in his head.
St.-Germain had decided that Parker wasn’t suicidal: he was too much in control of the situation to let himself die here. The police detective obviously wasn’t going to shoot him inside the elevator. What was he going to do? What was he planning now?
“You don’t have anything figured out,” Parker whispered across the elevator.
“You seem certain about that.”
“Yeah, I am. You still think you’re going to get away. That’s your fucking arrogance. You think I’ve put myself in a box here. No way out. No escape for me.”
St.-Germain said nothing. A smug expression remained on his face. He always won. Somehow, he won.
“You’re wrong. I just wanted you to suffer, like my brother, Marcus. Like you did to him in the Edmonds Hotel.”
Isiah Parker raised the Ingram machine gun and smiled. With his free hand, he took out a sealed Plasticine bag filled with fine white powder.
St.-Germain’s eyes widened. Finally, he understood something.
“I wish we had more time for this,” Parker said. “Never enough time these days.”
He took out a lighter, an ordinary Bic.
He took out a small silver spoon.
A hypodermic needle and a plunger appeared next.
He raised the Ingram to the level of St.-Germain’s eyes. “Take off that coat. Get comfortable.”
“What if I won’t?”
“Then everything goes real quick. Less time for any rescue attempts. Roll up your sleeve. Either arm’s okay.”
The Grave Dancer reluctantly took off his suit jacket. After removing his gold cuff links, he rolled up his shirt sleeve.
“Now fix your own cocktail.”
“I don’t use the stuff. I never use narcotics.”
Parker gestured over with the gun. “Now you do.”
He watched in eerie silence as Alexandre St.-Germain cooked up a speedball with the shooting paraphernalia. A familiar acrid odor took over the closed space. When the hypodermic was loaded, Parker spoke again. His voice was low, but in command.
“Good stuff. Very popular up where I live. Take a taste, Grave Dancer. Do it now.”
St.-Germain raised the hypodermic, its plunger extended.
“Just a little taste now,” Parker said. “Then we talk some more. Nothing to be afraid of yet. Twelve-, thirteen-year-old kids do it every day in my neighborhood.”
St.-Germain slowly and carefully inserted the silver needle into his vein. The arrogant smile had finally started to fade.
Seconds later, his head lolled back, then forward again. It was a junkie’s patented nod-out routine. His eyeballs rolled up sharply into his skull. Suddenly he started to dry-heave.
He knew he’d been given an overdose. Fear was in his eyes. He was going into cardiac arrest on the elevator floor.
Isiah Parker’s eyes never left St.-Germain’s face. What he saw was his brother. The Edmonds Hotel. Maybe a touch of justice, finally.
Alexandre St.-Germain went into severe convulsions. He couldn’t get his breath, but he could hear Parker’s voice. “How do you like it, Pusherman?”
St.-Germain had a stroke sitting against the elevator wall. He had a second agonizing stroke forty-five seconds later.
Parker stared at the pathetic, slumped figure, the head now twisted at an impossible angle. Alexandre St.-Germain was dead, dead like a pitiful street junkie on the floor of the elevator.
There was no remorse inside him; no attacks of conscience for Parker. He had done what had to be done. He’d done what the police ought to be permitted to do.
Then one thought dominated Parker’s mind: to escape and survive. That would be something, wouldn’t it.
103
HE PULLED THE emergency-stop button back out. The elevator rumbled and shook to life. The amber indicator lights