The Midnight Club_ A Novel - James Patterson [9]
The two bodyguards were watching television on the first floor, and were easily dispatched. In a way, it almost seemed too easy so far.
When Alexandre St.-Germain returned, the two call girls understood that he was in complete control for the evening.
He was wearing a black leather mask, in keeping with the current trend of danger in the world of kinky sex in New York. The mask had zippers that looked like jagged scars running down both his cheeks. Polished metal studs jutted across his forehead and chin.
This was the Grave Dancer, just the way legend had him: exotic and mysterious.
The drugs consumed upon the Grave Dancer’s arrival began to take effect. His slurred sentences dominated their attempts at conversation; jumbled words ran into and over more jumbled words.
Expensive oils were poured, then smeared over the muscular curves of Alexandre St.-Germain’s body. High overhead, a network of mirror images ebbed and flowed across the ceiling. Shadows danced and fused with one another. A warm, lubricated finger slid into his rectum. Another entered his mouth.
Then something was wrong. Suddenly, in the midst of all the pleasure, something was happening, something completely out of symmetry.
“What’s that? The sound?”
They all heard it. Outside in the hallway. It began with a heavy footfall… Approaching footsteps that then seemed to trail away.
Voices were approaching upstairs. Several voices merged into a solid block of noise. Everything was happening too fast now.
St.-Germain sat upright, fully alert, but also trapped in silk sheets and too many pillows, in the jumble of bare legs and arms, silk stockings and garters thrown everywhere on the bed.
Both women were on their knees, their lovely mouths open in surprise.
“Who is it? Who’s out there?” St.-Germain demanded.
The bedroom door was flung open. A man holding a machine-gun pistol rushed inside. A black billed cap was pulled over most of his face. He was in a professional shooting crouch.
“What?… Are you from the Midnight Club?” Alexandre St.-Germain completely lost his composure as he spoke. A burst of words came tumbling out of his mouth in a voice that wasn’t quite his own. “Are you from Midnight?” he screamed again.
“Get out of here. Both of you,” the man with the gun said to the two call girls.
The women frantically ran from the mirrored bedroom, tripping over one another as they tried to get into the hallway.
At that same instant, a submachine-gun blast nearly ripped off the head of Alexandre St.-Germain. The shocked European crime boss was thrown back hard against the creamy white bedroom wall.
“Midnight?” came a final gargled scream.
11
John Stefanovitch; West Ninety-ninth Street; Two A.M.
NIGHTMARES.
There were these recurring nightmares that suddenly came true in his waking hours, John Stefanovitch had begun to think. It was happening to him right now.
The back of his neck was soaked with sweat, and his khaki sport shirt was sticking. His heart raced underneath the plastered-down shirt. He felt sick to his stomach, as if at any moment he could completely lose it.
The tires of his van squealed as it accelerated, then curled down the hill, speeding onto West Ninety-ninth Street.
Less than forty minutes before, he’d been awakened by the anxious voice of his captain in Homicide…
“There’s been a multiple homicide up on West Ninety-ninth Street. It looks like a professional hit. They used sub-machine guns, maybe Uzis… It’s Alexandre St.-Germain.”
“What about St.-Germain? What are you saying?” Stefanovitch had asked. His voice was groggy, his brain only partially awake.
“He’s dead. Somebody got the scumbag tonight. I thought you’d want to know, Stef.”
Once he was on Ninety-ninth Street, Stefanovitch easily spotted his partner, Bear Kupchek. He saw the Bear as his van slowly rolled down the steep hill toward Riverside Park. It would have been difficult not to notice the six-foot-four, 260-pound detective.
“I live all the way out in Ridgewood, New Jersey,” Kupchek