Two.
Three.
Four.
FIVE!
Below, on street level, Sergeant Mullany and Officer Hoogland burst through the front doors of the Potter Building, shoving Blanck about in his handcuffs. Blanck is writhing, spitting mad. He quite resembles a cobra.
The duo with Blanck stops short when they see how many NYPD officers have gathered on the street, alongside the zealots and the paparazzi. The officers were called to the scene after a chair curiously crashed to the street moments ago. They look up to trace the path of the chair, but the building exterior is dark, particularly just above the ledges, which cast shadows up onto the façade.
And Friends, if I were human again, I wish I’d have the chutzpah to pull off what these two do next. Sergeant Mullany puffs up his chest, twists his neck, and winks at his partner, Officer Hoogland. His demeanor says,Follow my lead.
Sergeant Mullany strides up to one of the officers at the scene. “You! Precinct?”
“Uh… Fifth, sir.”
“Good. This-here suspect?” He grabs Blanck by the scuff of his jacket and slings him at the young cop. “Take him to the station and book him.” Sergeant Mullany briefly details the charges: theft, attempted murder, poisoning.
Blanck howls as if wounded. The paparazzi captures every bit of this anguish with a barrage of popping, sizzling flashbulbs.
The young cop nods eagerly at his superior officer. “Yes sir. Will you meet me at the station?”
Sergeant Mullany clasps the cop on his shoulder. “Absolutely. We have to enter his haul as evidence.” He jangles the bag of jewels, including the heavy Hope Diamond. “Right behind you, brother.”
The young officer, beaming with pride at being selected for this important duty after only two weeks on the job, shoves a spitting, cussing Blanck inside the back of a paddy wagon. Heslams the door, locks it, and drives away, the paparazzi’s flashbulbs fizzing like lightning.
Sergeant Mullany and Officer Hoogland slip away from the chaos. They walk one block, two, then burst into a full sprint, tossing their copper costumes into a dumpster behind the Municipal Building five blocks away.
PART FOURTHE CONSEQUENCES
CHAPTER FORTY-FOUR
I am dazed, standing at the base of the Potter Building, having descended eleven stories and bursting into this cool night. My cut foot throbs, my wrists and throat burn. The zealots and the paparazzi crowd a group of police officers, shouting questions. Many of the socialites join them, eager to tell their tale.
Dizzy. Sick with worry. I should sit.
A hand steadies me at my elbow. I turn and it’s Pax.
Not Pax. The Pax-in-a-tuxedo. The darker, angrier, scruffier, less genteel Pax. It must be his brother. He pulls me into a shadowy alcove, removes a glove, and reaches for my hand. In a daze, I offer it to him.
His palm is tattooed. Black, segmented by digits, as if he’d dipped his hand in ink and made a childlike handprint on paper.
“This is goodbye,” he says, and kisses the arch of my wrist. The zing of his whiskery, soft lips jolts my core, flips my stomach. I am shown the most horrific images imaginable: a bullet zipping through the air. A body slumping. Hundreds of bodies on a scorched battlefield. Bombs. Smoke. Wars.
“Why are you here?” I whisper.
The Pax look-alike considers this. He leans in and whispers, his accent more lush than Pax’s. “When I read things in the newspapers, the words? They shift. Some leap out at me. Others hide. The message rearranges itself to show its true meaning. Acode, just for me. Others do not see it; they are too blind. Do you know this gift?”
Words rearranging themselves to reveal a code. A gift, he says. Madness, I say.
“Yes, I see encryptions.” He edges his handsomely tailored tuxedo jacket aside and flashes the butt of a gun, sticking out of his waistband. It gleams, then it’s gone. It’s not a threat; it’s a confession. “It’s why I’m here.”
He fired the gun?
“And as it turns out, I also set up a meeting of my own. My next assignment…” He lifts a vial containing one small grain of rice to eye level. He rattles it and grins, his dimple the mirror opposite of Pax’s.
My every instinct tells me to back away.
