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  That was when Billy Boy said, “I’ll have you fucking screaming too before I’m done,” and for a minute Eric didn’t get it. For a minute they just circled. Then Eric realized the giant was mocking Frank Haggerty’s death and his mind abdicated leadership, he lost control.

  And he charged.

  Blindly.

  Billy Boy was waiting with open arms. Then the arms closed and began to squeeze and Eric felt himself being lifted off the ground and then he was slammed against the brick wall of the elevator housing and the blow stunned him, and the hard brick ripped into the skin of his back and blood started there and he struggled to get free but again he was slammed against the elevator housing and this time his head took a solid shot and the next time he thought he could feel a rib going and again he was slammed back and this time his hip took the brunt and his right leg felt numb and he was hurting all over now and he was bleeding too, but that had happened before, and he had fought strong men before, brought them down. But what made this different, what made this bad, was his mind was gone, his brain had taken a walk, his body was in charge and it wasn’t good enough, not against giants, not against this giant anyway.

  Billy Boy went for a knee in the nuts but caught Eric’s thigh instead and for an instant lost his balance and in that instant Eric slipped away, slipped free—

  —free—

  —and then he charged again.

  And again it was slaughter. Billy Boy grabbed him easily, took him by one arm, spun him across the roof and down. Eric tried to rise but too slow, Billy Boy kicked him in the stomach and it wasn’t a solid blow but for an instant the air was out of him and Billy Boy picked him up again, lifted him high, pitched him across the roof and he landed on some paint cans and they jammed into his skin and now it was leaving Eric. He saw Billy Boy lumbering for him and he tried getting up but the paint cans tripped him and he fell again, fell all by himself.

  Then Billy Boy brought him to a standing position with his left hand and slowly, as Eric watched, he turned his right hand into a fist and more slowly turned his arm into a club and slower still raised it high and Eric thought, I think he’s going to kill me, but that’s wrong, that’s all wrong, I was going to kill him.

  He was thinking again.

  The blow started down as Eric jumped into Billy Boy, jumped right inside the blow and when they were very close he brought his head way over to the left and then snapped it up into Billy Boy’s face and even before the cry he knew the giant’s nose was broken. Billy Boy stepped back, tearing, and while he was still having trouble seeing, Eric grabbed the sleeve of his coat and jerked it forward and kept hold of it while Billy Boy tried to keep balance and then Eric spun the giant around and around, the coat sleeve his weapon, and when he let go, Billy Boy stumbled and fell and as he got up Eric drove his knuckles deep into Billy Boy’s neck.

  Then when Billy Boy stood up Eric dropped down and drove his heels into the other man’s kneecaps and when Billy Boy was down again Eric got up and used his elbow on the damaged nose and this brought a shriek of pain.

  Move, move, move, Eric thought, circling, in with a kick, then an elbow into the stomach, then he grabbed the sleeve of the coat as Billy Boy pulled free but that was fine, Eric didn’t want the coat anymore, he wanted the nose again and he got it with the palm of his hand, drove the palm dead into the broken tissue and again Billy Boy could not keep silent.

  Billy Boy backed away, started to pull his coat off, but Eric would not allow it, jumped in, then away, then in again, again attacking the nose and Billy Boy screamed, “I’ll fuckin’ kill you,” and charged and Eric dropped, lashed out with both feet into the side of the giant’s knees, sending him crashing against the elevator housing.

  Billy Boy was panting now. He made a fist of his hand and a club of his arm and swung—

  —Eric stepped inside the blow, slashed the side of his hand into the side of the giant’s nose.

  Billy Boy made a fist of his hand and a club of his arm and swung—

  —Eric stepped away, and when the force of the missed punch spun the giant past him, Eric brought his knee dead into contact with the base of the other man’s spine.

  As Billy Boy began again to make a fist and then a club, Eric watched it because it was all the giant used now, all he had faith in, some mystic belief that somehow he would win with that single weapon. Eric watched in the darkness and Haggerty was dead for no good reason far below and on this roof, in this night, Billy Boy seemed to Eric like everything people had been trying to rid themselves of for eenturies, he was some throwback to the muck, when if you were a bigger Tyrannosaurus Rex, that carried with it triumph, and Eric realized he was not going to kill this creature, he was going to do something he hoped much worse. I am going to terrify you, Eric thought Vm going to make you feel fear. I’m going to take your mystic weapon and destroy it.

  The club blow missed, and Eric slapped Billy Boy with the back of his hand.

  Heaving now, enraged now, the next club blow missed and another slap. A dainty slap, almost a feminine thing.

  Billy Boy had his hand into a fist—

  —and Eric stood there.

  He made his fist into a club.

  —and Eric stood there.

  Billy Boy raised his right hand high.

  —and Eric filled his mind with Haggerty, and what a pleasure. Just that day’s Haggerty. Haggerty telling the grieving Greek widow that life wasn’t necessarily “Byronic.” “Definitely Budweiser.” “Sake quality.” “Saline content.” “You’re lucky they didn’t kick the shit out of you all over again.” And Eric replying, “it’s my fantasy, Frank, they didn’t stand a chance.”

  And now, in the darkness, in Eric’s reality, the club blow landed.

  Eric just stood there. He felt nothing. The blow dropped away like water.

  Billy Boy took a step backward. Eric watched him, thoughtfully. Billy Boy took another step. Eric spoke, voice very soft. “Now you suffer,” he said.

  Billy Boy screamed and ran. He raced for the edge of the roof where there was a fifteen-foot drop to the next building, but Eric sliced the legs out from under him from behind and Billy Boy crashed into the wall. He got up and tried to run again and this time Eric caught him with a shoulder and Billy Boy crashed into the elevator housing, his head smashing into the bricks. He was making sounds now as he got up and ran again, this way, that way, panic controlling him and when Eric reached him he brought his elbow into contact with the giant’s Adam’s apple and Billy Boy went down, got up and ran blindly, bumping into things, slipping, falling, running like a waterbug, without direction.

  When Eric caught up with him, he finished things quickly, a chop to the nose, an elbow to the stomach and when the giant doubled over, Eric brought his knee up sharp against his chin and Billy Boy fell semiconscious, and Eric took half a minute, got his gun back, then he dragged the giant from roof to the corridor and when the elevator came he threw Billy Boy in and rode down to the lobby where the guard was lying on the ground, moaning and rolling slowly around, and from the lobby Eric pulled Billy Boy out into the street and as they reached the sidewalk, a man in a blue suit came up alongside Eric and hit him a terrible blow to the side of the head and Eric gasped, let go of the giant, turned to his attacker when a second man in a blue suit struck him from behind at the base of the neck and the first one hit him with a pistol barrel across the forehead and Eric went down with his own blood in his eyes, and it was madness, it was all madness, he was going insane, helplessly watching as the two blue-suited men took the giant and placed him in a limousine and then a man who looked like Henry Kissinger was giving curt instructions, and then they were all in the limousine, driving quickly away and Eric on his knees tried for a look at the license plate but he was almost blind now, blind with blood, yes, and sweat, yes, that too, and saddest of all, tears…

  PART III

  CONFONTATIONS

  1

  The Contact

  Billy Boy lay naked while the two
women massaged him with oils. Maybe not totally naked—there was a small cloth covering him, but sometimes when he moved his body a little one way or another on the bed, it would slide away and then they could catch sight of it. When that happened, they didn’t make a fuss, just readjusted the small cloth.

  In the beginning he figured they were hookers but now considering the white uniforms and all, they had to be nurses. Strong. They both had great fingers. Now one of them was standing above his head, stretching the muscles in his neck while the other gave his calves a going over.

  “What’s ‘at stuff?” he asked after a while. It was hard for him to talk or think good. He was so relaxed. He could never remember being this relaxed before.

  “Patchouli,” one of the broads said, the one doing his neck. Light brown hair. Probably a little older than the other one but a better shape. If he had to rape one or the other, the one with the light brown hair would get the call.

  “Jeannie,” Billy Boy whispered then.

  “Pardon?”

  “You got that light brown hair like in the song.” Someone in his family had sung it once. Way back.

  “Shhh,” the nurse said gently. “You must rest”

  Billy Boy closed his eyes and rested.

  All he could feel was their fingers. Good and strong and never stopping. The fingers would find a knot and then they’d go to work, smoothing, stretching, till the knot was gone.

  “What’sis place?” Billy Boy asked after a while.

  “The doctor will explain everything,” the nurse at his calves said. “Soon.” Now she was working on his feet, rubbing the tired soles. The smell of that patchouli oil was all around him. He really liked it a lot. Next whore I have, he decided, first she’s gonna rub me with patchouli oil.

  Now the nurse at his neck moved down to one thigh and the nurse at his feet moved up to the other. Ordinarily he’d be hot to trot when that happened. Ram, jam, thank you ma’am. Only now, it was too much effort. Everything was too much effort. The best thing was to lie there and just go with it. He could take off if he wanted. No question, a bust out was his for the asking. But so far, they’d been nice, so far all he’d had to do was rest and eat good hot food done any way he asked for it and lie still while these two - made him sleepy.

  —a helluva lot better than being back on that roof—

  “What’s wrong?” the one nurse said suddenly.

  “Why are you so tense?”

  “Relax.”

  “Yes. Please. Relax.”

  “Sometimes you remember bad things,” Billy Boy said.

  “Just don’t think,” the light brown hair one told him.

  Billy Boy gave that a try. Soon he was conscious of the sound of his own breathing. Smooth and even, smooth and slow and maybe he even went out for a while, but he was immediately aware as soon as somebody else came in the room, not because of any noise or like that—

  -—but the nurses, their fingers dug too deep all of a sudden, they were the tense ones now.

  Billy Boy opened his eyes. The guy looking down was tall, thin, brown hair, coat and tie, the face of a guy always smelling something he didn’t like a lot; a shitheel. The shitheel said, “My name is Trude, Mr. Winslow.”

  “Where am I, what’sis place?”

  “In the middle of Manhattan, on the top floors of a building.”

  “Hospital?”

  “Partly that, on occasion a research center.”

  “What’s a research center?”

  A shitheel smile. “A place where you look for things, Mr. Winslow.” A shitheel pause. “That’s really much too formal, ‘Mr. Winslow.’ How would you like to be called?”

  William was what he wanted, only no one ever did that-—he loved William. William was class. “Billy Boy’ll do.”

  “I don’t much like that either.”

  “Well, it doesn’t matter a helluva lot what you like in the long run, does it?”

  “I like ‘William.’ I think I’ll call you that.”

  Billy Boy looked at him closer now. “How long I been here?”

  “Eighteen hours perhaps. I trust everything’s pleasing to you.”

  Billy Boy shrugged again. “You can ‘trust’ that if it isn’t, I’m getting the fuck out.”

  “I would hope it wouldn’t come to that.”

  “What’sat mean?”

  “We wouldn’t want to detain you forcibly.”

  Billy Boy had to laugh at that one. “What—these two bimbos would pin me and you’d tie me up?”

  “Let’s just hope it doesn’t come to that,” Trude said again. “I make a bad first impression on people, William, I’m afraid I’ve done that with you. In time I think we may even come to like each other.”

  “How much time?”

  “Let’s just take things as they come, shall we?”

  “I’m stayin’ because I want to—I go when I wanna go—you remember that.”

  “Of course.”

  “I’m boss, I run me!”

  “Of course. The moment you decide to leave, just tell me… and well bring you immediately back to the gentleman we took you from, no problem at—”

  “—you keep him away from me—” Billy Boy was sitting now, the nurses backing away as he began to scream. “—you keep that fucker the hell away you know what’s good for you, I don’t wanna see that fucker, you got me, you got me?”

  “William, William,” the shitheel said. “How can we have begun so badly; the Duchess told me how sensitive you were, and now look what I’ve gone and done.”

  “You know the Duchess?”

  “For many glorious years.” He came close to the bed now, whispered. “How do you think I knew to call you William? You told her, she told me. How do you think I knew what movie you’d be attending? You told her, she told me. We have no secrets, the

  Duchess and I—and you and I must be the same.” He reached out now, touched Billy Boy’s forehead, gently rubbed the temples. “Please lie back down.”

  Billy Boy did.

  Trude gestured for the nurses to return to their labors. In an instant their fingers were on the giant’s body. He closed his eyes. Trude’s voice went on softly. “What a wonderful creature you are, William. What a misunderstood man. She told me. She told me. As gifted with your brains as with your body. She told me. And the Duchess never lies.”

  “… ‘at’s ri…”

  “Soon, William, soon.” He moved to the door, gestured for the brown-haired nurse to follow him. He opened the door to the hallway, stepped outside, spoke briefly to her when she was beside him. “Alert me the moment he’s ready.”

  “Of course.”

  “But since I’m sure we’d all prefer that moment come sooner rather than later, may I suggest you immediately alter your style.”

  “I’ve been doing massage for many years, Doctor.”

  “Of course you have but if you’re perfect, then you’re the first since Jesus to reach that state, so I’m sure you won’t mind some suggestions.”

  She said nothing, waited.

  “End the tapotement immediately and concentrate solely on effleurage. Clear?” When she nodded he said “Excused” and turned his back on her, walked away. He was well aware that she was angry, that he could have simply said, “End the percussion immediately and concentrate solely on stroking.” But it was important that all his underlings realize that not only was he more intelligent and knowledgeable than they, he was all of that on their best subjects.

  He had been first in every school he ever attended.

  Now he stopped by the two men in blue suits who sat alertly at the end of the hall. They had helped him get Winslow into the limousine some hours earlier, and they were both excellent at their profession. Apple, the larger of the two, stood as Trude approached. Berry, the younger and quicker, stayed seated as he was. Berry was bright, too bright perhaps, and might someday require disciplining.

  Well, Trude was good at that, too.

  “Half an hou
r or less I should think,” he told them.

  “Yessir,” Apple said.

  Trude noted Berry’s silence as he continued on past the elevators—he detested waiting—to the stairs, went down the two flights in silence. When he reached his office he unlocked it, turned on the lights, locked the door behind him, made a fresh pot of coffee, and while he waited, took some caffeine pills. He had been up many hours now and it was essential that when Winslow was ready, he, Leo Trude, had to be that and then some. Success, as always, rested solely in his hands.

  His office, book lined, was a source of cheer to Trude; his desk, dust free, the same. The entire room was in perfect order—he had been an anal compulsive for so long that he could still remember his parents actually worrying about it. “There ought to be some mess,” his father said often. “Leo, remember, a sweet disorder in the dress kindles in clothes a wantonness.’’

  But then, his father had been a fool. A double FF—Fool and Failure. An unpublished poet, an unread scholar, a professor of excruciating dullness. His mother had been one of his students, unpretty, driven. When she finally realized she had mounted the wrong horse, Leo was the one who was whipped, whipped to run faster, fastest, to win.

  Soon, mother, soon.

  He opened his central desk drawer, took out a pen. The drawer on the right contained paper, beneath that was a folder already titled “Winslow.” Leo glanced at his coffee, perking away. Then he began to print quickly, the letters so small, so perfectly formed, the lines so straight that at first glance it could have passed for typing. He bunched his thoughts toward the center of the page.