City of Endless Night

5

Marc Cantucci jerked awake just as the airplane in his dream was about to plunge into the ocean. He lay there in the dark, his racing heart slowing as the familiar and comfortable surroundings of his bedroom took shape around him. He was damn tired of this same dream, in which he was in a jet hijacked by terrorists. They had invaded the cockpit and locked the door, and moments later the plane violently nosed down and went into a sickening plunge under full power toward the distant stormy sea, while out of his window he watched the black water rushing closer and closer, knowing the end was inevitable.

He lay in bed, wondering if he should turn on the light and read for a bit, or try to go back to sleep. What time was it? The room was very dark and the steel shutters on the windows were down, making it impossible to get a sense of the hour. He reached for his cell phone, which he kept on his bedside table. Where the hell was it? He couldn’t have forgotten to leave it there; his habits were as regular as a clock. But maybe he had, because it sure as hell wasn’t at hand.

Now too irritated to sleep, he sat up and turned on the bedside light, looking around for the phone. He threw off the covers, got out of bed, examined the floor around the table where it might have fallen, and finally went over to the wooden valet rack where he had hung his pants and jacket. A quick check showed it wasn’t there, either. This was becoming more than annoying.

He didn’t keep a bedside clock, but the alarm system had an LCD clock on it, so he went over and slid open the panel. And now he had a most unpleasant surprise: the panel was dark, the LCD screen blank, the alarm-activated light off. And yet the power in the house was on and the CCTV system, beside the alarm panel, was still working. Very strange.

For the first time, Cantucci felt a twinge of fear. The alarm system was the latest and best money could buy; it not only was hardwired into the house but had its own power supply and no less than two backups in case of power failures or technical problems, along with landline, cellular, and satphone connections to the off-site alarm company.

But here it was — not working.

Cantucci, the former New Jersey AG who had brought down the Otranto crime family before turning mob lawyer himself for the rival Bonifacci family, and who had received more blood-oaths of vengeance than he could count, was naturally concerned about his security.

The CCTV screen was working just fine, doing its usual thing, automatically cycling through all the cameras in the building. There were twenty-five of them, five for each floor of the brownstone in which he lived in, by himself, on East Sixty-Sixth Street. He had a bodyguard who stayed in the house with him during the day, but the man left when the steel shutters automatically descended at seven every evening, turning the house into an impregnable mini-fortress.

As he watched the cameras cycle through each floor, he suddenly saw something bizarre. Punching a key to stop the cycling, he looked at the image with horror. The camera in question covered the main front hallway of the house — and it revealed an intruder. It was a man, dressed in a black leotard, with a black mask over his face. He was carrying a compound bow with four feathered arrows racked in it. A fifth arrow was fitted into the bow and he carried it ahead of him, as if ready to shoot. The bastard looked as if he thought he was Batman and Robin Hood rolled into one.

This was just fucking crazy. How did the guy get past the steel shutters? And how did he get in without setting off the alarm?

Cantucci punched the instant-alarm panic button, but of course it didn’t work. And his cell phone was gone — a coincidence? He reached for a nearby landline phone and put the receiver to his ear. Dead.

As the man moved out of the camera’s field of view, Cantucci quickly punched in the next camera. At least the CCTV was working.

Now that he thought of it, he wondered why the man hadn’t disabled that, as well.

The figure was heading for the elevator. As Cantucci watched, the figure paused before it, then reached out a black-gloved hand and pushed a button. Cantucci heard the mechanism hum as the elevator descended from its position on the fifth floor, where his bedroom was, to the first.

Cantucci immediately mastered his fright. Six attempts had been made on his life; all had failed. This one was the craziest yet, and it would fail, too. The electricity was still on; he could freeze the elevator with the push of a button, leaving the man trapped — but no. No.

Moving fast, Cantucci whipped on a bathrobe, opened his bedside drawer, and took out a Beretta M9 and an extra fifteen-round magazine, which he dropped into the pocket of the robe. The gun already had a full magazine with a round in the chamber — he kept it that way — but he checked anyway. All good.

He quietly but swiftly passed out of the bedroom into the narrow hall beyond and positioned himself in front of the elevator. It was now rising again. He could hear the clinking and humming of the machinery, and the elevator numbers lit up, showing what floor it was on: three…four…five…

He waited, in firing-ready position, until he heard the elevator shudder to a stop. And then, before the doors could open, he fired into them, the heavy 9mm Parabellum rounds punching through the thin steel with plenty of killing power left on the other side, the noise deafening in the enclosed space. He counted the rounds as he fired, rapidly but accurately — one, two, three, four, five, six — moving in a pattern across and down that would be sure to hit anyone inside. He had plenty of rounds left to finish the job once the doors opened.

The doors slid open. To Cantucci’s great shock, the elevator was empty. He ducked inside, firing a couple of rounds upward through the elevator ceiling just to make sure the man wasn’t hiding up there, and then he punched the STOP button, holding the elevator on that floor so it could no longer be used.

Son of a bitch. The only other way for the killer to get up to his floor was by the stairs. The man had a bow and arrow. Cantucci, on the other hand, had a handgun — and he was an expert in its use. He made a quick decision: Don’t wait, go on the attack. The stairs were narrow, with a landing between each floor — a poor environment to get off an arrow shot, but ideal for handgun use at close quarters.

Of course it was possible the intruder had a gun, as well, but he sure as hell seemed intent on using his bow. In any case, Cantucci would take no chances.

Firearm at the ready, he raced down the stairs in his bare feet, making almost no noise, ready to fire. But by the time he’d descended as far as the second floor, he realized the man wasn’t on the stairs at all. He must’ve come up, then exited onto one of the lower floors. But which one? Where the fuck was he?

Cantucci exited the stairwell at the second floor and, covering the corners, went into the hall. It was clear. One end opened through an archway to the living room; the other ended in a closed bathroom door.

He quickly checked the CCTV screen in the hall, fast-forwarding through the cameras. There he was! On the third floor, one above, sneaking down the hallway toward the music room. What was he doing? Cantucci would have thought he was dealing with a madman, except this intruder was moving deliberately — as if he had some sort of plan. But what? Was he going to steal the Strad?

Christ, that was it. That must be it.

His most prized possession: the 1696 L’Amoroso Stradivarius violin that had once been owned by the Duke of Wellington. That, and his life, were the two reasons Cantucci had installed such an elaborate security system in his brownstone.

He watched as the figure moved into the music room and shut the door behind him. Punching the button for the camera inside the room, Cantucci watched the figure move toward the safe that held the Strad. How was he planning to get into the safe? The damn thing was supposedly unbreakable. But of course the bastard had already overcome a sophisticated alarm system; Cantucci knew better than to assume anything.

Obviously the intruder had heard the shots: he must know Cantucci was armed and looking for him. So what was he thinking? None of this made any sense. He watched him stop at the safe, reach out, and punch in some numbers on the keypad. The wrong numbers, evidently. Now he took out a little silver box — some sort of electronic device — and affixed it to the front of the safe. In doing so, he laid down the bow and arrow.

Now was his chance. Cantucci knew where the man was and where he would be for at least the next few minutes, and he knew the bow and arrow were not in his hands. The man would be busy with that metal device and the safe.

Moving silently, Cantucci climbed the stairs to the third floor, peered around the corner, and saw that the door to the music room was still shut, the intruder inside. Sneaking along the carpeted hallway in his bare feet, he paused at the closed door. He could throw it open and gun the man down long before the would-be thief could pick up that ridiculous bow and arrow and let one loose at him.

In one smooth, purposeful motion he grasped the knob with his left hand, threw open the door, and burst inside, gun up and aimed at the safe.

Nobody. Room empty.

Cantucci froze, realizing instantly that he had fallen into some sort of trap, then pivoted around, firing madly into the room behind him, even as the arrow came flashing through the air, striking his chest and slamming him into the wall. A second and third arrow, fired in rapid sequence, pinned his body firmly to the wall — three arrows spaced in a triangular pattern piercing the heart.

The intruder, who had been positioned in the open door of the room across the hall, walked forward and stopped two feet from the victim, held upright by the three arrows, his head flopped forward, arms drooped. The killer reached out and turned on the light in the hall. He leaned the bow up against the wall and looked the victim over, slowly and with deliberation, from head to foot. Then he grasped the victim’s sagging head in both hands. He raised it and looked into the staring — but unseeing — eyes. With one thumb he pushed up the victim’s top lip, turned the head slightly, briefly examining the teeth, which were white and straight and free of cavities. The haircut was expensive, the skin of the face smooth and tight. For a sixty-five-year-old man, Cantucci had taken very good care of himself.

The intruder released the head, letting it fall forward. He was well satisfied.