Ace In The Hole

11:00 A.M.

With a nasal squeal of fury Mackie ripped the calendar o the petechiate wallpaper. It displayed an open-lipped pussy presented for his approval-which wasn't coming-framed in dark hair and olive-thigh flesh, the tentative smile of a Puerto Rican girl hovering off above it in the middle distance. Mackie put a buzz on his fingers and ran them across the photo. Bits of woman went everywhere, a flurry of coloredpaper snow. That made him feel better.

It was almost as good as the real thing.

But while it could be assuaged, nothing was changing the thing that was pissing him off in the first place: the man he had come to kill wasn't here. Mackie didn't take disappointment well.

Maybe if he hung out a while Digger Downs would return home. He kicked over a low table of blond, wood-like veneer, purchased from some rental store, and went to the kitchen, while tabloids, racing forms, and issues of Photo District News fluttered around the floor like wounded birds. The SounDesign stereo on the cinderblock-and-board bookcase spritzed robopop at the fading seams on the back of his leather jacket.

The icebox was like a fifties Detroit car, big and bulging, and banded with chrome from which even phony luster w long since gone. All it lacked was fins. He yanked the door open. Inside were a bunch of white cardboard fast-fo containers; half a deli sandwich, entombed in Saran Wrap, the meat gone the color of a morning-after bruise; a carton of eggs with the top ripped off, and two eggshells punctured, as if by a drunken thumb while some of their comrades were on their way to a morning-after omelet; two six packs of Little King and one of no-name creme soda; and plastic margarine tubs filled with this and that, mostly mold. There were a few little gray plastic cylinders that obviously held film. These Mackie opened and unspooled, gleefully bathing them in the dubious radiance of the one bare bulb protruding like a hemorrhoid from the ceiling.

He closed the door, buzzed a hand, and slashed across. The thick-gauge metal parted with a shower of sparks and a satisfactory vibration up his arm and down his dick. Onlv skin was more fun to cut than good metal. He grabbed the refrigerator, pulled, got it rocking with a strength that was surprising in his skinny, twisted little body, and pulled the thing over with a satisfying bang on the cracked linoleum. Then he turned his attention to the cupboards that crowded around a sink filled with caked and crusty dishes, which gave off a fruity fecal wino smell, something you could dip a spoon into.

The cupboards were layered, like a televangelist's wife, with enamel. Though they hadn't been refinished in living memory they gave off an odor of paint, overlaid with eons of cigarette smoke that had permeated the cabinets to their presumed bedrock of wood, that actually competed with the organic decay in the sink. Inside he found sixteen bags of Doritos, two cans of beans, one of them opened, replaced, and forgotten during binge munchies, and a box of Frosted Flakes. Tony the Tiger looked ill. The beans smelled like a dead cat.

"This is Randy St. Clair, and I'll be coming back at you with more sounds of your city from WBLS-FM, 107.5 at the end of your dial," the radio was saying when he came back in the living room. "But first, on Newsbreak, Sandy will tell us how the delegates are preparing for a long, hot summer week in Atlanta, and update us on continuing reports of genocide in Guatemala, and she'll have the latest on a grisly celebrity murder in Jokertown. Sandy?"

He frowned. It was too bad about Chrysalis. The Man had promised he could do her himself one day. Now he'd never find out what it would be like to put his hand in that glass-clear meat.

That was a brand new bitch, and it made him mad all over again. He went from room to room of the cramped apartment breaking what he found, alternating between exhilarated and clinical: Will this make me feel better? It was vandalism as designer drugs.

The bed was propped up with textbooks under one corner: French, darkroom technique, a police text on interrogation. There was no spread. The sheet was tie-dyed with bodily fluids of the kind you were supposed to encase yourself in Latex rather than come in contact with. He shredded things.

When he emerged he was starting to feel cranked at Downs again. Der Mann wasn't going to like this, not for one little minute.

Well, Downs just wasn't here. The Man could hardly blame him for that; it wasn't his fault. Fuck it. He phased through the outer wall, into the corridor.

As he did, a door across and down one opened.

"I tell you it's those Chinese people," a woman was saying in that nosy whine that made these New York people sound to Mackie like big, fleshy insects. "They're all drug dealers, you know. I saw all about them on the 60 Minutes. This Mr. Downs, he's, like, a crusading investigative reporter. I figure he got too close to them, the tong sent somebody over to mess his place up. There must be a dozen of them, the noise they were making. With sledgehammers and chain saws."

She pushed out into the hallway like an East River tug in housecoat and fluorescent-pink, fuzzy slippers, with a hankie tied over curlers, and a super in tow. The super was a black man not much taller than Mackie, with a mustache and gray-stippled hair bushing out in back from beneath a Montreal Expos baseball cap. He had on paint-smeared, gray coveralls. He nodded distractedly at the woman while grumbling to himself, and tossing his big steel ring of keys for the master to Digger's apartment. He didn't notice Mackie.

The woman did notice Mackie. She screamed.

He smiled. It was the nicest thing anyone had said to him all day.

The super looked up at him, his mouth a shout of pink in his dark face. Mackie felt his hands begin to vibrate as of their own accord. This wasn't going to be a total loss after all.

Jack saw the weird red pyramids, looking like some strange form of acoustic tile, that crowned the Omni Center, and headed in their direction. He'd got lost in Peachtree Center looking for cigarettes, and taken the wrong route to the convention.

Ted Turner's Omni Center was built of a new type of steel that was designed to rust. The theory was that the rust would protect the steel underneath, and from what Jack had seenand Jack had built a lot of buildings over the last thirty years-the theory was perfectly correct.

Still, the damn thing was so ugly.

He was approaching one of the convention's back entrances. A uniformed guard stood outside the closed door. Jack nodded into the mans shades, then tried to step past him to the door.

"Wait a minute." The guard's voice was sharp. "Where do you think you're going?"

"Into the convention."

"Like hell you are."

Jack looked at him. Connally, the man's name badge said. He had a broken nose and a little silver Christian cross pinned to his collar.

Great, Jack thought. Probably a Barnett supporter. He unclipped his ID and floor pass from his pocket and waved them in the guard's face.

"I'm a delegate. It's okay."

"No one gets through this door. Ever. Those are my instructions. "

"I'm a delegate."

Connally appeared to reconsider. "Okay. Let's see that ID."

Jack handed it over. Connally squinted as he looked at it. When he looked up, there was an evil grin on his face. "You don't look sixty-four to me," he said.

"I'm well-preserved."

The guard reached for his walkie-talkie. "This is Connally. Situation Three."

Jack waved his arms. "What the hell is that?"

"You're under arrest, asshole. Impersonating a delegate." "I ant a delegate."

"The Secret Service are on their way. You can talk to them."

Jack stared at the guard in rising despair. This, he realized, was only Monday.