Death Dance

45

Two hours must have passed before Ross Kehoe and Mona Berk left the area where Chet Dobbis and I had been restrained. They had forbidden us to talk to each other as they whispered between themselves, reformulating their plans.

The only other noise I could hear came through the broken skylight above-the honking of car horns and the occasional scream of sirens, too far away to be useful to me.

Kehoe walked away from us and down the staircase. I was even more tired now and terribly frightened as I had watched Kehoe deteriorate throughout the night, fighting with Mona and then pouring himself a second drink.

My arms ached from trying to stretch at and work the binds behind me, but I sat up at attention when I heard what sounded like the door-our only connection to freedom-slide on its tracks. It seemed like Kehoe had left.

Ten minutes later the door reopened and Kehoe walked up the steps and back to us.

He spoke to Mona. "Nobody down there. They've got the lights on now, but I couldn't see anyone."

I whispered to Dobbis, "How can he tell? What could he see?"

"Do you remember those perforated stars, the enormous ones over the proscenium with cutouts in the grillwork?"

They were the most beautiful part of the auditorium's design. "Yes, of course."

"If Kehoe walked around that entire dark chamber we came through, he'd reach the area behind those eight stars. When the Shriners built the place, that was an organ loft. Another anachronism, another empty space. But from behind those stars you can pretty well see the entire auditorium. And you can do it without being seen from below."

Everything seemed to be working to Kehoe's advantage.

Mona got up from the bar stool and moved to the bed, stretching out on top of it. Kehoe walked over to us.

"You might as well rest. You need to save some energy to make your way out of here when we're ready to go."

His back was to Mona, who had rolled over on her side. As he squatted to look behind me to check that the ties were still secure, he laid his hand on my knee, then ran his forefinger up the length of the inside of my thigh. I suppressed a gag as my eyes followed his dirty fingernail along the seam of my gray slacks.

"Go where? How?" I asked as he pushed up to his feet. Had he lost it entirely that he thought he could walk us out of this dome?

"Chet will tell you. This theater has more trapdoors and underground passages than the Vatican. Two, three in the morning, maybe we'll get moving. Might even have to wait until tomorrow night."

Kehoe lifted the revolver and stroked his cheek with the barrel. "Unless you get on my nerves too much."

"And then what?" I asked. "Cops will be looking for you everywhere. Your home, the airports, the train stations, the car rental-"

"You know, Alex, that's the nice thing about owning your own planes. BerkAir. Not that we intend to take you and Chet quite that far with us. Maybe a little insurance to get us to the right private field."

"BerkAir to the Bahamas, no doubt."

"Follow the money," Kehoe said, sitting up against the headboard of the bed, next to Mona, to keep an eye on us. He rested the gun on his chest.

"Mona's money," I said, wondering whether Joe Berk had fixed things in his will after Briggs dropped the lawsuit.

"I hate fucking rich people," he said, rubbing his hand over Mona's backside and laughing to himself. "It's just their money I like."

If she had appeared to have been reclining calmly before he made that remark, Mona was on her feet and obviously restless again, looking for something, or someone, to be the target for her hostility. She paced back and forth beside the bed before walking to the swing that was suspended from the ceiling high above us. With one hand she grabbed the brass chain while she steadied the seat with her other one.

"Stay off that," Kehoe said.

"Why?" she asked. I didn't think that Mona Berk was used to taking orders. She ignored him and pulled herself up on the swing, pumping her legs to get it moving,

"You want me to pull you off that or what?" Kehoe's mildest threat would have done the trick for me.

"I want you to get us out of here, Ross. That's what the fuck I want." She was going higher and higher, disappearing for seconds against the backdrop of the dark walls as she flew by. I could see only the shiny brass chain making a dizzying arc as I tried to follow its motion.

Kehoe walked toward the swing and Mona kicked harder, nearly grazing the top of his head as he came closer.

When she flew back past him, Kehoe reached out and grabbed Mona's leg, pulling on it as he twisted the chain around and around with his well-muscled arm. Her head snapped forward and she wrapped her elbows tightly against the metal links to keep herself from falling off.

"Are you crazy?" she yelled at Kehoe. "What's wrong with you?"

"Stop the damn thing!" he said, stepping away as the seat of the swing jerked up and down while Mona tried to unravel herself.

She came to a stop, threw her head back, and started laughing. "You're nervous, aren't you? You're as goddamn nervous as I am, aren't you?"

I watched as she jumped off and walked over to Kehoe. I couldn't hear what they were saying to each other but I could see that they were arguing, which couldn't be good for any of us.

I was too wired to close my eyes, even though I was aching with exhaustion and fear. I looked over at Chet Dobbis, who had hung his head, slumped in his seat, and started crying-turning his face away from me when he caught me watching him. With every ounce of whatever strength I had reserved, I twisted and turned my wrists, pulling the silken strips as far apart as I could.

Kehoe and Mona had gone back to sitting against the headboard of the bed, fidgeting and whispering to each other, until it must have been after two o'clock in the morning. I looked over when I saw her stand up and start to approach, probably on a command from Kehoe to check on Dobbis and me. I stopped wriggling and held my hands in place behind me.

My heart began racing faster as I saw that Mona was holding the revolver.

"You don't need that with me," I said. "I'm too scared to make trouble."

"You've caused more than enough for me and Ross already. Look what you've started," she said, waving her hand with the revolver over her head. "It's your fault we're trapped in here."

I needed to calm her down as badly as I wanted to calm myself. I had no idea whether Mona Berk had ever held a gun before and I was even more frightened to think we were in the hands of an amateur.

"Ross seems to know what he wants to do," I said, hoping she was annoyed enough to tell me what was in store.

"Maybe he did before he started drinking," Mona said, looking over at him to see whether he was paying attention to her. He had gotten up to stretch and splash water on his face from the wet bar across the room. "I should never have waited here for him. I should have left all this dirty work up to him to get done."

"So how come you trusted Ross when you first met him?" I asked tentatively. Maybe I could talk her down. Maybe I could convince her that she had so much more to live for than he did. "I mean, wasn't he working for your uncle?"

"Like that would have mattered to me? Like I thought anybody in the world would have had an allegiance to Joe Berk for longer than the first paycheck?" Mona asked me. "You know what Joe did to me? You people who think he didn't deserve to die a miserable death, you ought to know this. He paid Ross to break into my old apartment-even my office-to hook up some of his surveillance cameras so the mean old prick could know what I was up to. Not naked, not in the bedroom. Joe just needed to know who I was hanging out with, who I was seeing and what I was doing. So he'd have a reason to fuck me out of my inheritance. Any reason. That's how I met Ross."

She was seething now at the thought of the old family history and I continued to try to shake off the chill as I shivered in the face of her rage.

"What do you mean?" My wrists ached and I could feel the blood accumulating above them as I stopped moving my fingers.

"Ross felt bad for me. Listened to Uncle Joe talk all the time about how he was going to screw me out of my share of the money. Came to me and told me what was going on, that he felt guilty about being the one to set up the works-you know, the electrical stuff. Told me what Joe was doing to me and to Briggs, too."

So Ross Kehoe double-crossed Joe Berk. And did it with the perfect enemy to make it a win-win situation for himself. Could Mona really think Ross was in love with her, and could she possibly believe he wouldn't cross her, too, when the right time came? His contempt for the Berks was palpable.

"I could have killed the old bastard myself. This was all I needed," she said, patting the gun barrel with her left hand.

I hated guns. I'd been around them a lot in all the time I'd worked in the office and had friends in the NYPD, but I'd never wanted to use them. I watched Mona's hands carefully, hoping to figure out if she was familiar with this one. I tried to tell if she knew it was loaded or not, whether it had a safety, and how to use it. If she was into guns, then I'd still be at a great disadvantage, even if I could finish loosening my bonds to try to take her on.

I vowed to myself to start going to the range to learn to shoot the very next time Mike or Mercer had to be there, if I got out of this alive.

"Why did Ross break into my building last night?" I asked her, trying to distract her from the weapon she was playing with so casually. "Why was he coming after me?"

Mona Berk didn't answer.

"Really, I had no idea he'd done anything wrong. I-I still don't know why he's doing this now," I said. I could kick myself for not figuring it out earlier, but I hadn't.

"Rinaldo."

"Rinaldo Vicci?"

"Yeah. He called me this weekend," Mona said. "He thought he'd made a mistake while he was talking to you."

"Me? He never said anything to me." A sense of desperation had crept into my voice. It was way too late to convince her I didn't know anything bad about Kehoe until the confrontation just a few hours earlier. Now I couldn't look at him and think of him as anything else except a killer.

She glared at me. "Rinaldo knew that Ross had told the police he'd never met Talya. That he didn't know her. But Rinaldo said he was alone with you at the Met the other day. He said he told you that he had seen Ross in Talya's dressing room."

"No, no. Vicci never told me he saw them," I said, stammering a denial.

"Well, he thought he had told you too much about Talya and Ross," Mona said, dismissively. "Rinaldo was just trying to suck up to me, like he was doing me a favor by covering up that connection. But when I told Ross about the conversation, it made him crazy."

"Why? I just don't understand that."

"Ross figured he was a few steps ahead of the cops. He didn't think they were onto him at all. It was you he was worried about after Rinaldo made that slip."

"But-"

We both turned our heads toward the staircase because we were reacting to the very same noise. It was a low whirring sound at first, and if Mona hadn't looked that way, too, I wouldn't have been certain that it wasn't just a tingling in my ears, the result of my exhaustion.

But Mona heard it and seemed frozen in place.

I started to get up on my feet and she pushed at me, screaming Kehoe's name.

The noise was steady now and it was coming from the heavy metal door at the bottom of the stairs.

"I told you not to move, dammit," Mona said, slapping me across the face with her left hand. Her shouts scared the whimpering Chet Dobbis, who rolled onto the floor and tried to crawl behind his chair.

Kehoe was back at her side within seconds. "What? What the-?"

"It's the door," Mona yelled. "What's happening?"

I strained at the bonds, certain that the silk ribbons were shredding into strips and that I could slip my hands out now.

Kehoe reached for the gun and Mona threw her right arm back in the air, wildly discharging a bullet.

"You lied to me!" she shouted at her lover. "You told me no one could find us here."

My eyes flashed between the staircase and the gun in her hand. I could reach the bottom of the steps in seconds, but she and Kehoe- and the revolver-would get to me before anyone could get the door to open.

Whoever was on the other side of that door-theater workers who'd figured out this might be a place to explore, or better yet, the police-would be in greater danger if I drew the gunfire in their direction. On the other hand, I had no idea how they would be armed and how I could protect myself, Chet Dobbis, and them-if I didn't alert them to the fact that our captors had a gun.

Mona had gone into a panic, confirming my realization that she and Kehoe were not expecting any allies to come to their aid. I watched as she went running away from the door-from the approaching enemy-and farther into the large domed room. Kehoe ran after her, trying to overtake her so he could get his weapon back.

I used my right fingers to yank on the binds one last time, releasing my left hand and then freeing both. My chances of being killed were just as good if I didn't make a dash to get out, once Mona and Ross stopped fighting with each other for the gun.

As fast as I could move, I got to my feet and ran down the steps to the door. I threw myself against it and pounded on it with my fists. Perhaps it was my imagination, but there seemed to be the slightest of cracks where the solid metal panel slid into the wall. I banged again and again, until Mona Berk screamed my name from across the room and fired a shot that glanced off the wall next to my head.

I turned to look and saw Kehoe struggling with her to grab the gun. She was kicking at him but calling out at me. "You'll get us all killed, you bitch," Mona yelled. I dropped to the floor as she let go with another round.

"How could you trust someone who met you in the middle of a double-cross?" I shouted at her. "It's not you he's after, it's the Berk fortune."

"You keep your fucking mouth shut," Kehoe said to me. Then he turned his attention back to Mona, who had run to the far side of the bed. "Give it to me, babe. I can finish them off and still get us out of here."

I was crawling up the stairs on my stomach, ready to make a run for the darker side of the cavernous room. I could see Mona pointing the gun right at Kehoe's chest and I inhaled, ready to give her some more emotional ammunition.

"You must have made a deal with Briggs," I called out to her, crouching at the top of the stairs. "The kid drops the the lawsuit against his father that you two started, in order to get back in Joe's good graces. Then you make a deal with him to get your share of everything he stands to inherit, promising to keep him up to his eyeballs in cocaine and showgirls. But you had to kill Joe to make it work. You two had to kill Joe before he disinherited Briggs for some other indiscretion."

"There aren't enough rounds left for you to fuck with this," Kehoe said to Mona Berk. "Give it back to me."

"He's going to kill you, too, Mona. As soon as he's got your money."

"Shut up," she screamed at me frantically. "I told you to shut up."

"I can shut her up, babe. I want the gun," Kehoe said.

"It doesn't matter now, Ross," I said. "It doesn't matter unless you can boost yourself up and out of that skylight on your red velvet swing. Don't let him fool you again, Mona."

"They can't drill through that door. It's impossible. They'd never be able to get the kind of equipment they'd need to do it up here," Kehoe said to her as she continued to back away.

"They're not drilling. They're opening the door," I said.

He turned from her and looked down the staircase.

"Jaws of life, Ross." The sweetest sound I'd ever heard.

The hydraulic rescue equipment used by police and military under the most dire of circumstances-for excavating bodies from aircraft and automobile accidents, building collapses, military disasters-and occasionally for getting lucky and extricating live ones from the jaws of death. I had seen the Emergency Services Unit use it in the most extreme and dire circumstances, and I knew that it could get the job done here this morning.

Mona Berk held the gun with both hands and pointed it at me. "Stand still. I've got nothing to lose if I shoot you now. You're the reason we're stuck in here, dammit."

The flickering neon shining in from the cityscape above the skylight made the jerky movements of Mona Berk and Ross Kehoe appear like they were caught in the rays of a strobe. I watched from my squat as he lunged at her to get the gun.

Again, Mona screamed as he punched her jaw and the gun fired, by accident more than design.

The bullet must have hit something close to Chet Dobbis, who had tried to flatten himself on the floor. I heard him gasp and saw him struggling to get to his knees, his hands still tied behind his back.

I knew I'd be safer in one of the dark recesses of the domed ceiling, but it would leave Dobbis exposed to the feuding killers.

As he reached behind himself to the chair he'd been sitting on to straighten himself up against it, Mona Berk turned and saw him as clearly as I did in a beam of light that streamed in from overhead.

"Stop moving around, you idiot!" I heard her call to Dobbis as she aimed the gun and discharged another round.

This time he yelled out in pain. He had only been upright for seconds, but Mona had found her mark. Dobbis had been hit.

I pushed up and ran toward him. "Get away from me," he yelled.

There was blood coming from his right shoulder and I grabbed hold of his left elbow to start dragging him with me away from the wildly frantic Mona Berk. I was trying to keep count of the bullets that had been spent, assuming the revolver held six and not knowing how many more Kehoe had in his pocket.

"Give it up," Kehoe said, trying to get his gun away from his out-of-control cohort. "I won't miss."

"We're never going to get out of here, you damn liar," Mona said, refocusing her rage on her partner. "You're going to get us both killed."

I saw the flash of the gun firing and again the sound of the blast echoing within the domed room. Another shot followed immediately and I saw Ross Kehoe fall backward from the impact and heard the crack of his skull against the surface of the floor.

Mona dropped to her knees beside him and ignored me for the moment. Her bloodcurdling screams scattered all the pigeons perched on the edge of the broken skylight. The gunsmoke trailed upward and gave off an acrid smell as it drifted toward the skylight.

I dropped Chet Dobbis's arm and started in the direction of Mona Berk and the fallen Ross Kehoe. The bullet count was in my favor, and the whirring noise at the door behind me continued to give me courage.

As I passed the bar, I grabbed a crystal decanter and cracked it against the marble countertop, holding the jagged glass in my hand by the neck of the broken bottle, and making a run at Mona Berk, who was sobbing now, while Kehoe was silent and still beside her.

"The gun is empty, Mona," I said. "Put it down."

She didn't look up the first time I said it. She was mesmerized, it seemed, by the pool of blood collecting on the floor next to Kehoe's chest, trickling toward her.

"Drop it," I said, determined to get it out of her hands before anyone managed to enter the room.

As I neared them, I could see that Kehoe's chest was moving up and down, but Mona wasn't watching that. She couldn't take her eyes off the blood as the rivulet reached her knee and the crimson stain started to spread on the leg of her pants.

I took a few steps closer to her and she lifted her head, bellowing at me like a shrew, from her kneeling position on the floor. No words came out-only a primal scream. When she picked up her right hand-bringing the gun up with it-I charged at her and knocked her off balance. The revolver dropped onto the floor and slid under the bed a few feet away, while the crystal decanter splintered into hundreds of tiny pieces as I lost my grip, and Mona Berk landed on it as she fell backward.

While she rolled back and forth in pain, trying hopelessly to brush off the shards that were embedded in the skin of her neck, I retrieved the gun and ran to alert my rescuers through the widening crack they were creating in the entryway. Then I untied Chet Dobbis and examined the wound that had grazed his shoulder, reassuring him-and myself-while I waited for the powerful spreader to open the heavy door of the great old forgotten dome of the Mecca Temple.