Ghosts of Manhattan (15 page)

And then he jumped, throwing himself into the air, dropping below the lip of the apartment block before suddenly rising again on a plume of shimmering flame.

Donovan watched as the vigilante swept through the air toward another rooftop across the street, and then the plumes of fire extinguished once more and everything was dark, save for a few shafts of silvery moonlight picking out the glinting aerials of holotube transmitters that pointed to the stars like so many upraised hands.

Donovan returned to the room with the corpse. His head was spinning. He still wasn't clear about what role the Ghost had played in proceedings here, but he was now sure of one thing-the vigilante wasn't working for the Roman. Whatever his faults, however brutal his methods, the Ghost was right. Donovan needed him. He needed a blunt instrument, someone prepared to do what was right, to fight the criminals on their own terms, without one hand always tied behind his back. He wished he had the same freedom.

He turned things over in his mind. The car with three funnels. The Ghost must have been referring to the vehicle used by Gideon Reece, the sleek, black, modern thing that Donovan had sat inside the other night. So the Ghost had worked out how to find Reece. But finding a single car in a city full of them-surely that was like searching for a needle in a haystack? No matter what modifications had been made, how different it was from the similar models that purred constantly along the city streets, the city was a big place, and Donovan didn't know where to begin his search. Even if he found Reece, he knew he'd never be able to get him for Sinclair's murder. The man was too clever for that. And he was coming for Donovan, too. Time was running out. He almost laughed aloud at the irony. He realized he was hoping, hoping that the Ghost, that vigilante he had just encountered on the roof, was going to save him, was going to get to Reece first, use whatever methods he deemed necessary to put an end to the man's reign of terror. He couldn't cross that line himself. But he could certainly turn a blind eye while the Ghost did.

Sighing, Donovan regarded the corpse. The poor bastard. It was clear to him that Reece's motive in dressing the scene in such a manner was to ridicule the dead man, to remove any last vestiges of his dignity. To defile him. It had been the same with Landsworth. The message was clear: oppose the Roman and he will not only take your life, but your reputation, too.

Donovan thought it was just crude. There was nothing subtle about removing a man's head and posing his corpse in a chair, or throttling a hooker and wiping her lipstick around a dead man's prick. It lacked finesse, for all its grotesque grandeur. It was barbaric, a punishment from another time.

He turned to see Mullins standing at his elbow, brandishing a mug of coffee. He took it with a grateful smile.

"Have you noted, sir, that the body only has one Roman coin on its eyes? Perhaps we disturbed him when he was placing them?"

Donovan shook his head. "No, Mullins. There were two coins here. That vigilante, the Ghost, wasn't placing the coins on Sinclair's eyes. He was removing one of them."

Mullins gave him a quizzical look. His top lip seemed to twitch in thought. "So, you don't think the Ghost committed the homicide?"

"No. I think the Ghost is as keen to find the Roman as we are. He took the coin as evidence. He's searching for clues."

Mullins frowned and brought his steaming coffee to his lips. Behind him, the uniformed officers were talking in the hallway, out of sight of the grisly corpse. "So what you're saying, sir, is that by following the Ghost, we might be able to find the Roman."

Donovan grinned. Of course! "Now that, Mullins, is one of the best ideas I've heard in days." He liked Mullins. The man had insight.

Mullins gave an embarrassed chuckle. "What I don't understand, sir, is what links the victims. They all seem to be upstanding members of society. Their deaths appear to be entirely random."

"Most likely they're just honest citizens who refused to take the Roman's bribes." Donovan knew he sounded weary. He took a long pull of his dark, oily coffee.

Mullins shook his head. "You've always told me, sir, to look for the link. The thing that binds the victims together. We need to find the common ground. There has to be something. We just can't see it yet."

Donovan shrugged. "I don't know, Mullins. I really don't know. A part of me suspects that's just wishful thinking, and a part of me desperately wants you to be right."

Mullins was stoic. "We'll find it, sir. The link is there. We just haven't looked in the right place yet."

Donovan glanced over at the screaming face of the dead doctor. "I hope you're right, Mullins. For all our sakes."

he Johnson & Arkwright Filament was a creation of miraculous proportions, or so Gabriel expounded to his guests as they lounged and splashed and caroused in the bubbling water, dressed in their swimwear even now, in the middle of November.

The Filament itself was a huge cylindrical brass stove that sat on the edge of the swimming pool. It was covered with complex dials and switches, and had a hinged brass door in its belly that allowed access to the furnace. Henry, earlier, had rolled up his sleeves and shoveled in sack-loads of coal, enough to heat the pool for at least a day, if not longer. The device belched black, gritty smoke from a wide funnel in its roof and extended two long, brass fingers into the water, over the lip of the pool. These filaments reached almost to the bottom of the pool itself, and through them, superheated liquid was passed in a constant current, warming the surrounding water and causing steam to rise like a wispy veil from the surface, drifting away into the chill winter air.

It had cost Gabriel a small fortune, but he had been true to his word. He'd promised his entourage a November pool party, and that was what they were now enjoying.

Gabriel himself remained fully clothed. He was stretched out on a sun lounger on the veranda, soaking up the hedonistic atmosphere. He watched the multitudes of people swarming about by the pool, or frolicking in the water, while sipping his bourbon and casually smoking a cigarette. He saw Ariadne-poor, beautiful Ariadne-skulking with her clutch of girlfriends, casting furtive looks at Gabriel and Celeste, the latter of whom was propped in a deck chair beside him, watching him with an amused gleam in her eye.

The whole thing was ludicrous, he knew. But then, that was the point of it. That was the nature of the perpetual party, the veil he drew over his own life to prevent others from seeing in. He found it fasci nating that nobody should challenge him on such an outlandish idea. But no, the invitations had gone out and the people had swarmed; expectant, cheerful-some, perhaps, a little mystified. Yet they had accepted the notion without question, convincing themselves, and each other, that the masterful Gabriel Cross couldn't possibly conceive of having a bad idea. And so they had come, dressed in their bathing suits and carrying towels beneath their arms. It was a grand social experiment, and Gabriel knew that it proved something to Celeste, about the nature of his parties: that she was right. All those guests were trying to escape from something, and they blinded themselves to the reality of it in exchange for a moment of blissful ignorance. They wanted Gabriel to tell them how to have fun because they couldn't work it out for themselves. He loved that she hadn't made a point of it.

Celeste had recovered well from the shock of the other night. But he knew she wasn't sleeping. She'd stayed with him since the incident, allowing herself to be cajoled into moving in, at least until things had blown over. Or, as Gabriel realized, at least until she was able to live with herself again. That was the crux of the matter, he was sure. She'd killed two men that night, snuffed out the lives of two other people, and she detested the feeling of assumed godhood that the weapon had given her. She didn't want to be able to decide who lived or died. That wasn't her role to take. In her worldview, that was the domain of higher beings. Higher than her, anyway.

She recognized, of course, that she had acted only in self-defense, but nevertheless those actions had changed her. Something inside of her had broken. It was something Gabriel would never be able to repair, no matter how hard he tried, no matter what he did or said. He knew that himself, all too well.

Celeste had told him all of this in the small hours of the night, when the only sound was the rustling of the trees through the window, and the only warmth the press of her body against his, the touch of her breath upon his face, the thump of her racing heart as she went over and over and over what had happened. He hadn't asked her why, and she hadn't volunteered an explanation, either. He still had no idea why those men-those mobsters-had been so desperate to take her away from him, so intent on their purpose that they had turned over the club and murdered all those people. Gabriel knew none of those victims was innocent, but neither did any of them deserve to die, not like that. Not at the hands of those terrible monsters rendered from soil and clay and death.

Whether Celeste suspected any reason behind the Roman's attempt to kidnap her, he could only speculate. Yet he recognized within her a seed of discretion, a decision not to reveal that part of herself, not to him, not to the world. She was hiding something, withholding some secret that exposed her in some way, made her vulnerable, and she had chosen to bury it. She was tied up in something and she had chosen not to share it with him. He would have been a hypocrite if he'd expected anything else.

She turned to him, now, a wry smile on her lips. "You went to the city yesterday. I overheard you talking to Henry."

Gabriel accepted this as a statement of fact. He'd left her dozing on the sofa in the drawing room, resting at last, and had taken the car back to the city. He'd returned late that night. She'd been in bed, feigning sleep, as he'd slipped in quietly and curled up beside her. Later, when she'd woken, he'd been there to hold her as she wept.

Now, however, she had challenged him on his whereabouts, breaking the unspoken rule. He plumed smoke into the air, and turned to watch a couple by the side of the pool, holding hands as they jumped into the water together, crying out in delight like excited children. "Yes. I went into the city."

Celeste nodded, slowly. "You weren't-"

He swallowed the remains of his drink in one gulp. "I was."

She sat forward in her chair. She was both appalled and enamored. "Really? You went back. You brave, foolish, wonderful man!"

Gabriel waved his cigarette nonchalantly. "I didn't get very far. I asked a lot of questions. I discovered that the man we saw-the thin man in the evening suit-is called Gideon Reece. He works for the Roman, the mob boss who's been causing a stir. The police are looking into him, too. I met a nice inspector."

Celeste was just about to reply when a man Gabriel didn't recognize approached the veranda from across the garden. He wasn't wearing a bathing suit, but was dressed instead for the winter weather: a dark wool suit and a beige overcoat. He was wearing a brown hat. He beamed up at Gabriel and flashed Celeste a wide grin. "Quite a party you've got going on here, Mr. Cross. Unusual to see people in swimwear at this time of year."

Gabriel smirked. "Yes, indeed. Trying out my new acquisition. It's called the Johnson and Arkwright Filament. It heats the pool, you see-

"Yes, I'd gathered as much." He looked down at his right hand, as if studying the palm, and then thrust it out in Gabriel's direction. "The name's Houseman, Jack Houseman. I'm with the New York Times."

Gabriel looked the man up and down appraisingly. There was an awkward moment while he made up his mind whether to take the man's hand or not. Then, remembering he had a role to play, he slid his glass tumbler onto the table beside him and leaned forward on the lounger, grasping the reporter's hand. "Good to meet you." He looked over the other man's shoulder. "You're welcome to join the party."

Houseman grinned. "Deadlines, Mr. Cross. I'm sure you understand."

"I'm sure he doesn't!" Celeste half-whispered, a sweet smile on her lips.

Houseman laughed. "I understand there was an ... incident the other night, downtown."