Minutes later she was on the street, hailing a cab, the hack’s jaw dropping when he realized who she was. She hadn’t experienced the adulation—Feral’s spooky attentions were not the same—for almost two days, and she realized that for all the lines she gave the magazines about intrusion into her private life, she loved it.
CHAPTER NINETY-EIGHT
Red Henry, the mayor of the goddamn City, lumbered unsteadily out into the night air, pausing at the top of the steps to survey the lines of cars, looking for the black Packard Phaeton that came with his office. The guests queuing for taxis looked up as he emerged, and he realized that he was cursing aloud. He smiled at the queue, reminding himself that they were voters, and finally located his car. The driver was chatting with two men, their hats hiding their faces. The drivers tended to socialize with each other while they waited, but the men his driver was talking to clearly weren’t fellow drivers. Something about the way they held themselves. And their fedoras. Henry wondered who the hell they were. He took the steps slowly, careful not to reveal the extent of his inebriation with a stagger or hesitation.
He needed to get back to his office. He needed to get Feral to take that singing bitch to Draffert’s. He needed to find out exactly what the fuck had happened to the Poles and decide whether he wanted to give them the scare of their lives before they left the City. He had a reputation to maintain. He needed to hear about the fire in the goddamn Vaults, though as he thought about it, it might not be the worst thing that had ever happened. But it infuriated him because it had not been part of his plans. Someone would have to be held accountable.
He needed to figure out a new strategy for Frings. He’d always assumed that it would be counterproductive to have him bumped, but now he wasn’t so sure that Frings was more trouble dead than alive. He was too drunk to assess it clearly.
He needed to get Smith out into the country to find out where those Navajo Project psychopaths had disappeared to. Come to think of it, where the hell was Smith? He hadn’t seen Smith as he left the gala. Smith was usually the type to be right there, ready to cause whatever mayhem Henry would allow. Then he remembered Smith’s leaving the hall with a sense of purpose about him, and he wondered if he shouldn’t have his driver take him directly to Feral’s place.
A panhandler came up to him and rattled the coins in his cup. Henry stopped and glared at him. The panhandler backed away, mumbling slurred, semicoherent curses.
His driver was no longer talking to the men from before and had the door open for him. Henry remembered that he had a question to ask him but could not, for the life of him, recall what it was. Fucking alcohol.
“Feral’s. Quickly.”
“Feral’s, sir?”
“That’s what I said.” Was it a complicated request?
“Of course.”
Henry rested his head on the leather seat back and let his lids drop, willing himself to sober up. Willing himself to consider his problems one at a time rather than deal with the flood of anxiety that was threatening to overwhelm him.
There was a crash, maybe a foot away from his head, and he opened his eyes to see glass shards littering the seat, reflecting the streetlights like tiny stars. Hands appeared from outside, tossed a package on the seat next to him, then disappeared. He heard the sound of footsteps running away.
CHAPTER NINETY-NINE
Poole hailed a cab and, after wading through a snarl in traffic caused by the mass deployment of ASU squad cars, headed toward Little Lisbon. He stared out the window, exhausted and concentrating. He needed to continue to take things in order, just as he had done in the ASU station. The primary thing now was to find Carla—and Enrique. He was going to Enrique’s apartment first because that was where Carla was headed when Poole went to St. Mark’s. He was not confident she would still be there, but it was a place to start.
He forced himself to put off thinking about the next step. It seemed too dependent on the circumstances when he finally found her.
He had expected it, but was still dismayed to find a dozen or so ASU officers on the sidewalk as the cab pulled up to Enrique’s building. The officers