The Hammer Falls Read online

  She smiled vaguely and settled into a chair with a taut ripple of flesh. “That was the beginning.”

  Horace’s mind buzzed. The beginning of what? Such was the power of her presence that his mind sparked with burning questions. He wanted to know everything about her. Then he chided himself for the distraction, but the way that dress clung to every succulent swell and curve of her, the fluidity of every smallest movement, the way her eyes had already sized him up as if she had known him for a thousand years, seized his attention and would not let go. His heart thumped hard several times against the box fixed to his breast. He felt like an idiot schoolkid with his first crush. Moreover, bathing him in her ageless gaze, with the state of anti-aging and aesthetic beauty technology, she could have been anywhere between twenty and sixty.

  She allowed Vince to take her hand and kiss it.

  Vince said, “Roxy likes the fights, thought she might like to meet you, Hammer.”

  Horace said, “We appreciate the invitation, Vince. A lot has happened since yesterday.” The promo event felt like a lifetime ago, with worlds of pain interposed. The aches were fresh.

  Trask snorted. “Worst goddamn twenty-four hours of my goddamn life. Pardon the language, madam.”

  She nodded.

  After they ordered food—since Horace hadn’t eaten a proper meal since yesterday morning, he ordered the biggest steak on the menu, with extra pasta—Vince eased back in his chair and fixed Horace with a long, searching look, steepling his fingers against his lips.

  “So, Hammer,” Vince said, “what on earth ever gave you a taste for vodka?”

  “That’s a complicated question.”

  “We have all night. And if you want help taking care of that problem, the particulars matter.”

  Horace considered for a moment, appraising Vince and wishing his eyes could feast upon Roxanne until they were full.

  Trask stepped in. “Hammer here spent a lot of years in the minors. He had a shot for a comeback. Playing in the little leagues is way more dangerous than the Big Time. Practically no sponsorship. Regeneration costs in the stratosphere.”

  Vince said, “The guys who fight their way out of the minors are the toughest there are.”

  “More like the luckiest,” Horace said. “For every one of them that fights his way up, there’s fifty who fight their way down. They get crippled, maimed, or killed. A lot of them are just as tough or tougher than the ones who make it. The pit is an unpredictable thing.”

  “Okay, so you needed a little rebuilding before you got in the ring with The Freak, and that kinda reconstruction costs,” Vince said. “You made a deal. So you shoulda made enough on the fight to pay them back.”

  “I did, except I gave most of it to save a friend’s kid, to pay for fixing some genetic disease he’s got.”

  Vince leaned forward on his elbows. “So then they came after you. Used your friend for leverage.”

  Horace nodded. “So I left Dmitri Mogilevich’s head in his lap in the back of a limousine.”

  “What?” Vincent jumped out of his chair like it was red hot with an incredulous laugh bubbling out of him. He began to walk in circles, running his fingers through his hair, saying, “Oh, my god! Oh, my god!”

  Roxanne’s eyes widened almost imperceptibly with a faint tilt of her head.

  After a few moments, Vincent’s incredulity diminished, and he leaned over the back of his chair. “Holy shit, Hammer. You got any idea what you’ve done?”

  Horace frowned and licked his lips. “Yeah, I got a pretty good idea.”

  “You just became a hero! You got any idea how many people wanted that fuck dead?”

  “Been too busy trying to stay alive to think about that.”

  “That fuck was Yvgeny Mogilevich’s only son. He was the guy gonna take over when the old man retires—or gets retired. His fingers were in a million pies.”

  “I’m getting a pretty good idea what kind of pies,” Horace said.

  Roxanne’s voice slid between them like warm cream. “And Dmitri was also a sadistic bastard, just like his father. A relentless sadistic bastard.” The lilt of her voice carried shadows of personal knowledge that would go unrevealed until such time as she chose to reveal it.

  “So offing him makes me a hero,” Horace said. “Are all these enthusiastic new fans going to come out of the woodwork to cover my back? Take some of the heat off me?” His voice made it clear he expected no such thing.

  Vincent rubbed his chin and appeared to count squares in the tablecloth.

  Roxanne leaned forward in a way that squeezed the perfect swells of her breasts between her upper arms. “What about this friend of yours? The friend they threatened.”

  Horace’s voice turned dry and raspy. “Well, she’s still alive, as far as I know. But on the run—with her kids—because of me.”

  “A lover?”

  “Let’s just say, ‘we’ll see.’”

  At the mention of the children, Vincent’s face hardened like cement. “Going after kids. That’s not how to do business.”

  “In Prague,” Roxanne said, “Yvgeny Mogilevich had an orphanage burned to the ground because he wanted the land. The doors had been chained shut. Any police who investigated were killed or bought. This is just one of his atrocities. In centuries past, such men walked in the open as heads of state. Today they use the pretense of the shadows.”

  Horace said to her. “I get the feeling there’s more to you than eye candy.”

  “How direct.” That tiny smile curled a corner of her mouth again.

  Vincent said, “So where is this friend of yours now? Maybe we could get her under wraps.”

  “I don’t know.”

  The arrival of salad, bread, cheese, and wine intervened for a while, and Vincent filled the empty air with gregarious chatter. Trask reciprocated with an account of the attack of the night before, complete with sound effects. Horace had to hand it to Vincent, he knew good food.

  From the mundane patter Roxanne kept herself removed. She passed the time stroking her wine glass in silent contemplation. When Horace’s eyes lingered on her too long, she would meet his gaze with an inscrutable look, neither warm nor cold, simply aware and evaluating as if a core of diamond floated somewhere deep within, unbreakable, imperturbable. Horace couldn’t help wondering what kind of life had turned her into a walking mask. At times he caught her gaze upon him without any veneer that she was not, in fact, judging, evaluating, measuring him.

  Over a spectacular meal, Vincent enthused about his favorite moments from the pit fighting scene, his evaluations of fighters and techniques, which Horace had to admit were spot on. This guy knew enough that there had to be real martial training lurking behind that pretty-boy persona.

  After the disappearance of the steaks that must have cost a small fortune, Vincent leaned forward on his elbows and said, “So, you need a way out from under this death sentence. And your lady friend, too. You want it all to go away.”

  “Got it in one, brother.”

  “But the Russian organization is a hydra.” Vincent glanced at Roxanne. “Cut off one head, and five more grow back to take its place. They can look like they’re everywhere, in everything. At least that’s how it might look from the outside. But here’s how it really is. They got a whole army of thugs and leg breakers. They got some captains. But the Russians are not one big hydra. They’re a bunch of little hydras, with a few family ties here and there. Cut off enough heads, and the monster forgets, because the new heads have to deal with each other, and nobody knows who’s gonna bite who. And other monsters might come along and grab what they can off the corpse, you know what I’m saying?”

  Roxanne’s voice was solid and forceful as a brick. “The old man is the head of the Mogilevich syndicate. You have already killed the man mostly likely to seek vengeance for killing Yvgeny: his son. You take him down, maybe whoever comes next will leave you alone. The contenders will have their hands full consolidating power and fighting off the other mob
s.”

  Horace said, “But I still have to figure out how to get close enough to twist off daddy’s head.”

  “That is the question,” Roxanne said.

  “To be or not to be, that is the question,” Vincent said. “And that’s really what we’re talking about here—suicide. That old man has more security than the fucking president of the United States.”

  “There might be a way,” Roxanne said. “In two days, there is a special event. Invitation only. Yvgeny Mogilevich holds this event twice a year, in Las Vegas. He brings in twenty fighters for a series of ‘boxing matches’. Some of them are trained, but others are simply men who have wronged him, or found themselves in the wrong place at the wrong time. It is pure blood sport. All bouts are to the death, no weapons, no armor, no regenerations. It is a shocking spectacle, but it suits his taste for blood.”

  Horace had heard of such events, hosted by the planet’s megawealthy, from a guy who had survived one; but he was on a liquid diet for the rest of his life. The atmosphere around these events made Death Match Unlimited look like a teen badminton tournament. It was the realm of sadists and those desperate enough to gamble their lives to please them. He had even heard rumors of such events being fought by slaves, almost like the Roman gladiators of old. However, at this moment he would be willing to fight in such an event, kill some poor schmo for good if it meant crushing Yvgeny Mogilevich’s skull into goo. But then again, he kind of stood out in a crowd.

  Roxanne continued, “I could bring you in, Mr. Harkness, as my escort, in disguise. Some hair, a new face, an extra scar or two. You would hardly stand out in a such a crowd.”

  Vincent said, “There’ll be more guns in that room than in the police arsenal across town.”

  “Only for Mogilevich’s men,” she said. “All others are forced to relinquish their weapons at the door. Except for our Hammer here, who has them built in.” She squeezed his iron-hard forearm, sending a jolt of heat straight to his crotch. “As for protection, military-grade battle armor could be hidden beneath your clothes. Most of the bodyguards will be wearing it. Again, you would hardly stand out.”

  The things Horace had heard about military-grade battle armor made even his carbon-fiber look like archaic boiled leather, and with a higher dollar value than the lives of most of the men who wore it.

  “Who the hell are you, sister?” Horace said, narrowing his eyes.

  “Have you not figured it out yet, my friend?” She raised her wine glass and briefly touched the blood-red liquid to her pillowy lips. “I am another hydra.”

  Talk of business was tabled for a while. Vincent wanted stories of Horace’s exploits, which Horace was happy to provide, and to which Vincent offered sincere appreciation and insightful commentary, an admirer with enough restraint to avoid the realm of incoherent fanboy.

  Roxanne listened with interest, but her implacable demeanor was too rigid to reveal if she were truly interested or just listening politely. But in spite of her demeanor, a constant charm radiated from her in waves. She had a way of focusing on someone that made the object of her attention feel as if he were the most important person in the room to her. This was a woman who could indeed build an empire through charm and chutzpah alone. In the annals of Horace’s memory, there was no one like her, man or woman.

  After dinner, another limousine whisked them to Club Neo, a flashy nightclub that Vincent owned. The back of the limousine was palatial in its luxury, a sumptuous fortress of titanium steel, bulletproof glass, leather, and liquor. Vincent checked himself in a mirror. “You’re gonna love this place! You guys are desperately in need of some R & R!”

  Aside from feeling that going to a club was a tremendous waste of time and that Lilly was out there somewhere, vulnerable, Horace worried that going out in public would be a tremendously dangerous extravagance, with his face flagged in every camera and database in the Buffalo area. He mentioned as much to Vincent.

  “Don’t worry,” Vincent said. “We’re going in the back entrance.”

  “What about cameras inside?”

  “Every camera belongs to us. Neo is a registered face club. Every frame of video and 3-D is processed. We can erase your presence like you’re the Invisible Man sitting next to me. It’s a service we offer to some high-end clients.”

  “What about netlink and net-shades signals coming out of there?”

  “The whole building is a Faraday cage. No signal gets in or out of there that doesn’t pass through our filtered repeaters. It’s a face club, right? People make or break their celebrity careers at places like Neo. Images are broadcast out of there worldwide. But we control every single frame. For tonight, none of us will appear to be present.”

  Horace nodded his mollification.

  Trask swirled the amber scotch in his glass. “So explain this face club thing to me.”

  “People build their face ratings, a number that represents their worldwide popularity. You’ve heard of Genevieve Montier, right?”

  “Who hasn’t?”

  “She’s not the only supermodel who got her start in the face clubs. She had one good night at a face club in Paris, met the right people, made the right moves, looked like a goddess, and she went viral. Boom. Instant modeling career. Everybody thinks they got something to show off. Beauty, dance moves, style, charm, grace. They rev themselves up on their drug of choice. They meet other facers, all looking to build their own ratings. They dance. They flirt. They make out. They fuck somebody in a private room. People log in and watch. They rate the facers in real time. Some facers have armies of fans, whole subcultures with pissing matches over who’s cooler, and they’ve never done anything with their lives except go to a fucking club, sponsored by cosmetics and fashion companies.”

  Trask rolled his eyes, and Horace agreed with the sentiment.

  “People wanna be famous,” Vincent said. “They’re willing to pay a stiff admission price and extra for drinks for the chance to do that.”

  Trask snorted. “Kids today.”

  Horace could hardly fault them for the urge to fame. Back when he was just starting out—hell, even when he was on top—he would have leaped at the chance to supercharge the upward arc of his celebrity.

  The limo ducked into an underground parking garage and halted.

  Vincent grinned. “We’re here.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  The interior of Club Neo blinded Horace for several moments. Slashing lasers and explosive strobes tore through his vision, and the subsonic pounding of the music vibrated through his bones like they were tuning forks. He hadn’t seen such an overwhelming spectacle of beauty and vanity since the biggest events of his younger days, which had been steeped in Hollywood starlets and perfectly sculpted icons of physical fitness. Startling profusions of thigh and cleavage, chiseled features and physiques, sparklesilk dresses and suits, styles ranging from classically elegant to almost non-existent strips of strategically placed tape. Perfect lips, perfect teeth, perfect cheekbones, perfect eyebrows, perfect hair, perfectly cultivated smiles. And all of them mixing, chatting, laughing carefully. The sprawling dance floor boasted world-class movers mixed with local hotshots.

  A thudding techno-synth pounder transitioned into an electronic retro swing number, complete with faux-vinyl scratchiness that brought a number of dancers out to Charleston and fox trot.

  Vince led them through the cacophony of lights toward a pool of soft radiance in a corner booth. Two bouncers in tuxedos had already cleared the booth and awaited their arrival. The eyes of the crowd followed Horace with mostly amusement, some curiosity, as if wondering what sort of stunt he was planning in his awful getup.

  The knowledge that they were effectively wiped from the lens of every camera helped unscrew the knots of tension in Horace’s shoulders. An almost audible pop tingled through him as that realization took hold, and he settled back into the seat of soft, white suede, like sliding into a marshmallow.

  Roxanne eased in beside him but kept a physical di
stance. Such was her magnetism that Horace found himself wanting her snuggled up under his arm but wondering if the costs might bury the benefits in an avalanche of danger. Vincent’s gaze flickered with the notice of her positioning, but his amiable smile remained in place.

  The booth was acoustically shielded somehow from the pounding music, and the space here, with the gleaming white table and softly fluorescent walls, was as quiet as their table at Campanello’s. Vincent’s fingers worked a little glass keyboard in the tabletop.

  The club was busy, but not crowded. Crowds too thick prevented people from being seen; the place needed the illusion of social vibrancy, but not a sweat-soaked crush. Besides, these people were too pretty to sweat.

  Fist-sized drone cams floated above the club-goers, who posed for the cameras, cavorted, flashed, mugged, rubbed velvety-smooth cheeks. Four hologram tanks were interspersed around the club, each one filled with a reproduction of one of the dancers with the best moves.

  The ceiling was a dome of interconnected 3-D screens that flashed with snapshots, dance clips, breasts squeezed together and genitalia meticulously emphasized, smiles and winks and luxuriant hair-flips. One of the screens was a scoreboard filled with names and ratings. The numbers, names, and icons were in constant, dizzying flux. Another screen featured face shots of viewers at home, their expressions glazed in raptures of fascination, some of them wrapped in enthrallment verging on obsession. None of those faces were as beautiful as those that filled the club.

  When their drinks arrived, Trask raised his glass. “Quite a place, Vince. My hat’s off to you.”

  Vince nodded. “I like to hang out here once in a while just for the spectacle. The best people-watching anywhere.”

  Horace disagreed—these days he preferred the clientele of labor-class bars and strip clubs—but he thought it politic to say nothing. Maybe when he was twenty-five, he would have enjoyed places like this in small doses. It was certainly a target-rich environment for super-charged loins, but all the people here were flaunting themselves for a rare and specialized kind of currency. On the fringes of the throngs, liaisons formed; pairs or threesomes or foursomes slipped away into discreet back rooms. The cameras unerringly noted who left with whom.