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The other mime placed a finger on the top of Spector's head and danced around him like a maypole. He stopped in front of Spector, tugged at his cheeks.
Spector had put up with enough. It was time to get this fucker out of his hair. He stepped in close and made eye contact. He locked in and set the pain free, grabbing the mime's shoulders as he began to fall over. Spector lowered him slowly, pulling the mime's hands together over his chest. The shithead's eyes were glazed over with death and surprise by the time he came to rest on the trampled grass. Spector stuck the flower in the corpse's hands and applauded melodramatically. The crowd laughed and cheered. Some patted him on the back; others looked at the mime, waiting for him to get up.
"My friends." The amplified voice came from the podium. The crowd turned. Spector angled his shoulders and began pushing through. "Today, we will have the privilege to hear from the only man who can lead us through these next difficult years. A man who preaches tolerance, not hatred. A man who unites, instead of being divisive. A man who will lead his people, not herd them. I give you the next president of the United States of America, Senator Gregg Hartma
The applause was deafening. There were weird screams and whistles, joker noises. Spector caught an elbow in the ear from a freak with arms that hung to his knees. He shook it off and kept moving in.
"Thank you." Hartma
Spector could see him now, but there was no way to lock eyes at this distance, even if Hartma
Spector was about a hundred feet away in the center of the crowd. Hartma
"I need your help to win our party's nomination and become your next president." Hartma
Hartma
… there was a sound. A Secret Service man knocked Hartma
Hartma
No shit, Spector thought. But this was one time he was glad to have a fat freak as company.
6:00 P.M.
From the end of the corridor, Mackie watched the tall, thin man with coffee-and-cream skin close and lock the room door. 1531, just as der Ma
To himself he laughed at his target's apparent attempt at disguise. She looked just like one of the ReeperbahnstraBe girls, armored against unaccustomed daylight. It was appro priate. Just a whore; just another fucking whore. Who had lured the Man and would pay.
They turned away from him, toward the elevators. He pushed off from the wall next to the fire extinguisher under glass. He couldn't do them here-he was already thinking them; it was only logical, he mustn't leave a witness-because this crazy bourgeois palace was hollow at the core, like the culture that built it, and anyone on one of a dozen levels could see everything that went on out on the catwalks surrounding the atrium. His move had to come on the quiet; der Ma
But that was no problem. Mack the Knife was subtle, like. Like his song. He would follow, and know the time.
Maybe he'd ride the elevator with them. He licked his lips at the joke. That would be really kriminell. They'd never suspect him. They might not notice him even. Perhaps they were in love. Perhaps the black man had a hard-on.
He moved. A voice grabbed at him. "Hey, you. Not so fast."
He turned. A squat white man in a brown suit stood there with a wire hanging out of his ear. Hotel dick; Mackie had the gradations of cop burned into his autonomic nervous system by the time he was toddling the Sankt Pauli cobblestones. He had been as discrete as possible, staying back in the entry to the room where the ice machine lurked and clattered to itself, fading through the wall into a utility closet when people got too near. But there was a limit to how covert even Macheath could be, hanging out here over sixty meters of emptiness in this unsettling outside-in place.
The suit laid a hand on his arm. You couldn't do that, not to Mackie Messer.
"You're lucky," he said. He touched the man on the point of his cheekbone, buzzed a fingertip.
Blood started. The man cried out and doubled over, slapping a hand to his face. Mackie phased through the steel fire door and started ru
Spector sat on the edge of the bed, feet tucked underneath him. He was almost surprised to find his room clean when he returned. It had been that long since he stayed in a hotel. He was alternately pla
"Senator, do you feel Reverend Barnett had anything to do with this afternoon's disturbance?" The reporter held the microphone up to the senator, who paused before replying.
"No. I think that, whatever our differences, Leo Barnett would not stoop to such tactics. The reverend is an honorable man." Hartma