Chapter 7 - "Happy New Year"

Greenwald’s cold, hard brown eyes bored into the almost black of Eric’s and the hazel of Mary’s.  Neither of them showed the slightest emotion.  “But isn’t that the point?” asked Eric, sounding almost bored.

“Yeah, you’ve paid your money, you’ve had your kicks, and now it’s time to finish.”  Mary had shifted her weight, ready to make a break for it.  Greenwald noticed and the pocket swung fractionally towards her.

“Don’t do that,” he said simply.  Greenwald looked them over.  “You think I’m some kind of ridiculously spoiled, completely amoral rich kid who’s gotten bored of jet-setting and has turned to hunting humans.  You’re probably right.”  He sighed.  “But I am good at what I do, and I like to be creative.  Please stand up, slowly.”

They did so.  “Now start heading for your hotel,” he commanded.  Eric turned uptown.  “Tsk, tsk,” Greenwald chided, the menacing pocket aimed at his stomach.  “The Mariott Marquis is right over there, remember?  You’d be surprised at how talkative a little well-placed cash makes your typical hotel employee.”  They began walking, and all three stayed silent until they were all safely in the suite.

Their captor removed his coat and took a seat.  Then, as if remembering something important, he delved into the coat and extracted the nickel-plated Sig-Sauer .380, a smaller, more compact pistol than the Glock.  He smiled at them just behind the glint of the gun’s finish.  “You were wondering if I was bluffing, weren’t you?  You thought I might’ve been relieved of my weapon during that little maneuver at Penn Station.  By the way, whose idea was that?”

“Mine,” said Mary off-handedly.  Both she and Eric remained standing.

“Quite a good move.  Anyway, you would have been right.  The overzealous officers of the New York Transit Police did indeed decide to impound my automatic.  But naturally, I never travel without a backup.”

“Naturally.”

“Now you must be wondering other things, aren’t you?  Ask away.”  He reached into a pocket, and proceeded to light a cigarette.

“How’d you find us?”

Greenwald smiled without the slightest warmth, the smoke drifting from between his teeth.  “You nearly had me on that count, as well.  My very first instinct after leaving police custody was that you were finished with New York and would be complete fools to double back here.  But you knew that would be my opinion, didn’t you?”

Eric nodded.

“I’ve simply been making my way around the local hotels since this morning, until I happened upon the Mariott Marquis.  What with it being New Year’s Eve, I almost bypassed it completely.”

“Lucky you,” Mary sneered.

“Indeed.”

“Now what?”

“As I said, I like to be creative.  I’m going to give you two wonderful people one last night of fun.  You’re both going to accompany me to the New Year’s Eve celebration at the Rainbow Room.  It’s a tradition for me, and now it’ll be ten times as memorable.”

Under any other circumstances, Eric and Mary would have been ecstatic at the prospect.  But now, it would be terrible torture.

“I’m afraid we’ll have to decline your offer,” said Eric.  “We haven’t anything appropriate to wear.”

“That’s true,” Mary agreed.  “Fancy dress and tuxedo were hardly priorities when we were packing for this all.”

Greenwald shook his head.  “You really don’t understand the power money has, do you?”  Gun still in hand, he crossed to the desk and picked up the telephone.  “Ah, yes, this is Suite 1209,” he said into the receiver.  “We’ve just had a spectacular run of luck, and we need the finest tailor and seamstress you can find immediately.  Price is absolutely no object.  Fifteen minutes?  Excellent.”

He looked back at his prisoners.  “Very soon, a small army of peons will descend on this suite, and garb you both in the finest clothes you have ever worn.  If either of you makes the slightest attempt to escape, to confront me, or to get a message to the outside world, and I will shoot you both in a heartbeat.”

Exactly as he said, the tailors and seamstresses appeared, and began to work their Fairy Godmother-like magic on them.  At eight that evening, Eric stood in the middle of the bedroom in a precision-tailored tuxedo.  It was so nice, in fact, that he allowed himself a moment of enjoyment as he looked in the mirror.  It lasted until he realized that the best clothes he’d ever worn were to be his last, as well.

Greenwald stood nearby, his own formalwear brought over from the Plaza.  “You look splendid,” he told Eric.

Eric stared back, resentful that this spoiled brat of a man held both his and Mary’s lives in his hands.  Before he could reply, a knock came from the main room.  He gestured towards the cigarette dangling from the other man’s lips.  “Those things will be the death of you,” he snapped.

Turning his back on Greenwald before he could reply, Eric opened the door and stepped through.

“What do you think?” Mary asked.

He forced himself to blink, then to breathe.  Mary stood in the center of the room, wrapped in a magnificent gown of silk in the darkest shade of purple he’d ever seen, and dotted with glittering rhinestones.

“You look incredible,” he managed.

“Thank you,” she replied, and the note of sadness in her voice told him that she’d been having similar thoughts to his own.

“You certainly do,” said Greenwald, and immediately all the defenses were up again.  He stood before the two, his eyes met with only defiance on their faces.  Brandishing his gun until they reached the elevators, he guided them through the lobby and out the doors to a waiting limousine.  They took their places in the back, with Greenwald facing forward and opposite Eric and Mary.

Mary raised an eyebrow.  “Where’s your date?”

“He’ll be meeting us there.”

“How much did you pay for him?”

Greenwald’s expression darkened.  “Ten times what I would pay for you.”  Eric’s hand clenched into a fist.  “That would be a most unwise course of action, Mister Umali.”

“You know our names,” said Eric, calming.  “So what’s yours?”

“What could it hurt?” he said with a shrug.  “My name is Ilan Greenwald, and yes, my father is obscenely rich– he controls perhaps a quarter to a third of all the shipping in Mexico, both legal and extralegal.  He doesn’t give a damn what I do, so long as I’m not arrested.  I’ve been using Mister Frost’s services for two and a half years now, and have killed all six of my targets, most with a great deal of ingenuity, if I say so myself.”

Mary stared into his eyes, showing nothing.  “So what’s in store for us?”

“Oh, but that would be telling, wouldn’t it?”  The childishness in him that they’d both suspected was on display.  “You two just put all of that out of your minds for the night, and have a good time.”

The chauffeur was good, Eric noted– they made the trip from the nearly impassable midtown area to the foot of 30 Rockefeller Plaza in less than fifteen minutes.  Greenwald slipped his pistol into a shoulder holster, without the slightest bulge in the jacket to announce its existence.  The door opened, and they exited.

Standing just inside the main entrance, behind the brass-framed revolving doors, stood a young man with the angular good looks of a male model, and dressed in a designer tuxedo.  “So there you are,” he said.

“Here we are indeed,” replied Greenwald, exceptionally pleased with himself.  “So nice to see you, Simon.  These are Eric and Mary, some… companions… who’ll be joining us tonight.”

“Whatever,” he answered, then glanced again into the mirror he’d obviously been staring at for a while.  He smoothed out his slicked-back hair and straightened his jacket.

Greenwald presented a dinner-jacketed steward with four tickets as they boarded the direct-service elevator.  It took them up the forty floors to the legendary Rainbow Room.

Famous from its very opening in the thirties, the Rainbow Room had played host to countless numbers of the country’s greatest entertainers.  Six decades of America’s– and the world’s– stars of stage, screen, music, and even some of more infamous notoriety, had come here to see and be seen.

The gigantic ballroom was decorated, as it was every New Year’s Eve, in black, white and silver.  At the far end from where the quartet entered was the stage from which the likes of Count Basie, Duke Ellington, and Glenn Miller broadcasted to the world.  Tommy Dorsey’s orchestra with its beanpole of a singer, Frank Sinatra, had played here, and now the eponymous new version of the big band was blaring out a brass-heavy version of “Jumpin’ at the Woodside.”

For an old-fashioned sentimentalist like Eric, it was heaven, and despite himself, found it impossible to resist the allure of the place.  Mary, keeping his hand in hers, couldn’t help but pick up on this and share in his excitement.  The huge circular dance floor was already full of dancers, swirling around the smooth parquet in whorls of black and bright colors.  Surrounding the floor, in concentric raised circles, were the dining tables, appointed in glittering crystal and silver.

The maitre d’ led the quartet to one of these tables.  Mary was sure it was one of the choice locations– it was just for four, and had a commanding view of the dance floor, stage, and on the other end of the room, the towering windows that looked out on the incomparable New York skyline.

The impeccably appointed waiter, complete with silver sommelier’s cup, arrived just as they finished being seated, and distributed the menus.  Greenwald ordered that the Cristal should come at once and that the bottle never go empty.  Very quickly, the four made their selections from the menu– the event always involved a limited number of choices, but it was still the kind of food whose very name, let a lone description, set the mouth to watering.  With a nod and a click of the heels, the waiter vanished.

From below them, they heard the orchestra shift into a slow Rumba, “Begin the Beguine”, with a Latin sound more authentic than either Eric or Mary had ever heard from a big band.  Mary took his hand.  “Rumba– your favorite.  Let’s dance.”

Eric stood, then glanced towards their “host.”  Greenwald said nothing, but the look in his eyes told them to stay within his view.

Mary led the way to the floor, and they closed into dance hold.  As they began moving, Mary smiled.  “This is the first time we’ve danced since…”

“Yeah, ‘since’.”

“Think it’ll happen tonight?”

He nodded.  “Knowing him, he’ll do it on the stroke of midnight.”

Mary leaned in close, and Eric could feel her breath on his cheek.  “I have an idea,” she whispered.

Eric mirrored the motion.  “So do I.”

From his vantage point, Greenwald watched them while he listened to whatever vacuous observations Simon was spouting with something less than half his attention.  He’d expected them to be miserable, to be crushed by the irony that what should have been one of the happiest nights of their lives would be the last.  The champagne arrived, and he drained his glass as soon as it was filled.  Eric and Mary returned not too long after.

Dinner, as could be expected, was delicious, if a little on the spare side, with the Mary and Eric constantly leaving the table to dance.  After the devilishly rich chocolate mousse was gone, Simon, paid companion or not, had finally had enough.

“Are you gonna dance with me or what?” he pressed.

Greenwald heaved a sigh of frustration.  “All right, all right.”  He tugged at his arm and they headed for the dance floor.  They stopped purposely within scant feet of their two “companions,” as the orchestra dutifully swung– literally– into its rendition of “Sing, Sing, Sing.”  The relentless rhythms of the song swept across the room, and soon the floor was almost too crowded to move.

Mary gave a quick thanks to whoever was watching out for them at that moment, and nodded to Eric.  They, and their plan, went into motion.  She hung on and opened herself to Eric’s lead as he began to pick and choose their steps, his eyes on the entrance doors, thirty feet across the floor.

Greenwald pursed his lips as he was separated from them more and more.  There would be the quickest flash of them, then his view would be blocked by another jitterbugging couple.  Then suddenly, he would catch sight of them again, another few feet away.  He did his best to follow, but with so many people and so many wildly flailing limbs, it was slow going at best.

Eric, on the other hand, was in his element at last, as was his partner.  Between his lead and knack for navigating, and her almost psychic follow, they were gaining ground quickly.  The doors were twenty feet away.

Cursing under his breath, Greenwald gave a not-so-subtle elbow to the ribs of the man next to him, prying his way past.  They had gotten to within fifteen feet of the doors, when his hand moved into his jacket.

Mary was the first to see the move.  She back-led a step, switching places with Eric, and he saw it too.  He gave her a tight spin which pulled them towards the edge of the floor.  Twelve feet to go, and he saw the glint of the pistol’s nickel finish.

Feigning a scratch to his hand from some socialite’s fingernails, Greenwald kept the pistol tight against his leg, waiting for a chance to flash it towards them.  He didn’t want to have to kill them here, but he wasn’t about to let them get away again, either.  With a floor this crowded, it would be a simple task to get one of their hands around the gun after the kill.

Less than ten feet left, and it happened– a couple of overzealous swingers cut across Greenwald’s path, and with the silver decorations and the blare of the band, only Eric and Mary were paying close enough attention.  Close enough to hear the dull clatter and see the shine of metal as the gun was knocked from the young man’s grip and slid across the floor, under a table skirt.

Greenwald stomped across the man’s foot even as he was making his apology, leaving a completely baffled Simon in his wake.

Mary and Eric made a break for it, rushing for the door.  They walked briskly into the hallway, and disappeared into a stairwell.  Eric chanced a look back at the partially-closed door below them and made a quick, silent prayer.

“This better work,” Mary said, echoing his thoughts as they rushed up the stairs.

Back in the ballroom, Greenwald angrily stuffed the recovered pistol into his hip pocket and headed for the door.  As he dodged both dancers and waiters, he found himself short of breath, from both the dancing and the frustration.  *Damned cigarettes,* he cursed silently.

Finally, he was out in the hall.  He looked quickly from one end to the other, then found the stairwell door ajar.  He inhaled deeply, trying to recover his breath, and entered.  Greenwald could hear breathing and movement from above him, and drew his gun.

With a tiny spark, Eric burned his fingers.  He continued working with his other hand as he shook the shocked one.  “You’re sure you can do this?” Mary asked, keeping her eye on the stairwell door on the forty-fifth floor, left open like the one on the fortieth.

Eric slammed the metal panel closed just as the stairwell door slammed open.  Panting, Greenwald leveled the pistol at them and coughed raggedly.  He walked up to them.

“Very… nice…” he managed, his breath coming only in short gasps.  “But you should’ve run down, not up.”

They raised their hands in surrender.  “I guess you’ve got us,” said Eric.

“I guess he does,” Mary agreed.

They both moved back away from the wall.  Greenwald, still breathing hard, stood between them, his back against the brass-colored elevator doors.

Eric smiled.

“What the hell’s so funny?” Greenwald demanded.

“I told you those cigarettes would kill you,” he said.  With the last word, his foot lashed out, connecting with Greenwald’s wrist.  Eric let himself go off balance with the motion, falling towards the wall.  The gun barked at the ceiling, sending chips of it flying.

Mary’s own kick caught the shocked man in the chest, and he stumbled back.  Eric’s hand slapped hard on the elevator call button mid-fall, and the doors slid open onto the dark black of an open shaft.

Greenwald had only the fraction of a second to realize what had happened before he toppled backwards into the shaft, disappearing into the darkness.  The fading note of his cry was cut off by the closing doors.

Mary helped Eric to his feet, and they hugged tightly.  Suddenly, Mary looked up.

“What time is it?”

Eric checked his watch.  “Eleven fifty-five.”  With that, they rushed for the stairs, and arrived back in the ballroom with just enough time to scoop up their glasses of champagne and return to the dance floor at precisely 11:59:50.

“Ten, nine, eight,” they shouted, ecstatic, along with all the other revelers.  “Seven, six, five, four…”

“Three… two… one–“  The cry went up, “Happy New Year!”

Eric looked down, pulled Mary to him and placed a small, sweet kiss on her lips.  It lasted only a moment, and then turned into a simple warm embrace.

Mary let go and raised her glass.  “To living,” she said.

Eric touched his glass to hers.  “To living.”

THE END.