Chapter 2

Seattle, June 1987

ROMAN

The girl bucked and twisted under him, her high, round breasts mashing his naked chest as his belly slapped wetly against hers. Roman Dixon worked at concentrating while the water bed undulated and a pornographic video played unwatched on the television set.

"Oh, Roman!" the girl gasped. "Oh, my God! Oh, fuck me!"

Why, he wondered, did so many of them get off on using the f-word while in the act? It didn't have the shock value anymore that it might have twenty years ago. In fact, Roman found it distinctly off-turning falling from the lips of some fresh-faced young girl.

Not as off-turning as this, though. With growing alarm he felt his erection soften and shrink inside the girl even as he pumped more vigorously. Finally he gave up and withdrew, rolling over to lie on his back beside her.

The girl lay still for a little while, then raised up on an elbow and looked at him. For a moment he couldn't think of her name, then it came to him. Kathy Isles. Accounts receivable. They all seemed to be named Kathy or Christie. Or sometimes Debbie. Last week he had his first Heather. This Kathy had thick, dark hair that framed her pert little face in soft waves. She looked at him with worry in her clear young eyes.

If you say 'What's the matter?' I'll shit, he thought.

"Is anything wrong, honey?"

Roman did not shit. Instead, he lied. "Nothing's wrong."

"Is it me?"

"You're fine."

"Is there anything I can do?"

You can shut the fuck up and leave me alone, he thought. He said, "Don't worry about it. I'm just tired."

Kathy looked at him a moment longer, then lay back. On the television screen two naked women - one black, one white - did things to a naked young man who hung by his knees from a trapeze. The young man had a prodigious hard-on. The women were ardent in their attentions. All three looked to be having a better time than Roman Dixon was.

This was not the first time it had happened to him, of course. No man lived who did not now and then find himself incapable of performing the sex act. It was, however, the first time Roman had no ready excuse. Always before he had been too drunk or worried about business or distracted by some family problem. This afternoon, however, he was sober, his sporting goods stores were all in the black, and his home life was no more disagreeable than usual.

At thirty-eight it couldn't be his age. Hell, he was as randy as ever, and in good shape. Okay, so he was a little thicker around the middle than he'd like to be, and there was a softening of the jawline, but he had all his hair and the killer smile, and he still drew hungry looks from young women on the street, much to Stephanie's annoyance. No, it had to be something else.

Maybe his present incapacity was tied somehow to the funny thing that happened with his mother-in-law. No, not funny. Weird. The thought of Myrna Haaglund and the scene of the other night completed the shriveling of his organ.

If it was true that a woman's mother is an accurate picture of what the woman will become, he was in for a rotten future with Stephanie. Myrna Haaglund had been no prize twelve years ago when Roman was hustled into marrying her daughter. Fat and irritable then, at least she had most of her faculties. She wasn't all that old now, mid-seventies probably, but her mind was rotting. Half the time she couldn't remember where she was. Why Van didn't put the woman into a nursing home Roman did not know. The old man was as tough and ropy as ever, his mind just as keen. He sure didn't lack the money, and if Roman was any judge, Van Haaglund could still get it up, given the opportunity.

That thought brought Roman back to his predicament. He swung his legs out of the bed and got up, leaving Kathy bobbing there gently, like a pale dolphin on the tide.

"You don't want to try again?"

"Not today. I've got things to do. Things on my mind."

"Well, that's probably the trouble."

"Yeah, I guess."

Roman pulled on the bikini briefs Stephanie always told him he was too old to wear, and got into his shirt and pants.

"Are you going back to the store?" Kathy asked.

"What for? The place runs itself."

It was true. Each of the three D&H Sporting Goods Stores was managed efficiently by young men recruited from the University of Washington school of business. Roman kept an office in the original store in the U-District, but made an appearance there rarely. He scanned the monthly profit figures, made occasional recommendations on new lines of equipment, checked out the new hires, went to junior chamber meetings, but his presence at the store was largely symbolic. What it did for Roman was give him an excuse to get out of the house and away from Stephanie and the boys. Also, it let him personally hire certain key employees. Like Kathy Isles.

Kathy dressed rapidly, and they left the Olympus Adult Motel, discreetly located north of the city on old Highway 99. They stood for a moment under the portico out of the drizzling rain that was Seattle's trademark.

"You might as well take the rest of the day off too," he said.

"Thanks, boss." She kissed him lightly on the lips.

"And don't worry about it. We'll make up for it next time."

"I'm not worried," he said.

At least not about what she thought he was. He watched Kathy cross the parking lot, pert and bouncy in her belted yellow raincoat. Then he walked through the drizzle to his Eldorado, thinking again of the bizarre experience last week with his mother-in-law.

* * *

Visits to the home of his wife's parents were always a drag for Roman. They had an expensive house in the rich suburb of Bothell, but he would rather go bowling.

His mother-in-law did little but sit and drool and babble about things that made no sense to anybody. Van only wanted to talk business, with the emphasis on how much tougher it had been for him than it was now for his son-in-law. Stephanie jabbered away foolishly as though everyone were having a fine time. The last visit, however, had been especially unsettling.

They made it through dinner - rib roast overdone the way Van liked it by the Haaglunds' surly black cook. No cocktails, no wine, and no after-dinner drinks. Van Haaglund was a teetotaler and a health freak. To smoke his cigarette Roman had to go out and stand in the rain on the brick patio. Mustn't contaminate the air. Balls. When he came back in he found himself alone with his mother-in-law, a situation he always tried to avoid.

Roman did his best to ignore her and checked his watch. If he could get Stephanie out of there in the next ten minutes he would get home in time for Miami Vice. While he waited for his wife to return he picked up a Sports Illustrated from the coffee table, hoping there might be a shot of some chick in a swimsuit. For a moment he successfully forgot about the drooling old woman, so he was startled when she spoke to him.

"Roman!"

At least the voice seemed to come from Myrna Haaglund. The tone was so harsh and the pronunciation so distinct that Roman almost dropped the magazine.

He looked at her in shocked surprise.

"It's payback time," she growled. In her watery, faded eyes there burned for an instant a hatred so palpable Roman could feel the heat of it. Then Myrna's head lolled to one side, the eyes dimmed to their customary stare, and the moment was gone.

When Stephanie and her father returned to the room Myrna was back to her dribbling, mumbling self. Roman said nothing about the strange outburst. It was over so suddenly that he could almost believe he had imagined it. Except that he hadn't imagined it. And for reasons he could not explain, the brief scene troubled him deeply.

* * *

Now he drove slowly through the light afternoon traffic across the Floating Bridge to the suburb of Bellevue, where his family waited. He was in no hurry to get back to Stephanie and her kids. Even after twelve years he was unable to think of her two boys as theirs. Maybe if he'd had some of his own, his life would be different now. But there was no use thinking about that. He'd made his bargain. A Life of reasonable security for which he had to take on a homely woman and two homely kids. Sometimes - hell, often - he imagined how it might have been if he had not twisted his knee on that long ago football field.

He decided to stop at the Lion d'Or for a drink before going home. Maybe two drinks. They had a satellite dish, and there might be a ball game on from somewhere.

New York, June 1987

ALEC

Hard to believe, thought Alec McDowell, that there was a time when citizens could walk safely through Central Park in any season, night or day, without the imminent likelihood of losing their valuables, their virtue, their life, or all three. That time had vanished long before Alec McDowell arrived in the city in 1975, but he still sometimes thought about it with that odd nostalgia people feel for times they have never known.

It was not Alec's habit to stroll idly through the park, and he kept a wary eye on the other walkers on this June afternoon as he passed the heroic statue of General Sherman at the East Drive exit onto Fifth Avenue. He kept his stride brisk and let his arms swing purposefully as though packed into his narrow five-foot-six body there were a coiled machine ready to destroy an attacker with one or another of the martial arts. Not that he could hope to deceive a streetwise New York mugger for long, but at least he might be passed by for some decrepit old lady if he moved with alacrity.

There was a problem other than muggers bothering Alec this afternoon. He could not shake the unpleasant aftertaste of what seemed at the time to be a meaningless incident. It had happened the week before in his office at Laymon and Koontz, the consultant firm where Alec expected to have his own name added to the title soon.

He had been working late. The building had the silent, haunted feeling of offices at night, when ghostly echoes of the day still whisper through the halls and cubicles.

Alec's attention had been focused on the audio tape cassette playing in his portable machine. It was a conversation between an elected city official named Anton Scolari and the owner of a Newark construction company. The content of the conversation would have been enough to indict the official on charges of bribery and conflict of interest, had the tape not been obtained through the use of an illegal bug in the man's office. Alec McDowell, however, was unconcerned with the legal ramifications. What he was after was something to help elect his firm's client, Bo Walton, who would oppose Scolari in the upcoming election.

"Alec!"

He started at the unexpected sound of his own name spoken in the grating voice. At first it seemed to come from the tape recording, but logic quickly rejected that possibility.

Alec punched the cassette player into silence and looked around the roomy, deserted office. A young Puerto Rican woman in the blue uniform of the building maintenance crew was emptying ashtrays into a plastic-lined trash can.

"It's payback time."

Alec stared at her. "What did you say?"

The woman looked at him, and for a fraction of a heartbeat she wore a devil's smile, all teeth and hatred. Then her face lapsed into a soft Latin innocence.

"Sir?"

"Did you just speak to me?"

"No, sir. I di'n say nothing."

He held her eye for a long moment, then realized that what he had heard could not possibly have come from the throat of this woman. And what he thought he saw on her face was an illusion, a trick of the night shadows. What else could it be?

"Never mind," he told her. He punched the rewind button on the tape deck. "Can you come back and do this room later?"

"I got to do it like the list says or I get in trouble," the woman said.

"All right."

Alec swept the material he was working on into his desk and locked the drawer. What the hell, he'd got as much as he was going to out of the tape. It wasn't good enough.

Besides, the voice or hallucination or whatever it was had destroyed his concentration. It was nearly ten o'clock. He could go home to his Yorkville apartment, read some of the accumulated newsletters, then maybe get to sleep.

Sleep did not come easy that night. The grating voice would not leave his mind. There was something distantly, ominously familiar about it.

Now as he hurried along Fifth Avenue, where the danger of muggers was minimal, Alec still sensed a menacing presence somewhere nearby. Furtively he scanned the faces of the other pedestrians, but no one met his eye. He pulled up the collar of his jacket against a chill that only he could feel.

THE FLOATER

Darkness.

No light. No heat. No sound. No pain.

Only a terrible, crazy joy.

It had been a long, long time in the planning. There had been false starts and wrong turns. But now, at last, it had begun. The plot had been set in motion. There would be no stopping now.

It was payback time.