Cold Cat had both tracks going now. He leaned toward the microphone and jumped in on the one beat:

I be on the hunt.

Gonna waste that cunt.

She say no, no more.

I say hit the floor.

Something still wasn’t right. He rewound and sat back, removing his earphones. Needed something tight.

He licked his lips. Composing was hard work, and he’d been at it more than two hours. What he needed was a beer. Something. He’d made it a rule: no liquid in the studio. There was too much sensitive electronic crap in there to run the risk of something spilling and shorting the shit out of it.

He looked through the thick, soundproof glass to where his bodyguard Lenny was sitting in an orange easy chair, reading some tit-and-ass magazine or other. Lenny had an opened Miller can on the table beside him. Cold Cat regarded his bodyguard. Fat Lenny. He oughta be told not to put on any more weight. It wasn’t like he was all muscle, the way he’d been when Cold Cat hired him. Lenny looked like he could walk through a wall then. Now he looked like the wall.

Cold Cat contemplated leaving the studio for a few minutes to finish whatever beer was left in Lenny’s Miller can. Show the potato brain who was boss.

But the beer can had given Cold Cat an idea. Taste.

Yeah, that’d work better. He put his ear phones back on and edged his chair up closer to the control panel.

Lenny must have sensed he was being stared at. He looked up from the magazine and glanced toward the studio’s thick rectangular window.

But Cold Cat was already hard at work.

He ran the tape again, this time jumping in over the last lyric line:

I say taste the floor.

Much better.

The phone must have been ringing. He saw through the thick window that Lenny had put down his magazine and was standing near the desk, the receiver pressed to his fat head.

He hung up the phone, looking like something had scared him shitless, the whites showing all around his dark eyes. Then he marched right over and yanked open the studio door.

“What the shit you doin’?” Cold Cat said, peeling off the earphones. “Can’t you see I’m workin’?”

“Building’s on fire, Cold.” Lenny was puffing with excitement, making his cheeks flutter. “Fire down in the garage.”

“Parking garage is concrete,” Cold Cat said. “Whole goddamn building is. There’s a fire way down in the garage, fire department’ll put it out. I hope whoever called you wasn’t dumb-ass enough not to call the fire department first.”

But even as Cold Cat finished talking, he could hear sirens below in the street. Some of them had to be right outside.

“Cold, listen—”

“You listen, Lenny. The brave firemen and women are on top of the situation. Fire’s way below us, don’t matter a bit ’less they tell us to evacuate. Which they ain’t gonna do, because the garage is concrete and concrete don’t burn. Meantime, shut the damned door so I can get back to work.”

“You don’t understand, Cold.” Lenny was bobbing, waving his arms. “The super called here ’cause it’s my car that’s on fire! My brand new BMW!”

Cold Cat shrugged. “Ain’t brand new, Lenny. Last year’s model.”

“I love that car, Cold!”

“So go to it. Help ’em put out the fire. Just don’t bother me ’less we get the order to go. Fire’s forty stories down in a concrete garage. BMW probably got some kinda self-fire-extinguishing feature, anyway.”

Lenny looked thoughtful. “Maybe it does, Cold.”

Cold Cat shook his head. “So get your ass down there and see to it. What I’d be doin’ if it was my car. Fire Department’s here, so are the police. I can spare you for a while, so go tend to your wheels.”

“Thanks, Cold. I mean, really!”

“Shut the door,” Cold Cat said, and settled down again behind the microphone and sound controls.

Lenny complied, and Cold Cat was sealed in and soundproofed again. Cold Cat was pleased to note that even the piercing sirens below were completely inaudible once the padded studio door was closed.

He didn’t bother watching Lenny sprint from the apartment and almost yank the door off its hinges opening and closing it. Cold Cat was unconcerned. He didn’t see how a fire could spread in the concrete parking garage; no way it could get to the upper floors. And all the civil servants in uniform were down there with hoses and axes and whatever the hell else they used to put out car fires. Can openers, maybe.

A lyric in that?

No. Let it go. Not easy to rhyme “opener.”

Hey, wait a minute—“open-her.”

He put his earphones back on and skillfully worked the control board again. Maybe he could add a line:

I say taste the floor.

Gonna open her.

No, no…

Gonna open whore.

Yeah! Gettin’ it on!

It was glorious when the creative juices were flowing.

Now if he could get the blend down, raise the volume on “whore.” Uh-huh! This one was going to work. He could feel it.

He manipulated the control board and ran though the number again, then played it back, all the tracks.

Needed more drum, be okay. Better’n okay.

In the isolation of his soundproof room, with his earphones on, his head bowed, and concentrating so intensely, Cold Cat didn’t notice the figure, armed with a handgun and bulky sound suppressor, enter the apartment beyond the studio’s window.

His first and only view of the intruder was when he glanced up an instant before the first bullet shattered the thick glass, and the second slammed through his right eye and into his brain.

When Lenny returned to tell Cold Cat the fire had totaled the BMW and had been deliberately set, he immediately saw the damaged studio window and stood still in the center of the living room.

Holy shit!

The glass in the window had gone milky. There were two jagged holes in it, close together, spiderwebbed. He was pretty sure what had made them.

“Cold? Cold? You in there?”

Foolish to call. The studio door was closed. Lenny rushed over and yanked at the door, but it was locked. He hadn’t locked it when he’d run out to get to the basement garage. But it locked automatically sometimes. Or maybe Cold had locked it.

He knew he’d better force the door open, but he shouldn’t touch anything other than his cell phone, and use it to call the police.

Other hand, Cold might be in there bleeding to death.

Lenny went to the ruined window and peered in through one of what he was certain now were bullet holes.

Cold was slumped over the control panel, his head turned to the side. He was looking back at Lenny with an empty eye socket. Lying flat in the center of his back was a red letter J cut from some kind of cloth.

Lenny reeled backward.

Justice Killer!

He found himself sitting on top of his magazine in the orange easy chair. It was difficult for him to breathe. He was squeezing the chair’s arms hard enough to leave permanent indentations. This was badder’n bad.

Bodyguard career’s all over. Nobody gonna hire me now.

In a dark dream, he fumbled with his cell phone and called the police.

It didn’t take them long to get there.

They were right downstairs.

55

Beam stood next to da Vinci as they watched Richard Simms’s body being removed, Cold Cat leaving his expensive, tastelessly furnished Manhattan apartment for the last time. The paramedics tending the gurney craned their necks, taking a final, lasting look around, as they guided their burden through the door. They knew they’d never see anything like this again.