Three Fates

He’ll laugh his bony ass off. Answer, damn it. Answer the phone.”
    But in two rings his cheerful and recorded voice came on.
    “I’m busy, honey, hopefully making sweet love. Leave a message and Mikey will get back to you.” He made his signature kissing sound that ran right into the beep.
    “He’s turned it off.” She took a calming breath, then another. “He’s home, taking a nap, and he turned off his pocket phone, that’s all.”
    “Ring him on the land line, Cleo.”
    “I’m just going to wake him up.” She dialed. “He hates it when you wake him up from a nap.”
    The phone rang four times. She was braced for another recording when he answered. The instant she heard his voice, she knew he was in trouble.
    “Mikey—”
    “Don’t come back here, Cleo!” There was a shout, a crash, and she heard him call her name again. “Run.”
    “Mikey.” A second crash and the short scream had her hand going wet on the receiver. Even when the phone went dead in her ear, she kept shouting his name.
    “Stop. Stop it.” Gideon pried the phone out of her fingers.
    “They’re hurting him. We have to get there. We have to help him.”
    “Call the police, Cleo.” He clamped his hands on her shoulders before she could run. “Call them now. Give them his name, his address. We’re too far away to help.”
    “The police.”
    “Don’t give your name,” he added as she fumbled to hit 911. “Just his. Make sure they hurry.”
    “I need the police. I need help.” She ignored the calm voice of the emergency operator. “Mikey—Michael Hicks, four-forty-five West Fifty-third, apartment three-oh-two. Just—just off Ninth Avenue. You have to hurry. You have to help. They’re hurting him. They’re hurting him.”
    Gideon depressed the receiver as she began to cry. “Hold it together. Just hold it together. We’re going. Which train do we take? What’s the fastest way to get there?”
    Nothing could be fast enough, not with that scream of pain and terror echoing in her head. She all but flew the blocks from the subway stop, but it wasn’t fast enough.
    Relief spurted through her when she spotted the two radio cars outside Mikey’s building. “They got here,” she managed. “New York’s finest.”
    Uniforms were already setting up barricades, and a small crowd was gathering.
    “Don’t say anything,” Gideon warned with his lips against her temple. “Let me ask.”
    “There should be an ambulance. He needs to get to the hospital. I know they hurt him.”
    “Just stay quiet, and I’ll find out.” Gideon kept his arm tight around her as they stepped up to the barricade.
    “What’s going on?” He glanced toward a bike messenger who was straddling his ride and snapping a wad of gum.
    “Dude got killed in there.”
    “No.” Cleo shook her head slowly from side to side. “No.”
    “Hey, I should know. I was heading in to make my delivery when the cops came back out. Said I had to hang out and be interviewed and shit ’cause they had a homicide on the third floor. Suit cops are coming, you know, like on NYPD Blue ? One of the uniform dudes told me this black guy got his face and head all bashed to shit.”
    “No. No. No,” she said again, her voice rising as Gideon pulled her away.
    “Keep moving, Cleo. We’re just going to keep moving for a little while.”
    “He’s not dead. That’s a lie, a stupid, fucking lie. We’re going to his show tonight. He’s getting us house seats. We’re going to get shit-faced on champagne. He is not dead. We were just . . . it was only an hour ago. I’m going back. I’ve got to go back.”
    He needed to get her some place quiet, some place private. Gideon wrapped both arms around her to hold her still. Where the hell did you find quiet in a city like this? “Cleo, you listen to me, just listen to me. We can’t stay here. It isn’t safe.”
    When she let out a low moan, when her knees buckled, he took her weight. He half dragged, half carried her down the street. “We need to get inside somewhere. You need to sit down.”
    He scanned the street, the shops, and spotted a bar. There was nothing, he decided, like an urban dive for a little privacy.
    He pulled her inside, keeping his arm banded around her. There were only three patrons, all hunched at the bar. None of them even bothered to glance over as he poured Cleo into a dim corner booth.
    “Two whiskeys,” he ordered. “Doubles.” He dragged out bills, slapped them on the bar.
    He