Run for Your Life (Michael Bennett 2)

He had a real eye, they said. They, meaning the people in the fashion world who actually counted. In spite of his youth, the word icon was being whispered. His name was dropped in company with Ritts, Newton, Mapplethorpe. Sorry, fellas, move over. There’s a new enfant terrible in town.

And best of all, the parties. Tonight, already a fabulous dream, was just beginning, and how many more would he have? He could practically see them in an endless array stretching out before him. As long, elegant, and dark as the row of designer suits in the gymnasium-sized closet of his loft down on Broome Street.

All around him, the world breathed, Yes.

He stepped out onto the street. The night was young—just the way he preferred his ladies. Like the barely legal, new Ford Nordic blonde he’d just “met” in the back stairwell. He could actually fall in love with her, if only he could remember her name.

“Pierre?” a woman’s voice called.

He craned his neck, raising his stubbled face toward the sound. It was she—his new nameless lovely, as statuesque as the figurehead of a Viking ship, standing on the fire escape above him. Or was she an actual flying Val-kyrie? As high as he was, it was hard to tell.

“Catch!” she said.

Something sailed down toward him, dark and diaphanous, and settled into his outstretched hands—a warm, wispy weight that was barely there. A feather from an angel wing? No, better. Thong panties. What a wonderfully American parting gift! How Girls Gone Wild!

He blew her a kiss, removed the silk handkerchief from the breast of his cashmere Yves Saint Laurent sport coat, and inserted the undergarment in its place. Then he continued on his way to Tenth Avenue to cab to his next soiree.

He was midway up the east side of the block when he spotted a man standing alone on the sidewalk, alongside the train overpass.

A fellow reveler, was Pierre’s first thought. But then he saw the guy’s serious face.

He stared unabashedly. He was always on the lookout for a striking photo image, always honing his eye. That was probably the reason he would be immortal. And this figure—there was something tragic in the way it stood against the dark, otherwise completely empty street. It was the essence of noir. So Hopperesque.

But more still, there was also something about the man’s eyes. A startling, yearning intensity in them.

As mesmerized as he was, it took Pierre a good thirty seconds before he saw the two silenced pistols the man was holding beside his thighs.

What?

Pierre’s drug-addled mind scrambled for comprehension. The girl in the stairwell, was the first thought it grasped. Was this an angry rival?

“Wait!” Pierre said, raising his hands placatingly. “She said she had no boyfriend. Please, monsieur, you must believe me. Or perhaps you are her father? She is young, yes, but very much a woman?—”

The Teacher shot him twice in the crotch with the suppressed .22, and once in his throat with the .45.

“Not even close, French fry,” he said, watching the worthless hedonist bounce face-first off the sidewalk.

He knelt beside the fallen man and pulled his hair back from his forehead. With his teeth, the Teacher uncapped a Sharpie and began to write.

Chapter 50

AS THE TEACHER HEADED BACK into his building, the last thing in the world he expected was the small, attractive blond woman who rose up furiously from the outside steps.

“I finally found you, you son of a bitch!” she screamed.

Holy crap! the Teacher thought, panicked. It was his publicist, from his former life—the life he’d abruptly abandoned when he’d started on his mission two days ago.

“Wendy,” he said soothingly. “I’ve been meaning to get back to you.”

“How gallant of you,” she fumed. “Considering I called you thirty-six fucking times. Nobody no-shows the Today show! You’ve ruined yourself! Worse, you’ve ruined me!”

He glanced around nervously. Standing out here arguing wasn’t cool. If somebody hadn’t already discovered the dead Frenchman, they would any second now.

But then he realized that she was falling-down drunk, with bloodshot eyes and a smell like a brewery. A plan snapped into his mind. Perfect.

“I can do better than explain, Wendy,” he said, with his most charming smile. “I’ll make it up to you, ten times over. Got an e-mail that’s going to blow your doors off.”

“Make it up to me? How are you going to un-demolish my business? You know how hard I worked to get you booked? At this level, you don’t get a second chance. Now I’m over.”