The Doors of Death and Life [Paperback]

The fight was the natural, inevitable conclusion to a horrendous evening. “You promised me,” Julianne said. “You promised, that if I let you quit the rat race you would at least give me moral support on my job.”

“That is really unfair, Jul. Home improvement is always seasonal. It’s not my fault I had to finish a deck today.” Rob tried to keep his voice down, but a passing hotel bellboy smirked at them anyway.

Julianne punched the elevator button, her bosom heaving in the tight blue taffeta cocktail dress. “Handing your business card to that woman, and offering to build her a swing set? What would Portia do with a swing set? She’s the biggest slut in Milan! Debra actually asked me if that was the latest in pickup lines!”

Rob’s jaw was set so tight his blond beard bristled. “I know she’s easy. Everyone in the room knew. Why do you think I told her I was a carpenter? To get her to quit hitting on me, that’s why.”

“Or maybe it was just to get your pager number into her hot little hands, huh?”

“Jul, you can’t possibly believe—”

The elevator doors slid open to reveal the smiling elevator boy. “Lobby, miss?” They stepped in, not touching, and stood in seething silence as the elevator descended.

The Willard Hotel’s lobby was historically accurate to a painful degree, restored to look just as it had when Mark Twain strolled through in the 1890s. When they stepped out onto the antique-look mosaic floor, Rob got in the first shot. “And I didn’t appreciate being appraised by that old vulture, either.”

“Rob, the Signora is famous for her sense of style. She’s the greatest fashion designer of her generation. If she ogles you, it’s an honor, that’s all! I mean, she’s eighty-four years old.”

“If a sense of style means dragging around the world with a planeload of whores and gigolos, it’s an honor I could do without.”

“You are just so impossible!” Julianne’s hazel eyes flashed magnificently with rage. “Oh, for God’s sake, go get the van. I can’t walk another step in these heels.” She sat down heavily on a red leather chesterfield sofa.

“High fashion makes people do such melonheaded things. I’ll bring the truck around front.”

“The truck?” Julianne sat up straight again, electrified. “Rob, you didn’t drive that hunk of junk to a black-tie reception, did you?”

“It’s not junk,” Rob snapped.

“Well, it looks like a junker! You are trying to embarrass me, just out of meanness, because you didn’t want to get dressed up!”

Rob forgot not to shout. “It was force of habit, okay?”

“I don’t want anybody I know to see me riding in that clunker! Pick me up at the bus stop across the street!”

Snarling, Rob strode out through the revolving doors and down the street to the parking garage. His dress shoes pinched, and the warm May evening made him sweat where the old tuxedo jacket was too tight under his muscular arms. Jul hadn’t appreciated a bit the aggravations he’d gone through—building decks all day, rushing home to wash up and climb into the monkey suit, and then battling rush-hour traffic all the way from Fairfax downtown for the Association of Garment Design’s damnable reception. And it was ten o’clock at night, and they hadn’t even served any real food. Why did he let her do these things to him?

He felt better when he got to the garage. Slowly over the last several years, Rob had marshaled his private coping mechanisms into a deliberately mundane armor. His carpentry work was always a calming and centering influence, and by extension his tools and truck had become talismans of normality. Automatically, he checked the light blue Ford over. The white truck cap hid all his tools, and the ladder rack on the roof was empty. He had locked all the doors and paid for garage parking to keep from getting ripped off. Once, he had forcibly trimmed back the crime rate of the entire District of Columbia, just to see if he could do it. But these superficial societal fixes were never permanent. After three years the local economy was still reeling from the ’99 Quayle recession to the point where even Lewis Home Improvement’s truck could be a target. But the truck was untouched tonight. Satisfied, he climbed into the cab and started the engine.

As he eased out onto the street, Rob’s hyperactive sense of justice came to the fore. Julianne did have a point. This was not a vehicle to ride in wearing blue taffeta. The heavy-duty bumpers were spattered with red construction mud, and the vinyl front seat was invisible under a clutter of tools, maps, construction sketches, and notes. Hex nuts and odd carriage bolts rattled back and forth on the dashboard as he turned the corner towards the hotel. Of course he hadn’t had time to clean up the cab, but would it do him any harm to tell Jul she was right?

Then Rob remembered that Julianne was waiting across the way at the bus stop. He was on the wrong side of the street, and would have to pass the hotel and pull a U-turn. He peered ahead and to the left to see if Jul was there yet, and gasped.

The bus stop had a shelter, a roof and two Plexiglas walls. Inside it several people were scuffling. Between them he could clearly see the blue sheen of Julianne’s party dress.

The crisis mind-set fell over Rob like an icy cloak. He stamped on the gas and set the truck barreling at the bus shelter, screeching to a halt at an angle to the curb. On high beam, the headlights flooded the bus shelter with 110 watts of shadowless light.

Any other rescuer would have dashed to intervene. Rob had the time to cut the engine and turn on the emergency flashers. He got out slowly, sucking the air down deep into his chest because it was important not to get too mad, not to lose control. Still, his step was unsteady as he went across to Julianne and helped her to her feet. “Don’t try to talk, dearest,” he said, holding her close.

Her dress was torn open at the vee of the neckline, and her ash-blonde hair straggled down from its topknot. She trembled in his arms like a frightened bird. “My purse,” she stuttered. “My shoe. And—oh my God, Rob, what are they waiting for?”

The three young muggers stood eerily still, staring into the glare of the headlights like jacklighted deer. Their hands, tattooed with gang emblems, hung limp at their sides. A knife glittered on the pavement beside Julianne’s beaded evening bag. “They’re waiting for me,” Rob said grimly. “Let me cope with it, Jul. Into the truck with you.” With tender care he helped her into the cluttered front seat, and fetched the missing shoe and the bag. “You’re not hurt, right?”

“Just shook up. Oh Rob, let’s go!” Tears ran down her face, smearing the mascara into raccoon rings around her eyes.

“One more minute, dearest.” He pushed a hanky into her hand and shut the passenger-side door. Then he went around to the front of the truck and stood between the blazing headlights, leaning back a little against the truck’s dusty grille. “You little swine,” he said to the muggers. Suddenly his voice didn’t sound like his own.

Very rarely now did Rob use his full power. Ordinary daily life didn’t call for it, any more than it called for tactical nuclear missiles. But the ability was always there, leashed but vast, and he clenched it now like a fist around the three lowlifes in the bus shelter. He wasn’t interested in their miserable past histories, or what drugs they were on now, or what half-assed rationales they could construct for their criminal behavior. Rob was out for blood, and the only question was how.

“A bus or a car accident is too messy,” he said softly, remotely. “So is jumping from a roof. The Potomac River, that’ll do. Walk yourselves halfway over the bridge down there, and jump in where it’s deep.”

The power hummed like thunder in his voice. The three young men turned obediently and began to walk, around the corner and then south along 14th Street towards the river. The doorman at the Willard had noticed the commotion at last and ran up. “Is something wrong, sir? You want me to call 911?”

Rob turned his berserker gaze onto him for only a second. As the doorman’s mouth dropped open in terror Rob got a grip on himself. This guy was innocent. “They tried to snatch her purse,” he said, breathing deeply. “But I sent them off with a tongue-lashing.”

“You should press charges!”

“They’ll never do it again,” Rob said. “Forget it.” Again it was a command, not a suggestion. The doorman held the truck door for Rob and waved cordially as they drove off.

Julianne wiped her streaming eyes with the smeary hanky. “Oh, Rob, I was so frightened! I let them have my handbag, but then they pulled the knife, and began to claw at my dress—”

For a second Rob could hardly see, he was so angry. Automatically he eased up on the gas as they rolled down Constitution Avenue. “I should’ve dropped them onto a railroad track,” he muttered.

“What did you say, hon?” Julianne peered through the dark at his face.

“You don’t have to worry about them anymore,” Rob said hastily. Very few people knew about ...