The smart play would have been to bring the cops along with me. But something had told me back in the theater – my macho maybe coming out, with Gaga safe and the gun in my belt – that I needed to do this thing on my own.

Right now I wasn't so sure.

The place was getting me more creeped every step I took. I'd started back at an old railroad maintenance gate you could hardly tell was there, that used to service a line that ran under West Harlem and Riverside Park, the tracks rusty and mostly forgotten now. The map Gaga gave me that Sickblade gave her showed a hidden side tunnel you accessed through a kind of homemade turnstile you had to squeeze through.

My phone flashlight showed dark stone walls on both sides, and, no surprise, rats. When I stopped to listen to see if I could hear any sounds from the outside to help place myself, I could hear water dripping, moving. I remembered how my sister used to talk about rivers running under the city. If one was around here, it probably drained out into the Harlem River, a connector that ran into the Hudson one way and Hell Gate the other.

And besides the dripping there was this smell. Something like what used to come drifting uptown from the meatpacking district on hot days.

A slaughter smell.

I stepped over to the wall and shined my light up close, could see that some of the stones had been loosened and put back in place, the moss between where they joined pulled apart. I knew what I'd find if I pulled them loose again – Sickblade's tombs were marked on the map with the sketch of a skull.

"There's more buried underneath your feet," the voice behind me said.

I whipped around in time to see the blur of a club coming down in in a man's hand. Bright lights flashed with a boom in my head. Then just as quick they went out.

                                                #          #          #

I was back with Szu again, sitting next to her in the parlor, side by side in the old velvet love seat. The other girls from the house were with us, Marla, too, who'd disappeared that time. All of us were listening to Doc Granith and Gaga playing a slow ragtime duet on the piano. Dreamy kind of music, almost like a waltz. 

Everybody was swaying back and forth, all of us into it, feeling nice. There was movement by the door and I looked over to see my sister, Tanya, come in. She looked like a million, her giving me that supersmile as she walked over to the piano. She tapped Doc Granith on the shoulder and held her arms out in a way that showed she wanted to dance.

Doc got up and the two of them started waltzing, dancing like they were finalists in some big talent contest, Gaga's music sounding like a full orchestra. 

Szu stood up and tugged me to my feet and we started dancing, too. I'd never waltzed before, but right then it felt like we were as good as anyone.

And like it was choreographed, the other girls got up and were dancing, each with a partner who just kind of appeared, guys whose faces I couldn't see. The girls looked the happiest I'd seen them, dancing like they were born to waltz.

After a lot of swirling and smiling and with a mellow breeze blowing, the walls of the parlor melted and we were all dancing in a wide-open meadow, the piano now up on a pedestal stage, big exotic flowers around it like some Lady Gaga botanical special. She was playing the waltz like she was a one-woman ragtime philharmonic.

But after a couple more bars she changed key and the music took on a different tone.

I looked at her up on that stage and she nodded toward where my sister was dancing with Doc.

Tanya's back was to me, but when she turned my way I could see she had blood pouring down the front of her. Her throat had been slashed.

And it wasn't Doc she was dancing with – it was some stranger whose features were blurred.  

I looked around at the other girls and they were all dancing with clones of the same blurred stranger. Blood was pouring from their slashed throats too.

Szu in my arms made a groaning sound. I looked down and when she tried to speak, blood gushed out of her mouth. She pointed and tried to show me that her tongue had been cut out. 

Things started to spin. I lost hold of Szu. I reached out to bring her back but she kept getting further away.  The spinning took her up into a dark whirling cloud full of evil-looking birds, her little body disappearing when they tore her apart.

I looked around and saw that all the other girls were gone too.

It was just me and Gaga and the music.

And then the wind took Gaga away and the music went screaming with her.

                                                #          #          #

When I came to, I was laid out on a cold cement floor. My head was pounding and I heard a voice that sounded like it was still in the dream. I opened my eyes slow and tried to focus on the man standing over me whose face was a blur. The lighting around him was like a glow, a dull red glow, but enough so I could see he was holding a piece of paper. 

"You screwed yourself," he said, waving the paper, the map that got me into this. "Any other time, I wouldn't bother with you. I got no interest in doing guys, and I'm leaving this place anyway."

I mumbled, "So what's the problem?"

"You're a nosey little prick is the problem." He waved the paper again. "I give this to the bitch in good faith to give to the cops, give myself time to straighten up here and split, and she gives it to you."

I wanted to make a crack about judgement but couldn't think of a good one.

"I should've done her like I'd meant to," he said. "How'd you find her so fast?"

"Connections."

"If you mean some phone shit, good luck with it working again."

He kicked something on the floor that slid across and hit me in the face – what was left of my smashed phone.

"That pistol you had ain't gonna help either," he said.

"I guess it's not my day."

He stepped over and gave me a sharp kick in the ribs. Had a pistol in his other hand, my eyes too fuzzed to tell if the gun was mine or the one he'd taken from Dempsey.

"I'd blow your shit away right here," he said, "but I want the place tidy for when they come in."

The man not wanting anything to mess with his glory – the girls he'd buried behind those walls, the tongues he'd cut out...

"You going to show me your collection?" I said.

"What?"

"The tongues. You kept them, didn't you?"

He stared at me and nodded. "Anything to buy time, right?"

I turned myself halfway over, a jolt of pain where he'd kicked me, and propped myself up on one elbow. I could see his space now in the weird red light, his tool rack and the workbench for doing procedures, his display cabinet with its world-class collection...     

My eye went to the video camera on its tripod and the big flat screen on the wall. "You must have gotten some good stuff. You going to leave it for the folks at home? Let them see how their daughters and sisters made it big?"  

"Lemme say it face-to-face, asshole – I didn't kill your sister."

"I know you didn't"

That got a squint. "Then why the fucking vendetta?"

"You killed Szu."

"Who?"

Guy couldn't keep track, he'd done so many.

"The Asian girl," I said.

"She was a little whore."

"She was my little whore."

"Well now you can join her."

He reached down with his free hand and picked up a knapsack, slung it over his shoulder. Pointed the pistol at me and said, "Get up."

Spoken like a man with a gun. I pushed myself onto my hands and knees, took a breath and wobbled to my feet.

He went over to a rusty iron door and pulled it open. Motioned with the pistol for me to step through it. I did and he followed me out into a dark passageway and started to pull the door shut behind him.

But then he stopped.

He stood there and stared back into his place with its satanic red glow. His hellhole.

This was it. He was leaving it all. His world was in a knapsack now.

After a couple beats he turned to me and said, "Let's go."

He didn't bother closing the door. I guess he wanted to be sure the cops and the rest of the world would find his – what did Gaga call it? – his legacy.

I walked along the passageway ahead of him, gun at my back, just enough glow from the open door back there to keep me from falling on my face.

But pretty soon the glow gave out and I started stumbling.

"You got a light?" I said, my phone one in pieces back where he'd stomped it. 

"Just keep going"

No choice, so I did. The death smell still hung in the air and the sound of water got nearer. I had no sense what direction we were going. 

"In here," he said after we'd walked not too much further.

"Where?"

He grabbed my arm and jerked me toward some dim light that was coming from the mouth of a cave. I could tell that's where the water was, the sound of it seeming, at least to me, like it was saying something, maybe calling us to it, which would be a nice thought under different circumstances. 

I stumbled through the cave, him right behind me with the gun, rocks all over the ground. After a minute, there ahead of us in the dimness as we came around a bend, was one of those underground rivers that Tanya had talked about.

And right then I knew what the deal was.

I was looking at my grave. My watery grave. 

I stood there watching the gleaming black current, listening to its flow, listening to the rippling sounds like there'd be some miracle message in them telling me what to do. 

And maybe there was.

Because like I'd done with Gaga in that other tunnel, I stumbled forward and fell on my face. I felt around quick and closed my hand around a rock. A baseball-size rock.

"Get up," he said behind me.

I did some mumbling and got to my feet, keeping the rock in front of me, out of his view, and walked to the edge of the river. Stood there and stared some more at the current. Could hear him walk up behind me, probably aiming the pistol at the back of my head.

Then I ducked and pointed at the water in panic and yelled as loud as I could. "What the fuck's that?" 

My one chance.

Hoping I'd confused him, I whirled around with my arm cocked and threw that rock as hard as I could at his surprised face. Caught him dead center, between the eyes, a hit so hard it echoed (I was only five feet away).

The gun went off when he fell over backward but the shot didn't hit me. He was out cold, maybe even dead. I grabbed him by his feet and had to use everything I had to drag him over and push him into the river.

The blood from where the rock hit spread out in the water and started drifting away. 

I stood there and watched him sink to his grave.

Picked up the gun he'd dropped and kept watching the current.

Made sure he didn't come up, ready to shoot him in the head if he did.

After a couple minutes watching, I tossed the gun – Dempsey's gun, which I didn't want to get caught with – into the river and went to find my way out of this dungeon.

                                                #          #          #

I took an A train back downtown, had decided to skip the reception Gaga was having after the service, me scruffy from all the prowling underground. And also there were other issues I should be dealing with – like letting the cops know where they could find Sickblade's slicing station. Just how to do that and not get myself sucked up in the mess was what I was wrestling with. Maybe I could just navigate them there and bow out.

Yeah, right.

I got off at Fifty-Ninth and headed west, heading for the house where I had a spare phone. When I got to Ninth Avenue, I had to wait for two fire engines to roar past, sirens howling, lights whirling, before I could cross. I watched them cut back and forth down the Avenue, traffic pulling aside to let them pass – and then got a funky feeling when I saw them and a cop car turn onto my street.

I looked up at the night sky and saw glowing red smoke spiraling from the direction of the house.

(To be continued...)