Blood Ties - Brossura

Parkinson, Dan

Brossura

ISBN 10: 0345421973 ISBN 13: 9780345421975

Casa editrice: Del Rey, 1999

Riassunto

Assigned to guard the secret of time travel in the year 2008, Jack Logan, a man without an identity, arrives in 1930s Manhattan and collides with a madman out to reshape the history of the twentieth century in his image. Original.

Su questo libro

L'autore

Dan Parkinson is the author of the action-packed Timecop novels, Viper's Spawn and The Scavenger; The Whispers and Faces of Infinity (in The Gates of Time series); as well as many westerns and a number of successful TSR fantasy novels.

Estratto. © Riproduzione autorizzata. Diritti riservati.

Harry Sheffield's long fingers danced through the lingering final trills of "Bye, Bye, Blackbird," holding that last, minor chord as its little echoes faded away into the muted murmur of voices here and there around the room. The piano in the Phoenix Club was no match for the fine, lacquered grand he had played two years before in his virtuoso performance with the Boston Symphony Orchestra, but it was a good Wurlitzer and its tones rang bell-true here on the recessed, brass-and-velvet bandstand of the Phoenix Club.

Not that anybody besides himself really cared. A virtuoso pianist becomes simply a piano player the moment he steps away from his art and accepts a six-nights-a-week contract to entertain the diners. For Harry Sheffield, that moment had come at the age of twenty-one. Without a doting family or a wealthy patron, art is the short road to starvation.

So Harry had packed away his dreams of composing the greatest of concertos, and now he pounded the keys for Rudy Valentine at thirty dollars a week.

The silence brought a smattering of reluctant applause, and he noticed again that there was something different about the mood of the Phoenix tonight. Early on, it had been the usual crowd--a few drunks and hecklers at the front tables, a bar mitzvah party in the alcove, some on-the-towners playing at the easy life, a gaggle of opera-goers fresh from the Black Orchid, and a larger crowd from the Orpheum where "Broadway Melody" shared the marquee with Mickey Mouse.

But now the casuals had drifted away, and there was a different bunch. The air was nervous with tension, subdued with expectant dread. Busboys had cleared away the front tables, and those diners who remained weren't dining. They were just waiting--sad-eyed Italian faces and lumpy overcoats along one side, the McGintys along the other.

There had been a rumor on the streets, that a deal would be made between the Spirelli family and Seamus McGinty for control of rackets on the Lower East Side. But nobody knew whether the deal would involve money or blood.

Harry ran a few riffs along the upper register, eased into bass chords, and glanced at the little cellar trap half-hidden by the piano. Something nervous was happening here tonight.

He launched into "Crazy Rhythm" for sixteen bars, then downchorded expertly and blended in a touch of "Desert Song," and nobody seemed to notice. He realized that it didn't matter what he played, as long as he kept playing. Nobody was listening to the music. They would listen only if he quit.

Harry Sheffield was used to being lonely. It was a way of life for him, and he had about given up on any miracles coming along to change that. But the young pianist felt lonelier than usual tonight, alone on that lighted bandstand while out in the shadowy clubroom men with $200 suits and hidden guns glared at one another across an empty dance floor.

He noticed then that the waiters and busboys had all disappeared. Something was happening here.

Maybe it was because of the bandstand rise that Harry saw what no one else in the place seemed to see--a sudden swirling, coalescing shift of reality in the little corridor leading to the kitchen. For an instant, in that little space, existence seemed to spin, whirl, and collapse inward upon itself. An instant only, then there was a man there, suspended three feet above the floor. In the instant Harry saw him he dropped to the floor, crouching, then ducked behind a velvet drape.

"Desert Song" became the overture from "Die Walkürie," and Harry didn't even notice it.

Across the club, the big oaken door opened and three McGintys edged in, two with their hands under the coats and one--Seamus himself--carrying a leather satchel.

All hell seemed to break loose at that moment.  The strange man from the kitchen corridor appeared at a booth alcove, holding a lethal-looking something with a red light on top of it. He lunged and pivoted, grabbed the valise from Seamus McGinty, and whirled around.  The other two McGintys went down as though they had been poleaxed, and the man with the odd weapon sprinted three steps toward the kitchen, then doubled over the outstretched foot of a small, dark-haired woman whose sable wrap was thrown aside to expose a large, semiautomatic handgun with an elaborate red-light beamer of its own.

"Drop and spread 'em, Bozo!" she ordered.  "You're under arrest!"

Across the room, a man in some kind of uniform stepped out from between rubber plants, swinging a red-light gun this way and that.  "Everybody just stay calm," he ordered. "It's TEC business."

For an instant, the scene was a frozen tableau...followed by chaos.  It might have been Seamus McGinty who opened the ball, or it might have been Vicente Spirelli.  But suddenly there were guns everywhere, and everybody was shooting at everybody else.  Harry Sheffield dived behind the piano. The roar of gunfire in the Phoenix Club was deafening.  It ebbed slightly, and Harry peeked out to see bodies sprawled everywhere.  Some were moving and some weren't.  The girl with the sable wrap was crawling toward the bandstand, leaving a little trail of blood behind her.  On impulse, the musician broke from cover just as someone kicked the girl viciously and stood over her, leveling a gun.  It was Bozo, the man who had first materialized in the kitchen corridor.   With a cry Harry sprinted two steps, launched himself, and smashed into the man, who didn't see him coming.  Bozo fell, dropping his gun.  Harry followed, almost blind with rage.  The man had assaulted a helpless, injured woman.  Remembering that vicious kic
k, Harry swung a roundhouse blow that smashed into Bozo's face, then hit him again, as hard as he could.  The man went limp, and Harry turned to the girl and picked her up.  Gunfire erupted again, and he ducked and ran, back to the cover of the piano.   She was almost unconscious, bleeding from a head wound, but even through the blood and the stink of gunpowder Harry realized that never in his life had he seen anyone so beautiful.  He raised the trap, eased her down through it, and crawled in after her.  Beneath, the crawlway was a service ledge dropping to a small cellar.   Above them, muffled now, a few more gunshots echoed; then there was silence.  In the cellar gloom she looked up at him with dazed, unfocused dark eyes.  "Help me," she whispered.

"I'm trying to, miss," Harry said.

"Where's Cole?" she slurred, struggling for consciousness.  "My partner .  .  .  and the jumper .  . . where are they?"

Harry eased the trap open, peering out.  The Phoenix reeked of gunsmoke and silence.  There were bloody bodies everywhere. Raising his head, he saw the man he had hit, sprawled now across a table with part of his head missing.  Across the room, beyond fallen Spirellis and McGintys, the man with the red-light gun lay half-upright against a velvet-draped wall.  He was dead.  Everybody was dead.

Just beneath him, the girl's slurred voice sounded frantic.  "The anomalies!  Gather up the anomalies!"

"The what?"

"The .  .  .  things that don't belong in this time," she managed.  "Please .  .  ."

Harry crawled from the trap, skirted the piano, and made the rounds, stepping over dead gangsters. He found three of the odd-looking red-light guns, a thing like a padlock with a radio dial, and a strange bracelet strapped to the dead uniformed man's wrist.

He gathered these and returned to the trap, closing the lid just as the club's front doors burst open to the sounds of shouts and stern voices.

In the little cellar off the stage crawlway, the injured girl tied a sort of tape around all the things Harry had collected, and added a bracelet of her own.  She pulled away from Harry, feeble fingers trying to manipulate the decoration on one of the bracelets.

"Here, miss." He took the bundle from her gently.  "Let me help you with that. What are you trying to do with--"

"No!  .  .  ." she breathed, and passed out.

Harry got a grip on the bracelet's raised center, tugged at it and twisted, and suddenly everything around him began to whirl crazily.  By reflex he cast the bundle away from him, then watched in wide-eyed awe as the strange things disappeared in a swirling, coalescing instant of indescribable confusion.

Shouts and footfalls sounded overhead, and Harry knew it was only moments until somebody noticed the floor trap behind the piano.  In the gloom of the tiny cellar he scooped the injured girl up in his arms and ducked around boilers, through pipe tunnels, and into a plumbing shaft.

He didn't know what had happened in the Phoenix Club, or who was up there now, or what would happen next. But a helpless, bleeding girl with big, dark eyes had asked him to help her, and suddenly there was nothing more important in Harry Sheffield's world than to do what he could for her.

She needed him.  Harry couldn't remember anybody ever needing him before.
In the dingy little walk-up that was Harry's home, he cleaned and wrapped her wound--a short, bleeding scar just above the left temple.  Sensitive fingers told him her skull was sound, but the concussion was precarious. He wrapped her in blankets and held her close as waves of delayed shock racked her.

Doc Walker came from down the street, examined her, and shrugged.  ...

Su questa edizione

• Editore: Del Rey
• Data di pubblicazione: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0345421973
• ISBN 13: 9780345421975
• Rilegatura: Copertina flessibile
• Numero di pagine: 245