“For infinity,” he whispered. “You sleep now. Grandpa’s here to protect you. You’ll be safe, little Cheetah.” He balled his hands into fists, stuffed them deep in his pockets.
Time for Daddy to wake up and go hunting.
CHAPTER 15
After landing at Logan Airport, Decker stopped off for a snack at the Grab and Go Café before heading out by taxi to Cambridge. It was a particularly cold evening. Traffic was light and he made good time through the Sumner. Thanksgiving was barely a memory but the streets were already twinkling with Christmas lights. He had seen them from the air, through his porthole, like a carpet of electrical fireworks, each pinpoint a promise, a flicker of faith, courtesy of the lighting departments of Costco and Wal-Mart, stretching out to the distant horizon.
Xin Liu’s condo was located near the MIT campus. Decker was freezing by the time he paid the driver and made his way down the long walk to the lobby. The building was a renovated brick warehouse. Although fairly sizeable, there were fewer than two dozen names on the wall. Xin Liu wasn’t one of them. So he called her again on his droid. Sixteen, she informed him, over rock and roll music. Under Macintosh. He pressed the button and she buzzed him in.
Decker made his way down the brightly lit hallway toward the music. As he neared apartment 16, the door suddenly opened, music blared and Xin Liu stepped out into the hallway. At least Decker guessed it was her. He couldn’t tell. The tiny woman before him was wearing a mask — some kind of cat, with long whiskers — and a black PVC bodysuit.
“Special Agent Decker?” she asked him.
And high heels, with pointy black tips. “Xin Liu?”
She laughed. It was a deep-throated laugh, far deeper and richer than he would have expected from someone her size.
“Call me Lulu,” she said. “Everyone else does. Xin Liu’s too hard for most gweilo. Although your accent’s surprisingly good.”
Decker hesitated in the doorway. “Perhaps I should come back later,” he started. “When your guests are no longer—”
“Don’t be silly,” she said, dragging him in.
The loft was absolutely packed. The door opened up onto a corridor swimming with people. They were all wearing masks and Decker felt suddenly naked. A walrus. An ostrich. A lemur. Venetian Carnival masks. Ex-Presidents. Mayan gods.
Beyond the short corridor, the loft opened up onto a large sitting area — except no one was sitting. There were dozens and dozens of people milling about, drinking, laughing, smoking cigarettes. Or, at least they appeared to be cigarettes. Now that Decker got closer, he wasn’t so sure. The air was cloying with pot smoke.
“Follow me,” she said, dragging him in.
They wiggled their way through the jostling crowd. Every once in a while, someone would stop Lulu and ask her a question. Bodies pressed all about them. Someone almost spilled her glass of red wine onto Decker. She was wearing the mask of a fish. A cod, it appeared. He could tell the fish was a she from the tight, squamulose corset she wore, covered in shimmering emerald-green scales. Her breasts were practically spilling out of her bustier.
“Who’s your friend?” the cod said in Mandarin, spying Lulu.
“A computer salesman from Belgium,” she said.
“What’s your name?” the girl added in French, turning toward Decker.
“John.”
“Hi, John,” the cod said. She held out a hand.
“Hi…”
“Amy,” she appended for him, shaking his hand. “He’s delicious,” she continued in Mandarin. “Where’d you find him?”
“At a puzzler convention in Antwerp. Didn’t you already come with two boys, Amy?”
“What’s your point?”
“That’s not enough for one evening?”
“You can never have enough tongues on your body at one time.”
Lulu laughed. Then she turned back toward Decker and said, “You’re lucky you don’t speak Chinese.”
“Right,” Decker said.
“Come on,” Lulu added, reaching out for his hand. “We need to find you a mask.”
They wormed their way through the crowd toward a black spiral staircase at the side of the loft, adjacent to a fifteen-foot Christmas tree. As they climbed the cast-iron steps, Decker got a good view of the party.
There must have been two hundred people packed into the space. The main room was large, at least sixty feet long, twenty wide, with a twenty-foot ceiling striped with black metal girders. It had clearly been an industrial space at one point. Music was pumping from a Bose sound system at the foot of the stairs. The Ramones, Decker thought, but he couldn’t remember the song. Old school. There was a bar on the far side of the loft, near the kitchen area, a long marble-top counter space with a nativity scene, and a table set up with all manner of food — sushi and sides of smoked salmon, dumplings, puffed pastries and towers of fruit.
The table was surrounded by a whole flock of penguins. The bartender was a rust-colored octopus, pouring shots with each of his tentacles. People were dancing near a glass door at the other end of the loft, some out on the wrap-around balcony, notwithstanding the intemperate weather.
When they got to the top of the stairs, Lulu led Decker down a long narrow corridor lit by sconces of smoky lavender glass toward a bedroom at the end of the hall. The bed was piled high with coats. Black-and-white photographs peppered the walls, most featuring images of some tropical countryside — flickering palm trees, white cresting waves, hillsides of shimmering rice paddies. Could have been anywhere. Cambodia. China. Sumatra. But no people, he noticed. Just the odd water buffalo.
Lulu slipped in around him. She squatted down at the foot of the bed by a large metal trunk, flipped it open, and started to rummage about. “Let’s see now,” she said. “You need…” Then she paused. She stared up at him thoughtfully. “Not an animal. More like…” She plucked out a mask and handed it to him.
“Is this really necessary?” he inquired. The mask looked like the face of a ghost — white, twisted and drawn, the mouth open in agony. Like some prop from a bad slasher movie. Munch’s Scream.
“It’s a costume party, Special Agent Decker. And besides, that’s perfect for you. You know what gweilo means, don’t you?”
“A not-very-flattering Chinese term for people of the Caucasian persuasion.”
“‘Of the Caucasian persuasion!’” Lulu laughed. “That’s about as gweilo a term as I’ve ever heard. It means white ghost man. Go ahead. Put it on.”
Decker slipped on the mask. She’s right, he considered, examining himself in a mirror. It fits perfectly.
They made their way back to the party. As Lulu started down the stairs, Decker could see she was wearing a long velvet tail, with strands of midnight black silk at the end, and he resisted the urge to reach out and pull it.
The music was louder now. They were playing Blondie’s Heart of Glass. More people were dancing. He could see them cavorting in the flashing red lights. No, they were blue now. Including Amy, the cod. She was grinding against a bear and what looked like a wolverine. Or was he a badger? Hard to tell.
“Get yourself a drink,” Lulu said. “Things will start to wind down pretty soon now.”
“You think?” Decker laughed. “Go ahead. Tend to your guests. I’ll be fine.”
Lulu hesitated for a moment. Then she slipped down the stairs and disappeared into the wavering throng.