Sometimes you had to shoot first. Ivo knew fellows who hesitated. They went home in boxes.
Ivo had learned, and he'd returned to Belgrade in one piece. But the pale face and dead baffled eyes of a fourteen-year-old boy he'd shot, an unarmed boy who'd looked like he was armed but was only looking for a handout, had followed Ivo home and stayed with him.
At least in the Army you had the weight of the government behind you. Here, with Dragovic, the government was against you. But either way, you spent a lot of time waiting. Like now.
"Do you think the man from the beach was in that truck yesterday?" Vuk said, nodding toward the town house.
Ivo glanced at him. Why was he always paired with Vuk? He liked nothing about him. Too rash, always looking for trouble. Why look for trouble when it had so many ways of finding you.
"I suspect it, but I couldn't prove it."
Neither had mentioned their suspicions about the truck to Dragovic or anyone else last night. They'd have looked like fools for allowing themselves to be suckered, and they knew how the boss dealt with fools.
"One thing I do know," Ivo said, "is that after it happened, whoever lives there was able to come and go as free as they pleased. And that makes me—"
The car jolted and rocked as something slammed into the left front fender, knocking Ivo against Vuk.
"Sranje!" Vuk shouted as he was thrown against the passenger door.
Ivo straightened in his seat and looked around. His first thought: Not that truck again!
But instead of a truck he saw an old rusted-out Ford with its right front bumper buried in the Lincoln's fender. But no bearded man behind the wheel. This time it was a short, muscular Hispanic.
"Hey, sorry, meng," the man said with an apologetic smile. "This old thing don't steer too good."
"Govno!" Ivo yelled as he tried to push his door open, but the Ford was too close.
Vuk was already opening the passenger door, but by the time he'd reached the sidewalk, the Ford was screeching away, leaving them coughing in the thick white smoke from its exhaust.
"Get him!" Vuk shouted.
Ivo was already turning the key. As he threw the Lincoln into gear and hit the gas, it lurched forward a foot or so before swerving toward the curb. Ivo cursed and yanked on the steering wheel but it wouldn't budge.
"What's wrong?" Vuk said.
"Jammed!"
Vuk jumped out and ran around to the front of a car where he froze. Then his face contorted as he began swearing and kicking at the front tire.
Ivo got out to see what he was doing.
"Look!" Vuk shouted. "Look!"
In an instant he understood: the Ford had scored a direct hit on the wheel, leaving it cocked on its axle.
Ivo turned and watched the battered old car dwindling in the distance on Sutton Place. Then he swung around and glared at the town house.
Vuk followed his gaze. "You don't think…"
"The man who hit us just now was not the man from the beach," Ivo said. "But still…"
Vuk turned back to the car. "Never mind him. What are we going to do about this?"
Ivo's anger faded to fear as he realized they were going to have to report another disabled car to Dragovic.
Vuk paled. The same must have dawned on him. "We'll have to get it fixed! Immediately!"
"On a Sunday?" Ivo said. "How?"
"I don't know, but we must!"
As Vuk yanked out his cell phone and began jabbing the keypad, Ivo's mind raced. If they could have the car towed, somehow get it repaired, they'd say nothing. As for watching the house… they'd lie… report no activity. No one was home anyway.
But they had to fix this damn car.
3
"One child," Jack said as he handed a ten to the guy in the ticket booth.
He was a beefy type, wearing a straw boater. He looked around.
"What child?"
"Me. I'm a kid at heart."
"Funny," the ticket man said without a smile as he slid an adult ticket and change across the tray.
Jack entered the main tent of the Ozymandias Prather Oddity Emporium and checked out his fellow attendees: a sparse and varied crew, everything from middle-class folk who looked like they'd just come from church to Goth types in full black regalia.
At first glance the show looked pretty shabby. Everything seemed so worn, from the signs above the booths to the poles supporting the canvas. Look up and it was immediately apparent from the sunlight leaking through that the Oddity Emporium was in need of new tents. He wondered what they did when it rained. Thunderstorms were predicted for later. Jack was glad he'd be out of here long before then.
As he moved along he tried to classify the Oddity Emporium. In some ways it was a freak show, and in many ways not.
First off, Jack had never seen freaks like some of these. Sure, they had the World's Fattest Man, a giant billed as the World's Tallest Man, two sisters with undersized heads who sang in piercing falsetto harmony—nothing so special about them.
Then they came to the others.
By definition freaks were supposed to be strange, but these went beyond strange into the positively alien. The Alligator Boy, the Bird Man with flapping feathered wings… these "freaks" were so alien they couldn't be real.
Like the Snake Man. Jack couldn't see where the real him ended and the fake began.
Makeup and prosthetics, Jack told himself.
But the way he used his tail to wrap around a stuffed rabbit and squeeze it… just like a boa constrictor.
A good fake, but still a fake. Had to be… even if this was Monroe.
One aspect of the show that reinforced his feeling that these weren't real was that there was nothing sad or pathetic about these "freaks." No matter how bizarre their bodies, they seemed proud—almost belligerently so—of their deformities, as if the people strolling the midway were the freaks.
Jack slowed before a booth with a midget standing on a miniature throne. He had a tiny handlebar mustache and slicked-down black hair parted in the middle. A gold-lettered sign hung above him: little sir echo.
"Hi!" a little girl said.
"Hi, yourself," the little man replied in a note-perfect imitation of the child's voice.
"Hey, Mom!" she cried. "He sounds just like me!"
"Hey, Mom!" Little Sir Echo said. "Come on over and listen to this guy!"
Jack noticed a tension in the mother's smile and thought he knew why. The mimicked voice was too much like her child's—pitch and timbre, all perfect down to the subtlest nuance. If Jack had been facing away, he wouldn't have had the slightest doubt that the little girl had spoken. Amazing, but creepy too.
"You're very good," Mom said.
"I'm not very good," he replied in a perfect imitation of the woman's voice. "I'm the best. And your voice is as beautiful as you are."
Mom flushed. "Why, thank you."
The midget turned to Jack, still speaking in the woman's voice: "And you, sir—Mr. Strong Silent Type. Care to say anything?"
"Yoo doorty rat!" Jack said in his best imitation of a bad comic imitating James Cagney. "Yoo killed my brutha!"
The woman burst out laughing. She didn't say so, but she had to think it was awful… because it was.
"A W. C. Fields fan!" the little man cried with a mischievous wink. "I have an old recording of one of his stage acts! Want to hear?"
Without waiting for a reply, Sir Echo began to mimic the record, and a chill ran through Jack as he realized that the little man was faithfully reproducing not only the voice but the pops and cracks of the scratched vinyl as well.