Hank was holding his bloody nose, wagging his finger at Jack. "Now you're gonna get it! Now you're gonna get it!"
Bondy seemed to have a sudden infusion of courage. He hauled himself to his feet and started toward Jack with a raised fist.
"You goddamn son of a—"
Jack rapped the iron bar across the side of his bald head, staggering him. With an angry murmur, the circle of carny folk abruptly tightened.
Jack whirled, spinning the pike around him. "Right," he said. "Who's next?"
He hoped it was a convincing show. He didn't know what else to do. He'd taken some training in the martial use of the bamboo pole and nunchuks and the like; he wasn't Bruce Lee with them, but he could do some damage with this pike. Trouble was, he had little room to maneuver and less every second: the circle was tightening, slowly closing in on him like a noose.
Jack searched for a weak spot, a point to break through and make a run for it. As a last resort, he always had the .45-caliber Semmerling strapped to his ankle.
Then a deep voice rose above the angry noise of the crowd.
"Here, here! What's this? What's going on?"
The carny folk quieted, but not before Jack heard a few voices whisper "the boss" and "Oz." They parted to make way for a tall man, six-three at least, lank dark hair, sallow-complexioned, his pear-shaped body swathed in a huge silk robe embroidered with Oriental designs. Although he looked doughy about the middle, the large hands that protruded from his sleeves were thin and bony at the wrist.
The boss—Jack assumed he was the Ozymandias Prather who ran the show—stopped at the inner edge of the circle and took in the scene. His expression was oddly slack but his eyes were bright, dark, cold, more alive than the rest of him. Those eyes finally settled on Jack.
"Who are you and what are you doing here?"
"Protecting your property," Jack said, gambling.
"Oh, really?" The smile was sour. "How magnanimous of you." Abruptly his expression darkened. "Answer the question! I can call the police or we can deal with this in our own way."
"Fine," Jack said. He upped his ante by throwing the pike at the boss's feet. "Maybe I had it wrong. Maybe you pay baldy here to poke holes in your attractions."
The big man froze for an instant, then slowly wheeled toward the ticket seller who was rubbing the welt on the side of his head.
"Hey, boss—" Bondy began, but the tall man silenced him with a flick of his hand.
The boss looked down at the pike where sawdust clung to the dark fluid coating its point, then up at the crouching rakosh with its dozens of oozing wounds. Color darkened his cheeks as his head rotated back toward Bondy.
"You harmed this creature, Mr. Bond?"
The boss's eyes and tone were so full of menace that Jack couldn't blame the bald man for quailing.
"We was only trying to get it to put on more of a show for the customers."
Jack glanced around and noticed that Hank had faded away. He saw the performers inching toward the rakosh cage, making sympathetic sounds as they took in its condition. When they turned back, their cold stares were focused on Bondy instead of Jack.
"You hurt him," said the green man.
"He is our brother," the Snake Man said in a soft sibilant voice, "and you hurt him many times."
Brother? Jack wondered. What are they talking about? What's going on here?
The boss continued to pin Bondy with his glare. "And you feel you can get more out of the creature by mistreating it?"
"We thought—"
"I know what you thought, Mr. Bond. And many of us know too well how the Sharkman felt. We've all known mistreatment during the course of our lives, and we don't look kindly upon it. You will retire to your quarters immediately and wait for me there."
"Fuck that!" Bondy said. "And fuck you, Oz! I'm blowin' the show! Ain't goin' nowhere but outta here!"
The boss gestured to the Alligator Boy and the Bird Man. "Escort Mr. Bond to my trailer. See that he waits outside until I get there."
Bondy tried to duck through the crowd, but the green man blocked his way until the other two grabbed his arms. He struggled but was no match for them.
"You can't do this, Oz!" he shouted, fear wild in his eyes as he was none too gently dragged away. "You can't keep me here if I wanna go!"
Oz ignored him and turned his attention to Jack. "And that leaves us with you, Mr…?"
"Jack."
"Jack what?"
"Just Jack."
"Very well, Mr. Jack. What is your interest in this matter?"
"I don't like bullies," Jack said.
It wasn't an answer, but it would have to do. Wasn't about to tell the boss he'd come to French-fry his Sharkman.
"No one does. But why should you be interested in this particular creature? Why should you be here at all?"
"Not too often you get to see a real live rakosh."
When he saw the boss blink and snap his head toward the cage, Jack had a sudden uneasy feeling that he'd made a mistake. How big a mistake he wasn't quite sure.
"What did you say?" The glittering eyes fixed on him again. "What did you call it?"
"Nothing," Jack said.
"No, I heard you. You called it a rakosh." Oz stepped over to the cage and stared into Scar-lip's yellow eyes. "Is that what you are, my friend… a rakosh? How fascinating!" He turned to the rest of his employees. "It's all right. You can all go back to bed. Everything is under control. I wish to speak to this gentleman in private before he goes."
"You didn't know what it was?" Jack said as the crowd dispersed.
Oz continued to stare at the rakosh. "Not until this moment. I thought they were a myth."
"How did you find it?" Jack said. The answer was important—until this afternoon he'd been sure he'd killed Scar-lip.
"The result of a telephone call. Someone phoned me last summer—woke me in the middle of the night—and told me that if I searched the waters off Governors Island I might find 'a fascinating new attraction.'"
Last summer… the last time he'd seen Scar-lip and the rest of his species. "Who called you? Was it a woman?"
"No. Why do you ask?"
"Just wondering."
Besides Gia, Vicky, Abe, and himself, the only other living person who knew about the rakoshi had been Kolabati.
"He referred to himself as Professor Roma. I'd never heard of him and haven't heard from him since. I searched for him afterwards, to see if he could tell me what he knew about the creature, but never found him."
Jack swallowed. Roma… figures.
"Something in the caller's voice, his utter conviction, compelled me to do as he said. Came the dawn I was on the water with some of my people. We found ourselves vying with groups of souvenir hunters looking for wreckage from a ship that had exploded and burned the night before. We discovered our friend here floating in a clump of debris. I assumed the creature was dead, but when I found it was alive, I had it brought ashore. It looked rather vicious so I put it into an old tiger cage."
"Lucky for you."
The boss smiled, showing yellow teeth. "I should say so. It almost tore the cage apart. But since then its health has followed a steady downhill course. We've fed it fish, fowl, beef, horse meat, even vegetables—although one look at those teeth and there's no question that it's a carnivore—but no matter what we've tried, its health continues to fail."
Jack now had an idea why Scar-lip was dying. Rakoshi required a very specific species of flesh to thrive. And this one wasn't getting it.