“I suppose,” Evan said, “that I have an overdeveloped sense of justice.”
“Where do you think it came from?”
“I’ve been on the other side.”
“Isn’t that interesting,” René said. “So have I. That’s what convinced me justice doesn’t exist.”
“What does exist?”
“Luxury.” René sipped his wine. “You could take silk sheets and caviar and inject them directly into my veins.”
“So that’s what you live for?”
“I want to have everything I want for as long as I want it.”
“At any cost?”
“At any cost to others, yes. Look at me. I’m fat. I’m ugly. What do I have? Money and fearlessness. Which equals power. Through power I get my needs met. I value luxury, yes. Youth. And beauty.”
A young man trudged in from the hall, rubbing one eye with a fist. His T-shirt pulled up, exposing the kind of stomach only achieved in one’s early twenties, a slight concavity runged with muscle. His dirty blond hair swirled up, bedhead chic. He was either stoned or really tired.
René’s son?
René stiffened. “It’s not safe for you here, David.”
David looked around through heavily lidded eyes, taking in Evan, Dex, Manny with his raised shotgun. “Looks plenty safe to me.” He plucked a piece of meat off René’s plate, chewed it languidly.
Then he leaned over and kissed René full on the mouth.
Oh.
David mussed René’s perfectly coiffed hair. “The steam room is broken.”
“Broken?”
“It takes too long to get, ya know, steamy.”
“I’ll have Samuel look at it.”
“Yer a doll.” David cast a bored gaze at Evan, then disappeared back into the hall.
René shared an exasperated look with Evan. “When you’re young, you’re never going to be old. Remember?” He forked some green beans into his mouth. More wine. “I’m not gay,” he said. “I just sometimes like to sleep with men.”
He pressed the clicker again, and Samuel appeared, scratching at his scar.
“Go look at the steam room,” René said. “There’s nothing wrong with it, but David’s fussing again. Pretend to make adjustments to the valve.”
Samuel nodded, exiting swiftly.
“If my interests are aligned with someone else’s, I can be quite generous,” René said. “As with you. I’ve done my best to acquaint you gently with your circumstances. I hope you’ve seen that you’re free to enjoy certain liberties, that you’ve been treated well.”
Evan shifted in his chair, bringing Manny and his shotgun into view over his right shoulder. “It’s been lovely.”
“It’s a lot of money to lose. I understand that. You have seventy-two hours to come to grips with it. But let me be clear. At the end of that time, if you don’t cooperate, you won’t like what will happen.”
“What will happen?”
Behind René, Dex stepped forward into the dim light cast by the chandelier. He’d been standing so still and silent in the shadows that until he’d moved, Evan had nearly forgotten he was present. Dex raised his left hand and pressed it across his lips. The tattoo on the back of this one was not a smile but a bared grimace. The incisors were pronounced, not quite vampiric, though they dripped with blood. The kind of mouth that would chew right through your gut. The sight of the inked scowl held up before Dex’s otherwise blank features sent a chill corkscrewing up Evan’s spine.
Dex had answered his question without having to speak.
“Dex is mute,” René said. “Dumb, they used to call it, but I promise you that’s not the case.” His teeth were tinted from the Bordeaux, the red distinct against his pasty face. He regarded Dex like a prize steer. “He manages to convey so much without saying a word.”
Evan stood up. Instantly, Manny shouted at him from behind. “¡Siéntate! Ahora, motherfucker.”
But Evan didn’t sit. Instead he kept his stare fixed on Dex. Holding his painted fangs in place over his mouth, Dex looked back him, his gaze containing no menace or fear. It held almost nothing at all, just the relentless focus of an owl watching a mouse about to scurry from cover.
“I can see you’ve won some fights,” René said. “I bet you think about them from time to time. Replay them in your head.”
“Not as much as the ones I’ve lost.”
René crossed his utensils neatly upon his plate and pushed it away. From inside his lapel, he removed a clear cylindrical spray bottle. He squirted down his place setting and then rose and sprayed the cushion of his chair. He did this as though it were normal postprandial etiquette.
The mysterious bottle vanished inside his jacket. He tugged the front panel, seating the coat properly on his shoulders, then flipped a button into place with an expert twist of his thumb. He nodded at Manny. “It’s okay. It seems we’re done.”
He turned to leave.
“So this wire,” Evan said. “You think it’s not traceable?”
“The computer is air-gapped, never been connected to the Internet before. The wire will be encrypted. The receiving account will relay the money out through a series of…” René stopped when he saw that Evan was smiling. “What about this amuses you?”
“That you think it’s enough.”
“Enough for what?”
Evan shook his head. “Trust me. You don’t want to do this.”
“Why not?”
“Because,” Evan said. “You never know who’s watching.”
16
Faithful Companions
Except for the swim cap, Candy McClure was naked. She loved being naked, though right now it was for work, not pleasure. That’s why she was hunched forward, the corpse flopped atop her back, marble-white arms dangling over her shoulders as she carried it toward the conveyer belt leading to the crematory unit. The dead body pressed against her skin wasn’t the most pleasant thing she’d felt this week, but she went to great lengths on disposal operations to avoid leaving fibers or residue at the scene.
It was one of those pet joints. She preferred animal mortuaries to human ones. If you could get around the inevitably cutesy names — they all seemed to be called “Loving Paws” or “Puppy Heaven”—they had certain advantages, looser security being foremost.
She’d broken into this outfit, Faithful Companions, in the glam outskirts of Muskego, because it used the Power-Pak II, her cremation unit of choice and the same one used for humans. Nice and roomy. Ideal for a St. Bernard or an investigative reporter from the Journal Sentinel who’d decided to start asking questions about black-budget allocations.
She flopped Jon Jordan’s body onto the track atop a rigor-mortised, three-legged American Shorthair. She’d preheated the unit before retrieving the body from the stolen van she’d parked by the back loading dock. Ramming the heel of her hand into the button, she engaged the equipment and watched the unlikely twosome rumble into eighteen hundred degrees of obliteration.
Curiosity killed the cats.
Snapping her gum, she stretched out her shoulders, limboed a bit to loosen her lumbar. The flesh of her back itched and burned. Jon Jordan was not a small man. She caught sight of her naked form in the stainless steel of the crematory unit and paused to admire herself.
A knockout body by all accounts. Large, firm breasts that still sat high and proud. Tapered waistline befitting a cello. Wide, feminine hips. Shapely legs.
But.
She turned slowly, bringing her mottled back into view. Since Orphan X had knocked her on top of her own jugs of concentrated hydrofluoric acid, she’d had countless skin grafts and scar-tissue-release surgeries. The pain was intense and unremitting, infections always one shower away.