Luc glanced at his watch, as much to break contact with Prather's eyes as to check the time. The digits read 8:43. A minute past time.
"Have you. got the creature secured?" Luc said.
Prather nodded. "We are ready if you are."
"Let's go then."
"Payment first," Prather said, holding out a wide, long-fingered hand.
Luc hesitated. He'd always paid after he'd drawn the sample. "Is something wrong with the creature?"
"Yes. It is dying, as we both know. But do not fear—it is not yet dead."
Then, why did Prather want payment first? Luc stiffened at a terrifying thought—if the creature was near death, if this was to be the last sampling of its blood, then Luc was of no further value to Prather. If they would no longer be doing business, then Luc, a witness to murder, was… disposable.
He would never forget how casually Prather had disposed of Macintosh.
"You look frightened, Dr. Monnet," Prather said, baring his teeth in a yellowed grin. "As if you fear for your life."
"No, I—"
"Relax, Doctor. I am a man of my word, forthright in my dealings. I am so because I must set an example for my troupe." He extended his hand closer to Luc. "This is my business office; let us do business."
Luc pulled out the envelope and handed it to him. "I've included advance payment for three of your roustabouts as security when I test this batch."
Prather nodded as he counted the money. "Things got a little out of hand last time, you say?"
"A little."
More than a little. Luc had lost control of two of the test subjects. He chewed his upper lip at the memory. It had been quite nearly a disaster.
Prather sighed as he closed the envelope. "I don't like hiring them out, but attendance is off this tour. In good times people seem less inclined to go and stare at those less fortunate than they—at least those who appear less fortunate. So we must make ends meet any way we can." He stuffed the envelope into one of his own pockets. His voice dropped to a whisper, as if he were talking to himself. "Because I must keep the troupe together—by any means necessary."
Wondering at the hint of desperation in Prather's voice, Luc followed him out of the trailer and into the twilight. He caught the scent of the Long Island Sound as they followed a path of trampled marsh grass to the main tent.
"You're fairly isolated out here," Luc said, wondering why Prather had chosen this relatively well-off section of the North Shore to set up. "Do you do enough business in this area?"
"Not as much as we might in a more blue-collar location," Prather said. "But we do enough. The owner rents us the land for a reasonable fee, and the truth of it is, we like the town."
"Monroe? What so special about Monroe?"
"You wouldn't understand," Prather said.
Just then a young woman came running toward them across the grass, crying, "Oz! Oz!"
She was short, thin, with a long ponytail trailing from her undersized head. Luc could see that she was crying. She grabbed Prather's hand and pulled him aside. Between sobs she whispered in a high-pitched voice, her words tumbling out so quickly Luc couldn't catch their meaning beyond something about someone named Rena being "so mean."
He watched Prather nodding as he listened, saw him pat her shoulder and murmur in a reassuring tone. She smiled, giggled, then skipped away as if she hadn't care in the world.
"What was that all about?" Luc said when Prather rejoined him.
"A domestic squabble," the tall man said. "We are a family of sorts, and every family has them."
"And you're the father they come to as mediator?"
"Some of them do. Many in the troupe are quite adept at handling their own affairs and solving their own problems. Lena and her sister Rena, however, have a mental age of about six. Their petty disagreements seem momentous to them. I play Solomon."
"Ah. I thought she looked microcephalic."
Prather nodded. "They're called 'pinheads' in the trade. Lena and her sister are known as 'the Pin Twins' under my canvas."
Luc felt a twinge of revulsion that his face must have mirrored.
"Offended, Doctor?" Prather's mouth twisted into what might have been a smile. "Exploitation of the mentally retarded… that's what you're thinking, am I right?"
"Well…" That was exactly what he'd been thinking.
"But you know nothing of their life before I found them. Lena and Rena were living in a cardboard box in Dallas, vying with rats for scraps from restaurant garbage bins, being repeatedly raped and otherwise abused whenever it suited their fellow street dwellers."
"Dear God."
"Now they live in their own trailer, they travel the country, and during the show they sing and recite nursery rhymes in close harmony for the customers who stop at their stall. And they are safe, Doctor." His deep voice took on an edge. "We watch out for each other here. No one will ever hurt them again."
Luc said nothing as Prather lifted the tent flap for him. What was there to say?
A moment later he was standing before the Sharkman cage. A pair of the vaguely canine roustabouts had one of the dark creature's arms. Luc shuddered as he realized that one of these two could have dealt Macintosh's death blow last month. Their powerful bodies seemed relaxed; they were expending little effort to hold the creature's arm steady. One of them probably would have been enough. Even the creature's stink seemed to have faded since last month.
Luc closed his eyes as the world seemed to tilt beneath his feet. This is it, he thought. The last sample. The creature is all but gone.
His fingers trembled and fumbled as he prepared his phlebotomy needle, but he managed to find the vein and fill his tubes with the black fluid. When he stepped back the roustabouts released the arm, but the creature didn't even bother to withdraw it into the cage.
Luc held up one of the tubes and tilted it back and forth. The inky fluid within sloshed around like water.
"And next month?" he said to Prather.
"I doubt very much there will be a next month for this poor creature," Prather said. "But if you want to pay a visit, just for old times' sake…"
Prather's voice faded, replaced by a vision of Milos Dragovic's rage-contorted features and his coarse voice echoing, Where is my shipment? Where is my shipment?
"I don't…" Luc's mouth had gone dry. He swallowed. "You will call me if… when it happens?"
"Yes," Prather said softly. "We will mourn our brother."
Struck by the note of genuine melancholy in Prather's tone, Luc glanced at him but saw no mockery in the big man's expression.
Feeling as if the tent were collapsing on him, Luc turned to go. He realized too late that he was leaving the back of his neck exposed to the kind of crushing blow that had killed Macintosh. He hunched his shoulders as he hurried for the exit, but no one followed him.
He allowed himself a sigh of relief when he hit the night air but did not slow his pace. No time to waste. He had to get this sample to the synthesizer immediately.
15
"Here," Milos said, patting the cushion next to his thigh. He wore a double-breasted Sulka suit, pure cashmere navy chalk over a pearl gray thirty-three-gauge worsted cashmere turtleneck. "Come sit by me. I want to share something with you."
The young model swayed toward him across the deep carpet of the living room like she was strutting a runway. He didn't know her real name. She called herself Cino—pronounced "Chee-no"—but Milos doubted that was on her birth certificate. She'd probably been born Maria Diaz or Conchita Gonzales or something like that. She'd never tell. And what did Milos care about her given name? All that mattered were the dark, dark eyes under the silky widow's veil of her bangs, the jutting cheekbones, and the jaguar-lithe body.
Milos watched her move toward him now, her slim hips swaying rhythmically within the tight black sheath she wore. He'd met her two weeks ago at a club opening and had been struck by how thin she was—downright bony. She looked better in her photos where the camera di
d her a service by adding a few pounds to her anorectic frame. Women this thin did not populate Milos's fantasies. In his dreams he preferred sturdier bodies, women with more meat on their bones, flesh he could grab and squeeze and hang onto during the ride. Someone like Cino… well, sometimes he was afraid she'd snap like a twig.
But Cino had the look everyone wanted. And if everyone wanted it, Milos Dragovic wanted it even more.
The best of everything, first class all the way—that had become his credo, the rule by which he would live the rest of his days.
The watch on his wrist, for instance: a gold, thirty-seven-jewel Breguet, considered the best watch in the world. Did it tell time better than a Timex? Hardly. Did he need to know the phases of the moon on its face? It said there was a new moon now—who cared? But people who counted would know it cost upward of thirty grand.
Did he need the fifty-inch plasma TV screen hanging like a painting on the wall of the entertainment room? He hated television. But the sort of people who'd be his guests here Sunday would see it and know it was the best screen money could by.
This house and its lot, where waves tumbled onto the beach beyond the sliding glass doors that lined the south wall of the living room, was the absolute best money could buy. But that hadn't prevented certain locals from interfering with its construction. The Ladies Village Improvement Society—he'd thought someone was putting him on, but this turned out to be a real group, with real clout—had objected to his blue tile roof. He'd paid through the nose to bypass them.
But then, he'd paid through the nose for everything connected with this place. He'd overpaid for the land, been overcharged by the contractor who built it, gang-raped up the ass by the crew of fag decorators who had been swarming through the rooms for the past few months, and to top it all off, the place squatted a hundred yards from the Atlantic Ocean, a sitting duck for the next hurricane that wandered too far north.
Milos didn't care. It was only money, and he'd always known how to make lots of money. What mattered was having the best. Because if you had the best, that meant that you recognized what was best, and people—at least people in America—equated that with class. They were all jerks as far as Milos was concerned. He didn't know a designer sofa from something from the JC Penny catalog, an antique dresser from a junk store reject, but so what? He simply hired people who did. And what was the only thing you needed to hire anyone? Money.
It all came down to money.
But sometimes money wasn't enough to impress the people who really mattered—the people inside. They demanded more than money. They wanted breeding, lineage, class, celebrity—take your pick. Some computer geek could start a company, sell it for a hundred million a few years later, but he'd still be a geek. He'd still be an outsider. Milos had always been an outsider, but now he was working his way in. It took work, it took smarts, but he was learning the ropes.
His reputation—some called it shady; he preferred colorful—actually worked as a plus, lending him an air of dark celebrity. That was a toehold in that other world. He found that certain insiders liked to drop his name. He played up to that. That was why he had invited Cino out for the weekend. She would be his trophy, a decoration on his arm for both parties.
But most important, she would talk when she returned to the city next week. The girls always talked. That was why everything she saw this weekend must be first class, the best. Even the sex. Cino was less than half his age but she'd developed some kinky tastes in her twenty-two years; she liked it rough—as long as she didn't end up with any bruises—and Milos was more than happy to accommodate her. She'd talk about the sex and everything else, and he needed her to describe it to her friends and acquaintances as the best. Because they would quote her in their circles and that would spread to other circles and soon all the insiders would know about Milos Dragovic's Memorial Day Weekend parties and wish they'd been invited… and they'd vie to be asked to his next gala.
And that vying would spill over to his club. When Belgravy opened in the fall, it would be the place to be.
Cino barely dented the cushion as she alighted next to him.
"Share what?" she said, showing perfect teeth that appeared to glow amid the smooth olive tones of her face. "A secret?"
He glanced at her. You want secrets, my dear Cino? I could tell you secrets that would send you stumbling and screaming from the room.
"No… no secrets." He gestured to the wide-based crystal decanter on the glass coffee table before them. "Just some wine."
"I don't really like red wine. Champagne's my thing. You know that."
"Of course. Your other lover. Dampierre."
"Not just Dampierre—Dampierre Cuvee de Prestige."
"Of course. And only the 1990 vintage."
"Mais oui. That's the best."
Milos wondered if it was truly the taste of her Dampierre Cuvee de Prestige 1990 she preferred or the fact that it was harder to find and twice as expensive as Dom Perignon. If it was price and rarity that turned her on, then she'd go absolutely wild for the Petrus.
"I have something even better here." He lifted the decanter and held it up to the light. "A very special red wine, a Bordeaux whose grapes were harvested long before you were born. In nineteen forty-seven."
"Nineteen forty-seven!" she said, laughing. "That's before my father was born! Is it still any good?"
"It's marvelous," Milos said. "I've been letting it breathe."
Actually, he hadn't tasted it, but anything this expensive had to be good. He hadn't poured it into the decanter either. Kim had done that.
Kim was further proof of the Milos maxim: you don't have to know shit—you simply have to hire people who do.
And Kim Soong knew damn near everything—about food, about wine, about clothes, about all sorts of important things. How a gook got to know so much was beyond Milos, but Kim had become indispensable. He had done a little dance when Milos showed him the half-case of Petrus 1947. Milos had figured it had to be pretty good stuff if Monnet had wanted it; Kim's reaction had confirmed that. Kim really knew red wines.
But Kim had said to pour this Petrus—he'd pronounced it "pet-troos" and Milos had made a note of that—directly from the bottle to a glass would be an insult to the wine. Imagine… a wine with tender feelings. It had to be candled and decanted. Milos hadn't the foggiest what the hell that meant, but he'd gone along, and soon he was watching, fascinated, as Kim slowly poured the wine into the crystal decanter while staring through the neck of the bottle at a candle flame on the other side.
And now Milos did the pouring, from the decanter into the pair of wide-mouthed tulip-shaped glasses Kim had set out. Half a glass each. He handed one to Cino, then raised his own.
'To a weekend full of surprises," he said, locking eyes with her.
"I'll drink to that," she said.
Milos took a sip and swallowed. It tasted… awful. But he let nothing show on his face. He looked at his glass.
I spent two and a half grand a bottle for this shit?
He took another sip. Not quite as bad as the first, but still awful.
He glanced at Cino who looked as if she'd just spotted a maggot in the bottom of her glass.
"Eeeeuw! This tastes like cigarette ashes!"
"Don't be silly," Milos said. "It's delicious."
Actually, she wasn't far off. It did taste like ashes.
"Blech!" Another face as she returned the offending glass to the table and pushed it as far away as she could reach. "Like sneaker soles."
"Just try a little bit more." Milos forced a third sip. Ugh. How was he going to drink the rest of this? "It's really excellent."
"Tastes like dust bunnies. Where's my Dampierre? I want my Dampierre."
"Very well."
He pressed a button built into the coffee table, sending a signal to the kitchen. Dressed in a crisp white shirt and a black vest, Kim whispered into the room a moment later and did one of his little bows.
"Yes, sir?"
"It appears the lady does not find the Petrus to her liking."
Another little bow. "Most unfortunate."
"Old holy water," Cino said.
Milos wanted to clock her. "Perhaps you would taste it, Kim, and give her your expert opinion."
Kim smiled. "Of course, sir. I would be honored."
He whisked this oversize silver spoon from his vest pocket and poured maybe half an ounce of the Petrus into it. He sniffed it, then slurped it up like hot soup—Milos never would have believed Kim could be such a slob—and rolled it around in his mouth. Finally he swallowed. His eyes rolled up in his head before he closed them. They stayed closed for a moment. When he opened them he looked like someone who'd just seen God.
"Oh, sir, it's wonderful! Absolutely magnificent!" He looked damn near ready to cry. "Nectar of the gods! Mere words cannot do it justice!"
"See," Milos said, turning to Cino. "I told you it was good."
"Laundromat lint," she said.
"Perhaps the miss's palate is not so educated as Mr. Dragovic's. It takes a certain seasoning of the tongue to fully appreciate a well-aged Bordeaux."
You just earned yourself a bonus, Kim, Milos thought. But Cino wasn't the least bit impressed.
"I appreciate Dampierre, aged all the way from 1990. When can I have some?"
"Right away, miss," Kim said, bowing and backing away. "I shall return in an instant."
Furious, Milos rose with his glass and moved away before he throttled her. Cino liked it rough? Cino might get more than she could handle tonight.
He pretended to study one of the paintings his decorators had stuck on the walls. A swirling mass of creamy pastels. What the hell did it mean? All he knew was that it was expensive.
He sipped the wine again. Did Monnet and people like him really enjoy this stuff? Or did they just pretend to?
"You really should give the wine another chance," he said. "At twenty-five hundred dollars a bottle you—"
"Twenty-five hundred dollars a bottle!" she cried. "For stuff that tastes like wet cedar shakes? I can't believe it!"
All the Rage Page 10
