by Wol-vriey
Rachel nodded. “Me neither. I’ll take care of it.” She gestured to Frank. “Watch the timer.” She disappeared from Malone’s view for a moment.
“I’m going to fucking kill both of you for this!” Malone screamed.
“We’ll kill you first,” Rachel said, reappearing. “You can’t live without a liver. And we’re eating all of yours.”
She jabbed Malone in the neck with a hypo.
He instantly felt his aggravation dissolved in the drug dissolving in his bloodstream.
Suddenly everything seemed funny again.
The timer sounded. Rachel disconnected the microwave from Malone’s belly, then raised his liver out of his body by placing a plastic stand under it.
Malone thought his liver looked funny, like a map of Australia, with the cooked part the province of New South Wales.
Rachel and Frank sat down beside Malone. Frank poured glasses of wine. The pair picked up forks and knives and tucked in.
“How’d you two become cannibals?” Malone asked, watching Rachel chew part of him.
“The food of the gods,” Frank said. “You talk too much. Please be quiet.”
Rachel swallowed. Malone watched the muscles of her throat move, ferrying his masticated meat to her stomach. “Human liver is packed full of nutrients,” she said. “It’s perfect for consumption in these dinosaur days.”
“Why not just eat dino liver?”
Frank replied: “Stupid question. Have you ever tried killing one?”
Malone smirked. “I killed the ones you set up to kill me two nights ago. Nasty trick, that.”
Frank shrugged. “You should have taken the hint and left us alone.”
“How’d you find us anyway?” Rachel asked.
“A snake told me.”
“You’re just dumb,” Rachel said. “You should have let mother pay the ransom. It’s my money, anyway.”
Malone was intrigued. “Then why steal it?”
“Because,” Frank muttered around a mouthful of liver, “her father died without leaving a will, so his money all went to her mother.” He swallowed, washed the meat down with a sip of wine.
Rachel spat. “He actually did make a will, but dragons torched his lawyer’s office—”
“—With old Rosenberg in it,” Frank added.
“—So everything went to mother. Which is fine, really, as we get along and she gives me all the money I need—”
“So why?”
Rachel looked pained. “Mother wants me to meet men, have a social life, get married, raise a family. I want none of that.”
She said this last with emphatic fierceness. Now Malone was certain: Frank had winced. Oh ho, he realized, Frank’s in love with her. He laughed inwardly, and Miss Ice Princess Nerd here clearly isn’t reciprocating his emotions.
“Okay,” Malone said. “But how come you need five million dollars to remain single?”
Rachel glowered at him. “Stop making smart cracks at my expense.” She calmed herself, forking a chunk of Malone’s liver into her mouth and chewing savagely on it. “I need the money for my . . .” she gestured to Frank, “. . . our research.”
“What research?”
“Robots.”
The coin dropped. Malone was so surprised, he forgot that Rachel Fischer and Frank were currently eating him. The humorous overtones haunting him dissolved.
“I saw the robots downstairs, and the one in the lab with its brain exposed. What the hell do you want with so many of them?”
Neither of his captors immediately replied. By now the cooked sector of Malone’s liver was all gone. Frank poured two more glasses of wine, handed one to Rachel.
They sipped and regarded Malone.
“I’m waiting,” Malone said. “What do you need two hundred New Korean robots for?”
Frank gave Rachel a questioning look.
She shrugged back. “Tell him. He won’t liver long enough to tell anyone.”
Malone winced at the pun. The pair laughed.
Frank smiled at Malone. She’s right—you won’t liver long enough to rat on us.”
“Okay, so you’re going to kill me. What’s the big secret?”
“Simple,” Frank replied. “We intend on taking over the country. The robots are our prospective army of conquest.”
Malone was stunned. Had he not been im-mobilized, one could have knocked him down with a feather.
“Conquest?”
Rachel nodded. “That’s what I needed money for—to buy more robots. And mother wouldn’t give it to me. So Frankie came up with the kidnap idea.”
CHAPTER 14
Posh
Posh waited impatiently till evening for her next shit. Then she did it, not in the toilet, but on a spread of old newspaper.
Once it was all out, she poked it with a coat hanger, separating the stinky chunks, till she found what she was after.
Ewwww, she thought.
Oswald Watkins’ cockskin really was in her shit. It looked like a flesh condom, some poop had even gotten inside it.
Posh raised the cockskin on the hanger and stared at it for a long time.
And the freak wants me to come be his old lady, she thought. And Herbie—my greedy bastard pimp—wants me to go back there.
A vision of Oswald Watkin’s skinned penis flashed before her eyes. She gagged, then puked on her excrement.
Posh packed puke and excrement up in a plastic bag, then threw the bag out of her window into the window of the almost full-grown skyscraper-beetle next door.
She sat on her bed to think.
She quickly made up her mind. I’m done with Herbie for good. All he ever thinks about is payday, not the crap I have to go through to make his money. Thank heavens, Oswald’s skin problem wasn’t contagious. I’m quitting now, before Herbie puts me into a scene where I catch something dangerous.
There was a problem however—Bulldog, Herbie’s Neanderthal brother.
Posh knew that if she just upped and walked away from Herbie, Bulldog would simply come kicking down whoever’s door she hid behind. He’d beat the shit out of that person and yank her back here.
And, oh fucking no, I’m not coming back here. When I’m gone, I’m gone for good.
She realized she needed to think her ‘escape Herbie’ plan through properly.
It had to be foolproof.
Thirty minutes of thinking brought Posh no solution. She decided to visit a bar for liquid inspiration.
She grabbed her purse and set off for Winthrop Square.
***
Jade Cure was sipping a Martini in Tony Motta’s bar when Posh walked in. The pair knew each other from high school. They weren’t friends, but most of their friends were dead anyway. Acquaintances were the new friends.
Their eyes met. Jade waved Posh over.
They kissed cheeks.
“What’ll you have?” Jade asked.
Posh eyed her Martini. “Same as you.”
Jade signaled over a waiter and placed the order.
“Been ages,” she said after.
“Yeah,” Posh replied. Though pleased to see Jade, the weight of her current worries dulled her enthusiasm.
Jade heard the stress in her voice. “You alright?”
Posh forced a smile. “More or less. Life is shit anyway, right?”
Jade raised an eyebrow. “Shit? Girl, I heard you’d moved up in the world.”
“I’m about moving down and out,” Posh said.
Her drink came then. Both young women were silent as Posh paid the waiter.
Posh decided to tell Jade her problem. “I’m in big trouble,” she said miserably.
“What sort of trouble?” Jade asked Posh.
“I need to quit my pimp. But if I do, then his asshole brother is going to kill me.”
Jade was shocked. “Girl, that’s fucked up.”
Posh nodded. She explained her plight in detail.
***
“I know someone who can help you,” Jad
e said when she was done. Around them, bar chatter ebbed and waned.
Posh stared gloomily into her drink. “Forget it, the guy would just get killed. Even bulldogs are scared of Bulldog. Herbie’s a spineless punk—even I can kick his ass—but Bulldog . . .”
“Trust me,” Jade said. “This guy, Malone, will eat your bulldog for lunch.”
Posh looked up from her glass. “For real? I mean Bulldog’s a fucking monster.”
Jade laughed. “So what’s new?” She indicated Posh’s glass: “Want another?”
Posh searched the Chinese girl’s face for sign she was joking. But no, Jade seemed serious. Posh dared to believe she could swing her escape.
She waved away Jade’s suggestion of a drink. “Not yet. Let me hear about this Malone. He sounds too good to be true. What is he? Ex-SWAT, ex-Marine?”
Jade shook her head. “Neither; that’s the odd thing. He’s a shamus, but Ma says he only took that up when life burnt down and he needed a job. Used to be a pencil pusher. From what Ma told me, he set up his detective agency because people kept saying they needed someone to locate their missing people.”
Posh nodded. “Okay, so the guy’s a badass—tough as rocks.”
Jade shook her head emphatically. “Nope, he’s smarter than he’s tough. He’s fast, but brains are his main advantage. Now, to your problem. Ma says—”
“How’s your mum know so much about this guy anyway? They lovers?”
Jade winced. “I forget that you’re a hooker. Sex is the only thing on your sleazy mind. Posh, my mother is two hundred years old. Malone is thirty-six . . . I think.”
Posh was shocked. “Two hundred?”
Jade made a face. “Look, you want to hear about this or not? I remember you saying just now that your ass is on its way to getting killed.”
Posh raised her hands in apology. “Sorry, I got carried away.”
Jade finished her drink. “Now, how I know Malone can help you is this story my mother told me about what he did for her . . .
Uncle Lee’s Golem: Part 1
“Do you know what a golem is?”
Posh wrinkled her nose and brow a bit. “That’s like robots, right?”
Jade nodded. “Yeah, only they’re made of meat. They’re supernatural shit, magic.”
Posh remembered that Jade’s mother was some sort of Chinese witch. “Okay, I get you. You’re saying your Ma made one of these golems?”
Jade shook her head. “No, not her. It was her brother, my Uncle Cheung Lee, who did.” She laughed and signaled the waiter over again. “Look, let’s have some more drinks.”
When the waiter had departed with their orders, Jade continued. “Now you need to understand something.” She peered intently at Posh, her slanted eyes mere slits. “Haven’t you ever wondered why dragons never trouble Chinatown?”
Posh still wondered about that. “I always assumed they didn’t like the taste of Asian meat.”
Jade smirked. “You’re close. But they eat the Japanese and Koreans don’t they? But not us. It’s because they’re allergic to us. No, not in the usual sense, they won’t drop dead after eating us, but, legend says that long ago in our history when both races were few in number, Chinese and dragon folk made a pact to help and protect each other.”
Posh shook her head. “But that’s ridiculous.”
Jade smiled superiorly. “Not if you’re Chinese. The point I’m making is they don’t attack us; not even if they’re dead.”
Posh gaped at the last statement.
The waiter placed fresh Martinis before them.
Posh took a sip of hers, then asked the obvious question: “How the hell can a dragon attack you if it’s dead?”
“I’m coming to that,” Jade said. “It’s easy. They can be made into golems.” She shrugged. “You reshape dead dragon meat into human shape and animate it with magic. The problem with that is—the golem, being made from dragon meat, won’t attack a Chinese.”
Posh nodded. “Okay, I’ve got that, but I’m still confused.”
“You won’t be much longer. That’s just background. Remember I mentioned that my uncle Cheung Lee made a golem?”
“Yeah?”
“Okay, time to tell you why he made it.” She looked around the bar, regarded the asses of a pair of guys shooting pool for a moment.
She turned her attention back to Posh. “We’ve a magical heirloom in our family. It’s a frozen goddess—a half woman, half snake statue.”
“Magical?” Posh was growing skeptical with all this talk of the supernatural.
Jade nodded. “Oh yeah, it’s magical all right. You wouldn’t believe the stuff it does. The problem is, everyone in our family wants it. My Ma has it by right, being the eldest, but that doesn’t stop her sisters and brothers scheming to steal it away from her.”
She laughed. “Ma’s always been a step ahead of them though. That was, until Uncle Lee came up with his idea of making a golem.”
Posh thought a bit. “I don’t see how that would be difficult to deal with. You just said the monster wouldn’t attack anyone Chinese.”
Jade laughed out loud, causing some bar patrons to glance their way. “Oh, but he didn’t make it of dragon meat,” she said, flicking her hair away from her face. “He made it from dinosaur meat.”
She laughed again at Posh’s surprise. “That’s right. Uncle Lee camouflaged the golem so it looked like it was made of dragon meat, but it wasn’t. I was out when it attacked our home. According to Ma, she kept invoking the old human/dragon truce spells, but none of them worked. The meat machine knocked her aside, picked up the statue and made off with it.”
“Wow.”
“‘Wow’ is right. Ma said she chased after it with another family heirloom ‘The Dead God’s Sword,’ which cuts through just about anything. No matter how hard she slashed the golem however, the sword made no impression on it. It just knocked her down again, this time knocking her out cold. She woke with a banging headache.”
Jade stopped talking on catching the eye of one of the pool players. Handsome, blond hair, with a short mustache. He grinned back at her, then surreptitiously tapped his partner’s ass and winked.
Jade immediately got the point. “Wow,” she groaned. “What a waste of dick.”
“Huh?”
She remembered she was talking to Posh. “Oh nothing, just thinking aloud, about Richard, a guy I once knew who was playing on the wrong football team.”
Posh looked confused.
Jade smiled. “Now where was I? Okay, Now Ma knew immediately that Uncle Lee had stolen the statue. She confronted him and he didn’t deny it. She even saw the golem there.”
She sipped her drink. “Ma’s a small woman, but a hardheaded one. She raised a fuss. Uncle Lee had the golem remove her from the premises. It didn’t harm her,—apparently he’d told it not to, he was her brother after all—just lifted her up like a kid and dropped outside the gate in front of passersby. Ma was so mad and embarrassed, she burst into tears.”
Posh giggled. “I’d be mad and embarrassed too.”
Jade nodded. “Now, Ma doesn’t want to give up, but she’s got no choice—she has no idea how to build her own golem from dinosaur meat, see? Then someone recommended Malone to her.”
She paused. “Go on,” Posh prompted.
“Ma says she was unimpressed when she met Malone, but his office had a sign outside saying it would take on any job, no matter how weird. So she told him her problem. He told her not to worry and asked her where Uncle Lee’s place was. She takes him there, he goes inside. There’s the sound of loud crashing and banging, and ten minutes later Malone comes out with the Snake Lady statue.”
“Wow!” Posh was impressed. “How the fuck did he do that?”
“How else? He fought the golem and defeated it. When people entered the house later, they found bits of the creature everywhere.”
Jade’s face became solemn. “Unfortunately, Uncle Lee died during the battle too—the golem turned o
n him before it expired.”
She smiled coldly. “Now to the point of my tale. After that, news got around, not just in Chinatown, but the rest of Boston as well—you don’t mess with Malone.” She stared pointedly at Posh: “You get my point here?”
Posh nodded. “I think so.”
Jade pushed her point. “You hook your ass up with Malone, neither your pimp nor his doggy brother gonna DARE bother your ass ever after.”
“Hmmm,” Posh said. “The question is, how?”
Jade looked at her in surprise. “Girl, you’re a hooker, aren’t you? How fucking else?”
Posh rolled her eyes. “You know where I can find him now?”
“Come home with me. Ma will have his address. He was at our place yesterday. Some rich heiress kidnapping case he’s working on. He should be back home by now.”
Posh nodded. They got up.
“Hold on a minute,” Jade said.
Posh waited while Jade sashayed over to the bar and chatted up the bartender, a handsome dark Brazilian.
She came back beaming. “Romantic life’s looking up,” she said. “Got a date with Mario at eight to-morrow night!”
They left the bar together and headed for China-town Park.
***
Posh pulled up at Malone’s house at a quarter to midnight.
In addition to taking Herbie’s pimpmobile, she’d also taken three-quarters of the money he kept in his shoebox ‘safe.’ She’d earned it after all. She’d drop the car off later somewhere where he’d find it easy.
All her belongings were in the trunk. There wasn’t much: Some clothes and shoes, cosmetics, and a photo album.
Leaving had been easy. It was Friday night—Herbie was out partying with friends. She’d had excused herself from the revelry, claiming period cramps.
Posh sat in the darkened Lincoln for a long time, gazing at the bungalow with its faded ‘Bud Malone: PRIVATE INVESTIGATOR’ sign.
So this is the place. It struck her as odd that her potential savior would reside in such a nondescript, inconsequential building.
While driving over, she’d changed her mind on one detail: She wasn’t going to try and seduce Malone into helping her. Oh, no. If this guy was as badass as Jade said, he was certain to have loads of women.
