by PJ Manney
Skirt hiked around her waist, he groped along the counter and grabbed a carving knife, gently sliding, teasing the blade between the silky fabric of her panties and her skin. She stilled her movements, enjoying the game. After a sufficient tease, he sliced one side open. Then the other. The fabric fluttered down her legs to the floor, and his hand replaced it, his fingers probing, caressing.
He wanted to savor her every way, with every sense. Blindness had its advantages. Eyes closed, he became deeply aware of his other senses—and her effects on them.
Her breath quickened, deepened, her hands moved from her shirt to his. It slid off his body and disappeared into the oblivion of blindness. She unzipped his fly and released him, stroking his length.
His teeth dug into her salty, velvet neck. She roared in response. But he didn’t relent, teasing the line between pleasure and pain. She dipped her head and returned the favor, biting his neck a little too hard. The pain brought his brain up for air.
“Why do I scare you?” he repeated.
Her nails raked his balls, his cock.
He forgot the question.
A mental map formed in his mind, embedding in the Hippo 2.0. The mountains of her breasts here, the valley of her navel there. The smooth, undulating ridge of her backbone. The smell of her cleavage. The different smell of her cleft. With each place he touched, a different sound came from her throat: gasps, squeals, gurgles, moans, sighs. Each region had special characteristics, held separate fascinations. He was an explorer again, charting a new world. He missed exploration more than he realized.
Blindly kneeling before her, he lifted her up against the door, throwing a thigh over each shoulder so she sat on them. His hands clutching her ass, he buried his face between her thighs, his mouth consuming her. She grabbed the countertop for balance. He heard no songs in his head during their lovemaking. Her rhythmic moans were his only accompaniment. It was a rousing melody.
So much hard-won sensation flooding his brain he never wanted to forget. Where was his processor when he needed it?
“Keep your eyes closed,” she said. She slithered off his shoulders. He heard the sound of a zipper, the whoosh of fabric, the thud of pumps kicked to the floor. “Okay, blind man. Open.”
Eyes wide, he caught his breath. She was nude. Gloriously lush, Vargas pinup unreal.
She fell upon his remaining clothes. In moments, they were gone.
Tongues twined, her arms reached over his shoulders, raking his back. One leg wrapped around his waist. He cradled her ass, and when he lifted her, she wrapped the other. He turned them around and laid her against the wall. After teasing her mercilessly until she begged, he slid inside, slippery tight, divine.
They rocked and rolled against the wall for minutes, hours, he didn’t know. Memory was gone. Only this remained, here and now, no past, no future. A constant present of mutual and overwhelming sensation, unable to stop and, he prayed, never ending. Only when he came did he fathom the depths of oblivion he’d sought for so long.
Spent, he leaned heavy against her, a tangle of limbs and hair, a slick of sweat, saliva, juices. As he surfaced, he hummed a melody he’d never heard until that moment, and his fingers danced and plucked at her red ringlets like guitar strings. When the song was over, he pressed his forehead against hers. Nose to nose. Sharing deep breaths. Her eyes were closed again.
“Why do I scare you?” he asked.
She shivered, sleepily. “It’s cold.”
After a minute of silence, the dam broke deep within her eyes, and the water came. In torrents. He kissed her cheeks and rocked her. Green contact lenses floated out on the tide, settling on his chest, and with a start, he saw her real eye color for the first time. It was a deep, rich brown. The same eye color she and the ophthalmologist had chosen for him.
It was cold, and his muscles grew stiff. He scooped her up and carried her to bed. Tucking her in, he crawled in, wrapping himself around her. The tears hadn’t stopped. He knew once they did, he’d have an answer, but perhaps not the answer.
After another quarter hour, her voice, ragged, mumbled into her pillow, “I can’t lose you . . . They killed him, but it was me . . . my fault. Oh God, I loved him so much . . . and . . . I . . .” She bit off the rest.
Smartest guy in the room, and he didn’t know shit.
If what she didn’t say was true.
CHAPTER FORTY-NINE
He held his breath and listened.
“I know what feeling responsible for your father’s death is like,” she said. “I didn’t shoot him, but he died because of me. And the club. I was sick when the nurse told me about your father. I’ve been there . . . I am there.”
She rolled on her back and stared at nothing. He watched her profile in the darkening apartment.
“He was in Somoza’s cabinet in Nicaragua, and he fled when Somoza was assassinated and the Sandinistas took power. He had legitimate businesses here, but he also raised money for the Fuerza Democrática Nicaragüense: contras. He invented a faster way to make money from the cocaine smuggled through Nicaragua from Colombia. He sold a cheap alternative to expand the coke market beyond cash-flush yuppies. Freebasing it, but leaving the base in to cut it . . .”
“Crack . . .”
“Yeah. The Phoenix Club approached him and made him a deal. He joined, cut them in on the action, and from then on, the CIA helped build a trans-American crack pipeline. Within a few years, with well-established markets, he sold guns to the gangs so their turf wars drove up the street price. He had it coming and going, and the money flowed, which made the contras, the club, and the US government very happy.” She shook her head. “He thought he had every angle covered. And he did. For a long, long time. Even after Iran–Contra broke and CIA drug ties were exposed and his old network fell apart. He just built new ones. He had it all covered . . . except one little thing: me.
“He tried, he really did. Lectured me, begged me, punished me, had bodyguards tail me, tried to keep me straight every way he could. But I was so smart. By college, I was a junkie. When I got nabbed in a DEA sting and needed his fed friends to bail me out, I wanted a safer dealer. And who was safer than Daddy? When he said no, I told him I knew what he did and who he did it with. I’d met club members and CIA who came to our home. I’d figured out who were financiers, distributors, dealers, users, and I told him I’d find someone who was interested in all that information. I even figured out a little bit about the club. I told him I’d tell everyone who’d listen if he didn’t give me what I wanted. But we were bugged. The club heard it all, and they were ready to deal with the problem if Daddy couldn’t. The Nicaraguan civil war was long over, and crack had its day, but Daddy was still a cash cow, moving the business into meth and ecstasy and anything else the marketplace wanted. So they ordered a hit on me. I’m sure it was some newbie’s initiation. They set up a fake suicide. That’s another of their faves. But it was Daddy who walked into my apartment first, looking for me. I’d gone on a binge, and he was worried I aspirated vomit on the bathroom floor or something, and he was the one who walked in on the gunman. The story the DA gave the news was that I killed him, making it look like a fake suicide. When I realized what happened, I freaked. I had to get away. Instead of faking my death half-assed, I ran. My mother had stayed behind in Nicaragua during the war, with my older brother, and had a new life. She didn’t want some murdering junkie daughter on her doorstep. And Daddy left everything to me in Panamanian tax haven bank accounts I already signed on. I donated his estate to a charitable trust in Colombia and had J— Mr. Money launder it back to my new Swiss bank accounts. Then he introduced me to Dr. Who.”
“So you’re wanted for murder?”
“Yeah.”
“Where does Anthony Dulles fit? Why were you connected?”
A shudder of held breath escaped her body. “Dulles ran the contra banking operation for the CIA. Daddy and he were close. When he retired from the spooks, he ran a legit bank and still laundered drug money.”
“Of course. He was in the chain of command that authorized it. Years later, I discovered a club member offering information, and it turned out to be him. He was regretful for what he did. I think he was religious in his old age and afraid of going to hell. He confessed his role in my father’s death and swore to protect me.”
“So what side was he on?”
“His own. He didn’t like the club dictating to the country like that. He’d been a rabid anti-Communist and saw the club as increasingly antidemocratic.”
“Did he hate nano or just my tech?”
“If it’d been open to the market, he’d have been happier. For a guy with a finger in every black-market pie, he was a big free marketeer . . . But he was afraid what the club might do with it and paid pit bulls like Mankowicz to push through anti-nano legislation.”
“Was Mr. Money another of your father’s launderers?”
“Yes.”
“And your mercenaries?”
“You acquire unusual skills and contacts to do what needs to be done. It’s remarkable how many people are willing to help. And teach. Especially for a lot of money.”
“And what about Steve Carbone?”
She drew a jagged breath and turned to Tom. “We met at University of Florida. He was in med school. And he was my boyfriend. And then I had to disappear.”
“So he helped you.”
“Not at first. I was afraid I’d get him killed at worst. Ruin his career at best. So I left the country. Mr. Money found the cosmetic surgeons I needed from overseas contacts.”
“What made you think you could take on the club?”
“You wouldn’t understand . . .” she muttered.
“How can you say that?”
“No. It’s not the same. Your father didn’t come to you and say it was your duty to destroy them.”
“He came to you?”
“Well . . . yes . . . kind of . . . I know you’ll think I’m crazy . . . I was sleeping, and I had this waking dream, at least I think it was a dream, and he was standing in my room and that’s when he told me. I swear, he was as real to me as you are right now.”
“You know how Hamlet that sounds . . .”
“Maybe Shakespeare had a pissed-off dead father, too.”
Each stared at their own patch of darkness, remembering the deceased and their unfulfilled obligations.
He hoped her fear of him stemmed from a fear of intimacy and abandonment. He needed to believe that story very badly.
CHAPTER FIFTY
After she left for a Wired gig the next day, Tom looked up Talia’s father on the HOME. He researched the larger story of the cocaine–contras connection and found a photo of the man described as the mastermind, whose biographical details fit with Talia’s account. His name was Ricardo Gonzales. The bio didn’t mention the Phoenix Club or a daughter, but didn’t contradict anything Talia said, and filled in certain gaps. For a nanosecond, he wondered if he’d ever met the man. He looked so familiar. And then it hit him.
The man in the photo, with his handsome, lean, angular face, short-cropped, thick white hair, rich brown eyes and café con leche complexion was his doppelgänger.
It was the first time in his life he regretted acquiring knowledge.
Talia gave his surgeons her father’s picture to build her avatar, designed for her revenge. It was why she wouldn’t touch him for months. Or look at him during sex. But by telling him her story, she ensured he would eventually figure it out. What could that mean?
The room reeled. He staggered to the bathroom and vomited.
Desperate to clear his head and settle his stomach, he fled the apartment and hit the drizzly streets of San Francisco.
The rain felt cleansing, but the more the pretend-blind man tapped along the streets with his cane, the more he thought about Talia. Was she crazy? Would they recognize Ricardo Gonzales when Thomas Paine came knocking? Analyzing what he knew so far, one question clawed at his mind.
What else had Talia been hiding from him?
Ever since he had regained consciousness in the hospital, Tom had wanted to stalk Carter in person as soon as he was able. Talia told him he was too sick, or later, not convincing enough to pass as blind. But he was more than ready now.
He crossed the street to pick up the 43 MUNI inbound. Doing his best blind impersonation, he felt for the money slot and, stuffing his coins in, asked in the direction of the driver’s seat if they could tell him when to get off at Jackson. The driver said yes. A young man’s voice said, “There’s a couple seats to your right.” He gave thanks and found an empty seat, but not before almost sitting on someone. He felt bumps, starts, and stops as they traveled north on Masonic, then Presidio into the exclusive neighborhood of Pacific Heights.
Before he knew it, the driver said, “Jackson.” It was six blocks to the center of the northern edge of Alta Plaza Park. The only people out were either nannies, their tiny charges wrapped in blankets and cocooned in plastic-hooded strollers, or tradespeople renovating multimillion-dollar houses. His white cane and dark sunglasses made it clear what he was. No one gave him a glance.
When his cane found the park stairs, he carefully climbed, finding a bench to his right. He sat on wet slats, facing the street, not the park, focusing his hidden sight on the building directly across the street.
His vantage point and the overcast day gave a clear view through floor-to-ceiling windows into the top two stories of a three-story house. A cube of smooth gray concrete and polished steel, it was the street’s sole monument to modernity, tucked into a mishmash of unevenly renovated, century-old Italianates, Queen Annes, and Beaux Arts structures. Like its owner, the house stood in handsome reproach to those around it.
Lights were on, exposing the house like a fish tank. Carter sat at his desk on the top floor, facing the windows on the park, cheerfully absorbed in a desktop HOME screen. How could a man like that live with himself, no less look happy? Sting and the Police warbled “Every Breath You Take (I’ll be Watching You)” through Tom’s head, warning of voyeurism’s dangers, as images of death and dismemberment made a fantasy music video in his mind. Light drizzle increased to heavier rain. He had to refrain from wiping his sunglasses off.
A skinny urchin with spiky blond hair, baggy tee, and loose jeans ambled out of the bedroom. He moved with youthful, effeminate grace. Most likely picked up in the Castro for a few days’ fun, only to be sent packing with a nice fat paycheck, so Carter never had to see him again. That was the usual MO.
The screen held the older man’s attention. The boy crept slowly behind, hovering for a second, then lashed out, grabbing Carter’s neck. The older man clawed crushing hands to prevent suffocation and lurched from the chair, toppling it. A tussle ensued. Was it overenthusiastic roughhousing? Or some punk stealing the satisfaction of killing Carter from him for whatever he could load in a van? Both were tall and slender, but Carter had at least fifty pounds of muscle on the boy. And the way he fought back, it wasn’t the first time some kid had tried to roll him.
Empathy spiked adrenaline, as Tom imagined himself in the fight, and time slowed. If the kid wanted loot, he was pretty dumb. Tom would have just hit Carter on the head or slit his throat from behind, giving him no chance to fight back. He threw mental punches and kicks, like he was watching a video game.
They grappled to the window. In profile, the attacker had what looked like female breasts, but it couldn’t be. Then the boy’s face turned directly toward Tom.
It wasn’t a boy. It was a woman.
It was Amanda. Attacking Carter.
Tom leapt from the bench and slid down the wet grass to the pavement, and forgot he was blind, forgot there were steps, forgot to look both ways, running in front of an oncoming car. It honked, slammed brakes, skidding to a stop. An elderly gent behind the wheel of the big, old Lincoln was about to have a coronary, hyperventilating in confusion as a blind man ran across the street. Tom reached the
double yellow line in one piece and stood stock-still to look up. Carter pinned Amanda against the window. And kissed her. Deeply.
Raindrops paused in midair.
As slowly as a vine’s tendril curls around its support, Amanda’s arms snaked around Carter, and she kissed him back. Tom had been those lips and felt that endless kiss, tongues entwined, down to his bones’ marrow. Even as cars honked at the blind man glued to the pavement, the lovers didn’t notice.
Was this a dream? Was he having a stroke? Had his pain and longing finally caused a psychotic break with reality, a release of subconscious fears? He pinched the back of his hand. It hurt.
If real, Tom didn’t know what stunned him more. That Amanda was alive and in love with Carter. Or that Carter was in love with her. Given his love and trust in his wife and his best friend’s homosexuality, how was this possible? The idea of Amanda and Carter . . . in love . . . and conspiring against him . . . blew his tenuous reality away.
Any crazy thing could now be possible. How long had their affair been going on? Could Amanda have been a part of the plot against him all along?
Her voice rang in his head. “We needed his help and that was the payment.” Maybe Prometheus was only the deposit. This was the balance.
Every troubled moment of his marriage’s last two years tormented him. Had she planned the miscarriage to unbalance him? Maybe she didn’t want his child, since she and Carter had a plan to be together . . . But from when? Had the baby even been his? His head flooded with so many memories, it hurt. Could Carter have introduced Amanda to him as the beginning of the setup? Was that insane thought actually possible?
If so, she deserved her comeuppance more than Carter. Her betrayal was worse than if she died. He wished he had a rifle. He would have shot them both, right through the glass, then and there. Sting warbled in defiance, lonely, crying . . .
Tom would have crushed his head between his hands if it would quiet the taunting music, but it played regardless.
