by Chris Mooney
What wasn’t normal—what made Sebastian’s eyes widen with shock and awe—was just how different the Ferreria kid looked now. Not only was the man up and walking—a miracle in and of itself—but the wounds covering nearly every inch of his skin in the photos were either completely healed or on their way to being fully healed.
On top of that, nearly all his excess fat was gone. The kid wasn’t going to be a bathing suit model, but he might have been twenty pounds away from it.
Sebastian snapped his attention back to Maya and said, “This is after one pint?”
“Half a pint, and seventy-two hours.”
Sebastian wanted to call bullshit. To achieve Pandora’s optimum benefits, a client would have to be given a full-body transfusion and then wait at least two weeks for it to work its magic. After that much blood and that much time, you might see an amazing transformation take place: wrinkles reduced, skin tightened, everything firmed up.
But this, what he was seeing right here, right now . . . it couldn’t be possible. The man looked like an entirely different person. Like he hadn’t been beaten nearly to death.
“Vitals?” Sebastian asked as he watched Sixto run the towel across his hair.
“His blood pressure is a bit higher than I’d like, but blood pressure usually spikes after a transfusion, because of the stress the body is put under. Again, that’s normal. He may experience some mild flu-like symptoms in the days to come. We’ll see.”
“And his heart?” Heart attacks were always the biggest risk factor in carrier transfusions, the new blood putting the heart under strain.
“Normal,” Maya said. “I performed an EKG, just to be sure. No complaints of heart palpitations or dyspnea—breathlessness—and no loss of consciousness or reported dizziness.”
Sebastian couldn’t keep his eyes off of Sixto.
“That is goddamn remarkable.”
“That’s one word for it.” Maya didn’t hide her disgust. Sebastian had filled her in on Paul’s business plan of abducting female carriers and raping them until they were pregnant. He had also given her the pills Paul was crudely manufacturing.
“Paul was right,” Sebastian said, and turned to her. His throat felt unusually dry, and his heart was tripping inside his chest the way it had at night years ago, after he’d had too much Scotch, like it was pumping sludge instead of blood. “Pregnancy blood is much more potent.” Then, as an afterthought: “It will put us out of business.”
She looked at him sharply. “I will have no part in allowing current or future female carriers to be—”
“I wasn’t suggesting that. Jesus, Maya.”
“If he goes through with this, gets this stuff to market . . .” She didn’t finish the thought. She shook her head and rested a hand on her throat as she swallowed, and when she turned away, facing the window, she suddenly looked old to him, as if she’d aged ten years in the last ten or so minutes.
CHAPTER 22
BACK WHEN SHE worked for Anton, Ellie had always made sure she was on time. Her health depended on it. The first week she went to work for him, learning the ropes, one of his stickmen ended up being five minutes late for a meeting. The guy had a valid excuse: a flat tire. He had even taken a picture of it on his phone and had texted it to Anton. Anton nodded in understanding and then broke the guy’s nose.
Ellie was waiting for him outside of her building at ten to one when, across the busy street, she saw Anton’s black BMW, with its tinted windows, slide to a stop and double-park. The guy driving behind him had to pump the brakes a bit and voiced his displeasure by planting his hand on the horn. Ellie darted through the traffic, the guy in the Audi not letting up on the horn, and when she got into the passenger seat, Anton threw his door open, about to storm out and put the fear of God into the driver. She grabbed his arm, his bicep as hard as granite.
“It’s not worth it,” she yelled over the horn. “Come on—let’s go.”
Anton shut the door but kept his hand on the handle, his attention pinned on the rearview mirror as he debated whether or not to go out and unleash holy hell. He wasn’t dressed for it: Prada loafers without socks, and tight, dark designer jeans with an even tighter black V-neck shirt. Anton put a high regard on his clothes, doted on them like children. He wouldn’t want to get them wrinkled, let alone bloodied, which she took as a good sign.
The Audi peeled out from behind Anton and darted back into traffic. Anton stared after it, quiet, grinding his teeth. He wore a pair of mirrored Oakley sunglasses, and the skin of his face was red with anger.
Working with Anton, she had learned quickly to forecast his mood swings, which were often as chaotic and unpredictable as summertime in New England. Sometimes the storm lasted minutes, sometimes days (especially if he’d gotten a blood transfusion), replaced by gray clouds or, God willing, sunshine and clear blue skies. Whatever was eating at him, it had nothing to do with the Audi.
She knew better than to ask. Anton hated when his employees asked him personal questions of any kind. It would set him off.
Then again, Faye Simpson wasn’t his employee, not anymore. Faye Simpson now worked exclusively with Frank. Faye Simpson wouldn’t ask Anton questions, but Officer Ellie Batista would because she needed to know what Anton was after, his thoughts, his game plan, everything.
Still, she’d need to be careful. On a good day, Anton was about as stable as a live grenade.
Anton got a call. His phone was connected to the BMW’s computer system through Bluetooth, so the caller’s name was displayed on the console: Galina. Anton took it.
The woman spoke only in Russian. Anton spoke in Russian, too, and while Ellie didn’t have the slightest idea what they were talking about, she knew it wasn’t good. The woman screamed at Anton, but he didn’t scream back—didn’t do much of anything except sit there and rattle off a few Russian words, looking like he wanted to take the world’s longest vacation. The call ended ten minutes later, when Galina hung up.
“What is it with you broads?” Anton asked, throwing his hands in the air. “You act nice, treat them right, take them out to nice dinners and shit, and what do they do? They squeeze your nut sack and smile because you’re not giving them more. But if you treat them like dirt, wipe your feet all over them, shit on them, they smile and come back and ask for more. You’re all insane.”
Then, when Ellie didn’t reply, he turned his head to her and said, “What? You got nothing to say?”
“I wasn’t aware you wanted my input.”
“Let’s hear it. I need your help with this.”
“That’s a sweeping generalization, your view of women.”
“You saying I’m a liar?”
“You ever think you’re picking out the wrong kind of woman? That maybe instead of going after the ones who have brains the size of a chickpea and beach-ball-sized boobs—”
“I’m a tit guy. It’s in my DNA—I can’t help it.”
“How about finding a woman of substance? They are out there, you know.”
“Yeah, and they’re fat and collect cats.” Anton sighed.
Then, much to her surprise, he opened up to her about his problems with his girlfriend, Galina. She was Russian, Anton explained, and they had met at the wedding of a mutual friend, and after dating for eight months she thought they should move in together. Galina had become “too Americanized,” he said—had become a spoiled brat of a woman who expected to have the latest this and that, top-of-the-line cars and clothes, a beautiful home that would be the envy of her friends. Only she didn’t want to work for any of it. That was the job of a man, and she didn’t like how cheap Anton had become. She deserved the finer things in life, and if Anton couldn’t provide, then she’d find someone who could.
“I should kick her out on her ass, is what I should do,” Anton said.
“So what’s stopping you?” Ellie noticed they weren’t headin
g to Culver City. Were, in fact, heading in the opposite direction. And Anton had spent a lot of time subtly checking his rearview mirror, just a slight tilt of the head.
“She’s pregnant,” Anton said.
“Judging by your tone, I’m guessing I shouldn’t say congratulations.”
“She said she was on the pill. Told me she didn’t want kids, right? Had no interest in them. This morning she tells me, Look, you want me to keep this thing growing in my belly, then you’ve got to show me how much you love me, and that means opening up my wallet, ’cause that’s all she cares about, what makes her happy.”
Anton pulled right, into the entrance to a BMW dealership. “And if I don’t—how you say it?—pony up these things for her, she’s going to get an abortion.” He made the sign of the cross. “The woman is an animal, is what she is. I should put a bag over her head, put her out of her misery.”
“I thought we were going to lunch.”
“I’m bleeding my heart out to you here and you’re worried about lunch? That is the problem with you women, how you mess with a man’s pride. You take that away from a man and he can’t be responsible for his actions. Don’t matter if you’re a woman or man, the person who screws with your pride or tries to steal it, and you put up with that? A man without pride is not a man. He’s a pizda.”
“A what?”
“Forget it.” Anton drove behind the dealership. “I got to pick up a part for my car. It’ll take five, ten minutes tops. Can your little stomach wait that long, or are you going to faint from hunger?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You sure? I can get you a snack from a vending machine or some shit, tide you over.”
“I said I’m fine.” Ellie’s head ached. She’d forgotten what it was like to talk to him, trying to follow his thoughts, his violent mood swings. She wondered if he’d had a blood transfusion. She didn’t see any marks on his arms.
The back of the dealership contained a warehouse-like area where BMW cars and SUVs were serviced. Several bay doors were open. Anton surveyed them for a moment, then headed toward the one on the far right, Ellie’s gut instincts telling her something was up even before Anton picked up a small folded piece of paper from the console and handed it to her. It read:
Leave purse & phone in car. no questions.
Ellie stared at Anton’s block-lettered handwriting, thinking: He’s afraid my phone is bugged, my movements being tracked. And he would be right.
Ellie still had the piece of paper in her hands when he drove into the bay. The door began to slide down, a big, clanking sound that rattled inside her skull. The bay door didn’t have any windows—there were no windows in here at all, she noticed, just a long row of cars being serviced by mechanics, and she had a moment of panic, feeling like she was trapped, like she had been brought here because Anton had found out something about her, possibly her real identity, and planned to take her out.
The thought, and the accompanying feeling, she realized, was insane, and she pushed it aside. Still, the feeling wouldn’t go away, brushed against the walls of her heart when Anton turned in his seat and grabbed something that didn’t go with his tough-guy image: a Gucci backpack. He took it with him as he got out of the car. Ellie followed, leaving her purse and phone behind as instructed, and saw him walking across the bay, the mechanics ignoring him. She followed, stopped when he turned to her.
“You drive,” he said, and pointed to a silver SUV with tinted windows.
Ellie got behind the wheel. Anton tossed the backpack in the rear seat, and when he slid into the passenger seat, he programmed an address into the console’s built-in GPS system.
“When the door goes up,” he said, “start the car and drive.”
Anton adjusted his seat all the way back. He folded his hands on his stomach and said, “I need to meditate, clear my mind. No talking.”
The door went up.
Ellie drove out of the bay, heading for the highway.
* * *
* * *
They drove north on California State Route 99 for two hours in silence. Well, not total silence. When the British female voice wasn’t announcing her turn-by-turn directions, Ellie listened to Anton snoring softly beside her.
The address Anton had plugged into the GPS was in Fresno.
What would bring Anton all the way out here, two hundred plus miles from LA?
Clearly Anton was afraid of being followed, which was why he had switched vehicles at the dealership and ordered her to leave her phone in his car. Clearly he suspected Frank or his people might be tailing him. Ellie was more concerned about her people.
Roland used her phone’s cell signal to track her movements. His people, Roland had told her, were watching her at pretty much all times, but they didn’t get too close, as they didn’t want Anton, Frank, or anyone else to get even the slightest whiff of being under surveillance. Ellie had no idea who Roland’s men (or women) were, because Roland wanted her to act natural and focus on her job, not spotting a familiar face and risking Anton or someone else she was working with picking up on it. The phone was the device that allowed the task force members working surveillance to hang back, and her phone was in LA. Had Roland’s people found out they had been duped? Probably Frank’s people, too, if they had been following Anton.
One thing was clear: there was a good chance she was on her own.
The uptight British GPS lady stiffly announced their destination was a mile ahead, on the right. Anton stirred awake. He sat up abruptly, and for some reason it reminded her of an old black-and-white horror movie she had seen a long time ago, when she was a kid—Dracula sitting up in his coffin, wide-awake and ready to feed on blood.
Where, exactly, are we going? Ellie wondered. Not a residential area—that was for sure. So far, the only things she’d seen on this long street were of the commercial variety: strip malls, big-box stores, and a couple of gas stations.
The address was for an expansive mall-like parking lot. It didn’t belong to a shopping mall but to an old Toyota manufacturing plant. She’d caught the sign in the front, long since faded by the sun and neglect, a couple letters missing.
“Drive around to the back,” Anton said, yawning.
“I think it’s time you tell me what I’m walking into.”
“You’re not walking into anything. You’re going to stay in the car.” There wasn’t a trace of anxiety in his voice—or on his face, for that matter. He yawned again, his jaw popping. She could see his eyes blinking behind his sunglasses. “And stay frosty, okay? Eyes and ears, eyes and ears—especially on your six. You don’t want anyone to smoke check you.”
It annoyed the shit out of her when he spoke in military slang, as if he had been a real soldier instead of a thug who did blood, shot ’roids into an ass cheek, shopped at Barneys, and had a five-thousand-dollar espresso machine in his condo. The tough-guy talk sounded like it had been plucked from video games and bad movies; still, he did have the ability to back up the tough-guy talk, because Anton was tough—ferociously so. She had seen him in action several times, with her own eyes.
They were in the back of the building now. She saw a bunch of gray-and-brown interconnected buildings, all the street-level windows gone, replaced by wood boards spray-painted with graffiti, like the rest of the plant.
“See that wide-open bay up there?” Anton said, pointing out the windshield. “Park in front of it.”
Ellie had to drive around oil barrels, shopping carts, and more than a few soiled mattresses scattered haphazardly on the ground. “How many people are you meeting?”
“That remains to be seen.” Anton snorted and leaned forward in his seat, scanning the area. “There’s a Glock in my backpack. Keep it handy but not out in the open. Put it in this side compartment here, or under the seat.”
Ellie’s back was slick with sweat.
“You
ever fire a gun?” Anton asked.
Ellie Batista had, but not Faye Simpson. “Held a couple but never fired one.”
“You point and pull the trigger—that’s it.” She could feel his gaze on the side of her face. “Relax, will you? This is just for your protection, in case this shit goes sideways. I don’t think it will, but like you Americans say, it’s better to be prepared than to get caught with your dick flapping in the wind—am I right?”
“I don’t even know what this situation is.”
“Stop right here.”
The floor inside the bay was concrete. It was stained by decades of rust and grease. The afternoon sun lit up a good amount of the space directly in front of her, and she saw part of what appeared to be an assembly line, robotic arms of different shapes and sizes frozen in midair and stiff with rust, practically all the paint in there having fallen off. Ellie shoved the gearshift into park and left the engine running.
“Don’t forget the nine,” Anton said, and then got out.
Ellie turned in her seat and grabbed the backpack. It was a basic thing, more stylish than practical. It had a pair of outside leather flaps with snap buttons, and inside the flaps she found vials of both steroids and human growth hormone (no big surprise there), and packs of Dentyne gum guaranteed to keep your breath fresh for hours.
In the main compartment, she saw a bunch of burner phones, a leather journal of some sort, and a thick manila folder. She hunted for the Glock, finally found it buried at the bottom—a Glock 19. The backpack went onto the passenger seat, in case she needed to use one of the burners, and then she cracked open his window and hers so she could hear, and watched as Anton made his way inside the abandoned plant.
He stopped thirty or so feet away from the entrance, then abruptly turned right, stuck his fingers in his mouth, and whistled. From somewhere inside the plant she thought she heard a car engine start. Anton didn’t wait around; he walked back to the Beemer, but he didn’t get inside. He leaned against the hood, directly in front of her, and folded his arms across his chest.
