Nightlife

by Brian Hodge

  The Lincoln stopped at the front gate, overseen by two guards in suits. No problems, he was expected. The steel latticework gate swung open at the middle, and they were in.

  Agualar’s drive was heavily tree-lined, a curving affair designed to prevent a straight open view of his house from the gate and street. That passion for privacy. Tony compared the layout from the map with the real thing as the Lincoln rolled in. One camera on the drive from up at the gate. Gradual curve to the left, then a straightaway toward the house. One more camera mounted near the house to cover the straightaway. Tony called the overhead diagram to mind — angles, curves, areas of visible coverage. On the inside of the curve, there should be a crescent of roughly fifteen feet that was pure blind spot. Covered by neither camera.

  He had just pinpointed Agualar’s Achilles heel.

  Lupo parked on an asphalt oval before the house, and they were admitted by a goon who was Lupo’s equal in size. Must have had his suits custom tailored. Tony and Lupo submitted to the indignity of a quick frisk and had had the foresight to leave weapons in the car. Tony wondered if, in their absence, guards would emerge from hiding to search the car. Depended on how paranoid Agualar was today. Cocaine could bring it on, make you fear enemies that weren’t there. And on the bright side, fuck up with enemies that were.

  Even if the car was searched, they wouldn’t find anything to worry them. Lupo’s MAC-10 and straight razor, a Browning automatic Tony often carried. No heavy firepower, just tools of the trade. Just those…

  And a five-foot coil of nylon rope in the glove compartment. Innocent enough. Just rope.

  “You can wait here,” the doorman told Lupo, and his voice was a rumbling bass from a tomb.

  Tony nodded to Lupo, let yet another guy who materialized lead him deeper into the house. How Agualar kept them all straight Tony didn’t know. Guys all looked alike — short hair and suits, most of them looking to have steroid dependencies.

  Whatever you could say about Agualar — greedy, a stubby obese pig of a man, paranoid — he lived in fine style. Tony was led from the entry hail through a large arched portal. Past an open, airy sprawl looking up two stories to the ceiling. A curving balcony ran along one wall, and the first floor was built on two different levels linked here and there by four-step stairways. The walls and balcony and its railing were eggshell, the carpet and walkway tile were pale gray. Most of the furniture was a darker, gray, and in one corner sat a gleaming white Bosendorfer grand piano.

  Style. What a waste, considering the owner.

  The aide led Tony into a branching hallway, down to one end, and stopped before a closed door. He rapped twice. “Come,” said a voice from the other side.

  The aide poked his head in. “Tony Mendoza. Still wanna see him?”

  “Yeah.”

  The aide fell behind Tony as they entered Agualar’s den. More eggshell and grays, even a smooth gray desk made of some plastic polymer. The wall behind Agualar held huge windows of thick cubes of translucent glass, now shiny black with the new-fallen night.

  Another wall held a seven-foot tarpon, mounted. Those fish were fighters like Tyson was a boxer. Tony had heard Agualar’s version of the catch, also knew the real story. The fishing charter in the gulf where Agualar had hooked it and then let one of his steroid monsters wrestle the thing all afternoon, until it had about two minutes of fight left inside those silver scales. He’d pulled it on board and posed for pictures like he was sweating testosterone. Just looking at the thing made Tony want to vomit.

  “You want me to stay?” asked the aide.

  Agualar gave a curt shake of his cannonball head. “Outside the door.”

  Tony heard the door latch behind him, waited for Agualar to tell him to sit. Fat bastard. Still, best to keep on his good side at this crucial stage. Tony fought the urge to laugh. In the man’s presence, he felt especially dark and sleek in black slacks, black shirt. Agualar, on the other hand, was taking this Hefner crap too far. Sitting behind his desk in silk pajamas. All he needed was a pipe.

  At least Hef managed to project something of the debonair. Agualar looked more like a child molester. Sawed-off porker with thick fingers and lips, a hairline receded back to the crown of his head. He grew it long on one side, combed it over the sweaty gleaming dome, thought no one noticed.

  “Go on, go on, take a load off.” He jabbed one thick finger at the chairs before his desk.

  Tony sat while Agualar studied him with beady pig eyes. Tony noticed white flecks beneath his nose. Still dipping into his stockpile too much for his own good.

  Achilles heel number two.

  “Thank you for seeing me,” Tony said, smooth as butter.

  Agualar sniffed. “I figured, if nothing else, it might be good for a laugh. I’m not used to guys way down in your little sewer wanting a meet. I hear, hey, he’s asking around to my guys about a meet, what the fuck does he want?”

  Tony smiled. Harvard M.B.A., a real charmer. “I have a present. A token of appreciation.”

  Suspicion and delight filled the man’s eyes in equal measures. Schizoid. Tony reached into a shirt pocket and withdrew a clear glass vial, set it on his desk, then folded his hands.

  Agualar frowned. Checked the light. Bent in closer to peer at the thing. “What the hell?” He picked it up, turned it this way and that.

  “Pretty, isn’t it?” Tony said. “You act like you never saw the stuff before.”

  “Don’t be a dickbrain. Where did you get this? And what the hell is it?”

  Tony feigned the look of a man suspecting he had heard a joke and wasn’t sure it was funny. “Are you serious? You were supposed to know all about this a few weeks ago.”

  Agualar stared at the vial, then popped it down onto the desktop. Drummed his fist beside it for a moment. Hurriedly reached into a desk drawer and pulled out a nickel-plated revolver, ivory grips with scrimshaw inlay. Tony didn’t bat an eyelash as Agualar waved the gun at him.

  “Yeah? Yeah? Well, I don’t.” Fat man was sweating more, his nose twitchy as a rabbit’s. “Why don’t you educate me.”

  Placatingly, Tony spread his hands. Kept his voice soft, hypnotically smooth. Here sits a reasonable man. “I got six keys of that a few weeks ago. Directly from Luis Escobar.”

  Agualar perked up further at Escobar’s name. His death early last week had been big news statewide, although everybody on both sides of the law still seemed to be scratching their heads over it. His bookend bimbos hadn’t been much help in figuring it out. A wet man with golden brown skin and black hair — that was all they could agree on. Great, detain Latin America for questioning. A real pro job, though, and the hitter had a twisted passion for novel ways of whacking people. Some rival importer’s doing, no doubt. Competition for Escobar’s throne had been a hard, fast, and bloody scramble. Dade County was in definite turmoil.

  “Escobar said you weren’t interested in handling this stuff. Skullflush, it’s called.” Tony shrugged. “I know, I know, I thought it was screwy myself. But what, I’m gonna call him a liar?”

  Agualar’s jaw was clenched as he stared at his desktop. He began spinning the revolver’s cylinder while shaking his head. “That dead fuck, Escobar. That dead fuck. Didn’t say dick to me about this, didn’t say dick!”

  “My source for it has dried up,” Tony continued, “and so naturally I turn to you. I was hoping to find someone with longer arms than I’ve got, help keep my customers happy.”

  Agualar was nodding, sweat glazing his skull, beading over his upper lip to make a watery paste of the residual coke smeared there. From another drawer he pulled a larger vial of his own and a tiny gold spoon. He loaded each nostril twice and shut his eyes and groaned. Rolled his eyes open again. Watery, bleary, bloodshot.

  “I’ll check into this,” he said.

  “At least I brought you a token taste.” Tony nodded toward the vial of green. “Enjoy.”

  Agualar’s eyes narrowed. Ever suspicious, poisoners in my midst. “You first.”
/>
  “You know I never touch the stuff.”

  “Make an exception.”

  Tony had fully expected this. He held out his hand for, and received, the gold spoon. Snorted a load into each nostril and shuddered distastefully for image’s sake. His mind was momentarily swimming by the time he recapped the vial. The dosage hadn’t been enough to bring on the change, just a heady light show.

  Agualar nodded, nonplussed. “I’ll see what I can do.”

  “Careful with that stuff. Very pure — it’s uncut.” He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Packs a punch at first, but worth it, I suppose.” He paused. “If you’re into that sort of thing. Not my cup of tea, personally.”

  Agualar sniggered wetly.

  “My gratitude,” said Tony.

  “Andy? Andy!” Agualar bellowed, and the guy outside the door reappeared. “See Tony out. And leave me the fuck alone tonight. Anybody bothers me, I’ll have his balls for paperweights.”

  Tony bade the pig good night and dutifully fell in step with Andy as they retraced their steps. He would have given anything to read Agualar’s thoughts right now, seeds of panic sprouting in the muddle of his mind. Groping for reasons as to why Escobar had shut him out on skullflush distribution. He had to be wondering if he was ready to be set up for the high and mighty plunge because of his own addictions. So the Medellín cartel had dealt with one of its own, Carlos Lehder. Set him up for capture when his head got too full. Quickly extradited, and now doing life in a U.S. federal prison.

  Things would surely look bleak to Agualar, at the moment. And no better way to perk up sagging spirits than chemically. With whatever happened to be at hand.

  Tony collected Lupo at the door, and they were ushered out. Night was now total. They got into the Lincoln, Lupo fired the ignition, and they were slowly rolling to loop around and head back out the drive.

  “Did he buy it?” Lupo asked.

  “Oh yeah.” Tony laughed, going for the rope in the glove compartment. “I bet his shorts are full of bricks by now.”

  He’d already tied one end of the nylon rope into a tight loop, which he slipped over the handle of the passenger door. Fed the other end into Lupo’s right hand. Should be just enough slack.

  Their headlights cut twin cones of brightness through the drive, already dimly lit by a gauntlet of small sodium globes. All the better for the cameras. Lupo kept the speed down, a steady six miles per hour. As they neared the curve, he hung as far inside as he could without it looking overdone.

  Tony unlatched the door, held it ready. Before leaving the penthouse this evening, he had taped the little button down to prevent the inner light from winking on and the buzzer from going off.

  Into the curve…

  Into the blind spot…

  “Banzai,” said Tony, and pushed the door open far enough to slip out and tumble to the ground beside the asphalt. While Lupo gave a yank on the rope to swing the door shut again. Its clunk was inaudible over the engine. No way could the pair of guards at the gate have heard.

  Just as surely as they would never know that only one man now sat behind the mirrored windows.

  Tony hung in beside the trees while the Lincoln continued its slow, steady trek to the gate. Saw the glow of the brake lights, heard the opening, then the closing, of the gate.

  Alone, then, with the night and shadows.

  According to Santos, the bulk of Agualar’s closed-circuit cameras on the grounds were mounted to keep watch on the walls. The house was covered as well, but less thoroughly, mostly the entrances and ground-floor windows. Couldn’t have too many cameras going at once, or the guys on monitor duty inside could never keep track of them all.

  Tony didn’t need doors, didn’t need windows. Just shadows, and occasional ground cover. He’d committed the maps of the grounds to painstaking memory, his route and an alternate worked out in advance. And he hadn’t chosen black clothing tonight as a fashion statement.

  He took his time, worked his way back toward the house, then made a wide sweep around it. Tree by tree, shadow by shadow. In view of Agualar’s den near the back of the house, Tony could see his distorted image through the thick cubes of glass. Bloated and wavy, multiple Agualars still sitting at his desk.

  Tony crept all the way into Agualar’s hedonistic playground of gardens and pathways, deck and waterfall and pond. These too were softly lit, and beneath the night sky, both water and grounds became a dreamy tropical oasis.

  He pressed on until he came to the farthest reaches of the screen of trees, then doubled back through thick-trunked palms, ferns, palmettos, gumbo-limbos. As he neared the perfect man-made rocky bluff, the noise of the turbine-driven waterfall drowned out whatever faint rustling noises he made.

  The rocks, finally. Safety, shelter, and water.

  Tony crouched between the sinewy multiple trunks of a twisting rubber tree and the water’s edge, and there he shed his clothes. Everything went into a neat pile. He reached into a shirt pocket and pulled out another vial. Substantially larger than what he’d given Agualar.

  While bringing himself to the brink of change and beyond, he thought of the effects the drug had brought about when he and Sasha had taken it together. The meshing of mind and spirit in some higher plane of existence, the union allowing him to subjugate her will, make it bend to his own. He was born for this. The game was his to win.

  And so in the midst of artificial paradise, he became new. The remolding of his head and shoulders into a sleek, scaled bullet. The cavernous mouth rimmed with carnivore teeth. The coarse, webbed hands. Far more effective for situations like this than the old Tony could ever have been.

  The water was cool, as inviting as a silken featherbed. He slipped in and beneath its surface with barely a ripple. Free at last to swim and take full advantage of what the gifts of nature redefined had bestowed. Freshwater flowed past gills, infusing them with oxygen richer than he had ever known with lungs. No orgasm could ever have felt as intense or lasted as long.

  Within his soul, his spirit searched the inner planes for another nearby spark of life. Nothing yet. He was content to wait.

  The amount he had left with Agualar would never be enough to bring on the change, even if the man had known of it and willed it. Just enough to open his mind.

  And leave exposed its vulnerable white underbelly.

  Tony dove, he swam. He explored the bottom of the pond, its sand and rocks. He glided beneath the waterfall, heard and felt the pounding roar overhead. Farther in, behind the falls, he found a grate recessed into the rocks where water was sucked in and recycled for the spillway. He swam away, skimming the bottom…

  …and soon sensed the feathery tickle of a new window opening near his soul. The first terrifying and awe-inspiring steps down someone else’s road, illuminated by green powder.

  contact

  He stroked, he soothed frayed nerves into submission, as gentle and unobtrusive as a guardian angel. Even from out here, Tony could sense Agualar’s quickened heartbeat, then its slowing as he ministered to the fear. Nothing to be afraid of, nothing at all.

  With any luck, Agualar would think the thoughts were his and his alone. Never suspecting them of being spoon-fed.

  Soothing…

  Calm…

  Tranquil…

  Nothing but bliss, soft and loving.

  Come on in, the water’s fine.

  Tony swam in broad circles at the bottom of dark, dark water. And oh, what secrets it held.

  While above, there came footsteps. A shedding of clothes. Low groans of someone in the throes of never-ending wonder. Finally, a tremendous splash.

  Tony felt the shock waves from above, minute ripples reaching all the way down, tingling along nerve receptors across his new hide. He didn’t even need sight to pinpoint direction.

  He flashed up from the depths, jaws opening, the shark’s-tooth necklace trailing down against his chest.

  Contact.

  Hard. Fast. Bloody.

  Thrashing, f
lailing. A flurry of jaws and pyramid-shaped teeth like razors. Screams that gargled in a throat choking with water.

  Tony dragged him all the way under, no longer disgusted by the man’s bulk. Not in the least, the more the merrier. He burrowed into gushing warmth, drove the struggling body into the rocks. Nowhere left to go. Agualar’s fingers clutched weakly at the grate.

  Moments later, the waterfall began to run red.

  Chapter 28

  THE JUDAS KISS

  Justin sat half awake, half asleep, while the hours they had spent in the car hung over him like swollen clouds. Swabbed with moonlight, April was curled in the seat beside him, in deeper sleep. The first several times she whimpered, he couldn’t place the sound. Tiny high-pitched moans, weaving in and out of stray thoughts trying to become dreams. They tugged him awake, and for a moment he blinked and watched the turmoil rippling across her sleeping face.

  No peace, even in slumber. He gently shook her by the shoulder.

  April awoke with a start, a soft cry. She clutched at his hand. Seconds later, she was leaning into him, embracing with heat, fear, desperation. Her cheeks felt damp against his throat.

  “You were having bad dreams,” he whispered.

  She nodded.

  “Want to tell me about them?”

  “Huh-uh.” A quick shake of her head. “Just hold me.”

  Whether it was late Thursday night or early Friday morning, Justin didn’t know. Darkness hung poised somewhere between fading dusk and coming dawn. As much one as the other.