I passed the flask to Maggie, who took a deep swig then said, “This is the most action I've gotten in months.”
I chuckled, and she chuckled back. The nervous chuckles quickly escalated into outright laughter for no apparent reason other than we needed it to. Then when the coffee shop owner walked in on a high-speed cum shot and ran out covering her eyes, our laughter turned into bent-over, tear-rolling hysteria.
We were well into the third movie when I asked Maggie to slow the speed down to normal. Liz Lagarto was in a bamboo hut that looked like the huts you'd find in the fringe towns except you could tell it was just a cheap set piece. She was playing the role of some Tarzan-like jungle girl who needed taming.
“Now, freeze it,” I said. I got up and walked past Liz, who was wearing a tiger-skin outfit that was so skimpy it could have been made from a cub. “I know this guy,” I said as I stepped up to the stuffed tiger that was being used as a background prop. I was sure it was the same one, standing upright with one claw raised. “Horst has this tiger standing outside his office on the Square.”
“You know what these movies are?” Maggie asked rhetorically. “Have you noticed how Lagartan they are? Liz Lagarto in the jungle. Liz Lagarto on a riverboat. Liz Lagarto in a brandy cellar. How much you wanna bet they're promotionals for his tour company? I bet he distributes them for a tidy profit, but his main purpose is to feed his sex tour business.”
I realized she was right, and I said so. I went back to my seat thinking Horst had found quite the market penetration strategy.
Maggie started the vid running again. “You've got to be shitting me,” she said upon recognizing the loincloth-wearing jungle boy who entered the hut—Raj Gupta.
I was speechless. Jaw-drop dumbfounded. That little shit, he didn't tell us he'd starred in a porno. He said he hardly knew Ian, but here he was getting his loincloth lifted by Ian's girlfriend. And what was it with this kid and loincloths? We interviewed him twice, twice, and we still hadn't gotten the full story. Right then, as I watched him get a lubing à la Liz Lagarto, I was seriously wishing I'd taken the opportunity to do some facial carving when I had the chance. “Are there any women on this planet that he isn't banging?”
Maggie said, “I might be the only.”
My flask was empty by the time we started number five. I just wanted to get it over with. I was OD'ed on porn. What had started off erotic had quickly turned laughable, and now it had become just plain tedious. It was true that we'd learned a little more about Raj and Horst. And it was also true that we'd learned a hell of a lot more than we ever wanted about Liz, but our main goal in ransacking Yuri Kiper's office was to get us closer to the barge murders, and on that score we'd come up empty.
Maggie had the system cranked up to 8X now. The plot was easy to follow, even at eight speed, and without hearing any dialog. Liz Lagarto, married to a less than adventuresome husband, seeks out an affair with a charismatic neighbor played by a dark-skinned, middle-aged local who had starred in two of her other movies. He introduces her to the rough trade, starting with a little pinching during sex and quickly moving up to spanking and nipple clamps. Each time they have sex, she encourages him to push a little further.
Maggie slowed it down to regular speed as the degradation began to hit disturbing levels. They'd moved far beyond kinky and were now into the realm of the truly perverted. He was keeping her locked in his basement now, chained to a post with a dog collar on. When she cried, he'd tell her she was a sinner. “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”
This was the first thing we'd watched that smacked of the S&M culture that all our suspects seemed to be a part of. I paid rapt attention despite the mounting revulsion.
Liz groveled as he came in and told her that today was her day of reckoning. He had a bed in the basement, and he cuffed her to it. He started in with electric shocks to her privates. How could she submit to this? Liz was panicked, straining so hard at her cuffs that her wrists bled. I squirmed in my seat when he razored her thighs and then her breasts. Make it end. Bile rose up in my throat as he snuffed out an entire pack of cigarettes on her back, making a connect-the-dots cross. This can't be real.
I looked over at Maggie, who was looking as pale as I felt. “This can't be real, Maggie.”
“God, I hope you're right.”
I didn't know what was worse, the fact that a human being would make a movie like this or the fact that there were people who got off on it.
He turned her over so she was face up. “Cheating on your husband is a sin,” he said. “Now you die.”
Liz struggled against her restraints. She yanked so hard that she dislocated her shoulder and cried out in pain. It's all a fake. It has to be. But there were no cut shots like you saw in regular movies, the kind of thing where you see the attacker stab down, then you see the victim bleeding, but you never see the knife go in. He grabbed her by the hair and held a knife to her throat. I kept telling myself it couldn't be real, but when I looked at her eyes, I saw pure terror. She was hyperventilating. It looked so real. I wanted to believe she was acting, but I'd seen her movies, and she wasn't that good an actress.
But it had to be fake. She was wearing an open-backed dress the first time I saw her. I would've seen the cig-burn cross on her back. He dragged the blade across her throat. Blood went spurting. She jerked against her restraints, once, twice, spraying blood all over her attacker. One more spasm and she went still, her eyes staring off in death. It's not real. It can't be. Liz is alive. But it was all so believable, all one long shot, no cuts.
I stared at her corpse as I told myself she was fine—she was alive. But she wasn't at Roby's last night. … No, I told myself, I copied this vid almost two days ago. I'd seen her since then.
The vid was still running. Her murderous boyfriend circled the bed, studying his handiwork, his face speckled with blood. She looked like a real corpse. Her chest didn't move, and she didn't blink. Her skin turned ashen. How did they do this? Flies were buzzing around the scene. Scavenging geckos were coming out of the walls, their noses tuned to the scent of decay.
The murderer kneeled on the bed. No, don't tell me! He unzipped his pants.
I covered my eyes. “Turn it off already!”
The scene blinked out, and the room returned to normal.
We were left staring at the café owner's Virgin Mary shrine. I focused on it, trying to purge the images from my mind. I studied the brightly painted Mary standing in front of a mosaic background of sparkly glued beads. I never was the religious type, yet I felt the urge to ask for forgiveness, just for having watched.
My phone rang. My new anonymous phone.
eighteen
MAGGIE and I sped down the hospital corridor. I didn't see Vlad posted by her door. I sped up, Maggie staying on my wing, our shoes echoing off the linoleum. We thundered through Niki's door. Niki was there, right where she was supposed to be. Her startled eyes said that if she could have jumped she would have. Maggie was already rushing over to her when Vlad came bursting out of the bathroom, his piece raised. He stopped half a second before frying a hole through my chest.
“Shit, Juno,” he said, “I almost killed you. You should've announced yourself before barging in like that.”
I grabbed Vlad's arm and yanked him out into the hall. “Why weren't you guarding the door? I thought you'd ditched her.” The only thing keeping me from yelling was the fact that I hadn't yet caught my breath.
“Relax,” he said. “I didn't think it was too smart to be hanging around outside her door. Might as well put a big sign up that says, ‘Here's Niki.’”
“Right,” I said as I tried to collect my haywire self. “When was he here?”
“About a half hour ago. One of the nurses came down to tell me, and I called you right away. She said he got very belligerent with the desk nurse upstairs. She told him Niki checked out, but he wasn't buying it.”
“But he left?”
“Not until after he threw up a big stink. Listen, Juno,
I don't think this is going to work much longer. If he comes back with a wad of bills, I don't think he'll have to ask around long before some orderly tips him off.”
Vlad was looking at me, waiting for me to tell him what to do. I had no idea what to tell him, none whatsoever. “I'll figure something out,” I said unconvincingly as I walked back into Niki's room.
Maggie had Niki turned on her side so she could check the skin ulcers that had formed on her backside from lack of movement. I took a look myself. They looked good. The staff was doing a nice job keeping them under control. There was nothing more life-threatening for Niki than those ulcers, which were sure to get infested with maggots if they broke open. And then, if they didn't heal quickly enough, the rot would set in, and once the rot set in, it was only a matter of time.
Maggie eased Niki over onto her back. Niki looked me straight in the eye. I stroked her cheek, which was just about the only place she could feel my touch. The door flew open. Vlad was there with a nurse I recognized as one of the nurses who took care of Niki when she was in Intensive Care. “He's back, boss. He's got a whole crew of cops with him, and they're going from room to room.”
The nurse took the purple 10K bill Vlad held out for her and stepped away in a hurry.
“Shit. Let's move her. I'll get the bed, you get—”
Vlad interrupted. “No way, boss. I had them move her twice. It takes a whole team.”
“Well get them in here. NOW!”
“There's no time, boss. It's a big production.”
I was so panic-stricken, I was practically panting. “What am I supposed to do? Just let them come and kill her?”
Vlad looked down at the floor like a kid who just got in trouble.
“Yes,” said Niki in her ventilator voice.
I wheeled on her. “Shut up, Niki. Now's not the time.”
“Seems to me … now's the p—perfect time.”
“Shut up already!”
Maggie aimed a stern look at me before comforting Niki. “It'll be okay,” she said to her. “We'll think of something.”
Vlad poked his head out the door and looked both directions. “Nobody yet. They must still be upstairs.”
Fucking fuck! I was about to freak out. My blood was boiling. My bobbing hand was waving like a blade of grass in high winds. My stomach burned like I'd swallowed a hot coal. I grasped for a little sanity and came up empty. SHIT!
Vlad looked out again. “There they are. They're at the far end of the hall, two of them.”
From somewhere in my gut came the answer, like it was always there. Today's the day I die. I pulled my piece and spat orders. “I want Maggie and Vlad in the bathroom. It's me they want. I'll take the fight to them in the hall. Don't come to help. If they get me, they get me, understand? They'll leave once they have me.”
Maggie was shaking her head no.
“It's the only way, Maggie. If any of them come in, I need you and Vlad to ambush them from the bathroom. I'm counting on you.”
Maggie kept shaking her head.
I grabbed her hand. “I need you, Maggie.”
“No. You can't just provoke a firefight in a hospital.” She pulled Niki's blanket off and started wrapping it into an oblong ball.
“What are you doing?”
“We're in maternity, right?” She took the bundled blanket and tucked it under Niki's arm.
“This won't work.”
“Yes it will,” she said. “Now go get another blanket to cover this equipment.”
It won't work. It won't work. It won't work. I was looking at Maggie. She was staring me down, her face hard as iron. I tucked my piece back in my belt. “You better be right.”
“A blanket. Now.”
“I got it, boss,” said Vlad. He took a peek out the door and slipped out.
Maggie started pulling tubes and wires, unhooking everything but Niki's air.
Could that rolled-up blanket really pass for a baby? I got busy wheeling equipment into the bathroom, packing it in with as much care as a dockworker. I slammed the heart rate monitor down on the sink with so much force that I heard the mortar cracking. I nabbed the IV stand and battled it into a tilted position by the toilet.
Vlad was back. “They're getting close, maybe eight or nine doors down.”
Maggie draped the extra blanket over the respirator and set the vase of flowers I'd sent to Niki on top. This could work. They'd be looking for tubes and blinking lights. When they looked in, they'd find the same scene they'd been seeing all along this ward, a woman sleeping with her baby.
Vlad went into the bathroom and stood on the toilet to make room for me to cram myself in. Maggie tilted Niki's head to the side, away from the door, making her look like she was asleep.
I could hear Niki whisper, “Let them kill m—me.”
Maggie soothed with her voice. “Shh. It'll be okay.”
Maggie was poised over Niki's air hose. I listened as the sound of opening doors came closer. Maggie stayed still, waiting as long as she could. Finally, she unhooked the plastic air hose from the stem that was planted in Niki's chest. Maggie dropped the hose, letting it fall to the floor. She pulled the plug on the suddenly noisier ventilator then tucked both the air hose and the power cord under the blanket and hustled for the bathroom.
“Her chest,” I hissed.
Maggie skidded to a stop and pulled Niki's sheet up over the plastic valve poking out of her chest. I sucked my body in to make room for Maggie, who slammed into me. I started to tip over. Vlad steadied me with his hand. Maggie tried to yank the door closed, but my foot acted as a mashed-toe doorstop. I pulled my foot up and leaned into Vlad, while Maggie managed to make it latch on the second try.
I heard the door pop open next door. My heart was pounding. Any second now …
But then I heard another door open, this time closer and realized the first door I'd heard must've been two doors down.
“Damn,” whispered Maggie. She'd pulled the hose too soon. Niki could suffocate before we got the hose reattached.
And then another door. A baby started crying and a muffled, “Sorry, ma'am,” came through the bathroom wall.
Finally, Niki's door opened. The three of us were collectively holding our breath. I had my ear pressed up against the door. I had my piece in my left hand, and my right hand was on the doorknob, which was luckily a lever-style knob that I could easily open with my bad hand. Long seconds ticked by. I thought of my wife, lying there unable to breathe, thinking it had been too long already. Maggie had pulled the hose way too soon. She easily could've kept the air pumping for another twenty or thirty seconds and still would've had the time to hide.
The door closed. He was either inside or he'd moved on. I waited for the sound of the next door down, needing to breathe, but afraid of making any noise. I heard the latch pop next door, and let out the breath I was holding. We rushed to Niki's bed careful not to make any noise. Maggie snapped the air hose back in while I stuck the plug back into the outlet. The ventilator whooshed into life.
Niki's eyes were open. Her skin was red with enough blue underneath to border on purple, but her eyes were open, and I saw them move. Relief overwhelmed me as Niki began to lose a shade of red with every pump of the ventilator.
Vlad clapped his hand on Maggie's shoulder. “Nicely done.”
Maggie nodded.
My legs felt weak. I took a seat on the end of Niki's bed. “Vlad, as soon as they're gone, get one of the doctors in here. We need to get her moved.”
The flyer lifted off, then banked to the right. I looked through the rain-streaked window as we skimmed over a building that had tightly concentrated patches of exposed rebar poking up. Looking around, I noticed most of the buildings had that same unfinished look, so many of them topped by tarps instead of tile. It was rare that a Lagartan developer could afford to construct a building in its entirety. Instead, money permitting, they'd add a floor at a time, each time leaving the rebar exposed for the next layer to attach to.
/> We moved east, the flyer's hum drowning out Niki's respirator. Below, I could see the Koba River, a broad black stripe arcing through the expanse of city lights. The river was everything to this city, everything. I'd drunk its water my whole life. I was raised on its fish. It was our all-in-one transportation system, irrigation system, and sewer system, the one constant in this fucked-up world. Without it, nothing was possible. This city was fortunate to have such an unbreakable backbone to depend on. I looked at my wife, who was looking at me with despondent eyes, her backbone nowhere near as strong.
She'd given up arguing with me. We'd spent hours in that hospital room, fighting it out while Maggie made arrangements to transport Niki to the Orzo family's plantation. I'd been stupid to think things were going to get better after I confronted Niki with my knowledge of her secrets. It was never the secrets themselves that were killing her inside. It was the truth behind those secrets that had been torturing her for all these years. How could I have thought anything different?
She was still looking at me. She didn't look angry. She looked resigned and defeated. God, how could I do this to her? I didn't want to be the cause of her suffering. Right then, all I wanted to do was unhook her from the respirator. Anything to relieve her pain. Anything to keep her from looking at me like that. No, I told myself. Things will get better. I clung to those words like they were the only thing keeping me afloat even as the words sank into nothingness and took me with them.
I don't know how long I stayed like that, feeling like I was at the bottom of a well that had been filled back in with me still inside, the dirt pressing down on me, crushing me until I couldn't move or breathe. I was nothing. No, I was less than nothing, powerless and insignificant.
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