Jack felt the skin along the back of his neck tighten as ripples of warning shot down his spine. He knew that shape. But that was all it was. A shape. So immobile. It had to be a dummy of some sort or a guy in a costume. A helluva good costume.
But it couldn't be the real thing. Couldn't be…
Jack ducked under the rope and took a few tentative steps closer to the cage, sniffing the air. One of the things he remembered about the rakoshi was their reek, like rotting meat. He caught a trace of it here, but that could have been from spilled garbage. Nothing like the breath-clogging stench he remembered.
He moved close enough to touch the bars but didn't. The thing was a damn good dummy. He could almost swear it was breathing.
Jack whistled and said, "Hey, you in there!"
The thing didn't budge, so he rapped on one of the iron bars.
"Hey—!"
Suddenly it moved, the eyes snapping open as the head came up, deep yellow eyes that seemed to glow in the shadows.
Imagine the offspring from mating a giant hairless gorilla with a mako shark. Cobalt skin, hugely muscled, no neck worth mentioning, no external ears, narrow slits for a nose.
Spikelike talons, curved for tearing, emerged from the tips of the three huge fingers on each hand as the yellow eyes fixed on Jack. The lower half of its huge sharklike head seemed to split as the jaw opened to reveal rows of razor-sharp teeth. It uncoiled its legs and slithered across the metal flooring toward the front of the cage.
Along with instinctive revulsion, memories surged back: the cargo hold full of their dark shapes and glowing eyes, the unearthly chant, the disappearances, the deaths…
Jack backed up a step. Two. Behind him he heard the crowd oooh! and aaah! as it pressed forward for a better look. He took still another step back until he could feel their excited breath on his neck. These people didn't know what one of these things could do, didn't know their power, their near-indestructibility. Otherwise they'd be running the other way.
Jack felt his heart kick up its already rising tempo when he noticed how the creature's lower lip was distorted by a wide scar. He knew this particular rakosh. Scar-lip. The one that had kidnapped Vicky, the one that had escaped the ship and almost got to Vicky on the shore. The one that had damn near killed Jack.
He ran a hand across his chest. Even through the fabric of his shirt he could feel the three long ridges that ran across his chest, souvenir scars from the creature's talons.
His mouth felt like straw. Scar-lip… alive.
But how? How had it survived the blaze on the water? How had it wound up on Long Island in a traveling freak show?
"Ooh, look at it, Fred!" said a woman behind Jack.
"Just a guy in a rubber suit," replied a supremely confident male voice.
"But those claws—did you see the way they came out?"
"Simple hydraulics. Nothing to it."
You go on believing that, Fred, Jack thought as he watched the creature where it crouched on its knees, its talons encircling the iron bars, its yellow eyes burning into Jack.
You know me too, don't you.
It appeared to be trying to stand but its legs wouldn't support it. Was it chained, or possibly maimed?
The ticket seller came by then, sans boater, revealing a shaven head. Up close like this Jack was struck by his cold eyes. He was carrying a blunt elephant gaff that he rapped against the bars.
"So you're up, aye?" he said to the rakosh in a harsh voice. "Maybe you've finally learned your lesson."
Jack noticed that for the first time since it had opened its eyes, the rakosh turned its glare from him; it refocused on the newcomer.
"Here he is, ladies and gentleman," the ticket man cried, turning to the crowd. "Yessir, the one and only Sharkman! The only one of his kind! He's exclusively on display here at Ozymandias Oddities. Tell your friends; tell your enemies. Yessir, you've never seen anything like him and never will anywhere else. Guaranteed."
You've got that right, Jack thought.
The ticket man spotted Jack standing on the wrong side of the rope. "Here, you. Get back there. This thing's dangerous! See those claws? One swipe and you'd be sliced up like a tomato by a Ginsu knife! We don't want to see our customers get sliced up." His eyes said otherwise as he none too gently prodded Jack with the pole. "Back now."
Jack slipped back under the rope, never taking his eyes off Scar-lip. Now that it was up front in the light, he saw that the rakosh didn't look well. Its skin was dull and relatively pale, nothing like the shiny deep cobalt he remembered from their last meeting. It looked thin, wasted.
The rakosh turned its attention from the ticket man and stared at Jack a moment longer, then dropped its gaze. Its talons retracted, slipping back inside the fingertips, the arms dropped to its sides, the shoulders drooped, then it turned and crawled back to the rear of the cage where it slumped again in the corner and hung its head.
Drugged. That had to be the answer. They had to tranquillize the rakosh to keep it manageable. Even so, it didn't look too healthy. Maybe the iron bars were doing it—fire and iron, the only things that could hurt a rakosh.
But drugged or not, healthy or not, Scar-lip had recognized Jack, remembered him. Which meant it could remember Vicky. And if it ever got free, it might come after Vicky again, to complete the task its dead master had set for it last summer.
The ticket man had begun banging on the rakosh's cage in a fury, screaming at it to get up and face the crowd. But the creature ignored him, and the crowd began to wander off in search of more active attractions.
Jack turned and headed for the exit. He'd come here hoping to explain Monnet's interest in a freak show, but that was all but forgotten now. A cold resolve had overtaken his initial shock. He knew what had to be done.
4
Luc had promised himself not to hover over Nadia while she was working—he knew how distracting that could be. She never would be able to give her scientific inventiveness and creativity full rein if she felt someone was looking over her shoulder every minute. But curiosity and just plain need to know had overcome him.
He'd been disappointed to find her signed out, but he'd come down to the dry lab to see what she'd entered into the computer. He tapped on the keyboard to retrieve the last image she'd been working on.
He sighed as a hologram of the too-familiar inert Loki molecule materialized in the air. He'd seen too much of that. He was reaching for the escape button but stopped when something on the monitor caught his eye. He stared in disbelief at the date on the screen, indicating that the image had been created at 9:20 this morning. Not recalled—created.
Impossible. Nadia could not have generated a fresh image without a sample, and he hadn't supplied her with any inert Loki. This had to be a mistake.
Luc checked the sample chamber and felt his chest constrict when he found a residue of yellow powder. How could this be? She must have used some inert Loki he'd left here—that was the only explanation.
But why couldn't he remember leaving it?
Stress. That had to be it. It sapped focus, the ability to concentrate. And he'd certainly had more than his share of stress lately.
And yet… Luc wished he could be sure. Was it possible she'd heard about a street drug that decomposed every month and had picked up a sample? Not Nadia. She wasn't the type to take drugs or have any interest in them.
Still, he couldn't mention this to Kent or Brad. They'd panic and want to do something rash on the chance that Nadia might link GEM to Berzerk. They'd become positively bloodthirsty.
No, he'd wait. Nadia was too valuable an asset.
But she'd bear watching. Close watching.
5
"Damn!" Nadia said as she hung up the phone, none too gently.
"Something is wrong?" her mother said from the kitchen.
Nadia stood in the front room. The little apartment was redolent of the stuffed cabbage Mom was simmering in a big pot on the stove. Since she knew how Doug loved the dish, she
'd suggested that Nadia invite him over for dinner.
But how could she when his line was always busy?
"It's Doug," Nadia told her. "He must be on-line with that computer of his."
She'd left the lab early and had been trying to contact Doug all day—and not just to invite him for dinner—but his line had been busy every time she called. He wasn't answering his cell phone either, which meant he probably hadn't turned it on. He often didn't on weekends.
Or maybe Doug had lapsed into one of his programming fugues. Nadia had seen it happen before. He'd take the phone off the hook, bury it under a cushion, and start hitting the keys. Gradually he'd fade into a state of altered consciousness where he became one with his computer and nothing else existed beyond their union. It was spooky.
But why did he have to fugue out today of all days? She'd been in a blue funk ever since running the inert Berzerk through the imager this morning. Seeing that molecule floating before her had drained her enthusiasm for stabilizing it.
Oh, God! she thought, stiffening. I left the sample in the imager!
She'd been so shocked after recognizing the molecule…
She calmed herself. No one would be in the dry lab until Tuesday. She'd go back first thing tomorrow morning and clean up.
What she needed most now was to talk about this. Her mother might be good for any other topic, but not this one. Nadia needed Doug.
"Come, Nadjie," her mother called. "Eat. You'll feel better."
Why not? she thought with a mental shrug. Not much else to do.
But when she sat down she realized she wasn't hungry. As she picked at her food she noticed the beer and shot of Reischman's sitting by her mother's plate.
"Mom," she said. "Would you mind pouring me one of those?"
6
Milos Dragovic gazed out upon the expanse of his grounds and was pleased. In less than forty-eight hours the army of laborers and craftsmen he had assembled had worked a miracle. And just in time. The final touches had been applied just minutes before the first guests arrived.
He watched them milling about the pool and clustering on the decks—the women mostly in black, the peacock men in coats of many colors. Quite a different crowd from Friday night's. Sprinkled among the glitterati he'd shipped in from the city were a fair number of Hamptons society. Not all the creme de la creme had accepted his invitation, but more than enough to allow him to call the party a resounding success.
He smiled. To the uninformed, the acceptance rate to a party hosted by a high-profile gangster might have seemed surprisingly high. But not if Milos's invitation strategy were known. He had investigated Hamptons society and divided the upper echelons into three groups. He then sent out his invitations in three waves, all mailed locally two days apart. When the first wave was received, he knew it would be chatted up in the social circles. He could just hear them: Did you know that boorish Dragovic fellow is having a party and he wants me to come? Can you imagine?
Of course the ones in the second and third wave were thinking, Why wasn't I invited? Not that I'd even think of going, of course, but why was I left out?
Then the second-wave invitation would arrive and there'd be a sense of relief—grateful relief that they hadn't been passed over. The post office's fault. Same with the third wave.
Thus the invitations would not be automatically tossed away. And then the talk that it might be rather interesting to attend—Hamptons slumming, you might say—and it will give us so much to talk and laugh about afterward… we'll postmortem it for days.
But with everything at the party arranged and orchestrated by Kim, seeing to it that only the very best of everything was served, and in the most tasteful manner, the only fodder for their postparty conversation would be how the affair had far exceeded their expectations.
The result would be that no one would turn down his invitations next year.
And in time Milos saw himself winnowing the list, cutting those who were not properly respectful. An invitation to the annual Milos Dragovic soiree would become an object of envy, to be coveted and striven for… like a membership at the Maidstone Club.
He wondered if any members of the self-styled East Hampton Environmental Protection Committee were present. If they hated him enough to dump refuse on his house, how could they bring themselves to attend his party?
Then again, there was the old adage: hide in plain sight. Milos's enemy might assume he'd be above suspicion if he attended. But there he was wrong.
No one was above suspicion. No one.
"Excuse me, Mr. Dragovic," said a voice to his left.
Milos turned and saw a tall, fair man. He stood with a glass of red wine in his left hand and his right extended. Milos recognized his face but the name eluded him.
"Jus Slobojan," the man said as they shook hands.
Of course. Justin Karl Slobojan. The wildly successful action-thriller director, worth a hundred million or so… originally a New Yorker, now living mostly in LA but still summering as much as possible in Amagansett.
"Mr. Slobojan," Milos said. "I've long admired your work." This was no lie. Even though his villains were often drug lords and gangsters, and always met a bloody end, Milos never missed a Slobojan film. "I am so very pleased to meet you."
And pleased he had come, especially after Mike Nichols and Diane Sawyer had turned him down.
"And I'm pleased to be here. This is a wonderful party." He leaned closer. "Did I hear that you had some trouble here the other night?"
Milos stared at the director. Could he be involved with this East Hampton Environmental Protection Committee? Unlikely. He spent too little time out here to get upset over who moved in. In fact, he was probably an outsider himself. Milos understood he'd been born in the Ukraine. In a way, that made them almost neighbors.
"A little vandalism by some locals," Milos said. "Nothing important."
"Good," Slobojan said. "Some of the rumors mentioned quite a bit of damage, but I can see now that they were exaggerated. You have a beautiful house for a party. The food is superb, and this wine…" He held up his glass. "If this is your house red, I'd love to see what you keep in your cellar."
"You know wines then?"
Slobojan shrugged. "A little. I dabble."
In Milos's experience, a person who downplayed his abilities as Slobojan was doing was most often a true expert.
"Then I believe I have a treat for you. Come."
He'd led the director halfway across the living room when he heard a sound outside. He stopped and turned.
"What's that?"
"What's what?" Slobojan said.
The sound grew louder as Milos hurried back to the doors. A helicopter! He was sure of it! With his intestines writhing into painful knots, he rushed outside and scanned the night sky.
"Is something wrong?" Slobojan said, coming out behind him.
"A helicopter! I hear a helicopter!"
Slobojan laughed. "Of course you do, old man. The Coast Guard runs up and down the beach all the time."
Already the sound was fading. Milos forced a smile. "The Coast Guard. Yes, of course."
Where the hell had the Coast Guard been Friday night when he was being bombed?
Milos relaxed. He'd thought about this all day and had come to the conclusion that he had little to fear from the so-called East Hampton Environmental Protection Committee tonight. This was a gathering of their peers. As much as they might hate him and his presence here in the center of what they considered their private preserve, they would not risk an assault on members of their own precious social circle. They'd know that if—more likely when—their identities were revealed, they would become instant outcasts, shunned by their own kind.
For tonight at least, his house was safe. But who knew after that?
That was why it was essential that he track down these bastards—especially the one who had called him on Friday night Milos would deal personally with him.
He led Slobojan back into the living room
where he had the 1947 Petrus breathing in a crystal decanter, the empty bottle beside it. As Slobojan bent to read the label, Milos turned the bottle.
"First you will try. And after you tell me what you think of it, I will show you the label."
"A blind taste test, ay?" Slobojan said. His smile looked uncertain. "OK. I guess I'm game."
Milos half-filled one of the decanter's matching crystal glasses and handed it to Slobojan. He watched closely as the director went through all the swirling and sniffing rituals, and wondered how he'd react when he finally tasted it. Here was a man who supposedly knew wine but had no idea if he was tasting something from France, California, or one of the dozen or so wineries right here on Long Island.
At last he took a sip. He made strange sucking noises, then swallowed. Justin Karl Slobojan closed his eyes as a look of beatific ecstasy suffused his features.
"Oh, dear God," he murmured. He opened his eyes and fixed Milos with a grateful stare. "I thought you were going to tell me you'd bought one of these so-called vineyards out here and this was your first bottling." He held up the glass and examined the ruby liquid. "But this is definitely French. An absolutely magnificent Bordeaux. I'm not good enough to identify the chateau, but I can tell you this is just about the best wine I've ever tasted."
Milos was delighted. He still didn't understand how people actually enjoyed drinking this acrid stuff, but at least he hadn't bought bad wine. He turned the bottle to show Slobojan the label.
The director's eyes lighted. "Petrus! I should have known. That's the—" His eyes fairly bulged as he noticed the date. "Nineteen-forty-seven! I was only two years old when this was grape juice!"
Milos handed the decanter to Slobojan. "Here. With my compliments."
"Oh, no. I can't. That must be worth thousands!"
Milos shrugged dismissively. "If one wants the best, one must be prepared to pay what is necessary." He thrust the decanter into Slobojan's hands. "Please. I insist."