Wondering at the hint of desperation in Prather's voice, Luc followed him out of the trailer and into the twilight. He caught the scent of the Long Island Sound as they followed a path of trampled marsh grass to the main tent.
"You're fairly isolated out here," Luc said, wondering why Prather had chosen this relatively well-off section of the North Shore to set up. "Do you do enough business in this area?"
"Not as much as we might in a more blue-collar location," Prather said. "But we do enough. The owner rents us the land for a reasonable fee, and the truth of it is, we like the town."
"Monroe? What so special about Monroe?"
"You wouldn't understand," Prather said.
Just then a young woman came running toward them across the grass, crying, "Oz! Oz!"
She was short, thin, with a long ponytail trailing from her undersized head. Luc could see that she was crying. She grabbed Prather's hand and pulled him aside. Between sobs she whispered in a high-pitched voice, her words tumbling out so quickly Luc couldn't catch their meaning beyond something about someone named Rena being "so mean."
He watched Prather nodding as he listened, saw him pat her shoulder and murmur in a reassuring tone. She smiled, giggled, then skipped away as if she hadn't care in the world.
"What was that all about?" Luc said when Prather rejoined him.
"A domestic squabble," the tall man said. "We are a family of sorts, and every family has them."
"And you're the father they come to as mediator?"
"Some of them do. Many in the troupe are quite adept at handling their own affairs and solving their own problems. Lena and her sister Rena, however, have a mental age of about six. Their petty disagreements seem momentous to them. I play Solomon."
"Ah. I thought she looked microcephalic."
Prather nodded. "They're called 'pinheads' in the trade. Lena and her sister are known as 'the Pin Twins' under my canvas."
Luc felt a twinge of revulsion that his face must have mirrored.
"Offended, Doctor?" Prather's mouth twisted into what might have been a smile. "Exploitation of the mentally retarded… that's what you're thinking, am I right?"
"Well…" That was exactly what he'd been thinking.
"But you know nothing of their life before I found them. Lena and Rena were living in a cardboard box in Dallas, vying with rats for scraps from restaurant garbage bins, being repeatedly raped and otherwise abused whenever it suited their fellow street dwellers."
"Dear God."
"Now they live in their own trailer, they travel the country, and during the show they sing and recite nursery rhymes in close harmony for the customers who stop at their stall. And they are safe, Doctor." His deep voice took on an edge. "We watch out for each other here. No one will ever hurt them again."
Luc said nothing as Prather lifted the tent flap for him. What was there to say?
A moment later he was standing before the Sharkman cage. A pair of the vaguely canine roustabouts had one of the dark creature's arms. Luc shuddered as he realized that one of these two could have dealt Macintosh's death blow last month. Their powerful bodies seemed relaxed; they were expending little effort to hold the creature's arm steady. One of them probably would have been enough. Even the creature's stink seemed to have faded since last month.
Luc closed his eyes as the world seemed to tilt beneath his feet. This is it, he thought. The last sample. The creature is all but gone.
His fingers trembled and fumbled as he prepared his phlebotomy needle, but he managed to find the vein and fill his tubes with the black fluid. When he stepped back the roustabouts released the arm, but the creature didn't even bother to withdraw it into the cage.
Luc held up one of the tubes and tilted it back and forth. The inky fluid within sloshed around like water.
"And next month?" he said to Prather.
"I doubt very much there will be a next month for this poor creature," Prather said. "But if you want to pay a visit, just for old times' sake…"
Prather's voice faded, replaced by a vision of Milos Dragovic's rage-contorted features and his coarse voice echoing, Where is my shipment? Where is my shipment?
"I don't…" Luc's mouth had gone dry. He swallowed. "You will call me if… when it happens?"
"Yes," Prather said softly. "We will mourn our brother."
Struck by the note of genuine melancholy in Prather's tone, Luc glanced at him but saw no mockery in the big man's expression.
Feeling as if the tent were collapsing on him, Luc turned to go. He realized too late that he was leaving the back of his neck exposed to the kind of crushing blow that had killed Macintosh. He hunched his shoulders as he hurried for the exit, but no one followed him.
He allowed himself a sigh of relief when he hit the night air but did not slow his pace. No time to waste. He had to get this sample to the synthesizer immediately.
15
"Here," Milos said, patting the cushion next to his thigh. He wore a double-breasted Sulka suit, pure cashmere navy chalk over a pearl gray thirty-three-gauge worsted cashmere turtleneck. "Come sit by me. I want to share something with you."
The young model swayed toward him across the deep carpet of the living room like she was strutting a runway. He didn't know her real name. She called herself Cino—pronounced "Chee-no"—but Milos doubted that was on her birth certificate. She'd probably been born Maria Diaz or Conchita Gonzales or something like that. She'd never tell. And what did Milos care about her given name? All that mattered were the dark, dark eyes under the silky widow's veil of her bangs, the jutting cheekbones, and the jaguar-lithe body.
Milos watched her move toward him now, her slim hips swaying rhythmically within the tight black sheath she wore. He'd met her two weeks ago at a club opening and had been struck by how thin she was—downright bony. She looked better in her photos where the camera did her a service by adding a few pounds to her anorectic frame. Women this thin did not populate Milos's fantasies. In his dreams he preferred sturdier bodies, women with more meat on their bones, flesh he could grab and squeeze and hang onto during the ride. Someone like Cino… well, sometimes he was afraid she'd snap like a twig.
But Cino had the look everyone wanted. And if everyone wanted it, Milos Dragovic wanted it even more.
The best of everything, first class all the way—that had become his credo, the rule by which he would live the rest of his days.
The watch on his wrist, for instance: a gold, thirty-seven-jewel Breguet, considered the best watch in the world. Did it tell time better than a Timex? Hardly. Did he need to know the phases of the moon on its face? It said there was a new moon now—who cared? But people who counted would know it cost upward of thirty grand.
Did he need the fifty-inch plasma TV screen hanging like a painting on the wall of the entertainment room? He hated television. But the sort of people who'd be his guests here Sunday would see it and know it was the best screen money could by.
This house and its lot, where waves tumbled onto the beach beyond the sliding glass doors that lined the south wall of the living room, was the absolute best money could buy. But that hadn't prevented certain locals from interfering with its construction. The Ladies Village Improvement Society—he'd thought someone was putting him on, but this turned out to be a real group, with real clout—had objected to his blue tile roof. He'd paid through the nose to bypass them.