“Let’s go,” Trub said, starting toward it.
“Where?” That came out as more of a plea than the demand I’d planned.
“I don’t want to spoil the surprise.”
I took a last look around, and with all eyes on me, followed her to and through the door.
We stepped through into a gloomy space lit by narrow shafts of light coming through the leaf-thatched lattice roof overhead. The air was even warmer than it had been in Rice City, and it carried a sweet, heavy scent, dark and mysterious.
I barely had time to take all that in before a linebacker-sized no-neck dressed in a loincloth and armed with an enormous wooden club came at me, snaggle teeth bared in what was definitely not a welcoming smile.
I let out a crack-voiced curse and stumbled backward, hoping the door was still behind me and would take me back to Rice City.
The door was gone. I fetched up against a wall. Suddenly Trub was there between me and the man with the club. He snarled and swung the weapon, grunting with effort, clearly intending to make a home run with her head.
She dodged the blow with a move that was pure kung-fu ballet in its grace and precision, at the same time burying her artificial hand in his bulging gut. The blow folded him over bug-eyed.
She stepped back lightly. The man dropped to his knees, clutching his belly and gagging.
“Don’t get up,” she said mildly. “I know the way.” She glanced back at me. “Come on, let’s go see Poppa Poppy.”
When she said that I was finally able to place the smelclass="underline" the beguiling reek of opium, a smell that occasionally wafted from the back rooms of certain cribs in one part of the city I haunted.
I followed her as she stepped around the guy she’d felled and toward a wide doorway leading deeper into the shadowy structure. Two more big men armed with clubs suddenly filled the opening, blocking our way.
Trub paused, looking them over like a cat offered a pair of tasty mice. “I’m going in to talk with your boss,” she said in the tone of voice someone might use telling a restaurant hostess that she had a lunch reservation. “You’ve got two choices. Either I go past you, or through you.” A smile that had more than a little crazy in it. “Doesn’t much matter to me.”
They checked out their compadre on the floor. He was still flopping and gasping like a walrus in need of the Heimlich Maneuver. One punch. The lady had a wicked left.
“We won’t forget this, bitch,” the one on the left growled as he stepped aside.
Trub laughed. “And here I didn’t think you people learned.”
“We’ll learn you,” the other blustered, but he too moved back out of her way.
“This is your lucky day, kid,” Trub said without looking back. “You get to meet one of the biggest slimeballs in this stretch of the Hoop.”
I wasn’t sure I wanted to meet any slimeballs, figuring I already knew plenty of them. But staying out there with the two door-thugs wasn’t that appealing an option either. They were already eyeing me like a safe, convenient outlet for their frustration.
“Why not?” I said, trailing behind as she pushed past the guards and through the doorway. It was even darker on the other side. The opium reek thickened.
As my eyes adjusted I was able to get a better look at our surroundings. We were in a large circular room with a conical ceiling. There were low pallets on either side of the door we’d just come through. Slumped figures filled some of these rude beds, puffing pipes or staring vacantly into dreamland. At the far side of the room was a raised dais piled high with cushions and pillows. An enormously fat man lolled atop them, tended by half a dozen young women and men, all naked. The fat man’s hairy body glistened with sweat and oil, shining in the light of small braziers. A braided black beard grew from his broad face, and perched on his shaven head was a garland of bright red poppies.
He watched us approach with heavy-lidded junkie eyes, and if our arrival provoked any reaction at all, it was one of mild bemusement, like we were an especially interesting hallucination.
“To what do I owe this tremendous honor,” he said in a low, silky voice when we stood before him. The movements of his mouth didn’t match the words I heard, and somehow I knew what I was hearing was being translated from Turkish.
Trub stood there gazing down at him. Her distaste showed in her tightened lips and the fixity of her stare. I had a feeling she was keeping a serious chunk of anger in check.
“You broke the rules,” she said at last.
“The rules,” Poppa Poppy repeated. A shiver snaked along my spine at the way the man voiced that simple word. He made it sound like some tender and innocent thing ripe for defiling.
“That’s right, you bloated toad, the rules. The buying and selling of children will not be tolerated.”
I stared. This drugged-out blob was buying kids?
Poppa Poppy roused himself enough to lift one hand, lazily waving away Trub’s accusation. “I am an honest merchant.”
“You are a lucky merchant,” Trub answered sharply. “If it were up to me, you and your whole operation would be nothing more than a rancid grease spot.”
A wide, toothy smile, smug and superior. “But it is not up to you, is it?”
Trub crossed her arms. Although outwardly composed, I was sure what she really wanted to do was vaporize the fat man, blasting him into deep-fried suet. “You think you understand the rules well enough to break them without earning any punishment. No surprise, your brain has been turned to dog shit. So one last time, let me explain something about the rules you refuse to get. Are you paying attention?”
A languid shrug. “I listen.”
“Good. If I were to slaughter you and every one of your minions, burn this place to the ground, and put your head on a pole in the middle of the ashes, then I would have broken the rules.”
“Yes, you would,” Poppa Poppy breathed with a smirk. “And the rules are so important to you.”
“If I did that, I would be rebuked. Told to try to please be a little more low key next time, and asked to take down your head down because it was so butt ugly. That would be the extent of my punishment.”
“You would not—”
“Shut up,” Trub snapped. “You have no idea what I might do when I’m pissed off. Have you heard the story of how I got this eye patch and lost this arm?” She held up her prosthetic.
“I have heard stories.” Poppa Poppy held out his hand. One of the young men passed him a loaded pipe. He studied it, then lifted it toward his lips. “Wild stories. Made to frighten the credulous.”
Trub slapped the pipe out of his hand, moving so fast she was a blur. “Well, listen up. I’ll give you the short version because you’ve smoked your brain too badly to have an attention span.” She paused to see if she had his undivided attention. She did. Had mine too.
“I was in Lebanon. There was a bomb. It went off. I lost an arm and a leg and an eye, not to mention some other odd bits. The bomber was a shithead, even by the standards of his kind. He snuck in to groove on his handiwork. When he turned me over I stabbed him in the throat with the shattered bones sticking out of my arm, dragged myself on top of him, and drowned the son of a bitch with my own blood.”
This was related in a flat, passionless voice that seemed to drop the temperature on the room by fifty degrees. I believed every word she said. That hadn’t been a brag or a scare story, but a stone cold recitation of history. I even remembered hearing the story from the news five or so years before. Trub was that woman.
Poppa Poppy believed her too. His color had gone bad, and fresh sweat covered his face. He managed a queasy, unctuous smile. “I assure you, there is no reason for violence.”