Liz pulled away when the tears stopped, and I moved back to the armchair, giving her a minute to just be.
“I'm sorry about your wife.” She said it so sincerely that I was taken aback. The hollowness inside me was suddenly all-consuming. Tears were about to overflow the dam I'd propped up. I wanted to tell her about Niki, about how I tried to save her and how I wasn't any good at it. I wanted to tell her about what a good a person Niki was and about all the times she'd tried to save me from my drinking and my enforcing. I wanted to tell her how much I loved Niki, the way she'd cut the buttons off my shirts and replace them with snaps, the way she would smile at my jokes, even when they weren't funny.
This was my opportunity…
Fuck it. I didn't deserve her consolation, or anybody else's.
For a long while, we didn't talk, each of us alone with our own thoughts. I worked hard at corralling my emotions. When I felt like I'd finally managed to pen them up, I broke the silence. “I want to talk about Horst.”
“I don't,” she stated.
“All right,” I said. “Then just listen. You tell me if I get any of it wrong. Okay?”
She didn't say anything, but she looked like she was listening. The trick was to get her thinking about Horst, about how he corrupted her brother. I wanted her to blame Horst for Ian's death. Not me, not herself, but Horst.
“Ian was a good guy,” I said as if I meant it. “Sure, he was screwed up, but he didn't hurt anybody. That incident with your old boyfriend was just a mistake. He thought he needed to protect you. His heart was in the right place. Since you were children, his heart was always in the right place. He wanted to be a chef, right? He didn't want to get mixed up in any of this. It was Horst that did it to him. It was Horst that got him hooked on steroids, wasn't it?”
She nodded absently.
“He turned Ian into what he was. Horst is a user. He uses people when they can be helpful to him and throws them away when they're used up. He didn't care about Ian. He only wanted what Ian could give him as a cop. He convinced Ian to stay with KOP when everybody knew it wasn't right for him.”
Again, she nodded.
“You used to hook at the Red Room, right?” I paused briefly, and she nodded. “You had no choice. Your father kicked you out on the street. How else were going to support yourself? You hated it. All prostitutes do. Sometimes you could rationalize it away, but deep down you hated it. All those needy johns and their hang-ups. That's how you met Horst, isn't it? He used to bring his kinky clients to the Red Room.”
I got yet another nod.
“He told you he wanted you to star in his movies. You jumped at the chance. You thought he was saving you from prostitution. But now you know that wasn't true. If he'd really wanted to save you, he would have given you a job in his tour company. You'd be living a normal life, answering phones or doing paperwork in his office. But that's not what he did with you. He made you degrade yourself on camera. It's nothing you hadn't done before, but if he really cared, he wouldn't let you be seen like that. He wouldn't be making money off it.”
She didn't respond, but I could see she was still listening.
“He latched onto your brother,” I said. “Not because he cared about him. Not because he cared about you. He saw how vulnerable Ian was, and he took advantage of him. Horst doesn't like getting his hands dirty. He told your brother how important he was, but Ian meant nothing to him. Ian was just his fucking janitor. He just needed somebody to clean up all his shit. If it wasn't for Horst, your brother would be alive right now. He'd be taking chef classes.”
Her eyes were locked on mine.
“Am I right?” I asked.
“Yes,” she said, clear and concise.
“Horst killed your brother, Liz. He didn't actually pull the trigger, but the brother you knew was already dead. Horst took the soul of a good kid and corrupted it. He killed your brother when he turned him into a murderer.”
She was staring into my eyes, her expression cold and sober. I had her convinced. I could see it on her face. Not that it took that much convincing. She'd probably already come to the same conclusion. It was Horst's fault. Everything she was feeling, all that pain, all that anguish, all Horst's fault.
She wanted to believe it. Horst was an easy scapegoat, a way for her to avoid having to look at her own role in Ian's stunted development. She still wanted to think the best of her brother, and telling herself that Horst made Ian do the things he did made it easier to think that way.
I leaned forward. “Horst killed your brother, Liz. He needs to pay. Help me make him pay.”
Her eyes took on a feral quality. “I'll help on one condition.”
“Name it.”
“I get to do the bastard in myself.”
I felt the fish on my tongue, its flavor seeping down into my taste buds. I didn't want to chew, but I did. I bit down and released a burst of flavor. I chewed slowly, not wanting to swallow even though I knew that if she'd decided to kill me instead, it was already too late.
The fish was good, and I concentrated on eating instead of talking. It could take a couple minutes yet.
Half of Horst's fish was already gone. “What do you think of the fish?” he asked.
“I think it's fantastic.”
“So how do you think this job interview is going so far?”
“I think it's going well,” I said.
“I hate to correct you, Mr. Mozambe, but I have to tell you that you're failing miserably. What I see in front of me is a man who has lost me a great deal of money. You haven't convinced me you can make it up to me yet, and I sincerely doubt you'll be able to at all. But I'm feeling generous. This marvelous fish has me in a good mood, so I won't cut off our talk just yet. I'll give you at least until d-dessert.”
He grinned menacingly. He was doing his best to ignore the little stutter at the end, but I heard it. The poison was already attacking his nervous system. He'd be completely paralyzed within a minute of the onset of symptoms.
I tried to make my case again, my voice taking on a rambling quality. There was sweat beading on his brow. He hadn't figured it out yet. He thought he was just having some odd reaction to the food. Maybe the fish was bad. Liz crept out of the kitchen to the safety of the living room. I kept prattling on, not making much sense. He dropped his fork. I saw the terror in his eyes when he realized. I tossed the table. Plates and glasses shattered. He brought his hands up but they spasmed out of control. I threw a shoulder into his chest and knocked him over backward in his chair. He tried to bring his right hand up, laser claws emerging where fingernails used to be. I booted his hand, my shoe kicking up smoke when it made contact. I stepped on his other wrist, pinning it to the floor as needles came firing out his pinky. His legs wheeled around helplessly. He came at me with his laser-claw hand, but it swung so slowly that I easily managed to pin it down with my free foot.
I stayed in position, standing on his wrists, waiting for the paralysis to take full control. He tried to shock me, but I was wearing the thickest rubber soles I could find. The electricity found the refrigerator instead and arced across the floor, a blue lightning bolt that blew the compressor and popped the refrigerator door open with a puff of acrid smoke.
A more natural color came to his cheeks as his control over the tech that bleached his skin began to fail. It was disconcerting to see his skin looking healthier. His mouth hung open and drool began to run down his cheek. I got off his wrists, and they stayed where I left them. The only things that were still moving were his eyes, which were darting left and right. I had no idea if he was still aware of what was happening to him. The poison had taken hold and would stop his heart soon. “Ten minutes tops,” I'd been assured by the apothecary. “Even if he has blood scrubbers. You give him a big enough dose and there's no way he'll be able to purge the toxin fast enough. Those little salamanders don't look like much, but their venom can fell the biggest monitor you've ever seen in under ten.”