“Nobody you want to know right now. Maybe you should call it a night.”
Bondy took a swing at Jack’s face. He telegraphed it by baring his teeth. Jack raised the rod between his face and the fist. Bondy screamed as his knuckles smashed against the metal, then did a knock kneed walk in a circle with the hand jammed between his thighs, groaning in pain.
Suddenly a pair of arms wrapped around Jack’s torso, trapping him in a fleshy vise.
“I got him, Bondy!” Hank’s voice shouted from behind Jack’s left ear. “I got him!”
Bondy stopped his dance, looked up, and grinned. As he charged, Jack rammed his head backward, smashing the back of his skull into Hank’s nose. Abruptly, he was free. He still held the iron bar, so he angled the blunt end toward Bondy and drove it hard into his solar plexus. The air whooshed out of him and he dropped to his knees with a groan, his face gray green. Even his scalp looked sick.
Jack glanced up and saw Scar lip crouched at the front of the cage, gripping the bars, its yellow gaze flicking between him and the groaning Bondy, but lingering on Jack, as if it was trying to comprehend what he was doing, and why. Tiny rivulets of dark, almost black blood trailed down its skin.
Jack flipped the pike a hundred and eighty degrees and pressed the point against Bondy’s chest.
“What kind of noise am I going to hear when I poke you with this end?”
Behind him Hank’s voice, very nasal now, started shouting.
“Hey, Rube! Hey, Rube!”
As Jack was trying to figure out just what that meant, he gave Bondy a poke with the pointed end – not enough to break the skin, but enough to scare him. He howled and fell back on the sawdust, screaming.
“Don’t! Don’t!”
Meanwhile, Hank had kept up his “Hey, Rube!” shouts. As Jack turned to shut him up, he found out what it meant.
The tent was filling with carny folk. Lots of them, all running his way. In seconds he was surrounded. The workers he could handle, but the freaks, gathered in a crowd like this, in the murky light, in various states of dress, were almost terrifying. Jack was struck by the degree and diversity of their deformities. And none of them looked too friendly.
Hank was holding his bloody nose, wagging his finger at Jack.
“Now you’re gonna get it! Now you’re gonna get it!”
Bondy seemed to have a sudden infusion of courage. He hauled himself to his feet and started toward Jack.
“You goddam sonova–”
Jack rapped the end of the iron bar across the side of his bald head, staggering him. With an angry murmur, the circle of carny folk abruptly tightened. Jack whirled, spinning the pike around him.
“Right,” he said. “Who’s next?”
He hoped it was a convincing show. He didn’t know what else to do at the moment. The circle tightened further, slowly closing in on him like a noose. Jack searched for a weak spot, preparing to make a run for it. As a last resort, there was always the .45 caliber Semmerling strapped to his forearm.
Suddenly a deep voice rose above the angry noise of the crowd.
“Here, here! What’s going on now?”
The carny folk quieted immediately, but not before Jack heard a few voices whisper about “the boss” and “Oz.” They parted ranks to make way for a tall, ungainly man, six three at least, lank dark hair, sallow complexioned, his pear shaped body swathed in a huge silk robe embroidered with oriental designs. Although he looked doughy about the middle, the hands that protruded from his sleeves were thin and bony at the wrist. He stopped at the edge on the circle and took in the scene. His expression was slack but his eyes were bright, dark, cold, more alive than the rest of him. Those eyes finally settled on Jack.
“Who are you and what are you doing here?”
“Protecting your property,” Jack said, gambling.
“Oh, really?” The smile was sour, almost cruel. “How magnanimous of you.” Abruptly his expression darkened. “Do not insult my intelligence, sir! I can call the police or we can deal with this in our own way.”
“Fine,” Jack said. He threw the pike at the newcomer’s feet. “Maybe I had it wrong. Maybe you pay baldy here to poke holes in your attractions.”
“Hey, boss–” Bondy began, but the tall man silenced him with a flick of his hand. He looked down at the pike where sawdust clung the dark fluid coating its point, then up at the rakosh with its dozens of oozing wounds. Color began to darken his cheeks as his head turned slowly toward Bondy.
“You harmed this creature, Mr. Bond?”
The bald man quailed under the scrutiny. “We was only trying to get it to put on more of a show for the customers.”
“And you feel you can get more out of it by mistreating it?”
“We thought–”
“I know what you thought, Mr. Bond. And many of us know how the Man Shark felt. We’ve all known mistreatment during the course of our lives. We don’t look kindly upon it. You will retire to your quarters immediately and wait for me there.” He gestured to a couple of the freaks – one who looked like an alligator and another who looked like a walking lump of muscle. “See that he gets there and stays there.” Then he returned his attention to Jack. “And what is your interest in this matter?”
“I don’t like bullies,” Jack said. He didn’t have to fake any sincerity for that statement.
“No one does. But why should you be interested in this particular creature? Why should you be here at all?”
“Even a rakosh has a right to die in peace.”
When he saw the boss freeze, Jack knew immediately that he’d made a mistake. The glittering eyes fixed on him.
“What did you say? What did you call it?”
“Nothing,” Jack said.
“No, I heard you. You called it a rakosh.” Oz – Jack assumed it was short for Ozymandias – stepped over to the cage and stared into Scar lip’s yellow eyes. “So that’s what you are...a rakosh. How fascinating!” He turned to the rest of his employees. “It’s all right. You can all go back to bed. I wish to speak to this gentleman before he goes.”
“You didn’t know what it is?” Jack said as the crowd dispersed.
“Not until this moment,” said Oz, continuing to stare at the rakosh. “I thought they were a myth. I found it drifting off Governor’s Island last summer. I’d gone out with a group of souvenir hunters to look for wreckage from the ship that had exploded and burned the night before. I thought the creature was dead, but when I found it was alive, I had it brought ashore. It looked rather vicious so I put it into a spare cage.”
“Lucky for you.”
The boss smiled. “I should say so. It almost tore the cage apart before it exhausted itself. But since then its health has followed a steady downhill course. We’ve fed it fish, foul, beef, horsemeat, even vegetables – although one look at those teeth and there’s no question that it’s a carnivore – but no matter what we’ve tried, it’s health continues to fail.”
Jack now understood why Scar lip was dying. Rakoshi required a very specific species of flesh to thrive. And this one wasn’t getting it. Jack had no intention of telling the boss what it was.
“You’re sure it’s a rakosh?”
“Well...” Jack said, trying to sound tentative. “I saw a picture of one in a book once. I...I think it looked like this. But I’m not sure. I could be wrong.”
“But you’re not,” the boss said, turning and staring hard into his eyes. “I’m certain you’re not.” He laughed. “A rakosh! Wonderful! And it’s mine!”
Jack glanced at Scar lip’s slouched, wasted form.
Yeah, but not for long.
“You must allow me to reward you for succoring the poor creature, and for identifying it.”