The driver’s door opened first, and Dex unloaded himself from behind the steering wheel. Then the other three doors and tailgate opened in concert.
New narco guards emerged from the G-Wagon, one after another, a clown-car stunt carried off with military precision. Ten of them. They formed a neat line in front of the vehicle, awaiting orders from René.
“Good,” Evan said. “You brought me more people to kill.”
But René just turned to him, his moon boots scraping on the porch, and smiled.
“No limits,” he said.
29
Your Bad Self
According to the intel Candy and Jaggers had gathered over the past day and a half, Setyeyiva was planning to leave his office between six and six-fifteen this evening. They shivered through another faux photo shoot down on the boardwalk, Candy looking fetching as ever in her leather pants and bustier getup, Jaggers zooming in over her head at the converted cannery. Soon enough only Refat Setyeyiva remained at the office once again, toiling away.
Jaggers checked his watch. “It’s time.”
They hustled back to their rental, a Škoda Fabia Combi, which, with low standards and some squinting, could be considered a car. As Jaggers pulled out of the parking space he’d shoehorned into, Candy bought a berry Popsicle from a vendor.
They zipped up the hill in the hatchback supermini. She hopped out behind the building in the alley that ran between TeleFon Star and the parking structure. Jaggers backed up, killed the headlights. Someone had spray-painted the three monkeys on the wall — see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil. The paint had dripped before it dried, lending the simian faces a demonic cast.
Dusk eased down the dial on the day. A few lights blinked on in buildings farther up the hill.
Candy propped herself against the wall by the rear door of the old cannery. She peeled back the wrapping on her SuperFun CrazeyBerryz Icestik!
She could make a spectacle of herself with a Popsicle.
Setting one foot flat against the wall behind her, she arched her back away from the wall and twirled the ruby-red tip between her lips. She knew precisely what she looked like.
It was good to be her.
5:53. No cars. No pedestrians.
That whisper returned: Can you still pull this off, Candy? After X left his stamp on you, are you sure you’re the same? Or are you damaged goods?
Yes, she was sure. No, she wasn’t damaged goods.
She was a traffic stopper. A Hall & Oates maneater. The kind of calendar girl that made you want to freeze the month. She used to be all those things with her clothes on or off. So what if, thanks to Orphan X, her naked superpowers had dimmed? She was still irresistible.
5:57. No vehicles. No foot traffic.
The wind shifted, producing a whiff of fish from the walls of the old cannery. The berry ice inexplicably tasted like peach. Somewhere in the distance, someone was blaring a Salt-N-Pepa — Led Zeppelin mash-up. These post-Soviet states were so gloriously ass backward.
She licked her berry-peach ice and waited. Refat Setyeyiva, come on with your bad self and your fucked-up name.
The door creaked open.
At first he didn’t see her. His scruffy face stayed bent down as he fumbled a file into a soft briefcase. He got two steps into the alley when she cleared her throat.
A soft, feminine melody.
He glanced over.
That stopped him.
He wasn’t bearlike as so many former throwers were. His massive body was still shaped the right way, mass up top, tapered through the waist. She wondered if he’d given up the steroids entirely or if they made him look too damn good to quit.
He was staring at her, no doubt wondering some things of his own.
She was a mirage. He seemed afraid to blink lest she disappear.
She parted her mouth. Let the ice pop inch further past her orange lips. Let her tongue squirm into sight on the side.
He didn’t notice the Škoda Fabia Combi rev to life behind him.
How could he?
His gaze stayed locked on her even as the car bore down, headlights dimmed. She tilted toward him and plucked the soft briefcase from his hand. At the last moment, Setyeyiva seemed to come back into his body. He whirled around as the car smashed into him, the brakes already chirping.
He flew. Landed. A bark of air left his lungs on impact.
He stared at her with uncomprehending eyes.
She licked up the Popsicle’s shaft. Might as well give him a little morphine on his way out.
Jaggers rolled forward, crushing the big man. The car bounced up and down and up and down and then was in front of him, perfectly positioned to load the body. Jaggers popped the trunk and climbed out.
Candy dropped the ice pop and walked over, the briefcase swinging at her side.
She smirked at that whisper that had been haunting her of late. Damaged goods her ass.
The Škoda Fabia Combi had few advantages, but two of them happened to be generous hatch space and a loading sill a mere 611 millimeters off the ground. The roomy hatch was lined with plastic tarp, taped expertly around the sides.
Candy took the ankles, Jaggers the armpits. They huffed and they puffed and they swung the man in. The car had no sooner creaked down on its chassis than they heard a clacking of high heels behind them.
They turned to see one of the boardwalk girls teetering up the alley toward them, her baby giraffe legs constrained by a micromini banding her thighs together. She had a sweet almond-shaped face framed with straight raven-black hair. She might’ve been eighteen or a precocious fifteen — you never knew with these East Slavic types. She looked very concerned in a wholesome oh-my-gosh way that seemed at odds with her getup.
She said something in what sounded like Turkish — probably Crimean Tatar. Noting their expressions, she switched to Russian. “Are you all right? Was there an accident?”
“Yes,” Candy replied in Russian. “But we’re okay.” She reached over quickly to shut the hatch, but Jaggers stopped her.
Candy looked at him. His button eyes peered back at her, showing no depth.
“No,” Candy said to him under her breath.
Jaggers said nothing but kept his hand on the underside of the hatch lid, holding it open.
The girl drew nearer. “You’re sure you’re not hurt? Do you need me to call someone?”
“No, no, we’re fine,” Candy said. “Thank you, though, sweetheart.”
The girl stopped. They were alone in the alley, just the three of them cast in the slanting glow thrown from a window above. At some point in the past few minutes, night had come on in full.
“We could use a hand with the trunk,” Jaggers said. “I think it got warped in the crash. We can’t get it closed.”
The girl looked confused. But she gave a one-shoulder shrug. “Okay.”
As she started toward them, Candy tried again to yank the rear door closed, but Jaggers held it firm.
And then it was too late.
The girl looked down, saw the tangled body held by the plastic lining, and opened her mouth. Jaggers sealed in her scream with a jaundiced hand, his fist jabbing twice at her neck. He dumped her into the cargo space on top of Setyeyiva’s body and slammed the hatch lid.
Only now did Candy see the slim silver pen clenched in Jaggers’s bloody hand.
The girl rattled against the closed hatch. Wet thrashing. A screech of breath.
The words hissed through Candy’s teeth, cold with rage. “She’s still alive.”