Buzz Cut (20 page)

This man. This man had waylaid her. Laid himself in her way. Laid between her legs. This man, this fucking man who Butler Jack knew, the security chief, Morton Sampson's top cop. Laid in her way. Took her, spoiled her, dirtied her with his own greedy needs.

He knew this man, David Cruz. Knew him on sight from his years on board the M.S.
Comet.
Knew he was inferior. A man of the body. A man who walked and sat and talked with such physical certainty. Butler Jack had known people like him all his life. They were common. The physical ones. The ones who trained their bodies to do what their minds could not. The ones who lifted and carried and packed and loaded. The ones who feasted on gravity, defying it, growing strong to deny its hold on them. He hated these people and these people hated him. Hated him on sight. They recognized Butler Jack. He was strong but he did not earn it. Did not lift weights or do the machines, any of it. He was strong because his father and mother were strong. He was strong because he could think strong. Because he could outmaneuver, outfox, outcerebrate.

David Cruz had stained her. Soiled her. He had befouled her. Forced her to break her hallowed vow to Butler Jack, forced her to lie, to betray her own words. But what irony it was. What wonderful dark twisted fortune that David Cruz should turn out to be his mortal adversary. How perfect it was that this man who was one of those being paid to track down Butler Jack would find him now. Would find him at his door.

***

Cruz never used the security peephole. It was a matter of pride, a belief that he could handle whatever gremlin or monster stood on the other side. He had his training, his years on the street. A black belt in alley warfare. Box or wrestle, gouge or pull hair, whatever it required. David Cruz was a man of simple pride. His hand-to-hand skills were good enough, he could take on anyone, be fairly sure he'd have a better than even chance of winning. There were always those men out there, faster, trained in some evil art from the Orient, they might be able to get the better of him. But there weren't many of those. And even with them, David Cruz would be willing to take the gamble. Good skills versus evil art. He'd always wager on the good.

When the knock came, he grabbed a pair of boxer shorts, stepped into them as he moved to the door and drew it open.

The blond man who stood before him in white slacks and flowered shirt had his left hand upraised. In it he held a black-handled dagger by the tip of the blade like a crucifix, holding it lightly as if he meant to flick it into David's chest.

Cruz took a half step back. A strategic retreat. Fighting room. Dodging distance.

The man stepped into the room. His face slack. Mouth dead. Only in his eyes was there any suggestion of what the fireworks inside his head might look like. One summer in Spain David Cruz had watched the Pamplona bulls. Watched them bleeding from the picadors, their heavy neck muscles slashed, their eyes taking on the glazed ferocity he saw before him now. Knowing they were doomed, only a matter of moments before they were gone, but with some final savage need to sink their horns in flesh, take a few lives with them. Dangerous beasts.

David kept his eyes hovering on the man's chest. An opponent's eyes could trick you, the legs as well. A feint, a crafty head fake could put you off balance, enough of an opening to sink the blade. But if you watched their chests, kept your eyes locked there, the knife in your peripheral vision, you could decode their real movement, anticipate the strike.

"You bastard. You filthy fucking bastard."

David didn't reply. He circled clockwise, watching the chest. The knife still held upright like a priest moving down the aisle at mass.

"Innocence," the man said, his voice roughened with rage. "You wouldn't know, you ignorant asshole, but it's Middle English, from Old French, and before that Latin. From the verb
nocere,
which means to harm. With the prefix
in
meaning
not.
Not to harm. To keep innocent. White and virginal. But you harmed her, David Cruz, you lay with her. You destroyed the innocence."

"Lay with who?"

"You know who. Monica. Monica is who."

They tracked around the tight oblong between Cruz's bed and his dresser. David's hands up and open, ready to fend off, to wrestle, punch, whatever lay open to him.

"Monica Sampson?"

"You know damn well who I mean."

"You're the one who kidnapped her? You're him?"

David wanted badly to look at his face, wanted to shift his eyes from the man's chest, but he disciplined himself, checked the impulse. Heart fired up now, more at the mention of her name than at the knife.

"What did you do with her? Where is she?"

"What did I do with her?" The blond man cackled. "You're the one who did her. It was you, David Cruz. You, you worthless wretched bastard."

David thought he saw the knife move. A whir of silver light. He dodged to his right. But when he looked again the blond man was still there, the knife in his hand, same position. Smiling now. The upper hand. David spooked, not sure what he'd seen. Not sure where to look now. The after-image of the silver light still burning in his eyes. But it was nowhere.

It wasn't his method to go on the attack. He was a counterpuncher by nature. But her name coming from this man's lips, the silver light, brought him up to the balls of his feet. He felt himself leaning forward, off-balance, a surge of anger richening the mixture in his lungs.

David broke the circle, stepped back, held his ground. Stared into the man's eyes briefly. Saw the same bleak and depraved look as before. Moved his eyes back to the chest, saw the knife holding steady as the man raised his right hand, extended it out to his side as far as he could reach, as if he meant to give David a roundhouse slap. And the silver light came again, off to the right, out of his peripheral vision. David hesitated briefly, then swung his head, squinted at it. An inch of current, its crackling buzz. Not understanding what the hell he was looking at.

And in that instant he felt the first swipe of the blade, the warm wetness on his bare chest. Felt the second slash across his cheek and neck, a numbing trail, and the third clipping his wrist as David cranked up an arm to defend. A fourth slash down his ribs, the man ducking under his arms somehow, quicker than he looked.

He chopped at the blond man's neck but the blow glanced off his collarbone. He lashed out two quick fists, neither of which connected, as the man bent and bobbed, eluded the next blow and the one after that. David felt the weakness growing in his legs. The slick of blood on his chest and arms. A shallow trench opened from his throat to his bellybutton. He knew that without looking. Knew he was dead unless he ended this quickly, could hold his wound closed, get to the infirmary.

Not sure where to look anymore. The knife jiggling in the man's left hand, the buzz of current in his right. David backing away, feeling the bed behind him. The blond man closing in.

It was a story he'd heard somewhere. A street cop's advice to every homeowner. You find a burglar in your house. You've got a gun in your hand, you don't know if the burglar's armed or not. What do you do? You ask the burglar a question. Any question, how is your mother doing? The premise being that people always freeze when asked a question but rarely do when told to freeze. How is your mother doing? The burglar freezes, and you shoot the motherfucker. Keep on shooting till you're empty.

Only difference, David Cruz had no pistol.

"How is your mother doing?" he said, a croak in his voice.

The blond man stiffened, held. And David Cruz ducked and lunged, smashed his shoulder into the man's solar plexus, heard him retch. Clenched an arm around the man's waist, drove him backward, slamming him against the wall. Legs pumping, hands reaching up and finding a grip on both the man's wrists. Spread-eagled his arms, pinning him to the wall.

The man wriggled but wasn't strong enough to break this hold. And David Cruz drove a knee into the man's crotch. Drove another one and another one. The man screaming but unable to move. Another knee and another. The blood from David's wounds slathered everywhere, making his grip slippery. Giving the guy wiggle room with his right hand, the electrified one.

David kneed him again and again. The screams. The man weeping now. Face twisted.

The man wrenched that right wrist, strained it. The ugly crackling of the current again. And David Cruz felt the cold touch of voltage against his arm. His body tossed sideways. Falling to the floor. On his back. Legs spread. He was immobilized but dimly awake. Knowing what was coming. Knowing it from somewhere a great distance away, a promontory, a place like the one David Cruz had climbed at boy scout camp many many years ago. North Carolina. Seven mountain ranges. Count them. See thirty miles away. That's where he was at the end, lying on the floor of his cabin, but at the same time returning briefly to North Carolina, becoming again that boy, a boy looking out at David Cruz on the floor of his cabin on the M.S.
Eclipse.
The young David Cruz learning to be good, learning to be true and honest and fair, but even then, even as a boy he had known somehow that violence was coming for him, coming from a long inevitable distance away, somehow always known, as he knew now, watching through the dim mist as a man kicked at the crotch of his adult body, kicked at it and kicked at it. David Cruz, the boy, seemed to be watching all of this as it unfolded, watching from some safe distance away. Seeing the bad man kneel above David's adult body and begin to work on his flesh with a sharp blade.

Thorn stood beside the body, a pale light angling in from the hallway. He reached out and touched a fingertip to Sugar's forehead. Clammy.

"Sugar."

Fighting off the tremble in his hand, Thorn peeled back the silver blanket to feel for a pulse. And jerked his hand away.

Sugar's bare flesh was coated with some kind of slime that gave off an aroma as sickly as overcooked broccoli. Thorn stepped back from the chrome massage table. A clot was forming in his throat.

He leaned forward, dabbed a finger against Sugar's nearly hairless chest, scooped up a glop of slime. Turning to the wedge of light from the hallway, he held up his finger. The stuff was green, strands of it dangling like shredded spinach.

"Seaweed," croaked the voice behind him.

Thorn staggered into a table, knocked over a bottle of oil, which crashed on the floor and broke. When he swung back to the massage table, Sugarman was up on one elbow, tucking the silver blanket back around his body. Face puffy and strained.

"Boy, was I out." His voice frail, Sugar taking shallow breaths. "Dreamed I was in that canoe. Stroking, stroking. Getting nowhere. Paddling like a maniac, the thing stuck dead in the mud. Terrible goddamn dream."

He lay back against the table. Took several shallow breaths.

"Jesus, you're alive."

"Maybe. I'm not sure."

"What the fuck happened to you?"

Sugar closed his eyes, worked on getting his breath.

"And what the hell is that stuff you're covered in!"

"Seaweed. A purgative."

"Man, oh, man. You scared the ever-loving shit out of me."

Feebly Sugar tucked the blanket into place. "What they do, they microwave the seaweed, get it piping hot, a lady slathers it all over, wraps you in this thermal blanket, turns out the light, leaves you to cook for an hour, sweat like a son of a bitch. It's to get rid of the toxins. I must've been full of them. Must've had twenty pounds of toxins floating around inside me."

"You sound like death on the half shell."

"At least I can talk."

"Well, you sound terrible."

"You come all this way to give me shit?"

Thorn sat down on the swivel stool beside the table. "Someone called, said you'd been hurt. You might not make it."

"I was probably fibrillating at the time," he said. "But they de-fibbed me. Hit me with those paddles, you know."

"You had a heart attack?"

"Kind of."

"Talk to me, Sugar."

He opened his eyes, stared up into the half-light, sighed, eyes drifting closed. Lying there sweating inside his foil blanket. With his eyes shut, he told Thorn the story, breath coming hard. Stopping every sentence, gathering himself, going on.

A few hours ago, headed to his cabin, he'd seen a guy duck in a room. It looked weird, so he followed. Guy got around behind him somehow. Same young guy they ran into on the docks in the Glades. He zapped Sugar with that thing on his fingers. After he was knocked out, the guy apparently rearranged him so one hand touched the bulkhead. To ground him. Then he put his current against Sugar's right nipple, making the voltage run from his right nipple across his chest to his left hand.

"Through your heart."

"Exactly. Guy was trying to rattle my pulse out of sync. And he succeeded, but somebody walked by, started screaming. Guy ran. They got a nurse down there. She de-fibbed me. Did some CPR and brought me back. Though my ribs, man, it feels like Muhammad Ali's been using me for a heavy bag."

"This fuckhead tried to electrocute you, you're lying there joking about it?"

"I'm too weak to get mad. My heart's not up to it."

"Jesus. I walked in here, I thought you were dead."

"Well, I believe I may have paid a brief visit to the great beyond. And let me tell you, place isn't all it's cracked up to be. Organ music is for shit."

"Man, oh, man."

"Nurse told me a fibrillating heart looks like a bunch of squirming worms. Muscles all separated into strands, jumping and jiving all out of sync."

Thorn felt his own heart quiver.

"Know what I found out? Fiesta's policy for heart attacks?" His eyes were open now, staring at Thorn.

"You're working yourself up, Sugar. You should just relax."