Internecine (15 page)

“That’s what I was thinking, as we’re kind of pressed for time, today.”

“Oh, dear boys, so are we, so are we. As a matter of fact, the Sister and I were right in the midst of something when you were so thoughtful as to call. If you don’t mind—?”

“Please,” said Dandine, waving away decorum.

“But first,” she said, “does our new friend, Mr. L, require any sort of . . . ah, medical attention?” She pointed at my forehead.

“No, Sister,” said Dandine, gracious enough to field what was becoming a recurring gag that wasn’t funny. “He was in a strange place, you know, and he . . . walked into a mirror.”

“Oh, you poor dear. Are you all right?”

“I’ll live,” I said, rubbing my head to demonstrate it was no biggie. Lancets of pain shot from my eyebrows to my jaw. Still tender. She had taken note of my gauzed wrists, too, but tastefully refrained from asking if I had recently attempted suicide.

She waddled off down a hall to the back of the structure, crooking a finger for us to follow. “Attend,” she said, all smiles. “Our Mr. L may find this instructive.”

“Oh, yeah,” Dandine said, sotto voce.

The Sister levered open a heavy door and indicated that we should enter. I caught an ambient, fishy odor my nose did not enjoy.

Dandine ushered me through first. “This is probably one of the most bug-proof rooms in Los Angeles,” he said.

I expected to see—surprise!—a soundproofed, hi-tech chamber
where we could shuck the niceties and get down to business. A bunker of safety tucked amid the chintz and religious bric-a-brac. I was half-right.

A gridded steel staircase led down to an unsuspected subfloor of the house. The main room was at least twenty by twenty feet, tarted up as a medieval torture dungeon. There were two vacant cells in one wall, each about the size of a toilet stall, with barred doors. Another door on the opposite wall led to a bathroom. Most of the equipment—the stretching rack, the
X
-shaped inverted cross (with padded wrist and ankle cuffs), a gymnastics horse augmented with restraints, and a Frankensteinian dentist’s chair—were wheeled back out of the center of the room to clear a large, general space of floor, carpeted in thin, but durable, all weather stuff like tweed. It was a harsh, deep crimson color, varying enough to reveal the traffic areas, and wheel impressions from the assorted machines.

The other Sister, virtually a clone of the first, stood in the center of the room, next to a footstool holding an open can of cat food and a spoon. Slick morsels littered the stool and the floor around it, and I identified the stench as minced mackerel. (My stepmom used to feed it to a bloated, glassy-eyed, catlike thing she called a pet; I’ve always hated that smell.)

Connected to the ceiling girders by a steel cable was a middle-aged, red-faced man wearing a too-tight Cub Scouts shirt (Troop 183) and nothing else. Smears of cat food had chunked around his mouth and spattered his naked thighs, making him look as though he had vomited excrement (I’m sorry, but that’s really the only way to describe it, and if you’d seen it, you’d agree). He was just struggling to stand as we entered, and the Sister closed the door behind us. Around him the carpet was darkened and wet; sweat was pouring abundantly off of him and as he managed to climb to his feet (freehand, since his wrists were bound behind him by a buckled leather strap), a rope of drool escaped from his mouth. The cable looped from a choke chain around his neck to the ceiling. He stood there, swaying, with his feet planted apart.

“Please do continue, Sister,” said our Sister. “I believe we were on Number Three.”

The other Sister nodded, stepped back for swinging room, hiked her
habit, and kicked the captive man in the groin as hard as she could with those big, clunky shoes. The man folded up and collapsed with a huffing noise as his leash (the cable) unreeled a predetermined length from its pulley. His genitalia were deep purple, the color of blisters filled with blood. I flinched.

Our Sister pulled a stopwatch out of her habit and clicked one of the studs, monitoring the sweep hand.

“Who’ve we got here, today?” said Dandine, hands in pockets, no more casually interested than if we’d walked in on grannies watching a soap opera.

“Oh,” our Sister said, “our Mr. G, here, devoutly hopes that one day he will become a U.S. senator. Or is it a congressman? Which one is more important?”

“Fewer senators than congressmen,” I said, amazed I’d found the breath to speak. The mackerel aroma was killing me. Past that there was a stale, locker-room smell that wasn’t an olfactory bouquet, either. Something was venting from the pores of the guy on the leash that stank like nerve gas.

“Oh, I believe you are correct, Mr. L. In that case, our friend here would be a congressman who wants to be a senator. Sister, may I have the honor of presenting our new friend, Mr. L?”

The other Sister was panting with exertion as she humped over to greet me. When she had pulled back to cock her kick, I’d noticed that she had a clubfoot. Otherwise, the Sisters could have been . . . brothers. It had taken me this long to twig to the fact that these two were little old men, in nun drag. You’ll understand that I had a few other things to occupy my immediate scope of attention, but Dandine should have warned me, goddammit. Not that it made a scrap of difference.

The other Sister’s handshake was not so vibrant. “Do excuse us, Mr. L,” she chirped. “We were right in the middle of this when our dear boy, Mr. D, gave us the pleasure of this social call. Normally, we would deflect such an interruption, but after all, this
is
for Mr. D, isn’t it?”

She squeezed Dandine’s cheek between thumb and forefinger and gave him a matronly hug.

“So what is this, Sister?” asked Dandine, amused. “Atonement for bad highway services?”

“Oh, no,” said the first Sister. “The gentleman there, Mr. G, was
very
specific in his requests. He even brought his own waivers, which was
very
considerate. Time.” She clicked off the stopwatch.

Mr. G thrashed around on the floor, trying to secure one knee so he could hoist himself anew. He grunted and snot spurted onto his chin. Veins bulged from his scarlet face, and his eyes were bloodshot, rimed in white. It hurt to look. I could feel my cock and balls trying to contract, to hide behind my lungs.

“If he stays on the floor for less than a minute,” said the second Sister, “then we get another ‘go,’ as they say, until we’ve each had three tries. One would think that the urge would be to hold back, but he insisted we use all our might and kick as hard as we possibly can. The sensation is quite liberating, actually, for the good Sister and I. The urge to kick harder, every time, is somewhat empowering. . . . He has stood up, inside the minute, every time. So now we move to the next phase.”

She smiled sweetly and returned to spoon more cat food into Mister G’s slack mouth. “You can lie down now, dear,” she said.

Mr. G fell forward onto his face and rolled until he was spread-eagled. The Sister gingerly taped his violet, malignant-looking penis to his stomach, and separated his testicles as though arranging a lace doily.

Then she stomped down hard on his left ball, using her heel.

I felt a black hole swirl open from the top of my rib cage to mid thigh. I think my own mouth was hanging agape.

Mr. G folded together like a flimsy lawn chair, convulsing.

“Ow,” said Dandine. His bemused expression had not changed.

“It is Mr. G’s wish,” said the first Sister, “to ultimately become handicapped through this abuse, in order to somehow curry sympathy with his constituents.” She leaned closer to us. “Personally, I think that part might be just a
story.
” She winked.

Mr. G gradually flowered open again, and the other Sister stomped on his opposite gonad, this time with the club heel of her orthopedic shoe.

“Oh, it’s
my
turn, now,” said our Sister. They exchanged places, her compatriot in the Calling clumping back over to us.

“Now, my delightful Mr. D,” said the second one. “How may we serve you?”

“I’m afraid it’s rather indelicate, Sister,” said Dandine. “Please know that I would not impose unless it was absolutely necessary.”

“Tish-tosh,” she said. “Away with that.”

I could not resist glancing past her. The first Sister repositioned Mr. G’s testicle as though placing a golf tee. Then,
stomp.
I was grinding my teeth.

“I don’t want to compromise your position,” said Dandine, “but I need to ask you a few questions about
NORCO
.”

Concern—maybe fear—crossed the second Sister’s expression like a passing storm cloud. “Oh,
my,
” she said. “This
is
serious.” With one weather eye on me she added, “We do not like
NORCO
. The Sisters try to have as little truck as possible with organizations of that caliber. We leave them alone; they leave us alone. Sometimes a disruption in the order, a change, is inevitable . . . alas.”

Stomp!

The guard/gardener lifted his hand in farewell as we exited. Dandine had already left a thick envelope on the sterling collection plate that was situated in a small nave within the reception parlor.

“My compliments on the Bordeaux,” said Dandine.

“Come again?”

“The wine. Thanks.”

Two plus two equals . . . “Wait—you
took
it from my apartment?”

“Didn’t you notice?”

“You lugged around a bottle of vino in that rucksack, all night?”

“I didn’t have time to shop for the Sisters.”

Suddenly I was exhausted all over again. Atmospheric pressure, or  something, crushed my shoulders down. My headache resurged. “Well . . . I guess that’s better than leaving it as party supplies for those bums who swarmed over my place last night.”

“Exactly, that’s the spirit.” He seemed pleased.

“So the Sisters aren’t connected to
NORCO
?” I asked, recalling the second Sister’s dismay.

“Remember all the little competing clubs I sketched out for you?” said Dandine. “Information brokerages exist in a gray zone, with friendlies and hostiles distributed according to whatever alliances are formed
or dissolved within a given time. Like week to week. The Sisters exist outside of
NORCO
, which makes them especially valuable to me, even though
NORCO
might use them to gain some other piece of information tomorrow.”

“The Sisters wouldn’t sell you out to
NORCO?
”

“I wouldn’t completely rule it out. But information spoils very quickly. They would tell
NORCO
useless truths. Unless
NORCO
decided to cross the line with them, and that’s a bridge you can never un-burn. Put yourself in the position of that fellow in the Cub Scout suit. Sooner or later under such coercion you might change your loyalties.”

“So the trick is to utilize the information before the other side can,” I said. “And make sure by the time they get the news, it’s academic.”

The Sisters were like a mom-and-pop boutique, maintaining a safe distance from the Walmart of
NORCO
.

Right now I really, deeply, and truly wanted to talk to Katy Burgess about her pet politician, G. Johnson Jenks, and I admit that it would be to try to score points with Dandine that might keep me in this puzzling game until I could see something that was really, deeply, and truly a revelation. But it might also be a test of Katy’s mettle and grit, and that intrigued me, too. Against the rules of contact, just now. But maybe later . . .

There had to be one single person I could contact that
NORCO
had not covered. The idea was a devilish itch inside my head. One person from my planet. One resource I could contribute. It was
there
but I couldn’t call it up; right on the tip of my brain, making me feel the way you feel when you forget your own phone number.

I saw Dandine’s expression click back to combat-neutral. Then his eyes glinted with a light that suggested he was revving up to work fresh, new violence.

A muscular GTO, cherry red under about eighty coats of lacquer, was parked alongside the Town Car, its butt canted upward over fat racing slicks. A well-worn New Balance athletic shoe with gaudy neon-colored treads was sticking out the driver’s side window, chocked between eye-searing chrome trim and the rearview mirror. Some metalzoid post-punk madness was churning out of the sound system (the door speakers were blown and frazzled, diluting the effect of the bass) and
exhaled smoke rolled out of the cabin. I could see the top of someone’s head—dirty blondish hair reaching every which way. At our approach, the head levitated a couple of millimeters so that stark blue eyes could spy on us, through the black leather gap between the top of the dash and the curve of the steering wheel.

“Yo,” said the guy behind the wheel.

“Declan Morris Zetts,” said Dandine. “He likes people to call him DMZ.”

“
The
Zetts?” I asked.

“Mm-hm. Excuse us for a minute, would you? Thanks.” He proceeded without waiting whether to see if I’d accommodate him or not. I played it safe and hung back near the Town Car.