New Title 1 (16 page)

“Like twice-pounded shit, my friend.”

“Same old Zippo.” Crosshairs laughed. It felt so good to laugh. “What about you, Sarge—ever seen such a specimen?”

“You’re looking better than last time I saw you,” Oddy said. “But barely, son.”

They were peering at his face with curiosity normally reserved for a Rubik’s Cube. Crosshairs said, “Might as well get this over with,” and lifted his bangs.

Nobody turned away, or grimaced, or stared with leering intensity. Oddy furrowed his brow and said, “Not a bad job.” Zippo agreed while noting the color was slightly off. Then Crosshairs sprung the clips that secured the prosthesis to his skull, detaching a portion of his face. Tripwire slitted his eyes and looked at the dark hairs dappling the divot. Crosshairs told him about the transplanted ass-skin. Tripwire asked to see his ass. Crosshairs shot him the bird. Zippo sniffed the prosthesis, declared it “rank,” and told Crosshairs he ought to wash it once in a goddamn while. Oddy asked him how the injury had affected him, and they all agreed it sucked to have everything taste like burnt toast.

“Even pussy?” Zippo asked.

“Even pussy.”

“That fucking war,” Zippo said.

Another round arrived, then another. Oddy regarded his old unit members. Perhaps it was the potent Canadian beer, or simply the dimness of the bar, but for the briefest moment Oddy saw them as they had been in 1967: Crosshairs was leaning back in his seat, arm thrown over the seatback above Tripwire’s head; he’d swept his bangs back, not caring who saw his face, comfortable, laughing at something Zippo had said. Tripwire was sitting to Crosshairs’ right, and the creases of his face, creases that had prevented Oddy from recognizing him, seemed to be melting away like ice during a spring thaw. Sitting next to him, steepled fingers pressed to his lips, Zippo waited for the other two to quit talking nonsense so he could tell them
the way it was
.

It was as if the twenty-year interval was nothing, as if it had only been a week, a day, since they’d last met, drank, laughed. Oddy watched this almost unconscious knitting-together, this sort of easy falling-back into old roles, with intermixed fascination and unease. It was like watching puzzle pieces being slotted together by invisible hands. This was not an overly comforting image. It made him feel like a man strapped to the nose cone of a heat-seeking missile.

“And then there were four,” Oddy said during a lull in conversation.

“Yeah,” Crosshairs said. “Just missing—”

“Afternoon, fellows.”

Answer appeared in the manner he always did: as if from thin air. One moment he was nonexistent and the next he was standing at the booth’s mouth, lips curled at the edges like charring paper. His hair was long, the fiery red had faded to strawberry-blonde and receding into a widow’s peak. He didn’t appear to have matured physically at all: his shoulders were still jagged peaks, his reedy arms and legs free-floating within flared jeans and chambray shirt. Oddy noticed the Blue Jays cap in his hand and realized Answer had been in the bar all along, sitting alone on the far side. Oddy knew then he’d observed everything—his and Tripwire’s meeting, Zippo punching Mr. Toe-sucker, Crosshairs’s appearance—waiting and appraising until he’d decided to make his presence known. Oddy wasn’t angry at Answer, exactly. He might as well be angry at a wolf for slaughtering sheep, a preying mantis for consuming its mate, or any other creature of instinct for doing what came naturally.

“Well, well,” Zippo said as Answer sat down with the unnerving sinuosity that characterized all his movements. “If it isn’t the wraith hisowndamnself.”

Answer shook hands with everyone. His grip was loose and cold, his skin dry. He looked at Crosshairs’s new face and cocked his head to one side, a gesture they were all familiar with. “So,” he said. “Who’d’ve figured Crosshairs would turn out to be the handsomest one of the bunch?”

Every once in a while Answer could fire off a zinger. The other four cracked up.

“What about you,” Crosshairs said. “Looking like a strung-out Opie.”

Zippo whistled the opening bars of
The Andy Griffith Show
.

“You weren’t the one who sent the letter, were you?” Oddy asked. “Seeing as it’s the type of thing you’d find amusing.”

Answer shook his head. “Just looked like a way to score some easy dough.”

“
Too
easy,” Tripwire said.

“You sound like a character in a bad slasher movie,” Zippo said. “It may surprise you, but there are many wealthy, harmless, and utterly batshit people in this world. We just hit the motherlode.”

Nobody heard the approaching footsteps. Nobody saw a shadow cast across the table’s surface, perhaps because the bar was too dark.

Or perhaps no shadow was cast.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen.” The voice was buttery and fluid. “So nice to see you’ve been reacquainted.”

««—»»

The speaker looked as though he’d stepped off the stage of a freakshow: roughly the height of an eight-year-old boy, stubby digits, arms projecting like flippers. Thin wormish lips, like a pair of parallel nightcrawlers. He was radish-eyed with one red iris, but whether he was a true albino or if this was an affectation, a tinted contact lens, was uncertain. Only one eye was visible, the other covered by an embroidered eyepatch. A pungent odor wafted off him, an unsavory blend of tannic and Old World spices. His sharply-tailored suit, gleaming gold cufflinks, and crocodile loafers couldn’t disguise the stone-cold fact the man seemed preternaturally suited to carnival geekdom, biting the heads off chickens or pounding a railroad spike up his nostril.

He advanced to the head of the table, which reached his nipples, placing his hands on the transparent Plexiglas. They did not jibe with the rest of his appearance: mechanics’ hands, creases rimed with dark filth, grease or crankcase oil.

“It’s wonderful you all came,” he said. “I thought some of you might’ve viewed my letter as a hoax.” He tipped Tripwire a wink. “Or thought someone had a mind to set you up.”

Oddy shot a hard look at the midget. “Anton Grosevoir, I’m figuring?”

The dwarf beamed. “Excellent pronunciation, Mr. Grant! Most people mangle my name so horribly it makes me wince to hear it.”

Oddy was confident that wincing would only improve Grosevoir’s appearance.
That
, he thought,
or a total body transplant
.

“Yes, I’m Grosevoir,” the man continued. “And I’m just overjoyed, I mean positively
elated
, you all came.” He clapped his hands together, producing a sound like gutted trout colliding. “Now, if you’d all be so kind as to follow me—”

“Hold the phone, stumpy.” Zippo produced the unsigned check and slapped it on the table. “I’ll be needing your John Hancock before I go any further.”

Grosevoir appeared miffed. Zippo inspired this basic reaction in all carbon-based life forms. “If you’d rather,” Grosevoir said, uncapping a platinum Mont Blanc. “But, as I said in the letter, the fifty thousand is only a, what do you call it, appearance fee?” He pulled the check to him, fingertips leaving gelid snail-trails on the Plexiglas. “My proposal—which, I take it, you have no desire to entertain—is much more lucrative.”

Grosevoir’s pen hovered above the check. Zippo drew it back, folded it neatly into his pocket, and said, “What the hell. I came all this way.”

“Splendid!” Grosevoir’s tongue, pink as a baby’s ass, darted out to slick his lips. “Please follow me. I have a room where we can discuss my proposition in privacy.”

“Just a minute, Mr. Grosevoir.” Oddy appraised the diminutive man in the way one might appraise a small but possibly vicious dog. “How do you know about our connection?”

“Your…
connection
?”

Oddy stared at him, fingers drumming the tabletop.

“Okay, okay,” Grosevoir buckled. “What can I say? All information is available for a price.” He rubbed his thumb and forefinger together. “The American military maintains records of its soldiery, the elite units and so on. I was able to access the information on yours. I liked what I saw.”

“But why us?” Crosshairs said. “Whatever the job is, why choose—?”

“I can answer all your questions.” Grosevoir spread his arms, palms open. “But please, let us conduct ourselves in private.”

He stood aside as the men filed out of the booth. He led them across the lobby, walking with an awkward capering gait that struck the men as undignified and schoolgirlish. Tripwire whispered to Crosshairs, “Guy looks like he should be standing next to Ricardo Montalban on
Fantasy Island
.” Crosshairs whispered back: “Yeah, or leaping out of a box of Lucky Charms.”

Grosevoir instructed the elevator attendant to direct them to the penthouse. Oddy was apprehensive: the suite could be jam-packed with assassins, black market organ farmers, a snuff film-making crew. He felt utterly unprepared and exposed, lashed to the train tracks with the 5:05 Amtrak bearing down.

Zippo, on the other hand, adhered to the Boy Scout credo of “Always Be Prepared.” He’d stopped at a local hardware store and purchased a twist-lock box-cutter, two screwdrivers—one Phillips, one Slot—and a 16-oz. Hammertooth antivibe hammer, the tools currently strapped to various parts of his body. Answer cashed in his plane ticket in favor of a Greyhound pass; this allowed him to smuggle his Kirikkale pistols across the border, one of which was now secured under each armpit.

The elevator ascended rapidly. This was a blessing, as in close quarters Grosevoir’s repellant aroma burned in their nostrils and behind their eyeballs like battery acid. The polished brass doors slid open with a merciful in-rush of fresh air.

Grosevoir led them down a hallway lit by frosted-glass coach lamps, stopping in front of a pair of mahogany double doors. He fumbled with the oversize key.

Oddy placed a hand the size of a shovel blade over the smaller man’s, enveloping it like a pitcher plant swallowing a gnat. “If it’s all the same, I’ll go first.”

Oddy shot a quick look at Zippo, who grabbed Grosevoir by the collar and yanked him back. Grosevoir issued an indignant squawk as the tip of a Phillips-head screwdriver feathered his ear canal.

Oddy inserted key into lock. “Now if anyone’s waiting on the other side of this door packing heat and bad intentions, my man Zippo’s going to be performing some impromptu neurosurgery.”

Grosevoir gulped like a boated mackerel. “This is foolish. I mean you no harm.”

Tripwire was skeptical of Grosevoir’s lame-duck performance: this was a man who felt no fear doing his best to impersonate someone who did. Tripwire got the impression Grosevoir was conversant with the mannerisms of fear in a role of one who inspired terror in others, rather than one who’d experienced the emotion first-hand.

Lock tumblers engaged with a soft
click
. Oddy threw the doors open and stepped into the lip of darkness. He searched the near wall for a light switch, keenly aware of his exposure, his only comfort the knowledge that Zippo’d plunge the screwdriver hilt-deep into the midget’s melon at the first hint of trouble. His fingers brushed a dimmer switch. Stark white light flooded the room, revealing…

A regally-appointed hotel suite. Plush cream carpet gave way to a flight of marble stairs terminating in a circular salon. A massive bay window offered a sweeping view of the Toronto skyline. To the left: an executive bathroom complete with jet tub. To the right: a bedroom with king size bed and satin sheets.

Oddy felt more than slightly foolish.

No pajama-clad ninjas. No swarthy organ farmers.

Nobody except one offended little man requesting a screwdriver be removed from his ear. Zippo shrugged, indifferent, but did as asked.

“Come, come,” Grosevoir said, high spirits returning. Either the man possessed the short-term memory of a fruitfly or the preceding hostilities had caused no real discomfort. He gestured to a stocked minibar. “Help yourselves and take a seat.”