Nightlife (7 page)

Toward . . .
something.
Something buried, forgotten for aeons.

Trent staggered into a pillar supporting a lighting arrangement. Looked Justin’s way. Their eyes meeting.

And Trent’s face rippled.

Justin stared dumbstruck as it happened. Trent’s mouth opened as his cheeks stretched and sprouted downy fur. Trent’s teeth, folding back into his mouth, blood weeping from the gums, then gushing as they split with the rows of emerging new teeth, sharp and carnivorous. Entire head, elongating slightly forward, nose flattening into an inverted pink triangle. Cupped ears standing out from his head. Ringed spots darkening across the lighter fur.

His eyes, staring, yellowing, nothing but huge irises, pupils.

The moment was a juggernaut, unstoppable. Within the unfolding labyrinth of Justin’s mind and soul, he could feel the beating of a kindred heart. A longing to do the same, a desire that at once seduced and repelled. It felt like aeons of evolution regressed and done away with, then tipped with a burning fuse.

Ready to detonate.

I don’t want this I DON’T WANT THIS—

Trent’s hands had shortened and fattened into paws, claws curving outward, predatory tools ready for use. While the beat went on, while all around him the dancers rocked and rolled.

Justin’s inner soulstorm, falling down the shaft toward primeval bottom.

Ready to detonate.

“Erik, if you don’t get me out of here, I’m gonna die!”

Justin doubled over suddenly and retched everything into the floor, onto Erik’s shoes, just as Trent whirled and disappeared into the heaving throng. The lights switched from pulsing colors to violently rapid strobes, and as Erik finally turned around to help, Justin rose to stare across the dance floor.

Rapid-fire images, intense flashcuts. Instants of frozen motion sandwiched between milliseconds of total darkness. He could see it all. An out-of-control Trent, whatever he was now, tearing through the crowd.

flash

A throat laid wide open, arcs of blood splattering a girl.

flash

A wide-eyed head, toppling from its shoulders while blood geysered upward, too too red in the drenching white light.

“Son of a bitch, Justin.” Erik, angry. Oblivious. “Look at this mess you’ve made.”

flash

Jaguar jaws clamping down on a splintering arm.

flash

Jaguar claws, tearing open a belly like a gaudy Christmas package and letting the ropy delights within spill out.
flash

Terrified dancers scrambling all over each other to get out of the path of whatever was in their midst. Screaming with sufficient volume to drown out the music.

flash

Stampede.

The strobes were killed and the pulsing colors resumed, and the music pumped onward. Justin hung on to Erik’s shoulder as they both staggered away. Only now did Erik notice the carnage strewn across the dance floor. Only now did he realize there was a lot more to worry about than his shoes. Beneath his tan he went white, and he firmed himself up under Justin’s deadweight.

“Oh, shit. Oh, shit. Let’s get you out of here,” he said, and Justin bobbed his head in complete agreement. “You don’t need to be around for the aftermath of
this
scene.”

And he dragged them both for the nearest exit.

Tony Mendoza didn’t normally like to rise much before ten or eleven in the morning. Today, though—the morning after the serious weirdness at the Apocalips—he was willing to make an exception. This morning he was a regular newshound, tuning in local radio and TV to get the official version.

Tony stretched in the breezes sweeping across the balcony of his condo.
Condo.
He hated that word. Sounded like one of those little raincoats for your pecker. He much preferred the term
luxury penthouse.
It was a lot easier to look down on People from the balcony of a penthouse than from some wimpy condo.

A fine Wednesday morning. Balcony, orange juice, and bran muffins. The sun and wind on his bare skin, obstructed only by his bikini undies. Hair loose and blowing about his shoulders. His boom box tuned to local news, back and forth, getting all the updates. He was alone. Lupo was out in the Lincoln, on an errand. At a pet store, picking up a couple dozen white mice.

Witnesses’ accounts of what had happened last night varied wildly. This was understandable. Four hundred people, toked up, coked up, drunked up, or in combination—you bet there’d be a lack of concurrence. Not to mention that it was bizarre to begin with.

Some people swore that a wild animal had been brought into the club. Leopard, jaguar—something. Others swore that it was some loony wearing a mask. Others claimed it was something in between those two. Maybe Lon Chaney’s grandkids were out running amok. Whatever. But more than one person had mentioned Trent Pollard’s name to the police, claiming they’d seen him acting funny right before the slaughter. A few said that from the back, it had looked like him tearing through the crowd.

Apocalips had been a meat market, once figuratively, now literally. Four people were dead, very messily so. Several others with bite marks and scratches. Doctors indicated that the wounds were consistent with animal teeth and claws.

Trent Pollard might have been able to explain, but he was no longer talking. Dead men tell no tales. He’d been found dangling from the business end of a noose by his employers when they came to open up the photo studio where he worked this morning. Leaving the police with a prime suspect of
some
sort, but no motive and no definitive explanations. Which was all for the better, really.

But what the hell
was
that green shit he’d snorted?

So far as Tony knew, Trent was the first around to sample any. It was a new product and all, and Tony himself most definitely did not touch any of the stuff he handled. Such was the general rule among the Colombians. They were businessmen, not party boys. Let the
norteamericanos
wipe themselves out one line at a time. Such was their destiny, not Colombia’s.

The green powder, skullflush, had come up through the usual channels. Six kilos, out of a refinery owned by the Vasquez family of Medellín, Colombia. Flown north to Cuba’s Varadero military airbase, a routine stopping point. Transferred to a boat and brought into the United States through the Florida Keys. Up to Miami under the wing of Luis Escobar, regional godfather in the Colombian mafia. Then transported northwest to Tampa. Mysteriously bypassing Tony’s frequent connection and superior in the Tampa-St. Petersburg area, Rafael Agualar.

Tony had been happy enough to wet his Speedos in excitement upon learning that Escobar was running an end-sweep around Agualar. It could only mean good news for Tony. Everybody knew that Agualar was getting soft and fat, sticking his nose into his product far too much for his own good. Tony knew he wasn’t anywhere near next in line among the
Agualares,
but nobody could deny he was an up-and-comer. A promising one at that.

That Escobar dealt with him directly boded well for the future. Maybe he was being groomed for takeover, seeing how well he handled the new product. Bigger deals, bigger shipments, bigger profits. Or so he had thought until last night.

Not knowing exactly what skullflush was, Tony had wanted to try it out on a guinea pig. That’s where Trent had come in. Irritating numbnuts that he was. A good customer from the past, from Tony’s lower-echelon days of street dealing, but a real weaseldick when it came to paying. Should it turn out to be poison, he was expendable.

Just what
had
it done to him?

In the bathroom at Apocalips, Trent had really weirded out. Strutting around like a peacock, singing gibberish. All the while, his nose running like a faucet. From what Tony could tell after he and Lupo had beat a hasty retreat, things had only gotten worse.

Whacked him out like PCP? Maybe. Turned him into some kind of werewolf? No way. But still, you had to wonder. Because nobody was in agreement on what had gone down.

Now that Trent was dead, it was no big shakes. Except, of course, the little hitch in the plan. Trent’s friend. Justin? Yeah. Justin Gray, who had partaken of the green as well. An out-of-town rube, he was expendable too. Only nothing seemed to have happened to him. Last he saw, the guy was hanging on to a railing looking like it was all he could do to stand up. Of course, he’d hoovered only one line to Trent’s seven. Could have made a big difference.

At any rate, he was a loose end that might have to be tidied up should things even remotely appear messy. Have to put Lupo on finding out where he was staying. Trent’s apartment? Maybe.

All of which would take care of itself.

Tony stood, stretched. Gazed with appreciation at the beauties on beach towels at poolside, four floors down. Sighed and ducked back through the double balcony doors. Life was grand.

He plucked up the wireless phone from its cradle and whipped up the aerial. Time to do a little business. It was getting to be about that time, in between class periods. He punched out a number that triggered a quick pulse in a beeper a few miles away. Hung on to the receiver to await the return call.

Tony wandered into a side room, his favorite in the entire sprawling penthouse. His sanctum sanctorum. Flipped on the light and smiled at his babies. The room was ranked on all four sides by nothing but aquariums.

He had small ones, for fish like gouramis and cichlids. Larger ones, fifty-five and 110 gallons each, for larger, more aggressive fish such as his oscars and Jack Dempseys. And then his prize, on the far wall, a three-hundred-gallon job stocked with piranha.

Tony had divided the room into fresh- and saltwater sides. Of course, the saltwater tanks held fish far more vivid than the fresh, as vivid as anything seen by Jacques Cousteau on a coral reef. Absolutely stunning yellows and blues and reds and blacks and whites. Sometimes it took the breath away, that something so beautiful existed in the world. By comparison, the freshwater fish were bland. Dowdy stepsisters paling beside Cinderella’s beauty. But he loved them too, like a commoner ascending to royalty refusing to forget his roots.

The room never failed in therapeutic value. He could leave the rest of the world outside the door whenever he wanted. Just ease back into the recliner—the sole furniture in here— and stare at whichever tank he wished. Letting the music of gurgling water and humming filters lull him into something like a dream state. Aquatic heaven.

Every important lesson of life that he needed to know was right here in these tanks. When to go for the prize, when to lie low. The powerful eat the weak, the large eat the small. Nowhere was it any more apparent than in the piranha tank. The pit bulls of the underwater world. He owned an even dozen of the little wonders.

He gently tapped the thick glass wall of their home. A couple turned toward the noise in their sluggish way that could be oh so deceiving. Mouths slightly open, jutting lower jaws rimmed with sharp ridges of teeth. Muscular sides silvery and scaly, as if bejeweled.

“Morning, babies,” he said to them.

At last the phone gave its shrill electronic chirp. He let it chirp a couple more times, let the kid on the other end sweat a bit'. Tony flipped it on and answered, finally.

“What took you so long?” With a grin.

Listened a moment to the thin piping voice on the other end.

“Got something heading your way today. One-thirty. Same spot as last week. Rice Krispies for lunch!” His own slang term for another substance. Snap
crackle
pop. The kiddies got a kick out of it sometimes. And at ten to twenty bucks a chunk, it was a rock that every kid could afford to get a piece of.

Listened to the kid whine.

“Hey, you think I give a fuck you got a big math test this afternoon? What are you now, twelve years old? Man, you gotta start getting some priorities straight, own up to your responsibilities. You blow this meet, I can get somebody else to cover that junior high action just like
that.”
He snapped his fingers by the mouthpiece.