The Skunge (21 page)

He hit the button to open the blinds, blinking at the sudden light. As quickly as it had come, the thread was gone. But still, that maddening, deep
itch
.

He did another line of coke, feeling his heart trip-hammer in his chest, and thought about the thing growing in his arm. He had seen the news, knew what was going on. He even had a pretty fair idea where he picked it up.

A rap at the door. Maas splashed water on his face, gulped from his drink. "Come," he barked at the door.

Arneson entered, looking as grim as ever. The guy was a spook. If Maas had three more guys as brutal and effective as Arneson, he would have taken over the entire state by now.

Arneson tossed a small bundle on Maas' desk before dropping into one of the over-stuffed chairs. The zippers on his leather jacket jingled like hidden knives.

Monitors arrayed around the room showed camera-fed views of the complex, the house, the acres at the back of the property. No hidden approach angles here; Maas liked to have eyes everywhere. One day, he knew, someone would take a run at him. ATF, a rival kingpin, thieves out for a big score. He would see them, and be ready.

Maas unwrapped the bundle delicately. A finger, removed with efficient brutality. Dirt under the nail. "Sonch." He held the finger up, turning it in the light. "I knew him, Horatio. He was kind of an asshole, but I liked him anyway."

"So did I."

"OK. Well. Cool, then. Shit." Maas swiveled in his chair to face the open windows. "It's going to be hard to replace him."

"I wouldn't worry about it."

Maas frowned. He was a believer—a great believer—in hunches. Sixth sense, clairvoyance, whatever you wanted to call it. A feeling. And he had a feeling now. Ever since that little bitch had come back, things had changed, in some indefinable way. Arneson, for one; he was even more withdrawn, prone to leaving without notice and not caring if anyone noticed. Up until now, he'd been a model employee. For a crook, he was the straightest edge Maas had ever seen. But lately…something else had crept into Arneson. Something left-handed and sly. Like he was something other than he pretended to. Maas considered the man before him. Arneson was no narc. He had done too much crazy shit to be a cop. Even a DEA cowboy wouldn't have been able to get up to the shit Arneson had been. He slapped one hand down on the desktop. "Bullshit!"

"What's that, boss?" Arneson said, unruffled.

Narc, sinner or saint, Arneson had the emptiest eyes Maas had ever seen. "Nothing. Take a day off. Go see a movie or something. I hear there is a new Romero pic playing. Nothing like a good zombie flick to clear the head, right?"

"A movie sounds pretty good."

Was that a hint of sarcasm in Arneson's voice? Probably just Maas' mind working overtime. The itch, the thread, the coke, Sonch. It was catching up to him, pulling him in too many directions. Maas himself hadn't felt the same since Sugar came back to stay. "And if you see Sugar, ask her to come and see me in my office."

"Don't know how I'd run into her, I haven't—"

"Just do it." Maas smiled at Arneson. He hoped his smile looked as fake as it felt. "Send that little bitch over here. She and I need to have a talk."

Exit Arneson, stage left.

Maas paced another minute, staring at the finger. Then he dropped it on his desk and picked up his phone. He tried one number, frowned, and called another.

"Hey, pal, how are you? I have some work for you. Do you still have those tracking dogs?"

CHAPTER THIRTY NINE

Sugar licked the girl's pussy, thinking about Arneson.

"Oh, come on, you little bitches!" The director shouted. He was a fat, greasy-looking man, sporting a walrus mustache and a t-shirt that read SAVE GAS—FART IN A JAR!
"At least
try
to make it look natural!" Sugar rolled her eyes and kept licking. This director had a mouth bigger than his brain and his dick put together, and unfortunately he only liked to use one of those at a time.

"I am, Daddy, I am," the girl said. She couldn't have been a day over nineteen, a petite Amerasian covered in tattoos, piercings and attitude. Sugar was shocked at the number of truly beautiful girls who showed up at Maas' compound, ready to debase themselves for the cameras. The money was good, but money was easy in California; any pretty girl could be an apartment girlfriend, have their bills paid, live the life they thought they'd wanted back in North Dakota. They could plant themselves there, enjoy some expensive lunches and a little shopping, then marry an investment banker before the crow's feet turned their smiles into masks. That life had its attractions. And one day, they woke up and found they couldn't breathe the air of other, lesser places. It was California or bust. First they adapted, then they became dependent on their new environment. Leaving the sun-scoured valleys and coastlines and parties and men and sex…leaving all that would kill them.

But was that
all
they wanted, really? Enough of them came here to be humiliated and displayed, that she wondered sometimes if they had secretly planned it—
wanted
it—all along. Did they crave the disgrace of being a digital meat-dream for whoever had a few dollars to spend? Did they need it?

What she herself wanted was something complex and undefinable; a Mobius strip winding over and through her, no beginning, no end, but throughout a rich lode of something dark and craven that rolled over and begged for attention. She wondered if she was just another one of those girls. Suddenly, she felt light-headed and starving. The need for a cigarette crackled in her veins like dim fire.

"Smoke break," Sugar said, and eased herself up off the deck. Lube seeped down her thighs in sticky trails.

"OK, girls, great work." The director, his sense of urgency deflated like a spent condom now that the cameras were off, lit a foot-long cigar and wandered away to check stock prices on his phone. He could be heard muttering dire imprecations to the east, to Wall Street, the great American Mecca.

Sugar smoked moodily, that restless feeling making her twitchy, making her want to hop in her car and drive as far as a tank of gas would take her. She had money, and it would last her a while. But where would she end up? Back in another apartment, facing down the unblinking eye of a camera, more meat for the grinder. And out there, there was no Arneson. She liked the way she felt when he was around.

She sighed and blew smoke rings that she popped with the burning tip of her cigarette. A blue haze hung over the mountains, blurring the line between the sky and the earth.

A voice from spoke from beside her. "So, you make, like, a lot of money, huh?"

Sugar started. The other girl (on-screen name Vanessa Vandal or something equally moronic) stood there, busily smacking gum, twitchy from coke, fingering her ears. Each lobe featured a huge black rubber plug, one of them emblazoned with a stylized pot leaf.

"If it's all the same to you, I'm taking a break. So how about you just toddle off and leave me alone for a few minutes."

Vanessa ducked her head as if slapped, and Sugar felt herself blush. It wasn't so long ago that she would have been the one in her place, approaching Sasha Grey, or Lexie Belle, asking for advice, wanting to look in their eyes and see some of the fire inside. Hoping that fire would somehow transfer from them into her. The hurt expression on Vanessa's face looked so at home there, like something just under the surface, always waiting to emerge. Vanessa stepped away, muttering. The only thing Sugar heard was
uppity cunt
.

Her empathy for the girl vanished. "Ex
cuse
me?" Sugar threw down her cigarette. "What did you fucking say?"

The other girl turned, and with a sly, poisonous smile, stepped closer. She was the same height as Sugar, but built like a bird. Her septum piercing glinted in the sun. "I said, fuck you. Cunt."

"Look, you little bitch, I'm sorry if I offended you or whatever, but that doesn't mean you can—"

"Oh, Miss Queen of the Scene is
so
sorry
. Well, you didn't offend me, you insulted me. There's a difference. Too bad you're too dumb to know the difference."

Sugar hadn't been in a fight since grade school, but now she felt adrenaline thunder into her body. Her vision shook as her heart rate cranked up. No skinny little bitch with stretched out ears and three pounds of cheap white gold in her face was going to mouth off like that. Not without paying for it.

Sugar smiled, showing all her teeth. Then she punched Vanessa in the mouth.

The girl squealed in pain and dropped to the ground, hands clapped to her mouth. Blood dripped between her fingers, marring the swooping designs inked on her admirably firm breasts. Sugar landed on her, fists thudding down on her shoulders and back. Vanessa shrieked, clawing blindly at Sugar. One of her fingernails caught the corner of Sugar's mouth and dragged it down. Fresh anger bubbled into Sugar's body as the delicate skin of her lip tore and started bleeding.

The crew hooted and stampeded closer, leaning in to watch, their eyes avid and sexual.

Sugar smashed her elbow down, meeting the back of Vanessa's head with brutal force. With her other hand she reached underneath and clawed between Vanessa's legs, fingernails digging at the other girl's thin cotton boy-shorts. Vanessa shrieked. Sugar felt flowers of blood bloom on Vanessa's shorts, and she saw one of the second camera guys squint in mock-empathy. No one moved to stop them. Now she snaked her arm across the girl's throat, clamping down ruthlessly. Vanessa struggled to suck in air, trying to heave her off, her nails tearing at the flesh of Sugar's arm. Sugar bore down.

"How do you like that, you little bitch? Does it
feel good
?" Sugar hissed in Vanessa's ear.

Vanessa's face drained to chalky white as her air supply dwindled. Still Sugar ground down, clawing at her crotch through the shorts, raking her nails across Vanessa's breasts, over the ribbed muscles of her belly. Some simian echo in her brain goaded her on. She suddenly wanted to kill the other girl. At the thought of it, a warm flush spread through her body, an almost sexual wave of pleasure. She felt herself buzzing, like she did on really good coke, at the thought of murdering this girl under the raw California sun. She watched intently, waiting for the girl's life to drain out of her. She wanted it. She
needed
it.

Two strong hands clamped onto her arms and she was pulled off of Vanessa. Her last vision was the girl grasping at her own throat, sucking in huge gasps of air, the knowledge of her almost-death stamped on her face like a tattoo. She would remember today.

Then Sugar was flying. The blue dome of the sky cartwheeled around her as she tumbled. A moment of clarity: time to leave California. It had to be. She needed to get out, drive away from this beautiful, toxic place, and learn to breathe on her own again.

She hit the surface of the cold pool like a cannonball. The water shocked her system, and her first agonized thought was
I'm sorry!
She tumbled through the water, her rage nothing but a memory and an ache in her head. What replaced it was sinking guilt. The feeling of a step taken that could not be taken back or forgotten.

She broke the surface of the water to see Arneson standing above her, blotting out the sun. His face was unreadable.

"Now that you're done playing with your friend, Maas wants to see you."

He walked away.

CHAPTER FORTY

Arneson sweated in the heat, tapping the burner phone on his thigh.

"Ring, goddammit.
Ring
."

He used his personal phone to watch a tube video about a Skunger going berserk in a clinic in Las Vegas. The Skunger tore apart a student nurse and two paramedics before the cops arrived and took it down in a storm of bullets. A steady crawl of news snaked across the bottom of the screen.

Congress was shouting about mandatory round-ups and detention for anyone with the Skunge: the pundit consensus was that they would probably pass it before the week was out, despite nominal protest from human rights groups. The streets of Los Angeles were deserted. More videos. More killings. Rural counties in the south had started offering unofficial bounties on live Skungers. They claimed to want them for research, but a sheriff department whistle-blower leaked documents that suggested they were tortured and killed instead.

Finally, the burner phone chirped, and he snapped it open.

"Is this Victor calling?" Arneson asked. Tension twanged in him like a struck piano wire.

"Extension three." The voice was gravelly, with a touch of West Texas twang, and cold as quarry water.

"OK. Access number is dash-dash-eight-nine-dash-three. Repeat, access is dash—"

"That's fine. My name is Staunton."

"Arneson."

"I've heard about the work you did overseas, and about that goddamn Preacher situation." He pronounced it
sitchyy-ay-shun.

"Great. Now listen." He took a deep breath. "There was a killing, on my op. I was there. I'll take full responsibility. The guy who did it…I couldn't risk exposing myself. I sent him out of town, destination unknown, but you'll want to start looking down in SoCal, in the beach cities. He goes by the name Sonch, you'll have records for—"