8

We search the club. More precisely, Jack’s men search the club, while I kneel in the middle of the room, dazed, scraping green goo into a bucket, trying to figure out exactly what I should and should not tell my old friend at this precarious juncture in our relationship.

I know full well who placed the dissolution packet in Jack’s drink, and even if I weren’t a hundred percent sure based on the smell of nacho cheese and jalapeños alone, the wink is enough to seal it. Tallarico sent his goon Sherman into the club in order to carry out the hit, and only a last-second catch by my schnoz was enough to save Jack’s life.

Of course, the big question is how Tallarico knew where Jack would be at that precise time. I wonder if they’ve got a tracer on me, but a quick self-patdown indicates I’m clean. Maybe they put a homing device in the toothpaste and my enamel is giving off signals. Good reason as any to neglect dental hygiene for a few days.

“One of my best men,” Jack muses, and I can’t tell whether his low tones indicate reasoned thought or imminent rage. “He had a kid. A little boy. He’s a stupid little thing, but a kid. Jesus.”

I’ve got nothing constructive to say; at least, nothing constructive that will keep me alive. If I tell them now that I’ve been staying with Tallarico, that I know who placed the spiked drink and wound up killing Antonio, there’s no way Jack could let me remain among the living. I’ve been lying for too long to start telling the truth now.

I really need to call my sponsor.

On the other hand, if I feign complete ignorance, it’s just going to be another tally in the negative column should they ever learn about my deal with the Tallaricos. It’s an easy call, really: lie and save my ass for the time being but maybe get myself killed in the long run, or tell the truth and almost definitely blow it all right here, right now.

I’m a short-term kind of guy.

“Any ideas who it was?” I ask innocently.

Jack runs a hand through his hair, smoothing out the rangier strands. “Oh, I have some ideas.”

“You do.”

“I’ve got no illusions, Vincent. This is a dangerous business I’m in, and I accept that. I make friends and I make enemies, and that goes with the territory.”

Hagstrom pulls up a chair and sits next to his boss. “We combed the place. No sign of anyone we don’t control.”

“What about the guise?” I ask.

Nelly starts to move away, ignoring me completely. Jack puts out an arm, stopping him.

“Vincent asked you a question, Nelly.” Hagstrom grudgingly turns back and fixes me with a bored stare.

“What guise?”

“The one the assailant was wearing.” It sounds good to use the word assailant where others would do just fine. Makes me sound like a cop, which throws Hagstrom off balance.

“Didn’t find a guise.”

“And all your staff are accounted for? All the . . . Asian gals, and their guises?”

“Yeah,” says Hagstrom. “Anything else, Einstein?”

Trying to lead these guys in the right direction without giving myself away is no picnic. I feel like a guide dog for the blind whose master has decided to cross a four-lane intersection on his own.

“So what you’re saying is that all of your waitresses and their guises are accounted for, and that the assailant who snuck in here did so because he or she was wearing a costume so similar to the rest of your staff that no one noticed anything odd about it. Doesn’t that strike you as the least bit strange?”

Hagstrom gets it now; Jack got it before I even started talking.

“Talent pool,” Hagstrom mutters, and Jack nods.

There it is again. “This ‘talent pool,’ ” I ask, “what is it?”

“It’s like an employment service. A lotta the girls . . . they’re from elsewhere.”

“So maybe someone else has access to this talent pool,” I suggest. “Someone who isn’t too happy with the way you’re running your business.”

Jack nods; he’s right along with me, and probably a step ahead. “We got crews down here,” he’s saying, “and everyone needs support staff. So we all dip a little into the pool. Here and there. So, yeah, there are guys, might have the access.” He turns to Hagstrom. “Get the girls out here. Undressed, unguised.”

“But—”

“Do it.”

Though things are quieting down now, an hour ago, the place was still in bedlam. As soon as Jack’s gunshot cleared the air, Hagstrom took over the scene, barking out orders to the underlings as they sealed the doors, the windows, any possible chance of escape for the assassin. The older woman who’s always at Jack’s side had him off in a corner, whispering something in his ear. The more often she’s around, the more nervous I get.

“I want everyone out here in the main room inside thirty seconds,” Hagstrom announced, racing through the club, herding the guests and dancers into the center of the room like a prize sheep dog. Glenda and I found ourselves shuffling along with the rest of them, complicit cows in a willing herd, rapt by Hagstrom’s commanding voice and presence.

“Guises off,” he insisted, “all of you. Hold the straps and clamps in your left hand, the skins in your right. I want to see scales, people, and I want to see them now.”

And we all complied, a mass disrobing, and Jack’s soldiers were so stunned by the turn of events they forgot all about rubbing themselves up against the strippers, now in close nude proximity. Because despite all the naked flesh and scales rubbing up against one another, it’s tough to be erotic when your friend and coworker has just melted into a pile of mint jelly.

Glenda’s buzz was gone, the horrible scene sucking all the life from her semiherbaholic stupor. “It’s freaking cold in here,” she said, wrapping her arms around her body as she pulled off her skin and draped it carefully over her arm.

“You, too, Nelly,” Jack said softly.

His jaw tightened; his shoulders fell. I loved it. “What?”

“Off with it. Come on.”

“But, Jack—”

“Nelson,” he said flatly, and I nearly lost a gasket at the use of his real name. No wonder he went by Nelly—Nelson Hagstrom is quite the mouthful, and a moniker destined to get your ass kicked on the playground. “Take it off. Now.”

He bickered and fussed but in the end he disrobed, removing not only his legs and arms and torso, but also that mask, and for the first time I saw the wide, flat Hadrosaur face of Nelly Hagstrom. And aside from the blunt snout, the odd set to the teeth, the most interesting feature was a twisted, bent scale between his eyes, in the same location as the scar on the forehead of his human guise.

“See that?” I whispered to Glenda. “Something happened to his head.”

Glenda chuckled. “You’re one to talk.”

I was one of the last to fully disrobe, not for any prudish reasons but simply because I was so intent on watching the others that I forgot to join in. “Let’s do this, Vincent,” Jack said as he wheeled up to me. “Get it over with.”

I disrobed and deguised. For some reason, I wasn’t concerned with the reaction of the other dinos in the room; I guess I should have been.

“Raptor!” growled Hagstrom, launching himself from across the room as I threw my arms into a cross of self-defense. Claws flashed out all around me, a hundred stilettos ready to make me into a scaled sieve.

Glenda hit Hagstrom low, throwing herself into his knees as I ducked out of the way and slid around to give him the old alley-oop over my partner’s back. But Hagstrom was ready for it and leapt over Glenda’s bent body, whipping around for another attack.

The rest of Jack’s men drew into a tight circle as Glenda and I faced down Hagstrom’s sudden wrath. I had no doubt they’d jump in if Glenda and I managed to get the upper hand, leaving me with two ugly choices: run, or die fighting. I spit out my bridge and bared my teeth, ready to go down gnashing—

“Enough!” The single word cut through the hum of rage and tension. “Enough with all of this!”

The crowd parted as Jack guided his chair over whatever flesh was in his way—you wanna hear a dino whimper, try running over the tip of his tail with a metal-rimmed wheelchair—zipping into the middle of the circle, placing himself amid me, Glenda, and Hagstrom.

Nelly was still worked up. “He’s one of them,” he barked. “A fucking Raptor, and we let him in this club. He’s the one set the whole thing up—”

Hagstrom’s voice cut off as Jack’s hand shot up, just reaching the softer parts of Nelly’s thick neck. He grabbed on tight, choking out the rest of Nelly’s words before they could leave his mouth.

“From day one, this bullshit,” he yelled, and suddenly his soldiers were beginning to inspect the floor, the walls, anything to avoid looking at their boss. “This is the kind of thing that got us in bad with every other crew in the first place. We let this bullshit get in the way.”

Jack waved toward another one of his men, the one they call BB. He looks like Richard Greco, his hair thinning slightly on top. I wonder if they order from the same guise catalogue. “Get the other guys outta the back room, bring ’em all in here.”

“Jack, really,” I said, concerned with where this was heading. “I can just leave. You don’t have to do this.”

“Yes, I do, Vincent. Now stand back.”

He released his single-hand choke hold on Hagstrom, and the big Hadrosaur stumbled backward, gasping for air.

Within a minute, everyone had joined the circle. Jack sat in the middle, wheeling around to make sure all of his employees got an eyeful from the boss man. “We are a family,” he began, “of Hadrosaurs, that is true. If you look at us, if you smell us, if you feel us—we’re Hadrosaurs, every one of us, and we should be proud of that.

“And I like to think we’re a family when it comes to the best interests of our organization. We watch each other’s tails, we sacrifice for the good of the whole. That’s what makes us strong. That’s what makes us stronger than the others.

“But we’ve become insular, and insularity begets weakness. We think we’re sly and coy and have all the answers, and that—precisely there—is where it all comes tumbling down. When you think you’ve got it all is when you’ve got the least of it. Am I making myself clear?”

A low rumble surfed through the crowd, though no one had the balls to actively disagree. Jack moved on. “So when I bring a trusted friend of mine into this family, when I ask him to be my guest in my home and at my place of business, there are certain things I expect in return.”

“Okay, Jack,” I said, sidling up and whispering in his ear. “Let’s not piss off the locals.”

“First,” he continued, “I expect respect. If not for my guest, then at least for me. Respect that I have the right to bring in whoever I want, sight unseen. Second, I expect courtesy. If not for my guest, then the courtesy to smile to my face when he’s in my company. And third, I expect compliance. If I ask you to befriend my guest, then you befriend him. If I ask you to stick a mushroom up your ass and dance a tango for him, then you’d better start looking for fungus and an Arthur Murray studio.

“But let’s pretend that none of that existed. Let’s pretend that I’m not Jack Dugan, that I’m not in charge here. Let’s pretend that this is just an ordinary get-together, and I’m introducing you to a guy I once knew.”

Jack extended his arm, inviting me into the center of the circle. And though I wanted to protest—the way you do to avoid seeming the teacher’s pet—I couldn’t derail his speech. I stepped next to him and gave a little wave to the crowd, which probably didn’t do much to endear me to them any further.

“This is Vincent Rubio,” he said, “and he is a Velociraptor. When we were kids, just twelve, thirteen years old, he faced a choice. He had to make the decision between Canadian prison”—and here, I could hear the murmur shooting through the room, the horrors of Ottawa well known to this crowd—“and ratting me out and skipping free. Him or me, that was his choice, back in the day. We were a couple of brats, thrown in front of the Council and forced to make a terrible decision.

“And this dinosaur before you—this Raptor—chose to subject himself to the tortures of the forty-sixth parallel rather than squeal on his Hadrosaur friend.” Jack leaves it at that, staring at me with a glow of pride and friendship, and I’m feeling more like worm dung than ever before. I grin back meekly, and can only imagine the look on Jack’s face were I to tell him of my employment with the Tallarico family, or how I was about to let it all fly back in that Council inquisition twenty years ago before the smell of prunes got me off the hook.

“Thanks,” I muttered.

“And just an hour ago,” he continued, turning back to the crowd, “Vincent—this Velociraptor you all revile—”

“Layin’ it on a little thick, Jack.”

“—saved my life yet again, noticing what I could not—or would not—seconds before the drink would have killed me where I sat. None of you Hadrosaurs came to my rescue. None of you Hadrosaurs were quick enough on the draw.

“So listen up, lizards, and hear me straight. Vincent Rubio is not to be harmed. He is not to be ostracized. You will treat him like a member of this family, and you will get to know him and love him like I have. He will become your brother.

“That is,” he said, turning back toward me, extending a single ceremonial hand, “if he will have us.”

Like I had a choice. I shook Jack’s hand firmly, forcefully. “What the heck.”

And just like that, it was over, the circle dispersed, Hagstrom slunk off into the shadows, and Jack’s men were all over me, slapping me on the back, apologizing for their rudeness. And though I was happy to be part of the crew, happier still to be alive and not in a state of trauma, I couldn’t help but wonder what percentage of their sudden change of heart was forced: Did Jack actually turn their minds around, or are they just following orders? Do I care?

BB and one of the older soldiers were put in charge of Antonio’s bones, a single dinosaur skeleton lying on the carpet of Dugan’s. Antonio was slim of stature, and his bones hinted at his petite frame—barely five feet high, most of his mammalian height must have been fitted into his guise, like the organic lifts Tom Cruise has sewn into his heels every few years. I know, I know, he’s still pretty short, but there’s only so far they can go without turning the things into stilts. Vanity, even for the rich and famous, has its limits.

BB grabbed a thigh bone in his hands and exerted pressure, bringing his knee up into the center. A sharp crack echoed through the air, like a rifle shot, and attention swung around to the center of the room.

“Hey, hey,” said Jack, “guys, do that elsewhere.”

“But you said we gotta—”

“Yeah, I know, but we don’t wanna hear it.”

BB nodded, and headed into the back room; when he returned, he was carrying a wide green sack, just about the perfect size for a dead body. I find it curious that they’ve got one of these handy, but thought it better not to ask. They loaded the clean white skeleton into the bag and carted it out a back door. Basic rules stipulate that you’ve got to break down any modern dino skeleton before dropping it off at one of the Cleanup Crew collection centers, but no one was interested in listening to Antonio’s bones cracking like breadsticks.

Now, over an hour later, the cleanup job is done. Bones collected, goo all soaked into rags and burnt to a crisp back in the kitchen.

“Line up,” Hagstrom calls out behind him as he walks out of the kitchen. “Go on, in front of Mr. Dugan. Put your guises by your feet.”

The waitresses pour out single-file, stepping demurely as they head toward Jack. This is my first glimpse of them with their guises off, and I’m surprised to find that none of them are Hadrosaurs; each is an Ornithomimus, their rough skin a mottled green with marbled veins of brown running through it. The predictable curve to the neck, the slope down the spine, and the long, waving—

Their tails are missing.

Not entirely, but enough so that it’s one of the first things I notice. A few of the girls have the typical long, counterbalancing tails typical of the Ornithomimus population, but most of them sport stubbier models, short little nubs of flesh where a flowing appendage should be. Some are more compact than others, some are nearly full-length, but it’s clear that most of these girls are missing a crucial part of their anatomy. It’s not a religious or cultural gesture; the ancient dinosaur practice of ritual tail circumcision went out with ancient dinosaur table manners.

I shoot Glenda a look; she shoots it right back at me. We’re the only ones in the joint who seem to notice, or care, that these gals aren’t quite all there.

Jack pulls between us. “Vincent, Glenda, where are you staying?”

“Hotel down south,” I lie. Glenda gives a little smirk.

Jack accepts it. “You want to go back to the house, stay with us there?”

Tough situation. If I say no, I may look suspicious. If I say yes, I’ll end up in hot water with Tallarico.

Hagstrom saves me. “Christ, Jack—there’s a limit,” he says, but his voice trails off as Jack fixes him with a glare I wouldn’t want to be on the other side of.

“It’s fine,” I say, taking this chance to backpedal. “The hotel’s all paid for, anyway. One of those package deals.”

Jack isn’t interested in hearing the minutiae of my vacation plans. He looks to Glenda. “What about you?”

I try to nod with my eyes, to give Glenda some impression that I’d like her to be my eyes and ears inside the Dugan compound, if only so that I can eventually help Jack figure out how the Tallaricos are gaining access to his family. She must pick up on the hint, because she accepts Jack’s offer. “So long as I get my own bathroom,” she adds. “A gal’s gotta keep herself dainty.”

Nodding, Jack waves a hand toward Hagstrom. “Nelly, get one of the guys to take her back to the house.” He wheels past me, toward the line of waiting, tail-free waitresses. “Go on back to the hotel,” he tells me. “Have a spa, get a massage. I might need you later.”

As I head for the ramp and exit Dugan’s, I can hear Jack start in on that odd group of Ornithomimi. “Okay, ladies, let’s take it from the top,” he says, and though I know he’s going to interrogate them about the last few hours, part of me can still imagine that he’s going to clap five-six-seven-eight and lead them into a kick-line.

But that part’s growing smaller by the day.

I take a cab back to Eddie Tallarico’s compound down on Star Island. The guards at the gate have to call back to the house and, once they let me through, the guards at the house have to call up to some unseen command center, but eventually I get in, and I head right for my room. The day’s events have left me drained, and I kick off my shoes and fall onto the bed, half-asleep before my head hits the pillow. There’s too much to think about between Eddie and Frank and Jack and Hagstrom and some unseen mole infiltrating the Dugan family, and the only way I’m going to make any sense of it is to turn off my thinker for a while and give it a rest. Tomorrow, if I’m very, very lucky, will indeed be another day.

I wake to the sound of a fifty-foot goose honking out a note of frustration, his elongated bill a foot from my ear. A single, squawking note, riding high and loud above any thoughts in my own head, all my dreams vanishing in a clarion call of brass and air.

Eddie Tallarico is playing the trumpet.

“Rise and freaking shine,” he yells, one foot on either side of my body, his weight pressing into the mattress as he jumps up and down, up and down, like a five-year-old in the carnival Bounce House. “Up, Rubio, up!”

I clasp my hands over my ears, but it’s not much use. He’s torturing the instrument, positively mauling anything good and true about that beautiful horn, and I wouldn’t be surprised if Miles Davis himself were to rise from the dead and drag Eddie Tallarico down to hell for his sins against brass.

“We got work to do—”

“We do, huh?”

“More precisely, you got work to do.” Eddie sticks out a hand. I grab it, and he hoists me up and off the bed. “That’s right,” he says. “I heard about last night.”

“What’d I do?” I really can’t remember; the cobwebs of sleep have yet to clear. But something’s coming into focus, something ugly, green, and gooey.

The club. The powder. The attack. Right.

Tallarico’s mole must have told him I fouled up the attempted hit on Jack. I’ve got to come up with something to explain myself.

“Now, see, here’s the thing,” I begin, an instant before realizing that I haven’t got a single word with which to follow up.

“I know everything,” he laughs. “I got a guy on the inside, gives me the whole scoop. We had that Dugan fuck dead to rights till some broad popped up and played Wonder Woman, got some poor shlub instead. Hey, a hit’s a hit, but I woulda liked to get the big job done sooner rather than later.”

“Sure, sure,” I say, trying to buy time while I make sense of the whole thing. The mole must have missed the fact that I was the one to warn Jack, that Glenda was only knocking away the drink on my suggestion. This is good; it only helps my situation with Tallarico.

“Fucking broad,” I mutter, trying to get a good sandpaper edge to my voice. “Dames.”

Eddie blasts out another few notes and hops off the bed; the mattress springs back up, and I can almost hear it sigh happily as the load is removed. “Today, my new friend,” he says, “you’re gonna fill in.”

This stops me cold, a tendril of dread muscling into my chest. “Fill in?”

Eddie reaches into my closet and starts rummaging through my clothes. He’s touching my shirts. The bastard is actually touching them, his grubby hands creasing the linen and silk.

“Know what?” I say, leaping over to the closet, muscling him out of the way. “I been dressing myself since I was six. Think I can handle this one.”

Eddie shrugs and shuffles away. Couldn’t care less. “I got a number of business ventures,” he says, “and I’m spread kinda thin. This can be a bit of a . . . problem some days.”

“That’s a shame.”

“Usually,” he says, “we can handle it.”

“Great. Then handle it.”

“See, I’d love to, only when I said I was spread thin, I mean like one scoop of peanut butter and a hundred slices of bread. So I got jobs I gotta devote guys to, and other jobs which go lacking. Sometimes, all I need is presence. Guys don’t have to do nothing on the job but show up and look pretty, but when one of my guys doesn’t show up—”

“Then you need a fill-in. I got you,” I say.

“Great. Then we’re settled.”

“But it doesn’t mean I’m agreeing.”

Tallarico takes a moment to think this over, then allows himself a deep burp. He doesn’t excuse himself.

“You don’t have a choice,” he informs me. “I own you, Rubio, for eleven more days. What I say, you do—”

“That wasn’t the deal.”

Tallarico shakes his head. “You’re some fucking piece of work, Rubio.”

“Likewise.”

“My brother gives you twenty grand—”

The little bit of herb left in me takes over. “Screw that angle,” I yelp, standing up, standing over Eddie, looking down at his pudgy face and dirty feet sticking out from beneath the robe. “Twenty grand to tail a guy, okay? To tail him, that’s all. And I’m doing a hell of a lot more than that. Frank wanted investigative work, he’s getting investigative work. So if you’re not happy with it, then take it up with your brother, but I’m doing what I was paid to do, and that’s that, and you can go fuck a monitor lizard before you yell at me again for doing my job.”

Eddie doesn’t answer for some time. He holds my gaze, and it’s me versus him, his stare versus my stare. A minute passes. Two. It’s incredibly difficult to keep this up, and it’s not just my contacts, which are rapidly drying out. There’s a sense that he’s looking into me, that he’s reading what’s in my head. That he knows it all already.

He breaks it off. Feels like an hour, might have been three minutes tops, but he breaks it off and allows himself a short chuckle. “Fuck a monitor lizard,” he says. “I like that.”

“Feel free to use it at parties.”

Eddie nods; I fear he actually may.

“So, you’ll do this thing?”

That’s when I realize that there’s no way to say no to a Tallarico. I could complain till I’m tan in the face, but what a Tallarico wants, a Tallarico gets. If I want to remain a general semblance of intact, it would probably be best to cooperate.

“Okay,” I say. “I understand.”

“I thought you might.”

Though I’m sure this decision will come back to haunt me in one way or another, I can’t see another way out. Unless . . .

“I wouldn’t suppose there’s a temp service you could call?”

This little job Eddie sends me on is the one in which I end up in a bloodstained Lexus sedan with nacho-cheese Sherman and surfer-dude Chaz. This is the job in which I spend an unexpected day at the races and quickly learn that not all Thoroughbreds are thoroughly bred. This is the one where Sherman pulls his second dissolution-packet trick of the last few days and unleashes a legion of starving bacteria on poor Stewie’s flesh. And this is when I learn the fine art of tail-chopping in an intensive five-minute hands-on seminar.

But it’s all over now. Pepe, the jockey, is somewhere back at Calder Racetrack being worked over by Sherman and Chaz, and dear old Stewie is hopefully at a local hospital, getting the help he needs in advance of the painful rehab process for his busted stump of a tail. For a moment, I wonder if this is the same thing that happened to the waitresses at Jack’s club, but for some reason it doesn’t ring true.

On the cab ride from the racetrack back to Tallarico’s, my cell phone rings. I’m still dazed from the previous few hours, so it’s a few moments before I recognize my own ring-tone.

“What is that?” the human cabbie asks me. “That song, I heard that before.”

“ ‘Crocodile Rock,’ ” I tell him. “Sort of a personal favorite.” I find the SEND button and press the phone to my ear. “Hello?”

“Hey, Vincent, how you holdin’ up?” It’s Jack, sounding casual as ever despite the fact that he’s only hours removed from a gruesome attempt on his life. “Listen, I want you to drop by the house. Got someone here wants to see you.”

“Sure, Jack,” I say. “Lemme just get back to the hotel, freshen up.”

“Better come by now. You need a limo?”

“I’m already in a cab.”

“Good,” he says. “Hand the phone to the driver, I’ll give him directions.”

Jack and the cabbie have a lovely chat, and some time between relaying directions and hanging up, they wind up in a whole conversation about the weather and the dangerous possibility of a hurricane hitting the coast. It’s not like I resent their concern for the neighborhood, but . . . I do worry a bit that they’re wasting my free minutes!

The cabbie heads north, into a posh, palm-tree-lined part of town. “They call this Aventura,” the cabbie says.

“Aventura. What’s that mean?”

“Means ‘too rich for my blood.’ ”

We pull through a series of gates and the driver drops me off at a thirty-story apartment building ringed with huge bay windows. As I step into the lobby, I get a whiff of Hagstrom.

“This way,” he grunts, leading me down a hall and into what looks like a private elevator. Indeed, there are no buttons—only a single keyhole. Hagstrom pulls a brass key out of his pocket, inserts it, and twists firmly. The elevator shakes once, and rises.

“Everything settled from yesterday?” I ask. “We good and all?”

No answer. Hagstrom stares straight ahead as the express elevator shoots us skyward.

“Oh, good.”

When the doors open, I expect to see Jack, decked out in some fine suit or another, waiting for me with open arms, or, at the very least, Glenda sipping an Infusion martini.

What I don’t expect—and precisely what I find—is a tall, thin gal in a stunning strapless dress, the wave of saltwater and mangoes washing over me even before the elevator doors part to reveal her presence.

There’s no need to take a step forward—she’s right there, not eighteen inches away—and I open my mouth to say hello, to say something witty, to surprise her with the ways in which my lexicon has grown and flowered in the fifteen years since we’ve seen each other—

She slaps me hard across the left cheek.

“Afternoon, Vincent,” purrs Noreen. “It’s good to see you again.”

And she slaps me hard across the right. These Dugans sure know how to greet a guy.