Mr. Imran arrived at Hans-Peter’s building shortly after 11 p.m. He was riding in the third seat of a van. A blanket-covered mound was on the floor where the middle seat had been removed. The mound moved slightly after the van came to a stop.
Mr. Imran was shopping for his extremely rich employer, Mr. Gnis of Mauritania, whom Hans-Peter had never seen.
The driver got out and opened the sliding side door for Mr. Imran. The driver was a large, impassive man with a cauliflower ear. Hans-Peter noticed that the driver wore archery arm guards under his sleeves on both arms. Hans-Peter did not get too close to the van. He did not get too close to Mr. Imran either, as he knew Mr. Imran to be a biter, and that he could not always help it.
Hans-Peter kept a Taser in his pocket.
They sat on stools in Hans-Peter’s shower room.
“Do you mind if I vape?” Mr. Imran said.
“No, go right ahead.”
Some perfumed vapor emerged as Mr. Imran lit up.
The liquid cremation machine rocked gently and gurgled to itself, basting Karla’s body with lye solution.
Hans-Peter was wearing her earrings, and a locket containing a picture of Karla’s father. He pretended it was his father in the locket, and the locket full of carbon monoxide.
Mr. Imran and Hans-Peter watched the machine for a few minutes without saying anything, like men absorbed in a ball game. Hans-Peter had added a little fluorescent color to the liquid and on the upward motion of the machine Karla appeared, her skull and remaining face glistening.
“That is a particularly becoming shade,” Mr. Imran said.
His eyes met Hans-Peter’s, each thinking how amusing it would be to dissolve the other alive.
“Did you put her in there alive?” Mr. Imran asked in a confidential tone.
“No, regrettably. She suffered a fatal injury while trying to flee in the middle of the night. Even dead, they do move entertainingly when the heat hits them,” Hans-Peter said.
“Could you set up an apparatus like this for Mr. Gnis’s den and demonstrate the machine on a conscious subject, do you think?”
“Yes.”
“You have something to show me today.”
Hans-Peter handed Mr. Imran a large leather folder, the cover tooled in a floral pattern. It contained candid photographs of Cari Mora taken with a telephoto lens as she worked around the Escobar house and garden, along with Hans-Peter’s sketched suggestions.
“Um!” Mr. Imran said. “Yes, Mr. Gnis was very enthusiastic about these and thanks you for sending them. Quite remarkable. How did she get the scars?”
“I don’t know. She will probably tell you as the work goes forward—I expect there will be work?”
“Oh yes,” Mr. Imran said. “I hope I will be privileged to watch and hear that conversation—the conversations are the very best part.” He smiled. Mr. Imran’s teeth are slanted backward like those of a rat, but their color more resembles the rust orange of a beaver’s teeth, with their heavy concentration of iron in the dentin. There were dark stains at the corners of his mouth.
“The major work should be done on the other side, Mr. Imran, because afterward she will be too difficult to move. It’s not like simply harvesting a kidney at the airport.”
“This is a hands-on project for my Mr. Gnis,” Mr. Imran said. “He wants to actively participate in every phase. Does he need to work on his Spanish?”
“It wouldn’t hurt. She is completely bilingual. In extremis, though, she will probably revert to Spanish—they often do.”
“Mr. Gnis wants the services of Karen Keefe for some portrait tattoos of his mom, Mother Gnis. He would like them drawn on the subject at the sites of the original work when that work is completed and healed over.”
“Sadly, Karen is finishing a prison sentence and has about a year to go.”
“That could still work into the long arc of the project; Mother Gnis’s birthday will come once a year forever. Will Karen be able to travel after her release?”
“Yes, a felony does not disqualify you for a passport if you owe no fines,” Hans-Peter said.
“Mr. Gnis values her portrait shading and halftones.”
“Karen is superb,” Hans-Peter said.
“Would it be useful to provide Ms. Keefe with portrait photos of Mother Gnis to study during her remaining incarceration?”
“I will ask her.”
“When can you deliver this Miss …”
“Mora,” Hans-Peter said. “Cari Mora is her name. If Mr. Gnis is sending his boat across we could co-ordinate with that. And there may be something else I’d like to send. Small, but heavy.”
“She’s going to require some gavage,” Mr. Imran said. “We could start that on the boat.” Mr. Imran made a few notes in his eelskin diary.
The liquid cremation machine began to tinkle in its rocking movement, rocking Karla away.
“It’s a chain mail bikini you hear,” Hans-Peter said. “It begins to tinkle on the bones as the flesh goes away.”
“We’ll take one,” Mr. Imran said. “Are they difficult to alter in size?”
“Not at all,” Hans-Peter said. “Additional snap links come with it at no extra charge.”
“May I see the kidneys?”
Hans-Peter got Karla’s kidneys from the refrigerator.
Mr. Imran poked the plastic covering them in their slurry of ice and water. “Bit short in the ureters, both of them.”
“Mr. Imran, they are going in the pelvis, within an inch of the bladder, not up in the renal position. Nobody’s put a kidney up there in years. Get current here. There is plenty of ureter.”
Mr. Imran took his leave with the pair of pink kidneys perfused with their saline bath. Considering the recipient could live with one, and with two new incisions would not know the difference, Mr. Imran ate the other one in the car.
His eyebrows went up. “Pré-salé!” he said.