30

FIVE BELLS TOLLED AS I KICKED MYSELF AWAY from Bikini.

“The winner of this contest,” said the MC. “. . . the Assassinator!”

Herc had barely raised my arm when I saw Dynamite coming through the ropes. “You’re a dead man walking!” He jumped on top of me, hands gripping the mask, tearing at its lacings on the back of my head.

“Get off him!” Herc said, wedging his body between us.

“Not this time, old man,” Dynamite said, and kneed Herc in the guts, stealing his wind. The old grappler pulled himself away while the bell rang and rang. Dynamite refused to get his fingers out of my mask.

I pulled back my arms, fixed my feet in an ugly stance to grip the weight of the earth, and drove two punches into his ribcage with the force of a Mack truck hauling ass from Tijuana. Dynamite pulled away, but his hands were still tangled in my mask’s spaghetti.

He yanked the mask off my face.

I sucked in the now-cool Olympic air, sweat streaming down my forehead, lips still red from chewing on Bikini, body essentially a stitched-up punching bag with a few thousand more miles traveled in the last ten minutes within the ropes of the squared circle.

My second breath woke me up enough to recall where I was and the kind of con job that I’d pulled on them. Before I could conjure up a solution, someone called out the fakery.

“Hey! That’s Icarus! The Assassinator is Icarus!”

“That’s not the Assassinator!”

“Rip off!”

Cups of beer took flight, trailed by half-empty boxes of Lucky Elephant, the candy-coated popcorn trailing out the spinning boxes like a bright pink comet’s tail. Cigarettes were next, then spare change. Herc and I had our hands up fending it off.

“Oh shit,” I said.

Herc nodded. “You know Shemp is coming for you, right?” “How do I get out alive?”

Herc yanked off his ref shirt, bow tie left around his thick neck, physique a cut and dangerous sixty-year-old diamond. “Cover yourself and get the hell out! Not the aisle. They’ll murder you for what you did.” Sure enough, Shemp and the goon squad were running toward the ring, along with gray-uniformed security guards from the Olympic. “You ain’t got a friend in this hell hole besides me.”

But I did.

I turned to the side of the Olympic where the main entrance glared back at me with an inviting eye. I thought of the carnival circuit preachers—evangelical con artists—pounding the pulpit for a crowd that was both audience and target, cash and mass. I remembered Hector’s adoration of the luchadores, human flying machines. The only idea worth having crystallized. After all, I was Icarus.

Shemp and the boys were almost at the ropes. Cutting across the ring, my strides long, I reached the Shemp-free side. Using the middle rope as the first rung of a ladder and the top rope as the second, my feet grasped a precarious balance.

I yelled, “Kevin!” to make sure he and his crew were watching. They were—with mouth-gaping stunned attention.

“Catch me!” I screamed. “Please!”

Kevin hollered something and the gang got their hands up as I threw out my arms.

I launched myself straight into the crowd.

Unlike my earlier airborne experience with Bikini as my launcher, this time I made a softer landing. Crashing into the kids, they partially collapsed but, amazingly, they all pushed back and up. I rose from the crowd to even more applause.

“The main door!” I shouted and they caught on. I rode their palms as more gathered to help bear me away from the ring while Shemp watched from it, screaming so loud I thought he might explode. But his booming rant was swallowed in the mass of the crowd who’d seen a night of wrestling unlike any other and were moving their savior-killer toward the door, a leaf carried by a thousand ants, draining from the seats, ready to take him to the street for who knew what.

I rode atop the wave of humanity and reminded myself that when the bout had started, they had worshiped Bikini and craved my blood. This is why victorious Roman generals rode through the streets of Rome in triumph accompanied in their chariot by a slave who continuously whispered, “Memento homo”—Remember you are only a man.

As we approached the door, someone grabbed my hand from below: Margarita, wide-eyed in a trench coat.

I got my disciples to lower me and held onto her hand as we continued up the aisle, on foot, as part of the crowd pushing its way to the door.

“You are full of surprises, James,” she screamed in my ear. “Here.” She shoved a heavy canister in my hand, a scrunched-up telescope covered in dials. Watkins’ encoder. My divining rod to Black Lotus! “Find it! Bring it back!”

“I will. And why the hell did you dose me?”

She dropped my hand and laughed before being swallowed by the crowd. “There is a rumor you can’t be charmed, gringo. Another customer of mine was curious if it was true. Looks like it is, though you can be influenced. Hope you enjoyed your time at El Dorado.”

I clutched the encoder to my chest along with Herc’s torn shirt as the crowd pushed me away from her, their sheer volume releasing the doors. Another customer? Interested in me? Edgar? Maybe. He’d made me immune, even to his own charms, but given his recent offer . . . Maybe he was looking to see if anything could break his own spell. Perhaps the petal wasn’t as precious to Margarita as she had made it out to be? Right now, none of it mattered.

In the drained seats, I saw one couple before being pushed through to the concourse. A big guy—who clearly enjoyed Bud as much as dumbbells—was working his hand up a very familiar skirt as his mouth nuzzled the neck below a very familiar face.

Veronica’s mouth was agape amid the spectacle of violence and mayhem. A dark part of me wondered if her closed eyes were filled with me.

Damn it! She was my ride.

My procession spilled out into the street. Two words ended my triumphal march and the abrupt stop tripped me up, landing me on my ass. Red lights swirled all around.

“The fuzz!”