CHAPTER FIVE

“Drinks, first,” Caleb said, signaling for the cocktail waitress. “Gin and tonic, right?”

“I really don’t want anything to drink, thank you,” Melissa said. “I have to get home.”

“To the über-dyke?” He did not bother to disguise the acid in his voice.

“I didn’t come here to discuss my personal life, either, Caleb,” Melissa said coldly. “You assured me this was business. Urgent business.”

He was on the verge of a sharp retort, but he bit his tongue and managed a smile, one of his special smiles that had always melted her resolve in the past. “I don’t want to quarrel with you, Melissa,” he said. “I never wanted to quarrel with you. I much preferred having fun. And we did have fun, didn’t we?”

“Caleb....” Her voice held a warning note.

“Just say we had fun.” He turned the heat up on the smile.

She studied the smile, that smile, and to her surprise it left her cold. She looked long and hard at him, her eyes searching his face. In the past, she had thought him the sexiest man alive. He was good looking, there was no denying that, but she saw now that there was something too superficial about his attractiveness. From the precise way he kept his hair glued in place to the calculation she could now read in his smile, nothing was natural, everything too studied.

With a sense of discovery she realized that she had been blind in the past, blinded by her own need. It was a relief to see him finally as he really was and not as she had romantically imagined him. It gave her a tremendous sense of release. How had she ever missed all this before? What a fool she had been. And Janet had been entirely right.

She sighed aloud and said, “Yes, I suppose we did have fun. We must have, or I would not have put up with all the rest, would I? But that’s not important now, that’s ancient history. Let’s cut to the business. What was so important that you had to see me tonight, alone, here?”

Bitch, he wanted to say, Don’t give me any of your crap, if you know what’s good for you.

Instead, he managed to get his expression under control. Romantic had not worked. He switched instead to needy. “The Alley Thing Project,” he said in his most earnest voice. “I need some results, Melissa. Where are we with that? Are we anywhere close to wrapping things up?”

She looked away from him, down at the cocktail-scarred table. “I’m afraid not,” she said. “We’ve run into some complications, to be perfectly honest.”

The cocktail waitress set another Chivas Regal on the rocks in front of Caleb. He counted out the money for the tab, and added a dime and a nickel for a tip, which the waitress pocketed with a barely concealed sneer. Caleb ignored that and waited until she had gone.

“What kind of complications?” he asked, taking a big swallow of his drink. He did not want to hear about complications. He wanted results.

“Unforeseen ones. Serious ones.” She met his eyes again. “It’s the genetic threads, they seem to be....”

“I don’t need the technical details,” he snapped. And I wouldn’t understand them anyway, he thought. And thought, too, angrily, that she knew that already. She was doing it again, trying to lord her smarts over him. “Just tell me where we are. What is the goddam problem?”

“She Cat is the problem,” she said. “She has grown into a monster, a Franken-pussy. She’s enormous, and she eats her potential mates. I mean, eats them, literally, rips them to shreds and devours them the moment we put them into the cage with her. Before they even try to mate with her. Before they even have a chance to try. It’s as if she hates them simply because they’re male.”

That much he knew already from his snooping, though he was not going to tell her so.

“Go on,” he said when she paused. “I still don’t see the problem.”

“Well, the truth is, it is getting worse every day, Caleb,” Melissa said. “I’m not sure as things stand now that we are even going in the right direction with this. It’s becoming too dangerous. Certainly She Cat is becoming too dangerous. I think we might have to kill the project.”

“Kill the project?” He glanced at the dark-suited men behind her and realized he had spoken too loudly. Leaning across the table toward her, he said more quietly, “What in name of heaven do you mean, kill the project? We can’t kill it now. The backers wouldn’t let us.”

“Backers?” She gave him a sharp glance. “What do you mean, backers? You never said anything to me about backers.”

He shrugged and offered her his naughty-little-boy smile, the one that never failed to work. “I didn’t want you to worry about that end of things,” he said. “Your job is to make things happen in the lab. My job is to run the business. And for a project like Alley Thing, we needed outside money. Even you must realize we’ve dropped a fortune into the research. If I told you how much you simply would not believe me, but take my word for it, it is a fortune, and not a small one, either.”

“Whose fortune is it, then? Who are these mysterious backers that I’ve not heard of before?” Melissa demanded.

“Who do you think?” he said sharply. “Who else would have a fortune to spend on warfare research?”

“Warfare?” Melissa stared at him, bewildered. “Alley Thing is not about warfare, except on male predators. Why...oh, you must mean the government.” Her voice went up. “Is that what you are trying to tell me, that I have been conducting some kind of warfare research for the government?” She thought for a moment longer. “For the United States Military?”

“Keep your voice down,” he said in a rasping whisper. “Melissa, for God sake, don’t act like a child. Do you think anyone but you and your lezzy friend care if a guy jumps a woman from time to time? In case you didn’t know, that is what men do and it is what women are there for, for Christ’s sake. Why would anyone spend billions to prevent that? Hell, if that were so damned important, we could just issue chastity belts to all the women in the world. The truth is, that would be a helluva lot cheaper than this project has been, believe me.”

“Then what do you mean, warfare?” Melissa shook her head, still confused. “I do not see where or how warfare comes into it.”

“Use your fucking brain, why don’t you? You are supposed to be so smart, figure it out. I saw the possibility the moment you first suggested the proposal to me, it flashed before my eyes in an instant: an army of women, turned into amazons, tougher than any man and fearlessly aggressive, like She Cat—what man’s army could stand up to that? Most men would back away rather than go hand-to-hand with a woman. It would change the nature of warfare forever. That is what they are spending their money for, and now they want to see some of what they are spending the money on.”

Melissa pushed her chair back from the table with a loud scraping noise and stood abruptly. “I will not be a party to this, Caleb” she said, her voice rising. “I will not let my project be used for any such purpose.”

He glowered furiously at her and she realized that he was showing his true feelings for the first time since she had arrived. It was not a pretty sight, but she took a definite pleasure in realizing that, though it frightened her, his anger did not cow her as it would have done in the past.

“Haven’t you learned anything from the time we spent together?” he asked in a voice dripping with menace.

“Absolutely,” she replied in a frosty tone. “I have learned that the hokey-pokey is not what it’s all about.”

“I warn you....”

“No,” she interrupted him, “I warn you, Caleb Wald, you will not use my research this way. I will destroy everything first if I must, all the records, all the trials, every last shred of it, before I will let you use it this way.” She turned to go but paused to add, “And another thing, by the way: your nose is too big.”

She stormed out of the bar. At the nearby booth, the three government agents were already getting to their feet. With a feeble grin, Caleb signaled to them that he had the situation under control. They sat back down reluctantly, and Caleb hurried after Melissa.

Patsy Cline went Crazy on the jukebox.

* * * *

That crazy bitch! Caleb swore under his breath as he hastily followed Melissa from the bar.

Outside, the legendary San Francisco fog had descended with a vengeance, muting the flickering yellow and green, green and yellow of the neon lights to pastel swirls that eddied around Melissa where she stood near the curb, talking in a low voice on her cell phone.

He did not know who she was talking to—more than likely it was that lesbian bitch girl friend, Janet Jackle—but, regardless of who it was, he did not want her talking to anybody about what he had just divulged—it was top secret information, for Christ’s sake—until he had her safely in line.

He rushed up to her and snatched the phone out of her hand and tossed it violently aside. It hit the sidewalk with a clatter and a bang and some metallic piece flew into the air.

“How dare you?” she sputtered. Her eyes flashed with anger but he saw a flicker of fear in them as well and it fueled his rage. “What right have you to...?”

“No, how dare you?” he snarled. “Listen, you stupid bitch, I have got too much riding on this deal to let you and your lezzy friend mess things up for me. Alley Thing is going to make a rich man out of me, and you’re going to help make that happen. You will do what I tell you to do, or else.”

“Or else what?” she demanded. “I am not afraid of you anymore, Caleb. And smashing my phone won’t do you any good. I was talking to Janet just now. You know as well as I do that she will be here in a matter of minutes, and you can be sure you won’t intimidate her.”

“Then we will just have to get our little disagreement resolved before she gets here, won’t we?” he said.

He grabbed her arm and gave it a vicious twist. Despite her struggles, he dragged her ruthlessly into the alley that ran alongside the bar, knocking over a garbage can in their scramble. A pair of large gray rats scrambled out of it and disappeared into the darkness “I am telling you, Melissa, you are going to bring me results on this project, at once, and you are going to make those results what I want.”

He yanked her arm up behind her back and was pleased to see her grimace in pain. Despite his anger, it gave him a jolt of sexual excitement. He loved making a woman hurt, especially one who would not do what he wanted her to do. There was something ultra-satisfying in teaching them who was boss.

To his surprise, though, she did not cave in as he fully expected her to. Instead, she threw back her head and began to scream loudly, “Help! Help!”

His temper boiled over. How dare the arrogant bitch try to make him look bad? He’d see she didn’t do any more yelling. He brought back his hand and swung, striking her with all his might. Wham! She staggered backward from the blow, took a couple of reeling steps before she tripped over the spilled garbage can and fell hard to the ground. Her head hit the pavement with a loud thunk, like the sound of a melon bursting, and she went out like a light.

“Stupid bitch,” he muttered, shaking his hand. It actually hurt from the force of the blow. She owed him for that, too, hurting his hand. “You asked for it.”

“Excuse me.” Someone tapped him on the shoulder.

“Huh?” He had not heard or seen anyone approach. He jumped and looked over his shoulder, and saw the biggest, the freakiest looking drag queen he had ever set eyes upon. She could have been Godzilla in a cheesy blue dress, with a cheap blonde wig on her head that looked more like Christmas tinsel than hair and her mouth painted a neon orange-red. And what in God’s name was that perfume that assailed his nostrils: Eau de Sewer?

“Who the hell are you?” he demanded, anger replacing his surprise. However big she was, and however outlandish, she was still just a drag queen.

She smiled a clownish smile at him and said—simpered really—“My name is Thing. Drag Thing.” She gave the tinsel hair a coquettish fluff.

He stared at her in bewilderment. Drag Thing? What kind of a fucking name was that?

“Well, get this, Miss Thing,” he said aloud, “Why don’t you butt out and mind your own frigging business.” He jabbed a finger at her immense bosom.

She lightly swatted his finger away and giggled. “Man slapping woman around is Drag Thing’s business. Man is being naughty. Drag Thing does not like men who are mean to women.”

“Yeah? Well how would you like some of what she’s getting?” he demanded in a threatening voice. He could slap drag queens around just as well as women, was how he saw it, even big, freaky ones.

He drew his fist back to punch her a good one, but before he could swing it, she struck him alongside the head with a purse the size—and feel—of a Volkswagen bus. Pow!

It was his turn to go down for the count. He hit the sidewalk hard.

* * * *

Drag Thing put her hands on her hips and surveyed the scene. There was no question that the naughty man was out like a light. And the woman gave no signs of waking either.

There was a cell phone lying on the sidewalk, near the woman. Drag Thing went to it and picked it up. The cover had broken off but, yes, when she hit the “talk” button, she got a dial tone. It was still working, then. She punched in the emergency number for the police.

“Emergency,” a voice answered on the other end of the line.

“Hello? Is that the police?” Drag Thing said into the phone. “Well, I was just taking a little stroll around the neighborhood, and I happened to discover these two people lying unconscious on the sidewalk. No, I don’t know what happened to them. Where? Oh, they are just outside a bar. What’s that? Well, wait a minute, let me see here: it’s called The Copa Club, now isn’t that the sweetest? Where is it? Oh, it’s on Hayes, Hayes and...hmm, Laguna, I think. Oh, dear, just send somebody by, won’t you, please, they couldn’t possibly miss them. How many people could there be lying about on the sidewalk at this hour of the night? Well, yes, of course, I know this is San Francisco, but still.... What’s that? My name? Oh, that doesn’t matter, does it? I am just your friendly neighborhood Drag Thing.”

She pushed the “off” button on the phone and placed it carefully by the unconscious woman, and looked around, not quite sure what she should do next.

It was the bar’s festive green and yellow lights that had initially drawn her in this direction, and it had been her plan to go in and order herself a little refreshment. She was ever so thirsty. She felt downright parched, in fact. As if she had a fever. And there was an odd buzzing noise somewhere back in her mind, like a wasp in a hot attic. Yes, definitely, a drink was what she needed.

Now, however, she supposed the sensible thing to do would be to remove herself from the scene of the crime, so to speak, as expeditiously as possible. The police would take care of things here. They would arrest the naughty man and see that the woman got medical attention. And, really, she would just be in the way, wouldn’t she?

She started to move on but she had gone only a few feet however, when a wicked thought occurred to her and she came to a halt, considering it more fully.

She smiled to herself, a wide grin that filled her face with bright red, overlarge lips. She went back to the unconscious man and, stooping down, reached inside his jacket and took his wallet from the inside pocket. It was positively stuffed with money.

She removed a handful of bills without counting them and tossed the wallet with the rest of the money to the ground beside him. She still owed that shop for her makeup, after all, and she liked to pay her debts.

And it wasn’t like she was stealing his money, either. “That,” she said with a clear sense of justice, stuffing the money into her purse, “Is the fine Drag Thing assesses you for being naughty. Those who prey, must pay. It’s only right.”

Taking yet another look at his face, she had a feeling that she knew the man, but she could not immediately place him. She studied his face intently, and as she did so, another idea just leaped into her mind out of nowhere, one that made her giggle mischievously. Kneeling on the pavement beside him, she opened her purse and began to rummage in it.

I must hurry, she told herself, before the police people come, or the naughty man wakes up.

* * * *

Caleb Wald woke up with a start and a major headache. He struggled to a sitting position, shaking his head to clear it, and, remembering, looked around in alarm. Luckily, that frightening drag apparition was gone. Jesus almighty, he thought. He had never been hit so hard in his life. She must have had a cement block in that damned purse.

Something caught his eye and he realized his wallet was lying on the pavement beside him. That fucking freak had robbed him while he was out. He reached for the wallet and at the same time he saw Melissa lying a few feet away in a pile of garbage. For a moment he could not think why she was sprawled on the pavement like that. Then it came back to him, the entire scene: he had hit her and she had fallen, banging her head hard on the pavement.

Worried, he half crawled over to where she was. Up close, he could see there was a little pool of nearly dried blood around her head and she did not appear to be breathing.

He felt a mounting sense of panic. Christ, he had killed her. Breathing heavily, he scrambled to his feet and started to run, to get away before anybody found him in an alley with a dead woman.

At the street, however, he paused in the flickering yellow and green light to reconsider what he should do. First, it would not do him any good to take off, would it? A dozen or more people must have seen him with her in the bar earlier, would have seen her storm out in a huff, too, and had seen him go after her. Running away now would only make him look all the more guilty, wouldn’t it? It wasn’t as if people couldn’t identify him to the cops when they came. He had to think of some better angle.

You’ve got to think, he told himself frantically. Figure it out, Caleb. You’re smarter than anyone else. You can find a way out of this.

He thought of that grotesque faggot who had knocked him silly: Drag Thing, she had called herself. If she cracked him in the head with something and knocked him cold, why couldn’t she just as well have been the one who whacked Melissa?

They could examine him, he was sure, and confirm that he had been knocked out. Hell, if nothing else, he must have a bump on his head the size of an Idaho potato. He felt to confirm it. Yes, there was a lump, and it was a lulu. Anyone checking it out would know he had been knocked cold. Who was to say whether Melissa had been killed before or after he was cold-cocked? No one could accuse an unconscious man of harming anybody.

Brilliant! Sometimes it was almost scary how sharp he was. He headed for the bar and as he rushed through the door, he staggered like a man who was only semi-conscious. “Help,” he yelled, holding his head, “Somebody call the cops. We’ve been mugged.”

Of course his entrance got everyone’s attention. He couldn’t have timed it better. The jukebox was momentarily silent. All eyes were immediately upon him.

To his astonishment, however, people began to laugh. He looked in the direction of the dark-suited trio of Homeland Security agents. They were on their feet, and amazingly Curly and Lawrence were laughing the hardest of all. Even that super-prissy Sylvester had a smirk on his face.

“What the hell?” Caleb said aloud, baffled. He went to the bar and looked into the smoky mirror behind the stacked liquor bottles. At first, in the dim light, it was difficult to see more than a ghostly image. He leaned closer across the bar and squinted at the glass.

What he saw was a face covered with make-up: a crimson lipsticked mouth, with enormous smears of rouge on his cheeks and eyes fairly dripping with mascara. It was his face, but it had been transformed into a ludicrous parody of a woman’s made-up face. That frigging bitch had painted him while he was unconscious.

He swore aloud and started for the john, to wash the makeup off. People were still laughing as he went by. He grabbed one little twit by the lapels. “What’s so damn funny?” he demanded.

The twit paled and his laughter died in his throat. “N-nothing,” he stammered, his eyes wide.

Caleb shoved him aside. “Then shut the fuck up, why don’t you?”

He pointed a finger at the bartender. “Call the cops,” he said. “There’s a dead woman outside.” Murder in his heart, he charged into the restroom.

“Drag Thing. I’ll kill that freak,” he vowed to his reflection. He turned the water on full and began to scrub at his face.

* * * *

A few blocks away Drag Thing caught sight of her reflection in a plate glass window and paused to look critically at herself.

Yes, the dress was definitely an improvement over her previous costume. It really was a lovely shade of blue. It brings out the color of my eyes, she thought with satisfaction.

It was a little Spartan for her tastes, though. Maybe if they added some bows, or a ruffle here and there. And sequins, tons of sequins, she did so adore sequins. She would have to take all this up with the dress’s designer. They really must talk soon.

Something occurred to her suddenly. The face looking back at her from the glass was only vaguely familiar. Oughtn’t she to recognize her own face? Though when she tried, she could not quite summon up an image of what her face was supposed to look like.

It was hard for her, however, to stay focused on anything for long. The way her thoughts swirled around inside her head it was a wonder she wasn’t spinning like a top. She blew the image in the glass a kiss and went on. What did it matter, really, if she recognized herself or not? She knew who she was, and when you came down to it, that was what was most important. She was Drag Thing. What a lovely name!

And what a lovely night it was, too. She took a deep breath of the cool damp air and began to hum and then to skip merrily along the sidewalk, and finally she executed a somewhat clumsy pirouette.

Just like the animals in that Disney film, she thought, I dearly do love that movie. Only, of course, those hippos in the movie had partners to help them. You really could not do a decent pirouette unaided. Where were the crocogators when you most needed them?

Undaunted, she did an entire series of giddy spins into the street. A police car, red lights flashing, suddenly emerged from the fog, bearing down upon her. She leaped back out of its way just in time, the car narrowly missing her.

The black and white stopped sharply with a squeal of tires on pavement and a window came down. “Hey, you,” the uniformed woman behind the wheel shouted. “Hold on there. You could have gotten yourself killed, you know, dancing in the street like that.”

“It’s all right, officer,” Drag Thing called back without stopping, and blew her a quick kiss, “I forgive you. I love police peoples.” She began to skip and twirl again and in a moment had vanished, still dancing, into the night.

Teri Warren stared open-mouthed after her. “Did you get a good look at that?” she asked her partner.

“Weird,” Jake Martin agreed. “Should we check her out, you think?”

Teri considered that for a second, and shook her head. “We’re on a call. Someone murdered, the caller said. Anyway, except for dancing out in front of a police car and looking awfully peculiar, this one didn’t do anything illegal that I could see.”

Something was nagging at the back of her mind, however, as she put the car in gear again. She hesitated, and Jake lifted an eyebrow. After a moment, Teri frowned and shrugged, and continued on toward The Copa Club.

A gentle rain had begun to fall.

* * * *

San Francisco summers are mostly rainless, so that by the time the first showers arrive in the fall, the locals are as glad for them as the thirsty earth is.

Drag Thing was certainly glad for the rain. She turned her painted face up to the cool droplets. They seemed to wash a feverish heat from her brow. Had she been ill, she wondered? She couldn’t quite remember. She certainly did feel peculiar, though. And she was so thirsty. She stuck her tongue out full length and savored the tickle of raindrops on it.

“I love all peoples,” she said aloud, and quickly amended, “except some peoples.”

Life was delicious! She laughed gaily, spun into another pirouette, and like one of the hippos in that film, performed an astonishing jeté across a looming puddle.