Satyr horns, tattooed knuckles around the grip of a knife. 'You know what I hear? I hear you want to do me.'
Other feet shuffled up behind them; other hands gripped Jonny's arms. Easy released him and lowered the knife. 'Bring the car around,' he said. Footsteps moved off. Then to the others: 'This guy wants to fuck me. But he's so simple you gotta love him, you know?'
Jonny leaned back, supported by the grasping hands, and snapped the steel toe of his boot up into Easy's groin.
Later, after they beat him and he was laid-out on the floor of the car, their feet on his back and a canvas hood over his head, he comforted himself with the image of Easy Money rolling up into a fetal position on the pavement in the filthy alley.
EIGHT
'You're a very stupid boy, Jonny-san.'
Water hit him and someone pulled the hood away. He found himself face-down on the riveted steel floor of an abattoir. His shirt was gone; the freezing water cut into him like knives.
'How much of this have you taken?'
He stood and Nimble Virtue tossed a packet of Mad Love at his feet. It came to rest by the toe of his boot, where the water was icing up over a flaking patch of dried blood. Welding marks, like narrow scars of slag. The slaughterhouse had been grafted together from a stack of old Sea Train cargo containers. A cryogenic pump hummed at the far end of the place, like a beating heart, pushing liquid oxygen through a network of pipes that criss-crossed the walls and floor. From the ceiling, dull steel hooks held shapeless slabs of discolored meat. Jonny looked at the slunk merchant.
'We found your pockets packed with this. From the size of your pupils, I would guess you've snorted up a small fortune's worth.' She wore a bulky floor-length coat of some opalescent sea-green fur.
Shrugging, she turned away from him, a tense, mechanical gesture.
Her exoskeleton whirred. 'We could have extracted the information we need painlessly, with drugs. But that seems impossible now. Who knows what might happen when the mnemonics mixed with the toxins you've ingested. We'll have to do it another way. But I want you to remember,' Nimble Virtue said, 'You've brought this on yourself (he heard her voice overlaid with Zamora's then: 'You beg for it, Gordon-').'
Easy Money and a thick-necked cowboy Jonny knew as Billy Bump stepped into his field of vision. Easy was wearing a sleeveless gray down jacket, Billy a surplus Army parka. Each held a Medusa.
Easy swung the whip end of his in a lazy arc before him. A bright, almost luminous fury welled up in his eyes. 'So when is it, asshole?' he asked.
'When is what?' Jonny asked.
'When's the raid?' snapped the cowboy. He spoke in a thick south Texas drawl, the result of a quartz chip implanted in the speech center of his brain. He spit a rust-colored stream of tobacco juice onto the floor. Billy Bump had picked up his name as teenager, when he had a habit of pushing people in front of moving cars for their pocket change.
'I can't hear you,' Easy said in a mock sing-song fashion.
'Why bother?' Jonny asked. 'You're not going to believe anything I say.'
'Jonny, please tell me when Zamora is going to move against us,' said Nimble Virtue.
'I don't know,' Jonny told her.
Easy Money whipped his arm out. The charged copper tips of his Medusa snapped into Jonny's chest, blinding him with sparks. The water radiated the shock across his arms and down into his groin.
Jonny doubled up and came to, finding himself clinging to a side of gray meat for support. He could barely breath.
'When are the raids?' asked Nimble Virtue.
'I don't know,' he said.
'Asshole,' said Easy.
Jonny pushed himself from the meat and took off between the stinking rows, but Billy was waiting for him. The cowboy jammed a big boot into Jonny's stomach and brought the Medusa down across his back. Jonny collapsed onto the metal floor.
Above him, Nimble Virtue's face appeared. Through his confusion and pain she seemed as gray and lifeless as her slunk.
Hard bones beneath dead meat. Maybe that's her secret, Jonny thought dreamily. No more Johns, she's found another way to sell herself.
Easy Money kicked him in the ribs and shook the coils of his Medusa over Jonny, sending sparks into his eyes. Jonny heard Billy and Easy laugh. 'Well it's cryin' time again,' Billy sang.
'Do you know where you are, Jonny-san?' asked Nimble Virtue.
Jonny nodded. 'Meat locker,' he said, trying to get his breath.
'Correct. And there is a warehouse full of my men just outside. There is no way out of here without my say- so.'
'No way out,' echoed Easy Money.
'I could have these young men beat you all week. Do you understand that?'
He sat up. Strange lights boiled around the edges of his vision.
'Yes,' he said.
'Good,' said the slunk merchant. 'Then why not be reasonable? When are the raids?
'Tuesday,' he said. Then: 'Oh fuck, I told you: I don't know.'
Easy and Billy were on him, snapping the coils of their Medusas down on Jonny's back and stomach. Pain and the mad dance of sparks overwhelmed him, merged with the flow of sensory data along his nerves until he was unable to tell where the white storm of agony ended and his body began. When they stopped, his muscles continued to convulse.
'When are the raids?' asked Nimble Virtue.
'I don't know,' said Jonny. 'Zamora didn't talk to me about raids.'
'What did he talk about?'
'I don't remember.' Jonny crawled to his hands and knees. Despite the cold, sweat was flowing from his arms and chest. 'My life,' he said.
'What?' Nimble Virtue demanded. She waited until he was in a kneeling position, then she slapped him hard across the face. Jonny felt the metal around her fingers tear his skin.
'Conover,' said Jonny. 'Zamora wants me to turn Conover.'
At a signal from Nimble Virtue, Billy hit Jonny from behind.
While he was stunned, Easy secured hard loops of white plastic around Jonny's wrists. Then Easy and Billy lifted him from the floor, Easy pushing Jonny's arms over his head so that when they released him, he was hanging by his wrists from one of the heavy steel hooks.
The pain was instant and terrible. He screamed.
Nimble Virtue picked up the Medusa Easy had left on the floor and approached Jonny. 'Answer me quickly and simply,' she said.
She gathered the coils of the Medusa together and pressed the charged tips into Jonny's side. He convulsed on the hook and went limp. 'What is your name?' she asked.
'Jonny Qabbala.'
'Your real name.'
It took him a moment. 'Gordon Joao Acker.'
'Where were you born?'
'The Hollywood Greyhound Station,' he said. Easy and Billy laughed again. It echoed. Jonny looked up; framed by the corroded bulkhead around a ventilation shaft, he saw his hands, blood on his arms.
