She raised her overplucked eyebrows. “Snail juice?”
“Supposed to be an aphrodisiac.”
Her eyes lit with recognition. “Oh, you’re talking about the genie. It’s supposed to do more than that.”
“Tell me.”
“Supposed to make a person open to suggestion. Like when people get hypnotized. ‘Your wish is my command.’ I don’t know if it works, but I was there when Mota tried to sell some to Chicho. He claimed that it only took a drop to put somebody in a sex trance.”
“Sex trance?”
“It’s like you tell them what to do and they do it. Can’t help themselves. Mota said this particular species of snails produces some chemical they use as a defense mechanism. Makes hungry iguanas get disoriented or something, and discourages them from eating more snails. Mota said the snails he was selling had been enhanced with a concentrated version of the chemical.”
“Did Chicho buy any?”
“No. What would be the point? You don’t need a snail to make a hooker fuck your brains out. That’s what money is for.”
It finally made sense. The new fact meshed with other facts. I turned and twisted them into proper place.
A little drop was all it took for Franz Samusaka to turn Bronson Carew into his sex slave. He ordered Carew to enjoy it so the vid wouldn’t look like rape. Carew might not even be gay. No wonder he went psycho.
Fueled by humiliation and victimization, he fixated on the stripe-faced man-eater. That was one badass bitch. Couldn’t fuck her for free. He fantasized himself as the victim turning all powerful. You want to rape me? I dare you. C’mon, do it. There you go. That’s it…
Snap.
A shiver rippled down my back.
The fantasy was so powerful he made it real, got a steel trap installed inside himself. He re-created the rape by using the snails on Samusaka and brought him back to the original scene of the crime. Then he forced his rapist to rape him a second time, but this time he turned the tables. Took his pound of flesh in revenge.
God, a fantasy like that must’ve dominated his every waking thought. The urge to do it again grew over the months since, the drive like a tidal force, pressure building day after day until the bursting point, when he chose two more victims, the men who covered up Samusaka’s crime. They deserved it. They were accessories, rapists by proxy. He made them attack him, made them mount him.
It was the doctor who did this. Genetically engineered a new breed of snails and kept them in a pen outside his clinic. Wu, Froelich, and Mota were his distributors with connections to the gay community as well as the brothels. The trio headed upriver every so often to pick up a new cask of snails. The pile of cash in that picture of them was their latest ill-begotten haul.
And Panama was their partner. A Yepala sheriff who took his cut of the profits in exchange for providing muscle as well as allowing the doctor to run his clinic on his land.
Maria sat next to me. “What’s wrong? You look lost.”
Not anymore, I’m not. The doctor had to be stopped. He’d brought us the genie. The ultimate date rape drug. The bastard was a menace. A scourge.
Her phone rang. “It’s Chicho.”
“Take it.”
I stood and walked into the bathroom, lifted the seat with my shoe.
The genie.
A sickening thought came to mind. Lizard-man might’ve made Wu kill his own family, his own girls. Jesus. I didn’t know if the drug was strong enough to make somebody do a thing so horrendous, but if it could make him shove his junk into a steel trap, then what couldn’t it do?
The sudden urge to vomit overwhelmed me. I dropped to my knees and gagged into the toilet. Jesus.
I flushed and stood on my quivery legs. Maria was still on the phone. “Where? Tell me where!”
I hadn’t paid any attention to her conversation until now. A rush of alarm struck, and I was out the door.
She was pacing, Chicho’s holo moving to and fro to stay in front of her. I stepped through him, into her path, grabbed her by the elbow. “What is it?”
Words came out in a frantic, hyper stream. “My sister. A john attacked my s-sister. She’s g-going to the hospital.”
“That you, Juno?” asked holo-Chicho.
I took the phone from Maria. “It’s me.”
“A john cut one of my girls. What are you going to do about it?”
“Who is he?”
“He goes by the name J.T. I’m paying you for protection, you better take care of this.”
“You know his address?”
The address popped in over his holo-head. I read it twice before hanging up.
I passed the phone back and looked into her terrified eyes. “Go to the hospital. Take care of her.”
“He said she lost a lot of blood.”
I guided her toward the door. “Just go. I’ll take care of everything else.”
I watched her hurry down the hall. A john cut her sister, and Chicho wanted me to rough him up.
I wasn’t buying it. A john my ass. Chicho cut her himself. That rat bastard had gone back to Mota and helped him and Panama set their trap.
The showdown was near.
Twenty-five
The Rojo Caballo.
I sized up the hotel from a neighboring rooftop, eyes scanning up and down six stories of stone staircases and long outdoor walkways. Lights shined inside windows of the lower levels. The upper levels were dark and empty. Vacant. Abandoned.
This was the address Chicho gave me. The address of the supposed knife-happy john.
I scoped the two-tiered roof, its ragged tarps and gnarled rebar. Scrap metal rested in piles. Scaffolding had been there so long it could be mistaken for part of the structure.
The address came complete with a unit number: P2. P for penthouse, 2 for the two men who were about to die.
A light glowed inside one of the rooftop unit’s windows. Probably just a flashlight positioned to make me think the john who had cut up Maria’s sister actually lived there. I kept my eyes on the shadows, primed to spot movement of any kind. But they were keeping cool. Disciplined.
The smart move was to stay clear. The smarter move was to take advantage. They were planning to kill me on that rooftop. That meant they’d taken great pains to make sure they hadn’t been seen getting up there. And that meant they hadn’t told anybody of their whereabouts.
Which meant they’d made my job of getting away with murder that much easier.
Mota’s setup was a yawner. Did he really think he could lure me to my death with that flimsy-ass story? That shit was grade-school.
I crossed the rooftop, feet tromping through leafy vines and ripped tar paper. I climbed a wall and jumped down to a lower rooftop, the long bag slung over my shoulder bouncing on my back. All I had to do now was hurdle that rail, cross that balcony down there, climb out onto that ledge, jump across this alley.
I checked the time. Maggie should be along any minute. Careful to stay in shadow, I leaned out and peered down at the street, where a jam of cars was gridlocked like bathroom tiles, pedestrians walking the grout lines. Horns and shouts echoed up the alley walls, the noisy sounds of a dysfunctional city.
There she was, crossing the street. Even from way up here, I recognized her, that confident stride, black
