Then, from the incision, a figure emerged.
Was it Zyro? Lois’ paralysis only allowed her to raise her sight an inch. In a moment, though, a shadow wobbled into view.
A tingling spread like sparks, describing the intricacies of her ribs, her spine, even her skull. What’s more, her state of arousal crested to waves of hot, knifelike flashes through breast and loin. Her sex visibly thumped.
Before the dark light, the limping man bumbled forward. The sharp ticking drew close, and at last Lois was able to glimpse her new and mysterious suitor…
One look and she’d had enough of this nightmare. The limping man was no man at all, but a preposterous parody. It appeared more insectoid than anything, a broad humped shell encircled by tiny clicking legs. It stood upright, however, on a pair of stout, jointed appendages with points. If it bore any semblance to humanity at all, that humanity was fanfare. This was no dream lover. It was a bug.
But it was a
And again the question came:
Answer: A man sized cockroach with a penis.
Gregor’s works
Gregor crawled daintily over her, as if great care were utmost on its mind. But did this thing even have a mind? Vivificated breaths whistled through multiple spiracles along its shell, and she could see horny passion in its compound eyes. Dollops of green goo dropped from its irised mandibles onto her bare belly. Lois was revolted, yet her physical excitement, somehow, refused to wane. Gregor lay fully atop her now. The nozzled glans snuffled fanatically, and at last the pink cannula found her sex. Lois’ orgasms unwound in spastic quakes. The cannula throbbed, passing jets of warm bug-sperm into her cervical canal as Gregor muttered sweet insectoid nothings into her ear.
“For shit’s sake!” Lois was finally able to exclaim.
Gregor’s armored face inched up to hers. The mandibles opened to fullness, revealing soft lips and tongue, and more than a modest portion of the opaque green saliva, which dribbled liberally into Lois Hartley’s aghast mouth.
««—»»
In this business you were one of two things. You were either legit, or you were dirty. And if you were legit, you were also something else:
You were poor.
Czanek was dirty.
It wasn’t Czanek’s dirt; it was other people’s. He did not feel bad about uncovering the evil of others; he was just a cog in an inevitable machine. Bug planting was a good gig; he could pull in twenty large a year from bugs alone. Industrial espionage paid well too, and sabotage paid even better. Czanek had once taken ten grand for stealing a composite formula from a textile factory and fifteen more for burning the records room and production facilities. By the time they cleaned up the mess, the other company, Czanek’s client, had already patented the stolen formula and was in full production. These were examples of what the trade called “surreptitious entry” or “black bag.” It involved invading privacy, violating personal rights, and, of course, breaking the fuck out of the law. If you were good at black bag, you made lots of money. If you were bad, you lost your license and went to jail. Though Czanek was small time, he was good at black bag, perhaps very good. Its diversity challenged him, and it brought in the cash. Dean Saltenstall, for instance, paid five hundred dollars per hour for a job. Good work reaped good money.
Tonight, though, Czanek was working for free.
Saltenstall was his best client, period. But if the dean ever found out that one of his bugs was transmitting to someone else’s, Czanek would lose his professional credibility in less time than it took to wipe his ass. He may have been the best dirty P.I. in the state, but he wasn’t the only one. Other dicks would kill for a client like Saltenstall. Some literally.
He walked up to the third floor of the sciences center. He wore maintenance overalls and had a phony card identifying him as Peter Hertz, a campus a/c technician. The building was empty at this hour, and the security guard wouldn’t be making his rounds for another forty five minutes. Czanek used a 2mm tension wrench on Besser’s office lock, applying nominal downward pressure with his pinky. Each lock had its own feel; too much pressure seized up the pins, and too little wouldn’t hold them flush. Czanek stroked the pins twice with his #2 rake, and the cylinder opened. He was in the office and had the door locked behind him in four seconds.
He let his eyes adjust, then turned on a red filtered penlight. His gloved hands snooped a bit first, an unavoidable professional impulse. He memorized the exact position of everything on the desk and in the drawers. The bottom drawer, however, was locked.
It was an old Filex disc tumbler with an 18mm keyway. He used a wider tension wrench and a “doubleball.” The slide bar slipped open immediately.
What he saw first made little sense—a list of typed names: L. ERBLING, S. ERBLING, L. HARTLEY, I. PACKER, E. WHITECHAPEL. L. Hartley’s name had a line through it.
Beneath this lay a stack of folders stamped with the Exham seal.
At the back of the drawer was a gun.
Czanek was stumped. The piece was some offbeat .25 auto. It smelled of cordite. He wrote down the serial number and put it back.
He didn’t like any of this. Why would Besser have a gun? Czanek didn’t know what to make of the notes and lists, but the gun was something else—guns were of his world. Could Winnifred and Besser really be planning to kill the dean for his insurance?
At the back of the drawer he spotted another Qwik Note. Four notations in florid writing, like a woman’s:
2)
Czanek should’ve been alarmed, extremely alarmed. One note mentioned Jervis Phillips, Czanek’s own client.