Anonymous Rex (21 page)

“My legs are falling asleep,” I say.

My dinonappers don’t seem to care. We drive on. “You know,” I say, “this just struck me—we haven’t been formally introduced. Maybe you’ve got the wrong guy.”

“Nah, we got the right guy,” says Cough Medicine. “Ain’t two dinos named Vincent Rubio who smell like a Cuban cigar.”

I squint in confusion, furrowing my brow until the muscles are ready to pop. “Vincent Rubio? See, I knew you had it all mixed up. I’m Vladimir Rubio. From Minsk.”

The dumber one appears to mull it over for a moment before Old Spice craps on my party. “Don’t listen to the little shit. He’s Rubio, all right.”

“You got me,” I confess, “you got me. So … now you boys know my name, but I don’t know yours.”

“Oh yeah,” says Cough Medicine. “I’m Englebert, and this is Harry—”

Old Spice whacks us both in the back of our heads, bringing a burp out of me and a whimper out of Cough Medicine. “The both of you, shut up,” he says, and we promptly follow orders.

It is some time before the hard lines of the city give way to the flowing curves of nature, trees and flowers and shrubbery replacing lampposts, traffic lights, and street vendors. The scents change as well, and I am amazed at how empty the air smells, like a one-thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle with six crucial pieces missing. It’s been a while since I’ve been out of a city—LA, New York, or otherwise—and I’m always rendered a little disoriented by the loss of the piquant odor of smog. In some ways, it’s a homing beacon, a signal to the land that I love.

As we move into the countryside, Old Spice reaches beneath the seat in front of him and pulls out a paper shopping bag. “Put this over your head,” he says, and hands it over, handles first.

“You must be joking.”

“I sound like I’m joking?”

“I don’t know,” I say. “I’ve only known you about thirty minutes.”

“And you ain’t gonna know me much longer ‘less you put the bag
over your head.” Obviously, he never learned the maxim that you can catch more flies with honey. My legs are still asleep.

I reluctantly don my improvised headgear, and all those pretty trees disappear. At least I still have my sense of smell.

“Almost forgot,” grunts Old Spice. I hear him rummaging through his pockets, change jingling, keys jangling, and a moment later he slaps something in my left hand. I run my fingers over it, trying to make out the shape—long and thin, two sides, both wood, connected to each other by a twisted metal wire, shaped like an alligator’s mouth, only without the teeth. One side opens when you squeeze the other side closed …

“Clip it on him,” Old Spice tells his partner. “Clip it on tight.”

With a Medium Brown Bag from Bloomingdale’s over my head and a clothespin clamped shut on my nose, we continue to streak through the countryside. Or so I assume. With my two best senses temporarily on injured reserve, we could have doubled back around toward the city for all I know. My sense of time is beginning to fade, as well—the rest of the drive could be an hour or a day, and I’d have no idea. I only hope that once this bag comes off my head, I don’t find myself in Georgia, where there may or may not be a warrant out for my arrest—don’t ask, don’t ask.

My ears have escaped unmolested, though, and after some time, I can hear a buzz-saw snore coming from my left, low but gaining volume. Old Spice is asleep, and about to broadcast it to the world. A little while later, the car slows, and there’s the unmistakable clink of three coins sliding into an automatic counter. The car speeds up again.

Ten minutes later, I hear a cow.

Five minutes after that, the pungent aroma of a landfill makes its way past the clothespin barrier, works its way through my nostrils, and slams hard into the olfactory recognition center of my brain. I gasp involuntarily at the eye-watering whiff, and Old Spice wakes from his slumber—his snores transforming into snorts, sneezes, a cavalcade of novelty-store sounds—and languidly reaffixes the clothespin, shutting out the last vestiges of stench.

We’re in New Jersey.

•  •  •

Some time later we pull to a stop. This has happened once or twice before, but this time I’m told to get out of the car. More than happy to oblige, I practically leap out of the backseat, my cramped, tingling legs eager to get in some good stretching.

“Should I take the bag off my head?”

“That would not be wise.” Harry grabs my left arm, Englebert my right, as they lead me across a bumpy terrain. My feet send back covert signals—we are walking on a dirt road, littered with loose gravel.

A few minutes later, we break into a clearing. Already I am formulating a plan of attack and escape, should it become necessary. I refuse to die with a Bloomingdale’s bag over my head.

“Close your eyes,” Harry tells me, and for once I decide not to follow his instructions.

Ouch! Light—bright light—stabbing—eyes on fire, eyes on fire! I slam my lids back down, drawing the shades on my damaged peepers. Harry laughs at me, and Englebert halfheartedly joins in.

“My eyes! What’d you do to my eyes?”

Whap! Another slap on the back of my head. “Quit whining,” says Harry. “I took the bag off your head, that’s all. It’s bright out here, you moron.”

Eyes adjusting now, red streaks fading from my corneas. The clearing slowly comes into view, and it’s mostly how I pictured it: a rough circle of emptiness hewn out of the surrounding vegetation, the canopy overhead filtering out much of the sunlight, but not enough to give my weary eyes a rest. The one feature I hadn’t guessed at is most prominent, though, sitting as it is in the dead center of the clearing: a log cabin, small but sturdy, just like good ol’ Abe Lincoln would have made. For all I know, he did.

Harry gives me a little shove, a football pat on my rump. “Go on,” he says.

“In there?”

“Yeah, in there.”

“Can I take the clothespin off my nose?”

“No.”

As I walk toward the cabin, breathing heavily through my mouth, I notice that neither Harry nor Englebert is following me. I’m a good thirty yards ahead of them now, and in theory I could make a break
for it—burst across the clearing like a gazelle and crawl madly to safety through the underbrush. Call the cops, alert them to the situation, and live to tell the tale on the talk show of my choosing.

Unfortunately, while I am quite the feisty badger when it comes to burrowing, my speed has always been closer to that of a chubby dachshund than that of a gazelle. Even if I were able to outrun the two lugs behind me, there stands a good chance that they’d be carrying long-range weapons that could drop me in a second no matter how finely tuned my burrowing skills might be. I decide to enter the cabin.

Just my luck, there are no lights inside. Between Vallardo’s incubation chamber and the Bloomie’s bag, my visual spectrum today has gone from bright to dark to brighter to darker, and my peepers are getting a real workout trying to keep up. I stand in the doorway for a moment, allowing the outside light to stream in, before a female voice—low, insistent—says, “Close the door.”

I comply, and find myself in darkness yet again. “Your eyes will adjust,” says the voice. “Until that point, I have a few things to say. I ask you to remain quiet until I am done. Is that understood?”

I know a trick question when I hear one. Following orders, I keep my trap shut. “Very good,” she says. “This may not be so difficult after all.”

Shadows coming into view now—a stove, a chair, a fireplace perhaps, and a long, lithe form standing among it all. “I understand you are here on business,” says the shadow, a thick tail slowly distinguishing itself amid the other silhouettes. “And I can respect that. We all have jobs to do, and we all do them to the best of our abilities. You would be remiss in your duties were you to give your work anything other than the full attention you have bestowed upon it thus far.”

And now there’s a neck, a long, graceful swan curve—arms, small but toned—almond-shaped eyes riding high above two ripe-plum cheeks. “I also understand that you are from Los Angeles,” she says, “and though you may be under the impression that you are used to life in a megalopolis, though you may think you know how to conduct yourself and your business in the big city, I want you to get it through your mind that LA is a playpen compared to the Big Apple. What is acceptable at the mother’s breast is not acceptable in the nursery.

“I’ve brought you out here for your own good, not for mine. In fact,
I’ve already saved your life on two occasions. Disbelieve this if you choose to, but it is the truth.”

A Coleophysis, no doubt about it, and a stunner at that. Each of her six toes is the perfect length, the perfect circumference, the webbing between bearing not a blemish. And her tail—that tail! oh!—twice again as thick as mine and forty times as dear. I only wish this damned clothespin were off so that I could breathe deeply of her scent.

She says, “I would be lying if I said that I didn’t … understand your work. But if you persist with all of these questions, this investigation … There is only so much I can do to protect you. Do you understand?”

“I understand your points,” I say, my eyes finally finished with their lethargic adjustments, “though I don’t necessarily agree with them.”

“I didn’t think you would.”

“I also don’t understand why you’re dragging me into a cabin in Jersey. You coulda sent a telegram.”

“None of this concerns you,” says the Coleophysis. “But unlike some others, I don’t believe you should get hurt.”

“Aside from a scrape with Harry and Englebert back there, I haven’t had much danger at all. You know that thug of yours threatened to rip my throat out?”

“They told you their names, did they?” Lips puckered, clearly unhappy.

I shrug. “You don’t just pick Englebert outta the air.”

“Tell me something,” she says, coming closer, hot breath on my throat. “Why do you find it necessary to stir up trouble?”

“Am I stirring? I thought it was more of a shake.”

A pause. Will she kiss me or spit at me? Neither—the Coleophysis backs away. “You went to see Dr. Emil Vallardo, is that correct?”

“Considering your goons picked me up outside the medical center, I’d say you know it’s correct.” Without asking permission—enough with the permission—I squat up and down, up and down, trying to get feeling back in my legs. The Coleo pays my impromptu workout no mind.

“They’re not my goons.” Then, a moment later: “Dr. Vallardo is a twisted man, Vincent. Brilliant, but twisted. It would be better if you left him to work on his bastardization of nature by himself.”

“I gather you don’t approve,” I say.

“I’ve seen his work. Firsthand.” She pulls up a chair and lowers herself onto the seat. “You’ve also been bothering Judith McBride.”

How does she know all this? Have I been followed since I stepped off the plane? It’s distressing to learn that I’ve been so disoriented by the city that I haven’t even been able to spot a tail despite my paranoia. Quick 360s are a regular routine anytime I move through the city; it’s an ingrained action for me, like checking the rearview mirror of a car. Heck, I usually check for tails even when I’m in the shower.

“I haven’t been bothering,” I reply. “I’ve been interviewing.”

A hard stare, and she pulls out a chair for me. “Please, sit.” I give up my squats and plop down across the way. I notice that she hasn’t mentioned my run-in with the dino-amalgamation in the alley behind the health clinic, but I figure she’s either working up to that, or her spies were slacking off on the job that night.

The Coleo takes my hand in hers, and a tingle runs through my guise, up my arm, and stops my heart. Strangely enough, it feels nice. A moment later, it pounds back into action. “The fire at the Evolution Club was a horrible thing,” she says to me, and from the glow in her eyes and the soft tones padding each word in cotton, I can tell she really means it. “Dinos died, and that was wrong. Donovan was hurt, and that was horrible. Horrible. And I understand your concern over your partner’s death, as well. But it was all an accident. Can you understand that?”

I ask, “Were you there that night? When Ernie died?”

“No.”

“What about in LA—at the club?”

“No.” And even without my nose to send me clues, I can sense she’s telling the truth on both counts. “But I know that what happened was not supposed to happen. Not in the ways it did.”

“Fine. What was supposed to happen?”

A head shake, a hand toss—“This is my whole point, Vincent. You have to stop asking questions. You have to leave New York tonight and forget about it.”

“I can’t do that.”

“You have to.”

“I understand. I won’t.”

I can’t tell if she’s chuckling or crying—her head has fallen into her
arms, her body racked with shoulder shudders and full-scale convulsions, easily a sobbing fit or laughing jag—but I take the break in the conversation to stretch again. All this sitting is wearing me out, and my hide is growing clammy beneath my guise.

She arises, her eyes glistening with tears—still no decision on that laughing or crying thing—and shakes her head, forfeiting the conversation. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was a sigh in there, too. “I’ve done all I can,” she says. “I can’t protect you any more.”

“I know,” I say, even as part of me wonders why I’m not giving in, going home, and saving my skinny hide. Protection is usually a good thing, and it’s only because I feel so close to something so big that I’m still in it at this stage of the game.

The Coleo says, “Is this job more important than your life, Mr. Rubio?”

I think it over, and she lets me take my time. My answer, slow in coming, is out of my mouth before I realize how true it is. “Right now, this job is my life.”

She understands, and doesn’t press the matter. I am glad. I look at my watch—it’s getting late, and now that I’m pretty sure I’m not going to be whacked out in the middle of New Jersey, fatigue has begun to set in. My muscles ache to be released from their confines, already anticipating a nice hot soak back in the hotel bath.

“Are we almost done?” I ask, pointing to my watch. “I hate to be rude, but …”