John Locke - Lethal Experiment

You begin the process of building your life from scratch. But you’re not building the life you were meant to live, you’re building something else altogether.

You realize you’re alive and not dead or dreaming. But you also realize that while you’re alive on the outside, on the inside you’re dead. A few months pass and they send you back to school, but something’s different. All the kids know what happened to you. They taunt you, hit you, but when they do, you feel no pain. That’s because none of them can hit you like the man hit you. And yet, you want to be hit, so you taunt them back. They hit you and you laugh. They hit you some more and you laugh harder. You love the feel of your own blood in your mouth. The taste and texture makes you feel almost alive.

You’re fifteen now, and you keep growing more and more beautiful, but you could care less. You start taking drugs, you flirt with the fathers of your former friends, and you get some of them to sleep with you in return for money you use to buy more drugs.

You eventually get busted for prostitution and you’re sent to a state hospital for evaluation. You’re coming off your drugs cold turkey and you freak out and they give you an injection and put you in restraints. The first time you wake up you find your arms, waist and ankles strapped to a bed. The next time you wake up, two orderlies are molesting you. You scream and wail and they run away and you think you know how to beat them, but all you’ve done was teach them to give you a stronger dose next time.

You spend a few weeks in the ward and by the time you’re clean you learn you have an IQ of 182, which is a hundred points more than you need for the life you’re willing to accept.

So you’re back home and back to other things, as well, like buying drugs and selling your body. And by the time you’re eighteen, you’re doing some new things, too, like stealing cars. You love the cars, love boosting them, love driving them fast, with the windows down and the radio up and the bass line thumping strong and steady.

Like a beating heart.

One night you’re driving a tweaked out Super Bee and you’re blitzed enough to wonder what it feels like to slam into the car that’s parked near the bushes where it all changed for you. You hit it hard, but you survive, and then it’s back to the ward, back to the knockout drugs that make the late night rape sessions possible for the otherwise un-dateable orderlies.

And you go on like that for a number of weeks or months until something happens: for the second time in your life, a man shows up and changes your life. Except that this man understands you and knows what you need. His name is Donovan Creed and yeah, he knows exactly what you need.

You need a reason.

You don’t get to be like eighteen-year-old Callie without experiencing soul-crushing trauma. And you don’t become the empty, broken, killing machine Callie of today unless you have a reason.

So yeah, I gave Callie a reason. I took her under my wing and trained her. She was an easy study because she was indefatigable, and because she flat didn’t give a shit.

Callie’s reason is revenge.

That’s why it’s easy for her to put a bullet into a total stranger, or kill date raping young men in cold blood. That’s why sometimes, for Callie, it’s personal.

I looked at her in the Gulfstream, sitting across the aisle, facing me, reclining, eyes closed. And God help her, she was and is the most exquisitely beautiful woman to ever walk the earth.

And the most deadly.

I couldn’t fathom this request of hers to see a Vegas show, but if Callie’s heart had opened to the point that she could appreciate theater, then I wanted to be there to experience it with her.

Still, I wondered what she meant by the life and death part.

Chapter 19

The Cirque du Soleil stage production of “O” was considered so important to the success of the Bellagio Hotel, they actually built the stage first, and then built the hotel and casino around it. And what a stage it is! It houses a pool containing one-point-five million gallons of water! There is a platform in the pool filled with thousands of tiny holes that allows it to rise and fall in seconds, without creating a wake. This enables cast members to perform high dives into the pool one minute, and skip across the surface the next.

Tickets are sold out months in advance. I didn’t ask Callie how she obtained our front-row balcony seats, and didn’t need to. Callie gets what Callie wants.

The show itself is hard to explain, but in general, it’s a celebration of water. There is no real plot, per se, nor is one necessary. “O” is a stunning display of athletes, acrobats, synchronized swimmers, divers and mythical characters, all of whom perform on a constantly changing liquid stage.

The program described the music as “haunting and lyrical, upbeat and melancholy”—and they weren’t lying, it was superb. For me, the blend of music and choreography enhanced the beauty and spectacle of the experience. Sure, I’d seen other circus acts that impressed me. But I’d never made an emotional connection with the performers before. But here, sitting beside Callie, watching “O,” I found myself caught up in the performers’ world of grace, strength and art. And loving every minute of it.

There are seventeen acts in the show, no intermissions. I glanced out of the corner of my eye at Callie several times, but each time her face showed less expression than Joan Rivers after a Botox treatment.

Until the seventeenth act: “Solo Trapeze.”

That’s when I saw Callie’s right hand tense, ever so slightly. I turned to look at her and saw her—not crying, but tearing up. Then, amazingly, a single tear spilled over the edge of her eyelashes and traced halfway down her cheek. She didn’t notice me staring, didn’t make a move to wipe it dry. More than nine million people have seen “O” in this theater, but none were moved more than Callie. I know, because I’ve seen her in dozens of situations that would have made the toughest guys cry. Add all those events to this and you get a total of one tear.

I opened my program and noticed the girl on the trapeze was the alternate. There was something familiar about the name.

And then it hit me.

It was Eva LeSage.

I’d never met Eva, but Callie used to guard her back in Atlanta for Sensory Resources. You get attached to the people you guard, and you like to see them succeed in life. Callie was proving to be far more sentimental than I’d ever known her to be. On the other hand, she hadn’t so much as frowned while killing Charlie and his friends a few nights ago, so it was unlikely she’d be mistaken for Mother Teresa anytime soon.

After the show I said, “There are six Cirque du Soleil shows playing Vegas.”

“So?”

“So that means tonight, five hundred performers will be walking the Strip—all of them limber enough to have sex without a partner.”

She gave me a curious look. “Anyone can have sex without a partner.”

“Not that kind of sex,” I said.

“Thanks for the visual.”

We climbed into our waiting limo and headed to the Encore Hotel. We had dinner reservations at Switch.

“Did you get anything else out of the show?” Callie said, “aside from the sexual dexterity of the performers?”

“It’s probably the best show I’ve ever seen: synchronized swimmers, acrobats, Red coated soldiers with powdered wigs riding on flying carousel horses, world-class high divers, contortionists, a man so deeply involved with his newspaper he continues reading it after bursting into flames…”

“Anything else?”

I smiled. “I was particularly impressed by the solo trapeze artist who made her debut tonight. The understudy from Atlanta. Eva LeSage.”

Callie studied me a moment before saying, “When did you figure it out?”

“Not till the very end.”

“You think she’s good enough to get the lead?”

I shrugged. “I’m not qualified to say.”

I looked at Callie and sensed she needed to hear some type of personal validation from me. Something honest, from the heart. I dug deep.

“For me, Eva had a delicate, ballet quality that went beyond special. She wowed me tonight. It was like watching poetry in motion.”

“Poetry in motion,” Callie repeated. Her voice had a wistful quality about it.

After a moment she said, “Did you make that up?”

“It’s an old sixties song.”

She grinned. “Eighteen sixties?”

“Nineteen, smartass. Johnny Tillotson.”

“Donovan, seriously. How do you know that—you weren’t even alive in the sixties.”

“Some things are worth learning about.”

“Sixties music being one of them?”

“Music was better back then.”

“Song titles, maybe.”

We sat awhile in silence, feeling the tires adjust to the uneven pavement.

The driver turned his head in our general direction and said, “Sorry about the construction.”

“No problem,” I said. Of course there’s construction. It’s Vegas. There’s always construction going on.

“You hungry?” I said.

I’d wanted to try Switch because I heard they had a lobster salad appetizer and great steaks. What makes the restaurant unique, every twenty minutes the lights dim, eerie music plays, and the walls and ceilings change their theme. I heard that sometimes the waiters quick-change into totally different outfits. Touristy, I know, but it would give me something to tell Kathleen and Addie about when I got back.

“I’m not a foodie,” she said, “but I’ll find something to nibble on while we talk about this…situation.”

“There’s a situation?” I said. “With Eva?”

“There’s about to be,” she said.

Chapter 20

Switch did not disappoint. This high-energy restaurant was all about vibrant colors, Venetian glass murals, and wild, stylish fabrics. More to the point: they had a bourbon bar that featured, among other timeless classics, my favorite spirit: Pappy Van Winkle’s twenty-year Family Reserve. I ordered us each a shot of the Pappy, straight up.

“I’ll have a chardonnay,” Callie said.

The waiter hesitated. “Bring her a shot of Pappy,” I said, “and a glass of your house chardonnay, just in case.”

After he left to fetch the drinks, I said, “You remember Burt Lancaster?”

“The actor?” Callie said. She looked around. “He’s here?”

“Only in spirit,” I said.

“Oh.” She thought a moment, and said, “I liked him in that Kevin Costner movie, the one about the baseball field.”

“Field of Dreams,” I said, “his last performance.”

“What about him?”

“When he was sixteen, Burt Lancaster ran away from home and joined the circus, wanted to be a trapeze artist.”

Callie looked interested. “And did he become one?”

“He did.”

The waiter brought our drinks.

“Take a sip of the bourbon,” I said. “You won’t be disappointed.”

Callie sighed. “Fine,” she said. “Cheers.”

We clinked glasses, and I said, “Let it sit on your tongue a few seconds, until you taste the caramel.”

Callie did as she was instructed, but quickly made a face and spit a mouthful of bourbon into her water glass.

“How can you stand that?” she said. “Tastes like gasoline!”

I looked at the hazy, amber liquid in her water glass, and frowned.

“I can’t believe you just did that,” I said. “It’s like spitting in church.”