John Locke - Lethal Experiment

“What are you laughing at?” I said.

“I just remembered the name of the movie star you look like.”

“Stop!” I said, “don’t tell me.”

“Fine. But you know who I’m talking about.”

“I feel like an idiot, taking this face out in public.”

“Th e chicks seem to like it,” he said. “You’re getting more fingers pointed at you than William Shatner at a Star Trek convention.”

Although I felt it was more likely the fingers were being pointed at Quinn, I said, “This is my test drive. So far so good, meaning, you’re the only one who’s laughed.”

“I’m not used to you with—what is it, sandy blond hair?”

“Light brown.”

“How often you have to dye that?”

“Regularly.”

“And the eyebrows?”

“Let’s change the subject,” I said. “How’s Alison these days?”

“Ouch. How would I know? I haven’t seen her in years. How’s Kathleen?”

“The same. What happened with Afaya?”

“He never showed up. One morning his “cousin” was at work in Denver, took his usual lunch break, never came back.”

“Someone tip him off ?”

“That’s what Darwin thinks, but it doesn’t matter. The threat went away.”

“How’d you and Alison start dating?”

“Who said we did?”

“Lou Kelly.”

Quinn stared at me a moment. “I guess you could call it dating. It lasted a couple of weeks, is all.”

I nodded, took a sip of my drink. He knew I was waiting for him to tell me how he and Alison got together sexually, when he was supposed to be training her to kill people. He finally did.

“She thought with you dead, maybe I’d give her the high-paying job you promised. I didn’t discourage her from thinking that.”

“You dog.”

“Woof. So anyway, when she realized that wasn’t gonna happen, she bolted.”

“You never heard from her again?”

Quinn laughed. “I know. You’d think, sensitive guy like me, she’d call whenever it rains or when she’s feeling blue, right?”

I smiled at the thought. “What about the guy from the Texas Syndicate?” I said.

“He didn’t follow up on her, far as I know. I think he had enough problems of his own, trying to stay in power.”

We were quiet a minute, and then I chuckled.

“What,” he said.

“She ever do that love song for you while in the throes of passion?”

“Which one—the asthmatic alley cat, or the singing horse?”

“The horse is the one I remember.”

Quinn gave a sudden imitation of her that made all the surrounding tables take notice. I laughed like I hadn’t laughed since the days of Kathleen.

Quinn said, “Alison was really something, she was.”

“So was Kathleen,” I said.

Quinn nodded. “So when do you want me to kill her fiancé?”

Chapter 51

Of course I didn’t want Quinn to kill Kathleen’s fiancé, but I appreciated the gesture. Hell, I’d thought of killing him myself and starting over with Kathleen, but like Callie said about quitting the business, each time I thought about it, I came to my senses.

Quinn and I had our steaks and split an order of truffled mac and cheese. During dinner we drank an outstanding cabernet, the 2004 Oracle, from Miner Family Vineyards.

“I only eat like this when I’m alone or with somebody,” I said.

“You were due,” he said. “Keep working out and eating like this and you’ll be back to normal strength before you know it.”

I almost told Augustus how much I’d missed him, but changed my mind at the last second. It wouldn’t have been worth all the shit he’d give me for saying it.

“What brings you to Philly?” he said.

“I came to see you.”

He twisted his face in the manner I’ve come to recognize as his signature smile. “That’s nice,” he said.

“People like us,” I said, “can’t afford to have many friends. I like to think of you and Callie as people I can count on.”

Quinn said, “I feel the same way. They’d have to pay me a lot to kill you or Callie.”

Coming from Quinn, that was quite a compliment. On the other hand, it was scary to think that this monstrous man who would kill me for the right price was the closest I had to a guy friend.

I looked at him as he stared at the women coming and going on the sidewalk in front of the restaurant, and wondered if our team of surgeons could do anything about his extreme deformities. I decided they could not.

Quinn wasn’t as ugly as Joseph Merrick, the Elephant man, but at least Merrick enjoyed two years on earth as a normal human being before the growths began forming on his face and head. Quinn was born this way, and his world view was formed in response to the reactions he got from others.

Doctors couldn’t agree on the source of Quinn’s particular malady, but the consensus pointed to a form of Proteus Syndrome, a condition so rare that less than a hundred cases have been documented world wide.

Proteus would explain the deformed facial features on one side of Quinn’s head and face, but none of the reported cases shared the strange, multi-colored striations that covered the left side of his face and neck. It wasn’t a skin disease, and there was no odor to his skin, so one theory was that the splotches were a giant, multi-colored birthmark.

Bottom line, Quinn’s poster boy looks were closer to Joseph Merrick than Brad Pitt. As you might imagine, there were gaping vacancies on Quinn’s social calendar, a situation that afforded him plenty of time to ogle the women that entered his field of vision.

A model-thin stunner entered the main dining room at Smith & Wollensky’s and took a seat at a table where three suits had been waiting. Her glimmering platinum hair was chopped shoulder length, and she had on some sort of purple makeup that looked like war paint.

“Oh Mama,” Quinn said. “What would you do to that one?”

“How long do I get?”

“Thirty minutes.”

“I’d turn her more ways than a monkey can turn a coconut.”

He looked at me. “Can I make an observation?”

“Please do.”

“You’re saying all the right things about these chicks, but your heart’s not in it.”

“Like I said, tonight’s more of a test drive.”

“You know what you need? You need to get your pipes cleaned. You’re in my town, let me make a call. Right now you’re sitting in a steakhouse, but you’re only thirty minutes away from the best night of your life.”

“What’s her name?”

“Her name ? Jesus, you really are a mess,” he said.

I shrugged. “I’m a detail guy.”

“You are that,” he said. “Her name is Heavenly.”

“What makes this hooker better than all the rest?”

He did that smile thing with his face, and when he did it, I smiled too.

“She got a friend for you?” I said.

“Her roommate’s Delight.”

“Heavenly Delight, huh? What are they, a tag team?

He cuffed me on the arm. “I won’t pretend I don’t know,” he said.

We sat in silence awhile, me thinking again about how we’re all just a phone call away from a life-changing event. Quinn’s eyes fairly danced with anticipation, like a kid hoping I’d take him to get ice cream.

“What the hell,” I said. “Make the call.”

“Really? That’s great! You won’t be sorry!”

He stepped away from the table. A moment later he returned, still on the phone, but didn’t sit down. I heard a click.

“Tell me you didn’t just take my picture,” I said. He pointed behind me. “Chick with the boobs.” He pressed a few buttons, ended his call.

We finished our fine dinner with a sauterne as rich and thick on the tongue as syrup.

“That some kind of wine?” Quinn said. “Are you kidding me?”

“It is and I’m not.”

“Tastes more like desert. What is it?”

“Lafaurie Peyraguey,” I said, showing off my French accent.

“Those words could never come out of this fucked-up mouth of mine,” he said, “but I can see why it’s your favorite.”

“Actually, purists prefer Chateau d’Yquem.”

“What do they know,” he said.

His phone buzzed and he checked the text. He winked at me.

“We’re on! The girls are excited.”

“Excited hookers?”

“I told them I was bringing a movie star.”

“You didn’t!”

“I had to, they were already booked.”

“Let me guess: they didn’t believe you, so you took my picture and forwarded it to them.”

“Well, what was I gonna do,” he said, “send her a picture of the chick with the boobs?”

“You took a picture of her too?”

He did that grinning thing again. “You want to ride with me or follow me there?”

I thought a moment. “I’d better follow you. We’ll probably be there awhile; the restaurant might be closed by the time we’re done with the girls.”

“That’s what I’m talkin’ bout!” Quinn said, cuffing my arm again.

The valet guys retrieved our cars. Quinn rolled out and I followed from a short distance. I reached under my seat and found the small box Callie had put there while Augustus and I were in the restaurant. I placed it on the seat beside me.

Car bombs are as diverse as they people they kill. They can be wired to ignition systems, set to timing devices, attached to tilt fuses that detonate when the car hits a bump in the road, or detonated wirelessly from a distance. The payload can be placed under the driver’s seat, dash, or attached magnetically to the underside of the car, or, as in this case, inside the wheel well. The detonator on the seat beside me was good for a distance of at least a hundred yards line-of-sight, or fifty if obstructed.

Quinn was my best guy friend, and one of the last people I’d ever want to kill. But he was also the guy who’d kidnapped Alison Cilice and held her captive in his warehouse for the past three years. I knew this as well as I knew my name. Well, scratch that. I knew it as well as I knew anything. It began as a hunch, and became a near certainty after having Lou Kelly’s geeks run a full-out search on Alison. When they found that her trail dried up less than a month after I went into my coma, I measured her disappearance against my in-depth knowledge of Quinn. I’d been ninety-nine percent sure before talking to Quinn at the restaurant. By the time we’d gotten our cars, I had no doubts at all.

If Quinn had told me Alison was dead and buried in a specific place, or that she’d taken up with someone or changed her name, or given me any plausible explanation for her current whereabouts, I could have Lou follow up on it. But Quinn said all the wrong things.

He admitted to dating Alison. He also said she bolted after a few weeks, and I believed him. But I had entrusted Quinn with Alison’s care and well-being, and whether she wanted anything to do with him or not, he’d have kept tabs on her these three years.

Because he’d still be guarding her, would in fact have guarded her for the rest of her life, since that had been my last request, just as I would, had our positions been reversed. It’s how we’re wired. We keep track of the people we guard, period. So his claim that he hadn’t heard from her in three years was preposterous.

My guess is that after being spurned, Quinn tracked her down and tried to get her back. She would have refused, and he would have kidnapped her. Like Beauty and the Beast, he probably hoped in time she’d grow to love him. But of course, Beauty and the Beast were from a time and place where women had fewer options.