"I warned you," BeBop smiled. "I really did."
They were standing amidst a crowd of people gathered around the elaborate indoor pool northeast of the Casa Grande. The room housing the giant pool filled with reflected orange light from the high arched windows along the wall. The floor and walls were completely covered in blue glass tiles imported from Murano, Italy, causing the room to shimmer eerily, as if they were all underwater rather than standing next to a pool.
Spaced around the pool were eight Carrara marble sculptures commissioned of Carlo Fre-ter of Pietrasanta, Italy, just for this room. Each was a reproduction of a famous classical work.
BeBop was leaning against "Diana and the Deer." Someone with a felt pen had vandalized the statue, drawing nipples where the breasts were covered by the white marble folds of her dress. Black pubic hairs were scribbled between her legs.
"Didn't I warn them, Tsetse?"
The young boy sat against the wall, balancing his blow gun on his knees. "Yeah, BeBop, you warned 'em. I heard you."
BeBop looked at Eric, Tracy, and Blackjack, then sighed like a parent disappointed with his children's behavior. With a grin, he strummed his guitar and began to sing, improvising an off-key tune. "Oh, baby, I warned ya/Tole ya not to be no asshole/ When you visiting Hearst Cas-tle." He laughed. "Not bad, huh? The acoustics in this place are awesome."
"Let's get on with it," Rhino said, standing with what was left of his crew. His eyes were rimmed with red and his lumpish body trembled, even while standing still. Whatever demons had invaded his system after passing through the Halo seemed to have accelerated until Rhino jittered like a man standing on a live wire. It was as if his entire nervous system were disintegrating. Occasionally he snapped his rubber band, but more out of habit than to control himself. He was past that now. The flesh on the inside of his wrist was bruised and raw, but he didn't feel anything there when he snapped the rubber band and shouted, "I want them executed."
This brought excited murmurs from the early morning crowd. An execution would be an entertaining way to start the day.
Eric took a step toward BeBop, saw Tsetse shift his blow gun at the movement. Eric wasn't about to try anything, not with BeBop's security force fanned out around him. One of the T-shirted guards was holding Eric's crossbow, Blackjack's saber and gun, and Tracy's bow.
"Rhino's right," Eric said. "Let's get on with it. Starting with why we were brought here?"
"You know why you were fucking brought here!" Rhino shrieked, making a fist of his delicate fingers. "You kidnapped Angel and murdered three members of my crew."
"How do you plead, gang?" BeBop asked them with a dramatic strum of his guitar.
Eric shook his head. "I don't know what he's talking about."
"You know goddamn well what I'm talking about!" Rhino blasted.
"Except for a brief excursion to our boat and one for some peanut butter on Ritz crackers, we were in our room the whole night."
"Yeah, I know the place," BeBop nodded. "Gino used to own a pizza parlor in Fresno. Now it's peanut butter on Ritz."
Rhino reached for the.38 tucked in his waistband.
"Whoa," BeBop said, holding up his hands. One of the guards with a shotgun stepped forward and nudged Rhino's arm. Rhino shoved the gun back into his waistband. "No violence, Rhino. Not yet."
"I think I can clear this matter up," Eric said. "Are there any witnesses to the crimes?"
Laughter from the crowd rattled the windows.
BeBop explained. "Those who might have seen something, probably can't remember what they saw last night. And those who can remember don't want to get involved and get their throats slit some night."
"But your own men saw Angel in their room," Rhino sputtered. "She'd been beaten."
BeBop turned to the head of his security force. "Tony?"
"Yeah," Tony said. "She was in their room. I only saw a glimpse of her, but she was banged up a bit."
"I told you," Rhino said. "Now let me have them."
"Mind if I ask a question?" Eric said.
BeBop shrugged. "Your witness, Mr. Mason."
"Tony, was Angel bound in any way. Hand cuffed or tied up?"
"Nope."
Eric turned back to BeBop. "The explanation is simple. Angel had a map to a cache of weapons left over from when the government was confiscating them after the first quake. She was trying to make a deal with us behind Rhino's back. He found out, sent his crew up to get her. Angel panicked, killed them, sustaining bruises in the struggle. Then she came to our room to try to sell us the map. That's why she ran when she saw Rhino."
BeBop's eyes lit up at mention of the weapons cache, knowing what power the owner of that man would have. He nicked out a few notes from "Stairway To Heaven," trying to look casual. "And where is this map now?"
"She took it with her out the window," Blackjack answered.
"Pity."
"It's all bullshit!" Rhino wailed. "She didn't have any map. They kidnapped her and killed my crew."
"If she didn't have any map," Eric said, "why would we want to kidnap her."
"Because you wanted-"
"Enough!" BeBop yelled, banging on the strings of his guitar. "I don't give a rat's ass who's right anymore. This ain't the fucking Supreme Court, Rhino, so don't come bitching to me. All I care about is that this place remains peaceful so business can be conducted so I can get my cut. I got overhead, man." He hooked a thumb at his security squad. "You think these guys follow my orders because they like my music? Hell, no. They get their cut of my cut. See?" He took a deep breath, stared into what was once a luxurious swimming pool. Now the water that filled the pool was rancid with vegetation. So much junk had been thrown into the pool that one could hardly see the water through the broken bicycles, empty cans, newspapers, cartons, and other debris that had been tossed in as if it were a giant garbage can. BeBop pointed at the pool. "That's where you're gonna settle this. In there."
"What?" Rhino asked.
"You two." He pointed at Rhino, then at Eric. "You two had the most to say, now you're gonna get a chance to settle up. Let's go. In the pool. The one who comes out alive wins the argument. Those with the loser, get to take his body and get the fuck out of Liar's Cove."
"That's ridiculous," Rhino protested.
"It's not up for debate, Rhino. You've been a good customer, but I've got lots of customers, and they know that BeBop takes care of them. So get your dumpy little fanny in that pool."
Eric didn't say anything. He began stripping off his shirt, kicking off his boots. The improvised bandages that Tracy had had wound around his chest had been replaced by Nurse Havczech, but Eric could still feel the ache of his wound underneath.
"For Christ's sake, BeBop," Blackjack protested. "You can see that he's wounded. Let me take his place."
"No way, Jose. You let him do the talking, now he's gotta do the fighting." He glanced over at Rhino, who had not yet made a move. "Come on, big fella. Everybody's waiting."
Rhino looked confused for a moment, the gnarled half of his face making him resemble the statues scattered around the pool. Finally a small smile cracked the good half of his face, his lips spreading slowly like the splitting seam of a football. He shrugged out of his neat double-breasted jacket, then leaned one hand against "Diana and the Deer" while removing his patent leather loafers. He wore no socks.
Eric walked to the edge of the pool, thinking Rhino was ready. But the bigger man continued to strip. He peeled off his shirt and pants to the unified gasping of the crowd, who were shocked to discover the pattern of scarring on his face continued down his entire body. Half of his body was covered with the thick slabs of scarred flesh like the wrinkled hide of a rhinoceros. The effect was particularly hideous because the normal half of his body sprouted thick matted hair. The scarred half was slick and hairless.
Rhino stood only in his boxer shorts, facing the crowd with that half-smile. He stepped out of his shorts, totally naked.
This brought an even louder murmur of surprise, chorused by his own crew. Rhino's penis, given a fifty-fifty chance of going with either half of his body, had chosen the deformed half. It was a twisted white stub of swirling scar tissue, like a cigar that had been angrily stubbed out. One buttock drooped heavily under the extra weight of the scarred skin.
Without hesitation, Rhino stepped to the edge of the pool and jumped in. His body splashed aside a small circle of the floating garbage. He stood looking up at Eric, the water lapping his chest. An empty can of Coors bumped his back.
"Now that," BeBop said with admiration, "is entertainment." He signaled to Tsetse, who scampered to his feet and brought over the Donnie and Marie Osmond lunch bucket. BeBop took a tiny snort, closed the pail, and waved at Eric.
"Let's go, bashful."
Eric leaped into the pool five feet away from Rhino. Being shorter than Rhino, the water splashed against his chin as he stood and waited. The stench of the putrid water was nauseating, but he tried to ignore it. Instead he concentrated on the scarred lump of a man wading toward him.
"Okay," BeBop said. "Let the duel begin. Last one out is a dead egg."
The crowd began to cheer.
Rhino was steaming toward him like a full-speed tanker. His huge bulk swept the water aside in great waves. The blanket of trash that coated the pool rolled in rhythm with the swells. Rhino's slender fingers were held out in front of him like mechanical claws.
Eric waited, sliding his feet backward along the bottom of the pool. His feet often nudged unseen debris and he was not anxious to step on anything sharp. The thick coating of slime under his feet made it hard for him to keep his balance.
Rhino seemed to have the same trouble, slipping twice as he plowed toward Eric. Once his head went under the water as he flailed for balance. When he came back up he spit the water from his mouth, including a piece of white styrofoam from a coffee cup. A thick string of dark algae hung from one scarred ear.
"Move to the shallow1 end, Eric," Tracy advised, hollering over the hoots and catcalls of
the crowd.
Eric noticed the people clustered around the pool, more coming in all the time. Some were kneeling, shouting encouragement to the gladiator of their choice, keeping their throats moist with mugs of BeBop's Brew. No matter how desperate their own lives became, people needed distractions, needed to see the life and death struggles performed by others. Eric imagined the cavemen, after a hard day's hunting and fighting, returning home only to reenact it all with paintings on the wall. Now that TV, movies, theater, records, and professional sports were gone, what else was left but this kind of hideous combat.
BeBop watched the proceedings with an amused grin. To him it was a business strategy, nothing more. That his clients were entertained by it all was a bonus. Eric thought he even saw a glimmer of regret in BeBop's eyes that he hadn't thought of charging them all to watch the fight.
"The shallow end!" Tracy repeated.
Eric didn't have time to tell her he had more of an advantage in deeper water than a taller man. In shallow water, the bigger man could use his weight and height with more leverage. In the deeper water, that advantage was taken away. Eric waited until Rhino was almost on top of him before diving under the water and swimming toward the deep end. He didn't dare open his eyes in this poisoned mess, relying instead on his sense of direction. When his head popped out of the water again, his feet dangled
under him in deep water.
The crowd was booing, yelling "coward" and "chickenshit" at him.
Rhino was swimming toward him now, his huge legs kicking a geyser of water behind him with each stroke.
This time Eric was ready. He waited until Rhino was within three feet, the big man's small hands reaching out of the water for Eric's throat. Suddenly Eric ducked under the water, curling into a ball, then kicking out both feet at once. They struck Rhino's stomach, sinking a few inches into the blubbery flesh.
Rhino doubled over, his face slapping the water, air bubbling out of his mouth in a muffled grunt.
Eric coiled his legs again, sprang them out at Rhino. They caught him in the chest this time, propelling Rhino backward a little. Eric could hear the man's garbled groan even underwater. He started to coil his legs again for another kick.
But he was too slow.
Rhino snagged one of Eric's ankles and yanked him through the water like a hooked tuna. Eric was two feet under the surface on his back as he was dragged forward, water forcing itself up his nose. He tried to twist around, kicking at Rhino's hands with his free foot. But it was no use. Rhino's grip was too strong.
The power pulling him along was so fierce that some of the floating garbage from the surface was sucked down into the whirlpool, swirling around Eric's face. This is what it must
feel like to be flushed down a toilet, he thought.
Then he was no longer being pulled, and the hands around his ankle were now fastened like fat leeches around his neck, crushing his windpipe while holding him under the water. He had lost all his air seconds ago and was now functioning on pure adrenaline, fighting the sharp pain in his empty lungs. The arrow hole in his chest opened up and he could feel his blood oozing into the warm swampy pool. Absurdly he worried about his wound getting infected even as he tried to fight his way to the surface.
He pried at the fingers around his throat, but they didn't budge. It was as if they were nailed to his neck. His eyes were open now and he could see Rhino's gruesome face hovering just above the surface, hear Tracy and Blackjack screaming behind him, begging Eric to do something.
And Eric did.
His cupped hands shot up out of the water and clapped together on both of Rhino's ears, bursting the eardrums. Rhino's roar of pain vibrated through the water. But still Rhino squeezed tighter. Eric felt his chest heaving involuntarily, felt the rush of warm water through his nostrils, flushing down his throat. He had to try again.
This time he launched his thumbs straight up into Rhino's eyes, digging the thumbnails deep into the eyeballs. Rhino's good eye flattened under the pressure, but that black marble of an eye on the damaged side of his face didn't move. It was as hard as a pearl, petrified. Eric dug harder.
Rhino's grip eased a little, then a little more. Eric was floating to the top. He broke the surface, sucked his lungs full of air, and heaved his weight into his thumbs.
But Rhino clamped his hands around Eric's wrists and easily pried them away. The enormous strength of the man surprised Eric. He tried to yank his hands free, but Rhino pulled them apart as easily as snapping a wishbone.
With a loud growl, Rhino suddenly reached down, grabbed a handful of Eric's chest bandage and a handful of pants and plucked Eric out of the water, raising him over his head. He threw him straight at the blue tiled corner of the pool like a child trying to crack open a clam by hurling it at a sharp rock.
Eric twisted slightly in midair, allowing his muscular back to smash against the hard edge of the pool, absorbing most of the shock. His head grazed the corner, sending five hundred volts of pain into his skull, but there was no serious damage. Dazed, Eric slid from the edge under the water to the bottom of the pool. His left foot landed on a piece of glass that sliced through the callouses on the ball of his foot. The pain jangled his nerves and sent an icy eel slithering through his stomach.
He forced his eyes open, peered through the murky slush. Ten feet away he saw Rhino's tree stump legs churning toward him. Eric dropped his hands to the bottom of the pool, felt gingerly for the glass that had cut his foot. Maybe a weapon, he hoped. His fingers bumped a high-top Nike sneaker, Volume I of Webster's Third International Dictionary A-G, a broken amber globe that used to belong to the lights around the pool. Too unwieldy, he thought, brushing it aside. Then his hands touched something else. At first he thought it was some kind of electrical wire, but it was too rigid. Then he recognized it: a wire coat hanger.
The legs were almost on him now. He didn't want to be caught short of breath again, so he fished up the coat hanger and kicked off the side of the pool, swimming furiously to the deepest part. When his head bobbed up again, he saw Rhino doing an easy breaststroke toward him. Eric hooked the hanger in his waistband to keep it out of sight.
"Hey, Ravensmith," BeBop warned. "You can't keep running, man. We can't spend the rest of the day here settling this one dispute. I got a whole fucking castle to run here. You either fight or"-he nodded toward Tsetse- "my buddy here is gonna stick your face full of pins."
Tsetse pulled a pin from his fishing hat and thumbed it into the end of his blowgun.
BeBop grabbed Tsetse's wrist and turned it so he could read the boy's watch. "I'll give you both another five minutes. After that I'll have to award the match to my old buddy Rhino, based on aggressiveness. And you and your friends will be history. Understood?"
"Understood," Eric responded, but didn't move.
Rhino grinned as he paddled closer, speaking out of one side of his mouth. "Don't worry, Ravensmith. You don't even have five minutes."
Eric treaded water for the twenty seconds it took for Rhino to get within five feet of him. Then he dove under the water, stretching the hanger at the hook and the middle of the bottom bar into an elongated diamond, making an opening he hoped would be large enough. His eyes were stinging from the dirty water as he swam, barely able to make out his target through the haze.
Rhino swiveled his head around, whipping it from side to side as he searched for Eric while treading water. He couldn't see anything through the floating garbage. Viciously he brushed away a soggy TV Guide that was piggyback on a tree branch. He looked over his shoulder at BeBop. "He's running again, damn it. I want-"
But before he could tell the young musician and lord of Liar's Cove what he wanted, Eric exploded out of the water and jammed the hanger over his head, pulling it tight around the ragged throat, and twisting off the slack wire. Rhino's head jerked back as he clawed behind him for a piece of Eric. Eric leaned back, his knees lodged hard against Rhino's spine as he pulled on the hanger, constantly twisting the wire tighter. With each twist the black wire bit deeper into Rhino's windpipe.
Rhino's sputtering was a choked hiss. His small hands flailed blindly behind him, occasionally brushing some part of Eric's body, but not enough for those iron fingers to grab hold. He tried shaking his attacker off, but Eric rode him like a bucking bronco, yanking hard on the hanger, twisting the wire tighter and tighter.
The normal half of Rhino's face turned red, then white, then blue, but the scarred half maintained its lifeless marble color. With the terror of death slowly enveloping him, Rhino gave one last mournful cry, shrugging his shoulders like Atlas hefting off the world. Eric flipped up into the air, still holding onto the hook of the hanger with one hand. As he came back down again, Rhino was struggling to loosen the hanger with one hand, and reaching for Eric with the other. He managed to snag a handful of Eric's hair and was pulling him over his shoulder.
Eric had lost position, his knees no longer wedged into Rhino's huge back. He felt the stronger man's insistent power pulling him forward by the hair. He tried tightening the hanger more, but he was losing leverage there too. If Rhino managed to get both hands on him again, Eric knew he was done. He didn't have the strength-or time-to fight off another attack from those deadly hands.
Desperately, Eric held onto the hanger with one hand and dug his other hand into Rhino's face, trying to gouge at the eyes as he had before. Only his hands kept slipping from the rubbery scar tissue. Finally he clamped on to the thick ridge of flesh hanging over Rhino's black marble eye and pulled. A hunk of skin came off in his hands!
He could hear the horrified screams of some of the crowd, Tracy among them, and the howls of laughter from the others, drowning Rhino's own tortured wail. The shock of pain and the gushing of blood into his eye, distracted Rhino long enough for Eric to climb back into position. With five quick turns he twisted the hanger tight enough to cut off all the air.
Rhino began to sink into the deep water, weakly clutching at the wire and Eric. Eric stayed in place, knees pressed into the back, leaning backward, pulling on the wire. The muscles and veins bulged on Eric's arms and neck like bridge cables. He gulped a mouthful of air as they went under, Rhino fighting now in slow motion, a dying lump of animal raging against death.
Then nothing.
Eric didn't dismount immediately. He waited, holding his breath, ignoring the stinging in his eyes as he watched through the filthy waters Rhino's lifeless arms float out to the side. When he was satisfied that Rhino wasn't faking, Eric kicked off the dead man's back and broke surface, swimming lazily to the edge of the pool. Tracy and Blackjack helped him out of the water.
The crowd was alternately cheering and booing. Eric saw goods exchanging hands- cartridges, arrows, walnuts, salt-as losers paid their bets.
Eric looked at BeBop. "You owe me a bath."
BeBop's face clenched suddenly with anger. "I don't owe you jackshit, pal. You're alive. Consider yourself lucky."
Eric leveled his stare at the young man, his lips curled into a grim imitation of a smile.
BeBop flinched a little, then shrugged. "All right. You earned it, man. Least I can do for a really big show." He turned around and faced Rhino's crew. "You can fish the whale meat out of the pool and get out of here. You've got an hour." He waved the head of his security force to his side, speaking loud enough for the crowd to appreciate his words. "I want these three to have the run of Liar's Cove for the rest of the day. Anything they want. Within reason." He laughed, wagging a finger at Eric. The crowd cheered again. "Now let's get the hell out of this cesspool," he said, and spit into the pool.
The crowd began pressing and shoving through the doors. As they did, BeBop, a diplomatic smile pasted on his face, stepped up to Eric and whispered, "You'd be wise to be gone from here by morning. And I don't want to see any of you back here for a long, long time. You're bad for business."