The black man in the suit. The first guard’s twin.
“Where to?” said Emil.
“We got to go deal for your transportation, my man.”
Not quite so well-spoken, she thought.
“Wait a minute. I can’t… listen… just hold on a second, okay? Have a beer.”
He handed the man his beer and started pushing his way through the crowd.
“Hey! What the fuck? Fuck you, asshole! ” The man slammed the beer down on the bar and moved after him. Ray took her by the arm and then they were moving through the crowd too with Billy trailing behind. They heard somebody scream ahead, throaty and then shrill. Marion?
I should be so lucky, she thought.
She spotted Emil and the guard at the edge of the crowd and then saw Marion standing beneath the woman, staring up. A thin line of blood ran from the woman’s rib cage to her navel. The neo-Nazi skinhead had his arm around Marion’s waist boyfriend-and-girlfriend-style and was gesturing toward the woman with a broad, sharp-looking knife like an instructor working a blackboard with his pointer. Like the woman was some sort of math problem.
“See?” the Nazi said. “You cut her here and it don’t hardly hurt.”
He sliced the top of her foot just above the second toe.
“You cut her here though…”
He moved the knife across the sole of her foot and the woman screamed again. Emil grabbed Marion’s arm.
“What the hell you doing?”
She didn’t answer. Just stood there watching the blood drip off the woman’s foot along either side.
“Hey, Maria. We got to go.”
“Damn right,” said the guard.
“Fuck off,” said the Nazi. He pointed the knife at Emil. Emil let go of Marion’s arm and backed off, hands in the air.
Now this was interesting.
“Got nothing to do with you, friend,” he said. “We got business, that’s all.”
“I told you, fuck off!"
He jabbed with the knife and as Emil darted back and away the black guard stepped forward easy as you please. He placed the tip of his index finger against the lip of the blade and smiled.
“ Play nice, ” he said.
The Nazi didn’t seem to know what to make of that.
“Like the gentleman says, it’s business. This what you came for?” he asked Emil.
He nodded. The guard looked at Marion.
“Come on, sweetcakes,” he said. “She gonna be hanging around awhile.”
“Not yet.”
She turned to the Nazi and put her hand out, palm- up. The Nazi didn’t seem to understand at first and then he did. He handed her the knife. Marion looked at the guard.
“Is this okay?” she said. “I can do anything I want, tight? I mean, that’s true, isn’t it? Hell, I can kill her if I want, right?”
“ Excuse me, lady?”
“Suppose I killed her, is anybody going to mind or what?”
“Jesus, Marion!”
“Oh, shut up, Emil.”
She turned back to the guard. He smiled again and hook his head.
“Nah, can’t kill her, honey. She belongs to somebody. You could hurt her a little, though. Nobody going to bother you about that.”
You don’t need to see any more of this shit, Janet thought. You can just turn away. But it seemed important to know exactly how far this goddamn woman was willing to go. So she watched her as she reached up and traced a slow deep line across the woman’s thigh from hip to knee with the point of the knife, the woman trembling and moaning, and watched the blood well up thick over the blade of the knife onto Marion’s white- knuckled hand. Watched the hand draw away and poise to cut again and then the black man’s bigger hand close over it gently and take the knife away and hand it to the Nazi.
“Come on, baby,” he said. “Leave a little somethin’ for later.”
As he moved her away she was smiling.
“You’re not entirely a real nice person,” said the guard as the music welled and boomed again. “You know that?”
They followed him through the crowd to the stairwell at the end of the bar.
At the top of the stairs he led them down a long dark oak-paneled hall, empty but for half a dozen vases on pedestals from which dozens of long-stemmed red roses sprouted and scented the still air, rioting away the odor of cigarettes and stale beer below. He opened a set of double doors to a stark, brightly lit room with a single long table and chairs around it the only furnishings-a boardroom not unlike those back at the courthouse except that this table and these chairs must have cost a lot more than the taxpayers were going to put up with. Closed glass doors beyond the desk led to an open porch-a widow’s walk. Beyond them she could see moon and stars.
The man at the head of the table was middle-aged and small and thin, his wrists wiry in his rolled-back shirtsleeves. He looked like a businessman who’d just spent a rough but eventful evening coming up with whole new ways to hammer the competition. Papers fanned across the desk in front of him. Behind him stood an immaculate gentleman with manicured fingernails and a rose in his wide lapel and the word thug writ plain all over him.
“Mr. Thaw?” said the guard.
“Fine. You can leave now.”
He backed out of the room and closed the door.
The man looked up from his desk.
“Harold Thaw,” he said. “This is my associate, Mr. Coombs. And you are Rothert, Short and Ripper. You want a car, I’m told. Is that all?”
“That’s all, Mr. Thaw,” Emil said.