The First Church of Whoopie

Fun and Thieving in Las Vegas, Part 7

2008-11-23T23:15:24-08:00

[The following fevered writhings should be understood as an affectionate fair-use PARODY. All characters of the Lupin III franchise are the property of their original creator, Monkey Punch, for whose work I am forever grateful. Oh, and the lyrics quoted in the epigrams are the property of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker, for whose work I am also forever grateful. I earn nothing from these writings except entertainment value. Thanks, and carry on!]

Up on the hill

They've got time to burn

There's no return

Double helix in the sky tonight

Throw out the hardware

Let's do it right

Aja

When all my dime dancin' is through

I run to you

--Steely Dan, “Aja”

My crazy nervous system tends not to play nicely with most painkiller drugs. They dope me up but can’t keep me knocked out for long, so I wind up hovering in this bizarre hypnagogic state--not necessarily unpleasant in itself, but hardly restful. And to add insult to injury, the narcotics don’t do much more than take the edge off the pain.

So I spend some untold number of hours thrashing around in murky stupified waking dreams, of which I can remember little more than nonsensical fragments, until the sound of quiet conversation starts hauling my consciousness back up towards the surface.

“So how's he doing?” a woman’s voice has just asked. It’s not until Jigen replies that I get the woman’s voice matched up with Nessa’s name.

“He’s pretty fucked up right now.” A pause as Jigen takes a drag on his Pall Mall. “You can tell by the way he’s breathing that he’s in a lot of pain.”

Oh yeah--I guess I’ve been doing the shallow breathing thing without even thinking about it, haven’t I? But now thinking about it causes me to spazz and draw a deeper breath than is prudent. Bad mistake: I get a jolt from the cracked ribs that almost knocks me right back out. I guess I vocalize a bit here, because when my brain clears again, Jigen and Nessa are right by my bedside.

“Well that was nasty,” I stage-whisper. Not going to chance putting any more breath than that behind my voice right now, not after that little spasm. From the fragrance of piñon pine on the air and the bit of the room I can see without moving my head, I reckon I'm back in Lola's house.

“Easy does it, man,” says Jigen. From this angle I can see his eyes, and the worry in them.

“Trying to, partner.” I give him a pretty strained version of my million-dollar con smile. “What day is it, anyway?”

“Still Sunday. You’ve been out about eight hours.”

“Is that all? Feels more like eight months … yikes!” Made another false move there; the stab of pain puts black spots before my eyes for about five seconds.

“Looks like the dope’s wearing off. You want a re-up?”

“Not yet. Want the use of my brain for a little while longer. When I can’t stand it any more, you’ll be the first to know.”

Jigen manages a relieved half-smile in response to my smartass tone. “Man, you should get a load of yourself right now. You look like you’ve been in a prizefight.”

“Feels like it. Got a mirror?”

Nessa interjects, “Got one right over here.” She disappears out of my line of sight and returns with what must be one of Lola’s makeup mirrors--it’s way too femmy for Nessa’s tastes. She holds it up before my eyes. My face does have an impressive amount of bruising.

“Whoa, look at those shiners. We should send a photo to Pops. Scare him out of about eight years’ growth.”

“Hey, by the way,” says Nessa, “Fujiko was wanting to know when you woke up.”

"She was? ... ow ow ow ... " Oops, got a little over-excited there.

Jigen growls in annoyance at the mention of Fujiko's name. “Aw c’mon,” says Nessa, giving him a look. I can’t help grinning when he caves almost immediately, pulling his hat brim down as he concedes to his woman.

“Let me guess,” I say. “She’s getting ready to head on over to Darkpool on her own.”

“Got it in one.” Jigen snorts and takes another drag on his cigarette.

“That’s my Fuji-cakes, eyes on the prize. Though I notice she could have left hours ago.”

“Yep,” said Nessa. “Waiting on you. That girl may be crazy, but she does have some priorities.” She leaves to fetch Fujiko.

“You know she’s gonna fuck shit up,” says Jigen.

“Yeah. I know.” My grin is becoming a little lopsided--even this brief amount of talking is tiring me out. “But that’s okay, we need a stalking horse. Plus it’s all part of the game, you know?”

“Yeah. I know.” He regards me somberly. “Game got pretty fucking scary this time, man.”

“Yep. And weird. I’m not sure I’ve fully grasped yet exactly how weird. Still trying to sort it all out.”

“All I care is that you managed to beat the Reaper again, partner.” He lays a hand on my shoulder and gives me that crooked death’s head smile of his, the one that speaks of too much knowledge of both ends of the gun. I tend to forget, having worked and played with Jigen for so many years, that there's this other side of him. He’s seen the deaths of too many people he's cared about.

“Lupin!” Fujiko, still clad in that yummy catsuit, bursts through the door and distracts me from this morbid line of thought. Rushing to my side, she throws her arms around my neck and showers my banged-up face with kisses.

“Ow-ow-ow-ow-ow!” I gasp. But I’m also grinning full-force again. This makes twice in less than 24 hours that Fujiko has flung herself upon me with genuine passion.

“Oh Lupin, I’ve been so worried!” she coos.

“That’s it, I’m out of here.” Jigen stands, straightens his hat, and heads for the door. Over Fujiko’s shoulder I see Nessa catch up with him and shoot him another look. “What?!?” he responds to her as the door closes behind the both of them.

Fujiko slides into bed with me--fully clothed, but hey, I'll take it. She cuddles up close, drawing my head to her chest so that my face winds up pillowed in her cleavage. God, she knows me, and my fetishes, way too well. Even in the state I’m in, even with a bed sheet and that catsuit between us, I feel my incorrigible dick spring to attention.

“Ohhhhh, Fujiko-chan ...” I flash her one of my cheesier smiles. “You know, if you wanted to ravish me for a change, I couldn’t lift a finger to stop you …”

She smiles at me. A genuine, not-conning smile. “I might consider doing that at some point. If you behave. And if you’re really up to it.”

Though my back is none too happy about it, I manage to scoot my hips forward just enough to press my erection against her thigh.

“Oh, I’m up to it, alright ... Ow!” She’s pinched my ass cheek with those nasty sharp acrylic nails of hers.

“God, you’re such a perv,” she pouts at me. “But at least I know you must be on the mend.”

“Hey, you’re the one who climbed into bed with me,” I pout back at her. But I simmer back down and just cuddle, as I know she prefers. And frankly, despite all my smart talk, I am up to little more than that after all.

“I am glad I’m getting to say goodbye before I leave,” she said, caressing my head.

“Be careful, lover. Morningstar is not finished.”

“I wondered about that.” Yep, that’s my Fuji-cakes. Never misses a beat, doesn’t even stop to ask how I know. “Do you think he’s found another body to possess?”

“I’d bet cash money on it. In fact, I figure he goes through bodies at quite a clip. When I hacked GeoDynamics’ computers the other day I wondered why there was this strangely high turnover in the elite security team that guards the corporate VIPs. Now I think I know why.”

“Charming. Well, thanks for the warning.” A pause. “Lupin. This one really scared me.”

I sigh. “First Jigen, now you. I’m sorry, lover. I truly didn’t see it coming.”

“You never do, you know.” She plants a long, luxurious kiss on my bruised mouth. I start feeling like I really could rise to this occasion after all ...

And then all of a sudden she’s out of the bed and on her feet again, straightening her outfit, all business.

“F-Fujiko-chan!” I struggle to sit up and reach after her, but fall back, leveled by a surge of pain. “Not fair, not fair at all …”

“Now now, you need your rest.” She strides briskly to the door, pauses and turns. “You know, usually for an advance sortie like this I’d jump my cut of the take by ten percent, but just to show you how much I care, I’m going to give you a get-well present and keep my share at sixty percent.”

And then she’s gone.

Jigen rushes in, evidently alarmed at the strange hiccupping/coughing/moaning noises I'm suddenly emitting. "Oh Christ, it hurts to laugh," I wheeze at him. But I keep on laughing, or trying to, like the crazy bastard I am. He just shakes his head at me, and slaps a fresh morphine patch on my neck.

Dear sweet Fujiko, I think as I drift off into wacky-dream land again. She has never quite gotten it through her pretty task-oriented head that I don't do these extreme jobs for the money. Though yeah, it does annoy my ego when she jerks me around about the split. But even my annoyance amuses me. Like I said, it's all part of the game.

For the next thirty-six hours or so I drift in and out of consciousness. Various of my friends manage to get some food into me, though the morphine guarantees that I have some trouble keeping it down. At one point I regain consciousness to find my body being grasped by strong hands--Jigen's and Goemon's--so that my head is over the edge of the bed, while other strong hands--Nessa's--hold a bucket for me into which I shamelessly heave until I'm empty, and then heave some more. "Geez, and I don't even have a nice rip-snorting drunk to show for all this effort," I quip. All three of them roll their eyes at me.

Another time I come to sprawled on the bedroom floor. Apparently I must have felt the call of a full bladder from deep in my drugged sleep, and decided to get up and go to the can on my own. Only problem, my feet are still numb and clumsy from my little pseudo-zombie experience, so my legs go right out from under me within a few steps. More strong hands haul my sorry ass back upright and drag me into the bathroom, at which point Lola and Nessa chase the guys out and take over. Ooooh, how 'bout some funky nurse-and-patient water sports action? Nah, dream on; still way too crapped out to engage in any such shenanigans. But just thinking about it sends me off into more fits of giggles, despite the same painful consequences as before. And then it's Nessa and Lola's turns to roll their eyes at me. I get that a lot.

All of this is reassuringly standard behavior from me when I'm convalescing. I just don't make a very good patient. I mean, c'mon, me? Patient? Get real. But totally separate from all that, totally apart from the bone bruises and cracked ribs and concussion, I feel this indefinable but undeniable not-rightness within me.

“It’s that Eleggua dude, isn’t it?” I say to Lola sometime Monday evening. She has gotten me turned over onto my belly without too much discomfort, and is giving me a tough but helpful massage.

She laughs as she digs into my shoulder muscles. “Yeah, dawlin’ … that ‘dude,’ as you insist on calling him, has definitely got his hooks still sunk deep in your psyche, I can feel it. He’s got some unfinished business with you for sure.”

I grunt as she presses hard on a particularly locked-up muscle. “Any idea what that unfinished business might be?”

“Other than guessing it has something to do with you being such a perfect child of his, I can’t say.” She begins working down my spine.

I flinch and suck in air sharply. “What does that mean anyway, to be the ‘child’ of one of these supernatural doofuses?”

“That you are a manifestation of that 'doofus' in the living world.” She smiles at me as she begins careful exploration of my poor abused ribcage. I grit my teeth.

“What? Like a … an incarnation? What the Hindus call an avatara?”

“Not necessarily. Sometimes, it’s more a matter of your natural self echoing the divine's natural self. In this case, it makes all the sense in the world that you’d be a child of Eleggua. He is the Trickster par excellence, doll.” She’s gently stroking the sides of my ribcage, making me alternately flinch and sigh.

“Trickster, huh? Yeah, I can groove on that … ow! Though I bet I could do it a whole lot better once my Trickster papa gets those hooks of his out of me.”

She finishes working me over and lies beside me, sheltering my beanpole frame with her abundant one. “I’ve got a ritual we can try, to see about fixing that. But first I think you should get a good night’s rest. We’ll give it a go tomorrow.”

“Crap. That long?” I manage a smile.

She just laughs and kisses me.

* * * * *

Some time late that night, I awake out of the first sound sleep I've managed since being injured, strangely free of pain and grogginess. I feel a presence in the room. Gingerly I pull myself up into a sitting position.

I address the empty room. “It’s you, isn’t it … Eleggua?”

“What a perceptive mortal you are.” One of the shadows in a corner of the room detaches itself from the others and steps forward into the moonlight. He is still, or again, presenting as my dark-skinned doppelganger. I feel that chill down my spine again, but this time I ignore it.

“So what do you look like, really? Or is it that you can look like anyone you damn well feel like?”

“Both, really--I do have a form that is mine, but it’s so boring to stay limited to just one look. As you know for yourself.” He comes close, smiling slyly, and cups my chin in his hand.

"Look," I say, "I'm flattered that you're so into me, but I think you know damn well that I'm just not wired to swing that way."

"I notice you're not pulling away, though."

"Like I could evade you? Even if I weren't recovering from being beaten to a pulp?"

"Hah. You’ve become a bit more sure of yourself since our last meeting." He keeps that leer on his face, but does drop his hand.

“As long as we’re being all chummy," I say, "would you mind telling me what you want with me, anyway? I don’t mean to sound ungrateful, but ever since you saved my ass I have just not been feeling quite right. If I didn’t know better I’d swear you planted the supernatural equivalent of a tracer on me.”

He throws his head back and laughs. “You are a bold one, Arsene Lupin the Third. You are quite right--I did place my mark on you. Because I have been waiting for a chance to come back and do … this.”

And suddenly I’m flung out of bed. The room lights up and whirls around me like Dorothy's house in the tornado. Next thing I know, I find myself, fully clothed, face-planted into the sands of a desert.

I climb to my feet. My body is mysteriously and completely healed. I pat myself down--it’s my actual gear, not an illusion. There’s my Walther in its holster, the extra ammo clip in my left hip pocket, four remaining smoke bombs from Saturday’s mayhem inside my right jacket pocket, and the other random assorted toys just where I remember putting them when I last loaded up. The desert I’ve landed in looks like the barren pancake-flat playas of northwestern Nevada, home of land speed records and intentionally remote hippy art festivals. It's full daylight, and oven-hot.

Eleggua is standing several yards away with the sun at his back, hands in pockets, legs planted wide -- the pose I often adopt before I’m about to pull something.

“Oh c’mon,” I say, planting my hands on my hips. “What the hell do you want--a duel?”

“I want to see what you’re capable of.” With the sun silhouetting him, only the shift of his jaw and his tone of voice tell me he’s smiling.

“Ridiculous,” I say. “What kind of a fair duel is that, a mortal against a god?”

“I’m not a god, I’m--“

“A divine being, yeah yeah yeah. I got that part. Whatever you are, you still have lots more going for you than a mortal. Which means it’s an unfair fight. You hold an unbeatable trump card.”

“What if I swore to use no abilities other than the ones you possess?” I’m still hearing that shifty smile in his voice. Hey, it takes a con to know a con.

“Oh sure, like you came by my abilities naturally in the first place. What do you think you are? That insufferable Q busybody on Star Trek? Why--yow!”

This Eleggua dude may have magically copied all my natural abilities, but that doesn’t mean he automatically has the smarts and experience to run them like I do. So: all the while I have been deliberately pitching my little hissy-fit at him, I have also been watching for that telltale tensing of his right shoulder muscles. So by the time he draws his gun, I'm also drawing; and when he fires, my bullet meets his in mid-air with a flash and bang.

Even before our bullets meet and explode, I’m off like a jackrabbit on speed, dodging his follow-up shots with a somersault and a leap that carries me behind the nearest rock outcropping.

“That was pretty damned impressive, boyo.” I hear him change clips and pump the slide in his copycat Walther. Amateur--he wasted eight whole shots trying to hit me.

“You're impressed, huh? Well, I’m not.” I slowly and calmly stand up, step up onto the rock that had briefly been my hiding place, and turn my back to him, dropping my head onto my chest.

“And just what do you think you're doing?” he asks in the tone of an annoyed parent.

“I've decided I don’t want to play this game," I answer, back still turned to him. It's my turn to stick my hands in my pockets. "If you want to kill me, even after having expended all that effort to bring me back to life, I can’t stop you. So you might as well just plug me and get it over with.”

“You know I can’t just shoot you in the back.”

“Well, you’re going to have to, because I’m not up to gratifying your divine sadism when I know I’m overmatched. You wanna shoot at me, go ahead and get it over with. But leave me out of your first-person-shooter re-enactment fantasies, okay?”

And so I bloviate along. Only I am no longer where Eleggua thinks I am. I have slithered out of my clothes, leaving them hanging, scarecrow-fashion, on my handy-dandy little folding framework. Because my head had been lowered out of his line of sight and my hands were concealed in my pockets, he cannot now tell that my head and hands are missing from the scarecrow.

Meanwhile, stripped down to underwear with Walther in hand, I stealth my way around the perimeter of our little patch of desert, all the while throwing my voice so that it sounds like it's coming from my effigy. Oblivious to all this, Eleggua keeps trying to reason with the obstinate little mortal he thinks is still before him. When I gently but firmly press the muzzle of my gun into the back of his skull, I am rewarded with the spectacle of the divine being jumping nearly a foot into the air.

“Gotcha,” I grin, stepping back and sticking my gun into the waistband of my boxers.

He turns and stares at me for a moment, openmouthed and wide-eyed. Who knows, when you're faking out a faker? But my little hunch circuit insists his shock is genuine, and profound.

Then he snaps out of it and starts to laugh. "You did it. You really did it. You unequivocally got the drop on me. Even though I was watching, and sensing your presence there in front of me--"

"Wait a minute. I thought you said you were going to restrict yourself to my abilities."

"Oh, I wasn't technically using my divine powers, in terms of taking advantage of that sensory data in our little game. But it's a moot point, because my supernatural senses were as totally fooled as my mundane eyesight." He grins big. "So congratulations, you have won our little duel. Though I may have succeeded in achieving a more important goal."

"And that is?" I eye him suspiciously.

"Proving a point." He gestures, and a bistro table and umbrella materialize there on the cracked dusty surface of the playa. "Come. Sit. Talk with me."

Like I have a choice? I think to myself. But I follow him to the table--after retrieving my clothes and folding frame from the rock.

When I straighten up from pulling on my pants, there's an ice-cold gin and tonic at my elbow. I take a sip. Tanqueray. "Nice."

"Only what you deserve, after I dragged you out of bed to play first-person shooter with you." He smiles wryly, sipping a lemonade. "Now about that little display of your skills just now ..."

"And about that little incident of cheating ..."

"Ah, yes. Actually, it wasn't just a little incident. I was cheating throughout the entire thing. Watching and listening. When you stood up and turned your back on me, I fully expected you to pull your slipping-out-of-your-clothes trick. After all, I know your methods, boyo--I've been inside your head."

"You mean to say you were faking your surprise just now? I don't believe that."

"No, that was no fake. I was indeed shocked to the core. Because even though I knew what you were going to do, I could not catch you at it. When I felt your gun against the back of my head, I was still watching your goddamned clothes, waiting for you to do the slip. You got the drop on a full-fledged orisha, boyo. Do you have any idea what that means?"

"No. I don't.” I let my exasperation show in my voice. “All this supernatural stuff--spirits and possessions and divine beings--I just don't get it. It makes no sense to me. I'm a thorough-going pragmatist so I don't doubt the evidence of my own eyes--let alone the evidence of the heart still beating in my body--but it's like terra incognita to me. I was much happier being on the periphery of all this ... stuff, only coming as close as the occasional treasure with occult properties. And even that’s been more than enough to get my ass bitten at least once that I recall. But otherwise, forget it ..."

He starts laughing. "You really can't see it, can you?"

"See what?"

"This supernatural stuff that you claim is so alien to you--you're living your whole life up to your eyebrows in it. Everything you do and are is steeped in it."

"What the hell are you talking about?"

"That business of slipping out of your clothes, for instance. Such a bizarre skill, and yet so useful to your unique way of doing business. How exactly do you do that? Can you describe your method in words?"

"Oh. That." I relax a little; I'm still on weird ground, but it’s a recognizable weirdness. "Sure, I'd be the first to acknowledge that it's not a normal ability. But it's completely and totally natural--for heirs of the Lupin family genetics."

"Ah yes, the naturalistic explanation. And you use it to explain away a host of other freakish abilities as well. The sudden bursts of lighting speed. The acrobatics and vehicular stunts that defy the laws of physics. The moves that look like sleight of hand, but aren't--poor Zenigata could have had you arrested about a hundred different times now if handcuffs behaved on you the way they behave on any normal mortal. And above all, the twin guardians of your skinny little ass--your unerring hunches and your unfailing luck. That whole portfolio of oddball abilities runs in your family as surely as that lantern jaw and ear-to-ear grin. But you're going to sit there and give me this reductionist cant that it's completely and solely genetic? Surely you must be joking."

"Just because the abilities themselves are paranormal, doesn't mean that they can't be accounted for without resorting to supernatural mumbo-jumbo." I can't believe I'm sitting in the middle of a desert arguing philosophical crap with a god. Divine being. Whatever the fuck. This is insane.

"You think so, hmm? Well riddle me this, boyo. Is it not true that, while some level of the Lupin family skill set manifests in every one of your many blood relations--including the insatiable horniness, apparently, because it's a pretty large family--is it not true that these abilities are realized most powerfully and completely in the heirs of the family line?"

"Well, yeah. So they are. But what does that--"

"If the inheritance were solely based on genetics, then birth order should not mean a fucking thing." He punctuates each word with a stab of his index finger into the tabletop.

"Wha-wha-wha-what?" My brain freezes.

"Simple Mendelian genetics. Each offspring should have a statistically equal chance of getting the full complement of Lupinosity. Yet you yourself acknowledge that the heirs, the first-born descendants of Arsene Lupin the First, have an odds-defying edge in manifesting the family legacy. Why is that, oh Prince of Coincidence? What the fuck do you call that shit, if not supernatural?"

And as my jaw drops, he leans back in his chair, wearing the Con Artist Smile of the Universe, and laughs and laughs and laughs.

Holy shit. Busted.

And then I start laughing too, and laugh until I tip my chair over backwards and hit the ground with a crash, and then I continue to laugh, rolling in the dust of the playa. Holy fucking shit. Right there in front of my nose, plain as day. Stupid stupid stupid--what an idiot I've been. Could the entire family have been conning me? Or perhaps just Grandpapa, the old devil? But I think back, and I swear the entire family sincerely believes the genetic explanation. So the whole lot of us have been blinded by denial, even the family members who specialize in card-sharping and thus know statistics inside and out.

Because Eleggua the Trickster is dead right, it can't be genetics--at least, not any type of genetics I've ever heard of. It's not just biological. I really am some kind of magic man.

"Wow," I gasp, still laughing, "there's a whole bunch of assholes who have been trying for ages to clone me, who are in for one rude surprise."

He just smiles at me, the smile of one who knows he has won.

"Okay," I say at last, picking myself back off the ground and righting my chair, "so ... what the hell does this mean, then? And I still don't understand why you've gone to such lengths to wake me up to this crap."

"Well, on a certain level, waking you up was an end in itself. After all, isn't that what your mother's familial religion is all about? Achieving enlightenment, the state of being awake and aware of one's true nature. I've been trying forever to find a way to get through to you, but your own powers were making that damned near impossible. It took lying in wait until you came within a hair's breath of snuffing it, but then Miss Lola called, and gave me at last the opening I needed through which to slip your wakeup call."

"Okay. So I'm awake. I think." I finish dusting myself off, and sit back down at the table. "But there's more to it than that, isn't there? This wakeup was not just an end in itself, but a means to some other end you have in mind."

He laughs. "Correct, my child. I have a job for you. Or to be more exact, you are already deep into the job I was needing done."

"So you're after Morningstar too. Not so surprising in hindsight--he's much bigger than I could have dreamed. But why do you need a mortal's help--even a mortal as freaky as me? Is there a reason you can't go after him yourself?"

He sits back and sips at his lemonade. "Boyo, the spirit world doesn't work that way. Just because it violates the rules of the mundane world does not mean it is not governed by rules of its own, and one of those rules is that the divine cannot directly intervene in the mundane. We must ever and always have intermediaries, channels for the energy, mortals who are willing to serve as the instruments of our will. Chevaux."

"So you want me to be your man against Morningstar. Interesting." I sit back and consider. "Well, obviously I was going after him anyway. But even though you can't act directly, can I count on you for a little assistance here and there?"

"I was going to insist on it if you didn't ask. You're damn good, there's no two ways about it, but even with all your friends and allies, you're going to need some extra muscle." He stands and offers his right hand to shake. "So ... do we have an understanding? Partner?" He winks at me.

Damn, I think to myself, he's pulled my own turn-the-adversary-into-an-ally gambit on me. Is he bound and determined to have me experience all my favorite moves from the receiving end? But I'm alright with it--I've come out the other side of this confrontation feeling I can trust this crazy dude.

"It's a deal." I seize his hand and shake it whole-heartedly. "And now, partner, here's a few thoughts on what kind of assistance I think you could provide ... "

* * * * *

Some time later, I awake back in Lola's spare bedroom, with wan pre-dawn light filtering through the curtains. I am sprawled on the bed still fully clothed. When I sit up, I discover the miraculous healing to be no dream.

Quietly, I rise and make my way through the house, feeling the unusual need to confide in someone, to fully re-ground myself in this reality. In my new reality. I hear Jigen's snore from behind his closed door. Lola's door is ajar and the room unoccupied. In the kitchen I find a half-pot of coffee keeping warm in the coffeemaker; as I pour myself a cup, the headline on a recent newspaper left on the counter catches my eye. That's right, the currently lame-duck President of the US is making an appearance in Los Angeles in a few days. Yet another hunch (where the hell do those keep coming from, anyway?) tells me to file this factoid away for future reference.

Now caffeined up a bit, I slip out the front door into the dew-wet early morning grass. Movement over at the horse paddock captures my attention; it's Lola and Nessa, exercising their horses and having a moment alone together. Something (again, where do these premonitions come from?) suggests to me it's best to not announce my presence.

From a vantage point just around the corner of the barn, I see them lean towards each other across their mounts and exchange the kind of comfortable kiss only long-time lovers share. Yes, this does get my libido's gears grinding--hey, I'm not proud, I'll cop to my share of yuri fantasies. But it also somehow gladdens my heart to know these two sister-lovers are there to take care of each other. Because I don't need my hunches nor even my new guardian angel to tell me our next move in this little war is going to be hazardous as hell.

Suddenly I'm aware that I don't sense Goemon's presence in the barn, but it does feel like he's nearby somewhere. (How, how, how do I know that? Man, this new knowledge has definitely blown a hole in my beginner’s mind.) I walk around the back of the building, study the nearby treeline, and spot him sitting in seiza on an east-facing rocky outcropping, watching the sun come up.

As I approach, he neither turns to face me nor makes any other move, remaining serenely at rest, Zantetsuken also at rest against his shoulder. "I rejoice in your recovery," he says.

"You and me both." For awhile, we both watch in silence as the sunrise paints the east crimson. Presently, I clear my throat. "Goemon. I need ... advice."

"Hmph. Unusual." As a long-time Goemon-interpreter, I can hear the amusement--and warmth--behind the gruffness.

"I know. But I'm a little out of my depth here ..."

"You have had an encounter with that kami. I felt the energies moving in the night." Somehow his use of the Shinto term for divine spirit is comforting; it's a more familiar terminology.

"He told me things about my nature that I'm still having trouble trying to digest."

"That you are akitsu mikami." Now, that particular term for manifest divinity, freighted as it is with Japanese Imperial history, is nowhere near as comforting. Yet Goemon uses it easily.

"You're not surprised," I observe.

"I began to suspect as much not long after our first encounter." He rises and faces me, wearing one of his rare smiles.

"So that's why you've put up with my shit for all these years." I smile back.

"That, and the comradeship of brothers in arms." Though still smiling, he lowers his eyes in deference. "And speaking of my putting up with your 'shit,' as you term it, I must offer you an apology."

"An apology?!? Whatever for?"

"All these years, I had respected your destiny--but in spite of what I viewed as your objectionable behaviors. I regarded your womanizing and childishness as defects impeding your potential for greatness. But when I witnessed your re-awakening ..." here he blushes beet-red, but doggedly soldiers on ... "I came to realize that, for you, these are no defects at all, but qualities as essential to your soul as your life's blood is to your life."

He draws himself up to his full height. "We walk very different paths. I am guilty of having judged your path by the standards of my own, and for that arrogance I beg your forgiveness." He bows deeply and with great seriousness.

"Goemon." I bow just as formally, deeply moved.

"And that advice?" he asks.

"I think you just about covered it," I smile.

He nods. "So. We continue the job, then."

"Yep. Shall we?" And we make our way back to the house to gather the others and flesh out my plan.

Fun and Thieving in Las Vegas, Part 6

2008-10-13T14:33:07-07:00

HENTAI ALERT: R to NC-17 TYPE MATERIAL AHEAD. YOUR CONTINUED READING OF THIS PAGE IMPLIES THAT YOU CONSENT TO READ SMUT, AND THAT IT IS LEGAL TO DO SO FOR YOUR AGE AND IN YOUR PLACE OF RESIDENCE. DON'T SAY I DIDN'T WARN YA. :-)

Oh Michael Oh Jesus you know I'm not to blame
You know my reputation for playing a good clean game
Oh Michael Oh Jesus I'll keep my promise when
You turn that heartbeat over again
--Steely Dan, “Turn That Heartbeat Over Again”

It’s dark, and I’m disoriented. But oddly enough, I don’t feel as if I’m being crushed under a couple of tons of topsoil like I was just a second ago.

“Gotta hand it to you, boyo.” The voice is eerily familiar. “This is one spectacular cluster-fuck you've gotten yourself into this time.”

I can't quite make out the person addressing me. He's just a black silhouette—a tall slender figure, again oddly familiar. He’s backlit by a single bright white light shining into this otherwise lightless place ...

Oh shit.

“That's right, boyo. You've managed to land your skinny little ass in The Tunnel again. The one with the light in it ...” he jerks his thumb over his shoulder at it ... “and it very much is not a train. Third time for you in this incarnation, boyo. You're really pressing your famous luck, you know. Usually, three strikes means you’re outsky.”

“Incarnation?” I scramble to my feet. Or what feels like my feet. I'm not by nature a particularly religious or philosophical guy, so I don't sweat how it is that I can be embodied in this place. All I know, from the previous two run-ins with The Tunnel that my unidentified host has invoked so casually, is that this place is definitely for reals ... and that brightly-lit doorway into the next world is definitely for keeps.

“And who might you be?” My own voice sounds strangely attenuated in my ears—I hope to hell that doesn't mean I'm already past the point of no return.

“Who, me?” Even the way he cocks his head reminds me of something or someone, but I'm just too rattled to place it. “I am your lucky break, boyo. I'm the dude appointed by your crazy destiny to save your ass this time around.”

And then he steps forward so that the light more fully illuminates him, and ...

He's me.

Only with the voltage turned up. Way beyond what flesh and blood can contain. Even mine.

And oh yeah--he’s me, but with African features.

I can't help it. Even at the brink of death, even in the face of some dude who’s obviously a divine being--a dangerous-feeling dude who is sauntering ever nearer to me, wearing that smirk and raised eyebrow I know all too well … even with all this going on, I can’t help that I’m still me, so of course I start to giggle like a demented thing.

“Whoa, I look pretty damn good in black. I should try that some time. Hell, you even have better hair than me ... yikes!”

He has walked right on up to me, and has raised a hand to run his fingers through my own carefully-coiffed hair. It's not just the homoerotic personal-space violation that has made a chill shoot up my spine.

“Oh, you're no slouch in the 'do department yourself, boyo. Though you could stand to use a little less product.” He removes his hand from my hair, pulls a handkerchief from a pocket (damn! same pocket where I always keep my handkerchief, too!) and fastidiously wipes his hand off, surveying my discomfiture with an amused half-smile.

“So ...” I have to swallow hard to get the quaver out of my voice. “What's the deal, then? What do I have to do to get myself out of this place?”

“No deal required, dude. This is a freebie.” The smile broadens, the shoulders go up in that studied Gallic shrug I've done so many times. “You see, I was asked to be here, and you of all people should know that a true gentleman never turns down a lady's request.”

“Lola.”

“Ah. A pleasure dealing with a mortal as perceptive as yourself. Yes, your lady-love, in this moment of greatest peril, sent out a desperate cry for help ...”

“Oh dear God. Is she alright? What's happening to her? I've got to get back before--”

“Calm yourself, boyo. We are currently outside the stream of regular time—it's as if time is at a standstill in the mortal world. Though we can't stay this way for much longer before we need to pop back into the stream of reality and have at it.”

“So—you're going to just let me go back?”

“Not quite. I'm going to have to go with you. Because, if I sent you back on your own right now, in a few short seconds you'd be right back here, DOA.”

He waves his hand, and a little bubble forms in the darkness. I peer through this porthole into the living world, and find myself looking down at a frozen tableau in the construction site. Morningstar has managed to grab both Lola and Fujiko; Jigen, Goemon, and Nessa are charging him; Pops is struggling vainly against his bonds, a look of horror upon his face.

My doppelganger gestures at the caved-in side of the excavation pit. “Even if your allies immediately dropped what they are currently doing, and started digging through that pile of dirt, they would never reach you in time to prevent your death by asphyxiation. And even if they continue in their struggle, they will find themselves to be no match for this demon called the Morning Star – Lucifer – and will surely perish as well.”

“Wow. The Lucifer. Really.” Analyzing this situation is making me feel much more centered.

And then something else in the tableau catches my eye. “That bite in the side of the excavation pit from the cave-in. Such a perfect conic shape. Sure doesn’t look accidental. Am I right?”

“You got it.” He grins at me, teeth glittering like diamonds. “It had help. From the Morning Star, or his tools.”

“So he’s got the remaining Geo-Core prototype working … and is able to aim it tight enough to do something like that. Interesting.”

I pull myself together the rest of the way. “Okay. I think I’m ready to be sent back. But what does that mean when you say you'll go with me?”

“I think you know what it means. You saw Lola demonstrate the technique just a moment before your little accident. Spirit possession. I shall mount and ride you. You shall be my cheval.”

That chill up my spine again--only stronger and colder. “Well ... you've already told me what will happen if I say no. But ... what will happen to me if I say yes?”

“I won't lie to you,” he says with sudden seriousness. “It's going to be a rough ride. You've received no initiation, no training in these practices, and your physical body is frankly not in the best shape at the moment. Not to mention the fact that your temperament is uniquely unsuited to being run by someone else, even if it's for your own good.”

“You got that one right.” Every fiber of my being is rebelling at the thought of this. I'm literally quaking in my boots.

“But I promise you this—you will live to be glad that you underwent the ordeal you are about to face.” His eyes flash like strobes. “So what say you, Lupin of the many names and faces? Do you consent to this next passage of your journey?”

I calm myself by an effort of will, and give him my best outlaw smile. “I think you already know the answer to that. Friends and allies are in danger. I cannot do other than come to their rescue, no matter the risk to myself. Besides,” I shrug, “it’s not as if I have much of a choice here.”

He matches my smile. “Of all my children, I think you are destined to become my most favorite of all.”

With a look of almost fatherly tenderness on his face, he lays his hand upon my head again, cradling the back of my skull. Another icy electric jolt up my spine, even stronger than the one before.

“Just one question before we go,” I manage to gasp out. “You still haven’t told me who you are.”

“Who, me?” he says again, his face very close to mine, his smile the one I wear when I’m sitting on top of a million-dollar con, “Well, that’s a long complicated story. Too complicated to go into now. But I promise I will tell you that story later, at our leisure. And I reckon you will hear at least one of my names in very short order. Now, we go.”

And then he presses his lips upon mine.

He’s holding tight to my head so I can’t pull away. He’s forced his tongue deep into my mouth. That sensation of electric shock rattles my teeth, shoots through my optic nerves into my brain, lights up my entire nervous system like a Christmas tree. As the world spins and goes black again, I feel him slip inside my skin, and take over the controls.

***********

For a few claustrophobic seconds I’m back under the full weight of the cave-in--long enough to feel how little air I have left, and how close to death I am, or was. For in the very next moment the weight and the darkness begin to lift, as a little bubble of light and energy forms all around me.

The bubble expands until there’s enough room for me to sit up--except I can’t. My mind issues the commands and my body fails to respond.

Ah! You’re still conscious! Remarkable--most mortals would know nothing at this point. But remember--you are not in control right now. I’m riding you.

It’s true--I can now feel that my consciousness has taken a back seat in my brain, and my divine doppelganger is at the controls of my body. As he stands me up in the still-expanding bubble and stretches my cramped muscles, I find myself continuing to struggle, trying in vain to move even a finger contrary to how he’s moving it. It’s reminiscent of the frustration of riding in the back seat of a car, stomping by reflex on nonexistent brake and gas pedals while the driver does it differently from how you’d do it.

Meanwhile the bubble has started to fill with more and more energy, like a tank filling with high pressure gas. My rider is channeling the energy somehow--I can feel it, even if I can’t explain it--until suddenly the bubble pops, punching a tunnel up and out of the cave-in. We go hurtling up through that tunnel, propelled by the exploding energy--and then we’re up up and away, no rope or grapple gun needed, he’s flying me through the air with the greatest of ease. And even though I’m not at the controls I have to admit that it feels pretty damn fucking cool, man! Super Lupin! Ha ha!

All eyes turn to stare with astonishment at this spectacle of me, possessed, exploding out of the cave-in; a chorus of voices gasp out my name. Morningstar is so startled, he loosens his grip on Lola and Fujiko; both women, though also stunned, have the presence of mind to slip his grasp and run like hell. And in the next second, my rider has me upon him--he swoops me down, closing my hands around the man’s skinny throat.

My rider stands me there, atop the rubble, shaking Morningstar by the scruff of the neck like a rag doll. “Miscreant, demon, deceiver.” My voice has got enough reverb to wake the dead--which I guess is the point. “What do you mean, masquerading as one of my people’s sacred spirits?”

“Wouldn’t you like to know?” the demon hisses back at me/him/us. The dark glasses went flying when we shook him, revealing empty eye sockets in which burn sparks of brimstone.

“Tsk. It’s useless to talk to you anyway, demon of deception. So I simply bid you to release the remains of this poor abused cheval you have driven into the ground, and begone.”

My rider shakes Morningstar again. I feel energy well up from behind my eyes, radiate out of my eye sockets, and burn into those of Morningstar. The sulfurous flames extinguish; he groans and convulses in my/our grip; then, in a few moments, it’s over. The body previously occupied by Morningstar now hangs in my hands, limp and lifeless.

My rider has me lower this poor bastard’s dead body to the ground. My friends and allies approach, warily, eyes wide and faces pale.

“Lupin … ?” ventures Fujiko, sounding uncharacteristically unsure of herself.

“Not Lupin,” says Lola, “but a lwa, a spirit, in possession of Lupin’s body. But which spirit? Speak, o mystere, and identify yourself so that we may know how to address you.”

My rider draws me up to my full height, assuming a posture totally alien to me: shoulders back, arms extended palms-up, as if offering benediction to all these battle-weary stragglers.

“You are indeed perceptive, daughter of Erzulie; in your moment of distress, you did not specify who should come to your rescue, so you have gotten someone a little bigger than you bargained for. Know that I am no lwa, but an orisha from Mother Africa. I am Eleggua, he who opens the door. As I have opened the door for this cheval, bringing him back to the land of the living from the brink of the next world.”

Eleggua--who is that? My consciousness is now getting swamped by ever-higher waves of energy … I’m fighting to maintain a grip on this reality …

Eleggua touches my hand to my heart. “But I feel this cheval fighting more and more feverishly against his bridle. I must release him soon, before he ruins himself. Even so, he will need help in regaining full possession of his own body. Daughter of Erzulie, I trust you will provide him that help?”

“Yes, my lord.” Lola bows.

Eleggua takes her hand in mine, brings it to my lips to kiss. “Bless you, then, my child, and be sure to tell my cheval all that has transpired. Though true to his unique nature, he has heard and absorbed much more of my visit than most mortals are capable of. I go now. Farewell.

And then he gently lowers me into seiza posture, my head drooping onto my chest. I feel him depart, releasing control over my body.

But when I try and move under my own volition again … I can’t. I’m still trapped in the back seat of my own psyche, unable to re-take the driver’s seat. I have some slight control over my breath. But that’s it. Can’t so much as wiggle a finger or blink an eye. All I can do is make faint little gasping noises in the back of my throat.

“What--what’s wrong with him?” Fujiko, deeply agitated--goodness, she sounds like she’s about to burst into tears! Unfortunately, I can’t raise my head to see this spectacle.

“It’s as Eleggua said, he’s going to need help to fully return to his body.” It’s Lola speaking now. She swims into my line of sight, bringing her face close to mine. “Lupin, can you hear me?”

I make what little noise I can.

“Try not to fight it, love. We’ve got to get you someplace safe so I can work on you uninterrupted.”

“Shit! We got company!” It’s Jigen, in alarm mode. A moment later, I hear the approaching sirens.

Hands grab me. I’m unceremoniously slung over somebody’s shoulder--Goemon’s, it turns out, as I find my paralyzed face slapping against his keikogi-clad back. I can hear Tottsan’s anguished cries as I’m hustled into the back seat of the Dart--poor old Pops, he gets so upset when he sees me take damage. The car jostles on its shocks as the others jump in. Doors slam, engines rev--the Dart’s, plus a motorcycle that must be Fujiko’s ride. And as a squeal of tires and roar of horsepower bears me away, I finally exhaust myself from struggling with my unresponsive body and sink into unconsciousness.

********

I come to, lying on my back naked, apparently on a mattress or something soft, in a dimly lit room. I’m still paralyzed--in fact, I feel even worse than before, like my body has turned into a block of wood. I try my damnedest not to fight it and exhaust myself like I did before, but it’s damn difficult; being this helpless, this caged, is driving me absolutely nuts.

My breathing must have given away the fact that I’m now awake, because suddenly Lola’s face is close to mine. “Patience, dear heart,” she murmurs. “We will be starting the ritual to bring you back out in just a few moments.”

Ritual? What are you talking about? I want to ask. But all I can do is make faint wheezing noises. I’m really beginning to lose it here … I … Arrrg!!! I hate this! I hate it, I hate it, I hate it! Please get me the fuck out of here! Soon! Aaaaaah … !

“Hush, child.” Lola lays a cool hand on my forehead. Christ. Did she somehow overhear my little internal hissy fit just now? Shit. And I can’t even manage a blush of embarrassment.

I’m distracted from my funk by the sound of others entering the room, quietly and without speaking. I can smell Jigen’s cigarettes, and Fujiko’s perfume, and the faint scent of sandalwood that permeates Goemon’s clothes … and that aroma of leather might be Nessa. Hmmm. Good thing I’m not shy by nature.

A faint sound of drumming starts up--recorded, I’m assuming. Lola vanishes from my restricted field of vision; a moment later, I hear her voice from a position somewhere near my feet.

“Erzulie Freda, beautiful mam’zelle, be with me now as I revive this child of Eleggua, and bring him fully back from the land of the dead.”

Then the mattress creaks and jostles. I feel Lola’s knees between my legs … and her hand on my poor lifeless cock.

Wow. Yeah. So this is the ritual, huh? Yowza. Really good thing I’m not shy by nature. And Goemon’s staying in the room for this? I’m impressed.

And glory be, I feel it working. As Lola’s hand gently and patiently strokes my member, it gradually begins to thaw and come back to life. And then that awakening begins to spread outward in waves, slowly, slowly, from my genitals, down my legs, up my torso, outward to my arms and neck and face. My muscles come awake with little spastic jerks. My jaw unclenches and I gulp big gasping ragged breaths. I mutter inarticulately through still-numb lips. And then, as my cock springs fully to erect life, I blearily look up through unfocused eyes to see Lola, a nude Nubian Venus, straddle my hips and lower herself onto me.

And then that consummately talented vagina closes around my now rock-hard cock, and she proceeds to fuck me to an orgasm that radiates from my toenails to my crewcut and has me howling at the ceiling like my familial namesake.

“Okay,” I gasp, as Lola kisses me, wipes the sweat from my brow, and sits back on her haunches between my legs, “I think I’m awake now …”

“Lupin!” And suddenly Fujiko has flung herself on top of me and is kissing me feverishly. Yeah, nothing like my almost dying to remind Fujiko how much she really loves me. Too bad I’m still in way too crappy shape to take advantage of the situation.

I snatch a few glimpses around the room. Jigen’s got his arm around Nessa and a huge grin on his face--the old perv, I know how much he likes to watch. Nessa’s expression is inscrutable, almost trance-like--no doubt this was as much a religious ritual for her as for Lola. And there, by God, is poor Goemon, sitting in strict seiza in the farthest corner of the room, eyes tight shut, face blushing nearly purple--but damn, he stayed in the room. Somehow that little demonstration of loyalty makes me want to smile …

But instead I groan. Suddenly I’ve gotten hit with a whole world of hurt.

“Now that your body’s reawakened, you’re starting to feel all the injuries you sustained,” says Lola. Wow, ain’t that the truth. I must be head-to-toe bruises. I may have cracked a rib or two. I nearly black out … a moment later, I find myself curled up in fetal position, moaning despite myself. It’s a lot of freaking pain. But at least it’s normal, everyday, this-world pain. No pain in the land of the dead. I am very much back in the land of the living. Thank Eleggua. Or whoever the fuck he is …

Somebody, I’m losing track who, slaps a morphine dermal patch on my neck. I gratefully go back under once again.

Fun and Thieving in Las Vegas, Part 5

2008-09-18T15:20:26-07:00

Would you like to take a yoyo for a ride?
Zombie, I can see you’re qualified
--Steely Dan, “Sign In Stranger”

Okay--time to party. As Nessa aims the car for the thinnest part of the crowd, I throw my spare gas mask at her, slap the sunroof out of the way, stand up through the opening, ditch the disguise jacket to reveal my own underneath, and reach into a pocket for some party favors. One of my latest toys and I love this thing--little battery-operated airgun that fires ping pong ball smoke bombs. Man, can these little buggers travel if I get a good air current under ‘em. In seconds I’ve got the whole room awash in thick choking smoke.

I take a second to slap my own gas mask on. The civilians, security guards, and cops are obligingly diving out of the way of our speeding vehicle, but Morningstar’s goons are giving chase -- and pulling firearms. Goddamn Darkpool baka yarou fucktards -- this room is way too populated for that kind of stupidity. In fact, they’re really escalating things way out of proportion to the situation, have been doing so from our very first encounter. Fishy as week-old sushi …

But I gotta shelve that thought for now, because a bullet has just grazed the roof inches from me--and instead of a dent, it leaves a tattered fibrous gouge.

I dive back inside. “Shit, this thing’s just fiberglass!”

“What, you thought they’d use real metal on one of these glorified go-karts?” Nessa’s steering a damn fine evasion course through the display area, clipping the corners of booths as she ducks various tag-teams of pursuers. But there’s a tension to her jaw that tells me she’s feeling like she might have bitten off just a tad more than she can chew this time.

“Head for the nearest exit!” I holler. I reach over to the eyepiece of her gas mask, thumb the switch that turns on its thermal vision, do the same to mine. The goons see where we’re heading and start massing to blockade us--until I load a flash bomb into the ping pong ball gun and fire it into their midst. Temporarily blinded, they let us whiz by; those who don’t manage to leap out of our way, we send flying like ninepins.

We’re out in the main hall now, where there are a lot more civilians, none of whom have any idea of the ruckus we’ve been causing. Nessa’s face is red and sweaty, and not just from the gas mask she’s pushed up onto the crown of her head.

“Let me drive!” I yell, pulling off my own gas mask.

“Are you crazy?!? I can’t stop here!”

“No need!” I hop my ass over the gearshift and slide into her lap--tight fit under the steering wheel, but man, she feels yummy under me--and grab the wheel from her.

“Jesus!” She struggles out from under me into the shotgun seat. “Give a girl some warning when you’re gonna do shit like that!”

“Okie-doke--warning you right now to hold on to your hat!” And I make a beeline for the nearest bank of escalators.

There’s a certain knack to getting a car’s nose to pop up so that you can jump it onto someplace it’s not normally supposed to be--you have to work brake, clutch, shift, and gas just right, play games with momentum and inertia. Jigen and I refer to this whole class of stunts by the label “circus driving.” I honestly don’t know if this little fiberglass electric will circus for me properly, but once again my luck is with me--its nose pops up just like one of my ping pong balls, and suddenly we’re gunning right up the escalator, tires just barely finding purchase on handrails.

“Holy fucking shit.” Nessa’s eyes are wide, but she gets it together enough to draw her gun and start laying down suppressing fire behind us. In the rearview mirror I see the pursuit goons dive for cover.

I hop the car down off the escalator railings onto the mezzanine floor. A bit less crowded here, and we now have all our pursuit following us from behind, which makes it easier to start losing them. Now where’s that monorail station I remember seeing from the maps? Aha! There it is…

Nessa sees where I’m steering. “You gotta be fucking kidding me…”

“Nah, I do this shit all the time.” Probably not the most comforting words in the world coming from me, especially when I can feel that I’m grinning like a madman.

I smash the car through a barrier, zip across the platform--just grazing some startled civilians waiting for the next train--and hop the car over to the monorail trestle.

“Get ready to lean left!” I yell. I get the driver’s side front and rear tires landed on the left-hand, oncoming-traffic monorail track. We’re now traveling down that track at a good 60 mph, the car balanced at a more-or-less 45 degree angle, just those two driver’s-side tires making contact with the rail, passenger-side wheels sticking up into thin air. Nessa has tumbled across the car into me, swearing a blue streak. I wrap my right arm around her to keep her from wiggling and throwing off our balance. Man, what a fine armful of lady. Jigen doesn’t get this lucky this often, so out of loyalty to him I’m not about to mack on his girl. But just because the restaurant’s closed, baby, doesn’t mean you can’t still read the menu…

Several goons rush out onto the platform just in time to see us heading out into the gathering dusk in the direction of the Strip. They waste precious seconds gawking before they remember to shoot, and by then we’re out of their range. Which is one of the main purposes of circus driving--I mean, besides the fact that it amuses me, and all.

“You doing okay?” I yell to Nessa.

“Christ on a crutch. When Jigen told me you were fucking nuts, I had no idea…”

“Hell, he drives like this too--I taught him. By the way, where the hell is he? I sent him a signal a whole five minutes ago.”

“Here he comes.” She points downward. “Plus a whole shitload of pursuit.”

I snatch a brief glance down to the street. Rounding the turn off the Strip into Convention Way are a good half-dozen city police cars, running full lights and sirens … and gunning headlong at them, currently behind us but catching up fast, is Nessa’s Bitch. The J-Man is behind the wheel, wearing the same madman grin as me; Goemon-chan is serenely standing on the roof with the sheathed Zantetsuken at the ready. No, I have never found out how Goemon manages to stand on moving vehicles without getting blown off; I mean, I do it too, but I cheat--a combination of special sticky soles on my shoes and careful shifting of weight. But Goemon can stand stock-still upright on a vehicle doing over 100 mph, nothing but traditional zori on his feet, and never budge an inch. Must be part of that training he’s always doing.

Jigen guns the big bad Dart and zooms through the midst of the squad cars, whose drivers are too startled to do anything except make way for him. Goemon draws; the all-cutting blade traces a network of glittering curves on the air; the Dart speeds on past, and, seconds later, all six squad cars groan and split neatly in half from grill to tailpipe. Ooh, pretty--

“LUPIN!!!” Nessa cries.

A monorail train is rounding the curve and coming straight at us.

“Yikes--hold on!” I do the circus-jump again, pop the car into the air, and land front and rear passenger-side tires on the opposite track, seconds before the train roars over the spot we just vacated. Nessa is making more vivid blue air--I swear, she must have pulled drill sergeant at some point in her military career, her vocabulary is truly awesome.

Jigen’s now traveling more or less under us. “Lupin, get the fuck down here!” he yells out his window.

“Can’t! Lost my grapple!” I holler back. We’re out on the Strip now, neon signs and outdoor attractions whizzing by us left and right as we gain on the next monorail station. I gun it--the electric engine is beginning to labor, but still responds acceptably--and bounce us off the track onto the station platform. Civilians scream and dive out of the way as we carom across the sky-bridge connecting the station to one of the big new casino hotels--I honestly have no idea which one; they fling the new ones up so fast in this burg, they don’t register on my memory like the old classics they replaced.

We’re in the mezzanine level of the casino now. I start looking for an escalator to zoom down, but then glance out through the plate glass onto the street and see reinforcements pulling up, this time more of those Darkpool Humvees. So instead of zooming downstairs, I zoom us down a hallway into the guts of the building.

“Jigen!” I bark into my watch’s comm link, “meet us at the loading docks!”

“Gotcha,” he says. “Nessa okay?”

“I’m fine, you fucker!” she bawls over my shoulder into the comm link. “But your partner is fucking dead meat!” We hear Jigen’s guffaw. Despite her threat, she’s actually regaining her smile. I knew she was a natural.

Suddenly we’ve got more security guards charging after us on foot--bet somebody radioed ahead to this casino’s security staff. I vroom us away down a service corridor, punch through a set of security doors--

And lo and behold, we’ve managed to blunder into the dressing room for the female casino staff. Yowsa. The ladies are in various states of dress, or not, and furiously Not Amused at our zoom through their room. But still I score a couple of souvenirs as we zip on through: one sequin-encrusted brassiere, size double-D … and one big red handslap-print across my face.

“You are fucking out of your mind,” says Nessa.

“Gee, what was your first clue?” I throw the bra around my neck like a scarf, and we speed on.

It actually looks like we might have given our pursuit the slip, at least for the moment. I find a stairway and we bump our way down it, tool down a few more service corridors, and burst through the freight entrance back into the open air. Yatta! We’ve found the loading docks. Jigen’s got the Dart parked out on the access road, headlights off in the gathering night; Goemon serenely sits in seiza posture on its roof. And we’ve met up with them not a moment too soon, for our little electric is starting to make death rattle type noises. It grinds to a halt with a sickening jolt; Nessa and I leap out and run like hell for the Dart.

Jigen moves over to let me behind the wheel, while Nessa flings herself into the back seat. “Howdy, Boss,” says Jigen, picking at the brassiere around my neck, “see you’ve been having fun again.”

“Mine!” I cry in a mock two-year-old voice, slapping his hand away. “You go get your own!” He snorts at me.

Our little moment of merriment is interrupted when a half-dozen more Humvees come bearing down on us, three each from either end of the access road, all glaring their high beams at us. No exit either of those directions.

“The fun just never stops, does it?” I throw the Bitch into gear. On the far side of the access road is a huge rambling construction site, soon to be another huge rambling casino. I floor it and we vroom into the site, Goemon obligingly slicing the chain link fence ahead of us so Nessa’s bumper doesn’t get too screwed up.

Goemon hops off the car as we pass a huge crane, draws and strikes its massive boom, and it crashes to the ground, managing to land on two of the Humvees. Two down, four to go. The tireless samurai then leaps over the fallen crane boom, slices up the two Humvees trapped behind it, and knocks out their occupants with back-of-blade strikes--two more down, two still on our ass. He runs to catch up with us.

There’s a huge deep excavation pit dead ahead of us. I swerve left and start following it around clockwise. The two remaining Humvees are trying to outflank us to left and right. Jigen skrags a tire on the passenger-side one and it goes end-over end into the excavation pit; there’s an explosion and flash as its gas tank explodes on impact. The other Humvee, though, seems strangely impervious to his best shots. Even Nessa’s big .45 can’t make a dent in the damn thing--she scores a direct hit on the front passenger tire and it bounces off like a Nerf ball. Not good …

Then someone in that Humvee hauls out a bazooka.

“Lupin!” shouts Goemon, from somewhere behind us. He’s a damn fast runner but he’s still too far away to intervene. Jigen and Nessa both fire away at the bazooka operator; the bullets seem to pass through him as if he were a ghost. The bazooka levels off, targeting our rear license plate. All I can do is watch like a hawk in the rear-view mirror, and prepare to take evasive measures …

But then, at the last minute, the bazooka operator shifts his aim from our car to the upper floors of an incomplete five-story parking structure a few hundred yards ahead of us. He fires; the missile hits a weight-bearing beam; the top floors collapse and tumble to the ground, blocking our path. I have to throw on the brakes hard and skid us sideways to a stop to avoid running into the debris. The Humvee squeals to a stop a few dozen yards away, its high beams nailing us; the bazooka is pointed at us again, but the operator does not fire.

They apparently want us alive, not dead. Interesting.

“They wanna stand and fight, they got it,” Jigen growls. He hops out of the car, slapping a speed-loaderful of fresh ammo into his revolver as he goes, and makes a dash for the rubble left from the collapse of the parking structure. Nessa and I follow, guns drawn and ready. I don’t see Goemon--I’m betting he’s watching and waiting for the right moment to strike.

Someone gets out of the Humvee; he saunters out into the open with the insolence of one who knows he’s invulnerable.

Now that I get a good look at the guy, it’s glaringly obvious that this is not just another Darkpool goon--no, this guy is giving off vibes a whole lot nastier than that. Tall skinny wiry dude in jeans and denim cap, with a red bandanna round his neck, a sneer on his leathery deep-brown face, and a machete thrust into his belt. The unmistakable uniform of the Tonton Macoute, the feared and hated secret police of Haiti’s old Duvalier regime --right down to that sneer.

“Arséne Lupin le Troisième,” he says, rolling my French name around in his mouth as if savoring it, “play-time is over.”

“That’s what you think,” I holler back from the shelter of the rubble. “I haven’t even begun to play you yet.”

“You think so? You don’t realize, but it is you who have just been played.” His three compatriots exit the Humvee, come to stand by his side and … they’re identical. Carbon copies. The exact same clothes, weapon, face … right down to the sneer.

The one with the bazooka grins and points it at the Dart. “The Ghedes are upon you,” he says--his voice is indistinguishable from that of the first to speak. “No escape vehicle for you, except a hearse.”

Ghedes … that’s right, I remember reading up on these dudes. Yet more entities out of Voudoun--they’re a clan of lwa associated with the dead. Baron Samedi is counted as one of their number, something like their leader and king. So these must be Morningstar’s personal enforcers, brought with him when he got kicked out of Haiti …

“Little fuckers,” Nessa mutters under her breath, eying that bazooka pointed at her car. She had accepted our warning that the Bitch could take some damage if we used it in a job, but this guy’s spitefulness is even pissing me off.

And that’s when Goemon falls from the sky, his screamed kiai echoing to the far corners of the construction site. He lands right on top of the bazooka Ghede; the bazooka goes flying from his hands, and is intercepted by a flashing flurry of Zantetsuken strikes. Slices of bazooka clatter to the ground.”

“Goemon-chan! My hero!” I cry.

He looks over his shoulder for the briefest second, meets my eyes, and flashes one of his rare smiles. “Ikouse!” he roars.

“That means ‘Let’s roll,’ babe,” says Jigen to Nessa. She nods; they leap out and dash into the fray.

“And it’s my line, goddamn it!” I laugh, following them.

All four Ghedes draw their machetes simultaneously. Creepy. But even creepier is what happens when I go to shoot the machete out of the hand of the nearest one: the blade doesn’t even budge. The bullet does the bounce-off-like-a-Nerf ball trick again. And creepiest of all, we hear a teeth-rattling clang as Zantetsuken meets with one of those rude cheap steel machete blades--and also bounces off. Creepy and scary. Our trump card has just been trumped and we’ve not even gotten busy yet.

All four Ghedes laugh simultaneously--fuck, are they telepathic clones or something?--and leap in among us, separating us from each other. I am immediately up to my eyeballs in dodging strikes from this grinning blade-wielding psychopath. I’m just barely faster than this dude--I feel the scorpion-sting on my cheek as one of his thrusts goes right by my ear. But his move gives me a perfect setup; I put a hold on his arm and shoulder, yank him past me, and throw him good and hard--slam--right into a concrete slab fallen from the parking structure.

But it doesn’t faze him a bit. He just clambers back to his feet, still clutching his machete. Man, look at the death-grip he’s got on that thing …

Aha! That’s it!

Now if I just yell my brainstorm out, the Ghedes will of course immediately know it too; so I choose to pass the word in Japanese, and hope to hell that Nessa catches on fast. “Disarm them!” I cry. “The blades get their power from contact with their flesh!”

“Been trying to do that,” yells Jigen, blocking a machete thrust with his Magnum. “Got any ideas?”

“How about this?” I aim my Walther at my opponent’s machete-wielding hand, and fire right across the full set of knuckles. Before my eyes, I see the flesh part, and immediately start to knit together again … but before the hand can regenerate any further, my foot connects with it, hard. Caught in that split-second when the fingers are still severed, the Ghede’s fist tears open and the machete flies free, taking the fingers with it. The Ghede screams like a damned soul.

“Nessa! Like this!” Jigen barks, executing my move on his Ghede. Simultaneously, Goemon is letting loose a storm of blade-flashes on his Ghede’s blade-hand.

Nessa makes to do the same, but that split-second delay while she watched Jigen demonstrate the new move costs her. Before she can line up her shot, her Ghede kicks her gun out of her hand.

“Nessa!” bellows Jigen. His Ghede takes advantage of his moment of distraction and tackles him, grappling him to the ground.

Now it’s my turn to cry out: “Jigen!” And my turn to get tackled by my Ghede. His intact hand closes around my throat. He just laughs, unmoved, at the knee I drive into his crotch and the fist I plant in his solar plexus. Things are beginning to spiral out of control here. The edges of my field of vision are starting to go black--

“Villains! Miscreants! Unhand my beloved!”

It’s Lola’s voice. But strangely transformed--lots and lots of otherworldly reverb.

The hand crushing my windpipe suddenly releases and disappears. I roll onto my hands and knees, catching big breaths, and then look up … to see Lola, resplendent in gold lame plunging down to here and slit up to there, floating gently out of the sky to hover a few inches over the roof of the Dart. She hangs there, glowing in the darkness, her eyes glittering amber coals, her hair and her skirts floating as if stirred by breezes though the air is still. The Ghedes cower together in a group, staring at her, transfixed, as her voice echoes around them.

“You! Rude boys! You! Corrupted Ghedes! You! Who terrorized a generation of my sisters and brothers across the sea! It is I, Erzulie, who call you out! It is I who cast you out! Release your chevaux, you renegade lwa, and be gone from this place!”

She raises her hand--in it is an old-fashioned hand-held mirror, as ladies used to always have in their boudoirs. The mirror flashes with the brilliance of about twenty of our August suns. All four of the Ghedes seem to shrivel in on themselves, and then collapse to the ground.

The eerie glow fades from Lola as her feet touch down on the roof of the Dart. She stands a moment, looking drained; then starts to slump. I’m already there to catch her, Nessa just a couple of steps behind me. Between the two of us we lower her to a reclining position on the ground. Jigen and Goemon come running up to join us.

“No, no, I’m fine,” she insists, her voice back to normal. “It’s just the backwash after expending so much energy.”

“What, did you fly here all the way from the Convention Center?” I’m frankly gaping at her at this point. She is weary, but triumphant, and as beautiful as a blooming rose.

“Oh yes, dawlin’,” she says, raising a hand to caress my wounded cheek. “I was in the middle of my next-to-last number when I felt the Ghedes manifest. I made quite the dramatic exit, let me tell you.”

“I bet. Hope they don’t stiff you for your fee.”

“You kidding, doll? I’ll probably get a tip for the unexpected special effects.”

“Not to piss on all the warm-and-fuzzy,” says Jigen, “but maybe we should be getting the hell out of here while the getting’s good.”

And then we hear that inimitable bellow: “Lupin! That’s fourteen vehicles you’ve managed to trash, and a whole convention turned upside down!” God damn that Tottsan. I groan and hang my head.

He comes bounding towards us, leaping over bits of debris, whirling his handcuffs over his head. So intent is he on his quarry that he leaps right over the fallen Ghedes without noticing there are lifeless bodies under his feet.

“Aw, Pops, for God’s sake, give it a rest!” I indicate Lola. “Can’t you see I’m busy tending to this lady’s needs?”

He grinds to a halt a dozen yards away, visibly confused. Heh. Pops can be almost as awkward around the fair sex as Goemon … but unlike with dear sweet Goemon-chan, I have no compunctions about using this knowledge to manipulate the Old Man right into the ground.

“Uhhhhh … a-are you hurt, Miss? Do you need me to call an ambulance?” Zenigata takes his eyes off me a split-second to fumble in his trenchcoat for his cell phone. That’s all the opening I need …

“Damn you!” he’s wailing a minute later, face-down on the ground, hogtied with his own handcuffs. I stand over him, laughing, dust myself off and straighten my tie …

Stupid stupid stupid. I have just wasted too damn much time being cocky.

A black shadowy something the shape of a bat and the size of a man shoots past me from behind, snatches Lola, and flies with her up to the top of the garage-rubble. It assumes the shape of a man and touches down, arm wrapped tight around Lola’s throat. The shadows drop from the figure, but in the pit of my stomach I already know who it’s going to be.

“Aha. Michael Morningstar. We meet again.” I assume the casual slouch that my gang knows means I am really seriously dangerously pissed off. I hear slight crunches of gravel to left and right, as Jigen and Goemon assume their battle-stances as well.

“So we do. But this time the advantage is mine.” He’s now in full Baron Samedi drag -- the top hat, the dark glasses, the white suit, the cane, the panatella clutched between evil grinning death’s-head teeth.

He tightens his headlock on Lola; she struggles, but she’s still too exhausted to put up a fight. “I suggest you and your compatriots drop your arms and back away, if you’re interested in the continued well-being of this lady.”

“And if I say no?” I raise an eyebrow at him. My hunch-circuit is buzzing away, urging me to stall him just a few moments more, keep him focused on me …

He pulls at the head of his cane, unsheathing from the shaft a nasty-looking sword. “Then it will be my great pleasure to send her to my kingdom of the graveyard.”

“But you wouldn’t do that, would you?” I bare my teeth at him. “For your master plan to work, you need her alive, not dead. This whole little ring-a-round-the-rosie was just a ruse to flush her out, and then get her to expend her energy on your pawns so she’d be defenseless when you struck.”

He starts ever so slightly, then his smile broadens. “Ah. So the rumors about your cleverness are true, Monsieur Lupin. Pity it will do you no good. I do need her alive, but it matters not whether she is intact--“

Before he can raise his sword to threaten her, a roar of machine-gun fire rings out. Bullets spit out from Morningstar’s chest. His arms fling wide as he staggers forward; Lola seizes her opportunity and leaps clear.

Standing a few yards behind him on the rubble heap is Fujiko, looking her most luscious in a skin-tight black catsuit, a still-smoking Uzi under her arm. “I’m upping my share to 60 percent for this, Lupin,” she smiles.

“Fujiko, look out!” I cry, bounding up the rubble heap at top speed. For Morningstar’s as impervious to bullets as his Ghedes were; the sheer kinetic energy of the submachine gun blast knocked him over, but he’s already drawn himself back together and stood up again. He turns, towering over Fujiko.

“Oh shit,” she mutters, dodging to the side.

I tackle Morningstar from behind. We tumble down the backside of the rubble heap together, grappling and punching, me struggling to keep him from getting a grip on me while I try to figure out how to stop an invulnerable assailant. I hear shouts from the others as they scramble up and over the rubble heap after us. If I can just sever his head and then kick it away before it can reattach …

I reach for my garotte wire--only use this baby in extenuating circumstances, but that’s what we got right here. But while I’ve got a hand busy doing that, he breaks through my guard, delivers a belly punch that has me seeing stars, and while I’m doubled over, grabs me by an ankle.

He whirls me around his head like a bolo. He releases me and I go flying. I do a little aerobatics and right myself -- in time to see that I’m hurtling towards the excavation pit.

I get my fingernails on the edge of the pit, but of course the dirt crumbles under my grip and I go tumbling in. Nothing for it but to tuck and roll. Fortunately the bottom’s dirt rather than concrete, but it’s hard-packed enough, and the drop is deep enough, that the impact nearly knocks me out. Every fiber of my being is screaming at me to get the hell out of this spot, but I’m just too stunned to move.

I’m only out that way for a second or two, but by the time my head clears enough for me to look up and see the side of the excavation pit caving in on me, it’s too late.

Blackout.

Fun and Thieving in Las Vegas, Part 4

2008-09-01T23:57:53-07:00

Your fortune is your roving eye
Your mouth and legs
Your gift for the runaround
--Steely Dan, “Your Gold Teeth”

Saturday, approximately 3:30pm: a large cargo truck pulls up to a loading dock in back of the Las Vegas Convention Center. A crew of roadies armed with dollies and security laminates shambles out of the truck and begins loading in The Love Bandits’ gear -- plus a few extra crates containing assorted non-Love Bandits materiel. Among the roadies are three newcomers -- Goemon, Jigen, and yours truly, masked up and dressed down in black jeans and tee shirts, the band’s official crew attire for corporate gigs. Jigen makes an awesome-looking roadie -- I just left his hair and beard natural and gave him a more dissipated-looking face. Goemon’s martial bearing is always a bit harder to camouflage, so I took his hair and skintone totally Nordic to compensate. Me, I couldn’t resist going a little Johnny Depp playing Hunter Thompson -- after all, I am the pro when the going gets weird.

Me and my little gang do put in some significant effort hauling gear, partly to get our own toys in place, partly as thanks to the real crew for putting up with us. Plus toys is toys -- all the music crap does fascinate the hell outta me. Our identity is evidently an open secret to all the regulars, but their code of silence would make the Mafia’s omerta look like a children’s cross-your-heart oath in comparison, so I’m okay with it.

Around 5:00pm I break myself away from playing with all the toys, and give Jigen the hi-sign, letting him know he’s now on point. And then I slip off to execute the next phase of this op.

I make my way through service corridors towards the Renaissance Hotel. While in transit, I find myself a nice quiet spot to change mask and costume; when I make my entrance into the lobby of the Renaissance, I’m a concierge in hotel livery.

I discreetly tap a couple of commands into the mini-laptop. Very shortly the PA system is intoning: “Dr. Rutherford, Dr. David Rutherford, please pick up the white courtesy phone in the hotel lobby, you have an urgent telephone call.”

And here comes my favorite scientist-geek, still looking like the tight-ass mama’s boy that he is, heading for that white courtesy phone at a trot. I intercept him there, taking his arm with a “Dr. Rutherford, there you are, now about that urgent message…” While I have hold of his arm, I sink a little needleful of my favorite fast-acting hypnotic into his inner elbow. I then proceed to lead the now-docile geek towards the elevators, chatting him up all the while.

When the elevator doors close, I brightly say, “Oh by the way, Dr. Rutherford, remind me of your room number, please?”

“Fourteen forty-four,” he drones, staring straight ahead.

“Very good! Let’s go there now.” I thumb the button for the 14th floor.

Once in his room, I relieve him of his suit, his ID, and his all-important convention member badge. I lay him down in his bed and instruct him to sleep for the next 12 hours -- hey, it’s the least I can do after zonking the poor guy twice in as many days. But he looks so cutely helpless all snored out in bed that I can’t resist pulling a little practical joke on him. Some bright red lipstick in a key location, and voila! Probably the most attention his lonely little cock has seen in some years. He should thank me.

Having finished decorating my mark, I set about changing mask and costume yet again. Add some hand coverings, and I am now Dr. Rutherford right down to the fingerprints. For my final move I go over to my decoy laptop, wipe out my virus software, and reload Rutherford’s original data, thereby removing the last trace of that infiltration.

Now, time to head off in search of Morningstar, and whatever other trouble I can get into. And trouble may well be the operative word here. Last night’s revelation that Darkpool is a local player set off a big ol’ hunch in my head; just a little more research and yes, of course, buried behind about a bazillion security firewalls I found a big fat connection …

It’s going on 6:00pm as I make my way at a brisk walk from the Renaissance back to the Convention Center. I’ve got a little time to kill before my rendezvous with my target, so I cruise the main exhibit floor, checking the layout. Big high-ceilinged multi-story warehouse-like space, with lots of wrap-around balconies, exposed beams and ductwork -- such structures are always good for fun and games. And look at all the booths displaying alternative-energy vehicles! I make note of several electric car prototypes that appear to be actually juiced up and ready to roll -- you never know when such things might come in handy.

And who should I spy checking out a particularly hot fireapple red all-electric concept car but Nessa, resplendent in studded leather jacket, Daisy Dukes that hug her ass perfectly, and her big bad Doc Martens over candy-cane striped thigh-highs. I sidle up to her, getting a kick out of the cold shoulder she gives my uber-geek alter ego.

“Too bad he made you give the hat back,” I murmur in her ear in my natural voice, “it looked so much better on you.”

She fights hard not to jump out of her skin; I fight hard not to bust out laughing.

“Shit, dude, you really are a brat,” she murmurs back at me, mouth twitching into a smile. “But good thing you dropped by. Take a look across the hall. Right in front of Door N15.”

I glance in that direction. “Aha. Figured Tottsan would be around here somewhere.”

“Tote-san?”

“Ah. Forgive me. Japanese slang. Roughly translates as something like ‘Pops’ or ‘Daddie-O.’ A term of endearment, sort of.”

“You’re on such friendly terms with the cop who’s chasing your ass?”

“Of course. He’s a good man, even if he is a bit of a freak.”

“Look who’s talking.”

“And the same to you, gorgeous. Ta for now.”

I choose a path that takes me right by the Old Man. He’s busy blustering into his cellphone in Japanese: “Damn it all, what do you mean you can’t send me a backup unit? … I already told you, those Darkpool madmen are no good! … Why? Because they’re far worse crooks than Lupin, that’s why! They were shooting to kill with military armament, against my specific orders! … What do you mean, ‘diplomatic considerations’? I’m a cop, not a goodwill ambassador! … What?! Hello? Hello?!? God damn it!”

Poor Pops. For a second it looks like he’s going to smash the phone against the nearest wall in frustration. But then he spots me. Before I can make a graceful exit, he’s charging in my direction. I tense up, ready to flee, then realize he’s not making with the handcuffs and the under-arrest hollerings, so I force myself to relax and stand my ground.

“Dr. Rutherford,” he says in his heavily-accented English, “I want to talk to you some more about your encounter with Lupin III.”

Oh great. “I’m sorry, Inspector,” I say in Rutherford’s most condescending tones, “but as I told you before, I’ve already given you everything I can possibly remember.”

“But you haven’t given me access to your laptop computer, and as I explained before, such devices are one of this criminal’s favorite targets.”

Oh, really great. Glad I took care of that, but ... “I must apologize again, Inspector, but the contents of my computer are strictly confidential.”

“Confidential?!? You’re more worried about having an officer of the law rifle through your data than a known master thief?!?”

I pull myself up to my full height (augmented with lifts in my shoes, as Rutherford’s a couple of inches taller than me). “Inspector Zenigata! I’ll thank you not to take that kind of tone with me! If you persist in this sort of excessive behavior, I will be forced to contact my lawyer to file a harassment suit against you and your entire agency. I consider this conversation to be at an end. Good day, Inspector.” And I turn on my heel and stalk off in high dudgeon, leaving the Old Man quivering with impotent fury.

Well, the good news is that I got an additional piece of intel out of the confrontation -- that Zenigata had indeed been working with Darkpool as of last night, but that he too is now pissed off at them. The not-so-good news is that “Rutherford” may have just succeeded in getting on Zenigata's piss-list too -- enough so to incite him to bust into Rutherford’s hotel room, with or without a warrant, in search of that laptop. And when Pops does that, he’ll find the real Rutherford zonked out in bed with my little calling card painted on his dick, and the chase will be on.

Nothing to be done about that at this point though, so it’s onward … to a secluded VIP function room on one of the upper levels of the convention center. There GeoDynamics is scheduled to be holding a very confidential reception for potential investors in its hush-hush new product.

I flash my ID, get my fingerprints scanned, and I’m in … and I find myself in a very interesting crowd of people. A bunch of ‘em I know from studying GeoDynamics’ org chart; a bunch more I recognize as players in the murky realms between official governmental agencies and, well, less official ones. Several are fronts for black market arms suppliers. One guy has all the earmarks of an operative for the Russian Mafia. And the walls are lined with security types -- your typical big beefy NSA alumni in black suits and mirror shades, radio headsets jacked into their ears.

And there at last is Morningstar himself. Nasty bit of business he is. I had already known he was the majority stockholder in GeoDynamics; my latest research uncovered the fact that he’s a major silent partner in Darkpool as well. Physically he gives off all sorts of bad vibe. Well over six feet tall, cadaverously thin, with disturbing sallow grayish-tan skin, a shaved head, flaring nostrils, and eyes well hidden behind dark glasses. An albino? At any rate, not a pretty face.

But despite this guy’s repulsiveness, who should be cuddling up at his elbow doing her best, most sexed-up office lady impersonation but--

Fujiko-chan!

Down boy. We’re working, remember? Not to mention having a hot thing going with a much more cooperative woman just a few floors away. Though Lola and I did already have the conversation about the monogamy thing. It was mercifully brief -- me: “I don’t do it.” Her: “Don’t sweat it baby, I don’t either.” Thank goodness.

For even though Lola is in fact much nicer to me than Fujiko has ever been or probably ever will be, even though Fujiko’s whapped me upside the head with her damnfool betrayal-accessory so many times I’ve got a permanent dent there, she still has the power to ring my chime as if I were Pavlov’s salivating dog. There’s just no woman that can turn me on like Fujiko, and she’ll always own a piece of my heart.

But that doesn’t mean I have any compunctions about messing with her head every now and again.

I’ve managed to successfully contain my little Fuji-cakes lust spasm, much to my cock’s chagrin, so she’s still unaware of my identity. Nope, not even Fujiko can clock me when I’m disguised up. In fact, here she comes now, no doubt thinking to wring some info out of a GeoDynamics science officer just the way I did earlier …

“Oh, Dr. Rutherford, there you are!” she coos in my ear; “I wonder if you could step over here so I can discuss some of the arrangements for this evening’s presentation …” Dificult as it is, I try to look discomfitted with this attention. Method Acting, man--just make like I’m Goemon-chan.

I catch the triumphant sparkle in her eye as she takes me by the arm and--oh, what a riot! There’s the pinprick in my inner elbow; she’s just slipped me some of the same drug I used on the real Rutherford. Good thing I’m already chewing on a wad of gum impregnated with the antidote.

I feign somnambulance and let her steer me out of the conference room into yet another service corridor. There, she props me up against a wall, leans in close, presses her glorious size double-Ds up against my chest--oh mommy. No Method Acting is required for me to start fogging up my glasses.

“Okay, Rutherford,” she purrs at me seductively. “The Geo-Core lab. It’s located in what wing of the Darkpool complex?”

“Shark gruel?” I murmur dazedly. “I don’t know anything about any shark gruel … sounds disgusting if you ask me … “

Oh, the expression on her face is priceless. I can’t hold the giggles in anymore … and then WHAP. Once again my face is wearing an imprint of Fujiko’s hand.

“OW! Careful, Fuji-cakes, you’ll tear the mask.”

“Lupin, you jerk! I just gave you enough Rohypnol to drop a bull moose in its tracks!”

I blow a bubble with the antidote gum, giggle some more. “I love you too, sweet cheeks.”

She sighs, shakes her head. The standard reaction I seem to get from all my associates.

“So you’ve figured out that GeoDynamics and Darkpool are connected, too, huh?” I say, pulling out a pocket mirror to make sure the mask is still intact. (It is. I use a special heavy-duty compound.)

“Uh-huh. But I’ve figured out a bunch of other things too.”

“Oh really? And just what would those things be?”

“That info is going to cost you.” She gives me that larcenous smile that makes me go all wibbly in the knees.

“Hmmm … but I’ve figured out a bunch of things too, from sources I’m pretty sure you don’t have access to.” I flash back my own thieving smile. “So how about we pool our resources … as well as the loot?”

“Okay, then--we split the proceeds 50-50.”

“You realize that kind of leaves Jigen and Goemon out of the money.”

“Hey, they’re partnering with you, not me -- you pay them out of your share.”

“Aw c’mon, Fujiko-chan, you know that’s not fair …”

But I know even before the whine is out of my mouth that it’s useless. Dickering with the iron-willed Fujiko is an exercise in futility. Maybe it would help if I weren’t such a pushover for her … naw. If I weren't, I’d probably get screwed over even more badly.

I swallow hard. “Okay. 50-50. It’s a deal.”

“Oh Lupin! I knew I could count on you!” And she favors me with a kiss that lights up my switchboard even through the insulation of the mask. I try to press my advantage--and myself against those fabulously bouyant breasts--but she’s already pulled away, gone all task-oriented. Ah well. So it always goes with her.

“So,” she says in her most businesslike tones, “here’s what I know so far. Morningstar is deep into the mercenary industry--Darkpool is actually his most legitimate operation, he has black market arms-running deals going all over the globe. He hooked up with GeoDynamics because he saw the potential for their experimental product Geo-Core as a weapon of mass destruction. The geeks behind GeoDynamics are crazy, but it’s more of a mad-scientist craziness. They designed Geo-Core to harness the Earth’s energies as a power source. But the technology they’re using is orders of magnitude more powerful than they realize. And it all centers on the specialized synthetic crystals they’ve developed--“

“Oh yes. The ‘crystals,’ as you call them. Which happen to be the largest, most perfect synthetic diamonds ever created in a lab.”

“Right. Each crystal is the size of a soccer ball and takes over a year to grow. They had two -- but they expended the first one in an experiment in the Gulf of Mexico--“

“And that’s the one that happened to blow big huge breaches in the levees of New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina.”

Fujiko’s eyes widen. “Wow. That is totally new info for me. Sounds like Morningstar was already testing Geo-Core’s potential as a WMD. The crystals feed off of environmental energies, they amplify and expand them. I knew they sank that prototype Geo-Core off the coast of Louisiana, using an offshore oil rig as cover, waiting for hurricane season to see if they could channel that energy. But I didn’t know they aimed the energy inland … “

“Oh yes. And it looks like Morningstar placed some side bets in terms of real estate deals--when large sectors of New Orleans and the Louisiana and Mississippi coasts got leveled, he moved in and made a killing. So to speak. Plus there’s this.”

I pulled out the mini-notebook, displayed a file and showed it to Fujiko. “This is a satellite photo of New Orleans during Katrina. Notice that very odd pattern of lightning flashes.”

“Wow. That looks way too orderly for naturally-occurring lightning. Even over a hurricane.”

“Indeed. Now compare it to this diagram.” And I pull up one of the veves I had downloaded from Rutherford’s computer.

“They’re the same! But what is that diagram? It doesn’t look like any scientific function I’ve ever seen.”

“That’s because it isn’t science. It’s magic, and it’s real. It’s the symbol for the Voudoun divine being known as Baron Samedi, the lwa of the cemetery and the dead. And now that I’ve laid eyes on our Mr. Morningstar, I see he’s the spitting image of the good Baron.”

“The puzzle pieces are all fitting together. Because you know where Michael Morningstar originally came from?”

“No, that I couldn’t determine.”

“That’s because “Morningstar” isn’t his original name. It’s Sabatier. He was an escapee from the old Duvalier military dictatorship of Haiti. He started out as Papa Doc’s personal bodyguard.”

“Wow. And Papa Doc always used to play up his affiliation with Baron Samedi to keep the peasantry under control. So Morningstar is actually of African descent?”

“I know, it’s hard to tell--but I’ve gotten close enough to him to find out. Turns out he was the youngest son of one of Haiti’s old elite mulatto families. When Papa Doc came to power and started exiling and imprisoning those elites, Morningstar decided what the hell, I’m out of the line of inheritance anyway, and switched allegiance to Duvalier. To this day he’s known to have a real chip on his shoulder about his racial status.”

"Yeah, well, some of us mongrels do develop an attitude, don’t we?” I grin wolfishly. Fujiko ignores it -- when there’s a treasure involved, there’s no distracting her.

“But the question is: where is the remaining Geo-Core, and its crystal?” she ponders. “And what are they planning to do with it?”

I start to respond, but then we both hear footsteps, and an angry voice demanding: “Miss Mine! Dr. Rutherford! We’re waiting for you!”

I seize upon this moment to sweep Fujiko into my arms and plant a huge French kiss on her luscious lips. She struggles, of course; but then she realizes the cover-up value, so when the functionary finds us, we’re deeply involved in lingual exploration of each others’ tonsils. We ignore him for a few moments, even while he clears his throat noisily, calls our names again, and turns red as a beet. Finally, we come up for air, do matching double-takes, and break apart from each other with appropriately guilty expressions on our faces.

The flushed and sweaty functionary waggles his finger at us. “Now now, people--let’s remember to stay professional. Just because we’re in Las Vegas…”

“…means it’ll stay in Las Vegas?” I murmur. And then have to fight not to yelp out loud; Fujiko has just ground her heel forcefully into my instep.

“I’m so sorry, Mr. Murdock,” she smiles sweetly at the functionary, “I just have no idea what came over me.”

“I’ll be happy to come over you whenever you want,” I murmur at her as we follow the functionary back to the conference room. I snicker when I get a glare in return.

Back in the room, the lights are dimmed and the inevitable Powerpoint presentation is underway. I take a seat towards the back, fiddle with my glasses, and flip on the micro-camera I’ve hidden in the bridge. A lot of the presentation is straight-out marketing fluff; a little bit is stuff Fujiko and I had just debriefed each other on out in the hall--absent such details as deliberately blowing out the levees and profiting from the land grab. My attention starts to wander a bit--hey, I’ll admit it right out: if not for the little problem of being a wanted criminal I’d make a dandy poster child for the ADHD Society.

But wandering attention can be a very good thing, because my wandering eye catches one of the security goons suddenly talking with great urgency into his headset. He then approaches Morningstar and mutters into his ear. Fujiko, who has perched herself by his elbow again, gives no outward sign of anything amiss -- except for one of the secret signals my gang uses in such situations: she casually raises her hand and draws a fingernail languidly across her throat. Just as casually, I gather myself together, and get ready to jump as soon as I see from which direction the shit’s about to hit the fan.

But then a new slide comes up on screen and grabs my attention--hard. It’s an aerial view of a rocky desert plain, with a deep long sinuous gash running through it from northwest to southeast. I know I’ve seen that image before--in the news, on the web, somewhere …

The presenter is droning on: “And this is the site of our next test run with the prototype Geo-Core, in which we hope to demonstrate the enormous potential for energy generation from tectonic plate activity … “

Aha. Got it. Man, that made it almost too easy!

And then the lights snap on, the door flies open, and in bursts Zenigata, dragging behind him two goons who are trying in vain to pull him to the ground. The Old Man in full effect is not to be taken lightly. He may be getting a little up in years, but whenever he gets wind of his favorite quarry, namely me, he becomes a man posessed.

Morningstar stands and faces the Old Man down. “What is the meaning of this?” he barks. “Have I not already told you, Inspector, that you have no jurisdiction here?” Yikes. He actually sends a little chill down my spine, and I don’t scare easy.

Pops, though, ain’t got no sense when he’s hot on my tail, so he doesn’t even blink an eye at this scary living cadaver towering over him. “Look, Morningstar, I’ve got all the jurisdiction I need from the ICPO, who have empowered me to go anywhere in the world to arrest Lupin III!” And he makes a lunge directly at me. Fortunately, though, the goons trying to hold him back seize this opportunity to tackle him.

“What?!?” Morningstar roars, wheeling to look at the man he thought was his staff scientist. Goodness, he’s genuinely startled! He had no idea I was in here! Score! Of course now my cover is blown to shreds. Oh well--so I might as well blow it even more. Time to make things go boom, baby.

“Hey Pops, I see you’re busy so I’ll save you the trouble!” Quickly pocketing the camera-laden glasses, I grab my mask by the scalp and yank it off. The Old Man's face goes purple with rage, and he shakes those two goons off like they were rag dolls.

But my Zippo is already alight in my other hand. Just set the mask alight, slap it down on the floor, and whoosh! Lots and lots of nasty dark smoke. Now with the free hand snatch the grapple gun out of my jacket, aim skyward, punch right through the dropped ceiling and sink the grapple in a bunch of ductwork, then pull the rewind trigger and I’m up up and away once again …

I arch backwards and push off from the ceiling grid with my feet; swing across the room paying out some rope as I go; kick a few goons out of the doorway as I swing out into the hall; release and retract the grapple; and hit the ground running. Behind me I hear Zenigata shout Fujiko's name, followed by gunshots and sounds of bodies colliding; I glance back to see Fujiko right behind me, and behind her a growing contingent of Morningstar’s goons.

“Damn it, Lupin, it took me months to set up that cover and you blew it away in thirty seconds flat!”

“Hey, don’t blame me, blame the Old Man!” I make a beeline for a balcony overlooking the main exhibition hall, grapple gun at the ready. On the way I’ve thumbed the little button on my watch that signals Jigen that it’s showtime.

“But they were just about to say the location of the next Geo-Core test!” Fujiko whines. She slides to a halt behind me, turns, pulls her Browning M1910, and picks off a couple of goons as they round the corner and start firing at us.

“No worries, Fuji-cakes, I’ve got it all figured out.” I fire the grapple into the exhibition hall ceiling, hook a nice sturdy weight-bearing beam, and hop up to stand on the balcony railing.

Fujiko hops up beside me, hooks her arms tight around my neck and shoulder, wraps her legs around my waist, and presses tight against me. Ooooh I am loving this!

“That’s my Lupin-chan! So what’s the location of the test, lover?

As we swing down into the increasingly agitated crowd towards a particularly peppy-looking little all-electric convertible I’d scoped earlier, I grin and say, “S.A. in California. Tectonic plate activity. Isn’t it obvious? They’re gonna plant the Geo-Core in the San Andreas Fault and try to set off the Big One!”

“Oh Lupin,” she coos, “I knew you’d figure it out.”

We’re about to make a perfect landing into the car when WHAP. Suddenly I’m splatted face-first on the ground next to the car, she’s in the driver’s seat revving the engine, and the grapple gun is retracting back up towards the ceiling and out of reach.

She blows me a kiss. “Bye-bye, sweetie!”

And before I can even gasp out, “Fujiko, that’s seriously not fair!” she VROOMs and she gone. Par for the course, man.

I jump to my feet. The crowd is mainly running away from me at this point, but I can see a combination of Morningstar’s goons, the convention’s security guards, and Las Vegas City Police starting to boil out of several entrances. Oh, and Pops in the lead, swinging a pair of handcuffs over his head. I look around for the next nearest candidate for getaway vehicle--

And one drives right on up to me. That bright fireapple red concept car, with Nessa at the wheel. She doesn’t even slow down, just kicks the shotgun seat door open; I get a handhold on the doorframe as she whips on by, and haul myself in beside her.

“Man, you do have a taste for crazy-ass bitches, don’t you?” She grins and guns it.

(to be continued)

Fun and Thieving in Las Vegas, Part 3

2008-08-25T10:50:46-07:00

Light the candle, put the lock upon the door
You have sent the maid home early like a thousand times before
Like a castle in its corner in a midaeval game
I foresee terrible trouble but I stay here just the same
--Steely Dan, "Dirty Work"

When Lola's bedroom door clicks closed behind us, something clicks open in the sex-lunatic part of my brain. I find myself doing one of my classic leap - clear - out - of - my - clothes weirdnesses, swan-diving naked into her bed. Hey, at least I manage to restrain myself from leaping right on top of her.

She's laughing, hands on hips. "Now, how in the hell did you do that?" she says, waving at the crumpled pile of my abandoned clothes.

"It's a gift." I strike a silly odalisque pose on her bed for a moment, then start up to my feet, ready to quit goofing around and get more romantic. But she has a better idea. She gently but firmly pushes me back down onto the bed.

"I've been known to get naked easy too," she says. "But I prefer to take my time with it."

She then proceeds to stripease out of her stage costume, that practically sprayed-on black strapless she'd never had time to change out of when we made our abrupt departure from the nightclub. It's a really hot, really slow striptease. God, does she have my number. Red lace lingerie reveal and everything. And her body is truly magnificent. I could get lost for hours in just the pink rosettes of her aureoles, the downy flesh of her inner thighs.

When she sits on the edge of the bed to roll down her hose, I scoot over and wrap my arms around her hips from behind, pillowing my face against her full round ass. Beneath my hands I can feel the muscles under her fleshy little belly flex as she bends to her task. Her smell fills my nostrils. I hear myself growling like some demented animal. I can't help grinning madly.

"You are just a big ol' wolf pup underneath it all, aren't you?" Denuded of the last bit of lacey underthingery, she breaks out of my embrace and lays herself down full-length next to me in bed. My face burns; my cock is instantly at full attention.

"Let's just say I'm a slave to my passions." I pull myself together somewhat, rise on one elbow and look her in the eyes. "Seriously. A very willing slave -- hey, I always have the most fun when I let them drag me around by the balls -- but a slave nonetheless. I'm afraid that's just something people who hang with me have to put up with."

Then it's her turn to look deep into my eyes. It feels like she's peering right into my brain. The hairs stand up on the back of my neck.

"I understand," she says, her voice gone all husky. "Perhaps better than you realize."

And then she pulls me down on top of her.

The next hour or two is a delirious blur of slip-sliding bodies, of fingers and lips and tongues and teeth investigating nipples and navels and glands and orifices, of flesh against flesh and flesh within flesh. The tigress in her makes its reappearance, leaving glorious long scratches down my back and bite marks on my neck. When I finally enter her, she gasps, her eyes roll back in her head, and her vagina clamps down on my cock as if prehensile. I begin slow and smouldering, but at some point she starts insisting "Harder! Harder!" I oblige. She takes it all and demands more. We reach a pounding crescendo; we climax together, clutching each other fiercely as we howl at the moon in unison, primal, insane, unrestrained. And then she continues to orgasm, over and over, commanding my fingers and mouth and cock to keep her out there on the edge of ecstasy, shouting to the heavens and shaking me to the root. I hold on for dear life, astonished at this savage beauty, loving her for sharing it with me.

Finally we both fall back, spent. As I slowly return to my senses, I feel a strange vertigo in my heart. Could it be? Could I have finally found a lover who is as fully a freak in the sack as I am? This is one thing even Fujiko has never been willing (or perhaps able?) to be for me. Something I've always dreamed of. I feel the hand of Fate in this, bringing me together with this woman at this moment.

We do the post-coital pillow-talk thing, our mingled sweat still cooling on our skin and the bedsheets. She runs a finger down my abs. "I love your body," she says. "You're slim but it's all muscle. An acrobat's body."

"Comes with the territory. Plus I've got a hyperactive metabolism."

"I think you got a hyperactive everything." Her finger traces my treasure trail all the way down. My poor weary cock, even though it's just been through a twenty-round prizefight, does its best to try and answer the bell yet again. "Hah. Including this crazy snake. Uncut, too. You don't see that very often here in the States."

"See? I was lucky right out of the womb. Neither France nor Japan are big on chopping anything off a man's pride and joy."

Her finger runs back up, finds the faint scar just under my sternum from my little adventure all those years ago with Clarisse. "This looks major."

"It was. And that's just the exit wound." I grin wryly. "Scars tend to heal clean on me, but if you look around you'll find quite a few."

"As it should be. Frankly I'd be worried if all your adventuring had failed to leave any mark on you." She slides out of bed, wraps herself in a pink silk dressing gown, and picks up a cigarette case from her dressing table. "I could use a little fresh air -- care to join me?"

I climb back into my boxers and undershirt, grab my cigs and follow her through a sliding glass door to a little outdoor deck. On my way out, I take a closer look at something that had only peripherally registered on my brain up to now: another altar. Quietly vibing away in a corner, an even more elaborate setup than the one in her dressing room at the club. Votive candles flicker before many icons, throwing atmospheric shadows on their graven faces and breasts.

We cuddle up on a wicker settee and light up. "So," I say, blowing a smoke ring, "tell me about the altars. I mean, if you don't mind my asking."

"Not at all, Curiosity Boy. I was wondering how long it would be until you got around to that." She smiles, fondles my chin with those dangerous nails, exhales a stream of smoke. "As you surmised, I am a practitioner of Voudoun. What we call in the tradition a mambo -- a priestess, a servant of the divine entities we call lwa. I myself am a devotee of Erzulie, the lwa of love and pleasure."

"Why does that not surprise me?" I take another drag on my cigarette. "But you know, I don't recall ever speaking my surmise out loud."

"You didn't." Her smile is sphinxlike. "But I have a knack for knowing more than what is spoken aloud."

"Funny, I've been known to do that too. For instance ... your name isn't really Lola, is it? I'm betting that it's actually Marie."

That rich chuckle bubbles up from her singer's diaphragm. "Oh, you are good. Yes. I've been going by Lola for years, but it's my middle name, not my Christian name. I am in fact Marie Laveau VIII, direct lineal descendent of the original Voodoo Queen of New Orleans."

"Yet another dynasty in my life, huh? But you're a long way from home, sweetheart."

"Well ... home isn't really home anymore." She exhales another stream of smoke, looking away and up at the star-brilliant sky. "Not since Katrina."

I realize I've jostled a wound. "I'm so sorry, ma chere. To have the heart ripped out of one's ancestral home like that ... My blood boiled when I read about it. The stupid neglectful bastards."

"Ah, but there's more to that tragedy than you may have heard." She turns back to me. Her eyes are now emitting a faint but distinct glow. She trembles ever so slightly. The hairs on the back of my neck begin to stand up again.

"You see," she says, gesturing with her cigarette as if it is a magic wand, "the newscasters had it right that it wasn't merely a natural disaster. But it wasn't only a result of governmental neglect either. Those levees were old and decrepit to be sure, and the goddam gummint deserved ample blame for that. But by the grace of the gods and the determined efforts of many many Voudoun faithful, the levees had managed to hold through every storm up to that one. No, when the levees broke that time, rest assured, child. They. Had. Help."

My hunch circuit is now setting my whole nervous system on fire. "And I take it you have some idea of who or what helped the levees to fall ... ?"

"I can't see it clearly. There are evidently unknown forces blocking me. But two names keep showing up in my own peculiar investigations."

"And those are?"

She throws her head back. Her eyes glow brighter, redder. "Morningstar. Geo-core."

Even though my hunch had warned me, I feel like I've taken a punch to the solar plexus.

And then I'm laughing like a maniac, sliding off the settee and rolling on the ground. Once again, I am a magnet for coincidence. They're piling up around me thick and fast. A sure sign that this is going to be one of those real doozy jobs.

Lola blinks, shakes her head as if to clear it; when she opens her eyes again they simply twinkle with wry amusement.

Still giggling, I manage to gasp, "You do realize those are the exact two names at the center of my current investigation."

"I had gotten that impression, yes." Her eyes flash that preternatural glow again ... and then she laughs, re-breaking the spell.

She pats the seat next to her on the settee. "Now come back up here and sit with me, love. The lwa have obviously put us on the same path for many different reasons, and now we have much to talk about."

**************

It turns out there are even more coincidences in store. I divulge our plans to infiltrate WEC to Lola. She responds, "I might have the perfect cover for you. How would you and your partners like to be roadies?"

"Don't tell me the Love Bandits are performing at the conference?"

"Yep. Tonight, in fact. Big party for the big brass, baby. We won the booking months ago. Actually, not quite so great a coincidence as you might suppose; I sensed there was something going to go down at WEC involving Geo-Core, and made damn sure I would be there to witness it, whatever it might be."

"Did you have any inkling it would turn into a Lupin III joint?" I grin big.

"Not as such. But I had known for some time I was fated to meet a special man, and I sensed that man might very well be you."

"Thus the standing invitation on your promotional cards."

"Uh-huh. I knew the meeting, if it were in fact fated to happen, would occur on the lwa's timetable, not mine. So I simply watched and waited, and in due time all these premonitions commenced to chase each other's tail, until they all caught up with each other in this moment."

"You know, I've never heard a more apt description of how my own hunches work. In fact, right now I've got whole swarms of them going off in my head like air-raid sirens."

I take her hands. "I honestly don't know where we're going with this, but there is at this point not a doubt in my mind that, yes, we are fated to be together. I ... I guess I was about to warn you to expect a bumpy ride when you cruise with me, but on reflection maybe you don't need that warning."

She laughs. "Actually, it may well be I who need to give that warning to you."

We cuddle and laugh like little kids playing a fabulous fairy-tale game.

Suddenly something distracts me. I listen intently. And then I grin even bigger than before.

Lola hears it too. Voices. Coming from the far end of the mobile. The murmurs of conversation are so soft that any rustle of breeze through the pinons drowns them out, but when all is still I immediately recognize one of them. After all these years, I'd know that urban hipster baritone drawl anywhere.

Jigen. With his lady-love. No doubt hanging out like Lola and I are doing, just out of sight around the corner of the mobile. Oh oh oh oh oh I just can't resist ...

Lola has recognized the voices too, so when I rise and start to creep towards the far end of the mobile, she catches my hand. "You're not--"

"Shhhhh!" I put my finger to her lips.

You're not going to go eavesdrop on them, are you? she mouths at me.

I grin still more broadly.

She sees it's useless, rolls her eyes and lets me go. Don't cry to me if you get spanked, she mouths.

Jigen's nearly as sensitive to stealth approaches as I am, so I put on my best, most silent moves as I advance on the corner of the mobile. When I'm in position I freeze. Judging from the flow of conversation, I have remained undetected. I settle in to listen, knowing Lola's eyes are on my crouching ass the whole time.

I'm just in time to hear Nessa ask: "So ... how the hell did you ever wind up partnering with such a crazy-ass dude, anyway? I mean, I think he's a riot, but even I could imagine him getting on my nerves sooner or later. And frankly, you seem a little too level-headed for that kind of shit."

He snorts with amusement, as I've heard him do so many times. "Ahhhhh, yeah. Lupin and me. Well, it all started because he was the first guy ever to beat me."

"Seriously."

"Oh yeah. He beat my ass but good. And it pissed me off, because he didn't fight fair -- at least, by my lights, at the time. Of course since then I've come to realize that's just how he does, but back then all I knew was that he was winning by pulling all this silly-ass circus shit on me and it was pissing me right the fuck off. And then, to add insult to injury, he saved my ass, even though I was still trying my damnedest to kill the crazy fucker. So then I was indebted to him, which pissed me off even more. But finally I got it through my thick skull that it was just plain pointless to stay pissed at the bastard, because he was simply the God - damnedest son of a bitch I was ever going to meet, and if I didn't quit being such a fucking pissant about it all, I was going to miss out on the partnership of a lifetime."

She let out a cackle of laughter. "I love it."

"God help me, I guess I do too. Though you know, he still manages to piss me off on a regular basis ... "

A beat of silence. Then ...

"Shit!" I exclaim out loud. I find myself deep in the foliage of the nearest pinon tree -- jumped up there so fast I barely registered doing so. Pure hunch in action -- it wasn't until somewhere during my leap up up and away into the tree that I heard the metallic rattle of the Combat Magnum whipping through that lightning-fast draw. Trust Jigen to have his gun close at hand even after having just made love.

No shot is fired -- at this point I've made enough noise that he should realize it's me. Now I'm staying hidden because I know he's fixing to get even.

A couple of seconds pass in silence. I'm just about to call truce and break cover when -- crunch of gravel and WHAP.

I see stars. Next minute I find myself in a heap under the tree. A bump is already rising on the side of my head.

"You fucker, that hurt!" I laugh, finding the thumb-sized rock on the ground near my face. Yup, world's best marksman, no matter what the weapon. I clamber to a sitting position, gingerly rubbing the now-throbbing bump.

"You fucker, it only hit your fucking head," he laughs. He comes over and offers me a hand up. He's wearing only shorts and undershirt too ... and of course the Magnum, shoved into the back waistband of the boxers. Hat is nowhere to be seen, though. Yay! She got the goddamn hat off his head!

Then I focus a bit more and notice Nessa standing at his shoulder, cackling like a madwoman. She's wearing only panties -- oh what a gorgeous tomboy totally-ripped body, pert little breasts perched on taut pectorals, biceps girdled with swirls of tattoo. And there's Jigen's hat, on her head.

I hear more laughter from behind. And then I yelp as sharp fingernails clamp down on my right ear.

"I told him he was gonna get spanked if he did that," laughs Lola. "Sorry for the interruption, dawlin's; I'll try to keep a better hold on him next time."

"Don't mention it," Jigen grins. "I'm used to it by now,"

"Oh, like you wouldn't have done the exact same thing if you were -- OW!" The fingernails have bitten deeper into my ear.

"C'mon, bad dog, it's back to the kennel for you." She gives the ear a good stiff yank and I yelp again.

Everyone laughs, including me, as I get hauled away. I can't wait to see what Lola has lined up for my punishment.

Fun and Thieving in Las Vegas, Part 2

2008-08-21T13:15:17-07:00

When Black Friday comes, I'll collect everything I'm owed
And before my friends find out I'll be on the road
--Steely Dan, "Black Friday"

"Shit. Hang on, we're in for some rough-riding here." Nessa floors it and we take the washboard road at a teeth-jarring 90 mph. But the copter is gaining on us easily, and there's no useful cover out here. I do a quick mental inventory of the remaining toys I've got with me and realize I don't have anything studly enough to immediately do in an assault copter. I see from the set of Jigen's jaw that he's done a similar assessment. Okay, time to start thinking creative ...

And then I look way far down the road, see a familiar figure in white and gray, and realize my luck -- and the exquisite Zen timing of Ishikawa Goemon XIII -- have saved my ass once again.

"Who the fuck is that?" says Nessa.

"He's one of ours, kid." Jigen grins. "Just floor it right by him."

"And then keep an eye on your rear-view mirror," I add, "'cause you don't want to miss this show."

He stands there by the side of the road, still as a statue, eyes closed, the legendary blade at rest in its unadorned scabbard, his long hair and the full skirts of his hakama waving gently in the breeze, seemingly oblivious to us or our car or the helicopter or the bullets it's spewing or anything else around him. But Jigen and I both know this is nothing more than the meditative calm before the lightning storm.

Just as we roar past him, his eyes snap open, fixated on the 'copter as if it's some ancestral nemesis.

And then, with a kiai more torn from his throat than shouted, he's airborne -- leaping effortlessly from a standing start to a point just under the belly of the 'copter, where he hangs, defying gravity, for a miraculously long time. All that can be seen of the actual draw and strike are flashes of light ... and then he's descending, the helicopter seemingly unscathed. It's not until he's earthbound again, and Zantetsuken has slid back home into its scabbard with a click of hilt against sheath, that the helicopter groans and slides apart into two halves like a ripe melon. Rotors whine, gas lines explode, and several tons of twisted metal fall out of the sky, strewing the ground with burning gore-spattered scrap.

Goemon crouches where he landed for a few more moments, eyes once again closed, returning to that state of meditative presence that allows him to wield the all-slicing blade with such insane skill. Then he rises and runs to where Nessa has pulled the car over ...

And stops a good several feet away, blushing like a stoplight. Good ol' Goemon. Doesn't even bat an eye at a fully loaded Blackhawk, but a carful of women terrifies the living shit out of him.

"Aw c'mon, Goemon-chan," I say, leaping out of the car to cajole him on neutral territory. "The girls totally promise not to bite. Don't you, girls?"

"Hell, I only bite when asked," laughs Nessa. Lola shushes her as Goemon blushes even more deeply.

"Ishikawa Goemon-sama." Lola leans out the window, speaking with the regal graciousness only a belle of the American Southeast can pull off. "I thank you for your gallant rescue, and would be honored if you would ride with us and accept hospitality at our humble safehouse. And Nessa here promises to be a good girl and keep her smart-ass comments to herself on the ride over. Don't you, Nessa?" She gives Nessa a significant look.

"Yes ma'am," says Nessa with mock schoolgirl contriteness. Now it's me who can't restrain myself from a fit of giggles. Goemon ignores it; he's used to such goofiness out of me by now.

He turns to face Lola and gives her a stiffly formal bow. "I accept," he grunts. I'm impressed -- that's the most verbiage I've heard a female stranger get out of Goemon in some time.

Nonetheless, I make sure to put myself between Lola and Goemon in the back seat. "Awwww, mom," I crow as Nessa puts Da Bitch in gear, "how come I always have to ride in the middle?"

Jigen snorts. "Now children, don't make us have to pull this car over."

"Yes, dad." I put my right arm around Lola and cuddle her up against me; she settles her head into the hollow of my shoulder with an amused smile. To my left I feel rather than hear Goemon let out a little sigh. He has closed his eyes and dropped back into meditation mode again, Zantetsuken cradled against his left shoulder, but there's still a little tinge of blush attempting to fight its way across his face. Okay, okay, Goemon-chan, I'll try to keep it in my pants until we reach our destination. But after that, all bets (and hopefully clothes) are off, man.

************************

We drive up into the mountains forming the western boundary of the Las Vegas Valley. As we climb away from the desert floor up the two-lane switchbacked road, we transition into a wetter, greener ecosystem -- the fragrance of pinon pine envelopes the car, night birds and bats flit through the star-packed sky, and in the still wilderness night you can hear the faint chatter of a running stream.

Nessa finally turns off the main road into a gravel drive, that rolls through pinon groves until it brings us to a small fenced compound. Inside is a classic American double-wide mobile home, a big old Quonsett hut, a rather ramshackle barn, and a horse paddock. Damn, I haven't ridden in forever, I think with a sudden pang of yearning.

"Here you are, man, trailer park chic at its finest." Nessa pulls up in front of the double-wide.

"Hey, at least you don't have any wheelless cars up on cinder blocks in the front yard." I mug at her. Yes, I know, I'm so incorrigible -- I'm already on a hot trajectory with one woman and I still can't resist flirting with my buddy's date.

"Dawlin', if you'd have come by our yard six months ago you'd have seen one of those for sure." It's now my turn to get The Look from Lola. Whoa. Um. Definitely feel my leash being yanked here ... and wow, it definitely feels gooooood. Yes ma'am, anything you say. I be a good boy now. Can I have my treat soon?

We troop on into the mobile, and have ourselves a few drinks to unwind -- even Goemon consents to partake when Lola, with a wry smile, produces a bottle of sake from her refrigerator. (Hmmm ... not the kind of booze you'd normally expect in an American household. Another coincidence? File that thought for now ...)

But as the hour grows later our chaste samurai bids us a typically stiff good night and goes off to sleep in the barn. Ah, Goemon. Much prefering the restful sounds of sleeping horses to the steamy sounds of love I for one intend to start making in very short order.

(To be continued ...)

Fun and Thieving in Las Vegas, Part 1

2008-08-16T23:47:21-07:00

Well you swear and kick and beg us
That you're not a gambling man
Then you find you're back in Vegas
With a handle in your hand
--Steely Dan, "Do It Again"

Las Vegas International Airport never fails to crack me up. I mean, the minute you’re off the Jetway, you can already hear the ching-ching-ching of slots--like people can’t even wait till they clear security before they start forking their money over to the Big Machine. I of course am capable of getting a lot more enjoyment--read that as “a lot more money”--out of those machines than the average poor bastard tourist from white-bread Middle America. And I’ll probably do so a little later in my visit, just for grins and walking-around money. But right now I have bigger, and more lucrative, fish to fry.

As I step onto the airport’s elevated shuttle tram, I catch a glimpse of my reflection in one of the windows. Man, have I outdone myself this time--looking back at me is the geekiest, most stereotypical Asian tourist one could ever order up from Central Casting. Ugly haircut, coke-bottle glasses, limp white shirt buttoned to the Adam’s apple, plus the inevitable camera round the neck and wheeled backpack dragging behind. All the Euro-American passengers are already rolling their eyes at me behind my back. Perfect. I suppress the big cheesy grin I feel trying to curl up beneath my mask, and drop more fully into character.

“Excuse me, solly, excuse me…” Of course I can and do speak perfect English when I want, but right now I'm getting a kick out of really laying the accent on thick. Meanwhile I'm making sure to trip over as many suitcases and bump into as many people as possible. More eye-rolling from the Middle-American tourists--God, these mindless little bigots are such suckers for this kind of crap.

Eventually my supposedly random stumble brings me to my chosen destination: an open seat to the immediate left of the mark du jour. He’s a geek too, actually, but a much higher-class and better paid geek than the one I’m portraying, so his suit is designer wool worsted, his glasses and hair straight out of GQ, and his computer bag a rich chocolate leather from Coach. Regardless of the class-status symbols, though, he still looks like his Mayflower-WASP mama dresses him. And regardless of his security clearance, he’s still naïve enough to think that simply placing his computer bag between his feet is adequate protection.

I bumble my way into the seat next to this guy, still apologizing profusely, still gleefully mixing r’s and l’s till the mark is gritting his teeth … and then I commit perhaps the single most unforgiveable act in the worldview of tight-assed little twerps like this guy: I pull out a pack of cigarettes.

“Ex-CUSE me,” the mark says in a voice dripping with condescension, “can’t you see that there’s no smoking allowed in here?”

“Oh oh oh--velly solly, honored sir, in my country is okay somoking alla time.” The mark casts his eyes heavenward, no doubt thinking all the nasty names this kind of asshole likes to call Asians. Fine by me. Because while his eyes are directed away from this here smart-ass li’l Euro-Asian, I get to flip that crucial pack of cigarettes under the seat across the aisle.

The departure warning chime goes off; the canned announcements sound; the doors of the tram slide shut. I glance at my watch: three, two, one … get a nice big lungful of air now ...

And then the cigarette pack goes “whoosh!” and starts spewing thick, dark, acrid smoke. Lots of it.

As people begin to cough and wail and otherwise freak out, I calmly reach with my right hand and grab the computer bag from between the mark’s twitching feet, while with my left I give the “camera” around my neck a quick flip, opening it up into the compact gas mask it really is. Gas mask now clapped firmly over disguise-mask, I thumb the switch on the coke-bottle glasses to turn on their thermal-vision function … and then all I have to do is swap the computer in the mark’s bag with the carefully prepared replica in my own, return the bag to its owner who has conveniently gone off in a dead faint, and the grab is done.

And now for the dismount. I traverse the car a lot more quickly -- and gracefully -- than my earlier transit, hit the emergency brake, pop the nearest emergency-exit window, and slip on out. The tram is, as I’d planned it, on one of the segments of elevated track between airport terminals, with about five stories’ worth of thin air between me and the access road below. As I anchor a rope and start sliding groundward, I spot my ride, right on time--just one of hundreds of anonymous utility vehicles scooting around the airport landscape, only this particular step van is discreetly making a beeline for the stream of smoke billowing out the tram window …

And that’s when I hear that all-too-familiar bellow of offended Japanese propriety: “Lupin! I’d know your M.O. anywhere! Where the hell did you -- LUPIN!!!”

Crap. Like the proverbial bad penny -- and I never even spotted him getting on the tram. But there he is, hokey old trenchcoat and all, hanging out the open window holding a handkerchief over his mouth against the smoke. He scans first skyward and then groundward, finally spotting me still a good 20 feet from the ground.

“Lupin! You’re under arrest!” he bawls as he vaults out the window -- hey, let it never be said the Old Man ain’t got game -- and starts shimmying down the rope after me.

Fortunately, Jigen’s spotted Pops too -- the van leaps forward like a goosed spinster, barrels right under the rope’s trailing end, and I have a nice easy leap onto its roof. But not before I flip open my Zippo and set that rope-end alight.

The flash from the rope’s thermite core gives Pops ample warning to scramble back up before it turns to a puff of smoke in his hands -- hey, it's never been my intent to kill the dear ol' bastard, I just want him out of my face. But man is he ever pissed off. All the more so when I whip my mask(s) off and give him my cheeriest “Abayo, Tottsan!” We drive off, leaving him clinging to the tramway howling with frustration.

I slither through the open window into the cab’s shotgun seat. “Well that was lots of fun.”

“The hell was Zenigata doing there?” Jigen growls. He’s still in the delivery service jumpsuit he’d donned for this operation, but has already ditched the matching trucker’s cap for his beloved fedora.

“Damned if I know. Pain in the ass -- I was hoping we’d have a little more slack before he got wind of this op. But the decoy laptop ought to buy us some time. And with any luck at all, the viruses I loaded onto it will buy us a bunch more.”

“Still, I’d feel a whole lot better if I knew his showing up was purely random, as opposed to him actually having a line on what we’re up to.”

“As would I. But since we don’t know that -- yet -- there’s no point in wasting energy fretting about it.” I rip the remains of my costume free of my regular clothes, crumple them into a ball, and am about to chuck the lot out the window, when out of the corner of my eye I glimpse some stray movement. I look back behind us.

Jigen’s way ahead of me. “Company. And these guys look a bit too aggro to be sent by Zenigata.”

To be more precise, there are now two Humvees full of uniformed goons trailing us, drivers sweating because they can’t figure out why they’ve got it floored and still aren’t gaining on a lowly step van. Of course they have no idea what’s under the hood of this particular van. Let’s just say it’s been juiced up a bit since it left Grumman's assembly line.

I peer at the goons' uniform insignia, can’t place it. "Must be some private outfit."

“Maybe they’re freakin’ Homeland Security.”

“Really. I feel so secure now.”

The goon riding shotgun in the lead Humvee hangs out the window with a submachine gun in his paw. All those automatics are such pieces of crap -- spew lots of bullets with little accuracy, make a guy with shit aim feel like he’s got balls. In fact just about the only person I’ve met who actually knows how to do some real damage with a submachine gun is not a guy, but the ever-talented Fujiko … but this is no time to distract myself, we've got a little situation on our hands.

Jigen jerks the wheel to avoid a stream of lead from machine-gun boy. “Hey, ain’t the Homeland Security guys supposed to holler cease and desist before they open up?”

“Guess they’re not feeling as secure as us. Wanna let me take the wheel while you do the honors?”

“Sure thing.” I slide into the driver’s seat while Jigen sidles through the cargo area of the van -- no small feat, as nearly all of the space is taken up with the backup ride -- and pops one of the rear doors. I keep one eye on the rear-view mirror, just to watch him shoot. I never get tired of it. He’s an artist. Even a utilitarian job like this, it’s poetry in motion. The faster - than - human - eye - can - follow draw, the perfectly damped recoil -- I tell you, it’s a thing of beauty. And it’s two shots out, two driver’s side front tires shredded, two Humvees tumbling like ninepins. And we gone.

We ditch the van behind a warehouse on the edge of the airport, strip my little toys off the engine, and speed off in the backup ride -- this time a sweet little Mini Cooper that gives me all kinds of Italian Job happy vibes. Jigen, not so much. “Shit, who do they make these things for, Munchkins?” he mutters as he slides his seat as far back as it can go. He has to put the back nearly horizontal before he can stretch his long legs out and put his feet up on the dash as he likes to do.

“Hey, you should be glad -- I almost went for one of those Smart Car dinguses.”

“Those kiddie toys? They should just stick giant wind-up keys on the backs of ‘em.”

“Oooh! I like that!”

“You would.”

Speaking of toys, by now we’re cruising up the Strip, enjoying the mass quantities of electricity being burned to entertain Ma and Pa America. All the more ironic considering this week's crowd is augmented by thousands of technogeeks (including this afternoon’s target) who are in town for WEC, the World Energy Conference. It’s the Disneyworld of energy industry trade shows, taking up several of the big hotels as well as every last square inch of the Convention Center. All the big names are here, from oil companies to nuke plant contractors to electrical utilities to the military -- even the new boys on the block, the renewable energy outfits, are edging in on the action. Sidewalks are thronged with guys who make my afternoon’s getup look high-styling in comparison, every one of them bristling with degrees and security clearances. I think of these dudes descending on the craps tables and I don’t know whether to laugh or cringe.

We’re not staying in any of these joints, however; too much glitz and not enough privacy. We’ve rigged up an impromtu safehouse in an out-of-business strip-mall storefront -- it’s amazing how you can go just a dozen blocks east or west of Las Vegas Blvd. and be in instant deadsville. Plenty of room for us, for our ride--and for our remaining team-mates, if or when they decide to show up. Goemon should be here in the next 24 to 48 hours. Fuji-cakes … ah well, she’ll arrive whenever she pleases. Or not. I suspect the penthouse at the Paris would be much more her speed.

Jigen putters around the camp stove, boiling water for coffee and ramen, our standard field rations, while I haul out today’s prize and see whether it was worth the effort. Property of one Dr. David Rutherford, PhD, mid-level scientist for GeoDynamics Inc., a little startup energy think tank with some very suspicious financial backers.

Not to mention a highly mysterious product, currently under development, called Geo-Core ... which incorporates some literally priceless components.

We're still at the fishing-for-data stage of this job; hopefully Rutherford's PC will increase our stockpile of data on the mystery product. So: fire 'er up, slip in my favorite snoop disc … nope, no defense viruses or other nasties … but a nice big fat email archive and random other assorted text and data files. The encryption crumbles like old styrofoam before my almighty snoop software, and … “Bingo!”

“Ya got something, boss?”

“Got several somethings. Not an actual lead on our treasure -- yet -- but definitely some useful intel.”

I focus in tighter and begin to speed-read. Yep, this dude is attached to the Geo-Core project -- boy will his ass be grass when his bosses find out he was walking around with all this crap on his personal laptop. Got a bunch of emails to or from that Morningstar dude who seems to be at the heart of the matter. Scanning them now … ha. Here’s a whole thread going on about that S.A. dingus. Still no clue as to what S.A. is, other than being a location somewhere in California. Given how many Cali place names begin with "San" or "Santa," that doesn’t narrow the field all that much.

Oh-ho, but what do we have here? Graphics files? That’s a new find. But when I open them up, I’ve got a whole new mystery on my hands.

Jigen brings me a cup of coffee and a bowl of ramen, and peers over my shoulder at the mystery graphics. “I take it those aren’t computer circuits.”

“Actually, I think they may be veves.”

“Vey veys? As in ‘oy vey vey’?”

“Hardy har har. No, veves are symbols from the African diaspora religion known as voudoun -- which is a serious religion, by the way, not like that zombie crap you see in the movies.”

“Hey, watch it! Live and Let Die is one of my favorite flicks.”

“You like that better than Goldfinger?!? Nevermind. The question is, why the hell does this guy have these dinguses on his computer, in a directory full of heavy-duty data?”

“Maybe it’s a code.”

“Maybe. Somehow that theory isn’t flipping my hunch switch. But we’ll see.” I slurp down some nourishment while I compress all the laptop’s data and download it into a flash memory card. Later we’ll jettison the laptop in a likely-looking dumpster, denuded of my fingerprints but loaded up with some more fun viruses. Hope they like videos of super-distorted anime kids doing silly-ass line dances …

Speaking of viruses, I go online through my own mini-notebook and sure enough, the virus on the decoy laptop I planted on Dr. Rutherford has phoned home. “He’s at the Renaissance, right next to the Convention Center.”

“Convenient. For us as well as him.”

“Yeah. We make our next move tomorrow when he’s hitting the convention. In the meantime, what do you say to a little R’n’R?”

*********

“Man. Eighty-sixed out of three casinos in a single night. Gotta hand it to ya, boss, that has to be some kind of record.”

We’re tooling around in the Mini, me at the wheel and Jigen with his feet up, contemplating our next stop of the evening.

“Hey, can I help it if my luck makes the pit bosses think I’m counting cards?”

“You could always play bad on purpose.”

"But where's the fun in that? Anyway, I’m bored with gambling. How about we take in some tunes instead?”

“You got something in mind?”

I root around in my jacket, hand him the rave card I picked up at the last casino we got thrown out of.

“Lola Laveau and the Love Bandits, huh? Sounds promising. Er, this doesn’t have anything to do with this Lola looking like a total babe, does it?”

“Duh. But that’s not the only attraction. Read all the way to the bottom of the card.”

“Hmmm … ‘Love to all bandits of the heart … special shout-out to …’ --holy shit!-- ‘to my favorite love bandit Lupin III, if you’re ever in town come up and see me sometime. Signed, Lola.’”

“Who could possibly resist such an invitation?”

“Sure as hell not you.” He sighs, shakes his head, chuckles. “You know, I’m not much for this hunch business, boss, but I got a helluva feeling right now that this is gonna be interesting.”

***************

It’s not a casino club, it’s an indie, a rambling unpretentious joint on a side street miles from the Strip, with a lot of Nevada plates in the very packed parking lot. Like every joint in Vegas, there’s slots in the front bar, but surprisingly few people are playing them. Most everybody is cramming into the showroom, waiting for the midnight set.

I drop a Benjamin on the maitre d’ and persuade him to give us one of the few remaining reserved VIP tables, halfway back in the house but right next to the catwalk. The stage is set up for a big band, with a horn section, a huge-ass drum kit plus percussion station, and an old-school Fender Rhodes, all of which I consider auspicious signs in this benighted age of drum machines and synthesizer patches.

We have just enough time to get our first round of drinks delivered before the lights dim. The crowd starts to whoop and holler as the band members take their places and kick into “Let’s Misbehave.” Porter, baby -- already loving this girl’s style. But she’s not onstage yet. Waiting for the band to run through the tune and come back up to the head before making her entrance.

And when she does saunter onstage, seize the mic, and open up that golden throat of hers, it feels like the temperature in the room shoots up a good twenty degrees. Or maybe it’s just me.

Her lush-breasted café-au-lait body wrapped tight in a black strapless, she strolls down the catwalk on stiletto heels, selling the song both campy and sexy, a knowing glint in her eye. This is one femme formidable. Already I feel her giving Fujiko-chan some major competition on my personal lust-ometer.

Out of the corner of my eye I see Jigen smiling and shaking his head at me. Oops, I guess I must be making one of my googly love-crazed faces again. Oh well, can't be helped. So much for making a suave impression on the lady on the occasion of our first meeting ...

She has worked her way down the catwalk to our table. It looks like she's just going to pass right on by ... until she stops, strikes a pose, looks me right in the eyes, breaks into a huge grin, winks. And moves on. All without missing a beat in her song.

Busted ... !

Jigen puts his head back and laughs uproariously.

I’ve sort of pulled myself back together by the time she’s working her way back up the catwalk to our table … until she bends down (treating me to a faceful of cleavage in which I could happily drown), seizes my chin with her non-mic hand, and plants a huge wet kiss on my mouth. And … again moves on. Again without missing a beat in her song.

“Christ, I’m gonna need to get an oxygen tank for you,” laughs Jigen. It’s true. I’m undone. Gasping like a beached fish. An absolute puddle of helpless lust.

She's back on stage, the song ended, the crowd stamping and hooting and hollering. She addresses them, and I detect an unmistakeably New Orleans Creole accent. "Thank you, thank you! How y'all doin' tonight? I'm Lola and these here are my Love Bandits, Les Voleurs d'Amour. We steal great tunes from every decade and make them our own -- and we've been known to steal more than a few hearts along the way, too, haven't we? But all you veterans know that, I'm talking now to the virgins! Now I know we've got at least a couple of Love Bandit virgins in the audience tonight, so why don't y'all stand up and let us give you a proper welcome? Don't be scared now -- we all been virgins at some point, I know the first time can be a little scary ..."

I of course can't resist leaping to my feet. "C'mon, Jigen, you heard the lady."

"Christ." He hauls himself onto his feet rather more reluctantly.

"Now see, that wasn't so bad!" She locks eyes with me from way up there on the stage, gives me another big wink. "Now you there, dawlin' -- bet it's been a long time since anyone called you a virgin!"

Jigen sighs. "Well, there goes the last pretense of stealth for this operation."

"No no," I shout back across the audience to her, "I'm sure there's still a little virgin territory on me ... somewhere!" I mime searching around my body. "Wanna help me find it?"

"Naw, dawlin' you got it backwards -- I'm all about helping you lose it!" Her laugh bubbles up rich as chocolate.

"Like you need any help losing it," Jigen mutters. But he's laughing. I'm laughing too. I am digging this chick more and more. She understands the joy of making a spectacle of oneself.

The show rolls on, and I proceed to get even more entranced by her. A hot body does, admittedly, go a good long way with me, but the brains and talent to do something like making fabulous music, that turns me on even more. This girl is one smart and talented performer. And funny too, as she continues to whip the crowd into gales of laughter with her between-song patter. Even Jigen gives up trying to hide how impressed he is -- he’s very picky about his music, but when he hears this girl sing Steely Dan’s "Pretzel Logic," I see him break out in a big grin of pleasure.

And just as the band's kicking into the final song of the set, my mellow is once again harshed by the bad penny man. Pops. I hear his dulcet tones from the back of the hall as he argues with the bouncer. The latter is obviously pretending not to understand the Old Man's admittedly atrocious accent, accusing him of being a drunk. Hmmm -- special instructions from Miss Lola to protect her surprise guest? If so -- how sweet!

But still, it might be a good idea to make a quick exit before Pops breaks through. Though not before leaving a little calling card on the table for the lady ...

We duck out a door labeled "Employees Only" and wind up in a dimly lit access hall. I start towards the back of the building, where I figure the dressing rooms should be. "Wait," says Jigen, "you're not going to go see her now, with Zenigata breathing down our necks?"

"I can't leave without thanking the lady for her hospitality, now can I?"

"Well, you could, but I'm not in the mood to whack you upside the head and drag your unconscious carcass out of here."

"I won't be long. Really. Just bring the car around."

"Whatever you say, boss." He slips into the shadows as he's so good at doing, and is gone.

Easy-peasy -- her name's on the dressing room door, along with a richly-deserved gold star. I slip inside, take a quick look around. I confess to an adoration of women's boudoirs -- the scents, the vibe, the pretty things with which they adorn their selves and their territory -- every item in these spaces talks to me of the women who breathe life into them.

But what's this? In one corner is something I've not seen before in any American woman's room. It's unmistakeably a religious shrine, but unlike the elegantly formal household butsudans of my Japanese mother's family, this shrine is a riotous burst of images, representing a syncretistic swarm of Catholic, Native American, and African iconography. Voudoun. Like the veves on Rutherford's computer. The synchronicity of it all is setting my hunch circuit off like crazy--

I hear the doorknob turn. Time to (temporarily) disappear.

She peers into the room before slipping in, quietly closing the door behind her. My card is in her hand and a look of expectation is on her face. She stands there a moment listening intently; then her nostrils flare as she inhales, and a broad smile crosses her face.

"Y'know, dawlin'," she annouces to the apparently empty room, "I've always loved the smell of Gitanes."

Laughing, I roll out from under her settee and stand. "Damn. Busted again. You're good."

"I have my moments." She approaches, looking me up and down with a frankness I've seldom seen in a woman. "My, you are one handsome devil. Your photos don't do you justice."

"That's because I see to it that photos that do 'do me justice' don't reach the public. Tends to be bad for business."

"I reckoned that was the case." She circles me slowly, continuing to size me up. Feeling her eyes on my ass is incredibly hot. "But word does get about; your reputation precedes you. Question is: how well does the reality live up to the legend?"

"Well, there's one sure way of finding that out, isn't there?" Her tigerish intensity is really turning me on -- but now I'm past the googly hit - on - the - head - with - the - frying - pan - of - lust stage into my own more predatory mode.

"I suppose so--" she begins. I decide to cut to the chase. She's startled at first to find herself so swiftly in my arms, my mouth so suddenly upon hers; her eyes widen, her body stiffens slightly, the natural reaction to being caught off-guard in a vulnerable position. But then her lips part before my very active tongue; her body relaxes and presses into mine; a burning heat springs up wherever our flesh touches. A small eternity passes while we merge this way; when we both come up for air, we seem to have mellowed our way past the wary circling predator stage.

"So," I say, grinning at her, "how well am I living up to my reputation so far?"

"Oh, I'd say preliminary signs are very promising. But I wouldn't mind doing a little more research."

"I wouldn't mind that either."

We have just started to go under again when my cellphone rings. I attempt to ignore it, but it's she who breaks the kiss and says, "Dawlin', I have a feeling you need to take that call."

I sigh. "Yes. I really do. Thank you for understanding."

It's Jigen -- switched to Japanese for security. "Trouble, boss. Our car is staked out. Goons from the same outfit as this afternoon. A few dozen of them. Snipers on rooftops and everything."

"Crap. Come on back. The alley behind the club."

Lola hasn't understood the words but she's picked up the tone. "Anything I can help with?"

I smile. "We need a ride. Ours is now ambush bait."

"Gotcha. My turn." She grabs a cellphone out of a purse perched on her dressing table. "Nessa. Where y'at? Bring Da Bitch round the back entrance, quick now. We got two guests need a fast out ... wazzat? Right, I'll tell him. En moment, doll."

"What was that last bit?" I ask as she closes her phone.

"Oh, that mannerless cop in the trenchcoat who was trying to bust on into the show. Nessa says he kept it up until about ten minutes back, when he suddenly got a call on his cell, got all excited, and run off. She thought it was suspicious."

"I'll say. Good call." Wonder if Pops had hooked up with the guys who bushwhacked our car.

Speaking of cars, I now hear the unmistakeable roar of a big American V-8 through the dressing-room wall. "Sounds like our ride is here."

I pull my Walther, check the magazine, strip a round into the chamber. I hear an answering metallic clack and look up to see Lola performing the same moves with a neat little PPK, which she then tucks back into her purse. "Ready when you are," she smiles.

We step out into the alley to find a gen-u-wine, beautifully restored, 1960s-era SCCA "Baby Grand" Dodge Dart, painted bad-ass matte black, growling like a panther. Behind the wheel is a young woman who looks like a punked-out Lauren Bacall, in spike-studded leather jacket, ripped-up jeans, and big bad black Doc Martens. "Nessa, I presume?" I say as Lola and I slide into the back seat.

Jigen comes running up at just the same time, Magnum in hand, and leaps into the shotgun seat. "Let's roll!" he spits out.

Nessa grins, revs the engine high, slips the clutch, and we take off like a bat out of hell.

"Man," says Jigen, holding tight to his hat, "you sure don't mess around, kid."

"No, Jigen-chan, these ladies both mean serious business. Hang on while I create us a little diversion." I pull my mini-laptop from one of the many hidden pockets in my jacket, and tap in a few commands. A few blocks behind us there's a series of small explosions as the sky lights up with fireworks ... then a deeper boom that shakes the Dart from the pavement up.

"Alas, poor Mini, we barely knew thee." I put the little 'puter away.

"Wow, you blew up your car? Fuckin' rad!" cries Nessa as she rockets us through a maze of back streets towards the city limits. She's got a look of glee on her face that I instantly identify with -- here is another fine soul who lives for the joy of fucking shit up. And then I look over at Jigen and I can't help busting out laughing -- he's doing his damnest to hide it, but he's been felled by Nessa much the way Lola bowled me over.

Nessa catches Jigen looking, flashes him a dangerous grin before returning her eyes to the road. "Name's Nessa. Pleased to meet you, Jigen Daisuke-san. Your reputation precedes you, man."

Your reputation precedes you. Exactly the line Lola used on me. Coincidence? Hmmm...

Meanwhile, Jigen's rising to the occasion. He tilts his hat to a slightly jauntier angle, gives her a Bogey-esque half-smile, and rumbles "No need to be so formal, babe. You can chan me anytime."

Good man! I knew you had it in you! But alas, I have to interrupt this cozy little moment, because I can see and hear pursuit from the rear.

"Company, kids. Nessa, you know someplace where we can lose these goons?"

"Got a real killer coming right up, man."

We have abruptly transitioned from urban to commercial landscapes, the kind of sea of warehouses I so like to work out of -- and then abruptly we leave that for trainyards and truckstops, and then just as abruptly we're surrounded by raw desert marred by the occasional quarry and chemical refinery. At which point Nessa puts the hammer down and takes the Dart well up over 100 mph. By the steady way the car lies in the road, she's way used to doing so with this machine. Bet she restored it herself.

Having put some distance between us and the goons, Nessa slows down just enough to take a turn off-highway. We are suddenly speeding past a series of waste-water pools into which some God-forsaken refinery had dumped all their poisonous byproducts. Ooh, wonder how fast a vehicle's paint gets eaten off if it falls into one of these? Aw, probably not enough to be spectacular, but it certainly wouldn't be pleasant. A definite rotten-egg smell is rising from a bunch of these stagnant slime-bowls.

"Okay," I say, drawing the Walther, "we can all play at this game." I roll down my window; the others do likewise. As Nessa proceeds to run a high-speed slalom through the maze of tailings pools, and the goons proceed to try and keep up, it's simply a matter of picking off tires at just the right moment to throw each pursuit vehicle into a pool. For Jigen, of course, it's a piece of cake. Lola succeeds in bagging one. I get a couple, then decide I'd have more fun throwing M-80s at them for the startle value.

And at one point, when Nessa circles around and catches a goon-mobile on the exact opposite side of a pool, she suddenly does a left-hand draw out of her jacket, fetches out a nasty-looking military model M1911A, and casually blows the whole driver's-side wheel off the Humvee. The recoil barely makes her arm twitch. I see Jigen's jaw drop.

I do the honors of picking off the last one. Nessa exits out the far side of this chemical wasteland and takes us down an unpaved service road paralleling a railroad right-of-way.

"That's one helluva piece you're packing, girl," Jigen says to Nessa. "You must have arm-muscles of steel."

She grins, steers with her left hand while she pushes that arm's jacket-sleeve up with her right. She does indeed have totally ripped arm muscles. I think Jigen's jaw is going to scrape the floorboards of the car.

"Weight-training, man," she says. "In the Service. I was Special Forces until I got shit-canned for pissing off some assholes from Darkpool."

"Wait -- the private security goonsquad the US military uses in Iraq, right?" I blink as it hits me. "Aha! That's who those goons were who were chasing us just now. I knew their uniforms looked familiar."

"Got it in one, man."

"Yeah," Lola chimes in. "They opened a training facility out in the desert north of here about, what, two-three years ago? Pissed a whole bunch of people off."

"Pissing people off is their specialty, from what I hear," says Jigen, rummaging in his jacket for a cigarette.

That's when we hear the beat of big rotor blades approaching.

"Well guess what?" I crane my head out the window. "Looks like they're fixing to piss us all off some more."

And a big black attack helicopter heaves into view. And starts firing.

The sweatshirt incident

2007-09-23T20:58:31-07:00

"Take that sweatshirt off right now, before I call the police!"

The words cut like an alarm through the unfocused hubbub in front of the checkout stands in the big-box pharmacy. I turn to see who could be the target of such barely-contained rage..

A skinny little man, apparently a vagrant, is in the process of very slowly removing the sweatshirt with which he was about to walk out of the store, the manager who caught him looking on with stiff disapproval.

The man has a big grin on his face and moves with ostentatious slowness. Slowly, slowly, he pulls the shirt over his head, grinning all the while, like it's the biggest joke in the world. And still grinning, he slowly hands the shirt over to the manager, and slowly makes his way towards the door.

"And never enter my store again." The manager, successfully needled by the vagrant’s grin-and-creep tactics, shadows him to the door, radiating indignation from his jaws and shoulders. The eyes of all shoppers--mine included--follow their progress, unable to look away until The Thief is good and gone.

I never do get a good look at the sweatshirt. A flash of heathered gray is all I glimpse. Knowing the kind of clothing carried by such places, I imagine a cheap ill-fitting cotton/poly blend number, no doubt screened with a sports team logo, the label inside declaring it was made in some sweatshop in China. But even so, it would have been enough to keep off the unseasonably early chill.

And now that the manager has his precious piece of merchandise back in his posession, does he deign to re-hang it himself? Or does he toss the once fiercely-defended garment to some underling to deal with, his interest evaporated now that somebody isn't trying to take the shirt without paying? This I do not get to see either.

I am left to face my cashier -- a fresh-faced rosy-cheeked young woman. "One minute he was over there trying on every sweatshirt on the rack, and the next ... " she offers by way of explanation, eyes wide with wonder. Can it possibly be that this is the first theft she had ever witnessed in her entire life?

I think of responding with something like, "Oh yeah, homeless people are really inventive that way, especially when they're trying to avoid freezing their asses off when they’re spending the night on a sidewalk." Or "Oh well, it's not like people would actually want to pay the exhorbitant price your boss is charging for that piece of crap anyway." Or "But hey, aren't you glad he was taking a necessity of life and not a forty from the cooler? ... and by the way, remind me why a store for health care products is selling booze, again? Not to mention cheap-ass sweatshirts?"

But I look at her apple-cheeked innocence, and decide not to tee off on her when I'm too cowardly to take that same tone with her boss. "Well, you know, it's always something ..." I wind up muttering inanely. I pay for my diet soda and leave.

I look for the grinning vagrant in the parking lot. He is nowhere to be seen. I wonder at the sheer chutzpah required to have kept on grinning like that when a whole storeful of people is staring at your retreating back and thinking "thief."

I find myself hoping he's in the process of boosting a sweatshirt from the next big box store down the street. I wish him luck.

Freaky sye-fye chunk 2: Elias in the Garden

2007-05-31T12:13:58-07:00

Elias is tending the Garden. He is feeling very at ease with himself and with the Universe. He treasures these moments of serenity, as he remembers many times in his life when it seemed that all the serenity (and safety) in the world had evaporated from the face of the planet.

The Garden is a little rough-hewn, like everything else in the village of Eff-One, first outpost of something vaguely resembling civilization in the rural agrarian non-society of Freak Nation. This Garden is actually not an outdoor garden but a big rambling shanty of a greenhouse, patched together from old quonsett huts, chunks of scrap corrugated tin and fiberglass, yards of plastic sheeting, and other random assorted bits of scavenged obtainium. But the uncertain daylight filtering through the roofs is an uncannily good approximation of light sifting through a healthy forest canopy, and the midspace of the room is densely green like a healthy forest floor. Huge swaths of green cover the tables running the length of the room--tables constructed of more obtainium, mainly sheet scrap lumber held up by a herd of sawhorses. The mass of greenery, the trays of dirt and growing medium from which it all sprouts, and the dirt floors puddled here and there with runoff from the irrigation driplines, all give off the dense reek of the living vegetative world--especially the wing of the Garden dedicated to cannabis.

Elias putters among the tables, ostensibly checking the condition of each crop, but really more just absorbing the vibe and giving it back. Especially when he reaches the wing known as the Head Bed. No tables in that room; here the dirt floor has been tilled into proper condition for an exceedingly odd crop. They look like huge onions, a good four feet or more in diameter, just their topmost bulges breaking the surface of the soil; except those bulbs are covered in human skin, and the tufts growing out of them are not greens but human hair.

This is where Heads come when their bodies can no longer sustain those huge crania of theirs. The exhausted Heads are brought here, and laid out gently on the soil, and instead of dying their bodies take root and grow into the earth. Eventually they submerge head-and-all into the breast of Mother Earth, where they remain, sessile but very much alive, and freer than ever before to roam the telepathic virtual world known as Head Net.

In fact they, and the other Head Beds scattered about Freak Nation, together serve as the Head Net backbone. In each Bed the Heads’ bodies put forth roots into the soil, not only to gather nourishment but to make contact with their neighbors; eventually their intellects become so interwoven that they can function as one huge communal brain. That gives the Bed the psychic bandwidth to traffic-direct all the billions of thoughts per second pouring through Head Net, sustaining and animating the virtual Head Space within. Without the Beds, the Net would not exist.

Elias, not being a Head, has only ever gotten glimpses of Head Space when given a lift by various Heads of his acquaintance. He prefers the physical freedom of his kind, the Furry Freaks, though sometimes the shedding is a royal pain in the ass in the summer. But he does like the general contact high of strolling through all that brain-energy in the Head Bed. And sometimes he does hitch a ride into Head Space; and sometimes the Head Bed hitches a ride on his brain, and rides him to an errand they need done in the physical world.

Now he feels a glow like the first really warm day of summer embracing his wide shaggy shoulders, and he knows the Head Bed has come calling to hitch a ride. <<More than that,>> they murmur in the back of his brain. <<We’re taking you to meet a visitor.>>

Oh, her. She’s arrived, huh? Cool. Very. He feels the Head consciousness slide in next to his own and look out through his eye sockets.

<<Why don’t you drive?>> they say. <<We knew you of all people would be just as into meeting her as we are.>>

Feeling the mantle of Head Net resting gently on his shoulders, Elias ambles over to the nearest exit and slips out through the plastic sheeting that serves as its door.

Scene from a freaky sye/fye novel in progress

2007-05-25T00:14:27-07:00

In my trek west across the depopulated wastelands of America, I’d seen some pretty impressive landmarks--most of them the remains of disasters dating back to the Collapse. Like the multi-train wreck just outside the ruin of Chicago, in which any freight containers that had not buckled from the original impact had given way since to the crowbars of looters. Or the 500 car pileup on the now-crumbling Interstate 55/64 interchange near the St. Louis Crater, the bleached bones of their former passengers scattered by carrion-eaters for acres in all directions. And speaking of skeletons, how about that blackened carcass of a Boeing 797 smeared across the flank of a mesa in the Dakota Badlands? No human remains to be found around that one, though--they’d all burned to a cinder when the plane did its swan-dive into terrain some twenty years ago.

Compared to those colossal wrecks, the landmark I now confronted looked like a homely, homespun little sideshow. A misshapen weather-bleached mound of trash the size of a small house, straddling the cracked and heaved two-lane blacktop leading into what had once been a national park. It wasn’t until you got a little closer that you realized there really was a small house under all that flotsam and jetsam. It was, in fact, the gatehouse to the old park.

You had to get right up close to it to realize all that garbage had not just been randomly dumped on the gatehouse, but deliberately hung all over it.

Thousands and thousands of pieces of trash, evidently hung with care by persons unknown traveling through all this dangerous country to reach this remote place. And there were certain themes among the items with which the house had been festooned. ID tags were one recurring motif. Driver’s licenses, company keycards, government IDs, police badges, military dog-tags, relocation camp dog-tags, hospital wristbands, plague triage wristbands, coroner’s toe-tags--all of them with dates from before the Collapse (by the time the Collapse had gotten rolling in earnest, nobody had time to keep up with the coroner’s tags anymore). Credit cards were big too, as were such pre-Collapse technocrap as cell phones, pagers, digital music players, PDAs, cameras--all totally useless since the infrastructure on which they had depended had risen up to strangle their original inventors.

And there were tee-shirts bearing the names of destroyed cities and universities, of extinct athletic teams and musical groups . . . flags of states and nations which, if they still existed at all, were now only impotent illusions maintained by handfuls of damaged diehards in isolated bunkers . . . newspaper and magazine clippings moldered away to illegibility . . . the occasional street and highway sign, including a prominently displayed marker for Haight Street (wonder what had become of the one for Ashbury?). And then there were the dolls. The dolls were especially eerie. All those eyes following you . . . And it hurt to think what probably had become of the children who had once played with them.

This was the celebrated Phantom Tollbooth, as it was called (among many other names) by the people for whom it stood as portal to their homeland, symbol of their liberty, and middle finger raised in defiance at their former species-mates. It meant I had finally reached the boundary of Freak Nation, refuge of those who, having finally gotten sick and tired of homo sapiens’s genocidal and suicidal shit, decided to abandon us to our fate and withdraw into the wilderness. And then the Collapse hit, and we became too busy fighting off our imminent extinction to come after them. And so things had remained until now.

I left my bike standing in the slot of afternoon sunlight that fell between the wall-like stands of trees lining the road on either side, so that the bike’s solar paint could soak up as many of the day’s remaining photons as possible. Gravel and forest litter crunched under my sandals as I approached the Tollbooth’s shaggy flank. The only other sounds were birdsong, the faint rustling of the wind in the trees, and the even fainter creak and sigh of my exoskeleton.

Close-up, the rotting layers of garbage cloaking the Tollbooth gave out a not-unpleasant odor of compost. There were splotches of mold, clumps of moss and fungus, ferns and bracken, even the occasional fir sapling sprouting out of its flanks and crown. Nobody ever bothered to prune the poor thing--and its owners liked it that way. The Tollbooth, and the offerings left upon it, were sacrosanct. Once something was hung on it, even by Mother Nature, nobody was to disturb it.

It wasn’t quite clear who first came up with that rule, but Head Net had definitively established who started the custom of hanging mementos on the old gatehouse. That honor went to a wild-eyed young lupine Freak who went by the handle of SupaDupaBitch, fresh from a harrowing journey back to her pre-Collapse hometown of Oakland. Ol’ SDB had gone there to see if she could find any member of her family still alive after all the chaos, only to discover of course that her quest was hopeless. Worse, she nearly got herself killed for her troubles when she was jumped by a vigilante party of deranged Straights (one of the more polite things the Freaks call us homo sapiens).

Escaping, she resolved that would be the last opportunity she would ever give Straight society to fuck with her. And when at last she passed the Phantom Tollbooth again on her way homeward bound, she ripped her precious Raiders shirt from her back, hung it on the Tollbooth’s front door, shucked the remainder of her clothes and heaved them into the woods, and sallied forth clad only in the fur that covered her hide, swearing she would never again let any symbol of Straight society so much as touch her Freaky ass.

She was by no means the first to go fur-clad--after all, nudism was only natural for those Freaks who had sprouted their own fur coats. But SDB’s simple spontaneous gesture of hanging that symbol of her former human affiliation out to dry touched a nerve among the collective Freakdom. Suddenly it was a rite of passage for every Freak passing the Tollbooth on their way home to the Motherland to post there some souvenir of the vanished world of the Straights.

Well, I was no Freak, and Freak Nation was not my home. But I had a little memento of my own family’s history that I’d brought all these thousands of miles to bestow on this monument.

I reached in my pouch and pulled out yet another pre-Collapse ID tag, this one a dog-eared press pass, and studied one last time the photo embedded in the plastic. As always, it was like looking into a strange mirror and seeing an alternate-universe version of myself, about ten years older and a good hundred pounds heavier ... and a whole different gender and orientation. "Godspeed, Dad,” I told the photo, and carefully hung the tag over a clump of other tags.

“And just who the fuck gave you permission to hang that on our gate, Straight?”

I whirled to find a big burly ursine Freak standing between me and my bike, regarding me with obvious hostility. He stood a good seven feet tall, and his shaggy fur made him look like he was about four feet wide. But I didn’t mind that--what troubled me was that I had not heard him approach. Sloppy, sloppy. Was I already letting myself be lulled into a false sense of security by Head Net’s gentle omnipresence? And where the hell were the Heads, anyway?

<> a lilting voice spoke within my head. <>

Head Net, checking in on Head Standard Time as usual. Fine, be that way.

I looked my interlocutor up and down and said, “And who are you to say who has permissions around here?”

His eyes glared red from under bristling brows. “Someone who has the right to be here. Unlike you, you fucking Straight.”

I rolled my eyes. “Now come on, I know that you know who I am, and that I was invited--“

“Fuck that shit. And fuck the assholes who invited you. You’re a fucking Straight, and Straights have no business setting foot on our land, so you can put your skinny little diseased cyborg ass on your piece-o-shit techno bike and just ride the fuck back where you came from.”

“Dude,” I said lightly, shifting on the balls of my feet, “you do realize you’re making a lot of assumptions about me, right? For one thing . . . I may not be a Freak, but if there’s one thing I am, it sure as hell ain’t Straight.”

“The fuck are you talking about?” he growled, curiosity piqued in spite of himself. But before I could elaborate, Head Net checked in again, this time more forcefully.

<> the mellow disembodied voice addressed my adversary, <>

“Yeah, well, this ain’t the first time the Council’s been full of shit. And I know my rights--”

“Well, you and the Council and your fucking ‘appropriate action’ can all go fuck yourselves.” But the wind was already leaking out of Shadrach’s sails; he knew he was beat. The Heads were watching his every move and mood now; if he so much as thought about doing me harm, they would shut him down before he had a chance to form a second thought.

I held up my hands in a sign of appeasement. “Never fear, I was just about to be on my way anyhow, as soon as I retrieve my bike.”

“Fuck that. Until I see you taking your fucking skinny ass off our land, you’re still in deep shit as far as I’m concerned.” But he did step out of the path between me and my bike. Only by a few feet though. And then he stopped, and glowered, daring me to walk by him. Charming. My experience with hostile Freaks might still be a little thin, but apparently wounded machismo is just the same across all sentient species. Guess I’d have to teach him the lesson he was so clearly demanding.

<> murmured Head Net in the back of my brain. <>

Yeah, well, I’ve been around the rodeo a few times myself, I thought back at them.

Shadrach was now making a big show of studiously ignoring me--but had not moved an inch from his position. Fine, whatever. I squared my shoulders and prepared to walk past the big lunk.

I’ll give him this--he was faster than he looked. He actually succeeded in laying a hand on my shoulder. But I too am much faster than I look--and much stronger too. Within seconds he had landed on his back with a resounding thump a few meters away. I heard the gasp as the impact knocked the wind out of his lungs. I was already astride my bike and kicking the power plant into action before he pulled himself up to a sitting position; he sat there, shaking his head to clear it, too addled to formulate any further expletive-laden tirades.

“Sorry it had to come to this,” I said cheerfully. “But perhaps next time we meet you’ll remember that I don’t need Head Net to protect my skinny little ass.”

And I kicked the bike into gear, gave Shadrach and the Tollbooth a wide berth, and continued on my way deeper into the park, deeper into the heart of the Freakdom.