Maybe the loon wore rubbers when he jacked off. Or maybe he used them with hookers. In any event, he’d been a busy boy.
The answer to the riddle of the Trojans turned up in a plastic trash can: five foil condom wrappers and a razor blade. Moffitt aligned them on the toilet seat. The condoms were inside the packages, and Moffitt cautiously removed them with a tweezers. Each of them bore visible nicks or slices, which presumably was why they’d been discarded.
Moffitt concentrated on the bright wrappers. Clearly they hadn’t been torn open in the ordinary haste of lust. Instead they’d painstakingly been cut along one edge, undoubtedly with the razor blade. Even with such care, Bodean James Gazzer had damaged all five rubbers.
The sixth must have been the winner. Moffitt was pretty sure he knew where it was and what was hidden inside it.
“Fucker,” he said aloud.
Mr. Gazzer must be quite the optimist, the agent reflected. Why else would he care whether the condom in which he’d concealed the lottery ticket was usable?
On his way out of the apartment, Moffitt encountered a stout rat gorging itself in the mounds of sugar and cereal on the dinette. His first impulse was to shoot it, but then he thought: Why do Gazzer any favors? With luck, the critter was rabid.
By nature Moffitt was not a mischievous person, but he was inspired by the shabby trappings of hate. He had a nagging image of Bodean Gazzer and his sadistic partner—one would be stretched out in his underwear on the futon, the other might be slouched at the dinette. They’d be slugging down Budweisers, laughing about what they’d done to JoLayne Lucks, trying to remember who’d punched her where. The look in her eyes. The sounds she made.
Moffitt simply could not slip away and allow such shitheads to go on with their warped lives, exactly as before. After all, how often did one get the opportunity to make a lasting impression upon paranoid sociopaths?
Not often enough. Moffitt felt morally obligated to fuck with Bodean James Gazzer’s head. It took only a few extra minutes, and afterwards even the rat seemed amused.
Sinclair was overcome the instant he touched the cooters: a warm tingle that started preternaturally in his palms and raced up both arms to his spine.
He was sitting cross-legged in Demencio’s yard, on the lip of the moat. The daily visitation was over, the pilgrims were gone. Sinclair had never handled a turtle before. Demencio said go ahead, help yourself. They don’t bite or nothin’.
Sinclair picked up one of the painted cooters and set it delicately in his lap. The bearded face gazing up from the grooved carapace was purely beatific. And the turtle itself was no less exquisite—bright gemlike eyes, a velvety neck striped in greens, golds and yellows. Sinclair reached into the water and picked up another one, and then another. Before long, he was acrawl with baby turtles—rubbery legs pumping, tiny claws scratching harmlessly on the fabric of his pants. The sensation was hypnotic, almost spiritual. The cooters seemed to emanate a soft, soothing current.
Demencio, who was refilling the moat with “holy” water, asked Sinclair if he felt all right. Sinclair spontaneously began to tremble and hum. Demencio couldn’t make out the tune, but it was nothing he was dying to hear on the radio. Turning to Joan and Roddy: “I’d say it’s time to take the boy home.”
Sinclair didn’t want to go. He looked up at Roddy. “Isn’t this amazing?” Thrusting both hands high, full of dripping turtles: “Did you see!”
Demencio, sharply: “Be careful with them things. They ain’t mine.” That’s all he’d need, some city dork accidentally smushing one of JoLayne’s precious babies. Say adios to a thousand bucks.
Demencio was tempted to turn the hose on the guy—it had worked like a charm on Trish’s tomcat. Sinclair’s face pinched into a mask of concentration. His head began to flop back and forth, as if his neck had gone to rubber.
“Nyyah nurrha nimmy doo-dey,” he said.
Roddy glanced at his wife. “What is that—Spanish or somethin’?”
“I don’t believe so.”
Again Sinclair cried: “Nyyah nyyah doo-dey!” It was a mangled regurgitation of a newspaper headline he’d once written, a personal all-time favorite: nervous nureyev nimble in disney debut.