When the elevator doors open on the twelfth floor the Serologist sees there is only one apartment. The front door is open and he walks in. A butler, wearing a name tag that reads Marcus, takes his coat and leads him to an expansive and underlit kitchen. There are three pit bulls lounging on the floor, two of them breathing heavily through strings of drool.
“You like dogs?” Kip Tiller asks when the Serologist walks in. He’s sitting on a stool at the kitchen table, smoking a joint and rolling the smoke around in his mouth and then letting it slip out slowly. Letting it curl in the air like cream in coffee. He’s old, old enough to be the Serologist’s father, but he’s got a young mouth and a gray ponytail. It fits with his pin-striped suit and reeks of money.
The Serologist nods. “Sure.”
“You like pit bulls?”
“Haven’t known many. Shot a few.”
Kip shakes his head dramatically. “See, that’s a fucking shame. These are beautiful dogs and ill-treated by society. I can’t tell you how many of these pups I’ve personally rescued. I have a shelter, you know, out on Long Island. Rehabilitate mistreated pit bulls. They are the most misunderstood of all animals. Hell, sharks have a better reputation.”
“The ones I’ve met, ones I’ve shot, were pretty nasty.”
“’Cause someone made ’em that way. Dogs are not inherently bad. They are loving creatures and pit bulls have massive hearts. Love families. Love children. Honestly, they are the best dogs you can own. It is disgusting the way they’ve been smeared. All these breeders, these baiters…Don’t get me started.”
“Okay.”
“You’ve seen the ransom video, right?”
The Serologist takes a seat and shakes his head. The machine hum of two silver refrigerators is white noise. And the kitchen is white, all white. They look odd, these men like two crows, perched on stools in that shadowed room.
“How could you miss that?” Kip asks, stunned. “It’s been on every fucking news station for the past forty-eight hours. They took her Saturday and the video’s all over the news by Tuesday morning. Unbefuckinglievable.”
“I don’t have a television set. I like to go to the movies.”
“Well, let me be the first to describe it to you. It’s about three minutes long and looks for all the world like a God damned Islamic beheading tape. These faggots in animal costumes holding my daughter between them. It’s only at the end of this atrocity that they mention, in voice-over no less, that they want fifty million dollars.”
The Serologist groans. He asks, “Do they identify themselves?”
“They call themselves the RPA. Revolutionary Patients’ Army.”
“Interesting.”
“I have it on good authority that these people are a bunch of whack jobs who were busted out of a mental asylum ten months ago. Police won’t say that. Not yet. But my sources tell me it’s true.”
“Busted out by whom?”
Kip Tiller smiles. He says, “Their therapist.”
“That’s something new.”
“Tell me about it.” Kip takes another long drag of his joint.
“It won’t be hard to find these people. These guys, more than others, are bound to slip up. That’s what crazy is.”
“The pay will be as expected.”
The Serologist leans in. “We’ve worked together for a while now, but not in this capacity. Do you know who I am?”
“The man who gets things done.”
“Right. It’s like a Pandora’s box, calling me. Once I’m here, there’s no going back.”
Kip rolls another joint. “You can do this? This is a bit different than usual.”
“Of course.”
“Right.” Kip lights the new joint and drags on it. “And when you find her? The people that took her?”
“What do you want to happen?” The eyes shrouded in the Serologist’s cracked-pudding face sparkle with some electric current.
“Just that they suffer. Suffer unbearably and that you film it. I want to see it.”
The Serologist chuckles. “I’m open to anything, Mr. Tiller. And I’d be lying if I told you that I didn’t have my own little ‘film’ collection.”
“Good. That they suffer, that’s the most important piece.”
“No worries. This won’t come out perfect. What I mean to say is that a situation like this one, it never ends nicely. Things like this, well, they don’t come out in the wash.”
“You think I don’t know that?”
“No. Of course you know that. I just want to make sure it’s clear. Crystal. Because when I come back here for the rest of my money I want to get it. No excuses.”
Kip is annoyed. He says, “You just get her. Get her and you get your money.”
The Serologist nods. He stands to leave and Kip says, “I’ve got to be honest with you, these people scare me. Scare me something good. Who knows what they are capable of or what they want? What they’ve already done to her?”
The Serologist smiles. “Do you think I scare easy?”
Kip laughs and laughs and laughs at that.
The Serologist leaves the table and goes out the way he came in. Kip Tiller does not stand. He says nothing as he cashes his joint and closes his eyes. One of the pit bulls farts and Kip chuckles.
2.
It’s near nine and Laser Mechanic is lying awake pissed off at Lulu’s heavy breathing.
It is clear that Lulu is not a ninja.
She doesn’t have the breathing down at all. She’s huffing and puffing in the bed beside him like a tractor engine. He’s sure people across the street can hear her. Let alone the neighbors in apartment 5D.
Laser’s lying on his back, wide awake and controlling his breathing. Slowly letting the air pass through his nostrils without a hint of whisper or vibration. If Lulu were conscious she’d have to put a hand on his chest or her ear to his nose to even tell he was alive. He is that ninja.
It started out as a commando thing. When he was ten and lived in Elizabeth, Laser loved imagining himself as an undercover, household commando. Probably it was related to him first seeing Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Commando. He saw it at Andy Clifton’s place during a sleepover and even though he was appalled by the brutality of it, he loved the control Schwarzenegger had. The muscles didn’t impress him as much as the stoicism. The cold exterior. Those narrowed eyes. Schwarzenegger was a finely tuned machine. The one-liners—“Don’t disturb my friend, he’s dead tired”—weren’t funny to Laser; they were just calculated, perfected. Like math. He convinced his parents to take him to the Army Surplus store and get him some camouflage pants and war paint. He didn’t want a gun. The thrill of being a commando wasn’t about violence; it was about control.
Laser started lifting weights. Ten years old, eighty pounds, and he’s bench-pressing one hundred fifty pounds in the mildewed basement with a single lightbulb swaying overhead. That’s when the asthma first became pronounced. It had been there during bouts of flu and even with mild colds. Been there when it rained for days on end. When he went over to Todd Brixton’s house and lay on the comforter where the cats slept. Between lifts Laser would tug on his albuterol inhaler like it was a nipple. If anything the disease only made him push harder. If anything it was a sign that there was weakness in him, another hurdle to overcome.
Warriors