My supposition was that the boy’s mother entered the house while he was engaged in coitus with the young lady. She assaulted them both with a hypodermic syringe charged with a substance that made them both more…pliant. She was restrained, and the placenta shoved into her mouth. She choked to death while the mother tied him into a hard wooden chair and rrrrutted with him until blood vessels under his scrotum burst against repeated violent contact with its edge. Crime and sex are inextricably linked, I have found.”
“I was wondering—”
“I’m sure you were. You’re a bright young man. She did indeed force her son to ejaculate into a plastic drip-feed bag such as is found in medical establishments, later to introduce his vigorous sperm into her bloodstream for the purpose of youth preservation. I suspect she bred him specifically for sexual entertainment and, in her twisted mind, the production of age-retarding chemicals. The girl was killed as instruction and punishment: you belong only to Mummy. The most fascinating detail, I believe, were the ligatures on his thighs—left, quite literally, by his mother’s apron strings. I considered meeting the woman, you know. A schoolboy’s uniform and some kind of cricket box to protect my precious scrotal treasures, and I would have been in like Flynn.”
“Why are you going to Los Angeles, Mr. Falconer?”
He broke into a beatific grin. “The game is afoot, my young colleague. I have learned of a sexual demimonde in Los Angeles.”
“No kidding.”
“Oh yes. But not the usual thing, no. These aren’t pissdrinkers or vomit-fellatio specialists, no no. I am talking of parties wherein persons possessed of certain diseases have young things from foreign climes shipped in for their filthy pleasures, and then take bets on which of them will die of the transmitted infections.”
“That’s horrible.”
“And one of these persons holds in false ownership a certain statuette, avian in appearance, hailing from Malta. My services have been engaged to retrieve the bird and—”
I fished my lighter out of my pocket and passed it to him. “Hold this for a second, would you?”
“Of course.”
He took the lighter. I punched him repeatedly in the face, and then told the flight attendants and surrounding passengers that I’d seen Falconer trying to set light to something in his shoes.
By the time we began to orbit LAX, Falconer’s face looked like bad steak. Everyone had had a go, even the old lady from five rows back, who tore up a plastic drinks tumbler and slashed him like she was a street fighter. I opened up a vomit bag and pulled it over his head. Trix slept through the whole thing.
Chapter 43
Leaning over Trix, I looked out at Los Angeles. An orange bowl inverted over the city. From a distance, you wonder how anyone can live there.
Stop-start shuffling our way through LAX security into Arrivals, she spotted something and pointed to me. An Asian girl in a business suit behind the cattle-fencing human funnel that pours people out into the hall, holding a clipboard with TRIX +1 scrawled in marker on the top sheet.
Trix grabbed my hand and tugged me through the crowds to the girl. “I’m Trix Holmes, and this is my plus-one. Brom sent you?”
The girl showed us a row of bleached teeth. I wouldn’t call it a smile. “Well, hi. I’m Blair? Brom’s assistant? I’m to drive you out to the house? Follow me?”
Bone-chilling air-conditioning gave way to a sweat-and grime-laden wall of hot air as we got out onto the street. I actually took a step back from the force of it. Blair struck out across the street like a native guide, giving the finger to cabs and limos as she strode toward the short-stay parking lot. A neutral silver SUV bleeped hello to her keychain, and she left us to throw our bags into the trunk and clamber in.
“I’m going to have to leave you at the house? I’m running late for my vaginal tightening appointment?”
Trix frowned. “Honey, you’re twenty-one if you’re a day. There’s no way in hell your vagina needs anything of the sort. Besides, everyone’s a different size. It’s just nature.”
Blair turned around in her chair and looked Trix up and down as if considering a circus freak. “Yeah, well. You’re from New York.”
Trix looked at me like it was my fault and leaned back in the chair. It was a long drive. On and off freeways, wending up and down ramp roads. My attention would drift, and then I’d look back out the window and