Chapter Twenty-One: Part One
Juan-Carlos let Dee and Carrie know by text message that he was on his way up. A few minutes later, Dee opened the door to find a hunched, drunken vagrant slumped against their doorframe, obviously crippled and on his last leg. Ignoring her, he was scratching industriously at something in his groin when his radiating stench penetrated her consciousness; a nauseating and acrid mixture of stale wine, rancid body odours and God knows what else. He looked up at her just as she grasped the door to push it closed, grinning with a rotting set of yellow and black teeth at the horror on her face before straightening up and saying, ‘Give us a kiss then gorgeous!’
‘JC?’
Seeing him transform in front of Dee, Carrie cried out, ‘Bloody hell! JC? Is that you?’
Bowing elegantly from the waist, he said, ‘Underneath all this crud, I am he.’ There was no mistaking his voice, but from his matted hair and bushy eyebrows down, his voice was the only thing they recognised. Dee couldn’t hide her horror as she stared at the ugly weeping sores on the right side of his nose, face and neck. Walking into the apartment, he reached into his mouth and slipped the coloured and moulded thin plastic covers from his teeth, revealing his normal white smile and enjoying the girl’s incredulity.
Still shaking their heads in disbelief, and trying not to breathe beyond bare necessity, the girls quickly showed him to Kate’s bathroom before opening every window they could. Juan-Carlos emerged almost an hour later wearing the smart suit and tie that Edison had left earlier in the day, and carrying a large plastic garbage bag, sealed with tape. ‘It’s the only way to keep the smell contained and fresh for next time.’
Carrie asked, ‘You want to smell like that?’
‘Hell no! I prefer to be clean, but a good disguise covers all the senses. A soak – a homeless alcoholic – will always strike a discordant note if they don’t stink, even if people don’t recognise why. When the odours are offensive enough, it buys you space, and the smell is all that people will remember of you. You see, people’s memories only store so much sensory information about any one thing. The trick is to make sure the dominant sense of that memory isn’t vision.’
Dee said, ‘There is no way I recognised you at the door. I was ready to slam it in your face!’
Juan-Carlos smiled at her and said, ‘In context, that’s the best compliment I could get. The trick is to look so down and out that people filter out your existence. Soaks are often anti-social, smelly and regularly ask for money, so people don’t want to see them. Typically, they are physically weak and represent little obvious threat, except to their own kind. You know, I’ve had two other homeless guys with beautiful souls try to help me out with shelters and kitchens down there? One even brought me a cup of soup and a bottle of water from the charity kitchen of a local church. This disguise puts me on the lowest rungs of the ladder of society. The general populace is too far up the ladder and do their best to cancel “us” out.’
‘I was looking out the window all morning, where were you?’ Carrie asked.
‘I will give you a hint,’ JC said. ‘I saw you rack one cake and do the white icing on the other one …’ He was looking at Carrie with teasing eyes as she studied him before shaking her head. Juan-Carlos looked out of the window. Without pointing, he said, ‘Keep looking out towards the other side of the park and just use your eyes in case we’re being watched. From the near entrance, see that second big tree? Follow the path behind the ice-cream stand to the left. Look under that next thick bush back from the path, at the highest point of the ground. Sean is lying right where I was. Just keep your heads pointed away from where you’re looking.’
Despite knowing where to look, it still took a few moments for the girls to spot the observation post. The man looked unconscious. His ragged clothes broke up his outline so effectively that they found him hard to focus on, even after they’d seen him. Shaking their heads, they headed for their bathroom to finish getting ready. A few minutes later, Carrie said, ‘Dee, will you please leave Suzette alone and let her get on with her job.’ Sliding her phone back into her purse, Dee looked back at her with a sheepish little smile. Carrie kissed her and said, ‘They’ll be fine, babe. They know what they’re doing. We trained them, remember?’
~~~~~
A middle-aged man pulled up in a town car just before JC walked from the building. Juan-Carlos casually looked around and got two ‘all-clear’ signals, one from his previous position, and another from a roofline on the other side of the small park. He patted his pockets as if checking for keys and wallet before turning to open the foyer door for Dee and Carrie. By the time he glanced back in the direction of the car, its driver was already climbing into the taxi that had followed him there. He ushered the girls into the still-running car before sliding into the driver’s seat.
Once they were moving, Dee asked, ‘JC, is the threat still real? Could he just have vented some anger and gone away?’
‘There is always that possibility. Natalie has done almost a year’s worth of profiling on him, along with a couple of others who share his specific pathology. She thinks that there are too many triggers happening for him to leave it alone now. His sociopathy makes him incapable of identifying with anyone else’s humanity, which is why he’s so dangerous. He is also a total narcissist. His special combination of pathologies makes him the only real occupant of his world, and that same combination of pathologies makes him reasonably predictable. Kate means nothing to him, but Kate’s resounding success and public undoing of his perceived victories represents the strongest of insults that a broken psyche like his can perceive. Think of any time his authority was challenged, especially in public.’
‘JC, I will not tell you how often he dragged Kate down in front of us. Prick is the only name we use in company. Don’t take him lightly though. He is a fit, strong, capable man, and he’s supposed to be an expert in some martial art.’
‘I never assume an adversary is anything but superior to me in every way, Dee. Assuming anything less will get you hurt.’
‘Rick said something similar the other day.’
‘Same training, same reasons. We’re not going to let anything happen to any of you. I just want to make sure that I’m the one to catch him if he comes. Rick is normally a very controlled man, but he’s clearly head-over-heels in love. I don’t know if he can be as cold as he’d need to be if he physically gets hold of Schivello first. None of us want or need the drama that could follow that.’
‘I saw something when he was talking on the phone the morning this all started. It was like a dark shape wrapped around him, but coming from him as well. JC, that was one of the most frightening things I’ve ever seen. It even felt like it looked at me for a moment. We all saw it, even a lady who lives up the hall.’
JC was quiet for a long moment before he said, very gently, ‘That is why I have to be the one to catch him, and not Rick.’
‘What was it?’
‘Grandmother calls it the other self, or the shadow self. You know how a lion can have a cub biting it all over and just take it? The lionesses can snarl and snap at him and he’ll just growl and walk off? Its light innate self is with its pride. That same lion is also a supreme predator. Its shadow self is its other side, the one that protects, hunts and kills.’
‘I know we have nothing to fear from Rick, but it felt like a very real thing.’
‘It is. Normally, only those very close to someone can see it. Your neighbour has probably seen it in someone she’s known in the past so she is sensitive to it. The deprogramming and reprogramming we’ve done on Alegria does not take that aspect away, it just gives us more control over when and how we let it out.’
‘Can we change the subject please?’ Carrie pleaded, ‘I’m getting goose bumps on my goose bumps.’
‘Gladly,’ JC said, ‘I heard some buzz about a good news phone call that Kate got this morning?’
‘A project her old firm was working on BP; that’s Before the Prick. It was given back to her. No bids, no questions, just here it is, now make it happen. From what Kate and Rick were discussing, it’s a really big deal.’
‘Good!’ JC said with finality. ‘How are you guys doing with everything?’
‘We miss her already, of course. With The Prick’s crap? We have never felt safer or better cared for, thanks to our personal flock of James Bonds. Except for the little things like not going for a walk in the morning and the new door locks, we haven’t really thought too much about it. The three days off have been wonderful, and it has been brilliant getting to know Ricky better. He is so nice!’
‘He’s a solid guy. He’s my blood-brother from my other mother, so I am biased, but I have never, not ever, seen him like he is with Kate. He doesn’t even look twice at a cute arse in the street any more. He’s turned into a boring old man.’
‘You next?’ Dee teased.
‘You know, if I could have the same thing they have? Hell yes. Otherwise? Hell no! The problem is that even at a basic level, I haven’t found a girl who’s even half kept my attention for more than a week or two. Based on the women already in my life, I guess my bar is set pretty high to start with. I’ve never even had a girl really grab my imagination and interest beyond a glance or two. I know that sounds terrible, but it’s the truth.’
‘On this subject, you know Giselle has you in her sights?’
After a pause, he said, ‘Thank you for telling me. I will have a gentle word with her as soon as it’s appropriate.’
The rest of the drive passed in good-natured teasing and stories. As the girls had their first close discussion with JC by himself, they delighted in the quality of man they found him to be. Whilst he was manoeuvring their car into a parking space, Carrie leaned into Dee whilst looking in JC’s direction, and whispered, ‘Isabelle?’
Dee’s eyes widened. Nodding, she said, ‘Wow. Oh my God, yes. Yes.’ They squeezed each other’s hands in agreement. Carrie’s younger cousin, Isabelle, had been raised with her for much of her childhood. Although she was currently on another continent, the idea of Isabelle and JC ignited the imagination of both girls. They just kept nodding to each other and smiling.
Noting their grinning giggles, JC wondered what was going on as he let them out of the car. He insisted they were not to touch the doors themselves, telling them, ‘Tonight, you will be treated as the wonderful ladies you are.’
~~~~~