“Like the Bard himself done said, as you like it,” she replies. “Yeah, I saw ’em both. I talked with ’em both, but that’s the part you already know, and fuck all if I dare waste your precious time.”
“This was after you met Ivoire.”
“You know that, too. Yeah, it was after, down at Kehoe’s pub, but you also already know that. So, fast forward. Total cunt of a day, and mostly I was just wanting to get drunk, but I have friends who hang out there, so I was hoping to see them. Two birds, one stone. But that night, none of them showed, which was a bummer—”
“I’m not here to discuss your social life. Twisby and the twin.”
“Jesus fuck, lady. I’m getting to them, okay?”
The October wind is a wailing phantom through the bare limbs of the few skinny trees lined up along the quay. Ptolema shivers at the sound, though she knows perfectly well there’s nothing the least bit ominous about it. There’s nothing at work but her exasperation, exhaustion, and imagination. Nothing but the reports and rumors from Maine. That, and this Twisby person and the twins to set her nerves on edge.
A red deer on a coin.
Cervus elaphus scoticus.
Deer Isle.
Odocoileus virginianus.
The Commissioner has warned her time and again not to let it get inside her head, that miasma, the muddling aura that surrounds every last agent of the X. But Ptolema knows it’s exactly what she’s done. The redhead is talking; Ptolema curses and wonders how much she’s missed in the lapse.
“ . . . not the same shade as mine, but more like an auburn. Tied back. She wasn’t drinking anything, and she hardly said one word the whole time. It was mostly the twin, mostly this Bête girl said what was said. It wasn’t all that much, mind you, but it was enough. Frankly, more than I wanted to hear, seeing as how Ivoire and I were already close enough to friends. Well, as close as you get to making friends these days, right?”
Ptolema quit smoking nearly fifteen years ago, but she almost asks the redhead for a cigarette. She’s still shivering and tries to stop. It’s a sign of weakness, and you never let an Xer see that kind of shit. They drink it up like nectar.
“I can’t recite it word for word, but the gist of it was Bête knows it was someone on our side made her sister sick, someone on our side set up this whole masquerade about her sister having been kidnapped. Put it in Ivoire’s head—brainwashing, menticide, thought reform, hypnosis, don’t ask me—that she’d lend her not inconsiderable talents to the cause and march off to that unholy fucking shitstorm in Maine, or else her sister would be tortured, raped, ravaged, tagged and bagged, whatever. That it was the X sending Ivy the goods.”
“The drugs?” Ptolema asks her, and the redhead nods.
“Ivoire, she told me it was just pills at first, but that wasn’t enough. The pain was way beyond vikes and percs, you know. And, from what she said, it was like whoever was in back of this operation knew that, which is when the heroin started coming, instead.”
“But Ivoire’s never seen who delivers the packages?”
“Nope. They just show up. Sitting on a fence post with her name written neatly on the brown paper wrapping. Or tucked into a knothole in a tree she just happens to pass. Shit like that. Happenstance. But every time she’s running low, the deliveries show up like clockwork. Tick tock.”
“And now it’s heroin.”
“Yeah. Not as if she had any say in that. She told me when they cut off the oxy, she scoured the whole goddamned island, top to bottom. But after the looting and the fires, wasn’t nothing left. Piddley-shit, one-whore place only had, what? Two drugstores to start with. Fuck it.”
Ptolema rubs her hands together. The gloves aren’t helping at all. If the cold bothers the redhead, she’s doing a good job of pretending it doesn’t.
“And her sister knows all of this? Bête?”
“Miss P, I’m pretty certain that’s what I just said. We’ve . . . they’ve . . . got her buyin’ into that whole utilitarian, greater-good crapola. Hook, line, sinker. There’s her sister out there, her fucking lover, sick as a dog and probably dying, and now she’s a junkie, and there’s hardly ever a moment she doesn’t seem terrified about what’s happening to Bête, but Bête, this Twisby woman has her full fucking cooperation, wrapped around her pinkie finger. Nothing’s going too far.”
Ptolema stops rubbing her hands together—it’s pointless anyway—and she says, “This can’t be the first time you’ve seen them pull this level of shit on someone.” The redhead is quiet. She doesn’t answer the question that, to be fair, wasn’t really a question. She doesn’t say whether she has or hasn’t seen this sort of shit before. Which, Ptolema knows, means that of course she has. It’s de rigueur, business as usual in the trenches of an invisible war that’s never had honor or a code of conduct or a Geneva Convention and never fucking will.
“Go on,” Ptolema says.
“That sounds an awful lot like an order to me,” says the redhead.
Ptolema rubs at her eyes. They feel as if they’re turning to ice. “Sorry. I honestly didn’t mean it to,” she says.
“You watch that tone, then. Where was I?”
“Twisby appears to be controlling Bête, and somehow they’re both controlling Ivoire.”
“Right, so at first the Bête twin, she was all puffed up, pleased with herself and these sick machinations, pure, undiluted braggadocio. But then she mentions someone called Sixty-Six, apparently another good lil’ factotum shipped off to the Pine Tree State. That was about the first time Twisby perked up. Shot Bête this ugly stare, reproach, you know. Disapproval. But not like it was a secret that Bête shouldn’t have let slip. More like Twisby is carrying a beef of some sort with this Sixty-Six. More like that. Maybe. I don’t know.”
Ptolema stops rubbing her eyes. She’s afraid they might shatter if she keeps it up, the way a rose dipped in liquid nitrogen shatters when struck against a hard surface.
“You know who this Sixty-Six character is?” she asks the redhead.
“I got some intel. Not a lot, ’cause her profile is buried in lockdown. But I fished up some tidbits. She was deployed shortly before Ivy. They met afterwards. Sixty-Six’s not much older than the twins. Twenty-ish, so about the same age as the twins. She spent some time in a mental hospital in upstate New York. Her parents had her committed when she was just a kid. But, out of the goodness of its heart, JS sprung her.”
“You know why?”
The redhead looks annoyed, shakes her head, and flicks the butt of her cigarette at the river. A trail of embers follows it down.
“How the hell would I know a thing like that? I’m sure there was some reason deemed sufficient and necessary to keep everything moving smoothly as shit through a goose.”
“Okay, so Twisby doesn’t like Sixty-Six.”
“Not if that glare meant anything. But after she gave Thing Number Two that nasty look, Bête’s whole demeanor changed. You’d have thought someone flipped a light switch in her soul. So, right off, seems to me Twisby has Bête on a short tether. But, as I said, this twin gets all twitchy, flinching, not half so talkative. Went virtually catatonic, then and there. I’m not ashamed to admit, gave me the willies even more than I had them already. That’s when the taciturn Doc Twisby begins speaking directly—”