In Too Deep(145)

Mar de Napoli didn't look all that different from when I'd been there with Scott just a few days before. Still, it wasn't the same restaurant. The atmosphere seemed contrived, the rustic Italian cheer forced. I knew what was different, and it wasn't the music. It was not having Scott.

After Sophie left the apartment, I spent the next two hours alternating between fits of rage and fits of self-recrimination. How could I have been so damn stupid? Finally, I put it temporarily aside by contacting a few real estate agents, and setting up apartment viewings for the following day. My agreement was month to month, so I wasn't going to be out too much. Besides, maybe a slightly better apartment was needed, I could afford to not live in the same place I had crashed when I was an undergrad after all.

I had been sitting, nursing an ice water for about ten minutes when Mark showed up, looking nothing at all like Marcus Smiley. It was really the first time since he had rescued me from the club that I saw the guy that Sophie fell in love with, the real guy inside there. He was wearing a navy blue t-shirt and jeans, and looked like just a really handsome regular guy in his mid-twenties. "Hey, have you been waiting long?"

"Not too long," I said, gesturing. "Have a seat."

"Thanks," Mark said. "I'm sorry about what happened, Tabby."

"Can I ask you why you acted so fast, instead of talking with me about it first?" I said, pausing to allow him to order from the waiter who came by. It was still pretty early, just past five thirty, so the dinner crowd wasn't in yet. Other than a few golden agers in the corner, the restaurant was ours.

"Threat level and opportunity," Mark replied. "I drove by your place last night because I wanted to get eyes on him. Yes I was prepared to act, but I had anticipated having to tail and prepare the takedown. Sophie would have talked to you either way, but when he went back to his office instead of home, I moved. There wasn't going to be another easy chance like that for a while."

I nodded in understanding. When I was working the stock market, sometimes you had to make snap decisions like that as well. "So tell me the details that I didn't see on the video."

"What do you want to know?" Mark asked, thanking the waiter when he brought him his Coke. Mark took a sip, then set it down. "I'll tell you whatever I can."

"Tabby said you retired him. How?"

"Mix of drug therapy and psychological conditioning. The second dart I shot him with had a powerful mix of hallucinogenics and some other things that make the mind very plastic. It can't change his memories, not with the time I had, but it can change a few other things."

"Like what?"

"Like the fact he's now permanently impotent," Mark said. I felt a little side of me, the part interested in revenge, growl in triumph at what he said. Another side of me, the side that remembered the feeling of him inside me and the earth shaking orgasm he'd given me, recoiled in agony. "But even after that, he's not going to be able to go back to what he did."

"Why?" I asked, intrigued. I couldn't help it, the angry side of me was stronger than the rest of me right then.

"Any time he gets sexually excited by anyone other than his wife from now on, he's going to have some pretty severe physiological reactions, including a blinding headache, stomach cramps, and loss of bladder control. Basically, if he sees a woman who he wants to make a pass at, he'll piss himself and go blind for fifteen minutes."

"Damn," I said, impressed. "You could do all that with just an injection?"

"That and about eight hours of psychological conditioning using auditory inputs," he replied. "The player was specially made to play the track once, then melt and destroy itself, so they didn't even have a chance to recover what the exact commands were. All anyone would know is the effects."

"So it's permanent?"

Mark shrugged. "If not permanent, at least long lasting enough that he's not going to be able to do the same scam. I'm sure some really good psychiatrist could fix it in time, but he's going to have gray hair, jowls like his father and some other not so handsome traits by the time it all gets reversed. Oh, and I added a few other things to keep you safe from him as well. If he thinks getting aroused will be painful, you don't want to know what getting within eyesight of you will do to him."

I sighed. The waiter came, and we ordered a basket of cheesy garlic sticks, just a small appetizer, I wasn't ready to seriously eat yet. After we were alone again, I asked the next question on my mind. "Can I ask why you didn't do more?"

"You mean why I didn't kill him?" Mark said quietly. "He has family, and a child on the way. Perhaps it would be better for the child to not have a father like him, but I thought with a mother like that already, there was a small chance that it would actually be helpful. I hope that maybe Pressman turns to the right path, although I don't know. Also, I thought the message I could send by him staying in the condition he's in would be a better warning to those who might target the two of us later on."

I nodded, then asked the questions that had been running through my head since I saw the video Sophie had shown me. "What did I do wrong, Mark? Why do I feel this way? What the hell am I supposed to do now?"

The waiter brought our cheese sticks, and Mark offered me one with some marinara sauce on it. The cheesy tomato flavor awoke the growling little demon in my stomach, and before I knew it I had wolfed it down. Wordlessly, he offered me another before taking one for himself.