Vasco nods and moves off, quickly as he can. He wants to get away from her, and out of sight of all those women. It’s like some nightmare, all these women in robes watching him eat shit. In a moment, he’s practically running. Back to the Hummer, away from this place.

That’s when he saw the black kid, the one who looked like an ape. In fact, he was an ape, Vasco was sure of it, watching the kid move. An ape dressed like a kid. But he was still an ape. The ape was circling around the garden. Just seeing that ape made Vasco’s head throb where his ear once was. Without a conscious thought, he pulled out his pistol and started firing. He didn’t expect to hit the little fucker at this distance, but he needed to do something. And sure enough, the ape ran, scrambled, went behind a wall, and disappeared.

Vasco followed him. It was the damn ladies’ room. But nobody was around. The lights in the bathroom were off. He could see the pool, off to his right, but nobody was there now. So nobody was in the bathroom, except for the ape. He held his gun and moved forward.

Chung chung!

He froze. He knew the sound of a double-action pump. You never went in a room after you heard that sound. He waited.

“Do you feel lucky, punk? Do you?” It was a raspy voice, sounded familiar.

He stood there in the doorway to the women’s bathroom, angry and afraid, until he began to feel very foolish and very exposed. “Ah, screw it,” he said, and he turned and went back to his car. He didn’t care about the fucking ape kid, anyway.

From behind him a voice said, “My, my. Such a lot of guns around town, and so few brains.”

He spun, looked back. But all he saw was that bird, flapping its wings as it stood on the door leading to the bathroom. He couldn’t tell where the voice had come from.

Vasco hurried to his Hummer. Already he was thinking what he would tell the law firm and the BioGen people. Fact was, it just didn’t work out. The woman was armed, she was tipped off, someone had told her in advance. Nothing Vasco could do about that. He was good at his job, but he couldn’t work miracles. The problem lay with whoever tipped her off. Before you blame me, take a look at yourself. They had a problem inside their organization.

Anyhow, something like that.