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  Then we all work until seventy and then it turns out that we must work until seventy-four. This is ridiculous. This is being done to us because we do not draw a line. We do not say, ‘no’. It’s time to say, ‘no’ to these robber-barons.

  They say there is no money for pensions. There would have been more than enough money in the retirement funds if the government had not allowed their pals in the banking sector to squander it time after time.

  They say there is no money for a dignified retirement of the hardworking, honest citizen, and yet there are always billions of dollars to give as bailouts for big corporations. There are always billions of dollars spent to wage useless wars on the other side of the globe and to finance regimes in the third world that hate us.

  We, the National Patriots, say that enough is enough. The politicians have become a closed elite that looks down at us with contempt. We the people must take the power back. We must take back our dignity and resurrect our belief that democracy really works.”

  Dave smirked. He hadn’t voted since he was twenty, but what he read just now did strike a chord. It struck the chord clumsily, but even that was more than could be said for the established parties.

  He opened the National Patriots website, but there was nothing there except a banner saying Down for Maintenance.

  Typical.

  He looked at the other news. In the criminal section, he saw a headline—Albino Killed for Medicine.

  Anton. With ominous foreboding, he clicked to see the full text.

  He let out a puff of relief. It wasn’t Anton. It was some other unfortunate albino.

  The remains of his body were found dumped in a park. Experts said this could be the results of an Eastern African superstition, that medicine made from the body of an albino can cure almost any disease.

  Dave ground his teeth and felt the pincer finally beginning to squeeze his skull, and together with it, a wave of racism threatened to blot out his normally relaxed view of the world.

  Then he suddenly realized that perhaps this was why Anton was a racist. He probably knew of this African superstition and his racism was a form of self-defense. After all, he could never know in the eyes of which Afro he was an animal with medical properties, to be chopped up, and sold off.

  Following up on his emotional momentum, he read an article calling for the deportation of all African immigrants back to where they came from.

  The author reminded the readers, that “Our basic freedoms were paid for by centuries of blood, sweat, and tears”, and that “people who are not willing to live by our democratic rules must not be given the chance to disrupt our lives.”

  Exactly, Dave thought. Then, to feel fair to himself, he read an article condemning fascist reactions to such incidents.

  The author reminded the readers that at the time of their grandparent there was the fear of the Asian peril, and at the times of their parents—the fear of the Muslim peril. Integration was the answer.

  This is different, thought Dave and rubbed his face. He should have shaved today.

  He looked again at the map with the body sites of the Season Girls and remembered his plan for the toy-basher. He dialed Fortham’s number.

  “Hi, Dave, what’s cooking?”

  “A toy basher...”

  “Ah, you’ve got him in your sight?”

  “I think so. I was wondering if you would like to cover my back when I try to use myself as bait.”

  “What? How?”

  “I sent you the preliminary report about the similarities concerning the three victims of break-ins.”

  “I haven’t read it yet.” Andy. Honest and blunt as usual. Where other people would evade and fib, he simply said how things stood.

  “Well, in short, they all bought the same toys from the same shop at the same time.”

  “You want to do this as well? When?”

  “Thursday night. After midnight. Around one.”

  “Wait, let me think.”

  Dave tapped his teeth with his pen and waited.

  Andy’s voice returned, “Okay, I’ll tell the wife that I’m on stakeout that day.”

  “Just don’t mention it’s in a sex shop. Ha, ha. Thanks, Andy.”

  “No problem. How’s the season girl curse, not caught up with you yet?”

  “Good of you to bring this up. Do you think there might be some sort of massive conspiracy behind all this?”

  Andy answered after a short silence. “I hope not. I certainly hope not.”

  “I mean, so many girls. Not two, not twenty, over two hundred.”

  “I know, I know, I counted them also. It could be just general inefficiency.”

  “To this extent? Are things that bad?”

  “Well, you know. Up to two thousand people disappear every year without trace from our cities. Traffic accidents kill and maim around five thousand. Hundreds are murdered and while the dead Season Girls were relatively few, they didn’t stand out so much. By the time the numbers accumulated, it became background noise.”

  “Some background noise,” Dave said with feeling.

  “Yeah. With the media not knowing, no pressure comes from the public to solve it.”

  “What about all these people who tried to solve it and got heart attacks or into various accidents?”

  Another silence from Andy. Then, “What can I say? I just hope we don’t get it the same way.”

  Some relief. Might as well have stayed silent. “Well, so do I. Okay, see you Thursday.”

  “See you Thursday. Take care.”

  “Yeah, you too.”

  The detective extricated himself from his desk without upsetting the paper piles too much and massaged his temples.

  Focus, focus, he repeated to himself, think about the toy-basher, about nothing else, nothing else. Things will wait their turn.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  The office of the National Patriots still had the look of freshness, which indicated that it had obviously been open no more than two weeks. It was in a prestigious part of the center.

  Natalie stopped in front of it and studied the party’s logo. It was unimaginative: an eagle surrounded by small white pentagrams, holding shots of wheat in its claws.

  She had tried to get some info on the party from the Internet, but its website wasn’t functional yet, and they weren’t even known well enough to have detractors in the blogosphere.

  She entered inside. It looked like a midmarket hotel lobby, with a new green-brown carpet leading off into the interior corridors and modernistic ruby colored chandeliers encircled by golden sunbeams. The walls were painted a wooden brown.

  To her left was a plywood desk with inlaid squares, one of which was already missing, uncovering a sandy colored interior. By this desk stood a young man slightly younger than her but in a serious suit and with a serious haircut. To his left lapel was stuck a badge with the National Patriots logo. From his chin up to his ears climbed a constellation of small red pimples, like mutated sideburns.

  “Hello, can I help you?” he asked her.

  “Yes, hi, I’m Natalie Martorino. I have a meeting with Mister Eberstark.”

  The young man studied her for a second. “Please come this way.”

  They went, walking along the endless carpet, took a turn to the left, past three open doors, and reached the fourth, on which hung a poster of the party. A plump, more or less young man with a serious mustache was looking into the future, which was obviously somewhere to the right and above the poster, and a hazy eagle loomed behind him.

  The young man knocked on the door and opened it, ushering Natalie inside. In the room were the very same plump man with the very same serious mustache, and an attractive woman of a little over fifty. They were sitting on both sides of a heavy oak desk.


  “Miss Martorino,” announced the pimply youth gravely. Both the man and the women stood up and smiled at Natalie.

  “Hi, I’m Ronald Eberstark, welcome on board,” said the man and pumped Natalie’s hand while looking sincerely into her eyes.

  This close, he looked older, forty-something, plump in face and in gut, but with the urgent facial expression that cautioned the world that he was capable of exploding into action at any given moment.

  Although his suit was expensive, it did not fit him perfectly at the shoulders and his pants were an inch short of his shiny Cabana brown shoes. The shoes were nice, admitted Natalie and felt a sudden impulse to kiss, and maybe even lick them. She quickly filed this impulse away.

  “In this together,” concluded Eberstark with a wink. Natalie smiled plastically. He was one of those people who had developed a winking tick from being amiable towards everyone.

  She hated amiable winking.

  It looked like this hint of general inefficiency infesting the HQ itself—obviously an expensive place to rent, but the possible impressive impact undermined by a cheap looking and tacky interior, just like Eberstark’s expensive suit was undermined by the way it sat on him—was indicative of the general disorganization behind the National Patriots movement.

  These people really were in need of help. Eberstark looked like such a dear. Annoying, but obviously it was just that no one had taken good enough care of him. He just needed someone better than the people around him, to help him organize his things, and to achieve his full potential.

  Again an image flashed, how she sits on his lap while... With a wince, Natalie evaded the thought again.

  “Hi, my name is Jane Donovan,” said the mature lady. She slid her warm and adventurously manicured fingers into Natalie’s hand. Then she flashed a smile, showing rows of whitened teeth. On her neck there was a tiger-striped, semi-transparent scarf tied into a loose artistic knot. Her lips were in a classy red-brown hue and there were some frivolous tiny stars sparkling just below her eyes. Her wavy blond hair was taut across her scalp and culminated in a formidable ponytail held in shape by a grid of tightly wound leather laces.

  “This is the young woman who our friend Blonski said can help us, if anyone can.” Eberstark nodded into Natalie’s direction while looking at Jane.

  I’m better than that old slut, Natalie thought and evaded looking at her.

  “Please take a seat, can we get you anything?” the old slut took the initiative and Eberstark remembered that he was in fact a host, and added fragments concerning sitting down and having coffee or water. Natalie asked for coffee and water with a smile, and Jane disappeared out of the door, calling for some Pete.

  Perhaps he was the coffee boy.

  Meanwhile, Eberstark was already proffering Natalie a small pile of various paper products. As she looked through them, she saw that they included a brochure about the National Patriots, their old mission statement, their statement concerning the retirement age and other issues, and a small book whose author was Eberstark himself. It was called, Time For Patriotism: Now!

  During her short career, Natalie had already ghostwritten two similar books and she skimmed through the beginning with a critical eye. I would have done it much better, she thought and again glanced at Eberstark’s shiny shoes.

  Eberstark himself was talking about his party. “We are part of a worldwide surge of national patriotism. Yes, a worldwide surge.”

  He clammed up and looked at Natalie and she nodded and scowled mentally. He was yet another of those speakers, who were like schoolteachers: incapable of presenting any coherent message unless someone kept nodding at certain intervals with an expression of understanding and agreement. She would have to wean him off this practice, if he was to have any degree of success during interviews and debates.

  After her nod, he continued. “We maintain relations with sister parties all over the world: in France, Britain, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Poland, Hungary, Denmark, Korea, Finland, Brazil, Greece...” Eberstark looked up towards the ceiling for a second, “...and Latvia.”

  “And Japan,” said Jane with a charming smile, as she sat down back in her chair.

  “And Japan, of course, Japan too,” agreed Eberstark.

  Natalie took out her notebook and began scribbling.

  * * * *

  Hours later, as she went out of the office, she finally allowed herself to grin foolishly. Now that she was free from his spell, she admitted that Eberstark looked like a dunce.

  Perhaps this was a disguise and perhaps he was a front for someone else. Dirty money? It didn’t matter. She would get to mould an election strategy.

  That woman, Jane, obviously was trying to get to know her in order to control her. A morning brainstorm of all things.

  Well...why not? She accepted the invitation.

  Natalie took a taxi, and opened her mouth to say her home address, then thought better of it.

  This day called for a little celebration.

  Besides, a lot of specific impulses had piled up inside her. The evening twilight was forming all around the edges of the artificial city lights and she felt something forming on the edges of her conscious self as well.

  “To Macedonia square,” she said. The driver grunted affirmatively and they drove off.

  Three transvestites had already gathered at the square, just at the entrance of a sex shop. Their young female customer far from surprised them, since in the last decade it was mainly young, plucky career women who were trying to out-compete men on their own turf, that came to abuse them.

  Natalie gave them a look-over and pointed at the blond one, who smiled with his pink lips. He looked like a good slut. Natalie went into the shop and bought herself a cheap but formidable strap-on dildo. She went out again with the inconspicuous bag in her hand.

  Ten minutes later, they were in the transvestite’s seedy room. She gave him the money and strapped on her strap-on.

  Ivana fluttered his eyelashes and got down on his knees. He lubed his anus and worked it open with three fingers, while Natalie watched, her nipples hardened, and her tongue quite unconsciously played with her lower lip.

  Finally, Natalie commanded Ivana to lick her heels. After that, she used the remaining forty minutes to fuck him hard, straining to somehow merge with the piece of plastic between her legs and feel with it.

  As she returned home that night, Natalie was quite happy. She organized herself a solo party, with wine, music, dancing, follow-up masturbating, the whole lot, until abruptly her strength deserted her again and she staggered over to her bed.

  As she woke up in the wee hours of the morning, Natalie was quite unhappy. She lay in fearful paralysis, helpless and petrified, and knowing that she did not even deserve the chance to send a prayer to the good Lord.

  She had sinned again, she had become too full of herself and it was all her fault for inviting disaster.

  The figures were again present in her room and now it felt like there were more than just two of them. As she listened to the dreaded hoofed guest walk around her apartment as if he owned it, suddenly she felt the ghastly touch of one of the night visitors.

  Unable to move or speak, all she could do is try to not breathe.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The man whose previous name was Alec, sat behind a curved transparent table in the Black Rose Chillout Place, and sipped his Blue Lightning energy drink cocktail.

  His facial features were yet again slightly different. He was cleanly shaven, had two large manly wrinkles running down his cheekbones, and his hair was gelled into a spiky shrub.

  He looked either like a man of thirty-something recreating the fashion of his childhood, or like a man of twenty-something, who had enough taste to participate in the small revival of that fashion.

  He was in a tight-fitting blue pullover and
in light green pants, all of which should be enough to help a prejudiced observer assume that he was closer to twenty than to thirty.

  After all, this was what the old slut was pretentious enough to write in her Take Me Network profile: ‘Men over twenty-five—don’t bother...’

  So, he had to be under twenty-five for her. Fine, he could play that role as well as any other.

  She was a splendid MILF. Fifty-six, according to her profile info, she had posed in kinky sex-wear and naked too, and as he had looked at her full loose breasts hanging below her attempt at a seductive smile his hands had itched to knead these soft bags of flesh.

  It wasn’t just that of course, what really made him establish contact was the set of three pictures in which she posed with a leather mask with a zipper on the mouth.

  At once a reference to the contemporary pop scene and to possible darker pleasures, it had shown him that she was the one to use to conquer the older women dimension.

  He already proved to himself that he could do to the twenty-something-year-olds and the thirty-something-year olds-whatever he wanted to. He only had to drive an older slut over the edge—and he would finally be completely sure of his top-notch quality as a man. If not forevermore, that at least for a whole year.

  There she was, a flamboyant figure with heavy curves sailing through the door.

  He waved with his leopard glove at once. With stolid dignity, the woman approached him.

  Electricity prickled his groin. He controlled himself, of course.

  Her blond hair was hanging loose with a suggestive ruffled quality to it and the tips were blue. Below her light brown leather jacket she wore a glittering black blouse, and her long multilayered orange skirt revealed not only corpulent hips, but also, from beneath it, two glittering silver boots. On her substantial bosom hung various metallic and glass trinkets: hearts, butterflies, keys, pens, and spiders. Closer to her neck were fake jewels of the anal beads type.