Chapter 41: Don’t Disturb the Monkey

“There you are ... Easy, Gene...” Holly’s voice was distant, as if through water, but Gene recognized it immediately. His head felt disconnected from his body, something like coming down from an acid trip. Gene’s eyes refused to open, but with something of an opiate sensation rushing into his system, it didn’t really bother him much at first. “Easy, Gene,” Holly repeated, “give it a minute to really kick in...”

What felt disconnected was suddenly squashed together, violent motion of a thousand images became vivid inside Gene’s head. He felt nauseous and retched. Hands held his shoulders. Was he still on the bed? He couldn’t tell.

Images, memories, conversations, threads came together to form a narrative in his brain. Real or not, Gene wasn’t sure. There was a factory and Charles Utah watching from a hill. He showed Gene and someone else diagrams and schematics. Is that Poppy? Gene had never met her, but the memory seemed too real to be false.

The schematics were blurry, chalk dust on smashed berries, nothing distinctive there. He heard a feminine voice, excited, frightened. In his mind he turned to see an olive-skinned woman gesturing wildly, features blurred but familiar. Utah responded as he always did, with calm and just a little too-much confidence in his righteousness. The woman wasn’t buying it, becoming angry.

Gene stumbled and fell to his knees, at least that was the scene in his mind. On the bed, in the now, his legs twitched and he heard Holly again, but his brain was fixed on letting the scene play out.

It shifted as he lost his balance. Gene felt scrapes and bruises forming, trying to catch himself. The woman was beside him then, yelling something frantically. Gene saw Utah’s feet above him on the rise, the man dashing away quickly. Hands grabbed his shirt, four or five or six, strong hands. They got the woman, too. Gene struggled but was unable to free himself. In his mind, he blacked out.

The scene shifted again. Bright lights and a small bottle on a sterile metal table next to him. He was alone. He felt claustrophobic when he realized his arms were strapped down. Gene called out, his voice muffled, but no one answered. After what seemed like an eternity, a short, stocky black-haired man strode in and leaned close to him. “This won’t hurt a bit, Shay,” the man said.

But Gene felt the pain as soon as the man touched him. Burning, icy pricks started at the base of his skull and became sharper the closer they got to his forehead. Were they ripping off his scalp? Gene tried to move his hands to check and again found them restrained. The pain eased off quickly, and the man said, “Now we come to it.”

Gene felt his thoughts thicken. Images in his brain became vivid for a few seconds. He saw the woman who had been with him and Utah and Poppy. Tamara?! It was his wife, of that there was no doubt. But the images soon faded in the memory, growing muted and distant, soon lost completely. Gene in the now looked on as his early brain erased one detail after another, first of Tamara’s presence that day on the hill overlooking the factory, then of other details. Poppy’s face. He had met her in person! Then of more and more. Schematics. Conversations. Plans. The Chancellor! The man who he would later know as Victor was there in his head several times over, but each one of those memories were lost to the Gene of that time.

After countless such erasures, Gene felt thick and heavy. The man there told him, “And one final thing for you today, Shay. A key.”

The prickling, tingling pain in his head retreated most of the way, a dull sensation of ice and sharpness remaining around the back of his skull. The man moved Gene’s chair so that it was turned slightly to the left, more upright, Gene’s feet on the floor. The man leaned forward, only two or three inches away. Gene watched his lips moving but couldn’t hear the words. They seemed to be repeated, each cycle starting with a pop Gene could hear and feel in his head, then ending with what felt like the onset of a strong opioid washing into his body.

Over and over, the man repeated something. Slowly, so slowly, the words began to form out of muted tones.

“Du ... on ... go ... boree...”

“Du ... eh ... turb ... onk ... uh ... gol ... amber...”

“Dun ... ehturb ... eh ... monk ... weh ... uh ... gold ... amborin...”

“Don’t ... ehturb ... the ... monkee ... with ... uh ... gold ... uh ... tambourine...”

“Don’t disturb the monkey with the golden tambourine.”

Gene in the now shot upright, eyes wide and straining. “Jesus Christ! I know how to unlock what Tamara knows!”

Holly stared at his face, as serious an expression as he’d ever seen from her.

Behind her, Gene saw Bridgewater lean over, an even look held confidently, and the man said, “Now this gets really interesting...”

“Are you sure this is the place?” Tamara asked, squirming a bit from her straining bladder. They stood outside what looked to be an abandoned bakery somewhere north of Rome, the street light with traffic, a handful of old men and a couple of women slowly moving along nearby. Hannigan was restlessly pacing in small circles, and to Tamara’s eyes looked quite uncertain and uncomfortable to be so exposed.

“This is the place. She’ll be here.”

Tamara watched a couple of children rushed down the street and disappeared into a dilapidated building which may have once been a government office or might have served in some other official capacity. Then two old men followed them at a brisk walk. “I get a sense this isn’t a place to linger, Marcus...”

Hannigan nodded, silent, his eyes scanning the hill to the north. “I know.”

A high, feminine voice, hissed quietly from inside the bakery, the accent heavy of Eastern Europe, the door only an inch ajar, “Get in here!”

Tamara slid inside after Hannigan nodded to do so, the man following a step behind.

The interior of the old bakery was as dark and dreary as the storefront, dusty and dingy and smelling strongly of mildew and decay. A woman stood close by, tall and thin, cropped dark-red hair, black sunglasses covering her eyes, a black body suit making her slender frame look sleek.

“Marcus,” the woman said evenly.

“Petra,” Hannigan answered.

“You never did much learn,” the woman said in her clipped accent, “to blend in.”

“I didn’t have any spiderwebs and chipped brick to add to my look,” he mused sarcastically.

She chuckled darkly, then turned towards Tamara, a mild sneer in her tone, “You must be her.”

“This is Tamara. She’s the one they are trying to find, yes.”

Petra nodded, then said, “Follow me. Quickly.”

She led them out the back door and through a washed-out alley, most of the pavement riddled with holes, the dark dirt below visible most of the way. Petra walked at a brisk pace with Tamara right behind her, Hannigan bringing up the rear. She led them to a small sedan and climbed into the driver’s seat. Hannigan motioned Tamara to the back and climbed into the front passenger side.

Petra pulled off slowly and turned down a dirt road not far away. Hannigan said, “Any more news of Bridgewater?”

“Some. He is in Italy. Genoa, we think.”

Tamara asked, “Who is we?”

Petra laughed but didn’t answer the question. “He won’t be there long. No idea where he is going next, but I can get you closer to Genoa.”

The windows were down and the breeze was a loud whoosh in Tamara’s ears. Hannigan practically shouted, “Has anyone followed us?”

The woman shrugged, “Don’t know. Probably. Nothing definitive seen yet.” She caught Tamara’s eyes in the rearview mirror. “There’s water in the bag at your feet.”

Tamara’s bladder strained, “No, thanks ... I’m floating back here...”

“You’ll have a moment for that shortly. We’re not going far.”

“How are you getting us to Genoa?” Hannigan asked, “I doubt the way is clear for us to go direct right now...”

Petra guffawed, “Hardly clear that way, this is true. We’re heading to Ladispoli. You’re going by boat.”

“I owe you another one, Petra,” Hannigan muttered just loud enough for Tamara to hear.

“I hope this favor doesn’t cost me a marriage like the last one did.” Petra caught Tamara’s eye again, a bitter grin on her face, “I expect Marcus didn’t bother to tell you about me.”

Tamara shook her head. “Nothing, really.”

Petra chuckled without mirth, “Just like Marcus. He seems to want to forget that he was once married to me...”

“We have to do this fast and orderly,” Henderson told them. Finch was a bundle of nerves as they sat in the ugly white van, the ragged, torn seats catching his pants and poking sharp plastic points into his thighs and butt. “We’re being watched, I’m sure, but Bridgewater wants it to happen right now ... Now or never, it seems.”

“Dad’s there?” Lauren asked from the seat in front of Finch.

“Last I heard, yes.”

The van lunged forward at a speed a touch too fast for the narrow, winding street which slid down from the large set of hills to the north. Finch could feel his stomach turning over, both in anticipation of seeing his father again, and from the way Henderson seemed to relish trying to see if the van could turn a corner on two wheels.

“Can you believe it?” Finch asked his brother beside him, “Dad!”

“I know!” Logan replied. “I never thought we’d see him again.”

“Me either...”

Logan leaned closer, grinning, “Think Lauren is really going to sleep with him?”

Finch smiled, “Probably...”

Logan laughed, “Yeah, probably...”

“I heard that,” their sister hissed as she leaned back over the seat ahead, “keep your voices down!”

Finch nodded, chastised, but couldn’t help sharing a smile with his brother. He knew that, right that second, Lauren was probably playing out fantasies in her head, and her lovely little pussy was growing wet thinking that their father might want to get into her panties like Finch and Logan already had.

“Don’t disturb the monkey with the golden tambourine ... Hmm...” Bridgewater leaned back from where he’d been looking at Gene over Holly’s shoulder.

Anna said from beside the bed, “Is that the passphrase?”

“Unsure,” Bridgewater replied. “Possibly. Or instructions. Or a red herring. Hard to say. I’ll get Silver on it.”

The man left the room and Gene’s head felt a mix of thickness and clarity. Something had unlocked inside him, and whatever he’d just recalled seemed to have freed him from the grip of whatever had been done all those years ago by Baron Quick. Freed him momentarily, at least. “So... minover,” Gene tested the word and didn’t feel his head explode, “set me off, the phrase behind it, anyway ... and now we’ve got some other rabbit hole to go down...”

“So long as there’s always a new rabbit hole,” Holly told him, her hand resting on his thigh as she sat beside Gene on the bed, “then we’re always making progress.”

“One day, we’re going to fall down one with no bottom.”

“Maybe ... but it hasn’t happened yet, Gene.”

Anna moved to the door, following her father, “I’m going to see to our plans. We’ll be moving before nightfall.” She left the room and Holly and Gene sat quietly a moment.

“So what happened?” Gene asked, “With Bridgewater. You thought he was dead.”

Holly gathered herself, absently stroking Gene’s thigh. “Dad found out about Victor and Whitehead just before Armenia. Victor thought Dad was a threat, that he was working out things before Victor was ready to be outed. He’d tried to kill Dad once already, though only later was it clear that was Victor. So ... to protect himself ... and me, he and Anna arranged his ‘death.’”

“How exactly did he think that would protect you? Wouldn’t Victor have suspected your father would have possibly passed on what he learned to you?”

Holly shook her head. “Victor is arrogant. He thought I was his lackey, not Dad’s. His little blonde fuck toy, I suppose. But more importantly, Dad had, without me knowing, started creating an appearance of distance between the two of us. He planted rumors about me that played favor with Victor, made it seem like I was not likely to share Dad’s confidences. It was enough, it turned out, for Victor to keep me around, the chances that I might discover something of Dad’s plans made me valuable ... at least until Victor discovered, just before your stay at his mansion, that Dad was alive. Then he wanted me dead.”

“And Anna was in on it the whole time...”

“The whole fucking time...”

“That sucks ... you not knowing...”

“Suck ass, Gene ... But we’re past that now.”

“Seems a little fast to be past that. You’ve only known your father was alive for a few hours. You almost killed your sister back there...”

She turned towards Gene and tilted her head. “Shit happens, Gene. You of all people should know that. They did what they did because they thought it was best. I’m not happy about it, but right now, we’re all in danger. Victor is closing in, and he’s not the only one. Dad said Utah is now hunting your wife.”

“Fucking Utah,” Gene growled. “I knew it was too easy for him to be dead. That guy is a fucking escape artist, more lives than a goddamned cat.”

Holly nodded. Suddenly, she pushed Gene to his back and straddled his hips, her tight black pants stretching as she leaned down to kiss him.

“Fuck, Holly...”

“Yes, ‘fuck Holly.’ That’s what I need right now, Gene.” She began to fumble with his zipper, fishing out his cock before he could protest further.

“Right now? I thought we were in danger!”

“Haven’t you learned about me yet? Haven’t I taught you already? I deal with all this shit, all this fucked up shit, in two ways. One ends up with someone dead. The other ends up with you inside me. Take your pick...” Holly grinned wickedly as she stroked Gene’s dick to life.

She rose over him, yanking away her pants, the smell of her body thick and pungent. Holly sat down on Gene, taking his cock into her slippery pussy. He groaned, no longer protesting as the heat inside the blonde’s cunt squeezed life into him. She put her hands on his chest and started to ride him rapidly.

Holly leaned down and kissed him passionately, her pussy sliding up and down his length. She started to shudder, riding him faster, faster. “God, Gene ... Fuck! I love fucking you!”

Gene wondered, only briefly, if it was her father’s cock she really wanted, but it mattered not to him. On one hand, it was a pleasure in the middle of a whirlwind of strange things, something to distract him if only for a moment.

On the other, he just wanted her to hurry the fuck up.

Holly’s orgasm came in strong rolls of her hips, her back arching, her head thrown back, a light moan voiced towards the ceiling, “Ohhhhhhh ... Ohhhhh ... Mmmmmm ... mmmmmm ... mmmmm...”

Gene felt her slow and grow still, his cock throbbing inside her but nowhere close to release.

“Want to cum?” she asked with a smile.

“Not right now...”