“Your cars?” the man said. “If you bring a car into my city, it’s my car.”

“Who are you?”

“You know very well who I am. I am Moreau. Dr. Moreau. Dr. Jack Moreau. I created you.”

Something wrong here, Ivo thought. The man on the beach didn’t talk crazy like this.

He adjusted the rearview mirror. The brown eyes flashed toward him, strangely glittering eyes. The eyes of a madman. Fear began to nibble at Ivo’s gut. He felt like someone who had set a possum trap and wound up with a bear.

What have we let into our car?

“So it was you,” Vuk said.

The man was shaking his head. “The beast flesh… the stubborn beast flesh creeping back.”

“Stop talking like fool. First you make fool of our boss, then you try to make fool of my friend Ivo and me too, yes?”

The traffic light on Sutton Place turned green as Ivo approached. He made a right and stopped at the red at Fifty-seventh.

“Ivo?” the man said to Vuk. “What kind of name is that? I didn’t name him that when I created him from a dog. And you. I created you from a donkey, I think. An ass. But I did not give you that hair color. And why would I try to make a fool out of you when you do such a good job of it by trying to look like a carrot? Don’t you own a mirror?”

Ivo could hear the strain in Vuk’s voice. “I can shoot off your knees now, but that would mean I have to carry you inside to speak to our boss, and later I have to clean up the mess. But once we are inside, the boss will want you to speak, and I will be very happy to be one to make sure you tell everything he wish to know.”

Ivo crossed Fifty-seventh, keeping as much of a watch in his rearview as he did through the windshield.

“You would do well not to anger me by breaking the Law,” the man said. “You remember the Law, don’t you? Are you not men? Has the stubborn beast flesh crept back so far that you’ve forgotten the law? Break the Law and it’s off to the House of Pain with you. I told you: I am Moreau.”

“You are no one,” Vuk said. “You are nothing. But you somehow manage to find yourself a fine-looking woman. Do you know what will happen after our boss is through with you? Ivo and I are going to come back and pay little visit to your woman. We are going to fuck her.”

What is Vuk doing? Ivo wondered, anxiety building like a pressure in his chest. Why is he taunting him? Doesn’t he see the man’s eyes? Can’t he tell that he’s completely insane?

And an insane man is capable of anything.

As Ivo turned onto Fifty-fifth he said, “I think that’s enough for now.”

“No, Ivo. Not nearly enough. I want him to know how we will take turns with his woman and how she will love it because she has never had real man before. And then perhaps we move on to little girl.”