Blood Sport

by Lisa Smedman

  I fished out the keystick for my car, then paused. I felt torn. Should I stay with Mama G, in case she had another lapse like the one just now? She seemed all right, but it was hard to tell. Lingering guilt gnawed at me. I hadn’t been there for my own grandmother, on the night she finally died after lying in a coma for two weeks. I’d been a Lone Star rookie then, putting in twelve-hour days, and had put off my hospital visit until the next morning. I didn’t realize that one night was all my grandmother had left.

  Back then, work had seemed more important. But after arriving at the hospital and finding only an empty bed, I’d vowed, in future, to always be there for the people I cared about. Even if it meant some inconveniences—like blowing a contract. Besides, Mama G had done a lot for me in the year I’d known her. When I’d been laid low with the flu and fever for a week last winter, lying out in bed like an invalid, she’d sponged my head and fed me hot chocolate. I suspect the cocoa was laced with “medicinal” herbs—it had tasted a little odd. But it had been one of the few things I could choke down, and it was made with love. You can’t buy medicine like that.

  “Are you sure you’re going to be all right, Mama Grande? I could cancel my first meeting . . .”

  As Mama G picked up the ceramic jar, shaking her head, I looked warily around for the missing snake. I didn’t want to step on it. Bad enough that one of her “serpent friends” lay dead in the trash can; I didn’t want to be responsible for injuring another one.

  “No, no. Cuídate, mí hija. ” She tried to usher me out the back door, but I insisted on going out the front way. I still didn’t trust the steps, and I wanted to make sure the back door remained locked—at least for a little while.

  Thanking Mama G, I stepped out into the drizzle and made sure she shut the door behind me. Traffic hissed past as I descended the steps and pretended to head for the sidewalk. I stole a glance behind me and saw Mama G in the window. I kept thinking she’d let the curtain fall, but she didn’t budge. She just stood there with the jar cradled in the crook of her arm, staring at me. There was no way I could sneak around back and remove the body of the snake from the trash can. I turned and headed to where my car was parked—and forgot all about the snake, until much, much later.

  As I stepped onto the sidewalk, my attention was briefly caught by a man and a woman who had just gotten out of a parked car and who were glancing up and down the street as if searching for something. Call it an ex-cop’s instincts, but they struck me as suspicious. I scanned their faces: tanned skin, dark hair, a slight Amerind cast to their features. They looked Hispanic, like everyone else in this neighborhood. I guessed their age as early twenties.

  The woman was pretty, with high cheekbones and long dark hair, but her expression seemed cold, closed. She wore a black skirt cut in a style that was popular a decade ago, a white blouse with a bright yellow flower pattern, and low-heeled vinyl pumps that looked brand new. The man was dressed in dark slacks, shoes that were cheap but polished, and a cotton shirt under a summer jacket that was too light for this damp climate. He looked overly muscular, as if he had synthetic muscle under that tanned skin. When he raised his hand to run it through his hair, I could see the slotted housing where a retractable spur had been implanted. I wondered if he was intentionally letting me see that he had bodyware. The pair looked clean-cut, but even so .. .

  I stared directly at them, letting them know they’d been seen, their presence in this neighborhood noted.

  The pair’s tanned skin and clothing much too light for our rain-soaked city marked them as out-of-towners. So did their car—it was brand new, one of the recently introduced two-seater Mitsubishi Runabouts. I could see a “Rent-a-Runabout” sticker on the bumper.

  I was debating whether to say something to them when the woman whispered to her partner and stuffed something she’d been holding in her hand into a leather purse that hung at her hip. I only caught a glimpse, but I recognized simsense chips before they disappeared into her bag. I wondered if they were BTL. I didn’t want that drek being dealt in my neighborhood. I’d seen too many kids messed up by so-called Better Than Life simsense. Adults too, for that matter.

  “Buenos días, señorita,” I said, catching her eye and trying to look like an interested customer. “Got any dreams for sale?”

  “Dreams?” She was a good actress. She seemed genuinely confused.

  “Dream chips. Brain strainers. You deal BTL, right?”

  “Oh.” Recognition dawned in her eyes. “Oh no. These are religious recordings.” She pulled some of the chips from her bag and offered them to me. They all looked identical, in plain yellow cases with red lettering over a multi-colored cross.

  “I see you have a chipjack,” she said. “Do you live in this neighborhood? Could I leave one of these with you and call on you next week to talk about our faith?”

  The male edged up on the other side of me. “Do you agree that the world has become corrupt?” he asked, an earnest look on his face. “That God has turned his face from us? Would you like to learn how you can survive the apocalypse that is to come?”

  The fanatical gleam in their eyes, combined with their squeaky-clean appearance, clinched it: they were missionaries. The type who go door to door saving souls. The last thing I had time for this morning was a religious debate. I waved the chips away, and the woman put them back in her bag.

  I mentally slotted the pair in the “no threat” category and muttered an apology for my suspicions. They’d have fun with Mama G, if they knocked on her door. She’d have no use for the simsense chips, but she’d have a wiz time talking religion with them. She’d probably keep them there for hours, arguing that Christ and Quetzalcóatl were one and the same.

  “Sorry,” I told the earnest young woman. “I only believe in Asphalt, god of parking. I’m going to make an offering to him now, to make sure I find a space where I’m going. Would you care to contribute to the cause? A nuyen in a parking meter is the usual tithe, although Asphalt also occasionally demands blood. That’s why there are so many traffic accidents.”

  The missionaries’ eyes widened and they both took a step back from me—as if I were the crazy one. At the time, I enjoyed the reaction—I liked messing with the minds of religions zealots. Only later did I realize that what I’d said had a special meaning to them.

  I smiled as I turned toward my car. “Potholes are the work of the devil,” I told them with a wink.

  As I climbed into my Ford Americar, I realized suddenly that the vice grips had eased their hold on my sinuses and that I could breathe through my nose again. Not only that but the rain had stopped—at least for the moment.

  I eyed my hand, which was just starting to return to its normal temperature, wondering . . . then I shook my head. Nah. The fact that my cold had temporarily gone on hold after Mama G’s vanishing-serpent trick and hand-dunking was as much coincidence as the rain stopping after I’d crossed my fingers this morning and wished that it would.

  There wasn’t any real magic involved, I decided as I drove away.

  It was the second incorrect assumption I’d made in that many minutes. I should have listened to my instincts, no matter how foolish they seemed. But it wouldn’t have mattered. For Mama G, it was already too late.

  2

  When I returned home that evening, I could tell something was wrong as soon as I saw Rafael’s bike. It’s a sleek Harley Scorpion with a distinctive gold-on-black paint job and plenty of custom work. Rafael dreams of becoming a pro in the combat biker leagues some day, so he’s always modifying the bike, tuning it and tinkering with it. The crowning glory is a flag from last year’s conference finals—supposedly the flag the Seattle Timber Wolves used to score the winning goal. The flag is valuable—and easy to boost, since it’s clipped to the back of the bike so that it wags in the slipstream like a wolf’s tail. Rafael always unclips it before he goes into the house. And he never leaves the bike lying side-down in the middle of the lawn.

  I stepped around the Scorpion
and took the steps two at a time. The front door was open, and from inside I could hear the sound of Mama G crying. Rafael was in my face as soon as I entered the house.

  “What did you do to upset Mama Grande?” he bellowed.

  I immediately thought of the dead snake. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t mean for her to see the snake. Pinkerton killed it and I couldn’t think of where else to put—”

  “What the frag are you talking about, Leni? What snake?” I paused. Rafael’s a big guy, topping two meters. Ork, but with an Hispanic cast to his features and sleek, dark hair pulled back in a pony tail. He’s bright, but doesn’t look it—his ork blood shows in a knobby brow, and his outthrust jaw gives him a belligerent, tough-guy look. It’s probably why he has so much trouble getting a job; employers won’t take the time to hear him out and realize that his wetware is fully functional. But he’s got a good heart. He really cares for his grandmother—even if he gets a little overprotective at times.

  “Slow down, Raf,” I told him. “Chill. First tell me what’s wrong with Mama Grande. What’s happened to her—and why do you think I’m to blame?”

  “See for yourself,” he told me, and turned so that I could squeeze past him. And that was a relief. Rafael’s wide as a door and solid as cement—you don’t try to push past him unless you want to get squashed flat.

  I hurried down the hall to the kitchen. It looked as if someone had trashed it. Herbs had been torn from the ceiling and scattered about, dishes were knocked onto the floor, and the motorcycle parts Rafael had been working on were lying by the door, as if the table had been tipped over and only recently been righted. Mama G sat on a chair in the middle of the room, clutching a piece of the ceramic jar from which she’d drawn the snake earlier. Her dress was soaking wet and a blanket had been draped around her shoulders. Downy white feathers drifted across the floor, but there was no sign of the snakes that the jar had once held. Like the first serpent, they’d done a vanishing act.

  I knelt beside Mama G and put an arm around her narrow shoulder. Tears spilled down her face, dripping onto the piece of painted ceramic she held. I saw with relief that her hands were undamaged and that her arms had only minor bruises—if she had trashed her own kitchen, at least she hadn’t seriously hurt herself. But at the same time I felt a pang of guilt for having left her alone that day.

  “What’s wrong, Mama Grande?” I asked softly.

  She shook her head. “I had to tell,” she moaned. “The magic .. . Lenora ... I had to tell her ... She made me ... I tried to ... I shouldn’t have ..

  She looked right through me. I shivered. “Mama Grande? It’s me, Leni. Lenora. I’m here. Talk to me.”

  “I had to tell. . The rest was a mumble.

  Rafael knelt among the debris on the floor and took his grandmother’s hands, wrapping them in his own. He glared at me, as if challenging my right to comfort her.

  “I found her standing in the front yard,” he said. “She didn’t seem to know where she was—she thought she was still in the Yucatán. She wouldn’t go back into the house—said it was filled with evil and that the spirits had abandoned it. I finally got her inside, but I still can’t get her to let go of that broken jar or to change her clothes. She just keeps saying you forced her to tell you something.”

  His nostrils flared in anger. “You didn’t ask her about Az . . . about her homeland, did you?” he rumbled. “You know how upset she gets when anyone mentions the civil war down there. If you stirred up old memories and got her upset. . .”

  The threat in his voice was unmistakable. I was glad Rafael and I were friends. He’d have flatlined anyone else without even asking for an explanation. I fought down my own anger at the accusation. It wasn’t going to help the situation.

  “That’s not the way it was,” I said. Quickly, I explained what had happened that morning, describing Mama G’s “cure” for my sinus cold—a “cure” that was still holding, spirits be thanked, although it was probably nothing more than coincidence. I also described her strange outburst. “She seemed fine when I left. The only thing I can think of that might have upset her was finding the snake in the trash can.”

  “Don’t be loco,” Rafael shot back. “Mama Grande loves snakes. She isn’t afraid of them.”

  “No, I mean ... I think it was a pet.” I stood and glanced out the back window. The garbage can was exactly where I’d left it, lid in place. If it was the dead snake that had set off Mama G, she’d have started her trail of destruction outside. But the damage was confined to the kitchen. It almost looked as if a struggle had taken place in the room.

  “They made me tell . . .” she whispered.

  “Calmate, Mama Grande,” Rafael urged. He was still trying to pry the broken bit of ceramic out of her hands. “We’ll get you dried off, and you can rest in bed . . .”

  I picked up on the change in pronouns right away. “They?” I echoed. I knelt down in front of Mama G, tried to catch her eye. “Who are ‘they,’ Mama Grande? Were they thieves? Burglars? Did gangers attack you?”

  Mama G stood up suddenly and looked wildly around her. Her attention became riveted on the floor, although it was clear she was looking right past the objects that littered it.

  “The hole! The hole in the earth. It’s the end. The end of the world! Oh blessed Virgin, the end!”

  “What is she looking at?” Rafael reared to his feet. “What’s upsetting her now?” He followed the path of Mama G’s wildly staring eyes, then stopped to pick something up. “This?”

  It was a chip case. I took it from Rafael and turned it over, holding it by the edges. Even though I didn’t have the equipment necessary to lift a print from it, old police habits die hard. It was empty. The simsense chip it had once held was gone.

  The case itself was made of cheap, glossy cardboard. The back was blank—it didn’t even list the studio where the chip had been recorded—but the front was printed a gaudy yellow with lurid red lettering. There was no title—just a long, rambling message in Spanish that sounded vaguely like a Biblical passage. It was printed over a cross with multi-colored arms of red, black, white, and blue.

  Heed the signs! it shouted in bold letters. The end of the world is at hand! Ravenous beasts, destruction by earthquake, wind, flood and flame. The end of our age and the beginning of the new era. But a few—those who keep the faith—shall reap the riches, even among the ruins. They shall be rewarded. Power and glory shall be theirs and they shall rule heaven and earth, hand in hand with those who shall rise.

  The text seemed to be saying that the coming apocalypse would be a good thing for the faithful—that the righteous would be taken up from the Earth and duly rewarded. A line at the bottom urged the reader to slot the chip and learn how to save his or her soul.

  The thing reminded me of a trideo infomercial I’d seen once, put out by one of the oddball Christian faiths. I couldn’t remember details, but the message had been similar: good Christians being called by God to experience eternal bliss in heaven. I’d laughed at the images of multitudes rising out of their graves—it was reminiscent of a bad horror trideo I’d once seen. I assumed this chip had contained something similar.

  I showed the chip case to Mama G, then pointed to the debris in the kitchen. “Was it the missionaries who did this?” I asked.

  She nodded mutely.

  It all fit. The young couple I’d seen earlier that day had probably boosted the religious recordings—and their nice conservative clothes—to use as a ruse to get elderly folk like Mama G to open their doors. I imagined them charming their way into her kitchen, then trashing things in an effort to scare her into telling them where her valuables were hidden. Except that neither she nor Rafael had any. Mama G, in her confused state, was blending the apocalyptic message she’d read on the case with the violence she had just experienced. No wonder she was terrified to the point of being incoherent.

  I started to explain this to Rafael, but something gnawed at me. There was one piece that didn’t fi
t. A rental car? Too easy to trace—unless it had been boosted. Most thieves were pretty stupid—I’d heard of one extortionist who sent his ransom demands using the telecom in the office of his parole officer, not realizing that the signature and time at the end of the message were fingering him. But these two hadn’t looked stupid, which made the rental car an unlikely choice. Those vehicles had a limited speed and range, and were rigged to send out a signal that told the rental company’s computers exactly where the vehicle was at any given moment. The car’s electronic brain automatically alerted the company and shut down the electric engine if the vehicle entered any of the city’s “no go” areas like Hell’s Kitchen.

  “I had to tell her,” Mama G whispered as Rafael put the blanket back around her shoulders and at last was able to gently pull the ceramic fragment from her hand. “Her magic went inside my head. She made me remember . . . She made me think of it.”

  “Made you think of what, Mama Grande?” I asked. It sounded as if Mama G had been the victim of a spell. But she didn’t seem to hear my question.

  Fresh tears poured down her cheeks. “She pulled it out of my head. I didn’t want to tell . . . But the spirits wouldn’t protect me. They weren’t strong enough. They were weak. I was weak . . .”

  She looked intently at Rafael, as if noticing him for the first time. “Eduardo? Where is the baby? You must take him to El Norte, before things get worse. He should grow up somewhere safe. Don’t worry about me—nobody will bother with an old woman. You and Luisa must go. I have friends who will help you.” She held up one hand, as if stopping a protest. “No, no! I will not hear it. You must go. This week. It is all arranged.”

  “Who’s Eduardo?” I asked Rafael.

  “She thinks she’s talking to my father,” he said. “She must think it’s the year our family fled from Aztlan. When I was just a baby.”