by F P Adriani
I stared at her serious face, finally noticing that a shiny sheen of sweat covered both her top lip and her chin. And her right hand was shaking on her black briefcase.
My eyes back on her face again, I said, “I don’t do dangerous.”
“But,” said Julianne fast, “I heard you do. You were in the news.”
Yes, I had been, and over an incident and a time I did not want to think about right now, or ever again for that matter.
The girl kept talking, making me realize that either she really was older than she looked—or she was much too mature for her age, or much too smart for her age, or maybe both.
“You can deal with thugs,” the girl continued. “Mister Onyx said you were the person to come to for finding people. I just went up to him when I was at the museum two days ago—and I asked him if being a security expert, if he knew what I could do about my mom being dead.”
My eyes widened at her mentioning Tan had pointed her my way: my instincts were telling me to ask her and her guardian to leave my office. There was something…wrong about them, or maybe about what they wanted me to do? I couldn’t tell which yet. But shouldn’t Tan have sensed something a bit off here? And if he actually had, why the hell had he sent the girl here?
This had been an ongoing argument between Tan and me: he wanted me to stop getting into dangerous situations; I wanted to get into whatever situations would make me money. What I wanted usually won out: certainly, no man would ever tell me what to do, no matter how much I respected him. Ultimately, I always did what I wanted. Fuck everybody else.
Still, I really didn’t want to get my ass killed; that would kind of spoil my days. So, recently, I had decided against an investigative focus for MSA and had been putting out more security-solutions advertisements.
Last month I’d scored MSA’s first semi-real small security job, which I’d contracted out to another security firm that employed the guards. I intended to be just the middle person most times: I and my employees wouldn’t do the actual guard work then; we’d just get a commission off matching the proper guards to each situation—a.k.a. easy money.
For months I’d been promising myself I’d only get involved in those simple security jobs and nothing dangerous.
Yet here was this girl Julianne tweaking my curiosity in ways it shouldn’t be tweaked.
So much for my promises.
My eyes roamed the girl’s face more carefully this time. Though we didn’t look alike, something about her reminded me of myself when I was younger: our faces held the same worries, the same pain—I, too, had lost a parent while very young. I’d lost both my parents. So I probably knew what Julianne was going through….
“She shouldn’t be dead,” the girl said to me now. “She wasn’t sick a day in her life! I need your help.”
“I’m not sure how I can help you. I know nothing about your mother other than what you just told me.”
I looked at Lori and was about to speak to her when the girl said in a rush, “I’ve got her notebooks. I found them after the funeral. They were hidden.”
My head turned back to the girl. “Hidden?” I asked, frowning.
Her head bobbed up and down—fast. “I’ve got a lot of money. You’d be paid a big fat amount.” She named a very lovely, very huge sum.
Dangerous or not, enough money for me to live on for a year certainly was a LOT of money…a lot of hard-to-pass-up money. I found my interest seriously peaking. …But then my anger just as seriously peaked at the girl’s next words.
“The thing is: can we trust you?” she asked me. Then she glanced over at her guardian, who was looking at me, very directly, her narrow brown eyes on my wide green ones—wide still because of the potential money involved, but also because of the potential insult.
When I spoke, my words to the girl were gentle—bitingly gentle. “Insulting people you want to work for you really isn’t a good idea, you know.”
Lori opened her mouth now. “This isn’t a normal situation, Miss Senda. Amy was both an astrophysicist and an archeologist. On her own she was working on several projects for years, one for nearly a decade. Lately she made even more progress. She located what she’d always been looking for. I only found this out when Julianne found the notebooks. I have one with me.” Her hand patted her briefcase. “But that’s where we have to be sure we can trust you, Miss Senda. There’s a map too.”
“Nothing I learn in here will leave this office,” I said. “Let me see what you have.”
She opened her briefcase then handed me a map—no, only part of a map. I raised my head to her. “I said you can trust me. You really think you should have torn this before coming here?”
She pointed a quick forefinger at the map. “That wasn’t me. That’s how Julianne found it.”
I looked at the graying-and-yellowing map, at the perfect perpendicular tear along one side, as if someone had creased it and laid a ruler over the crease before tearing. My finger absentmindedly stroked the torn edge; then my heart slowly began pounding harder as I looked over the map’s written and drawn contents.
I saw a huge chunk of Diamond depicted, with mountains shaped like triangles, oceans like big blue ellipses, sand seas like swirling white clouds. And on the map’s torn yellowy right end lay a crude drawing of The Astral Mountains, only the tear had rudely cut off part of them.
The map seemed to cover about a third of Diamond; I wondered if the missing part covered the rest of the planet. I also wondered if that part existed. Not that what remained appeared to be anything special. As maps went, it seemed hastily drawn, very incomplete.
I knew The Astral Mountains though; I’d grown up near there. And between two of those mountains on the map, I saw a circular heavily-drawn-in marker, in red.
DANGER, the image said in even darker red letters right below the red circle.
I had been so absorbed in looking at the map that I didn’t realize Julianne had come behind my right shoulder.
Now her pale forefinger pressed down at that DANGER circle as she said, “There’s where you’ve got to go.”
*
While my attention was still on the map, I asked them about the notebook, but they only shook their heads “no” in response. I wondered what had changed their minds. But I didn’t really need to see the notebook. The map’s DANGER sign was enough. But then so were the DOLLAR signs I’d been promised if I took the job.
I handed back the map to Lori. “You won’t give me enough details right now. And I can’t give you a firm answer right now. I need to think about this.”
Lori gave me their contact information; then they left my office a moment later.
I sat at my desk, staring out the big front window, staring toward the right at the beautiful young skinny oaks and the even skinnier red palella trees.
My office sat at the end of a street near a small park. Months ago I’d moved my living space to a hotel closer by; unfortunately, Tan’s house was over half an hour from my office and over an hour from my hotel. Or maybe fortunately his house was that far away because when I saw him there, the distance I’d have to drive home gave me an excuse to stay overnight at his place, which I’d hoped to do that weekend, before this new job opportunity had come up. Now, I didn’t know about all that….
As I was staring out the window, both Julianne and Lori moved into the view there. A tall blond man in a dark-blue suit had been walking behind them. But now, suddenly, another shorter man came up from the right and began grappling with the tall man.
My heart slammed into my ribs; I shot off my seat and rushed out the room, through the big outer office, into the long curving hall and then out the front door.
But when I’d finally reached them in the street, I was too late. What looked like the contents of a pocketbook were strewn on the blacktop surrounding the two women; Lori was struggling to pick up the items fast, Julianne was sobbing, and the tall man was now charging down the street after the shorter man.
“What happened?�
� I shouted at the women.
“The map—it’s gone!” cried Julianne.
*
“How the hell did that happen—those two guys?” I asked, glancing down the street, but I saw no one there now.
Lori shook her head at me. “No, John drove us here—he was guarding us—outside your door. Julianne wanted to go into the park. The other guy must have been waiting there. He punched John—grabbed my briefcase.”
My heart was doing that rib-damaging pounding again. “The notebook too then?”
Lori’s head did a second side-to-side shake. As she bent toward the ground now, her brown eyes warily glanced up at me. “Just the map and nothing else in there. I lied about the notebook.”
My suddenly soaring anger stiffened my back. I knew the two of them were bullshit. What else had they lied about? “So there is no notebook.”
“Oh yes there is—see?” Julianne said as she opened her brown coat and flashed me a big inside pocket. I could make out a hard rectangular bulging shape inside there.
“Why should I trust what you say?” I practically spat. “It could be a library book.”
“We can’t do this here—discuss this,” Lori said as she straightened up and began dropping things back into her pocketbook. “Where is John?”
“Where indeed,” I replied.
Just then, Nell and Roberto charged up to us. Nell turned frowning brown eyes on me as she said, “What the hell, Pia—you flew past us and didn’t even hear me call your name.”
“They were robbed,” I said, looking at Nell but tilting my head at the two women.
“So are you going to help me—take my case or what?” said Julianne, sounding older again. When I looked back at her, I saw her tears had dried up. Her face was all seriousness now.
“Like I said, I’ll think about it.” I watched her slow frown. Then I said to Roberto, “You and your gun drive them home. I’m gonna check round the corner there.” I jerked my head over to where the two men had disappeared.
Roberto nodded at me. I said goodbye to the two women, then I left them standing there beside Nell.
As I walked away, I pulled out my own gun.
*
Around the corner in the alleyway where the two men had run, I found zip, nada, nothing—zero. Zero people, zero briefcases, zero maps. The alley looked the way it always looked: damp, with a few garbage pails—empty, I looked—one grimy-with-frying-oil exterior restaurant wall, and sandy dirt scattered here and there on the sides of the faded broken blacktop below me.
My eyes hastily scanned for suspicious footprints in the dirt, but, really, I wasn’t a cop. I didn’t have the proper equipment for this shit. I did have some equipment from my old job, but that had been more about my avoiding leaving footprints rather than analyzing them.
I sighed heavily, stuck my gun back beneath my black blazer. I did not want to deal with this shit with this girl and her mother and her guardian; I smelled DANGER just as the map had warned.
I went back to my office, intending to call and leave a message for Lori Godwin that she should call the cops next time and not me.
But when I stepped inside my general office area, Nell had been waiting for me there.
“Jesus,” she said, “the day’s hardly begun, and already there’s a theft on the doorstep, and you’re taking off for dark alleyways.”
“Like I asked for this?” I said, flashing her a twisted frown. “Tan sent this kid my way—you believe that?”
“Actually, yeah, I can believe it,” Nell said, somewhat cryptically. For a moment I wondered about her tone, but I didn’t ask her to explain her statement because I was too busy dealing with feeling both uneasy and pissed at this day.
I looked at the wall behind Nell, at the peeling paint near the corners, at the yellowing light fixture above the desk, at the sticky wall-dust over the side file cabinets…. Really, this office was just a depressing-looking space. The park outside was the only pretty spot around here….
Did I mention my office was kind of a dump in a dumpy area? Well, it was kind of a dump in a dumpy area. And I really hated making Nell and the others come to work here—why I normally gave them only part-time office hours. Nell did half the paperwork at her place—not that I had tons of jobs to have tons of paperwork for. Plus, nowadays Nell spent a good deal of her time on her side-business: she made one-hundred-percent-from-Diamond-materials jewelry. Her artful pieces had begun selling quite well; at some point, she’d probably ditch this partnership with me—and I wouldn’t blame her for doing that….
I looked at her again, at her dark-brown wide cheekbones, at her gently frowning mouth. Her face seemed different lately, more filled-out-smooth. Actually, she looked the best I’d ever seen her look. And I said so to her—that she looked great.
As I continued staring at her pretty face, her mouth twisted into a little smile; then she finally spoke. “Pia-babe, you know, I came in early today because I wanted to talk to you about something personal, but I never got to because of your morning meeting.”
I shrugged. “All right. So talk now.”
“Pia-babe,” Nell said now, “the thing is…I’m pregnant!”
“What?” I asked, my face twisting in confusion.
Her palm lay flat on her belly now. “I’m pregnant—Derek and I are going to have a baby. Know what I mean? …Pia, you look a little faint or something, and I’m the one who’s pregnant!”
“It’s just—I’m shocked. Really—I’m so happy for you, Nell!” I hugged her then, not too hard though, my hands shaking on her back.
I really was shocked. Her pregnancy seemed to have happened so fast. Nell and Derek had met the same way Tan and I had met—yet their relationship had gone smoothly whereas mine and Tan’s had gone almost as rough as possible, and the roughness still showed no signs of smoothing.
When I pulled away from Nell, she said she was only just pregnant; the baby wouldn’t be here for seven months.
I smiled at her. “Wow…I can’t believe this—I mean, I don’t know what to say. I’ve never had a pregnant friend before. What’s the etiquette involved?”
Nell burst out laughing. I would have laughed too, but I suddenly remembered what had happened today, I suddenly remembered this whole business, this business that occasionally involved danger. A pregnant Nell and danger—I didn’t like this equation.
But before I could bring up the issue, Nell soon did—sort of. I wasn’t sure if she meant to, but I interpreted her statements similarly to what I’d been thinking: that MSA and Nell wouldn’t be mixing too well soon.
“I’m tired of playing the lovable-big-black-bear role,” Nell said. “Like at the mine job and with the you-know-what too.” She rolled her eyes upward; then her hand slid over her belly again where her new life lay. “I may be big, but I like the small things in life the best.”
“You’re your own person, Nell. You’re unique.”
“We both are. That’s why we click together so well,” Nell said, looking directly at me.
I smiled again. “I think I really lucked out coming back here. I don’t know where I’d be right now if I hadn’t.”
“You’d probably be somewhere else in the galaxy, kicking some dumb ass—hard.”
This time, we both laughed, at the exact same time and loudness. Then our laughing faded into an awkward silence, awkward on my end. I stared down at the floor.
“What’s up?” Nell asked me then, leaning forward and peering into my face, forcing me to raise mine.
Nell hadn’t done nearly as much undercover-type work as I had, nor had she been nearly as much of a muscle as I had. But she still had the sharpened senses of someone who’d been around the undercover block.
“It’s that girl,” I said, “that situation. I don’t want you around that kind of thing.”
Nell frowned, a touch of anger shifting her face. “The last thing I want is to be treated different because I’m pregnant. I want to do whatever I’ve been doing.”
> “Okay—that’s fine for you. But I don’t want to be responsible for my friend’s kid’s health. I can’t live with that.”
“So what should I do—spend the next seven months on an easy chair?”
“Maybe. Would that be so bad? You’ve been scrambling alongside me here, trying to get this place to fly, and it’s still barely left the nest. And I don’t mean to argue with you. I’m just concerned…that I’m still the same-old person, and danger follows me wherever I go. Constantly on my ass like a spouse who just won’t let up. And you’ve got your other business, don’t forget.”
“All right—look. Let’s compromise, Pia-babe. I’ll come into the office once or twice a week only—I’ll handle even more paperwork at home. You keep in touch with me there. Call me whenever—visit me whenever! You’re right about my other business—I really can’t keep up with the orders. IIII may need an assistant soon.”
“See? I was right,” I said now, but I felt sad as I said it. First Tan had pulled away from here, and now Nell. I seemed to be losing everyone important to me, like I was on my own yet again.
Part of my life’s corner-turning had been learning to appreciate how much I might need—or want—others in my life. Yet now it seemed as if those others were more in their own lives than they were in mine.
…Though maybe that was always the case with adults. Maybe I was too immature, maybe I had become too needy. Maybe I had to grow up more.
“I’m happy for you,” I said again to Nell. “And will I be an aunt someday soon then? You think that title would suit me—or not?”
Nell laughed, shaking her head. And I wondered what that shaking meant.
Then Nell said, “I love you, Pia-babe,” as she pulled me into a hug, and now I saw that what her head-shaking meant really didn’t matter.
*
A little later we sat down together at Nell’s desk while she started on the paperwork—the paperwork generated because of my morning meeting.
She asked me what she should specifically document about it, and at first I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t have much information to give her about that. I couldn’t. Or maybe I could.
