Touch of the White Tiger

by Julie Beard

  “Maybe she offers him something he can’t get anywhere else,” Soji posited. “She seems attractive enough, but Gorky has been photographed with some of Hollywood’s youngest and sexiest starlets.”

  “Lola went to prison for bookmaking,” Hank said. “Do you think they’re running some kind of illegal business together?”

  “No. I had to take her in last month after Gorky’s goons destroyed her apartment and killed her cleaning lady. She was broke and had nowhere else to go. That’s why I was suspicious when she recently bought new clothes.”

  We wrestled in silence over possible explanations that would prove Lola innocent. Finally, I leaned back in my chair and carefully crossed my arms over my bruised chest. “You know, maybe I’m making too much of this. I did a psychic reading for Gorky in exchange for the girls. When we talked, he seemed genuinely impressed and grateful to Lola for her psychic visions, though she had failed to help him find the Maltese Falcon—his version of it, anyway. Maybe he’s forgiven Lola and she’s just back in the fortune-telling business.”

  “Dressed like that?” Hank pointed to the glamour shot of Lola crossing the street in stiletto heels and enough glitter to light a casino marquee in Vegas.

  I held up my hands in surrender. “Okay, let’s take a stab at a worst-case scenario. Suppose she and Gorky rekindled a friendship—I’ll give her the benefit of the doubt here—when she contacted him last month. Then he decides to use her to keep tabs on me. He’s either paying her to give him information on me, or he’s treating her like a queen-for-a-day in the hopes that she’ll talk too much, which she usually does.”

  “No offense,” Soji said in her rich contralto, “but why would Gorky go to so much trouble to keep tabs on a small fish like you?”

  “Because he asked me to locate the Maltese Falcon when Lola failed to deliver. I told him that the statue was back in his homeland, Chechnya. But if my vision was wrong….” I dropped my face in my hands. “God, am I a fake psychic? Wouldn’t that be ironic? That’s what I called Lola for years before I realized she was the real deal.”

  “You’re being too hard on yourself,” Hank said, tipping back the last of his drink. “As usual.”

  I grabbed his arm. “No, Hank, I’m just trying to be logical here. I know I have visions and hear things that are right on. But it may be a hit-or-miss talent. Gorky warned me that if he couldn’t find the falcon in Chechnya based on my information, he would do me serious bodily harm. Maybe he’s trying to woo Lola to get close to me for the coup de grâce.”

  “But he wouldn’t have to do that if all he wanted to do was kill you,” Soji argued. “He could have any one of his minions pick you off in the dark without leaving a clue.”

  “Which brings us back to the assassinations,” I said. “I’d already concluded that it would have to be someone as evil and powerful as a syndicate boss, but I’d assumed it was Capone.”

  “Why?” Hank leaned back and shoved his hands in his pockets, relishing the role of devil’s advocate. “Why couldn’t it just be some demento fixated on retributionists?”

  “Maybe it was Cyclops,” Soji offered.

  I paused to mull this over. “I don’t think so. Why go to such elaborate lengths to hide your identity in three murders and then go ape shit in front of a bunch of retributionists and reporters? Now, the mastermind might have set Cy up to cause trouble, but Cy couldn’t have planned those murders. He was locked up in P.S. #1 until recently.”

  “Why a mastermind, Angel?” Hank persisted.

  “Because someone got into my bank safety deposit box and took my gun and delivered it to the scene of the crime. This same person monkeyed with my phone records. Those are two different legitimate private institutions that are difficult to infiltrate. To do that you’d have to be both well connected and criminally minded.”

  “As far as I can see, there is no reason to connect Cy’s attack with the murders,” Hank argued. “He’s obviously a loon.”

  “Yes, but Cy knew exactly when and where the CRS meeting was taking place. His attack was elaborately planned. My whereabouts had to have been divulged to this psychotic mole, either by one of my colleagues or by my mother, via Gorky. Either way, it’s not good.”

  This prospect was so bleak that no one could respond. Normally, my birth mother’s crimes and emotional misdemeanors embarrassed me, but I no longer had the luxury of that petty emotion. I had to nail down the real murderer soon or I’d be screwed.

  “Dad has been working closely with your attorney,” Hank said, trying to cheer me up, and it worked.

  “Really?”

  “Dad and Berkowitz have assembled a virtual war room of clerks, private investigators, ballistic experts, shrinks, you name it.”

  “Henry’s actually helping me?”

  Hank frowned. “Angel, come on. This is your foster father we’re talking about here. My dad. He adores you. It’s not exactly a family secret that you were his favorite.”

  Tears stung my eyes. I blinked several times, shrugging. “I know your folks have risked everything for my defense. But it’s one thing for Henry to foot the bill. It’s another thing for him to invest his time, his reputation. And I…I thought he might still blame me for Victor’s death.”

  “He might,” Hank said, as frank as usual. “But that doesn’t mean he stopped loving you. You are every bit as much of a daughter to Henry as Gigi. And don’t you forget it.”

  I nodded, moved beyond words.

  After Hank and Soji hugged me goodbye, admonishing me to go directly to bed, I took a long shower. The hot water burned my scrapes and cuts but sluiced soothingly over my throbbing muscles. I gingerly donned a loose nightgown, then went into the kitchen to call Marco.

  I just want to see if he has any new information on my case, I told myself, but myself didn’t buy it. I was growing increasingly agitated over Marco’s lack of contact. God, had he decided to blow me off at a time like this?

  When his voice message answered, I hung up, disappointment burning like indigestion. There had to be a reason he’d gone AWOL on me, but I wouldn’t try to figure it out now. I really was exhausted and needed rest. As usual, things would look brighter in the morning. Before I checked out for the night, though, I wanted to see how Cy’s attack was being portrayed in the news.

  “Lead story,” I said when my picture appeared over the anchor’s shoulder just after the opening credits. “No surprise there. If it bleeds, it leads.”

  I’d learned a thing or two about news judgment, or the lack thereof, growing up in the home of the dean of the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University. It would have taken a plane crash at O’Hare to bump me out of the top spot. Not that I wanted to be there.

  I splayed myself on the couch, watching a replay of what I had lived through just a few hours earlier. It was downright surreal. The reporter’s news package included shots of me being loaded into the ambulance on a stretcher, the Shadowman being hauled away in handcuffs, cop cars and flashing red lights everywhere, retributionists milling around like a convention of outlawed superheroes.

  The holographic images flashed in the middle of my living room, so lifelike that my survival instinct kicked into high gear. I had to grip the arm of my couch to keep from bolting. My heart pumped like I’d just run a marathon. I was just about to turn it off when the scene then shifted to a two-shot of the reporter and Brad.

  With the sound turned down, I couldn’t hear what he was saying, but I could well imagine. With his hands akimbo on a sequin studded white belt, his white shirt splattered with blood, and of course his cape, he made for a dramatic witness. His blue eyes danced as he entranced the reporter. I could tell by the way his lip curled smugly now and then that he was bragging about his rescue.

  “Sound. Full.” At my voice command, the digivision produced audio.

  “What makes you so certain?” The reporter’s voice came off camera.

  “Angel Baker is one of the most capable and moral people I know,
” Brad said. “She’s incredible. You should have seen her fighting off the Shadowman in there. The only reason she needed my help was because she couldn’t see in the dark.”

  “You’re from New Orleans. Perhaps you’re not aware that Miss Baker is a suspect in a double-murder case involving the mayor’s son. Does that change your opinion of her?”

  “I’m aware of it,” Brad said, bobbing his head with obvious, almost pitying disdain for the reporter and anyone else stupid enough to believe that I was guilty. “Let me tell you something. Angel Baker is innocent. Someone has set her up.” Jabbing a forefinger at the camera lens for emphasis, he delivered his last line to the television audience. “And the truth will come out.”

  That was the end of Brad’s interview.

  “TV. Off.”

  The room went silent. I just stood there, blown away by Brad’s generous, virtuoso performance. Clearly, he had matured a great deal since we’d spent that week together in bed.

  “Amazing,” I muttered. “Why couldn’t Marco stand up for me like that?”

  I padded into the kitchen for a glass of water. I lowered myself into a kitchen chair, every move precise and slow. I would definitely need another pain pill before I went to sleep. I let out a big sigh after what seemed like the longest day of my life.

  I flipped through Jimmy’s pictures again, amused over his choice of subjects. He had very capably followed my directions to photograph Lola. I was intrigued by the other choices he’d made on his own. He had been able to discern which passersby were worthy of scrutiny, like the protestors, and which ones should be ignored, like my neighbors. But he hadn’t been able to overcome the Rear Window subprogram imbedded in his mainframe. He just couldn’t resist taking a few shots of the neighbors’s windows, like Jimmy Stewart’s character had in the Hitchcock film.

  Engineers had made so many improvements in compubots it was almost scary. For years, robotics firms had proudly touted products that looked and felt like human beings, but reacted like computers. They were attractive, brilliant, fast and logical to a fault. As a result, the robotics industry had never really taken off in domestic settings. Human beings didn’t like hanging around walking, talking machines that were clearly and vastly more knowledgeable than they, but didn’t have enough emotional intelligence to figure out they were supposed to hide that fact. Plus, the early models were totally lacking in spontaneity.

  AutoMates, Inc. had been the first robotics firm to incorporate sophisticated “Gray Zone” reasoning and deduction abilities that enabled compubots to wing it, as it were, in circumstances that weren’t preprogrammed, and to show a realistic facsimile of emotions.

  Still, I’d noticed that AutoMates Classics, like Bogie and Jimmy, had a tendency to default to their prime film motifs for no reason and often when you least expected it. I should probably pass that feedback along to the company, since I was one of the few people lucky enough to have intimate contact with the Classic models for any length of time.

  That reminded me that I’d better try to contact the firm soon just to make sure I wasn’t going to be billed for Jimmy’s little visit. He hadn’t exactly been invited, though I would admit he had been useful.

  I put my glass in the sink and collected the photos, then found something in one of the apartment building photos that I’d overlooked at least a dozen times this evening.

  “Holy moley,” I whispered.

  I flipped on a counter light and held the photo under a bright, narrow beam. Unfortunately, a better view only confirmed what I thought I’d seen—someone standing in one of the windows across the street, taking a photograph of my apartment.

  I hurriedly flipped through the photos, collecting the two other apartment building pics. After close examination, I found a total of two still cameras and one video, all pointing my way.

  Someone was spying on me. And they weren’t fooling around.

  I decided drastic action was needed. I had to break into the apartment across the street and surprise the spies. If I could find out who was watching my apartment, I would probably also find out who had murdered Roy, Victor and Getty.

  But three cameras might mean three operatives, and I didn’t like those odds. I would need help. Mike was apparently still in old China Town. Who should I call instead?

  “Brad,” I whispered.

  My choice, which was immediate and instinctive, rocked through my consciousness like an earthquake tremor, signaling to my brain that all was not well in paradise. I had this vague but profound gut instinct telling me that while I could trust Marco with my heart, I couldn’t quite trust him with my life. It was a perverse distinction, and one that broke my heart.

  I wanted so desperately to love Marco, to be loved by him. Even to have a happily-ever-after with him. I would admit to that absurdly sentimental and boringly commonplace aspiration. But clearly that wasn’t my destiny.

  Like Jimmy’s, my mind teemed with conspiracy theories. I just hoped that when and if my new leading theory proved to be reality, Marco wasn’t behind the plot. It pained me to admit my suspicions about him, but I could no longer ignore them. Nor could I deal with them right now. I was too busy putting out fires.

  Brad was all too happy to come to the rescue for a second time in one night. I wasn’t sure his ego could handle the overload, but it was obvious when he strutted into my apartment, smoothing back his mussed, bleach-blond hair, that he didn’t share my concern. For a retributionist, saving someone from an act of violence was like a surfer catching the perfect wave. Brad was riding the big kahuna and wasn’t about to take a dive in order to play it safe.

  Fearing that my apartment might be bugged, I invited him down into the garden and showed him the photos. We discussed strategies and decided that he and two other retributionists would go for broke, break into the apartment, and capture the slime bags who were snooping into my life. With all the violence that had been directed at our colleagues over the last forty-eight hours, the time for discreet recognizance had already passed. It was time to bust some butts.

  Brad e-flashed Tad and Tom Crain, twin brothers who comprised two of the four members of the DCR retribution team. They arrived quickly, adorned with so many weapons I began to understand why some people thought retributionists were turning into assassins, even if they were used only in self-defense.

  Dressed in forest green flak jackets, camouflage paint and headbands, they looked like members of a Marines special ops unit, with one notable exception. In keeping with the Dead Corpse Rising theme, winding sheets, used in precoffin days to wrap the dead, encircled their waists and crisscrossed over their shoulders, giving them the vague look of Roman gladiators. All told, Tad and Tom looked like two dudes you didn’t want to mess with.

  Jimmy and I took our decoy positions in the living room. We set up a card table in plain view of the window to keep our spies busy while the guys snuck around to the back of the building. I wasn’t cut out for the role of lady-in-waiting and didn’t like it one bit. Everything seemed to be happening in slow motion.

  “Are you going to deal those cards or are you going to just shuffle them all night long?”

  “What do you want to play?” he replied.

  I glanced nervously at the window, then forced myself to look at Jimmy and pretend I was having a good time. “I don’t know. Anything.”

  “What do you like to play?”

  “Go fish.”

  He raised one provocative brow and began to distribute the cards. “Is that an invitation?”

  “No, it is not an invitation,” I said sharply through a smile meant for the cameras across the street. “I can’t believe you’re flirting with me at a time like this.”

  “Brad was flirting with you.”

  I picked up the five cards he’d tossed my way and began to organize them in pairs. “Brad is allowed. He’s human. You’re not.”

  Jimmy studiously organized his hand. “As I understand it, you didn’t mind it when Bogie flirted with you.”
/>   “Bogie!” I looked at him incredulously, then took a calming breath and smiled again. “Who told you about my association with him?”

  “Lola. As I understand it, you had much more than an association with his Rick Blaine character.”

  I shook my head indignantly. “That’s none of your business, and if you insist on continuing this conversation, Jimmy, I’m going to have to file a complaint with your programmer.”

  His eyes twinkled. “Oh, now, don’t spin off into a tizzy. Do you have any threes?”

  Chapter 17

  Body and Soul

  A half hour later, I was surprised to see Tom and then Tad exit from the building’s front foyer for all the world to see. Where was Brad? For a heart-stopping moment, I half expected to see a couple of thugs exit the building, dragging Brad’s body behind them.

  Thankfully, he appeared a moment later with Keshon trotting at his side. He ambled with apparent ease into the glow of the streetlight, where the three guys consulted, joked and high-fived one another.

  “Why are they being so obvious?” I wondered aloud.

  “They apparently have nothing to fear,” Jimmy replied.

  The men nodded and shook hands, then the brothers departed.

  I buzzed Brad in and met him at the top of the stairs. “Am I glad to see you. Come on in and tell me what happened.”

  Master and wolf strolled into my apartment. Keshon took one look at my PLD and started growling at it.

  “Keshon, back!” Brad commanded, and she circled around to the door and stretched out, still eyeing “Gigi” warily.

  “That’s just a contraption I’ve been meaning to get rid of,” I said and turned it so it faced the wall. “I growl at her sometimes myself. So, what happened?”

  Brad crossed his arms, assuming his normal wide and cocky stance. I noticed he’d changed since the meeting. He wore a black leather jacket studded with silver. In stark contrast, his bleached hair stood stiffly.