Anna Tane had read me pretty good. I'd been her instrument and she'd played me like a harp. She had counted on Bando Nicos and his rage, and there she'd been smart. What she hadn't counted on, though, was Cap Brady, Jak Edge, and the Law. She had thought to have two of her father's enemies destroy each other. Instead, we had joined forces. I wasn't smart enough to know why. Maybe it was because we had the Law. Maybe because we had good people running things. Maybe it was because we could see beyond the immediate moment. It didn't matter. She was down, and we had defeated her when we didn't even know we were fighting her or what kind of war she was waging. What's more, right then she didn't even know she had lost the battle. Another battle, however, was coming up.
Stays frowned as he leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. "I don't get the connection."
Marantha waved Stays into silence and faced me. "What clued you, Chief? How do you figure she came from the Hand?"
"When she ran out on Kegel, Carlo and the Hand is where she went to ground." I chewed on my lower lip and shrugged. "She comes out of nowhere, ruins Kegel, tries to ruin both Kegel's gang and the Razai, then she leaves him flat right after arranging to have him invaded. The Hand's the only bunch that gains."
Stays shook his head. "I agree, but it doesn't sound like much. If I was on the jury, I wouldn't bet my life on it."
"There's one thing more," I said. "Just before she released me she wanted to remind me I was nothing, that I was no big deal, that I was not a pezzo." I looked at Margo. "She used that word: pezzo. Hand jobs are the only ones I know who call a mokker that."
She nodded. "You're right."
I looked at Stays. His frown was complicated by one raised eyebrow. "You're right."
"So you added two 'n two," said Marietta, "an' came up with a genuine blue belly cop hunch."
"It still isn't much," I said. "When I say it out loud it sounds like nothing. All my flags are up, though."
Marietta stared at the table top as her wig began smoking. The Magic Mountain was doing some of her own addition. After a bit she leaned back, pursed her lips, and faced me. "Chief, what do you figure the odds are that when the fightin' starts, it'll just be Iron Lee facin' us, all by his lonesome?"
Now, there was a streak. Why would Carlo and his little girl arrange to screw only Kegel's gang and the Razai? "The ex-Kegeleros and the Razai tangle with Iron Lee, we kill each other off, the Hand wipes up the remains, and Carlo is boss from the Golden Ocean to the Southern Divide, his territory tripled. It makes perfect sense."
"What about Yani Comini and his men?" asked Stays. "Why that?"
"He and his men would be left all alone fighting both the Razai and Iron Lee," I answered. "Carlo figured Yani Comini was in a position to make a grab for his power. He's afraid to do anything permanent about it because of the loyalty of Comini's men. He could wipe them all. He's got enough troops for that. It would be too expensive, though, and would've left him wide open to be hit by either Kegel or Lee. This way Kegel, Iron Lee, and the Razai wipe out each other, General Comini and his men are caught in the middle at little or no cost to Carlo, and that's the end of Rico."
I leaned forward, grabbed the back of Marantha's chair with my left hand and pushed myself up until I was standing. My leg was stiff as hell, but it didn't scream. I was probably still riding the aftershock of some pill.
"Brother and sister crowbar, if we're going to turn this thing around, there are a couple of things in the box. First, we have to convince Nance and the Colonel what's going down. Next, we have to sell it to Iron Lee and his squats."
"An' what we got for proof," said the Magic Mountain, "is Carlo an' Anna have an initial in common, and the gut stringin' bitch used the word pezzo."
Lame. It sounded so lame.
Stays, his arms folded, rested his elbows on the table. "You suppose this is all so Anna Tane winds up the big boss? Is she after Carlo's job, too?"
It made perfect sense to me, until I heard Lauris answer quietly, "No." I looked at her and she wasn't so wired anymore. Teardrops streaked her cheeks as she kept her pain-filled gaze nailed to her lap. "I think I know her. If she's Carlo's daughter, she doesn't want to be boss. She wants her daddy to love her." She looked at me. "I mean love her, not take her to bed. She wants her Daddy to love her. To be proud of her. To respect her." The youngest RC on the force turned to her right and buried her face in Marietta's bosom. As the Magic Mountain wrapped her arms around Lauris, the girl shook the compartment with sobs.
I felt sick to my stomach, then dizzy. I lowered myself down until I was again sitting on the bed. It made sense, what Lauris Nhandi had said. As much as anything in this universe made sense, that did. Carlo had founded a gang and made a life for himself based on murdering all the colors he didn't like, and making sex slaves out of the angel cakes, forcing them to do all kinds of depraved stuff, beating and torturing them to death if they refused. Those particularly favored got to become part of Carlo's personal pussy parade. Consequently children were produced. Time passed, the children got older. Carlo was boss, he could do anything he wanted, and he thought with his dick. Anna Tane was one of the most gorgeous bits of eye candy any world had ever seen. Did the boss of the Hand sexually abuse his own daughter? Is the grass green? It came to me, that old image from the night horse, Anna Tane with tears in her eyes, blowing away like a sand picture in a high wind.
Some basic equation in my head shifted. My heart had been replaced; my program wiped; my power pack drained. I wanted to hate Anna Tane; needed to hate her. I didn't want to understand her. If I couldn't keep my hate alive, I didn't figure there was much point in putting off Prophet's payback. The purpose of Bando Nicos was done.
Stays pushed back his chair, stood, and pointed with his thumb toward the door. I nodded at him and he was gone. He'd fill Nance in on our thinking, what there was of it.
There were other things that needed doing, but right then there wasn't anything more important than hanging onto Lauris while she screamed. Margo and Marantha joined Lauris and Marietta in one of those silly group hug things, except this one didn't look so silly. There wasn't anything in the universe I wanted more right then than to climb into the middle of that hug and mix my tears with theirs. But I didn't figure Bando Nicos had the right.
See, when his turn had come, Bando Nicos hadn't cried. He hadn't felt the pain. Instead, Bando Nicos had picked a sick old whack, strangled him, and beat off his head with a rock. I couldn't be a part of that hug. Prophet's ghost hadn't yet validated my ticket.
Dizziness washed over me, and I should've let myself pass out on the bed. The one thought I couldn't bear even for a second right then was remaining in that compartment. I pulled myself up, grabbed my parka, and cripped my way out the door, using the walls, chairs, and table for crutches.
Once outside in the dark I stood on the back porch and held onto a roof post and the porch railing as the wagon swayed. I could just barely make out the lead critters in the team pulling the following wagon. Armed squats dogged it single file up each side of the trail. As I put my parka on against the cold, there came a soft voice out of the darkness. "Hi, Chief." The accent was bent, like a Chicano who'd learned English from a Swedish Armenian. The guy must've had eyes like a cat to tell it was me in the dark.
I looked down at the auto-toting shadow walking just to the left of the wagon's porch. The chup was nothing but a sheet, his face lost inside his hood. "Hi," I answered.
"How're you doing? The leg hokay?"
"Fine." I put another lobe on line, but I couldn't place the voice. "Who is that?"
There was a quiet laugh. "Oh, you never heard of me, Chief. Ky Rubin. I came in with the sharks from Duat." He was quiet for a second, then he said, "I like to shake your hand. Hokay? It'd mean a lot to me."
"Sure," I heard myself saying. I leaned over the railing, we shook hands, Ky Rubin waved, and I waved back, the confused frown on my face hidden by the night. I couldn't figure out what was going on.
"Hey, Chi
ef," called another quiet voice, the accent strictly Noo Yawk. "How's the leg?"
"Okay," I answered as I attempted to ease the pain. "How are you doing?"
"Great." The shadow laughed. "I can't believe I'm really talking to Bando Nicos."
I felt my eyebrows climb as I slowly shook my head. "Trust me."
After an embarrassed silence, the shadow waved. "Don't worry, Chief. We'll collect Alna's payback." Another silence. "So long."
"So long." He was swallowed up by the shadows.
The night was full of soft voices. Old, young, male, female, a few of them bringing a translator, a few who should have but didn't. They asked about my health, expressed sorrow about Alna, swore to get Anna Tane and the Hand. So many seemed thrilled to meet the real Bando Nicos in the flesh, like I was some vid star or a pol running for the big cob. I couldn't figure out how much of the fog in my head was from the bugs in my leg and how much was the words drifting in on the night air. It was crazy, and it was making me crazy.
I backed up against the wall next to the door and slid down behind the railing until I was seated on a bale of desert sheets, my cripped leg stuck out in front of me. My head rocked against the wall from the motion of the wagon as I focused on the pain in my leg, grateful for the diversion. But the pain wasn't bad enough. In a minute I was back to demanding of Bando Nicos an answer to "Who in the hell did those people think they were talking to?" I felt ashamed, guilty, confused, like a fraud about to be found out.
A brilliant thought slithered between my lobes. Maybe I should pop another thumper. It brought back to me Kegel's tent, Alna trying to tell me what I needed to hear, me beating my lights out on the hard ground just to stop the pain in my gut and the noise between my ears. Sure, pop a pill. It was seductive, that promise of oblivion. Every feel-good deadhead, alk, and powder puff in CSA had fallen for that promise. Only later did they find out that pain killers don't kill pain; they only postpone the arrival, allowing it to train and muscle up in the pain gym.
My headache split open in an array of multicolored explosions. My stomach churned and I tried to keep my mind off it. I didn't want to barf. I was just getting used to not stinking all the time. The only thing that could crowd out the sick feeling was to allow myself to fall into the despair I felt about Alna's payback and how I couldn't force myself to hate Anna Tane.
The emptiness and desolation almost made me want to go back to the pain and nausea. Desperately reaching for a spike to throw in, I remembered what Noo Yawk had said about Alna. "Don't worry Chief. We'll collect Alna's payback."
That was it. That was the job. That was what Cap Brady had been trying to pound through my skull back there in the Big Grass. Hating Anna Tane wasn't the job; killing her wasn't the job. I was a law officer, not a psycho killer. I wasn't supposed to kill her because I felt like it. I was supposed to kill her because that was the job that needed doing. The job wasn't revenge; the job was justice.
Justice for Alna and Anna Tane. Justice for Prophet and Bando Nicos.
I sensed someone standing in the doorway and for a moment I pulled my fuzzy thoughts back from the night. The person sat beside me on the bale. It was Lauris Nhandi. She wrapped her hands around my left arm and rested her head against my shoulder. In the dark she was only a silhouette. I leaned over and kissed the top of her head as I felt the tears spill from my eyes.
"Hell, kid. Reality sucks." I felt her head nod as she wrapped her arms around my waist.
"Sometimes," she said.
I put my arms around her, held her head to my chest, and watched the Eyes of the Spider smear through my tears. My feet began going over my head, the picture blurred, the universe whizzed around, and I felt myself slipping down that fathomless dark hole that I prayed would lead me to that gleaming black tunnel with the light at the end that would make me complete, bring me peace, and fill my heart with love.
I stood on the road, facing the castle, the army of ravenous skulls at my heels. I took a hesitant step toward the castle. Far away there was the voice of a tiny angel calling me. "Chief?" it said. "Bando Nicos, you chicken-yellow greaseball sonofabitch! Don't you give up! If you give up now, I will personally chase you down to Hell to throw fire cubes at you!"
The angel sounded a lot like Margo. I made a note to tell her that should I live so long.
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The Point of Justice
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Shadowy images drifted by in the haze. Mercy Jane looking down at me, her eyes red. It was gray outside, heavy rain thundering on the wagon's roof. Whoever had built the wagons had done a lousy job. The roof leaked and my covers were half soaked. The sound of the rain shattered my mind, the wagon still rocking as it was pulled through the mud, the curses of the critter drivers blistering the night air. My eyes opened. I saw that the roof wasn't leaking. I was sweating. My eyes refused to focus.
Mercy Jane was calling me names. The names didn't register on my ears. All that registered was that she was ranking me with badmouth I'd never heard before and didn't understand. To think that there was a curse word that Bando Nicos didn't know—not just one, but crowds of them. I had a nightmare that I had forgotten how to understand English and it frightened me so badly it startled me awake.
Mercy Jane was looking down at me, the tiredness in her face making her look very old. "You just try and die on me, you taco-sucking son of a bitch," she said. The left corner of her mouth pulled back into a tiny smile. "I guess that shows you."
My head and leg almost screamed with pain, but I made another note to point out to Margo and Mercy Jane that they were developing real potty mouths, and that was no shit.
All I could gasp out, though, was something I hoped sounded like "Water."
She put a straw in my mouth and I sucked on it. Cool, sweet liquid filled my mouth. It was like apricot nectar, but not thick. "Good."
"It comes from a bulb that grows here in the mountains," she said. "It looks like it helps fight some kinds of infections. How do you feel?"
"Like someone ripped off my leg and beat my brain to death with it."
"It should ease off soon. I gave you a thumper in the juice."
As she was saying it, I could feel the edges begin to soften. In another few seconds I'd be touring the galaxy. It pissed me. I couldn't afford to lie around all the time powdered out like Pill Phil. There were things I ought to be doing. Preparations. Something. People to see, places to go, executions to execute. As the edges began to drip, I figured screw it and took another sip.
I relaxed and the muscles that had been tensed up against the pain began to cramp. Mercy leaned forward and began rubbing where my neck joined my shoulders. As she rubbed my muscles, I could feel the pain and tension draining from me. Her breasts came close to my face, and I watched. After a moment, I noticed something. Where her breasts strained against her shirt there were brown stains that looked like dried blood. The shirt had been washed and the stains were faded, but they still looked like dried blood.
They were like the stains that'd been on Nance's shirt; like the stains that'd been on Alna's shirt.
"What's that?"
She sat back and looked down at me. "What's what?"
"The stains. On your shirt."
She glanced down and was silent for a beat. She looked at me, her eyes blank. "Blood."
"Blood from what?"
She looked away and began putting things into her kit bag. "Just blood. We've splashed oceans of it since we hit the grit. Don't worry about it."
With my left hand I grabbed her shoulder and forced her to face me. "Stains like that. I saw stains like that on Nance's blues. On Alna's." I could taste the fear in my mouth.
Tears welled in Mercy Jane's eyes as she studied my face. Almost as though her fingers belonged to someone else, they began unbuttoning her shirt. Her hands pulled the shirt open exposing the horror of her breasts. They were bruised yellow, black, and purple, the n
ipples crusted with old scabs that were beginning to fall away, revealing bright pink scar tissue beneath. I couldn't look away. The thumper began to make the universe turn about me.
"Pliers," she said, looking down at her breasts. "Anna Tane did it with a pair of pliers. Alna, Nance, me. All the female prisoners. It used to go on for hours at a time." She looked up at me, her jaw and neck muscles twitching.
"Why?" I demanded. "To make you talk? Nobody knows anything. Why?"
Mercy smiled, gave out an involuntary little laugh, and shook her head as she buttoned up her shirt. "We would've told her anything she wanted to know. Anna Tane was working a different corner, though. She didn't want to know anything."
"What then?"
Her words came to me small and puzzled through the buzz of the thumper cocktail. "Breasts, Bando. She hates breasts. She wants to punish them. I think you're right about her being Carlo's daughter. There were some things she said that Nance and I remembered. Carlo, her father the pervert, is a big jug man from Hooter Holler. He was probably left on the nipple too long." Her voice became hollow as she stared at nothing. "One time, after she was done torturing Alna, Anna Tane was so angry at everything, she was raving. She stripped her top and went after her own breasts with the pliers. I could see that she'd done it before. Lots of times. She didn't have any nipples left. Nothing but scar tissue."
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