by Jamie Quaid
“Ain’t nothing here for that kind of money,” Joe protested. “Tell Andre not to be such a tightwad.”
Oh, well, anything was better than thinking. “Ah, hon,” I purred, using the ubiquitous Baltimore endearment and tapping Joe’s arm as I passed by, “I bet you say that to all the girls.”
Not wanting to owe my wicked boss any more than necessary, I sucked in my gut and stepped carefully, doing my best to swing my hips as I approached a shiny red Miata convertible. Miatas are made of plastic. To be on a car lot on the slummy side of town, this pretty toy was probably held together with duct tape and baling wire. Up close, I could see that the vinyl seats and the windshield had cracks. I wiggled behind the steering wheel, flashing a lot of leg. “Let me see what it does, hon.” I flashed him a sparkly smile, and he perked right up.
As Joe hurried back for the key, Cora climbed in the other side. “You’re evil, girl, you know that, don’t you?”
Yeah, I was starting to get that impression.
• • •
I waved good-bye to Cora and drove away in the red Miata, feeling a grand poorer and a whole lot of stupider. I didn’t have Max to repair the rolling junk heap. I’d probably be up to my neck in repair bills and end up with a car on blocks while owing Legrande forever.
But I needed to do something to swing my head back on straight, and it looked like being stupid was it. I breathed deeply for the first time since the “accident” and enjoyed the wind blowing my newly cut hair as I cruised home. Even the kids in my tenement wouldn’t be dumb enough to steal a plastic Miata, so I figured it was safe.
The clouds were rolling in thicker. I tied a tarp to the mirrors—the convertible top didn’t work—and shimmied back to my apartment. Shimmy was about all I could do in spandex. I needed to change into something a little more practical.
I’d been ignoring the buzzing of my cell phone all morning, figuring it was more TV news goons wanting to know how it felt to have a boyfriend go up in flames before my eyes. How did they think it felt? I refused to do tears for public entertainment.
I hadn’t noticed any van in the parking lot, but a cameraman was standing in the corridor when I stepped out of the stairwell. We startled each other. I slammed back to the stairs, removed my sandals, jerked my skirt up my thighs, and performed my best uneven dash upward to hide on the roof. Yeah, yeah, I know, only stupid movie females run to the roof in times of danger, but there was a method to my madness. I had the keys to the roof door, and I figured the TV guy would think I’d gone down instead of up.
If I was really lucky, he hadn’t even recognized me. I hardly recognized myself. I was definitely not liking being the center of attention again. I’d learned a lot of hard lessons in Pennsylvania. Being locked in jail with my face plastered across the front page under the headline STUDENT MENACE hadn’t enhanced my impression of journalists. The provost got less press when he “resigned” a year later. I didn’t see any articles about a STUDENT HERO who saved the university’s rear end. But I was busy picking up the pieces of my life by then. Maybe I missed the story. I’d have laughed hysterically at my humor if I wasn’t trying to be quiet.
I locked the door behind me and walked barefoot on hot asphalt to the edge of the roof to see how I’d missed the van. He’d parked on a side street past the parking lot entrance, the rat fink.
Pity I couldn’t send TV vans to hell.
A tickle at the back of mind said it might be better if I didn’t think like that.
Camera Guy emerged from the front exit, looked around, then went back inside. I sauntered over to the rear of the building and watched him exit there. Poor baby. He’d just experienced the Incredible Disappearing Woman.
Just thinking about disappearing gave me the shudders after everything that had happened. Had Cora really meant it that the chemical waste pollution of the Zone had done something to the people who worked there? I should have asked what it had done to her. She’d been there longer than I had. Did it give her those skin-slashing cheekbones?
The thought was so patently ridiculous that I figured I should punch Andre for making Cora tell stories to get his way.
Except for that fact that Lady Justice was a piece of tin with personality. And buildings glowed without electricity. The magnifying glass in the sign advertising Cora’s detective agency often disappeared for days at a time and sometimes returned with photos of people inside it. The list of objects was long and strange—but I’d never noticed people being weirder than usual.
I tried not to think too hard. It made my head hurt. Maybe all those new hair follicles really were hacking my brain.
TV guy apparently got fed up. I watched him wander back to the van, talk to someone on his phone, and climb in. When he rolled off, I returned downstairs, grateful to Max for lifting that roof key and giving me a copy. I didn’t want to know what he normally did with roof keys, but I liked going up there to escape my life.
As I reached my floor, a tall, slump-shouldered man with wild gray hair was unlocking the door across from mine. I knew the student who lived there, but I didn’t know this stranger.
“Are you looking for Lily?” I asked, hiding the suspicion in my voice. I was learning to be wary.
He turned and studied me in a way that gave me creeps.
“Stay away from his family,” he said ominously, before entering the apartment and shutting me out.
I blinked in shock. There was something about his dark eyes that seemed a little too familiar. . . . I hurriedly unlocked my door. Hallucinations and paranoia are a really bad mix. Stay away from his family? Whose family? Why? Not going there.
Once I was safely inside my apartment, I broke down and scrolled through the list of messages on my cell. Numbers without names. Newspapers. Who the devil gave these people my private number? Max’s friends, of course. Dimwits. Did they hate me, too? I was almost afraid to check Facebook. I might have to delete myself.
But Facebook was about the only way I stayed in communication with my roving mother and my fellow college friends in crime. For now, I let it alone. I had more important goals in mind.
I slapped tomato and cheese on some bread and called it lunch. I ate while changing into jeans and a tank top. I was just starting to feel almost normal, so I avoided looking in the mirror. I really didn’t want to go all Exorcist again.
I had no idea what the news was saying about me or Max. I didn’t want to know. With any luck, I was a twenty-four-hour wonder and by now a semi of rabid chickens had overturned and shut down the Bay Bridge and they’d leave me alone. I had better things to do, and so should they.
I slipped on a pair of wraparound shades, checked the windows for TV crews, and hoped for the best as I aimed for the bus stop. Moist, heavy air was turning into droplets.
With my head clearing, I had a more distinct memory of what had happened to my deposit bag. I hadn’t lost it in a ball of flame or had it lifted by hospital personnel, as Andre had assumed. It had been stolen, probably by the jerk who had jostled me. I’d examined the shackle I’d dumped in my bag; it had definitely been cut. Unless someone was walking around with powerful metal cutters for fun, I was wagering they’d been waiting for me. I wanted another look at the Dumpster. Thieves always flung purses into the garbage after they’d grabbed the cash. Maybe I could save Cora’s boss his big check.
The bus ran only once an hour on Saturdays, and even then, it wasn’t crowded. The Zone was a workingman’s hangout, and most of the industrial plants were weekdays only. People partied on Saturdays, but the lights didn’t go on until after dark.
Which made me wonder if the radiation or whatever was in those buildings affected visitors as well as people who worked there, and if it got into the beer they drank or the water they sipped. Or if the chemical aroma hanging in a miasma over the area was infectious. Or if the whole thing was a fairy tale.
I’d seen plenty of evidence that the Zone affected things, say the naked-lady statue at Chesty’s that blew bubbles and d
id the hula. It had been years since the last big chemical spill, before my time. But if the chemical stew was slowly seeping into the water and affecting people, shouldn’t government officials have been all over it?
Well, if it just meant good hair and cheekbones, probably not. Maybe if people instead of buildings started glowing, they’d have to do something. I hoped.
I got off in front of the boarded-up bank. A sign said it would reopen on Monday. Scorch marks stained its bricks and the sidewalk by the bus stop, and shattered glass still littered the ground. I tried not to notice or I’d hurl. I choked back nausea and crossed the street to where I’d been standing when the limo had hit the kids. I wanted to do something decent to ease my guilt, but instead, I was wondering if there was any way of hacking the bank’s computers to see who had made a transaction just before five, when the diplomatic vehicle had pulled out.
I was almost a lawyer. I knew better. Hacking was illegal, not decent, but still.
I checked the bank for security cameras, noting one over the drive-through window.
I returned my attention to the building the presumed thief had emerged from. It was a multiple-office building, closed and locked on Saturdays. I could run a cross-check on the number and get a list of names for this address, but there could easily be a dozen offices inside. And a hundred employees or more, not to mention customers.
As I examined the door, I had the uncomfortable feeling of being watched, as if I had a target painted in the middle of my back.
I glanced around, but there was no one in sight.
Shrugging off my apprehension, I turned down the alley behind the building. A pretty orange tabby kitten looked up at me expectantly, and I leaned over to scratch its head, grateful for a little normality. “You’re a tailless wonder,” I murmured, admiring his wiry form. “Does that make you a Manx or one of us weirdos?”
He bumped my hand with his head, and I mentally promised him any fish I found inside the Dumpster. Luckily, the bin hadn’t been emptied since yesterday. I swung inside, encountering mostly boxes and papers that people were too lazy to recycle. A few fast-food wrappers didn’t offer anything promising for the kitten.
My deposit bag was a bright blue denim on the outside, not the brown vinyl the bank handed out. The color ought to stand out in this mountain of white and tan. I continued searching. The denim concealed a metal mesh liner supposed to deter the sharpest knife. The zipper had a lock that only I could open. As I said, I’d learned caution with age. If nothing else, I wanted the bag back. I quite liked it.
After flinging a mountain of boxes and trash to the alley, and half a hamburger for the kitten, I spotted blue fabric sliding down a paper avalanche at the back. Snatching a corner before it vanished, I retrieved the bag and examined it for knife slashes—but it was the lock that had been broken.
Swearing, I climbed out of the bin and sat on the curb to examine the zipper. Still feeling as if I was being watched, I shuddered as unease crawled up my spine. Not liking creepy men or Leibowitz staring at me was one thing, but being fearful of nothing was not a good sign of mental stability.
I glanced around to be certain I was still alone and tried to shake off the silliness. Max really had done a number on me if I started feeling afraid all the time.
The kitten rubbed my ankle and purred, but my mind was otherwise occupied while I studied my portable fortress. Except for the lock, the bag looked intact.
Not expecting to find anything, I checked the contents. Only the cash was gone. The large check from the detective agency and all the smaller ones were still there. So it was still an amateur thief, if he couldn’t cash the checks. Good to know.
Succumbing to another uneasy feeling, I glanced around again.
Was that a shadow on the other end of the alley? Still too jumpy after yesterday, I fled for Bill’s Biker Bar and Grill, deposit bag in my hot hand.
5
Bill was big and burly, with an unruly haystack of fading ginger hair and usually a three-day beard. I’m not sure how guys manage to always have stubble, and I wasn’t going to ask. I was jittery and needed security, and Bill was it. I’d seen him heave a two-hundred-pound trucker through a plate-glass window, just like John Wayne in the movies. He was strong.
He was polishing the bar and looked up in surprise when I burst in, since he never saw me down here on weekends.
My fear must have been obvious, because he strode out from behind the bar and checked down the street as I landed on one of his stools, gasping for breath and from the pain in my hip. The sidewalk down the block had suddenly taken a notion to turn to green mud, and I’d nearly broken my neck sliding through it. Usually the Zone was kinder to me. I was ridiculously grateful to have Bill at my back.
“No one out there,” he reported, ambling back to the bar and pulling out a diet Sprite, my drink of choice.
“There was no one there when this got stolen, either.” I slapped the bag down on the bar and gratefully accepted the icy soda. I wasn’t particularly coherent, but Bill frowned and nodded as if he understood.
“It’s been happening here and about,” he agreed. “I lost all my hundreds one night when there was no one here but me, so I keep the cash drawer locked now. Andre gets antsy when things like that happen.”
I stared. “You’re saying ghosts are stealing cash?”
He shrugged and began hanging beer mugs in the overhead rack. “I’m just saying you have to watch your back down here. Don’t knock invisible just because you can’t see it.”
I pulled the contents of the bag out and slapped the checks on the bar. “Then I want a bodyguard from now on when I go to the bank. And tell Andre if he files the insurance claim for Friday’s entire tally sheet and he wants to commit theft by depositing these later, he’d better figure out how to do it, because I won’t.”
He nodded sagely. “You gotta be honest in your business. He gets that. Sorry to hear about your fella. Let us know when the funeral is.”
Anguish ripped another hole in my heart. I needed to check with the good detective to see what happened with bodies after autopsies. Even if I ought to hate the bastard, I didn’t want Max going unclaimed. And I really didn’t want to think about Max as a corpse. Maybe that was why I thought I’d seen his face earlier. I wanted him to come back. To not be gone. My rattled mind had simply conjured his image.
I was afraid to go out on the street again, which meant I had to leave immediately and get over myself. Finishing my drink, waiting until it was almost time for the next bus, I waved at Bill and sauntered out as if I hadn’t just run from shadows like a jackrabbit.
The tailless kitten was waiting right outside the door. Big yellow eyes and a pleading mew broke my already broken heart. “My bodyguard,” I told him, picking him up and tucking him into my messenger bag. He promptly burrowed down and went to sleep, and I was glad to be able to give someone, something, the feeling of safety that I had just gained from Bill.
I wasn’t much used to people looking out for me. With my track record, I decided I probably shouldn’t get too comfortable with it, either.
• • •
I made it home without further incident. Even the green mud had disappeared, replaced by new gray cement with a footprint in it that could have been mine.
Once I reached the tenements, I walked around the block, checking all the alleys for news vans first. I didn’t like the looks of the leather-clad stranger lurking near the front step, so I eluded him by going in the back, by the garbage cans. Reporters ought to be made to wear PRESS signs on their hats like in the old cartoons. And if that was one of Max’s biker buddies, I didn’t want to know about it. They might kill me if they blamed me for his death.
I paid one of the kids playing in the lobby to go up and see if there was anyone near my door. Once assured the coast was clear, I fell into my apartment with a sense of relief, locking up behind me. I’d had enough of the world today. Life was easier when I slipped past everyone’s radar.
&n
bsp; My new furry pal tumbled out and began exploring. I didn’t know why I thought I could keep a kitten. I was woefully unprepared. I apparently needed to be needed. Or wanted company so I didn’t have to think too deeply.
I had a hundred and one errands to run, plus new-kitty duty—like acquiring cat food and litter box—not to mention finals to study for.
Instead of attending to any of that, I picked up Schwartz’s business card and dialed his number. I left a message asking when Max’s body would be released. I tried to sound very professional and business-like. I broke down and cried when I hung up. Kitty leaped onto my lap, arched his back, and stroked under my chin.
I knew I had to be stronger than this, but knowing and doing were two different things. I’d been pushed to my limits these last twenty-four hours, and the strain was showing.
I couldn’t face the world with tear streaks down my cheeks. I scratched the kitten behind its ears. “You need a name, fella. You don’t look much like a Kitty.”
He purred approvingly and kneaded the sofa cushion, then swatted a pillow to the floor. That was a pretty strong stroke for a bitty kitty.
“Pillow?” I suggested. “Billow?” I think he snarled at me. I didn’t blame him. “Milo?”
His head bobbed before he curled into a ball and settled down to the business of sleeping. Milo he was.
Determined to keep moving forward, I dragged out the little netbook I’d bought refurbished for next to nothing on Craigslist. If my mother had taught me nothing else in our years of wandering, it was how to live cheaply and how to avoid personal contact through use of the Internet.
Putting on my reading glasses, I checked e-mail and found a few electronic sympathy cards from several of the offices I worked with. I’d only lived here two years and had been with Max for only six months, so we didn’t have a lot of mutual friends. I’d met his biker pals, but I didn’t know how to get in touch with them short of driving to their hangout. With me going to school and working, Max and I had barely had time for ourselves.
