by Jamie Quaid
Well, that was definitely me talking to me.
“At least he’s alive slime,” I retorted, almost enjoying taking out my pent-up anger on a cracked mirror. “Who the devil were you, anyway? Trust fund, Max? Do you even know how to be honest?”
The image was actually clear enough for me to imagine an impatient grimace. “Check Themis.”
“Who the hell is Themis?” I shouted.
I thought he replied, “Your grandmother,” and then he was gone.
I didn’t have any grandmothers. These conversations, such as they were, were increasingly frustrating. I flung the blanket back. I didn’t want mirrors watching me undress anymore, not after what Andre had insinuated this evening.
• • •
The next morning, I wore jeans instead of a skirt, and a T-shirt under my button-down, not my usual law school attire. I flung all my textbooks into the Miata. I had to study every spare minute, and I wouldn’t have time to come back home and change before mop duty. I didn’t know how I would have time to check out the four names Cora had given me, either. Washing pots at Chesty’s would ruin my study time.
I waved at the Escalade. If they wanted to follow me, it was their wasted day, not mine. Maybe I’d bore them into leaving me alone. With a full night’s sleep, I was again leaning back toward believing Andre had lived in the Zone too long. So, yeah, I was hallucinating Max. That didn’t make me any different than half the population fantasizing over big-screen movie stars.
So maybe shock had affected my hair. That was hardly anything to get crazy about. And this was Baltimore. We got wind and freak storms. Those reporters were just looking for excuses to lose the fight. And the accident was totally Max’s fault. I was so not taking the blame for that one. My self-esteem was still quite healthy, thank you very much.
I aced my contract law test and was flying pretty high on ego when I drove the Miata to the Zone. Maybe Detective Schwartz would keep an eye on my car, too, if I parked next to Andre’s Mercedes. If the tires melted, I’d sue Andre.
The gray-haired, slump-shouldered man from Lily’s was just walking out of the kitchen with a carryout box. He looked at me, then the Miata. “That’s one of those plastic cars, isn’t it?”
“Tires are rubber. Engine is metal.” I defended my hunk of junk.
He nodded. “Not safe,” he said, as if agreeing with me. “Plastic wheels might do it. Plastic engine parts . . .” He shook his head and wandered off muttering.
There was one Zone inhabitant who hadn’t improved with age. At least now I knew the guy was more curmudgeonly crazy and less threatening crazy. So maybe I was learning more about the Zone, as Andre had said I needed to do. Quite an education.
My cell phone beeped and I frowned. Very few people knew my number besides Max.
An impossibly lengthy text message scrolled across my screen: Saturn is the planet of justice. It comes around every twenty-eight years to dispense karmic reward and punishment. This time, it comes in conjunction with the asteroids of change. The cycle is just beginning. Your time is almost here.
Oh, crap. I almost flung the phone over the fence into the biohazard zone. But I couldn’t afford a new phone, and after last night, I was almost regretting deleting the other Saturn message.
I checked the sender. Max.
My stomach seized in knots until reason began to win out. Max was never parted from his phone—it would have gone up in blue blazes like my car. The Universe, by way of the Zone, was messing with me. The Zone had managed to mix up the numbers. I glanced over my shoulder at the Superfund site over the fence and wondered if someone like the Geek lived back there, playing with electronic transmissions.
Besides, I was only twenty-six—and even if the message was meant for me, what in heck did planets and daughters have to do with each other anyway?
Leaving my books in the minuscule trunk, I slipped in through Chesty’s back door, ignoring the dudes in suits leaning against a slightly askew security-lamp pole that seemed to be craning its neck to look at them. I could understand the lamp’s curiosity. The dudes looked a whole lot out of place, but at least they weren’t kidnapping me and throwing me under a microscope.
On the off chance that someone would feed me lunch, I peered into the kitchen. Sarah was putting together a sandwich under the supervision of a burly cook in a chef’s hat and tomato-splattered apron. I was trusting the red was tomatoes.
She waved at me to enter. Not being shy, I helped myself to the loaf of bread on the counter and began building my own lunch out of fresh tomatoes, mozzarella, and basil.
“How long have you been living down here?” I asked Sarah while debating dirtying a frying pan I’d have to clean later. Grilled cheese was better than cold.
“Since I got married, right before the flood,” she whispered, casting a glance over her shoulder to the cook who seemed to be in his own world.
Which would have made her something like sixteen when she married, if my guesstimate that she was around my age was anywhere close.
She was so nervous that I didn’t want to sound like I was interrogating her, but I trusted anyone better than I did Andre, and it was time I started learning more about my new life.
“So, how long have you been a chimp?” I tried to sound casual.
She grimaced. “Since my husband called me one. I think maybe it’s all in my head. Now that he’s gone, maybe I can get back my self-respect.”
“Gone? To the hereafter?” My suspicion antenna went on alert.
She nodded diffidently. “He beat me up one too many times. I think the chimp strangled him. I woke up with these”—she glanced down at her big breasts—“and Bert was gone. I had a bad dream while I was unconscious, about Bert and a Dumpster, so I checked the one out back. He was in it, looking kind of blue.” She looked almost defiant as she finally raised her gaze to me. “He weighed over two hundred pounds. I’m not strong enough to lift that much weight. So I left him there and went looking for a job.”
In shock, I absorbed the realization that Sarah had killed her husband and gotten great boobs in return.
12
Aside from learning that Sarah was homicidal and possibly delusional, the rest of my day ran reasonably smoothly. I stationed myself at the bar with the receipts, making myself comfortable with a bottle of water and a stool adjusted to my height. Heeding Andre’s warning, I checked that the back door was locked and kept an eye on the front door. I had to leave it open so people could bring me their deposits. I preferred being outdoors in the sunlight to this cave of a place with shifty nudes peering over my shoulder, but I was willing to be cautious. For a while.
After Cora took the locked deposit bag to the bank, I had time to study in my cubicle. Not having to make the deposit or take the bus won me almost an hour of study. Helping myself to soup in the kitchen saved cooking time. Milo found a nest of dirty laundry to sleep in and no one objected to a cat in the kitchen. As Andre had suggested, Ernesto had a way to go before he became a good citizen. Or even civilized. Fortunately, he didn’t come in early today.
The kitchen didn’t get really busy until after seven, about the time Ernesto finally put in an appearance to tell me to start scrubbing. Carrying my books through the bar, I noticed the tall, drunken bully from yesterday had returned. He grabbed the neckline of one of the older waitresses, and she put his wrist in a grip that should have broken bones. Looked like things were under control. I might have wanted to stomp the laughing blowhard, but it wasn’t my place, even though his buffalo head swung to regard me as I passed.
I went out the back and took in a few rays of spring sunshine while I threw my books into the car. I tossed my classic button-down in with them, then tied the laces on the ugly boots with the modified heel required for standing on my feet for hours. I returned inside to cover my jeans and T-shirt with a clean apron from a closet before grabbing a mop and bucket. Since I didn’t see Sarah again, I assumed she only worked the day shift. I nodded to a couple of the waitress
es, but mostly I kept my head down and my mouth shut.
A restaurant kitchen was its own corner of hell, I decided, mopping up a greasy spill. It was only May, but in here, the heat had already escalated to inferno proportions. Steam spilled from pots on half a dozen flaming burners. Cooks shouted, cursed, and waved knives big enough to chop off heads in a single blow. I didn’t know why they weren’t throwing bodies out the back door on a regular basis.
I mopped. I scrubbed burned pots. I loaded the dishwashers. I figured out where to find the rubber gloves after my hands turned red and raw. I even cleaned off tables when one of the busgirls quit.
The drunken molester stepped into my path while I was carrying a bin full of dirty dishes.
“You and me, we gotta talk,” he said, crowding me with his big stomach. “I got a car outside. You could make some money.”
That was so disgusting that I didn’t bother answering. I trod on his toe with my heavy heel and skirted past him as he winced and stumbled back.
The midweek crowd died down after ten, and Ernesto told me to go home. He was not only uncivilized but cheap. It would take me months to earn Geek Boy’s fee if I only worked three hours a night for a lousy minimum wage. I needed to find out who had been in that hit-and-run limo, if only for the sake of those kids. I couldn’t make myself believe it had anything to do with Max’s death, but now that I knew Max had enemies . . . I couldn’t ignore the possibility.
Too wiped to debate whether this was a wise use of my time, I dumped my apron and gloves, gathered up Milo and my messenger bag, and headed out back to my Miata. I’d only seen Schwartz once during the evening, when he’d poked his head into the kitchen to grab a burger. I hoped he’d been patrolling the dark alley so I would still have wheels.
Maybe if I drove my car down here often enough, the engine would start talking to me. Or repair itself? Something truly helpful would be nice for once.
The stench of hot grease followed me into the foggy spring night, mixing with a strong odor of chemicals unable to dissipate in the humidity. Milo growled and my gut did a little gnawing. Ridiculous to think of a kitten as a guard cat, but cats had good instincts. Ernesto was apparently too cheap to repair or turn on the security lights, or maybe he didn’t want to encourage smokers to linger. The blue glow of the buildings did little more than cast eerie shadows through the fog. This was the first time I’d been exposed to the full effect of the ultraviolet light, and despite the warm night, I shivered at the weirdness.
Andre’s Mercedes was gone, replaced by what I assumed was the club owner’s big honking Hummer. Small weenies compensate with big cars, right? My Miata was closest to the building, with the hulking SUV blocking most of the alley behind me. I could get out, just barely.
Still checking warily around me, I rolled back the tarp protecting the seats and set my purse and Milo on the nest the cover made on the floor. Before I could climb in, I heard a muffled shriek from somewhere past the Hummer, in the thick shadows behind the garbage. Already nervous, I jumped nearly a mile at the sound.
I should have climbed in the car and hit the gas. But I was constitutionally unable to ignore trouble, even though the Dumpster loomed like an ogre in my mind. After the invisible-thief incident and Sarah’s story about finding her husband in one of those garbage heaps, I was beginning to look at the big green boxes as hungry vultures lurking to scoop up all evidence of dark deeds. I didn’t want to face any more bizarre scenes, and now the giant bins had started shrieking. I would be imagining bulging eyeballs popping out of the rusted sides if I didn’t leave soon.
But the rhythmic pounding noise I heard next was of this earth and not my imagination.
It sounded very much like a metal bed rocking against a wall during a moment of heated passion, but the frightened, angry cries accompanying the pounding were definitely not the utterances of consensual sex.
Red rage obliterated both my common sense and my head-down, mouth-closed attitude. I grabbed a tire iron from my trunk and eased down the trash-strewn alley to the far side of the garbage bin.
In the feeble blue light emanating from the building next door, I could make out two shadows: one big, bulky, and upright; the other slender and up against the stinking bin. The bulky shadow had one hand clamped against the smaller one’s mouth, holding her pinned and muffling her shrieks. I really didn’t need to see what the other hand was doing. The woman’s bare legs and struggles told me more than I needed to know.
My hands tightened around the iron. I admit, I had an anger management problem. I’d worked on it. But at times like this . . . maybe the planet Saturn took over. That was as good an excuse as any. All the martial arts training in the world couldn’t guarantee a gimpy shrimp might trounce an aroused creep three times her size, but I had no intention of running from this trouble.
I couldn’t approach without being seen, but the bastard was too busy wrestling with his belt to stop because of a skinny shadow racing at him. Not until I screamed my fury and swung with all my strength, applying the tire iron to his spine, did he take notice—big-time.
He reared back and grabbed for my weapon. “Whadya hafta do that for?” he roared, grabbing the tire iron and jerking.
I barely had a second to recognize the drunken bully from the bar before reacting. He had weight on his side. I had leverage on mine. Gripping the iron as hard as I could, I applied a swift sideways kick with my boot to his kneecaps that unbalanced him more.
While the brute’s attention was diverted, his victim crumpled to the ground, crying. She wasn’t much help as I triumphantly wrenched the iron from a sweaty clasp. My kick was just enough to propel the hulk backward but not knock him over—giving me the opportunity to aim at his balls with my deadly heel.
I missed, catching him on the thigh with my heavy boot instead. He roared in pain, but, recovering his balance, he succeeded in yanking the tire iron away this time. “You!” he roared. “I just wanted to talk to you.” He swung at my head with my weapon.
“You call this talking?” I ducked. My aching leg crumpled, and I ended up face-first in the dirt, spitting gravel. I didn’t have time to fear that my presence was the reason this monster was here hurting someone. Muttering epithets, I rolled as he came after me again.
“Freaking creeps give us all a bad name!” he shouted, bringing the iron down. “I could have made you a good deal on the boxes.”
Boxes? Great, even the rapists down here were more nutso than usual.
I wasn’t really listening while fighting for my life. I dodged and swung my foot to slam his shin with the built-up heel on my bad leg. Rubber bounced off the tire iron he was swinging, but I clipped his kneecap. He was so close, I could smell his sweat and beer breath.
An unearthly shriek, followed by a very human howl, had me scrambling backward, looking for banshees or wildcats. At this point, I was even prepared for demons.
In the blue light, I stared in astonishment at a streak of giant snarling fur landing on my attacker’s back and ripping at his ear. Still howling, the brute reached over his shoulder, grabbed the animal, and slammed the creature against a wall, where it slid lifelessly down the glowing blue bricks. My fury escalated back to red rage.
“Damn you!” I shrieked, recovering from my shock. I leaped to my feet and grabbed the weapon he’d dropped. I wished my atrophied leg muscles were stronger so I could drop-kick the bastard into next week. “If that’s my cat, you’re going to hell!”
Not rational conversation, but blinding wrath filled my head, replacing my brains. I swung the iron straight at his midsection with my full hundred pounds behind it. I was weeping, cursing, and wanting to see if that had really been my brave Milo rushing to my rescue, but first I had to eliminate a worthless, drunken blob.
“Damn you to hell!” I shouted as I swung. Using my martial arts training, I visualized the iron as a giant broadsword to add strength to my blow.
The iron hit solid blubber and—kept on going. Unbalanced by a swing I hadn’t
expected to complete, I lurched forward, falling on my hands. Shaking my head to clear the ringing in my ears and my blurred vision, I scrambled to my knees to see from which direction I’d be assaulted next. And met silence.
Blubber Man’s victim had stopped sobbing to stare past me. With trepidation, I followed the direction of her gaze. A very large, very still body lay in the gravel . . . in two pieces.
But it was dark and foggy. I could have been mistaken.
A kitty whimper turned my eyes away from the impossible.
I could swear, in the dim light, the animal that had leaped to my rescue was half as big as me, but that must have been the adrenaline talking. Over by the wall, poor little Milo struggled to his feet, then limped over to lick my hand. The ruff on his neck was standing straight up, and I petted it down, checking to see if he’d been injured.
A weak flashlight beam emerged from the darkness and a familiar baritone shouted, “What’s going on out here?”
I looked up into the barrel of Detective Schwartz’s gun. He towered over us, legs spread in proper defensive position, arms outstretched with his weapon aimed at my head. A gorgeous but useless hunk.
“Next time, move faster, Leo,” I snarled, cuddling my kitty and scooting back to the waitress huddled against the Dumpster. I’d brought trouble here. Somehow, this was all my fault.
The waitress I’d saved was weeping, one of her false eyelashes falling down her mascara-streaked cheek. There hadn’t been much to her costume to start with. What was left had been shredded. “Go get the biggest tablecloth you can find, Schwartz. The fun is all over.”
“He’s dead, isn’t he?” she whispered hoarsely as the good detective quickly grasped the situation and obeyed orders.
“I don’t think I want to look to find out,” I whispered back. “Did you see what happened?”
She shook her head. “There was a horrible howl, and this giant beast leaped from the wall, and he went down. That’s all I know. And I hope he’s dead,” she said fiercely.
