"I got another job for you." Paladin put her small warm hand on my bare arm.
A jolt of electricity went through me, and that damn flush returned. I tried to pretend that her hand didn't have an effect on me.
"Come with me." She led me through a different set of doors and across a hallway. Then she pushed open a door marked "Ladies," but didn't go inside.
"Vamoose," she said through the open door, and clapped her hands.
I said, "Paladin—"
"Shush," she said to me as half a dozen girls in various states of undress walked out. The girls seemed resigned, as if they got tossed out of the ladies' room all the time. "Come on."
Paladin stepped inside. I had no choice. I followed.
The inside wasn't a bathroom. It was a dressing room—kinda. It had several full-length mirrors, many chairs, a couch, and some glazed windows with gold crosses across them. Piles of clothes, backpacks, and purses sat haphazardly against the chairs and wall.
Once I was inside, Paladin opened another door. Through that, I saw stalls. "Everyone out?" she asked.
Her voice echoed and no one answered. So she went back to the main door, and turned a dead bolt I hadn't even noticed.
"I need you to babysit," she said.
"In here?" I asked, feeling panicked.
"No," she said with irritation, as if I had put her off her game. She looked toward the only door that she hadn't opened.
"I don't do kids," I said.
"I know that," she said with even greater irritation. "Do you think I would ask if you were that kind of man?"
I bristled for a moment—how dare she even think of me in that way? We'd worked a pedophile case together—and then I instantly calmed down. Of course, she would make that assumption from the sentence I spoke. She worked with runaways and abuse victims all the time. Her sf convention work was the anomaly, not the norm.
"I meant," I said with an infinite patience I didn't feel, "I don't deal with kids in any way."
"Too bad," she said. "I need you to take a kid to the convention for the day."
"Paladin, it's not that kind of convention. There isn't even kid's programming or more than the hotel-provided childcare area. I can't—"
"I know what Alternate Pro-Con is, Spade," she said with so much irritation that I was amazed she wasn't spitting as she talked. "She can hang with you in Ops."
Ops was convention operations, where I made my base. Usually I spent more time in Ops during a convention than I ever spent in my hotel room.
"Paladin," I said, matching her irritation. "Kids don't belong in Ops—wait. Did you say she?"
"I did," Paladin said, "and she's not really a kid. She's thirteen. She—"
"That's worse, Paladin," I said. "One reason I don't get in trouble is that I don't put myself in awkward situations that could cause even the slightest misunderstanding, and having a lifelong somewhat weird bachelor take care of a thirteen-year-old girl he's not related to is one of those awkward situations that could be misconstrued."
"Trust me, this won't get mistrued," she said, glancing at that door again.
"The worst situations in the world always start with the words, 'trust me,'" I said. "I'm sorry, Paladin, but you'll need to find—"
"I need your help," she said with an intensity I've never heard from her. Rather than yelling, she had lowered her voice, but the words still felt like daggers. "You always told me that I could trust you, that you're my friend. I don't have friends, Spade, except for you, but I have an understanding of them that mostly comes from literature and buddy movies, and those things always say that when your friend asks you to jump, you say, 'How high?'"
I frowned. "That's not quite what friendship is, Paladin. It's less about giving orders than it is about volunteering."
"Well, then, never mind. See what I care." She waved a hand. "Get out then. I'll figure out something else."
She seemed on edge and desperate. I'd never seen Paladin desperate before.
"How long do I have to babysit?" I asked.
"What?" she said, as if I had already left, and I was contacting her from the great beyond. "Oh, um, until later tonight. Two meals, Spade, and maybe a video on your iPad or something. Ten hours max."
"And you'll come get her?" I asked.
"I'll come get her," Paladin said.
"And you'll vouch for me if something goes wrong?" I asked.
She looked at me, a single crease in her glittery forehead. "What could possibly go wrong?"
I hated that question more than almost any other. That question combined with "trust me" led to bad decisions. And there I was, making one of them.
Because I agreed to babysit, as Paladin called it.
"Okay," I said. "Tell me why we're hiding in here and why you're so tense."
"I don't have time for that," she said. "I gotta get those other kids to that stupid gala."
"Paladin," I said, ready to back out all over again.
"Here's what happens, Spade. She's in that back room. I have a sheet over her head with some eyes cut out of it. You and me and her are going to join my trick-or-treat group, and I'll lead us outside. I'll take the group to my van, and a few others will go in your car. You'll drop off everyone but your little ghost at the gala."
"Do I get to know her name?" I asked, my stomach clenching.
"Sure," Paladin said. "Call her Casper."
"Seriously, Paladin—"
"She's going to call you Spade. That's not your real name. She calls me Paladin. That's not my real name. So you get to call her Casper, which is the name she chose. Believe me, it's better than Wednesday, which is the name I had to talk her out of."
"Because you don't like the Addams Family?" I asked.
"Because I thought naming yourself after a day of the week was too confusing," Paladin said. "Jeez, Spade, can you make this any more difficult?"
"No, Paladin," I snapped. "Can you?"
We glared at each other for a minute. Her glittery cheeks were flushed. I found myself wondering if this was our first fight, and if it was, did that mean our friendship had progressed to a new place or did it mean that our friendship was in jeopardy?
Then I sighed.
"Okay," I said, backing down. Of course, we both knew that I would be the one to back down. I had more invested in this relationship—at least, I thought I did. "We'll follow Plan A. Is there a Plan B?"
"I'm working on that," she said.
Plan A went off without a hitch. Me and my Friendly Ghost joined Paladin's trick-or-treat group and headed out the front of the church. I knew little about Casper except that she was quiet and tiny and smelled of Bazooka bubble gum, a smell I hadn't encountered for years.
She and four other ghosts, who seemed to be thin and male, joined me in the Lexus, and we followed Paladin's white panel van to some large fancy restaurant near Fisherman's Wharf. Once we arrived, Paladin gathered all of the ghosts except Casper. Then she handed me one of her business cards with a cell phone number written on the back.
"In case of emergency," she said, and then she herded her little troupe into the restaurant.
Emergency. I didn't like that word.
"You ever been to a science-fiction convention?" I asked Casper as we drove away.
She shrugged her shoulders—or at least, I thought she shrugged. The sheet moved up and down. Then the head turned, and the eyes focused out the passenger window.
I had been dismissed.
I didn't mind. I needed time to think. Something was up, something important. Paladin wanted this kid hidden for a few hours, so I would hide her, whatever it took.
I decided it wouldn't be as hard as babysitting five hundred sciencefiction professionals.
And on that, at least, I was right.
I got back to Con Ops to find Betty Jo Smeerly arguing with Doris Xavier. Doris ran security at almost every convention where I was Lord of Finance. I'd brought her in here because she was local, and because I needed a familiar face on t
he convention team.
Casper trailed behind me like a . . . well, you figure it out. She stopped at the door of Con Ops as if she had never seen anything like it before—and she probably hadn't.
By this point in a convention, Ops usually smelled of BO, three-day-old pizza, and sour ice cream. This Ops didn't, though, because this convention wasn't a traditional science-fiction convention. The pros caused trouble, but not the same kind as fans. And the pros either went to programming or they went out to eat with their editors. Things got rough after midnight when the hotel bar closed, and the pros who couldn't stop drinking sat in the con suite and sucked up the free beer.
We usually had fights then, but they were over things like careers and book covers and who slept with whose spouse. You know, the stuff that professional businesspeople of all stripes fought about.
I preferred fan conventions that could come to blows over important things like which Klingon greeting was appropriate for a Classic Star Trek party as opposed to a Next Generation party.
"What the heck's going on?" I said as I stepped inside.
Everyone jumped except Casper, who seemed immune. Or maybe she kept her jumpiness inside.
One of the volunteer staff—someone I didn't know, who had probably been recruited by the local sf people at the last minute—went around me, and closed the door.
So the fight was important and politically dicey.
"Betty Jo won't administer the awards," Doris said tightly.
I hadn't known it was Betty Jo's job to administer the awards, but I generally stayed away from anything to do with awards. Awards made professional writers crazy. They also made the award staff crazy, but not for the same reasons.
"I'm sorry I asked," I said as I headed toward my Tower of Terror.
The Tower of Terror was my computer system. State-of-the-art, networked to everything except the Department of Defense (and sometimes I wasn't even sure about that), my computer system had everything, from its own routers and servers and Internet connection to more back-up than you'd find at Microsoft on any given day.
I ran dozens of conventions out of this thing, and used it for all kinds of forensic analysis. It wasn't my only computer system. I had five laptops and four tablets with me, as well as seven duplicate Towers of Terror and other gadgets at home. I updated all my devices every six months whether I needed to or not, and I tried to stay ahead of the latest, latest, latest everything.
But the Tower of Terror wasn't my main objective at the moment. My main objective was my chair. I had four chairs specially made for my frame, and one got shipped to any convention I worked. Doris called my chair the Captain's Chair after Kirk's chair in the original Star Trek, partly because my chair had so many buttons and knobs and special gadgets of its own that, on a good day, it could probably work the Tower of Terror without me.
I wanted my chair like a little kid wanted his blankie. I was tired and tense, and I had a silent little ghost trailing me everywhere.
"You aren't going to settle this fight?" the con guy I didn't know whispered.
"It's an awards fight," I said. "I'll lose."
"There's a tie," Betty Jo said loudly, so that I could hear. "In fact, there's two ties."
I nodded tiredly. I turned to Casper, who was standing beside me. "You look hot," I said. "You want a soda or something?"
I figured getting her a soda was easier than asking her to take off the sheet.
The sheet went up and down again. The kid's silence was bothering me.
"Well, I do," I said. "You wanna get me a Diet Coke, and pick up something for yourself? There's a bunch of sodas in that cooler over there."
She didn't say anything, just glided toward the cooler as if she could float.
"I mean," Betty Jo said, "we can't give out the award until we know who actually won."
"Ties happen," I said, then bit my lip. I did not want to get involved, but I couldn't seem to shut up.
"That's what I've been telling her," Doris said.
"Ties do not happen when there's a five-person jury!" Betty Jo said.
I glanced at the kid. She was peering at the cooler, but I couldn't tell if she hovered over it because she couldn't see very well or because she couldn't figure out whether she should just grab something from it or because she didn't see anything she liked.
I sighed. "Someone probably recused themselves."
I was lying. Doris and I both knew it, but maybe that would stop the stupid fight.
"No one did," Betty Jo said. "I polled the jury."
Great. A conscientious administrator. That wasn't helpful.
"No, you did not," I said, with emphasis, hoping she understood me.
"But I did," she said.
Great. A conscientious clueless administrator.
"Ties happen all the time at Alternate Pro-Con," I said. "Ties happen with juried awards."
"Not on my watch," Betty Jo said.
"Yes, on your watch," I said. "Because if this tie doesn't go through—"
"These ties," she said.
"—then you'll never be allowed at Alternate Pro-Con again."
She stared at me, eyes narrowed. I had succeeded in diverting her attention at least. She was mad—at me. "You won't let me in?"
"I'm not the administrator," I said. "I'm just a SMoF flunky who got drafted to keep this thing together."
Her frown deepened. "Then how do you know I won't be able to come here again if I fix the tie?"
"Jeez," a little voice said, a voice I didn't recognize. "Lady, pay attention. He's telling you the vote is rigged."
We all looked in the direction of the soda cooler.
Casper had spoken.
I didn't think I'd ever heard Con Ops so quiet this early in a convention. We were all staring at the little ghost clutching my Diet Coke. The sheet had come up far enough to reveal two scrawny legs housed in jeans so faded that they looked like they wouldn't survive another washing. Knobby ankles rose above ancient tennis shoes with holes along one side.
Casper peered at us through the holes cut in the sheet, then sighed loudly, and tossed the sheet backwards, narrowly missing the food and coffee table. She wore a T-shirt with a picture of Einstein on it, and I would have thought she was a boy if I hadn't already known she was a girl. Or I would have if it weren't for one other thing, something that made my breath catch.
With her obviously self-cut hair, her pixyish features, and her slightly pointed ears, she looked just like Paladin must have at the same age. Paladin in miniature: Just as tough, just as smart, and just as prickly.
"Who're you?" Betty Jo finally managed. She had her hands on her hips and was facing Casper.
"Casper." Then Casper bent down and started rummaging through the cooler, clearly looking for something she liked.
Betty Jo looked nonplussed. She kept staring at Casper for a minute, clearly not used to being ignored. Casper was doing a good job at avoiding her though, so finally Betty Jo turned to me.
"Who is she?" Betty Jo asked.
"She told you," I said, wishing Betty Jo would go away.
"Yes, but why is she here?" Betty Jo asked.
"She's with me," I said.
"Why?" Betty Jo asked. "This isn't a fan con."
I couldn't say that she was my niece because that was too creepy-weird-uncle-with-roving-hands; I couldn't say she was my protégé because that wasn't much better; I couldn't say I was watching her for a friend because the mood Betty Jo was in that might cause more trouble. So I said the first thing that came to mind. "I needed her help on something."
And that, at an sf convention, was an acceptable answer. We fen had all known long ago that kids held the keys to many kingdoms, often kingdoms we wanted to stay in for the rest of our already misspent lives.
Casper looked at me sideways, still bent at the waist over the cooler. I had clearly surprised her. Which meant she hadn't spent a lot of time in fandom.
But Betty Jo wasn't surprised. She grunted and moved
on, not happy about the awards, and no longer caring about Casper.
"Someone want to open that door?" I said. "It's getting hot in here."
Then I booted up the Tower of Terror, and pretended to get to work.
The door opened, and cooler air blew in. There was a sigh and a bang, followed by voices in the hallway. Betty Jo had left. Doris moved into my range of vision. Thanks, she mouthed. I nodded.
And then it was quiet. Casper brought me my Diet Coke. She had popped it open away from the computers (great kid, that), and then set it in the cupholder on the arm of my chair without being asked.
In her other hand, she carried a cream soda. I didn't know that anyone made cream sodas anymore. She stood just behind me, out of my line of sight. But she was reflected in my screen.
I worked on the project I'd been avoiding—organizing the convention's exceedingly messy books. I'd scanned and uploaded paper files. Now I was using a program of my own design to pull information from those digitized scraps of paper into an accounting spreadsheet.
I figured I'd do this for about ten minutes, and then I'd ask Casper if she wanted something to eat.
About five minutes in, she said, "You were lying about needing my help."
I leaned back and folded my hands over my ample belly, the way I imagined Nero Wolfe would have done in the same situation.
"It depends," I said. "I'm not sure what your skill levels are. You're certainly not top-notch waitstaff."
She frowned, and straightened her shoulders. I still hadn't turned around. That seemed to bother her as well.
"I brought your Diet Coke," she said defensively.
"You did," I said. "Eight minutes after I asked for it."
"I didn't know there was a time limit."
"I didn't know it took eight minutes to get something out of that cooler." I waited. Smart and geeky with attitude usually didn't like being pandered to. So I was trying a different tack. I was being deliberately difficult.
She didn't say anything, but she didn't move either. I swiveled my chair slightly. Her cheeks were red—something that hadn't shown up on my screen—and I realized then that she was frozen in place. The attitude covered a superbrain nearly paralyzed with fear.
Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine 12/01/12 Page 10
