Limbus, Inc., Book III

by Jonathan Maberry

  “Of course, dear.”

  She answered on the second ring. “Hello?”

  “Frieda, it’s Wanda. My Grams said you called?”

  “Yeah, and it’s bad news. You ain’t gonna believe this, but Charlie’s had to close the office, permanent-like.”

  “Say what?”

  “Turns out he ain’t no real lawyer!”

  Wanda’s jaw fell open, but no words came out. She was stunned.

  Frieda went on. “The cops, they looked into Charlie and found out that he never passed the bar. He ain’t got no law degree, he ain’t licensed to practice law, an’ now all his cases are messed up.”

  “How can that— I don’t—” Wanda shook her head. “Damn.”

  “Yeah. Cops may be callin’ you, too.”

  “Okay. Thanks for callin’, Frieda. Take care’a yourself.”

  “You too, Wanda.”

  For a few seconds, Wanda just stared at the phone before hanging it back up on the wall.

  In the space of less than two days, she was out of both of her jobs.

  She had thought 1977 was the worst year of her life. But two months in, 1978 was trying very hard to overtake it.

  2

  The next morning, Wanda went out, and a business card fell from the doorjamb.

  She bent over to pick it up. It read:

  LIMBUS, Inc.

  Are you laid off, downsized, undersized?

  Call us. We employ.

  800-555-0606

  How lucky do you feel?

  “What the hell is this?” She shoved the card in her coat pocket and went out to look for more work. Today she was wearing the only nice blouse she owned, her platform shoes, and a pair of Mama’s old slacks that she hadn’t worn since the car crash. If Wanda was going to look for work, she was going to look her best.

  She tried the library branch on 124th, but the nice lady there told her she had to apply down at the personnel office at the big library on 42nd with the lions in front of it. However, that same nice lady said they could always use pages with filing experience, which she had plenty of organizing Charlie’s files, so there was that.

  But most of the people who took those jobs were students. Wanda was pretty sure they’d take one look at her and say she was too old.

  When she went home for lunch, she looked at the newspaper. There were plenty of want ads for temp agencies, like the one Charlie used to hire people to replace Frieda when she was sick. Maybe she could go to one of them. There weren’t any up here in Harlem, but she saw a bunch in midtown. She could stop by the library, and maybe hit some of those temp agencies.

  After eating lunch, she kissed Grams goodbye before heading downtown. Mama wasn’t home. Wanda had long ago stopped asking where she went during these times. She figured one of these days the phone would ring and it would be the police saying Mama was dead or hurt from doing something stupid like try to cross the street against the light and getting her fool behind hit. She’d gotten pretty good at moving around with the wheelchair, but that skill wasn’t so great when she was drinking, and Wanda just knew that when she wasn’t home, she was out at one of the local bars.

  She also wondered how Mama paid for those drinks. Wasn’t like she had money of her own. Grams’s social security money and Wanda’s own earnings went into the Chemical Bank account, and Mama didn’t have access to that. Wanda learned that lesson the hard way after Mama cleaned out the account they had at Manufacturers Hanover a couple years ago.

  Grabbing her coat, she felt the crumpled up card from the Limbus company in the pocket.

  Unfolding it, she read it over again.

  How lucky do you feel?

  Wanda had never felt lucky a day in her life. The only good luck she’d had was that Grams was still alive. Everything else, though, was just one bad scene after another. Pops beating her when she was a kid. Having to get the abortion when Rondell knocked her up because they couldn’t even afford to feed themselves much less a kid. The car crash and Pops getting locked up. Mama crippled for life and unable to get disability. Rondell getting shot during the blackout.

  And now this.

  So no, she didn’t feel lucky, thank you very much, but she decided to walk over to the phone anyhow. The number was toll free at least, so it wouldn’t make the phone bill any worse.

  Picking the phone up off the wall, she dialed the number on the card.

  A pleasant lady’s voice answered. “Hello Miss Jackson, thank you for calling.”

  Wanda actually pulled the phone away from her head and stared at it for a second, then put it back to her ear. “How the hell did you know it was me?”

  “We have considerable resources not available to most companies, Miss Jackson. I see you got our card. Would you like to come in for an appointment?”

  “What exactly you offerin’?”

  “Limbus has numerous job opportunities, but there’s one in particular that I think might be perfectly suited to you. If you wish, you can come in for an interview this evening at six? We have an office at 666 Fifth Avenue on the 42nd floor.”

  For a moment, Wanda didn’t say anything. She just wanted to ask a question or two, and now she had an interview? And they had a job for her already?

  Then again, the lady did say something about “considerable resources.” That was pretty heavy.

  “Yeah, okay, six o’clock.”

  “When you get to the building, go to the elevator on the far end of the bank. That’s the only one that goes to the 42nd floor.”

  “Right on.”

  “Thank you very much, Miss Jackson. Trust me, you won’t regret this.”

  She was regretting it already when she hung up, but it was cool. That address was on Fifth between 52nd and 53rd Streets. Between that building and the library were all the temp agencies she’d been looking at, so it would work out perfect for her afternoon.

  Once she got outside, she buttoned her coat against the nasty wind and went over to the subway entrance on 125th. She took a 3 train down to Times Square, then went downstairs to take the 7 over to Fifth.

  The library wasn’t so bad. She filled out an application and handed it in, and they said they’d call her if something opened up. They were nice about it, and there were other sisters in the office, too, which made her feel better.

  The temp agencies, though, were full of honky ladies who all looked at her like she had a disease or something. They were all dressed a lot nicer than Wanda, too.

  She was done with all that before six, so she wandered around the area. There was St. Patrick’s Cathedral, which was pretty, but too much for a church as far as she cared. Catholics were always over-decorating everything. She didn’t want to go into Saks Fifth Avenue, because it was full of things she couldn’t afford.

  But there were a few bookstores nearby. She went into Scribner & Sons between 48th and 49th and looked around. It had been years since she read anything that wasn’t a newspaper, a diner menu, or a law file, but she used to love reading when she was a kid. She especially loved Madeleine L’Engle’s A Wrinkle in Time. Shaking her head at the memory, she recalled that she wore out the copy of the book at the Harlem Library.

  Sure enough, she found a paperback of it at the store—along with another book by the same author! L’Engle had written another one!

  For about half a second, she thought about buying A Wind in the Door. But she couldn’t afford to get all indulgent. Wanda had no idea where her next paycheck was coming from.

  If the interview went well, and the bookstore was still open, she’d consider it.

  A lady who worked in the store saw her putting the book back and said, “You know, the third book is coming out this summer. I just saw it in the catalogue yesterday. It’s called A Swiftly Tilting Planet.”

  “A third one? Groovy!” Wanda actually smiled at that.

  “If you want, you can have a copy reserved for you.”

  Shaking her head quickly, she said, “No, I don’t think so. Thanks, t
hough.”

  “You’re welcome!”

  It was getting onto six, so Wanda went across the street and walked up the three blocks to the Tishman Building, with the big 666 right there in the middle of the street. She hadn’t told Grams where she was going, because she’d probably start calling it the “devil building” or some other jive. Wanda loved Grams, but she had some notions.

  Walking in, she went all the way to the far end of the elevator bank, like the lady on the phone had said. At this point, her feet were killing from the platforms, and she wished she’d worn her sneakers like usual. She was used to being on her feet all day, but that was in her comfortable shoes. The platforms were not meant for walking all over midtown.

  The last elevator in the bank had a different door from the others. It wasn’t as wide.

  She pushed the call button, and the door slid open right away.

  Stepping inside, she saw that there were only four buttons on the wall, one on top of the other. They were simple black push-buttons. The top one said “42,” then the one under it said “LOBBY.” The next two said “DOOR OPEN” and “DOOR CLOSE.”

  Wanda had to admit that it was pretty heavy that these cats had their own elevator in a fancy building like this.

  Pushing the “42” button got the door to close without her having to use the bottom button. The elevator jostled for a second, then moved slowly up.

  Eventually it stopped with a “ding.”

  The door slid open to a long hallway. It didn’t look like anyplace in New York she’d ever seen. What she was used to was either the dank, dark hallways of the apartment buildings in Harlem or the fancy Art Deco corridors of the Empire State Building and some of the other skyscrapers from the old days.

  This, though, was some funky stuff. Everything looked like it was made of some kind of weird shiny metal. There weren’t any lights that she could see, but everything was bright. The floors and walls and ceiling looked like something out of Star Wars.

  What especially got her was how clean it was. Even the lobby had gunk all over the floor from people tracking slush in from the sidewalk, and the walls had some stains here and there. For that matter, the city always was covered in smog.

  But this place? This was cleaner than the hospital where Mama was taken after the car crash.

  At the end of the hall was a metal desk that had absolutely nothing on it, just a lady sitting behind it wearing some kind of headset. Wanda had never seen a headset like this, though. It was so—so small. The earphones were tiny and actually got put in the ear-hole.

  The lady looked weird, too. Not in a bad way, Wanda just couldn’t figure out what nationality she was. If you’d told her she was Hispanic or white or Oriental or even maybe a light-skinned sister, Wanda would’ve believed it. It was like she had every possible feature of every possible person. Wanda kind of liked it, actually.

  “Yes, Mr. Spierings, I’m sure that will work. Goodbye.” The lady then looked up at Wanda. “May I help you?”

  “I got a six o’clock interview with—” She blinked. Only just now did she realize that she never got the name of the lady she talked to on the phone before. “Uh, with someone. I’m Wanda Jackson.”

  The receptionist nodded. “Ah, yes, you’re Ms. Cornwell’s six o’clock.” She pointed at a set of comfortable-looking chairs that Wanda hadn’t noticed before against the wall underneath a really ugly painting. “Have a seat, Ms. Cornwell will be right out.”

  Wanda nodded, and went to sit down. The seats were even more comfortable than they looked, and she noticed there was a small table between them that had a couple of books on it.

  She didn’t recognize most of the titles, but there was a beat-up hardcover on the bottom that had Madeleine L’Engle’s name on it.

  Her eyes went wide when she moved the book on top of it and she saw the title: A Swiftly Tilting Planet.

  Wanda grabbed the book and walked it over to the receptionist desk. “Excuse me, how the hell did you get this book? Lady at the bookstore said it ain’t out until summer!”

  “Um—”

  Before the receptionist could answer, a voice came from behind Wanda. “As I told you on the phone, Miss Jackson, we have considerable resources at our disposal.”

  Wanda turned around and saw a tall white lady in a nice maroon pantsuit.

  She held out her hand. “I’m Isabelle Cornwell. Pleasure to meet you in person.”

  “Wanda Jackson,” she said automatically as she returned the handshake. “But I guess you know that.”

  “Indeed. Come with me, Miss Jackson.”

  “Sure thing, ‘Ms.’ Cornwell.”

  “Please, call me Isabelle.”

  They walked past the reception desk to a metal door that didn’t have any windows or writing on it. Isabelle opened it and they went inside.

  The office was huge and fancy. Bookshelves lined the wall behind Isabelle’s huge wooden desk, which was covered in pieces of paper and a keyboard that was attached to a tee vee for some reason. There were also two typewriters on the desk—one manual, one electric—and one of those old-fashioned phones you saw in old movies with the earpiece resting on an arm on the side of the phone. There was also some kind of rectangular glass-and-plastic thing—Wanda had no idea what it was.

  One wall was entirely a big window with a view of downtown Manhattan. It would’ve been pretty if it wasn’t for the smog.

  “Have a seat,” Isabelle said, indicating one of the two chairs that faced her desk. They were just as plush as the seats outside.

  “Thanks.” Wanda sat down, setting the L’Engle book down in her lap, as she still hadn’t gotten a good answer to her question about it.

  “I couldn’t help but notice the way you almost sneered the prefix ‘Ms.’ Do you have an issue with it?”

  “Not really, I just—” Wanda shook her head. “Look, I got no problem with women’s lib. It’s cool, but most’a the women’s libbers I seen are rich honky ladies who don’t know nothin’ ‘bout what’s happenin’. They can pass the ERA all they want, but life in Harlem’s still gonna be a bad scene if you’re a cat or a lady. Even if men and women do become equal, white still gonna be better than black, you dig?”

  “I can certainly understand why you’d have that point of view.” Isabelle sorted through a pile of folders on her desk and then took out one and flipped through it. “Now then, I believe you came here to discuss the possibility of a job.”

  “Actually, you came to me. I assume y’all put that card in my door.”

  Isabelle smiled, but it was one of those robotic smiles that didn’t actually look happy. “Those cards have a habit of finding their way to the right people.”

  “So what kinda job we talkin’ ‘bout?”

  After looking through the folder a bit, Isabelle closed it and looked right at Wanda. “We’ve been observing you for a while now, Miss Jackson—may I call you Wanda?”

  She shrugged.

  “The incident at the offices of Mr. Aloysius Charles was not the first time you—”

  “Say what? The offices of who?”

  “Didn’t you know? Your recent employer the false attorney was born with the name Aloysius Bartholomew Charles—which goes some way toward explaining why he went by ‘Charlie.’“

  Wanda shook her head. “Figures. He lied ‘bout bein’ a shyster, ain’t suprisin’ he lied ‘bout his name too.”

  “Actually, he didn’t completely lie—he didn’t put ‘attorney-at-law’ on the window of his office. His refusal to do so could be construed as an attempt not to lie.”

  At that, Wanda just stared at Isabelle.

  “Perhaps not.” Isabelle smirked. “It matters little, as he did lie every time he took on a client. In any case, your talking down of Mr. Leroy Washington is merely the latest in a series. There was also Mr. Julio Garcia, who came into Smith’s Diner while high on phencyclidine—”

  “Say what?”

  “Ah, PCP, I believe it’s called in the vernacular
.”

  “Then just say that. Damn.” Wanda shook her head.

  “You kept him from doing bodily harm to the patrons of the diner until the police arrived. There were the multiple young men who tried to loot Hooper’s Grocery Candy and Smoke Shop during the blackout, whom you talked out of ruining a neighborhood institution.”

  Wanda tensed. “I really do not wanna be talkin’ ‘bout the blackout.”

  Isabelle nodded. “I can understand that, given what happened to Mr. Rondell Smith. My condolences on your loss.”

  Snorting, Wanda said, “Thanks. Look, what’s this—”

  “There was also the time Mr. Smith got a parking ticket for parking too close to a fire hydrant and you convinced the judge that he didn’t park close enough to warrant the ticket and got it reversed.”

  “Yeah, I talked Miss Modzelewski into givin’ me an A ‘stead of a B+ on a homework assignment once back in sixth grade. Where you goin’ with this?”

  Folding her hands on the big wooden desk, Isabelle said, “Quite simply, Wanda, we need someone with your oratorical skills for the department of Limbus Inc. that I represent.”

  “What department’s that?”

  Isabelle winced. “I’m afraid I cannot divulge that until you have taken the job. The department for which I hire is very—well, security conscious. Out of necessity, truly. In fact, most of Limbus’s employees aren’t even aware of the department’s existence, for reasons that will become clear if you should decide to accept the job.”

  “You still ain’t told me what the job is! Matter of fact, you ain’t told me how you got a book here that ain’t comin’ out for months yet. And you ain’t told me how you know so much ‘bout me.”

  “Our vetting process is quite thorough.”

  “No, it’s more’n ‘at. I didn’t tell nobody ‘bout what happened with those cats at Hooper’s, and didn’t no fuzz turn up, neither. They had better things to do that night than give a damn ‘bout no store up in Harlem. And ain’t none’a them cats was talkin’ ‘bout how some lady made ‘em look foolish. So how’d you know about it?”