Torch Song: A Kickass Heroine, A Post-Apocalyptic World: Book One Of The Blackjack Trilogy

by Shelley Singer

  “Waldo! Go help Drew. Now!” Waldo came creeping out into the aisle, his eyes wide and fearful. Drew was on his feet, sagging in Rica’s arms; Lizzie was watching him uncertainly, her outstretched hand shaking. “Get him upstairs!” Waldo picked Drew up and tried to hoist him across his wide shoulders.

  “Put me down, you asshole!” Drew screamed, struggling out of Waldo’s thick arms and falling to his knees with a grunt of pain. Rica was right there, taking his good arm, trying to help him to his feet.

  Samm and the others were backing the mercs out the door. Not counting Drew, six people down that she could see: two customers, three mercs who were dead or unconscious, and over there, by the poker tables, a cashier, holding his bloody head and crying. The last merc out the door aimed at Jo, missed, and hit a poker slot slam in the screen.

  The battle seemed to be over. Samm turned around, flushed, tense, eyes bright, scanning the casino; looking for someone more to attack. There was no one. They were gone, leaving a mess of blood and broken machinery behind them. His body relaxed, shoulders slumped. Jo caught his eye and he straightened up again, nodding in acknowledgment. Showing her he was ready to deal with the clean-up.

  Always the soldier, just as she needed him to be. Because she certainly wasn’t one. She’d done a lousy job of defending the casino. Too smug, too cerebral, she thought, to think she might ever have to actually engage in a fight. No dirty hands for her. Well, she could do a little better. She could at least keep up with target practice.

  It was a lucky accident that Samm had returned from Sacramento in time for the battle. She hadn’t expected him until the next morning. Then she had an unnerving thought: time. She’d been thinking there was time, that she could plan and prepare and work on her own timetable. Make her moves when her people were ready. But today the choice of when and where and how to fight had not been theirs. Bandits? She doubted it very much. Bandits weren’t usually that clean, didn’t usually wear shiny boots. Sure, they’d gone right for the money, but why not? No rule that mercs couldn’t steal. If the Scorsis were behind this— and who else could it be?— it was a major escalation in their rivalry when the Colemans were trying to hold the line. And yet another thought: Had they known that Samm was on the road? Had they also not expected him back so soon?

  “Drew!” Her sister’s deep voice. There came Judith, cruising down the mezzanine stairs at low speed like one of those big old ships you could tour in San Francisco Bay for five reals. Jo went to meet her.

  Lizzie had returned to the dead merc with the cleaver in his neck. Staring at him, she vomited suddenly into the wide pool of his blood. Drew was on his feet, Waldo dancing around him ineffectually. Rica, her hand light on Drew’s good shoulder, was saying, “You really should let Waldo take you upstairs. You need to lie down and you need a doctor.” Had Rica been there from the start of the battle? She hadn’t seen her taking part in it, but it had all been over very quickly and she was new, after all. Probably confused by the mayhem and by who was fighting whom. And probably not a fighter. Not muscular, not particularly tall.

  Jo reached Drew a moment ahead of Judith. She brushed hair out of the boy’s eyes, touched his cheek. He raised his eyes to her. “Rica’s right, Drew. The battle’s over. Go upstairs. Go to bed.” She glanced at Rica, who had backed away a couple of paces. “Thanks for helping him.” Rica nodded.

  Judith looked hard for a moment at Drew, then at Lizzie, and then glanced over the battlefield.

  Samm and Monte, the head cashier, were searching the corpses of two mercs. Samm looked over toward Jo and Judith and shook his head. Nothing on the bodies that told them anything about the raid. No IOU’s from Newt Scorsi, she thought wryly. A cleaner and a young change guy were carrying the cashier with the head injury, stepping over another merc’s body where it lay in the shards of the shattered door. Willa was talking to an injured customer who was peeking around the end of the bar, probably reassuring her that Doc was on his way. Lizzie turned from the man she’d killed, bumped into a customer blindly dashing for the exit, and stumbled against Jo, who wrapped a supporting arm around her.

  “It’s okay, Lizzie. You saved my life, and Drew’s.” Jo knew it wasn’t okay.

  Judith and Waldo together were leading Drew toward the hallway. It wouldn’t be easy getting him up to his room. Damn elevator. Where was Rica? Over there, helping Zack move a broken slot machine. Waldo turned and called out to Lizzie. Jo said softly, “Go upstairs now with your brother.”

  Lizzie shook her head. “Rather stay with you.”

  “All right.” What else could she say to that?

  “I’ve never killed anyone before.”

  “I know. You had to.” Jo was twenty years older than Liz, and she’d never killed anyone. She’d never had to. She wished she’d been able to today. Now Lizzie was carrying the burden for both of them.

  The last of the ambulatory customers, a few with scrapes and bruises, some of them glancing at the shivering, staring, blood-spattered teenager, stepped gingerly around the dead and injured, through the breakage, and out onto the street, headed, undoubtedly, for safer shops. Probably Scorsi’s.

  * * *

  I looked around at the shattered room, searching for Jo and Judith. Jo and the young girl had disappeared; the beautiful tall olive-skinned man was directing the clean-up. The woman with the dislocated shoulder was wearing a sling; someone had found her a chair.

  The way the employees fell to, sweeping up debris, removing the dead and tending the injured, I wondered for a moment if they were used to this kind of thing. The chief hadn’t said the feud had turned to war. Maybe she didn’t know, or didn’t care. But the stunned looks on their faces and the scared, shocked conversational bits I picked up led me to believe this was all a surprise. A couple of people I recognized as cleaners were posturing and laughing together, but they were breathing hard, shaky, and damp with sweat. I heard speculation about both “bandits” and “mercs.” I heard anger that anyone would do this to their casino and I saw a determination to make everything right and get the customers back in the doors.

  I followed the lead of the others, righting some of the fallen machines, taking an offered broom. A young woman and a man were sweeping glass nearby, rehashing the attack. The woman said it started with a ruckus in the restaurant. I remembered hearing a lot of noise coming from that direction at the start. Two raiders, she said, had run out of there and nearly collided with their pals coming in the front door.

  “Must have been trying for a diversion,” her large, bald friend said. “Gets a fight going in the restaurant, come in and take the place easy. What do you think, Emmy? ”

  The woman agreed. “Yes. But their timing was off or something.”

  Maybe just too eager to start the main event, I thought.

  I helped Willa, who was trying to bandage a cut on a friend’s arm. Her hands were shaking and she kept dropping the tape. She’d given me directions to Judith’s office just that afternoon, but it seemed like days before. A man in a gold jumpsuit with white braid stood near the back door, staring, it seemed, at nothing.

  Bending over to collect a mound of chips that had fallen off a blackjack table, I felt someone stick a hand in my hip pocket.

  “Hey!” I grabbed the hand, swinging around, ready to bash the bastard.

  “No, no— look in your pocket.” He was whispering, peering around furtively. No one was looking at us. I let go of his hand. He was one of the change guys, dressed in change-guy red, a pale flabby man who managed to look soft and scrawny at the same time. His nameplate read “Bernard.” He edged away again before I could say anything.

  What he’d put in my pocket was a short and uncoded message from Newt Scorsi. A meeting time, directions to the place, and the words: “About time you got here. I was beginning to think I’d have to do it all myself.” I had sent a coded message to him earlier that day, following instructions the chief had given me, asking for a meeting: “The showboat delivery has arrived, specif
y time and place.”

  Now I was thinking that I should have kept my arrival to myself for a couple days, done some observing first. The raid had surprised me. There was too much I didn’t know. That was often the case when I started a job. The local chief would leave out some important bit of information, sometimes on purpose, sometimes through incompetence, usually through ignorance. The chief’s story had been vague to start with, but I’d thought I had enough to go on— the complaining party said a powerful family was overstepping the law; find out what they’re doing and how, so we can stop the hanky-panky. Suddenly I was dealing with something that looked more complicated, and uglier.

  Shaved heads, shiny black boots— pretty spiffy for bandits. If they were mercs, were the Scorsis behind the foray? Why? In any case, it seemed unlikely the elaborate attack had been staged just to deliver a message to me.

  I stuck the message back in my pocket.

  Everything seemed to be under control and I wondered if anyone would notice if I went missing. I didn’t even have to go to my car; I could fall on the bed in my clothes and worry about cleaning myself up and changing in the morning.

  “Hey, Rica!” I turned at the sound of Waldo’s whiny voice. “You’re wanted in the restaurant.”

  Well, crap. More clean-up, probably.

  But the restaurant had been pretty much set to rights already. A cleaner was sweeping up the last of the broken dishes. And there was Jo, sitting with the young girl and Waldo, who had just brought them cold drinks from the bar: something red over ice. He squeezed into the booth with them. The girl, I saw now, looked a little like Jo—her gold-brown hair striped with black—or was it the other way around? —blue-eyed, slender but not thin.

  I approached the table. Jo looked up.

  “I wanted to thank you again for your help back there. This is my niece, Lizzie.”

  “You’re more than welcome.” I turned to Lizzie. “Hi, Lizzie. Are you Judith’s daughter, then?” And I had heard Jo refer to Drew as Lizzie’s brother. Drew had Judith’s brown curls. Clan connections were falling into place.

  The girl nodded. She was, pale, teary, but had recovered enough to give me a who-the-hell-are-you look.

  So Judith had two teenagers. Dangerous country for kids.

  I slid into the seat beside Waldo. “That was sure some awful scene— who were those guys, anyway?”

  “Just bandits,” Jo said coolly, making it clear that if she knew or guessed more, she wouldn’t be telling me.

  “I heard some talk that they tried to create a diversion in here first, but it didn’t work out…?”

  Jo laughed and glanced at Waldo. “They did. But the minute they started yelling, Waldo ran out the door and everyone here pretty much followed.” Waldo looked pouty. “Hard to keep a fight going when there’s no one to fight with. So the bandits ran out after them.”

  No bravery on the one side and no patience on the other. What a mess.

  At that moment, a potbellied middle-aged man in a white jumpsuit peeked in the door of the restaurant. When his eyes fixed on Jo, he walked our way. He was carrying a fat white valise with a red caduceus on the side. It wasn’t too hard to figure out that he was the local doctor.

  “Hi, George,” Jo said. “Drew’s up in his room.”

  “Everyone here okay?”

  “Sure.”

  George glanced at me, but didn’t stop for introductions.

  “I’ll be on my way up, then. Quinn’s going to be fine, by the way, minor concussion I’d say.” Probably the cashier I’d noticed. He’d had a head injury. “The customer with the broken arm and the woman with the dislocated shoulder are on their way to the clinic.”

  Jo nodded. She and Lizzie finished their drinks and stood. Jo smiled at me and said thanks one more time before walking toward the door with the doctor. Just before they stepped out into the casino, I heard Jo say, “Frank’s on his way. Guess he was busy rousting a tourist.” The doctor laughed and Jo laughed with him.

  Frank. I remembered the chief had said the sheriff’s name was Frank Holstein.

  Waldo still sat. He looked sidelong at me. “Probably no point in trying to find Fredo and Timmy. No one’s going to come back here, not tonight anyway. I don’t know when the cooks will get back, if ever. Of course if we have to— if someone does come in looking for a meal — can you cook?” He moved a little closer. Uh oh. With Jo and Lizzie gone, there was not a soul in the place except me and Waldo.

  I slid out of the booth and stood. “No, I don’t cook. Do you?” He pouted. He didn’t like that. Would he talk about what had happened? Would he know anything to talk about? I didn’t like being there with him but maybe I could learn something if I acted nicer to him. That wouldn’t be easy.

  I put on an earnest, interested, friendly face. “You’ve been here a long time, right?”

  That relaxed him, made him feel like an expert of some sort. He nodded wisely.

  “Tell me, Waldo, do you get bandits in here often?”

  Waldo stood too. “No. Not for years.” He smiled, showing his big white teeth. “I saw you watching the fight.”

  I waited for him to make his point. I didn’t like that smile. It was too familiar. Even intimate.

  “I have a bad leg. So I couldn’t jump in. Kind of hard to just stand there and watch, but exciting, too.”

  The way he said the word “exciting” confirmed my suspicion. That and the drooly look on his face. And the oily maneuver that moved his body closer until it was just a few inches from mine.

  “I don’t find death exciting, Waldo.”

  He laughed, reached out and grabbed my waist.

  No. Not even for information. I gripped his arm hard and cartwheeled him over my right thigh. He was even heavier than he looked. He landed hard on his back, screaming on impact, his foot catching a chair and tossing it to the floor.

  “Hey!” The yell came from behind me. Timmy?

  I whirled to see who the voice belonged to. Jo. She strode across the room and reached a hand down toward Waldo, helping him struggle to his feet. Uh oh. Had I tossed a family favorite? Even if he’d fled the restaurant at the first sight of trouble? Couldn’t do the job if I got fired.

  “Waldo, you stupid— How many times…?” Jo turned to me. “I suppose he grabbed you?” I nodded. Good. She sounded disgusted.

  “Just her hand!” Bullshit. Jo shook her head. She didn’t believe him.

  “But you won’t do that anymore, will you?” she snapped.

  “No.” I could barely hear him grunt the word. He was pouting again, like a nasty little kid.

  “Because this one seems capable of hurting you, Waldo.”

  Waldo shrugged, gave me a last resentful look, and hobbled into the kitchen.

  “You’re okay, Rica?”

  “Of course.”

  She nodded, appraising me. Looking deeper into my eyes than I liked.

  “Well, I guess you can fight, after all.”

  Chapter Seven

  Gossip with Strangers

  The worn royal blue drapes let pinpoints of daylight into the room, dusty beams brushing the scarred white-painted bureau. The room was cleaner than most I’d slept in, clean enough to please Gran. The bed wasn’t too lumpy, the walls were recently painted a soft cream, the tan carpet was worn but unstained. The clock worked. It was just before eleven. I’d slept hard. I was supposed to get my picture taken in an hour.

  My sys told me there was new mail.

  Not from Sylvia, of course. Still worn out from the day before, I revisited my crankiest fantasy. I was knocking on her door— no idea what it looked like— and when she appeared I said, “Now ignore me. Now tell me you still hate me for one little mistake with that whatever-his-name-was. Look me in the eye and say you’d rather stay here with whatever-this-guy’s-name-is than travel with me.”

  I’d been replaying that scene for years. Like some kind of stubborn rehearsal for a play that would probably never open because I was afraid if I did go t
here and say those words, she’d actually do what I was daring her to do, tell me she hated me and wasn’t going anywhere.

  The only message was a new offer, from New Orleans, dealing with some kind of corruption— nothing new there— but it included the cover role of Maggie the Cat at a theater in the French Quarter. I’d seen the original with Elizabeth Taylor, restored but a lot the worse for use, and fallen in love with Tennessee Williams. And Paul Newman. And Elizabeth Taylor. Maggie. New Orleans music and food, too.

  I answered: “Thanks for the offer. Sierra assignment queued first. I’ll check back with you when it’s winding down.” The job could still be waiting, even if I took a side trip to visit Gran. That’s one wild old city. Came back from a hurricane and flood way before the Poison and managed to rebuild before everything everywhere went to hell. Nearly two thousand people by last count. Greatest music on earth and lots to drink. But it wouldn’t tempt a lot of freelancers. The streets were dark and violent and the people stuck to their own. The language was a problem, too. My own Loosianne was better than most, even though I couldn’t seem to keep Redwood Spanish out of the French mix.

  Shooting the screen, I punched a line to channel 1, Redwood, or what I hoped would be Redwood, looking for any little piece of home. The holo shimmied for a second, a man’s head resolved shakily. Fading in and out. Singing. Badly. I muted the sound, watching his face and hoping the screen would shift to the prettier sight of Webber Doe, sending out the hearsay of Doe’s data from San Francisco. No Webber Doe. Ten minutes of staring at jiggles and fades, no luck. During one fade, another guy appeared, in Tahoe, he said, and introduced his wife. She started playing the violin. Mercifully, she was interrupted by a flicker from the Coast, back to channel 1, a vision of Webber Doe laughing and then she was gone. I gave up and shut down.