Kicky did not try to resist or make a scene, for fear of traumatizing the little girl. “Go on, honey,” she said gently to her daughter. “Go watch cartoons.”
“You come too!” demanded the little girl. “Cartoom wif me!”
“I can’t, honey. Go on, I’ll see you later,” said Kicky. Tears were in her eyes as the woman carried the child out of the room.
“You really can see her later, you know,” said Lainie conversationally. “It’s all up to you from now on, Kristin.”
“No, I won’t,” said Kicky in total resignation. “Not after tonight. I’m not an idiot. I know what you want me to do. I also know what the NVA does to snitches. I see it on TV. They tie you up and put a plastic garbage bag over your head, and then they put a bullet in your brain. The bag is so the brains and the blood don’t splatter and make more evidence for the crime scene investigators. They never bury the bodies. They want them to be found, so everyone will know what happens to informers. What’s going to happen to my daughter after I’m dead?”
“You know what will happen,” Lainie told her bluntly. “She’ll go to It Takes A Village, and she will be adopted by a family of proven wealth and substance and loyalty to the United States, probably on the East Coast somewhere, but certainly outside the Northwest just to make sure she doesn’t grow up with any bad influences in her life, like you.”
“Drunks?” asked Kicky bitterly. “I mean violent bad drunks, not like my mom? Nutjobs the courts have declared unsuitable for normal adoption? Dysfunctional yuppies or glitterati who want her as a toy and who will get tired of her and slough her off onto some Guatemalan maid or nanny all day, so she’ll be raised by the TV if she’s lucky, or maybe infected with some Third World disease? Or maybe a couple of dykes or faggots? Just anybody with enough money will do, I guess?” said Kicky bitterly.
“Look, I’m telling you for the last time, I don’t want to hear any more of that hatespeech!” snapped Lainie. “No more ethnic slurs or derogatory remarks about people’s sexual preferences! You’re in trouble enough already!”
“Yeah, I’m in trouble!” yelled Kicky. “I’ve got a couple of bastard cops who are sending me to my death and planning to sell my daughter after the spuckies kill me! I’d call that trouble! And as for hatespeech, you’d better get used to it, because if I’m going to be hanging with Jerry Reb, you’re going to be hearing a lot of it on your wire or whatever you’re planning. Let’s just say I’m getting into character!”
“Gee, it sure sucks to be you,” agreed Lainie equably. She had sense enough to realize that now was the time to ease up a bit on the terrified young woman in front of her. “Look, you’ve caught a couple of bad breaks in the past twenty-four hours, Kristin. That I’ll grant you. But you know, there’s an old saying: if you can’t get out of it, get into it. When life hands you lemons, make lemonade. If you play your cards right and keep your cool, and give this thing of ours one hundred and ten per cent, then this big cloud could turn out to have a hell of a silver lining. You don’t think we’d ask you to undertake a dangerous assignment like this without compensating you, do you? And your compensation will be commensurate with the risk. I can promise you five hundred dollars a week from the discretionary fund. That’s two thousand dollars per month tax free, plus we can arrange things for you like clothes and cars and anything you need. If you prove as valuable to us as I think you may, then it will be more.”
“Per month? Just how long do you plan on this snitch gig of mine going on?” asked Kicky, appalled.
“How long is a piece of string?” replied Lainie rhetorically. “From one end to the other. It goes on as long as it goes on.”
“It will go on until they pick up on the fact that I’m a rat, and then one night I get into a car with them and I end up lying in the woods with the bag over my head,” said Kicky with finality. “I can’t do it, damn you! I’m not a stool pigeon and I can’t act like one! They’ll be able to read me in their sleep. I probably won’t even make it past tonight!”
“Kicky, look, you know as well as I do where you’ve been and what you’ve done,” said Lainie. “You know how to handle yourself on the streets and in prison. If you didn’t have some moves you wouldn’t have survived, you wouldn’t be here. And you won’t have to do anything proactive, no fishing for specific people or things, although needless to say, we’re very interested in Mr. Lockhart. You don’t have to ask leading questions or act overly curious. Just go with the flow and sound enthusiastic about their great racist revolution. We will be recording you every step of the way, and our intelligence people will be doing all the analysis and figuring out what the hell their scene is from the raw data you bring in. You’ll just be a fly on the wall, so to speak, a listening post. Do whatever they tell you to, convince them you’re just a bimbo, and of course use your sexual skills, which I’m sure you’ve picked up in your professional life. These men are brutes, granted, but like all men they’re nothing but dumb thugs who think with their cocks, and they’re not going to suspect a foxy bitch with neat tats who gives them good head.”
“And you’ll be recording that too, I suppose?” asked Kicky, burying her face in her hands. “What are you going to do after I’m dead, sell it on the internet?”
“Oh, come on, don’t tell me you’re shy?” snapped Lainie in exasperation. “You’re a sex trade worker, for God’s sake! Surely you’ve done group bangs and porno and let some of your johns watch, that kind of thing?”
“As a matter of fact, no I haven’t,” said Kicky dully. “It’s something I do sometimes when I have to, because it’s the only way I can get money to pay the rent and buy baby stuff, and because it’s the only thing America thinks I’m good for. But I don’t enjoy it. As if you give a damn about what I feel.”
“Actually, I don’t,” said Lainie. “Look, are you down with this or not, Kicky? I need to know now. It’s not rocket science. You play ball, or America throws you away, all of you. We can still take you back downstairs and we can send that little girl right on over to It Takes A Village, and for good measure we can seize that trailer and your drunk-ass mother’s trailer as well under the asset forfeiture laws. Did I mention your mother is down in the drunk tank right now? Probably hollering for her first brewski of the day. If you balk on me or if you screw this up tonight, by this time tomorrow you’ll be so far into the system no one can pull you out, your daughter will be on her way to her new mommy and daddy, or her new mommies or new daddies as the case may be, and we’ll drop your mother off at the Salvation Army homeless shelter.”
“Okay, I get it!” shouted Kicky. “Just tell me what you want me to do!”
Lainie Martinez pointed to a large and comfortable looking sofa along one wall of the conference room. “Right now I want you to lie down and take a good long sleep,” she said. “You’ve got a heavy date at nine o’clock tonight, and I want you alert and rested and on your toes. You do not want to fuck this up because you’re exhausted.” She got up and went to the door. “This door stays locked, and remember, even if you can get out of this room, we’ve got your little girl, and you don’t know where in this building she is. Wise up, Kristin. You’re our bitch now and when we tell you to sit, you sit. We tell you to fetch, you fetch. When one of those racist murderers tells you to roll over, you roll over. Deal with it.”
In fact, Kicky was indeed exhausted, and even as stressed as she was, she fell asleep almost immediately when she lay down on the soft sofa. A woman police officer woke her up at four o’clock, gave her another painkiller, and let her go to the bathroom and take a shower in the staff locker room, keeping her under close watch the whole time. Then Kicky was taken back to the conference room where she was served a cafeteria lunch which she devoured whole. She hadn’t eaten for 24 hours, and she was hungry. After she was through, Lainie Martinez brought in a large cardboard box of stuff from Kicky’s trailer. A selection of her clothes was inside. “Pick out something to wear tonight,” she ordered Kicky. “Casual wear, not t
hat streetwalking outfit you were arrested in.” Kicky chose jeans, a pair of old running shoes, a bra and a short-sleeved maroon knit pullover blouse.
“You gonna tape a box or something to my navel?” she asked.
“Oh, it’s a lot more sophisticated than that now,” said Lainie with a laugh. She went to the door of the conference room and beckoned. A tall, thin white man in civilian clothes with a receding hairline and a badge and gun on his belt entered, carrying a metal briefcase, which he set down on the conference room table and opened up. “This is Detective McCafferty, from our Electronic Surveillance Division,” said Martinez. “You’ll be seeing a lot of him.”
McCafferty stepped up to Kicky and looked her over. “Pierced ears? Good,” he said. “I’ve got the very thing.” He went to the case and picked out a couple of small earrings, pearls set into a green leafy blossom design. He put them on Kicky’s ears; then he went to the case and pulled out a set of headphones, which he put on his ears. “Say something so I can check the levels,” he ordered.
“Itsy bitsy spider crawled up the fucking spout,” said Kicky. McCafferty diddled with some dials in the small console in the case. “Again, please,” he said.
“What if they run a metal detector over me?” demanded Kicky.
“No metal in those, all plastic fiber circuitry,” said McCafferty.
“Fiber optic? Are there tiny cameras in there so you can see as well as hear?” asked Kicky curiously.
“No, just audio, although we do have some video-capable pieces like that,” replied the bug man. “Now you, Sergeant. Step away from her a bit, say six feet, and say something.”
Lainie did so and said, “Fiber optics will come later. We want to get these SOBs on video as well as on digital sound. How’s that, Andy?”
“Good. Now me. I’m what? Maybe twelve feet away? Testing, one, two, yeah, I’m fine. Turn on the TV, please, for background noise filter.”
Lainie turned on the television, which was sitting in one corner of the room. CNN was on. The woman newscaster was reading off her teleprompter, “Rush hour traffic in Seattle is being disrupted and backed up for several miles from the Governor Rosselini Bridge, due to a burning police vehicle at the 23rd Avenue on-ramp to Highway 520. The police command car, believed to be carrying a senior field supervisor, was destroyed by an improvised explosive device concealed on the side of the entrance ramp. The supervisor and his driver were killed. Their names are being withheld pending notification of their families. A telephone call to CNN’s Seattle bureau using a confirmed code word claimed credit for the attack in the name of the outlawed white supremacist Northwest Volunteer Army. There were more terrorist attacks throughout the Pacific Northwest today as two Hispanic men were shot and killed in Yakima, Washington; bombs exploded in a Hispanic bar in Boise, Idaho and a Jewish community center in Eugene, Oregon; and the Korean owner of a convenience store in Chehalis, Washington, was shot dead. Also, in Portland, Oregon, a well-known gay and anti-fascist community activist, Geoffrey Weller, aged 32, was shot and killed in a deadly daylight sniper attack in the city’s fashionable Pearl District. Portland police have confirmed that a Jack of Diamonds playing card was found near the sniper’s presumed hiding place, indicating that the shooting was carried out by the notorious Jesse ‘Cat-Eyes’ Lockhart of the NVA. A one million dollar reward has been offered for Lockhart’s capture, but with no results so far.”
“Background filter’s fine,” said McCafferty with a nod. “We’ll have our ears on.” Lainie snapped off the television.
“One million dollars reward, Kicky,” she simpered suggestively. “I’m sure you could use some of that, couldn’t you? Don’t worry, you come through for us and Jamal and me will give you an even split. You’ve got my word.”
“And do I have your word I’ll be alive to spend it?” asked Kicky.
“You want a GPI on her?” McCafferty asked Lainie.
“Oh, yes, always,” said Lainie.
“A what?” asked Kicky.
“Global positioning indicator,” said McCafferty, rummaging around in his case. “That way we know exactly where you are, at all times.”
“Just what I always wanted,” said Kicky dryly.
“This is for your protection as well as ours, you know,” said Lainie. “If these guys tonight want you to go somewhere with them, you go with them. This way we can track you.”
“And are these earrings sensitive enough to understand me when I’m talking with a plastic bag over my head?” demanded Kicky. “Look, I’m doing this because I haven’t got any choice. Don’t worry, I’ll come through for you or literally die trying. Most likely die trying. But don’t insult my intelligence by pretending you give a damn about me or my safety, okay? You don’t care if they kill me, all you care about is getting the credit and the little gold star on your forehead for whatever information about the NVA I get for you and the Monkey. Don’t tell me you want to put a tracking device on me for my own protection. You just want to tag me like a fish or an animal, turn me loose in the wild, and see how long I survive before the bears and the wolves eat me, like this was some kind of sick reality nature show.”
“Mmm, close, but not quite,” said Lainie calmly. “What you have to understand, Kristin, is that you henceforth will represent a growing investment of time, effort, and money on behalf of the Portland Police Bureau. When we start laying out the shekels for an operation like this, our bosses expect to see results, and one cracker whore lying dead on a logging trail with that plastic bag you mentioned over her head doesn’t count as a result. Okay, so the milk of human kindness doesn’t come into play much in all of this. But we do want to protect you as an investment. The more valuable an investment you make yourself, the more motivation we will have to exert ourselves to protect you, got it? Full cooperation and participation on your part is advisable. Call it enlightened self-interest.”
“Try this,” said McCafferty, slipping a sapphire ring onto her right hand.
“You start building our mutual investment portfolio tonight, Kristin,” said Martinez. “You make all the right moves, you don’t fuck it up, and from now on that ring stays on your finger at all times. Sure, once you’re back on the street, you can take off the ring and ditch us. But be very sure about things before you do that, girl. Because once you take off that ring our divorce is final, and we not only get custody of Mary Ellen, but Jamal and I will hunt you down, and after Jamal takes a recreational break with you, I will personally put a bullet in your empty blonde head that will kill you just as dead as any NVA slug would. Once we start this, Kicky, you do not ever, ever forget whose side you’re on and who you’re working for. One day it will all be over; but we will decide when that day comes, not you.”
“Now I know why I fell in love with you,” sighed McCafferty, looking at Lainie with soulful eyes. Kicky had a horrible suspicion that he meant it.
* * *
They dropped Kicky off a block from Lenny’s pad at exactly nine that night, on a corner they knew could not be seen from the apartment windows. There had been some discussion between Lainie and Jamal as to whether or not they should insert her into the apartment earlier and have her waiting for whomever showed from the NVA, but Lainie vetoed it. “They show up and find someone they’re not expecting already there, that will sound a warning bell in their minds right away,” she explained. “They’ll wonder who else has been there before them and what they’ve been doing in there.” As Kicky got out of the nondescript Pacific Power van, Lainie said, “You have your bus pass? Remember, if they ask you how you got here, you took the 42.”
“I’ve got it,” said Kicky, fighting not to tremble in terror.
“Go now. Don’t fuck this up,” said Lainie, closing the door to the van.
“A ‘good luck’ might have been nice, bitch,” muttered Kicky as she hoisted her handbag to her shoulder. At her insistence she had been at least able to get them to give her another padlock, and she had made another slung shot from one of her s
ocks. “Look, they’ll think it’s out of character if I’m not packing something!” she had argued. Now she entered the building and mounted the creaking stairs to the second floor. She knew from past experience here that the elevator in this tenement wasn’t reliable. She stopped and checked under the mat at the top of the stairs. The key Lenny kept there for his girls, when he used the place as a drop, was gone. They were probably in there. She stood before Apartment 24 and took a deep breath. Then she knocked on the door.
After a moment the door was opened by the man she had seen the day before in Jupiter’s Den, the one with the shaved head and beard who looked like a wrestler. Kicky saw he kept his right hand behind the door, and she was sure there was a gun in it. She didn’t give him a chance to say anything. “Lenny Gillis ain’t coming,” she said to him.
“Yeah?” said the man, looking her over from head to toe. “Why not?”
“He’s dead,” she told him. “A couple of nigger cops beat him to death last night. The cops are probably looking for you now.”
“They always are.” Big Jim McCann stepped aside and jerked his head for Kicky to enter, and then he closed the door. There was indeed a black plastic-looking automatic in his right hand, probably a 9-mm of some kind, she thought. “Who are you?” he demanded, his voice deep, not rough. Kicky sensed that the next sixty seconds would probably determine her immediate survival or otherwise.
“I’m Kicky McGee,” she said. “I work, well, worked for Lenny.” She awaited the inevitable next question as to the nature of employment with resignation, but it didn’t come. Instead, a second man spoke from behind her.
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