Welcome to the Greenhouse

by Gordon Van Gelder

  Taiesha shook her head hard enough to arouse a faint jingle from the tiny metallic beads at the ends of her cornrows. The sound, as always, reminded her of the wind chimes her daughter brought home from the fair that last summer, before everything went to hell. Pretty things, those chimes, adorned with little butterflies of anodized aluminum, flashing blue and green in the sun as they spun about. How many years had it been since…

  Somewhere below, a gun went off and someone screamed. A splash was followed by several men shouting, then more gunshots.

  Only then did Taiesha notice the boats that had pulled up alongside the Queen—a kayak, a dinghy, and what looked like one of those fiberglass paddleboats she used to rent at Lodi Lake in the summer. The ungainly things were propelled by one or both of the passenger working bicycle pedals set under the seats. Her little girl had loved the silly contraptions.

  Where the hell had this one come from?

  The shadows, she realized. They’d been hiding behind what remained of the houses of Hilmar-Ir-whatever, counting on the glare of the morning sun to keep the Queens crew from spotting them too early on.

  “Pirates!” somebody finally cried down below. The pilothouse bell began clanging like mad.

  “Ah, shit!” muttered the judge.

  Taiesha moved toward the portside stairway leading down to the boiler deck. Her hand found its way to the small of her back without her guidance, and then she had the comforting weight of blued steel in her grip. The judge did not follow. His post was right there, at the top of the stairs, where he could keep boarders from reaching the pilot, from taking control of the Queen.

  Her own lay two flights down, on the main deck, but already one of the pirates had swarmed up a column amidships. The barefoot bastard scrambled over the railing just as she reached the boiler deck. For a fleeting second, Taiesha gaped. He looked like a friggin’ cartoon of a buccaneer. White or Hispanic mixed with black, he wore brown dreadlocks and torn denim cut-offs and some sort of gun belt, but most of the rest was earrings and tattoos and beard stubble. Jesus! The scrawny little mutt even had a naked knife’s blade clenched in between what was left of his teeth.

  All this news her eyes gathered in while her hands acted on their own. She heard a loud bang. Instantly, a small black hole appeared beside the blue spider tattooed above his left eyebrow. There wasn’t much blood. Just wide brown eyes full of dull surprise. Then he was falling back over the railing again, all before she’d even realized those two slender dark-skinned hands in front of her and the smoking pistol they held were her own.

  “Good shot, lass.”

  The voice was male and deep as the pit, but softened by a Scottish burr. Iain MacClure. Had to be, she thought, whirling around. The gun, by necessity, followed her line of sight, and she fired again but on the fly. A spurt of blood flew from the side of the Scotsman’s head as he threw himself at the deck but that didn’t deflect the bullet much. It still found its target—another boarder swinging an ax at MacClure’s broad back. The next man ducked and she missed him. Worse yet, the shell casing stove-piped, jamming her pistol.

  Poxy thing. But there was no time to think about it. The third guy had already reached for the ax.

  In two long strides, she delivered a place kicker’s boot to the third man’s gonads. It sent a shockwave of pain up her spine and lifted him up off the deck by a full three inches, but didn’t kill him. It did drop him onto his hands and knees when he came back down again, though, and thereafter he spent his time trying to vomit and scream simultaneously. She had to bring the gun’s butt down like a club and bash the man at the base of his skull to shut him up. Only then did she have time to worry about MacClure and his condition.

  Had she killed him?

  No.

  Damn the luck!

  Three hours later, they pulled into Atwater. Four dead pirates hung from the rails on the starboard side. The two they’d captured were chained to the same rails, spread-eagle, one of them wailing about it. The rest of them had either escaped or their bodies had been too much work to recover.

  Right now, the crewmen were lined up along both sides of the boat, a show of force for the locals that took up entirely too much room on the cargo-laden main deck. Worse yet, Taiesha had to sidle past MacClure as she made her way forward. She braced herself for the too-close encounter, not least because of her still-aching back, but the auditor merely nodded her way and said nothing at all.

  What was up with that anyway? Most men would have said: (a) “Hey, girl! Thanks for saving my ugly ass!” or (b) “You damn near blew my head off, bitch! What up!”

  Not MacClure. He was too busy fluffing his gray-blond curls, still damp from having the blood clots washed out. His right ear had been bandaged, and that made his round ruddy face look a little misshapen, but when it healed up he would probably be more symmetrical rather than less, since his left ear had a chunk missing too.

  Hunh. There were more scars that she’d never noticed before, underneath the long hair and the sideburns.

  Where did he get those, she wondered, next easing her way past a long row of steel water barrels. And who saved his hairy ass last time around?

  On reaching the capstan, she was none too pleased to discover the man had fallen in right behind her. What? Was he planning to follow her all day long? What on Earth had she done to deserve a six-foot-tall Scottish thorn in her ass?

  There was no time to ask him. She had her own role to play right now, one that called for a navy blue pinstriped business suit, a lawyerly bearing, and her smallest hide-away holster. That was the part she disliked the most. The form-fitting suit made it nearly impossible to conceal any serious weapons. But as Hebert kept on telling her, appearances would, sooner or later, start making a real difference.

  “Ah, there you are, my dear.” The judge looked as sober as… well, himself. He was wearing his black robes in spite of the heat, and carrying his symbol of office—the gavel he’d use when his clerk called court into session. “Look sharp,” he told everyone else.

  The Queen’s white gangplank hung from her nose like an anteater’s long snout, not yet in actual contact with the docks. As soon as she reached him, however, Hebert nodded to the boat’s captain.

  “Showtime!” the captain replied with a sardonic smile, and gave the order to lower the plank.

  Judge Hebert was, as always, the first to disembark. He moved with a priestly air of deliberation and the crowd ashore parted like the Red Sea before Moses. Well, John Alton Hebert was also a lawgiver, right?

  She’d just have to hope no one here realized how vulnerable they really were, how easily the man, the show, and the Queen herself could be blown apart.

  Dry land felt odd underfoot, as if she were still aboard ship. Her feet kept expecting a rhythmic rise and fall that wasn’t there anymore. Must make me look like a drunk, Taiesha thought, trying to keep herself in hand.

  It didn’t help, having to push her way through the crowd. They’d made way for the judge, but not for her, not until the detail assigned to her caught up and formed a flying wedge around her. She didn’t care for that either, though. Relying on somebody else for your safety made you careless. That’s how you wound up facing death all alone, with your family’s blood on the walls.

  Then again, there were only the three of them. Well, four, counting MacClure. Most of the others were assigned to Bobby Rishwain’s detail. Already, she could hear pulses of radio code on her earbug as his squad spread out and began their half of the hunt. Her own team had been put ashore quietly almost a mile north of town, and an hour ahead of their reaching the landing. If all went well, they’d be showing up here any minute and then she could link up with Rishwain and finish the job. Meanwhile, Judge Hebert was joining a man on a plank platform up ahead. Who the hell was that? The mayor?

  I’ll be damned, Taiesha thought. The man was actually wearing a waistcoat over a short-sleeve dress shirt. The rest of his three-piece suit was missing (he had jeans on, not slacks), but it di
d lend the fellow an air of decorum. He needed it. He had to shout to make himself heard above all the general uproar.

  “Welcome to Atwater!” he bellowed over the heads of his fellow townsmen. “We are delighted to have you here, Judge, and we hope this will be only the first of many official visits to our little town. I see you’ve already run into our biggest problem.” At which point, he waved at the pirates, living and dead, adorning the Queen.

  “Indeed,” answered Hebert. “And that will be our first order of business on the morrow.” He didn’t shout. He was wearing a lapel mike, and his somber voice boomed out across the dock with a startling volume thanks to loudspeakers mounted on the Queen. Several small children clutched at their mothers and cried. They were all young enough, they’d probably never heard the like. Hebert ignored them, aiming his words at their parents, who largely fell silent, more out of surprise than respect.

  “Now, then. Ladies and Gentlemen,” said the judge. “It is my pleasure to be here, and I can assure you all, on behalf of the sovereign state of California, that Atwater will be a regular stop for the circuit court.”

  That met with applause. Taiesha used it to cover a radio query. “Little Bo Peep, calling all her lost sheep… Buzz? Where are we?” “Already aboard,” Bustamente reported.

  “What?!” Taiesha forced herself to maintain her direction. She would not turn and stare at the Queen, or get anyone else intrigued by doings on the boat, not right now. “Did you get all three?”

  “Sure did.”

  She wanted to smile. Instead, she asked him, “How did you manage it?”

  Buzz chuckled. “Easy. I told ‘em there was too such a thing as free lunch, and it’s part of the witness fee. Never had to show ‘em the warrant.”

  “Outstanding,” she told him. To the rest of the team, she said, “Okay, we have our material witnesses. Now, all we need is the defendant.”

  She’d made it to the end of the platform by then, but she paid no attention to the two men presently treading the boards. Her attention was centered instead on a burly cocoa-colored brute with broad indio cheek bones. An ancient M-16 hung from his shoulder on a rawhide strap, much as a woman would carry a purse. While his stance was calm and his hands were still, his eyes danced over the crowd with professional speed, skipping over the kids and most of the women, zeroing in on a few of the townsmen and more than a few of the raggedy teenagers on the crowd’s outer fringes. He’s picking targets, she realized. Just in case.

  Using hand signals, she split up her escorts, two and two, so they could set up a crossfire, should support in force be needed. “Look sharp,” she told them. “This could turn ugly in a heartbeat.”

  MacClure nodded, grinning as if the fool didn’t know what ugly was, which might be all too true.

  As she came closer to M-16, he turned his gaze her way, so, rolling her hips a bit, Taiesha smiled at him. “You the sheriff?” she inquired.

  “Not exactly,” he replied.

  “Hunh. Well, I don’t see a badge, but I do see… authority.”

  That went over as she’d intended, allowing her to sidle closer.

  Meanwhile, up on the platform, Judge Hebert was just hitting his oratorical stride. “As you know, the state is striving with all its might to suppress the kind of lawlessness represented by these sorry specimens.” He waved at the two surviving raiders, still hanging in chains. One screamed an obscenity in response.

  The crowd roared even more graphic crudities back at the pirate.

  Hebert allowed that to peter out. Then he announced, “The survivors will be tried this very afternoon, and their sentences…” Here he paused, to whet their interest. “… will most likely be carried out first thing in the morning.”

  “Are you gonna hang ‘em?” somebody shouted.

  Judge Hebert smiled. “I cannot say, since they have been neither convicted nor sentenced as yet. But if I were a betting man…”

  That got a rise out of everyone present. It wasn’t a happy noise, she thought. It reminded her of the old Westerns she used to watch with her Gramps on a Sunday afternoon. A herd of cattle about to stampede sounded like that—a low, uneven, grumbling that kicked at her heart with a cowboy’s spurs. She wondered which way they were leaning. Pro or con on executions?

  Maybe both. There was a clear divide, she noticed, between the folks actually standing around on the dock and those lurking on the periphery. The former were much better dressed, and cleaner too. Most of them even had shoes, while the latter wore rags and perched in trees or atop wooden fences and crates and such—all positions with both a good view and a handy escape route.

  Townies and refugees, Taiesha told herself. The heart of her personal problem.

  Waistcoat chuckled. “Well, judge, somebody here might be willing to lay odds for you, but of course, by California law… that would be illegal too!”

  Laughter gusted among the townies, and was met with unease on the part of the refugees. Three guesses who thought the laws now being revived would be mostly applied to them, she thought. She was close enough now to touch M-16, and did, tracing out the flowing form of a lion tattooed on his arm.

  “We look forward to seeing justice done,” said the mayor.

  “I’m glad to hear you say that,” Judge Hebert replied, donning his grim reaper’s grin.

  The mayor eyed him, hesitating.

  “Oh,” said the judge. “Please forgive me. We haven’t actually been introduced as yet, have we? I am John Alton Hebert, Judge of the First Circuit Court of the Central Valley. And you, sir?”

  Waistcoat seemed reassured by this, by a formal brand of courtesy not often seen in the Valley even before the sea reclaimed so much of it. “I’m Eric Moreland,” he replied, “and pleased to meet ya!”

  He thrust a hand out, intending to shake the judge’s mitt.

  “Well met, indeed,” Hebert replied, and struck like a snake.

  Snick!

  Moreland blinked, staring down at the steel around his wrist in utter astonishment.

  To his left, on the ground, M-16 got it instantly. By the time he made his move, though, Taiesha was pressing the muzzle of her injection gun into his arm, right into the lion’s mouth. When she fired, the gun spat scores of nano-needles into him. He jumped like a cat and swung the M-16 at her head, but MacClure was there and grabbed the rifle. Two seconds later, its owner went cross-eyed and slid to the ground in a boneless heap. He wasn’t the only one. Between her team and Bobby’s, they’d knocked out half a dozen men, all of them heavily armed and strategically located.

  “Jesse, where are you?!” Moreland cried, panicking, trying to yank his hand free of the judge. Then Bobby’s men pressed inward, ringing the man as he was pulled down off the planks and spun about and the other handcuff applied. He kicked at them but it was already too late, especially if M-16 was the ‘Jesse’ he wanted to come to his aid.

  “Eric Alvin Moreland,” the judge intoned, “you are under arrest for the murder of Ramon Izquierdo, following your indictment on the same charge pursuant to testimony heard by the Modesto Grand Jury on April 14th of this year.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” Moreland shrieked at him. “No one in this town would ever take me on! They all damn well know better!”

  Some of them, maybe. As people caught on, pandemonium broke out here and there. Most appeared to be taking Moreland’s side, but more than a few were cheering his arrest. Some of the townies suddenly surged toward the platform. The rescue attempt, if that’s what it was, petered out just as quickly, however, when the bailiffs turned and took aim at them. Meanwhile, aboard the Queen, somebody fired a burst from the 50-mm machine gun mounted on the Texas deck.

  While the crowd took that in, Rishwain ordered, “Go!”

  Moving as one, the bailiffs hustled Moreland across the dock and onto the gangplank before anybody could quite figure out what to do.

  As soon as they had him aboard, Judge Hebert addressed the crowd with an uncharacteristic n
ote of good cheer. “You wanted to see justice done! And you will! Mr. Moreland will have a bail hearing this afternoon. Then we’ll proceed to trial, most likely right after sentence is carried out on those two pirates.”

  An angry growling arose, but Hebert only shook his head. “Now, now, good people! You haven’t seen the long arm of the law hereabouts for a very long time. I understand that, but I assure you, the wheels of justice are still turning. In the meantime, Mr. Moreland will be our guest, and you will all behave yourselves.”

  In the resulting silence, the judge climbed down off the platform. Taiesha joined him as he made his way back to the California Queen, with her detail now acting as his bodyguards.

  As soon as they reboarded, Judge Hebert turned to Taiesha. “Tag. You’re it.”

  Atwater. Rhymes with Backwater, Taiesha told herself, taking a seat in the interview room. She couldn’t help but sigh. There being no facilities in town that could be secured against the town itself, the accused had been locked up below decks and she, perforce, also had to put up with the overheated stuffiness down there.

  “All right, Jerome. Bring him in,” she told the bailiff on duty, a beefy black man who looked a little too much like her husband, Tremaine, for her personal comfort, but was also a solid reliable type, just like Tremaine.

  Damn it. Why was she thinking of him right now?

  Get your mind on the case, she told herself, and quit mooning around like an idiot. Tremaine is dead. Jerome is not him, and you’ve got a job to do, like it or not. So get your head wrapped around this thing.

  At which point, a niggling voice in the back of her mind spoke up, asking, “Why?”

  Why what?

  “Why worry about it?”

  She frowned, and the voice continued. “Why bother defending this clown? Wave your hands in the air, and let him hang too.”

  The man has a right to a decent defense, she told herself. And I’m a professional.