Candace gave him a quelling look. He quelled. Then to Mindy-Lou, “Why did you keep going along with his rip-offs, then?”
“Well, we needed to eat. And a place to sleep. And he was like, ‘Sorry, bae, but we’re already in this together.’”
“Wait,” I said. “He called you ‘bae’? Literally that?”
“She’s still beyond all else to me!” he said proudly.
“I never killed anybody at all,” I said. “But that makes me want to reconsider.”
“You’re the one losing the plot, now, Dust,” Candace said.
I blinked at her. It was a childhood nickname—never Dusty, which I hated. People started hanging “Dust” on me once they noticed I had something going for me normal people didn’t. Years before I ever did. “Sorry. Been a long day for me too. Anyway. These things happened. Fortunately nobody’s gotten hurt, nothing major’s gotten broken. Right?”
“Right!” Billy almost yelled.
“Cross my heart and hope to die,” Mindy-Lou said, and actually crossed her heart. I don’t think I’d seen anybody do that since I was thirteen.
“Here’s our situation. We got to track down the victims of your various misdeeds and get them all to agree to forget about pressing charges. And quit looking eager, Billy. We will do that without making use of those rainbows of yours.”
Against honest folk, I thought. Because the seed of a plan had started sprouting in my mind. It was not a good plan. It was an insanely risky plan. But it was also way better than every other course I could see. All of which wound up with us certainly boned and maybe dead, instead of just probably.
“Once we do that, and we are on a tight schedule here, we will deliver you safe and sound back to the contest.”
“You just want to make sure you get paid,” Billy sneered.
“Of course he does,” Mindy-Lou said. “He’s not an idiot, like you.”
“Of course I do. But keep in mind that none of the things we are about to do will stand the light of day. They may be legal, I hope. Some of them. But—once people start looking for dirty bits here, they’re gonna find ’em.”
Mindy-Lou had been nodding along. Now her face turned green. “But won’t that mean the record company—”
“Nobody is selling you into slavery. All right?”
“But how do we stop them?”
I ticked a finger at her. I hoped it made me look more grown-up than I was feeling, right then. “In due time,” I said, because for a fact I hadn’t got it thought all the way through. And also because if I told them what I was thinking of, they would have all gone bounding off across the plains like ol’ jackrabbits. Including Candace.
“First we got to get you off the hook with the law. Then we work things out with the, uh, the record label. And, yes, for you, too, Candace.”
“So you, the White Knight American Cowboy, aren’t even considering calling the police?” Candace asked.
“No. You’re not from around here, so maybe you don’t know how things go. I was raised to walk the straight and narrow by a mama who believes things authority figures tell her. But I’m a working-class, rural Latino. Brown skinned in Texas, ¿sabes qué? I did not grow up believing that la policia are my friends.”
“You know, Mexico’s right nearby, and bein’ as I got my powers, and all, the border won’t hold us up—” Billy started off, giving Mindy-Lou a soulful blue-eyed look. I could see how he was used to melting a girl’s heart.
Too bad hers had annealed, at least where he was concerned. “No! And fuck you and the horse you rode in on, Billy McConaghy!”
That was the first I heard of his last name. He shrugged it off with a sad smile and began sauntering around the table toward Candace. “Y’all seem like well-intentioned people,” he drawled, “even toward a sinner like me. I think you mean that, honest I do. But I think it’s really best for me to—”
He rolled his right palm over. A rainbow spurted out of it, arcing directly into Candace’s big black eyes. It even dazzled me, off to one side.
For a moment she just stood there. Then she whipped out a shin and caught him in the crotch so hard she lifted his boot heels plumb off the ground.
The rainbow went out.
“If you ever try that again,” she said, “I swear I will cut your throat and bury you under a cactus.”
Billy looked at me with a tentative grin. “Keep that shit away from me, gabacho,” I told him, “or I’ll dig up the cactus for her.”
His shoulders sagged. He honestly looked about to cry. Which I took for sincere. “Make you a deal,” I told him. “You help us, and don’t try any more funny business, and at the end we will let you walk away with a bill of health as clean as Mindy-Lou’s. On the other hand, if she or any of the rest of us sink, you will sink as well, and a good deal deeper and more painfully. ¿Me intiendes, ese?”
“I don’t really speak much Spanish,” Mindy-Lou said, “but he means, do you understand?”
“I know what it means.” Billy swallowed hard. “And yes, sir, I do. You may not trust me, and your reasons are sound, but I do trust you.”
“Especially on that ‘sinking painfully and deep’ part,” Candace said.
“Mindy-Lou?” I asked.
“Do I have a choice?” She brightened, slightly. “Whatever you’ve got is better than any kind of future I can see. Probably.”
“Fair enough. Now, while we’re still on the clock, here, we got a little prep work to do. You got a smartphone, right, Candace? And I bet it’s a burner?”
She nodded at that first part, looking a little suspicious, which didn’t seem any out of the ordinary for her. Her look curdled up plenty on that second, like I’d asked for her PIN to her bank account or something. “You have a plan?”
“It’s coming.” I stood up. “Well, now that we’re all happy friends and all, we got us a job of work to do. Grab up your dinners, kids, and eat ’em on the run or chuck ’em in the trash. We got no time to sit around chewing!”
Bubbles and the Band Trip
Part 10
THE MOB HAD JUST finished “Turtle Bop” when the fire alarm went off.
“Please file out to the nearest exit,” came the announcement. “Please file out to the nearest exit.”
A groan ran through the audience and the bands waiting to play.
“Well, this sucks,” Asti said. There was much agreement among the other Mob members.
Michelle walked onstage. She’d been hanging out in the wings with Robin, Wally, and Priscilla Beecher. They were watching the band play and keeping an eye on things.
“There’s an exit back here,” she said. “Let’s head out that way.”
The band stood and began to file out carrying their instruments.
“You need to leave those.”
“We can’t just leave them here on the floor!” Sean exclaimed.
“Our cases are right by the exit door,” Asti said.
“This could be something serious, you betcha,” Wally said.
“Rusty is right,” Robin said. “This could be something real, let’s get a move on.”
“Can we just stick our instruments into the cases? Please?” asked Peter. “It won’t take any time at all.”
“Okay, be quick,” Robin said.
The kids did as they were told, not even bothering to fasten the catches.
The fire trucks pulled away. And much to everyone’s relief, it was a false alarm. At the all clear, everyone trudged back inside. Michelle was glad to get back into the auditorium. They’d been waiting on the concrete walkway that wrapped around the building. Despite the beautiful day, it had gotten warm standing outside on it. It was cool and dark inside, and it took a moment for her eyes to adjust.
The Mob filed in through the backstage door, and the kids made a beeline to their instrument cases.
“You know, I’m beginning to think this trip is cursed,” Michelle said to the other adults.
Even though her hair was securely br
aided, Michelle still ran a hand across the top of her head as if to smooth it down. She had bulked up some, weighing in at about a hundred and fifty pounds. She wore a loose-fitting black skirt and a snug-fitting gray jersey top that showed off her cleavage.
“I just hope—”
A gasp and a strangled scream from Adesina interrupted her. A surge of panic went through Michelle. Nothing much scared Michelle, but her daughter’s cry terrified her.
Adesina was standing in front of her open case, but her bass wasn’t inside. Michelle saw two diamondback rattlesnakes where the bass should be. They were coiled side by side, heads starting to raise, rattles shaking.
“Don’t move,” Michelle said. There was a crack in her voice. A sound she only vaguely remembered having just as her card turned. A sound fragile and full of fear.
Michelle lifted her left hand and two bullet-sized bubbles formed.
“Mom! No!”
“What!?”
“My bass case! Don’t mess up my bass case!”
Two thoughts ran through Michelle’s head: Are you insane? And: Are you insane?
She let the bubbles go. They began to expand in the air and in a moment, they encased the snakes in hard shells. The rattlers struck the inside of the bubbles, but their fangs slipped off harmlessly.
“Kewl,” Adesina said.
The movement of their strikes sent the bubbles falling to the floor. The snakes began rolling around. Their rattles sounded like maracas.
“Eep,” Antonia said as one of the rattlers rolled near her. She slid to one side to avoid it. “Seriously, I’m not going near that thing.”
The other rattler rolled under the table where some of the instrument cases were. Asti got down on his hands and knees to grab it, but it slid off his fingers and began rolling toward Sean.
“Oh, hell no,” Sean said, scooting away from the bubble. “I’m with Antonia.” He nudged the bubble away with his foot. It slipped in Peter’s direction and he wheeled back.
“I’ve got nothing against them, but I’m not for them either.”
Ghost went noncorporeal and floated up a couple of feet. Rusty made a lunge for them and only succeeded in falling on his face as they spun out of his grip.
“Mom, do something!”
“Hey, you were the one who wanted her bass case kept non-gross.”
“That’s totes unfair.”
“Fine,” Michelle said. “I’ll get the snakes.”
“I cannot believe something like this happened,” Priscilla said. There was a frantic, birdlike quality to her hands as she spoke, and there was a rose bloom on her cheeks. Michelle found it incongruous with the normally composed Miss Beecher.
“Of course, y’all will want to withdraw the children from the competition,” she said.
Michelle was pissed, but she was also scared and she didn’t like feeling scared. She’d rarely felt this stomach-roiling panic. (Don’t kid yourself about that, a little voice whispered.) Someone was willing to endanger the life of her daughter as well as the other band members. She was certain now that the series of events that seemed to be pranks or accidents were something more sinister. She held the bubbles with the rattlers in her hands, uncertain what to do with them. Maybe she could put them in her room fridge until they went to sleep. The Big Sleep. But that seemed fucked up and cruel.
“I don’t know what I want to do first,” Michelle said, her voice tight with anger. “Obviously, they need some real security backstage. We need to find out if there were cameras back here.” Just then, her phone started vibrating. She ignored it.
“Mom,” Adesina said, “I need to see if someone from one of the other bands will lend me their bass.”
“You’re not going to play now!” Michelle said hotly.
“Yes, yes we are,” Adesina replied. She looked at the rest of her band members. “Right?”
They all nodded in agreement.
“My trumpet is missing, too,” Peter said. “We need to find replacements, quick.”
“Someone could have been seriously hurt, or worse!”
“But they weren’t,” Adesina replied. “Ghost and I just got to the band this year, but everyone else has been practicing for this for three years. Someone is trying to scare us away! We leave, they win.”
“Next time it’ll be something worse.”
Adesina didn’t reply. She had a look of such mulish determination that it took Michelle aback.
“I’ll be right back,” Adesina said.
The overhead floods made Adesina’s wings gleam. Her coppery dreads shone.
“Uhm, I hate to be a bother,” Adesina said in a cool voice as she faced the audience. “But my bass and Peter’s trumpet were stolen during the false alarm. I know this might make us late to finish our performance, but there were diamondbacks in my bass case, and, well, I thought we might be given a few more minutes to get some replacements.”
A shocked gasp went through the audience.
“Are y’all all right?” Dr. Smith asked. “Where are the snakes now? Good Lord! Do we need to clear the auditorium?”
“Oh, we’re all fine,” Adesina said. She even sounded cheerful. “Mom took care of the snakes. That’s no big deal. We just need to have someone loan us instruments. I need a bass and Peter needs a trumpet.”
“I got my axe right here,” Buddy Robins said. He came down the aisle with his bass case and laid it across the arms of three empty seats in the front row. He opened the case, revealing a well-worn Fender five-string jazz bass. After taking it out, he attached the guitar strap, then walked up to the stage and held it up to Adesina. “Here you go, little lady.”
An incredulous expression was stamped on Adesina’s face as she took it from him. “Th-th-thank you, Mr. Robins,” she said breathlessly. “I—I don’t know what to say.”
He smiled. “Just play the best you can. And I’m getting that back from you.”
Adesina nodded.
Just then, a small voice piped up. It was Jan’s niece, Vicky. “Peter can borrow my trumpet, but he better have his own mouthpiece.”
Peter went out onstage and held up his mouthpiece. “Always carry one with me.”
Now that Adesina and Peter had instruments, the band came onstage and settled into their chairs. Sharon stood in front of them, then brought them in on the downbeat.
Robin, Michelle, Wally, and Priscilla stood backstage watching the kids play and keeping an eye on their instrument cases.
There was a metallic creaking noise. Michelle looked and saw that Wally’s mouth was downturned and his face was scrunched up as if it were a ball of aluminum foil. “Oh, this is bad,” he said. “Cripes, who would do something like this?”
“I have a theory,” Robin said. Like Wally’s, his mouth was pulled into a frown, but it kept going, stretching like Silly Putty. “Those Purity Baptist Church jerks are my number one suspects.”
“But they’ve been outside this whole time,” Wally said. “Someone would have seen them come into the building. It has to be someone else.”
“Let’s just stop speculating,” Michelle said. “I know someone who’ll help sort this mess out. In the meantime, we need to decide what we’re going to do about keeping those kids safe until the end of the competition.” To keep the snakes from rolling around backstage, she’d put them into Adesina’s open bass case after the kids started to play.
She pulled her phone out of her back pocket and searched for a name, then she tapped on the number. A woman answered and said, “Ackroyd and Creighton Investigations. How may we help?”
Dust and the Darkness
Part 3
I SHALL SPARE YOU most of the details of cleaning up Billy and Mindy-Lou’s messes, of which they left a surprising number for a couple of kids who claimed they were trying to keep on the down-low. There was no squaring accounts with the woman who emptied her wallet to give them bus fare to Fort Stockton back in Kerrville, since they had no idea who she was, and the woman had raised no peep that
either my or Candace’s contacts could find out about with the law. Apparently the Mob were hedging their bets and hadn’t cut off her access. Or maybe they aren’t really a lot more efficient than any other big organization. Maybe the bus money really was a gift from a concerned citizen who took pity on a couple of destitute and really pretty kids.
The pizza joint from whose all-you-can-eat buffet the pair had walked out without paying last night was a potentially nasty sticking point. Like borrowing Rooster’s high-dollar pickup, dine-and-dash is a felony in the state of Texas. Luckily the Mordecai’s Hammer Pizza franchise they had ripped off lacked internal surveillance cameras, because the chain’s owner, retired ace Mordecai Jones, had something of a paranoid streak and didn’t believe in spying on his employees and customers. (He’d dropped the “Harlem” part of his ace name right before he founded the chain a few years back, pointing out that black aces always got hung with some kind of moniker that called attention to their race.) Even better, the owner-manager was another distant cousin of mine, so the criminal report the restaurant put out on the pair—no names attached—got withdrawn as mistaken.
None of which is to say it was cheap. Business is business, and I most particularly was not going to stiff my primo, distant or not, after he’d agreed to cut us a truly immense quantity of slack. Nor did I dread the inevitable “perpetually growing expense account” conversation with my granny. For once in my life I was enjoying talking to the fearsome old bruja on the phone, since she’d decided the Gutiérrez family’s understandable concern about the money hemorrhage this whole thing had turned into constituted an attempt to stiff us. Admittedly, since Mr. G was a financial adviser and Mom was a big-time dentist in Modesto, they probably weren’t hurting for funds.
We found ourselves in a pawnshop on the north side of town, near the Flying J airport, trying to untangle the transaction by which Billy and Mindy-Lou—meaning, as usual, Billy and his rainbows—had gained the funds needed to front the bucks for a second night at the Hide-a-Way. On the one hand, Billy omitted to actually say he owned the amp he’d hocked. On the other, the members of the Bon Iver cover band he’d rainbowed as they were breaking down from a barroom gig at weird o’clock in the morning were drunk, usually drunk, and in the habit of losing important bits of gear like their instruments, and apparently their van, when in that condition.
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