02. The Shadow Dancers

THE SHADOW DANCERS

Copyright © 1987 by Jack L. Chalker
ebook ver. 1.0

For Will F. Jenkins,
who as "Murray Leinster"
took the parallel world concept
and made it infinite so the rest of us
could play in his yard.

1.

A Summons From G.O.D.

Cleopatra Jones stared down at the twinkling lights of the city from her luxurious penthouse apartment;
her
city, the city she protected and watched over. Her slim, glamorous face and form reflected back from the window, a ghostly angel of perfection against the night scene . . .

Oh, hell, who was I tryin' to kid, anyway? Yeah, it was dark and I was lookin' out the window, but all cities look glamorous and mysterious at night, even Philadelphia, and only thing the woman starin' back at me in the glass had in common with tall, lean Cleo was that we were both black females who'd come up in the world.

It hadn't taken me long to put the weight back on that I'd lost back in that Garden place, though I wasn't as bad as I had been. Truth is, the most fattenin' stuff in the world is also about the cheapest, and when you're dirt poor you wind up with lots of peanut butter and real fatty stuff cause it goes further and fills better. Oh, the tummy was still okay, but the hips were growin' and so were my tits, which seemed oversized even when I was down at my model weight (thanks, Ma!). At five six, with a naturally round face and lots of bushy hair (I know it's not in fashion but it's the only way I could ever control it without spendin' two hours a day on it) I looked, well,
plump,
anyway.

I guess we was the only self-made poor folk in the Camden ghetto back then. Daddy was a retired Army colonel; he coulda done better by just bein' retired-there weren't too many retired black colonels then. But, no, he'd been a cop in the Army and he was a little too old to be a cop after and a little too black in that day and time to be a commissioner or police advisor, and he had this dream.

Back then there wasn't a single black-owned and operated private detective agency in the area-those that had the background didn't have the bread to get started. He pumped it all into settin' that agency up. Not much-a dingy office overlookin' a side street in one of the lousier sections of the ghetto even back then, some secondhand furniture and files, and a phone and a sign on the directory and the glass door to the office.
Spade & Marlowe, PI.
With Ma as his secretary he got enough clients to pay the bills, with a little help from his pension. Trouble was, the clients weren't exactly the well-to-do types and we pretty much got peanuts even when he did his job right-if we got anything at all.

My comin' along pretty well finished off any surplus, although I always knew that I was the one thing Daddy loved as much as that agency. We got by, but then Ma died young-she always had a real blood pressure problem and never did much take them pills-and he had the agency and me and the agency was the money for us to live. I dunno, I guess maybe I wanted all his attention and got very little, since he was in and out at all hours and I had to be pretty much on my own. I got to be somethin' of a wild child, runnin' with a bad pack, never carin' 'bout school or the future or nothin', just blowin' reefer and drinkin' booze and gettin' into lots of trouble. Just about the only thing I really paid attention to was makin' sure Daddy didn't know-we used to steal blank report cards and fill 'em out real convincing-like, and I could always come up with the right answers for his questions. I guess now I was rebelling against him in a way, and maybe against the whole world as I saw it, but I didn't see no future and no purpose to nothin'. Lost my virginity real young, too; when I finally got knocked up good, I stole some stuff from a store and hocked it for enough to get an abortion. It weren't no easy thing to do, but there was no way to keep a
baby
from Daddy's knowin', and that settled that.

That kind of neighborhood you was always around users and dealers, pimps and whores, and they weren't no creatures of evil and sin to me. I knew 'em by their first names, and they knew me. To a kid like me, they were romantic kinds of figures, and if nothin' else they was the only black
folks who seemed to me to be makin' it. I'd slept around so much by the time I was sixteen that all my fantasies were about bein' a hooker. Dress up real sexy-like, and have the dudes
pay
you to get laid. Easy money, easy work. Only who my Daddy was kept me from either joinin' up with a string or bein' taken in by a pimp. Ain't no way no pimp in that part of town wanted the Colonel as an enemy.

Finally, of course, Daddy found out about it. Had to, sooner or later. We had one big hell of a scene, and for the first and only time in his life he actually beat me good, and I was ready to pack up, run away, and go to some other city like New York and sell myself on the streets, but I got so mad I came out first to tell him, knowin' it would hurt him, and I couldn't find him at first. Then I figured he was in the bedroom, and he was, only I didn't go in or show myself and my bad mad just kinda faded out.

He was cryin'. Colonel Harold Parker, U.S.A. (Ret.), one of the toughest dudes in the world, was cryin'. John Wayne woulda cried before Daddy. It must have been the first and only time in his life he did it. This was the man who had dug a bullet out of his own side with a knife, then driven himself twenty miles to the hospital.

Pretty soon, I was cryin', too, and I ran into him and we held each other and cried it out. After that, we made a deal. I didn't want to go back to school, and he didn't want me in with that crowd no more anyway, so he agreed, though he didn't like it, to let me come in and take over Ma's old job as the secretary, receptionist, you name it. In exchange, when things got straightened out in the office and we got a little ahead on the bills, I'd take some night classes, get my G.E.D. high school equivalency, and maybe more if we could figure a way to afford it. 'Cause I was his business manager, he'd know where I was and what I was doin', and our free time would be
our
free time.

Well, I never did take to school, and I never got through eighth grade, but I managed. I always read-Ma and Daddy had seen to that from early times, and I kept doin' it even when the gang made fun of it-so I had a leg up on some of them kids who have high school diplomas and straight A averages who couldn't spell
cat
or write much beyond their name. I got a big vocabulary, but I never could keep all that
grammar shit right. Well, you know, you speak black English on the streets and white English around Daddy and it's kinda like thinkin' in one language and talkin' another. I got one of them ghetto-southern accents I ain't never gonna lick, and I gave up years ago tryin' to correct my grammar. It's a lost cause. I'm a low-class hick with a big vocabulary, so sue me.

I got the bug, though, helpin' Daddy on cases and gettin' things mostly in shape. The files might not have had the best grammar but they was complete and up to date. I never was no good at math, but after we got the free calculator for subscribing to
PI Magazine
I always knew we was deep in a hole. Still, I learned the business, for what it was worth. It's a damned dull, boring job with no respect and few rewards, no matter what the books and TV and movies tell you. No big action, either. Daddy had a gun, a big magnum, but he almost never carried it and I don't think he ever fired it as a PI. I did a lot of practicing with that sucker and I got pretty good, but that thing has a
kick they
don't show you on them TV shows and it ain't much good at any range. I also took karate and judo lessons at the Y and got pretty good at that, though I never had much call to use 'em.

I also just about cut out any social life. It weren't none of Daddy's doin', it was just me. Truth was, I just didn't have much self-image, as they call it. Never did. When Ma died and Daddy was away so much, I couldn't be on my own, so I got into the gang and did what the gang did. I figure now that's what all that fantasizing 'bout bein' a hooker was all about. Any girl who has that trade as her sole ambition ain't got much sense of herself. When men pay, then you got worth, right there, in dollars and cents. I was fat and slow and no matter how good a shape I whip into I ain't never gonna be no Tina Turner.

Daddy and the agency, then, became my whole life, my whole identity. I don't blame nobody, but it's just the way I am. I can't change that any more than I can change how I look or how I talk. Nobody would believe it if I told 'em, anyway-except maybe Sam, who knows it but just can't figure it.

But one night Daddy didn't check in-the cops did, and I had to go down and identify the body. He hadn't even taken his gun with him on that job, but he got far too many holes to go anywhere afterwards. It was kinda weird standin' there, in the morgue, lookin' at his water-soaked and bloody, bullet-ridden body. One part of me said it was him, but with all the life out of him he just didn't look
real,
somehow. I couldn't even cry, but all through that night and the next few days I just got madder and madder. The cops had no real leads and he'd been pretty closemouthed about it all even to me, 'cept that it was something big, bigger than he'd ever had before.

I cracked the case, after two months, when the cops couldn't, and I got some reputation as hot shit for it but it wasn't all that damned hard. Sure, I didn't know anything about that case, but whoever it was didn't know that and I just began to put out the word that I had leads and knew more than I did and set myself up as a target. The cops thought it was real gutsy of me, but truth was I'd just had all I had left in the world snatched from me and I didn't really care if they killed me so long as I got at least one of the bastards involved. Detective shit is more guts and dull routine than anything else; there ain't no real Sherlock Holmeses. The only thing is, most of the crooks around ain't all that smart, either-they just got smart lawyers. I set myself up, got invited to a meet just like Daddy, and I went, just like Daddy, only I took the magnum. 'Course, the gun didn't do no good, but the fact that I also called the cops helped nab the triggermen in the act of tryin' to kill me and led eventually to the indictment and conviction of a popular young black politician on the way up who just happened to be in the mob's pocket.

All that didn't help, though. Fact is, I got no new cases worth much and lost some old clients even though I got a reputation as a PI at least as good as Daddy out of it. Big Tony and the mob never did get touched by it all, even though they ordered it; the white folks had gone scot-free and the black folks had taken the fall, as usual, and for some reason I got blamed for that. Crazy thing was that the only folks who would toss a case or two my way were the smalltime crooks in the ghetto. Seems they were impressed and wanted me on their side.

Still, not enough came in to make even the basic bills,
and I sold the house and lived on that for a while, takin' a one-room dump near work. I was just goin' through the motions, though, and I knew it. I just didn't know anything else to do. Oh, I had a bunch of relatives, mostly cousins, in the area, but about the best I could hope for was some kind of job as a domestic or cab driver or something. I didn't have no skills to speak of, no real contacts, no diploma- and you needed that just to collect garbage-and only me as a job reference. Couldn't get no unemployment-I was self-employed-and welfare didn't mean shit unless you had a couple of illegitimate kids. The only guys I knew who might be marriage bait were either ones I couldn't stand, ones who wanted some kind of house nigger, or ones that were already as high as they were gonna go and were like street cleaners or handled the drive-in window at McDonald's.

Here I'd done somethin' the cops couldn't or wouldn't do, and dumb luck or not I done it good, and instead of gettin' the gold stars and thanks and all the rest I got shut out. I got to admit that my fantasies turned back again, and every time I passed one of the hookers I got more and more tempted-and without Daddy around I had offers from a couple of local pimps.

The cops, though, had at least a little soft spot for me, since I'd given them some good collars. I mean, a couple of white cops got to bust a bunch of meddlesome black dudes in Camden, and that was gold stars on them. That's why, at just about this time, they sent Sam around to me.

Sam was older than me by a good ten years, pudgy, balding, but kinda cute. He was also the first white man I ever took a liking to, and a big shock. It was the first time I found out Jewish white guys could be about as poor and out of it as me. He was a cop from Bristol, up north a bit in Jersey, and he was down tryin' to track down a ring that snatched little kids and turned them into kiddie porn objects. Fact was, I took to him right off, not just 'cause I needed somebody right then but even though he was white and Jewish he reminded me one hell of a lot of Daddy. He had that same sense of moral outrage Daddy always did, more than I ever could bring up, and when he was after bad guys he wanted their asses bad. He also had a real passion for the old detective stories and for all them old detective
movies on the Late Late Show starring Bogart or Robert Montgomery or Lloyd Nolan, the kind my Daddy always loved and grew up on. And, like me, he wasn't too thrilled to be a detective, he just didn't know how to do nothin' else. He also had a college education and real brains. He goes on them brains, too; I go on feelin's and sometimes guts but I ain't never gonna be no brain and I know it.