Audacious (13 page)

“All I can say is that there’s no way I’d work for them.”

The kid eyed Abby, those deep brown eyes seeming to take all of her in. Weigh her. Decide her fate.

And Abby did a wipe of all her assumptions about the girl. Then she studied her again. Stringy hair needed washing. The dirty face and skinned elbows were part of a stick-figure body that looked to be years away from womanhood. Or could blossom tomorrow. Hard to tell, kids from Five Corners were so underfed. Maybe Abby had been low on the age. Ten, plus or minus one, might be closer.

But it was the eyes that gave the experienced maid pause. No way to tell what they’d seen. What they’d done. Abby started to credit them with what she’d known at ten or so.

Then shook that thought off.

Five Corners had been going to hell fifteen years ago. And it had gotten worse. No, this kid had seen worse than what drove Abby out of here.

There really was no reason to trust her. Certainly not her and a smart kid with connections to all the gangs.

It was time to walk… fast.

“You see that corner down the way,” the girl said, pointing. “The one with two stores on it and a couple of good-looking houses. One’s even got some grass they cut.”

Abby looked and saw it.

“Uncle Joe and Auntie Mong don’t allow no drug sales on their corner. No nothing. And they got shotguns to back them up. That’s neutral territory. You go there. I’ll bring Bronc there, so you can talk, and maybe Bronc will help you.”

“How about Uncle Joe. Could he help me?”

“Uncle Joe don’t know nothing. You can ask him if you want, but all he ever says is that he don’t know nothing.”

“Smart man.” Abby had known Uncle Joe’s in her time. She sauntered that way.

A second later, when she looked back, the cat was cleaning its paws, but the girl had vanished.

Uncle Joe’s provided shade, and a lazy fan only slightly disturbing the warm air.

An old man of dusky origins took her measure, said, “You’re not from around here,” and pointed Abby at a soda cooler when she agreed she wasn’t.

Abby paid her rent for taking up space in the store by buying an orange soda.

“I’m adding a deposit on the bottle. You drink it here, you can turn it in for the deposit.”

“Sounds fair,” Abby said, paid, and turned away to examine the merchandise. It was mostly food and essential items for the home. Or the hovel. Abby noticed a good supply of Sterno stoves and candles. Oh, and one entire wall was taken up with cheap wines and fortified beers.

It wasn’t much different from the stores Abby’d spent her quarters and dimes at. Only now, everything was a buck or more.

Uncle Joe’s “You start any trouble and I’ll finish it” told Abby she was no longer alone in the store. The girl was back, but no one was with her.

“You want an orange soda?” Abby asked.

“I like the grape kind better,” the kid said, her face intent as she checked out the store.

“It’s just me and Uncle Joe,” Abby offered.

“She lying?”

“Not that I can see,” Uncle Joe said, but quickly turned his attention to stocking cigarettes on the shelves behind him.

The kid sidled up to Abby. “Bronc says your rig is making all kinds of music. Stuff he don’t know how to work.”

Abby glanced at her wrist unit. “Is it making music like a cop or jawbreaker?”

“No, or we’d have run. Then again, Bronc says you might be some kind of superbreaker. How’s he to know?”

“I work out on the Rim. We got better stuff than the fools who think they’re running Eden.”

Brown eyes went wide. “The Rim! You been in space?”

“It ain’t all the stories crack it up to be.”

“What part of the Rim you from?” a young man’s voice asked, cracking on “Rim.” He was a head taller than his girlfriend. Maybe a shade cleaner, at least his elbows weren’t scabbed. His eyes were an intense blue that seemed to overflow with questions.

“Wardhaven,” Abby said. “And other places.”

“Didn’t they just have a big space battle around Wardhaven?” the youth asked.

“I wasn’t in that fight. Some of my friends were. Some of them died.”

The two youths seemed to put their heads together over that one. Now, seeing two samples together, Abby figured the boy for thirteen, fourteen. The girl for maybe twelve, tops.

“What kind of work you do?” Bronc finally asked.

“Interesting stuff,” Abby said. “A little of this. A little of that. The less said about it the more I like it.”

“And you’re from here?”

“Not in the last fifteen years.”

“It would be nice to be fifteen years away from here,” the boy muttered.

“And she wants to find her ‘mother,’” the girl added.

“Everyone’s got a mother. You get away from yours for fifteen years and even you might want to see her again. Maybe even your gram.”

“I’d be happy if I never saw Granny Ganna ever again.”

Abby let herself blink twice at that name. She also made a point of not skipping a breath. “You two want a drink? What’s her name asked for a grape soda. What do you want, Bronc?”

“I’ll have a beer,” he said, pulling himself up to his full height.

“He likes a strawberry soda,” Uncle Joe snapped from two rows over. “And that’s all he’ll have from my place.”

“Auntie Mong would sell me a beer,” the boy said in not quite a whine.

“Over her cold, dead body. Don’t you kids think us gray heads talk to each other?”

Grateful for the distraction, Abby pulled a grape and a strawberry soda from the cooler, and headed her two, ah, unreliable information sources to the counter. Business done, and more deposits made, Abby quick marched the youngsters to a couple of chairs around a dusty space heater.

The bottles were half empty before Abby asked. “What’s your name, dirty face.”

“Cara,” the girl answered. “And don’t you go telling me to wash. You want me to look like I’m ready to sell something I don’t see no reason to part with just yet.” That was said with a glare Bronc’s way.

“What’s you mother’s name?” Abby tried to slip that in gently, softly.

It didn’t work. “None of your business. Who you hunting for, anyway? Bronc’s the one that knows everyone. He’s the one that wants to earn a ’puter like the one on your wrist. And he told me you’d never give him that one. Were you lying to me? People never give away a ’puter with their own stuff on it.”

“Let’s say I got ahead of myself,” Abby said, and turned her attention to the boy. Interrogating a fourteen-year-old boy ought to be easy. He had hormones. She didn’t. Although on closer examination, the boy seemed to have eyes only for the unit on her wrist.

“So, Bronc, does Cara’s mom have light hair? Some call it platinum blond. Others call it white or something like that.”

He glanced up from the computer. “Yeah, only it’s starting to get browner now. If you wash that mess on Cara’s head, it would look like that. Real pretty.”

The girl stuck her tongue out. “You and what army.”

“No, really, Cara, you’d look real hot, like your mom.”

“And what did that get her?”

That was not something Abby would ask. With luck, she’d see Myra in a few minutes and make her own assessment. Daughters were never a reliable judge of their elders.

“Is her mom named Myra?”

“She goes by Ruby now,” Bronc said, “but my momma says she’s just putting on airs. She had a real name before that.”

“Yeah, my mom used to be Myra,” Cara whispered.

“And you just mentioned Granny Ganna.” Abby shot the last words out.

Cara fidgeted. “I guess so.”

“She’s about as tall as me. Pretty in an old-fashion kind of way.” Abby knew it for classical beauty. But what do you say to an angry twelve-year-old?

“She’s old and fat and, and she ought to behave like a gramma-ma.”

“She’s still hot?” Abby asked Bronc.

“If you’re an old man and like old women, I guess so.”

“I’m, ah…” Even now, Abby had problems getting her tongue around that old name. She tried a different tact. “Ganna or Myra ever talk about another daughter?”

Both kids shook their head.

Which shouldn’t have come as a surprise to Abby. Still, it was a kick in the gut. Apparently, they’d dusted her dirt from their shoes just as completely as she’d washed them out of her hair.

Abby took in a deep breath. “I think your folks are who I’ve come looking for. Could you take me home?”

17

“Well
look what the cat done brung in,” was Momma Ganna’s greeting for her long lost daughter. Why was Abby not surprised.

“She followed me home,” Cara said, grin stretching from ear to ear as she enjoyed the scene. “Can I keep her?”

Momma Ganna snorted at Abby, the old disapproving snort the teenager in Abby remembered so well. “You keep her, she’ll break your heart, like she breaks any heart that lets her in.”

Abby had been surprised at the house Cara led them to. The block was solid row houses, stone and brick, three-or four-stories tall. None were abandoned. Yep, Momma was coming up in the world. Two blocks over and she’d be in Hepner neighborhood. It’d been gated once, to keep the riffraff of Five Corners out.

And Momma had aged well. Cara was wrong about her being fat; Momma was pleasantly round with hardly a sag or wrinkle.
Wonder who’s paying for the body work?
was Abby’s professional question.

“What kind of name you going by?” Ganna asked.

“Nightingale. Abby Nightingale. Who are you, Momma?”

“Topaz. A nice name, isn’t it? Expensive name.”

“A hard name, but one that can be broken,” Abby said.

“Momma, what’s all the racket?” came from the shadows at the top of the stairs. But it couldn’t hide the slender form of Myra, not from Abby’s hungry eyes.

But Sis wasn’t right. Whereas Abby remembered a willowy figure, what she saw today seemed more out of focus. The way she leaned against the wall…

“Myra, are you using?” Abby snapped before she thought.

“No,” she said, but the scowl on Cara’s face gave it a lie.

Abby turned on her mother. “Your own daughter!”

“It’s either that or she eats all the time. A hippo ain’t no use to me.”

“And you couldn’t bring in some kid from the streets to handle your customers?”

“I got clients now, baby ducks. Clients that want their privacy. Got to keep things in the family now.”

“You’re even more disgusting than you were when I left.”

“To empty bedpans at that fancy home. Bedpans better than what your momma does to put food on the table.”

“There was more of a future there.” Abby bit off that line. If she let it all out, she’d have to march out the door.

And she did want to see more of Myra.

“Yeah. Now you’re working for that princess. What you doing for her and all those pretty boys around her?”

Abby was about to fire back a “Nothing!” when the full impact of what Momma just said hit her.

“How do you know who I’m working for?”

Momma’s laugh was more a cackle. “Got you there. Look around some time at one of your fancy balls. You may just see your mamma on some well-turned-out guy’s elbow. Topaz has lots of surprises for you.”

And alarm bells went off all through that part of Abby that was a trained operative.

“I can see I’m not welcome here. It’s been nice seeing you again. Myra, hope we get to spend some time together while I’m here. It was good meeting you Cara, Bronc.” Abby turned to beat a well-ordered retreat.

Abby half expected a butler, or small tactical team, to try to stop her. She was relieved when she made it out the door.

Bronc was at her elbow. Cara had been halted with a “Where do you think you’re going, young lady.”

Abby would miss the little imp, but she kept walking.

Walking her anger out, Abby wanted to quick march for the trolley. Bronc, however, had gotten a bad case of the slows.

And Abby kicked herself as she quickly reacquired the situation she was in. There were guys— in threes and fours— on a lot of street corners.

“This place suddenly popular or is this the normal crowd?” Abby said, under her breath.

“There’s too many dudes here, and I think some of them are hot,” Bronc said.

Was that why he was slowing down?

The real reason for his delay arrived a moment later. “Hi, Auntie,” Cara said.

“What took you so long?” was Bronc’s greeting. “You gonna get in trouble?” was Abby’s.

A stuck-out tongue was all that Bronc got. “Momma’s going out tonight. I’ll sneak back in when she’s gone. She won’t remember nothing by tomorrow.”

“Ruby going out, too?”

“Yeah.”

“Why am I getting all this attention?” Abby asked. The guys were closing in.

“A couple of nights ago, your princess got jumped,” Bronc whispered. “Some of the folks she put down were from here. I think they figure you owe them.”

“Now wouldn’t that be a terrible end for me, paying for Kris Longknife’s doings while I was home in bed.”

“You didn’t do nothing?” Cara said.

“I swear it’s so. On my mother’s grave.”

Cara giggled at the image, and took off, half running, half skipping for one of the clumps. This one had a tall dude in white wearing a belt with a huge gold buckle.

Cara talked to him. He listened. Then he shook his head.

It looked like Abby was about to get whopped for that damn Longknife’s good luck.

No use wasting time getting it on,
Abby thought.

With one swift motion, her automatic was in her hand. She sighted it on the big fellow Cara had talked with, cycled a dart into the chamber, but reduced the charge. Then lowered her aim.

A second later, the dart was sticking out of the big dudes belt-buckle.

“I could have aimed for an eye,” Abby said in a voice that carried. “How much you willing to pay for your fun?”

The big guy eyed his buckle, then Abby. Around him, gangers had started to go for heat. Now they waited for his signal.

Abby was glad Cara was out of the line of fire. Bronc had taken the time to back away from her. He looked ready to hit the ground at the slightest hint that the call was against Abby.

Then the big fellow laughed.