Get Katja (21 page)

Katja and Nikolai do their best to stay upright in the back seat as the car swerves from side to side, threatening to topple over as the debt collector throws it around corners without braking. There are sirens in the near-distance and the call for help to the other patrol cars crackles through the radio mounted on the dashboard.

Lady D soars through a red light at a junction, narrowly missing a car coming in the opposite direction, before the flashing lights of another patrol car appears behind them. Its siren blares at them and it attempts to slide up beside them, but Lady D swerves away, so it swings to the other side, this time connecting its nose to their tail. Sparks from the point of contact flash against the window next to Katja, and then they are sent into a spin. The neon glare of the city whirls around them for a few moments before they come to a sudden stop, slamming into another parked car.

Katja pulls herself upright, Nikolai doing the same beside her, and she looks out to see one corner of the hood crumpled and steam slipping out from the darkness within. Lady D is slumped across the front seats, having been thrown there at the moment of final impact, groaning and clutching a fresh head wound.

“They’re coming,” Nikolai says, pointing at the headlights approaching them.

Katja jumps through into the front, shoving the debt collector into the passenger seat and restarting the stalled engine. Metal grinds against metal as she searches for a gear, throwing it into reverse and backing away from the oncoming patrol car, locking the steering to swing around in a semi-circle, the red-and-blue flashing past. She forces it into first and accelerates off before their pursuer can correct themselves.

“Two blocks north then a hard left,” Lady D says, wiping the blood from her head.

Smoke is now pouring from the front-end of the car and the engine is making a regular clunking noise but it still manages to speed away, the other car now back on their tail.

“Ready?” Lady D says, glancing over shoulder then at Katja. Her hand is wrapped around the handbrake. Nikolai grips his seat.

Katja nods, prepares herself, the patrol car right behind them now, then Lady D pulls on the handbrake and everything is spinning again and the tyres are shrieking. Katja fights with the wheel before steadying it and continuing up the rain-slicked street, leaving the patrol car behind.

“Left again,” Lady D says, and Katja does as she says but the car is slowing now, losing power, the clunking from the engine becoming louder and more regular, the steam pouring out thicker and darker.

“Where are we going?”

“Just up ahead, over there.”

Katja hears the siren getting closer but there’s still no sign of the red and blue lights. She struggles to find a working gear again, maintaining just enough momentum to turn the car past a barbershop with a crumbling sign which reads
Frank’s Place
and into the alleyway Lady D has indicated before the engine dies completely. The vehicle drifts for the final few metres before she swings it in behind a graffiti-covered dumpster and brings it to a halt.

They all remain silent and still until the chasing patrol car flashes past, the ghostly ribbons of its lights quickly fading to nothing, then they climb out. Lady D reaches up to a ledge above a shuttered doorway at the rear of the barbershop and takes down a set of keys. She releases a padlock and draws the shutters up, looks back at Nikolai and Katja.

“Stay out here if you like,” she says, her sentence punctuated by the timely sounds of more patrol cars getting closer.

Nikolai looks to Katja who considers the situation momentarily before nodding for them to follow the debt collector inside.

Lady D flicks on the lights, revealing the row of ratty red-leather chairs and milky containers of Barbicide. The large mirrors which line one wall reflect the bloodied and bedraggled images of the three standing between yellowing photos of hair models with the vacant smiles of recently-converted Christians. The debt collector goes through a door at the rear, Katja and Nikolai following.

The short, dimly-lit corridor is lined with more badly-framed photos, but instead of cheesy models these all appear to be of clients seated in or next to the barbers chairs out front. They’re all signed in thick black ink. Katja recognises some of them as minor celebrities, the rest looking more like mobsters and other hoodlums and in each one is the same man, vaguely muscled and with a shaven head.

She stops for a closer look, then realizes who it is.

At the end of the corridor is a bedroom, the modest bed surrounded by wardrobes and drawer units stuffed full of clothes. Lady D takes off the Policie shirt and peels off her bloodied dress and heels, then kneels down and pushes one of the units to the side. She works a couple of fingers into a gap in the plaster around a heating vent and pulls the metal grille away and reaches inside, all the way up to her shoulders. She grunts and strains before dragging a chunky leather satchel out and dusting it off. Dumps it on the bed and pops it open and it’s stuffed with cash.

“So this is who you are when you drop the Lady D act?” Katja asks, pointing to one of the pictures behind her. In it, Frank the barber presently standing before her wearing only a thong and some bruises, has his arm around a young man with the build and egotistical smile of an upcoming sports star.

“You don’t get it,” Lady D says, putting the money she’d recovered from the nurse into the satchel and zipping it up. She points at the man in the picture. At Frank. “
He’s
the act.”

Then she pulls open one of the cupboard doors to reveal a dozen or more wigs mounted on foam heads and selects one—ice-blonde, medium length and with a razor-edged fringe—then pulls it on.

“Now hand me that lipstick.”

Lady D’s uniquely-decorated white van is parked up a little ahead of the stolen patrol car, the dark tarpaulin which had been draped over it now removed to reveal large red lips painted across the rear doors. She opens the doors, parting those lips, throws her satchel and a couple of suitcases she had hurriedly filled into the back.

“So I guess we should be heading off now,” Katja says.

Now dressed in a dark purple velvet dress with black lacing at the edges, black stockings and another set of killer heels, Lady D cocks her head to one side.

“Heading where exactly?”

Katja shrugs. “Inland.”

“That’s your plan,
head inland
? And then what, another gig?”

“What else am I good for?”

“Then I hope you’ve got someplace safe to go because if you think that Kohl being dead means this whole thing is over with, then you’re badly mistaken. Way it seems to me, just about every motherfucker in this city is after you for one reason or another. You start plastering pictures of yourself all over the place again and—”

“I can handle myself.”

“Really? How did that work out for you tonight?”

As they talk Lady D retrieves a plastic canister from the back of the van and pours the fuel over the Policie car.

“I’ll take my chances. I’m done with hiding. Like you said I had every freak and weirdo after me today . . . no offense . . .”

“None taken.”

“. . . and I’m still here aren’t I?”

“Not without a little help,” Lady D says, pointedly glancing at Nikolai, before working the petrol trail towards the barber shop. She then takes a cloth rag from the van and stuffs it into the neck of the canister before lighting it and throwing it through the open doorway of the barbershop. Nikolai takes a few more steps away from the building just as the line of flame flows out of the shop and towards the patrol car.

“You need protection,” Lady D says, cleaning her hands on another rag, the fire quickly spreading. “At least to start with. Plus you need a ride and I guess that I’m looking for a new job.”

“You’re not serious,” Katja says, ignore
ing
the growing heat and the oily smoke spilling out around them.

“You wear heels like these, you’re always serious, honey. I can keep you safe—plus I can string a guitar.”

“That’s more than we can do,” Nikolai mutters.

Katja glares at him. “Look, the one person I’m willing to trust is standing right beside me and I’ll give you a hint—he’s not the one wearing a gaffe.”

She’s aware of Nikolai giving her a look but ignores it.

“Sweet—but not very sensible,” Lady D says.

“I really don’t think we should hang around here much longer,” Nikolai says, sweat now beading across his brow. There’s the sound of glass shattering from inside the barbershop, of metal creaking as it expands. The whine-puff of compressed air as the patrol car tires give way.

“I agree,” Lady D says. “So . . . ?”

Nikolai wrings his hands, rocks from one foot to the next. “Katja?”

The same sooty-grimey air which had filled her lungs only an hour or so earlier clots in her mouth, and she thinks of the Wheatsheaf’s roof racing towards her.

“Get in the van.”

Thanks to Tiffany “consultant Tgirl” Leigh, Bill “respect the proscenium” Freedman, Bracken “you call that an opiate?” MacLeod and Thomas “kill MacCauley” MacCauley. Thanks also to Agent Al, Brian Lindenmuth and Pork Chop, and to all the folks at CZP, including editor extraordinaire Sam Zucchi, artist extraordinaire Erik Mohr, and just general extraordinaires Brett and Sandra.

And, of course, to Jen, who inspires and guides everything I do—whether she knows it or not.

Simon Logan is the author of the short story collections
I-O, Rohypnol Brides,
and
Nothing is Inflammable,
and the industrial fiction novel
Pretty Little Things To Fill Up The Void,
as well as
Katja From The Punk Band
. His website is at http://www.coldandalone.com.

Get Katja
© 2013 by Simon Logan
Cover artwork © 2013 by Erik Mohr
Cover design © 2013 by Kerrie McCreadie
Interior design © 2013 by Kerrie McCreadie

All rights reserved.

Published by ChiZine Publications

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either a product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

EPub Edition MARCH 2014 ISBN: 978-1-77148-168-7

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Edited by Sam Zucchi
Copyedited and proofread by Sèphera Girón

We acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts, which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing throughout Canada.

Published with the generous assistance of the Ontario Arts Council.