The Night's Legacy (23 page)

She backed against the wall, watching the rest of the club as best she could.  She saw a man dressed similar to Hudler sitting at the bar.  The way he kept looking over his shoulder at Sam’s table meant he must be a bodyguard Sam had said wouldn’t exist.  He was probably just waiting for an opening to go and rescue his boss.

That moment came as Jasmine sashayed off the stage and the lights flickered out for a few seconds.  The helmet’s visor allowed her to see the man at the bar get off his stool and draw a nasty-looking revolver.  She reached for Caledfwlch, yanking it from its sheath.  Without thinking she flung it towards the bar.  The sword whizzed through the air like a Frisbee, faster than should have been possible.

The man at the bar ducked as
Caledfwlch hurdled towards him.  It was too late, though; the sword went cleanly through his right arm before burying itself into the bar.  The gun fired a shot that went into the ceiling as it hit the floor.  That was enough to set off a stampede in the club, everyone running for the exits.  Lois had already let the cape drop, so she didn’t see any need for subtlety anymore.  She shoved perverts aside as she made her way towards Sam’s table.

Before she could get there, she heard a shot ring out, followed by a scream.  Her entire body went cold as she imagined her father had been shot.  A moment later she saw Hudler lying on the floor, clutching his right knee.  Sam stood up from the table and then motioned to her.  “Take our friend out into the alley.  We’re going to have a little talk.”

She grabbed the back of Hudler’s shirt to drag him outside.  She spun him around into the dumpster face-first.  He hit it with a grunt and then lay on the ground, moaning and swearing in a foreign language.

She took a step back to let Sam deal with the interrogation.  He bent down to look Hudler in the eye.  “That wasn’t very nice,” he said.  “Where’d a small fish like you get back-up from?”

“Can’t take no chances,” Hudler said, punctuating it with a groan.  “Not with Set around.”

“What’s Set want?” Sam asked.

“I don’t know.”

Sam kicked him in his injured knee, which prompted another scream. 
Lois looked around, but there wasn’t anyone back here.  Though with the commotion they had set off, she expected the police would be here soon enough.  Maybe even that Detective Murphy she’d run into the other night.

“What’s he after?”

“Nothing!” Hudler shouted while rolling on the ground, clutching his injured knee.  “He gathered us all together.  Said something about robbing banks and overthrowing the government.”

Sam made an interested grunt.  “I’d heard about the first part.  Not the second.  He say how he’s going to overthrow the government?”

“I don’t know.  Something about creating chaos.  That’s why he wanted the banks.”

“Especially the Fed, right?”

“I guess.”

“So what’s his next target?”

“I don’t know!”  Before Sam could kick him, Hudler added, “We haven’t seen him since you guys broke up the Fed hit.  He’s laying low.”

“Where?”

“No one knows!  Not even Rahnasto.”

Sam grunted again.  “I doubt that.  Where’s Rahnasto?”

“I don’t know!  Only the higher-ups know.”

“Then where are they?”

“They move around.  We only see them for buys or meetings or things like that.”

“When’s the next one of those?”

“With this Set guy running things?  Who knows?”

Sam nodded and then took the pistol from his coat.  He aimed it at Hudler’s throat.  “You haven’t been very helpful.  You got anything else?”

“I told you everything I know.  Please don’t—”

Hudler couldn’t get out anything else other than a wheeze as Sam put a bullet in his throat.  He followed this up with two more in Hudler’s chest and another in his head.  Then he flicked open the pistol, holding it in his bad hand while he reloaded.

Lois stared at Hudler’s still form, her mouth hanging open.  She thought of what she had said in the hospital room when Mom mentioned Sam killing a criminal.  Lois had said it was justified and maybe it was, but this wasn’t.  She flipped open the visor and turned to her father.  “Why’d you do that?  He didn’t do anything.”

“He’s done plenty in his life.”  Sam finished loading the pistol and then flicked the chamber shut.  “We let him live and he’d go squealing to his superiors that we were after Set.”

“They’ll probably figure that out when the newspapers hit the stands.”

“They wouldn’t have if you’d stayed out here.”

“That bodyguard was going to shoot you!”

“He would have tried.”

“If you knew he was there, why didn’t you take care of him?”

“Then I would have tipped my hand to Hudler.  He would have beat it.”

Considering how little information he’d provided, she figured that wouldn’t have been much of a loss.  “Is this how you did things with Mom?”

“I usually waited until she was gone to shoot them.”

Lois wondered if that had made things right in Mom’s mind, though she had to have known what her boyfriend was doing.  “I’m sorry.  I guess.”

He turned to her, his eyes not looking as hard as before.  “You don’t have to kill anyone if you don’t want to.  Your mom never did, even though most of them deserved it.  I’ll take care of it.”

“It’s not that I’m squeamish.”

“It’s fine.  Your mom raised you.”

“That doesn’t have anything to do with it.”

“Tell you what, go back in there and fetch your sword.  See if that other one is still alive.”

“Don’t you want to interrogate him?”

“He won’t know anything.  He’s just hired muscle and Hudler didn’t know anything to tell him.”

“I guess so.”  Lois stepped over Hudler’s body on her way back to the door.  She opened the door and saw a trail of blood left behind by Hudler as she had dragged him out.  She followed this through the streamers, into the club.

The shots had cleared everyone out and no one had been brave enough to come back yet.  She saw a few singles on the floor, left there by some of the perverts as they made a mad dash for the door.  She ignored these, hurrying over to the bar.  The police would be here soon and she didn’t want to be here when they showed up.

Caledfwlch was still in the wall where she’d left it.  She closed her eyes, trying to pull it out of the wall with her mind.  It had worked earlier, but then she had been focused on saving her father, not that he had been grateful for the help.

She heard a groan from behind the bar.  Apparently the bodyguard was still alive.  She hopped over the bar, landing just inches from where he lay.  From the look of it he had crawled behind the bar, trying to reach a phone.  She doubted they would be able to save him.

The man groaned and then rolled over.  His face had gone pale and his breath was coming out in ragged gasps.  He didn’t have much longer.  “You,” he whispered.

“I’m sorry,” she said.  It didn’t seem the right time for a sarcastic quip.  She yanked
Caledfwlch from the wall and then squatted down beside him.  He stared at her, nodding slightly before she brought the sword down on his throat.

Chapter 21

From her bed Mom had ordered the Thorne Museum to remain closed for Dr. Johnson’s funeral.  The police had finished their investigation, though they didn’t announce any suspects.  Lois knew who they should be looking for, but there was no way she could tell Detective Murphy what she knew.

This time the closed museum had far more than four occupants.  The entire staff from the janitors on up were crammed into the Egyptian exhibit to pay their last respects to Dr. Johnson. 
Lois hadn’t bothered with any decorations, just an enlarged photo of Dr. Johnson next to the jar containing his remains.  She had also set out a blank journal so that people could record their memories of him.

She adjusted the black dress
Melanie had picked out for her the night before.  Lois had numbly tried on the dress, not caring what she looked like for the funeral.  Lois had bought the dress with Mom’s credit card, along with a dress for Melanie as well, who had confessed she didn’t own anything muted enough for a funeral.

The janitors had set up rows of folding chairs in the exhibit so that everyone could sit and listen as anyone who wanted to spoke about what Dr. Johnson had meant to them. 
Lois sat in the front row, still numb while Melanie sobbed and blew her nose, despite not knowing Dr. Johnson nearly as long.  Someone had set a chair next to Lois with the name placard from Mom’s desk on it, so that everyone could be reminded of the one who should be here most of all but couldn’t be.

Since she was the executor of the estate,
Lois had to be the master of ceremonies.  Once everyone was assembled she went up to the microphone set up beside the urn.  She tried not to look at the urn as she adjusted the microphone down to her lips.  She cleared her throat and then said, “Welcome everyone.  We’ve all gathered here to pay our respects to a man who meant a lot to all of us, Dr. Richard Johnson.  It’s both an honor and a shame for me to be standing in front of you.  Richard was my mentor, my friend, and the closest I knew to a father.  When I was a little girl, he used to carry me around this museum—”

Her voice choked in her throat as she thought of that birthday when Dr. Johnson had shown her around the museum, when he had taken her to the beach, and when he had shown up in the gift shop, still so happy to see her despite everything she had done.  She looked down at the urn and whispered, “I’m sorry.”

Then she bolted from exhibit.

* * *

She went as far as Jeff, where she slipped beneath the velvet rope to sit on the pedestal, leaning her head against the mammoth’s bronzed leg.  As she cried, one part of her kept saying with Mom’s voice that she needed to go back.  She had a responsibility to the others, to Dr. Johnson to make sure his funeral went off properly.  The rest of her didn’t care.

She wished things could go back to the way they had been before she left seven years ago.  Only this time instead of running from that diner she would stay with Mom and Aunt
Betty.  She would find another school to complete her PhD.  She would get a job at the Thorne Museum to work for Dr. Johnson.  They would go out to Egypt to make discoveries.  Then somehow she’d find a way to keep Aunt Betty from getting sick.  She could get Mom to stop being the Silver Seraph and maybe even figure out how to get Sam to end his exile.  They could all be happy then, especially her.

But there was no way to change the past.  She was stuck here with Dr. Johnson and Aunt
Betty dead, Mom crippled, and Sam living in an abandoned building so that he could gun down mobsters.  There was nothing she could do to change any of it, not even with that magic armor.  Magic armor she wasn’t fit to wear, not after she had killed that man two nights before.  She hadn’t mentioned that to Mom, knowing what her mother would say, how disappointed she would be that her daughter was a killer.

There was nothing she could do but curl up against Jeff and cry like the little girl who had once so boldly climbed up the mammoth.  She made no attempt to wipe her eyes or her nose, not caring what it looked like to anyone else.  She had cried plenty of times since coming back, but this was different, this was an emptying of all the pent-up grief.  Seeing the urn and the mourners and thinking of him had finally loosened everything she’d kept pressed down for seven years, or even longer, maybe her entire life.

She heard Melanie’s voice, sounding so small that Lois imagined Melanie standing over by the ticket counter.  “Lois?”

“Leave me alone.”

“Everyone thought you’d left.”

“I didn’t.”

“Is there anything I can do?”

Lois
shook her head.  There was nothing Melanie could do.  Nothing anyone could do.  No one could bring back the dead.  “Just tell them to keep the funeral going.  I don’t need to be there.  I wasn’t there for him when he needed me to be, so why should I now?”

“
Lois—”

“It’s all right,
Melanie.  Thank you for checking on me.  I’ll be fine.”

When
Melanie spoke it was with the same iciness in Mom’s voice whenever she lectured Lois.  “You need to stop being so selfish.  You’re not the only one who cared about Dr. Johnson.  Everyone here did.  We all liked him.”

“You didn’t know him like I did.  He was like my father.  Do you understand that?”

“Maybe I didn’t know him that well, but I know he wouldn’t want you out here blubbering to yourself.  He’d want you in there, with everyone else, to remember him and say the things he couldn’t say.”

Lois
finally pulled away from the mammoth at that.  What Melanie said made sense.  She had been so selfish that she thought of only what she needed to say for herself, but this wasn’t just about her.  She had to speak for Dr. Johnson and Mom, who couldn’t be here themselves.  That was her job.”

She accept
ed the handkerchief Melanie offered to wipe at her eyes and nose.  She probably looked terrible, but it was a funeral.  Then she forced herself to smile a little as she handed back the handkerchief.  “Thank you, Melanie.”  She gave her co-worker—her friend—a hug.

She let
Melanie take her hand and lead her back into the exhibit.  No one had moved to take her place yet.  Looking down at the floor with shame, she took the microphone again.  “I’m sorry, everyone.  A good friend reminded me that this isn’t about me and what I need.  This is about Richard.  I’m sure you’d agree there wasn’t anyone who cared about this museum more than him, with the exception of my mother.  The only place he would rather be than here was out in Egypt, digging in the sands to discover more about this ancient civilization.

“I think what Richard would want for all of us is to take care of the museum, to treasure the knowledge within.  What’s contained here is our legacy for future generations.  The best thing we can do to honor Richard’s memory is to spread his love for this place, to carry on the work he did here.  Nothing, not his death or the robbery that preceded it should deter us from that goal.” 
Lois felt her face turning warmer with each second as she faced the other mourners.  She cleared her throat again and said, “Dr. Foley worked with Richard for ten years.  She’d like to come forward and say a few words now.”

Lois
retreated to her seat, where Melanie patted her on the back.  “Good job,” Melanie whispered, though it was Melanie who had really done it.

“You too,”
Lois said.

* * *

The funeral went on for six hours.  After the last of the stories about Dr. Johnson, the service moved to the cafeteria, where everyone ate slices of baklava from Dr. Johnson’s favorite local bakery and drank wine Lois had taken from his wine cellar.  They continued to talk about him and how much they would miss him.

Lois
sat in one corner with an untouched plate of baklava.  On occasion someone would come by to pat her shoulder and compliment her for what she’d said.  She accepted these thanks with a nod and a shy smile before mumbling a few words.  Melanie sat steadfastly by her side, not saying anything since her speech in the great hall.  Lois had to admit she had underestimated her friend; Melanie wasn’t just a scatter-brained girl who knew how to fold a T-shirt and work a cash register.

Tony came up to the table and cleared his throat.  “Hi guys,” he said.  “I’m sorry about Dr. Johnson, but what you said was really amazing.”

“Thanks, but Melanie thought of most of it.”

“Not that much,”
Melanie said, looking down at the table.

“I don’t suppose we could go somewhere to talk for a minute?”

“Sure,” Lois said.  She patted Melanie’s hand and then stood up.  “Why didn’t you say anything at the service?  You were Dr. Johnson’s friend too.”

“I know.  I just didn’t know what to say.”

“You could have said anything.  No one was going to judge.  And you’d have to come out of it looking better than I did.”  They walked across the great hall, Lois glancing at Jeff, where she’d broken down and might have stayed mired in grief if Melanie hadn’t pulled her out. 

“I meant what I said about what you said.  It was great.  It really spoke to me.”

“You think he would have liked it?”

“Of course he would have.”

She sat down on a bench and sighed.  “If I tell you something, can you keep a secret?”

He sat down next to her and put a hand on her back.  “What is it?”

“You know he was rich, right?”  When Tony nodded, she continued, “He left almost all of it to me.  You’re sitting next to a millionaire.”

“Oh.  I see.  It’s probably because you were so close.”

“I know, but with all that money and the house and the jet…there’s so much responsibility.  That hasn’t exactly been my forte, you know?”

“You can handle it.  You took care of his funeral.  And your mom, right?”

“I guess, but a month ago I was free to do whatever I wanted, go wherever I wanted.  Now there’s Mom and the funeral and the will—”

“Don’t forget the gift shop.  Though you’ll probably be quitting now, right?”

“I don’t know.  Dr. Johnson’s will says that to keep all of his stuff I have to finish my PhD.”

“That should be a snap for you, shouldn’t it?”

“Maybe.  But it’s just one more thing.”  She thought again of Hal’s Diner, all those peaceful nights with just Miguel and a good book or two.  Then in the morning she could walk home, watching the Texas sunrise.  “Maybe I shouldn’t do it.  Let the state have all his stuff.”

Tony shrugged.  “If that’s what you want.”

“That’s not very helpful.”

“I can’t tell you what to do, at least not outside the gift shop.  You got to make up your own mind about these things.”

“What would you do if you were me?”

Tony considered this for a moment.  “I think I’d remember what you said about Dr. Johnson.  I think if you really want to honor his memory then you’d finish that PhD and try to get a real job here.”

“Couldn’t I just lead some tour groups?”

“Come on,
Lois.  Maybe I haven’t known you that long, but I know you’re not a slacker.  What are you really afraid of?”

She thought about this, looking away from Tony, at the Egyptian exhibit where Dr. Johnson’s ashes still rested.  What was she afraid of?  “That I’ll screw it up,” she said.  “I couldn’t be Mom.  I can’t be my dad.  Maybe I can’t be Dr. Johnson either.”

“Who’s asking you to?”

She snorted.  “You sound like Mom.  She keeps saying all she wants is for me to be happy.”

“She sounds pretty smart.”

“She’s a genius.”

Tony took her chin, turning her head to face him.  Looking into her eyes he said, “What would make you happy?”

“This,” she said and leaned forward to kiss him on the lips.  This wasn’t like their kisses in the backseat of his car, which had been abrupt and reeking of alcohol.  This was a tender, passionate kiss, a loving kiss.

When they finally had to part, she smiled and said, “Did that make you happy?”

“I don’t know.  Let’s try it again.”

So they did.