Torch Song: A Kickass Heroine, A Post-Apocalyptic World: Book One Of The Blackjack Trilogy (7 page)

Frank. I remembered the chief had said the sheriff’s name was Frank Holstein.

Waldo still sat. He looked sidelong at me. “Probably no point in trying to find Fredo and Timmy. No one’s going to come back here, not tonight anyway. I don’t know when the cooks will get back, if ever. Of course if we have to— if someone does come in looking for a meal — can you cook?” He moved a little closer. Uh oh. With Jo and Lizzie gone, there was not a soul in the place except me and Waldo.

I slid out of the booth and stood. “No, I don’t cook. Do you?” He pouted. He didn’t like that. Would he talk about what had happened? Would he know anything to talk about? I didn’t like being there with him but maybe I could learn something if I acted nicer to him. That wouldn’t be easy.

I put on an earnest, interested, friendly face. “You’ve been here a long time, right?”

That relaxed him, made him feel like an expert of some sort. He nodded wisely.

“Tell me, Waldo, do you get bandits in here often?”

Waldo stood too. “No. Not for years.” He smiled, showing his big white teeth. “I saw you watching the fight.”

I waited for him to make his point. I didn’t like that smile. It was too familiar. Even intimate.

“I have a bad leg. So I couldn’t jump in. Kind of hard to just stand there and watch, but exciting, too.”

The way he said the word “exciting” confirmed my suspicion. That and the drooly look on his face. And the oily maneuver that moved his body closer until it was just a few inches from mine.

“I don’t find death exciting, Waldo.”

He laughed, reached out and grabbed my waist.

No. Not even for information. I gripped his arm hard and cartwheeled him over my right thigh. He was even heavier than he looked. He landed hard on his back, screaming on impact, his foot catching a chair and tossing it to the floor.

“Hey!” The yell came from behind me. Timmy?

I whirled to see who the voice belonged to. Jo. She strode across the room and reached a hand down toward Waldo, helping him struggle to his feet. Uh oh. Had I tossed a family favorite? Even if he’d fled the restaurant at the first sight of trouble? Couldn’t do the job if I got fired.

“Waldo, you stupid— How many times…?” Jo turned to me. “I suppose he grabbed you?” I nodded. Good. She sounded disgusted.

“Just her hand!” Bullshit. Jo shook her head. She didn’t believe him.

“But you won’t do that anymore, will you?” she snapped.

“No.” I could barely hear him grunt the word. He was pouting again, like a nasty little kid.

“Because this one seems capable of hurting you, Waldo.”

Waldo shrugged, gave me a last resentful look, and hobbled into the kitchen.

“You’re okay, Rica?”

“Of course.”

She nodded, appraising me. Looking deeper into my eyes than I liked.

“Well, I guess you can fight, after all.”

Gossip with Strangers

The worn royal blue drapes let pinpoints of daylight into the room, dusty beams brushing the scarred white-painted bureau. The room was cleaner than most I’d slept in, clean enough to please Gran. The bed wasn’t too lumpy, the walls were recently painted a soft cream, the tan carpet was worn but unstained. The clock worked. It was just before eleven. I’d slept hard. I was supposed to get my picture taken in an hour.

My sys told me there was new mail.

Not from Sylvia, of course. Still worn out from the day before, I revisited my crankiest fantasy. I was knocking on her door— no idea what it looked like— and when she appeared I said, “Now ignore me. Now tell me you still hate me for one little mistake with that whatever-his-name-was. Look me in the eye and say you’d rather stay here with whatever-this-guy’s-name-is than travel with me.”

I’d been replaying that scene for years. Like some kind of stubborn rehearsal for a play that would probably never open because I was afraid if I did go there and say those words, she’d actually do what I was daring her to do, tell me she hated me and wasn’t going anywhere.

The only message was a new offer, from New Orleans, dealing with some kind of corruption— nothing new there— but it included the cover role of Maggie the Cat at a theater in the French Quarter. I’d seen the original with Elizabeth Taylor, restored but a lot the worse for use, and fallen in love with Tennessee Williams. And Paul Newman. And Elizabeth Taylor. Maggie. New Orleans music and food, too.

I answered: “Thanks for the offer. Sierra assignment queued first. I’ll check back with you when it’s winding down.” The job could still be waiting, even if I took a side trip to visit Gran. That’s one wild old city. Came back from a hurricane and flood way before the Poison and managed to rebuild before everything everywhere went to hell. Nearly two thousand people by last count. Greatest music on earth and lots to drink. But it wouldn’t tempt a lot of freelancers. The streets were dark and violent and the people stuck to their own. The language was a problem, too. My own Loosianne was better than most, even though I couldn’t seem to keep Redwood Spanish out of the French mix.

Shooting the screen, I punched a line to channel 1, Redwood, or what I hoped would be Redwood, looking for any little piece of home. The holo shimmied for a second, a man’s head resolved shakily. Fading in and out. Singing. Badly. I muted the sound, watching his face and hoping the screen would shift to the prettier sight of Webber Doe, sending out the hearsay of Doe’s data from San Francisco. No Webber Doe. Ten minutes of staring at jiggles and fades, no luck. During one fade, another guy appeared, in Tahoe, he said, and introduced his wife. She started playing the violin. Mercifully, she was interrupted by a flicker from the Coast, back to channel 1, a vision of Webber Doe laughing and then she was gone. I gave up and shut down.

It was then that I noticed that the roomsys, mounted on the desk, was blinking at me. Imagine that, I thought, a roomsys that works—not that I’d use it for anything private. I had a message from Jo.

Her dusky voice told me to meet Monte, the head cashier, in his cage, at noon. He’d take my picture. I realized that I was disappointed that Jo wouldn’t be doing it, and that irritated me. I wasn’t in Tahoe for that kind of fun, certainly not with someone I was spying on.

The bloodstained glass-sequined working clothes I’d been wearing during the raid were soaking in the bathroom sink. The blood was coming out but the bits of broken glass were hanging on. I might just have to buy new black pants.

I’d managed to make it to my car the night before and get some of my things. I’d hesitated about my sys. A new-from-Redwood coin-sized personal sys would be harder to explain away than a new weapon, if someone decided to check out my room. They were hard to get, wildly expensive, and nobody owned one who wasn’t either rich enough to buy it as a toy or doing something that required secrecy and flash-distance communication. In the end I stuck it in a money-pocket flap I’d sewn into a pair of pants, and hauled those pants and maybe a third of my clothes, along with personal odds and ends, to the elevator. Which, it turned out, didn’t work. So, at least an hour after the last of my adrenaline had leaked away, I’d had to drag my sacks of stuff up the stairs to the third floor.

I’d taken the time to find my snoop-sniffer before I fell asleep and run a scan on the room. No bugs that I could find. But I still wouldn’t trust the room-sys.

My meeting with Scorsi wasn’t until three that afternoon. I had enough time to sit through the photo session, change clothes, and do a little scouting around town. Research. Background. Gossip with strangers. Catch the local threads and tie them together. Read some back issues of the local newspaper. Timmy had told me there was one. It even had a real office. There was a website, he said, but it was down most of the time. I tried to access it on my sys. Sure enough. Nothing.

I took a long shower and laid out three outfits. A floor-length dark blue dress with long tight sleeves and a low-cut neckline, a white one that came to mid-calf and had loose, gauzy sleeves and real sequins on the bodice, and flowing pants and blouse made of forest green silk that had actually come to San Francisco on a boat from China. I didn’t much like the white one and wasn’t in the mood for the blue, so I chose the green. It set off my hair.

By the time I’d dressed and put on just enough makeup to create an effect for the picture, I had ten minutes to meet Monte.

* * *

Even if there had been time for breakfast, I couldn’t have gotten it at the casino. The restaurant was closed and a sign on the door read “Cook Wanted.” The casino, a little the worse for wear but cleaned up and with spaces waiting for new or repaired machines and tables, had already drawn a couple dozen gamblers. My green silk attracted a lot of curious stares.

I was on my way to the cashier’s cage when I spotted Bernard, the flabby change guy who’d passed me the note. Maybe he’d know a good lunch place.

“You working a double shift or something?” I asked. He opened his mouth and closed it again. Not a sound leaked out.

He looked over his shoulder, twitchy with nerves at being seen with me. He couldn’t have looked more guilty. Made me want to twist the knife by thanking him again for delivering the message, but I couldn’t chance anyone overhearing.

“Some of our people never came back. I have to fill in.” Eyes shifting all over the place.

I wasn’t enjoying the conversation any more than he was, and had decided by then that he was the kind of short-lived spy who was bound to blow his cover, so I got to the point. Food. Bernard didn’t think for even a second before he directed me, loudly, to “The Blue Chip Diner, the second best eats in town.”

“Thanks, see you, then,” I said, escaping.

Monte was waiting for me. His gray eyebrows shot up at the sight of me in my torch suit. He gave me a friendly smile, smoothed back his sparse hair, and taking my arm in his thin hand, led me inside the cage.

He actually seemed to know what he was doing. He had me posing this way, that way, glancing over my shoulder, smiling, smoldering, head shots, full body, to the waist. He took his time. My stomach was growling.

Finally he was finished.

“Okay, Rica! That’s just great. We got a bunch of good ones. You want to look them over?”

“I trust you, Monte.” It was always more important to make a friend than it was to guard my ego. He smiled happily and escorted me out of the cage.

After I’d trotted upstairs and changed into normal clothing, a pair of denim pants and a blue striped shirt, I passed the restaurant again and saw that the help wanted sign was gone and the doors were open. But since the new cook was a question mark and I’d rather not see Waldo again so soon anyway, I decided that I might as well take Bernard’s enthusiastic recommendation.

Outside the front door, a barker was urging passersby to “Come in for a Blackjack win!” I remembered seeing him at the back door after the raid. He was wearing the same gold jumpsuit with white braid. When I passed him, I saw that his eyes were foggy and blind. He looked to be in his fifties, so he’d have been a child when the poison began. Some of the chem-bombs did this to people. His nameplate said he was called Owen.

The Blue Chip was a small diner with a counter, a dozen booths and tables, three of them occupied, and a round table in the front window. One server, she had varicose veins and a black comb stuck through her dyed flat-brown hair, worked the tables; a fiftyish man took care of the register and probably the counter trade when there was some. He looked an awful lot like the change guy at the casino. Pale, bald, wearing a frayed pink shirt.

When I saw my breakfast, I was sure he was related to Bernard the spy. No one but a relative could have recommended the food there. The eggs over medium were a mess of broken yolk and crisped white. The toast and home fries were as damp and white as the man at the register. I ate what I could with lots of ketchup and hot sauce, left a decent tip on the counter and took my check to the register where he was standing reading a newspaper.

“Enjoy your food?” The man took my money and laboriously counted out the change.

“Yes. Very good.” He did a double take. Maybe no one had ever answered the question that way before. “Nice place you’ve got here.”

He grinned, nodding happily. “Well, thanks. Haven’t seen you around before.” He raised one thin eyebrow in what I supposed was flirtation. He must have thought he was on a roll. “I’m Xavier Polsky.”

“Rica Marin. New in town. Working over at Blackjack.”

His puffy eyelids dropped, covering his thoughts. Was he connected with the Colemans’ enemies, too, like the change guy, or did he just know that his clone was a spy? “Oh, yeah? They do real well over there. Working as a dealer?”

“No. Waiter. And singer, as soon as they open the room. Bernard, one of the change people? He recommended you.”

He nodded, still looking at the counter. “No kidding. Well, that’s nice. Bernard’s my cousin.” Aha! “Nice of him to send you here, and nice that you’re a singer. Maybe you’ll come over and do a number once in a while, huh?” He laughed and looked up at me, raising that eyebrow again. I laughed too, and left it at that.

“Maybe you can direct me to the newspaper office?”

He raised an arm and pointed east. “Right down the street here about a block and a half.”

“Thanks.” I turned to leave.

“Real nice people, those Colemans.” He was definitely protesting too much, or he was scared of them.

“Yes, they seem to be.” Nice. I started walking toward the door.

He called after me: “Well, you take care, then.” I sent him a backward wave on my way out. I was a couple of buildings down from the diner when I noticed a poster tacked to the wall, a political poster for a candidate for Sierra Council. This was the first advertising I’d seen for the elections, which the poster said were about a month away. I glanced at the photo of the candidate and then looked again. I couldn’t be sure, the quality of the photo wasn’t great, but he looked a lot like one of the mercs who had attacked Blackjack.

The Sierra Star’s office was close to the center of town, housed in a two-story wooden building that looked like it hadn’t been painted since the Poison. The front window had a new wooden frame, but that hadn’t been painted, either. The chubby young blonde woman in the front office looked at me as if no one had ever asked for back issues before, but she sat me down at a table and brought all eight back issues for the past couple of months. I could tell she wanted to know what I was looking for, but was too polite or too well trained to ask outright.