Johnny Bass vs. the Kung-Fu Dragon Cult:
A Love Story
By Christian Klaver
Chapter One
Johnny stared out of the cab window at the dreary Detroit city streets. A dirty rain drizzled on the roof of the car. Most of the rain was freezing on the car window in a dirty sheet of ice, but it didn't matter. This part of Detroit looked the same rain or sun. He tapped the motel room key on his leg. Uta’s check wouldn’t cover the hotel room and his furnace repairs unless he’d booked himself into the cheapest place he could find. And he found a real shit hole. Still, it was dirt cheap, and almost warm. He needed that check. The carrot for the job, and since it was a pretty crappy job, it made sense to use a pretty crappy carrot. But it should be just enough.
The cab pulled into the motel parking lot. One more night there, and he could finish that article for Uta and then he could pay to get the heater at his own place fixed. If only it was something better than council meetings. It sure wasn't Johnny's favorite topic, and it was pretty discouraging to write something that no one wanted to read. He tried to go over the details in his head, sorting to make something exciting out of it.
Whump-whump-whump! A blonde girl pounded on the window next to Johnny so suddenly that the cabby shouted while Johnny stared stupidly at her out the cab’s rain beaded window. She twisted back once to look behind her, then back to them, her eyes wild and fearful in the lurid light of the motel sign behind her. Her hair lashed about, a tangled cloud of drenched cornflower. She shrieked with each ineffectual clutch at the locked door.
Behind the girl, a large black figure stumbled over the motel parking lot's gravel island, and then bent over in the near darkness. When it stood back up, revealing a white stripe down the front chest, Johnny realized it was an enormous man in a tuxedo, glistening in the nighttime rain like a character from an overexposed black and white movie. There was a reddish stain on the lower part of the white shirt that might have been blood.
Johnny pushed open the door automatically, ignoring the cabby's protests, scooting back so the girl didn’t knock him over as she scrambled in. She pulled the door shut behind her and an instant later, something struck sharply on the driver’s side window near her head. She cringed, but didn't turn around. The object bounced off and ricocheted in an upwards arc through the yellow light of the motel sign. A lady’s shoe, black. The man must have thrown it, and then fallen over, for he lurched again to his feet.
Johnny pounded on the bullet-proof plastic partition between the front and back seats of the cabby. “Drive, goddamn it!”
“Ay-wa, Ay-wa-, Ay-wa. La-ah shobbak!! Kah-beh!!” the cabby shouted back, and the tires shrieked and wailed as they peeled out of there. As the car left, the man slammed his fist into the rear window, webbing the glass in a fracture pattern that covered half the view. Johnny had to duck and peer underneath it to watch through the rear window as the huge man in the tuxedo lurched after them like a well-dressed Frankenstein’s monster. Then the man slipped in the rain and fell, sobbing openly.
“Not very graceful,” Johnny said, amazed inside at the outwardly casual tone of his voice. “Don’t worry, Miss.” He reached out to lay a hand on her shoulder.
She screamed. Long and loud, cringing away from him with an animalistic panic.
“Okay,” he said calmly, trying to emulate the tone he heard actors use on wild animals in movies. He didn’t really know animals or screaming women too well, and it must have shown, because she didn’t look any calmer. The scream trailed off into a constant whimpering, but that seemed more like she ran out of breath. She hunched over in a fetal position as far from Johnny as possible, shielding her face and arms.
Johnny ran his hand through his short black mop of hair and looked down at her. Okay. A guy like that one might make a gal nervous around other people for awhile too, particularly men. Stood to reason.
“Listen,” Johnny said. “I didn’t mean to scare you. Maybe we can call the police? Or take you and drop you off somewhere? Do you live far from here?”
Then he tipped over in his seat as the cab swerved, falling into the girl. The cabby swore again, but the girl screaming in Johnny’s ear drowned that out. He pushed himself quickly off the girl as something pounded the trunk behind them. The tuxedoed Frankenstein was behind them again, because the car was back in the same spot. The damn cabby hadn’t left the parking lot, but only circled around the motel. Make that Frankenboy in a tuxedo, Johnny thought as the cab left their follower in the dust again. The size had fooled Johnny at first, but seeing the boy’s anguished face this time, Johnny was pretty sure the guy wasn’t much over 18.
“You fucking idiot!” Johnny shouted, pounding on the partition again. “Where did you think he’d go in twenty seconds? Holy shit! One full circle and he’s still here! Imagine that!” It didn’t do much to calm the girl down, but she did get quieter as she huddled lower and lower on the seat. The cabby just shouted back at him in Arabic. Probably calling him an asshole and asking him just where in the hell he thought he should go.
“Fuck it. Just stop,” Johnny said. They were just about on the other side of the Motel again. He couldn’t imagine a guy like that staggering past the front office without attracting attention, so maybe they could breathe for a few minutes.
The cabby just kept driving with one hand on the wheel, using his other hand to point angrily at the back window. He drove wildly around another corner of the motel, then another, but when they neared the spot where they’d started, Johnny didn’t see anybody in the parking lot. Only the yellow-lit rain on the blacktop and the quiet rows of cars. No Frankenboy.
The cabby went on going in circles and Johnny went back to talking to the girl while she shivered next to him.
“Are you all right?”
Nothing. Now that he could see her better, Johnny noticed the little black cocktail dress and fishnet stockings. They might have been nice once, but they were pretty torn up now. Under her shivering mane of bedraggled hair there might have been the stains of makeup.
“Was that your boyfriend? Did you guys have a fight?”
Still nothing.
“Look. I can’t help you if you won’t talk to me.”
He was revising his estimate of her age. A past stint of bartending had taught Johnny to look at her hands. He’d seen women with young looking faces, but hands always told the truth. The woman’s hands tightly clenching a little black handbag were slender, but not quite smooth enough to be a high schooler’s. Johnny guessed this woman maybe a few years younger than him, at least twenty-three. He was also pretty sure that under different circumstances she would be very beautiful.
She didn’t have any rings or other jewelry on, so no husband. He couldn’t tell for sure, but she seemed older than the boy. Maybe she was now, but it didn’t seem right to think that way. Besides, right now she just looked scared and very, very cold.
“Listen. I’m not going to hurt you. We’ll just drop you off somewhere safe. All right?”
Her answer was barely a whisper. “Can’t.”
Ah. English. Progress of sorts.
“Sure we can. I don’t mind. We’ll drop you off wherever. If you can’t go home, then we’ll take you to the police, or to a friends. How about parents? What are your parents' names?”
“I don’t know anymore,” she said.
Don’t know? He breathed deep for a second. Never mind. None of his business really. “Then what’s your name?”
“I don’t know.” Her voice got quieter and quieter each time. The cabby kept circling. “They changed it.”
“You don’t know?” he said. “Do you live nearby?”
“I don’t know anything anymore.” And she started crying.
“You don’t know where you live? And you don’t know your own name. Do you have any ID in the purse?”
She didn’t seem to be hearing him anymore. She clutched her purse and he didn’t want to risk touching her again to try and search for ID.
“And you don’t remember any friends, or parents, or the big guy you were with or where you came from or anything?” If she heard, there wasn’t any sign.
“La-ah shobbak. La-ah shobbak!” A burst of Arabic from the front seat.
“Hold on, goddamn it,” Johnny shouted back to him, though he had no idea what the cabby was talking about. “Give me a goddamn second to think.” It wasn’t really fair. The cabby didn’t throw any shoes or let some crazy woman into his car, but yelling at her didn’t seem to do any good and Johnny wasn’t about to find the Incredibly Dressed Hulk and yell at him. The cabby sulked, but he shut up anyway, so maybe he didn’t want to find the hulk either.
“C’mon,” he nearly shouted. “Huge guy in a tuxedo. He knows you. Who is that?”
“Yes...” she said softly. “My keeper. One of them.”
Johnny was sure the stupid looking expression was starting to etch its way into permanent residence on his face. “Keeper?”
“They...own me.”
“Ooookay. Who are they?”
“They’ll find me.” She went on, getting louder. “No one gets out. No one ever gets out!” And she yanked open the door and stumbled out into the parking lot.
Johnny bolted right after her. She flailed and tripped over the cement curb surrounding an island of grass separating the parking lot into two halves. Then she took a few more steps back into the parking lot and fell to her hands and knees.
He unthinkingly reached down and tried to pull her up. She screamed. Long and loud. He let her go and jumped back. Jesus, what was this girl on?
While he wavered over her, trying to figure out what to do next, she started throwing up. The air was so cold the contents of her stomach steamed, and the blacktop just looked blacker where she threw up on it. Christ, there was blood in it. Johnny started to panic and tried to steady her.
She screamed again and crawled to her feet. Johnny followed her, his hands waving ineffectually as he wavered between trying to help and not touching her. She only took three steps before slumping onto the hood of a parked car. Her eyes rolled up into the back of her head and she slipped the rest of the way to the black top. She wasn't unconscious, but looked pretty close.
Johnny was bending over the woman when a guttural snarl ripped the air behind him. The sound was close enough to touch, and Johnny could feel a blast of hot, fetid breath on the back of his neck.
Some habits stay with you. Johnny twisted and came up swinging a right hook. He didn't hit anything, but he thought for the barest of seconds that something was there. It was big, upright like a man, with clawed hands. Then…it was gone.
He wasn't sure, but he might have hit the space where it was, only now there wasn't anything.
He looked around, his pulse crashing in his ears. But no monster, no huge tuxedo guy. It was just Johnny and the woman. And she wasn’t much of an audience. She had her face on the blacktop with her hands over her head. He looked around for a few seconds to be sure, but didn't see anything. Detroit had its fair share of stray dogs, but they didn't usually come anywhere near people. And it didn't look like a dog, anyway. Damn, the weirdness of the situation was making him jumpy.
"What the fuck?" Johnny said aloud.
He was bending to look underneath the parked car when two blazing headlights caught him in their glare from the other side of the parking lot. A police siren wailed once, briefly, and the red and blue flashing glare of police flashers burned into Johnny’s eyes.
Johnny jumped back from the woman, feeling like a rapist caught in headlights. He felt stupid and guilty at the same time. Two big silhouettes stepped authoritatively from the police car.
“Oh shit,” Johnny said, but needn’t have worried. When the cops stepped far enough into the cab’s headlights he could see the bored expression on their faces. They didn’t look much like they wanted to arrest anybody.
Johnny looked down at the woman lying in the partly frozen puddle. Even in the freezing cold, there were earthworms in the puddle with her. The headlights from both cars colored her legs and the worms' wriggling flesh the same pale, washed-out hue.
“Motel manager called,” one of the officers said in an official sounding voice tinged with an Elvis drawl. “Some kind of trouble?”
The cop talking to Johnny looked bored, but occupied himself with a toothpick in the corner of his mouth. His partner reached down to pull the woman up and she twisted wildly and repeated her scream two or three more times for him before he gave up and dropped her back into the puddle. He took off his cap and ran his fingers through his brush cut while he examined the woman in the puddle at his feet, but without any real interest. The light drizzle stared to get heavier and colder. Johnny couldn’t begin to imagine how cold the woman in the puddle was, but her dress didn’t cover enough to keep a child warm, and he watched her pale legs shiver violently in a near panic.
“No one gets out,” she moaned. “No one.”
The cabby chose this precise time to rev his engine and gun his car in full reverse. Guess he’d had enough. Well, Johnny thought, that’s one way to get a free cab ride, though he didn’t think he’d be repeating the trick any time soon.
“They own me,” she said to no one in particular.
The cops looked on while the cab left, then Officer Toothpick lifted his eyebrows at Johnny. “Well?” The cop put a hand on Johnny’s elbow in order to draw him a few steps away.
While Johnny stammered out his story, he could hear Elvis Brushcut try and question the woman. What was her name? Where did she live? He didn’t get any more answers than Johnny had. She only kept repeating herself. They own me. No one gets out. No one gets away.
He tried a few more questions that Johnny hadn’t thought of, like “Have you had any drugs or alcohol this evening ma’am,” or “Have you ever been arrested for prostitution in the State of Michigan?”
He tried once to take the purse and examine it for ID, but she wailed and thrashed until he finally gave it up in disgust.
While this was going on behind Johnny, Officer Toothpick listened to Johnny’s story without comment or any sign of interest. Blah, blah, blah, heat out at home, blah, blah, blah, big violent guy, blah, blah, blah, girl with no name, blah, blah, blah.
“Well,” he said when Johnny was finished. “I guess we’ll have to run her in if she’s got no place to go.” He had no expression as he said it, as if he didn’t care one way or another, like he was discussing going to the grocery store. He probably practiced that face in the mirror. To serve and protect.
The other officer had gone back to a few more rounds of “Can you remember your name, Ma’am,” without any success. He tried touching her one more time and she screamed again, but much weaker. He pulled her to her feet anyway.
“Does she have any place to go?” he asked Johnny.
“I’ve got a room,” Johnny said.
“Fine,” the cop said.
“If she wants she can stay there,” Johnny added. “I’ll drive her home in the morning.” It didn’t seem much like proper procedure, but he could see how it would avoid lots of paperwork. Detroit’s finest.
“Fine,” Elvis repeated absently. Johnny thought of adding: “then I’ll throw her body in the street” to see if Elvis was really listening, but held back.
“But we’ll have to get her out of the parking lot,” Officer Toothpick said. “This man has a room,” he said to the woman. He spoke slow and loud, the voice reserved for illegal immigrants or especially stupid children.
“No…” she whispered. “They’ll kill me when they find out. They’ll kill everyone.”
“Of course they won’t,” Elvis said. “We’ll check in on you in the morning and make sure you’re all right, but we have to get you off the street or you’ll have to come to the station, and we don’t want that, do we?”
“Where’s your room?” Toothpick asked.
Johnny stared at him for a brief second, amazed. He hadn’t expected it to be that easy. Was it common practice to just leave stray women with the nearest stranger? Did they think it some kind of domestic fight, and not want to get involved? Did they even care? What the hell.
“Top floor, over this way,” he said pointing up the outside stairs.
“Fine. Come on, Miss.”
“No,” she whispered. “No one gets out...no one ever...” but Detroit’s finest weren’t listening. Johnny led the way while they navigated her slender frame gently but without remorse up the metal staircase. She stopped them once by clutching to a metal pillar where they couldn’t get her off without using any force. They tugged half-heartedly at her shoulders, ignoring her cries, but it was only when her exhaustion caused her to slip to the floor that they were able to get her moving again. Johnny opened the door as they brought her over to him.
“No one…” She murmured endlessly. “They’ll find…”
The wind still whipped around them as she clutched the doorway, but finally the warm air drifting out of the motel room seemed to make up her mind. She bolted for the nearest bed, and dove under the covers.
Officer Toothpick threw her little handbag on the dresser. Somehow it had come loose while they were dragging her into the room, but now it would be too much trouble for them to check her ID.
“Fine,” Elvis said. “We’ll check on her in the morning. He sounded a little pissed, and it accented his drawl. Thank you verra muuuch. They left without any further comment. They never checked back, in the morning or otherwise, and Johnny never saw them again.
“Listen,” Johnny said to the closed door. “You probably want my license or something, right? Can't be too careful while protecting the good citizens of Detroit, Michigan.” He took out his wallet, extracted his driver’s license and held it out, but the door didn’t answer.
When he turned back to the woman, she was already asleep. Johnny offered her his license, but she didn’t want it either.
Since nobody wanted it, he put it away and got out his cigarettes. He lit one, sucked it deeply and pulled out the bottle of liquor he’d stashed underneath the bed. He’d stolen it from a banquet hall the night before. He poured a swallow of whiskey in one of the motel glasses, then killed it. He poured a second swallow to carry with him and went back to the dresser with the woman’s purse on it. Maybe the cops didn’t care, but he certainly did.
Johnny looked over at the still sleeping woman as he unclasped the bag. Or at least, what he could see of her. She clutched the pillow to her face like a life buoy and most of what he could see was all pillow and hair.
If ever there was a damsel in distress made to order, this lady was it. Time to really play hero, Johnny. Except he had no idea what she needed. The cops’ questions about drugs and prostitution raised a few suspicions. Was she in trouble or was this part of her daily life? Maybe she needed big mean guys and drugs more than any thing Johnny could offer. Or at least thought she did. Maybe the cops were a hell of a lot smarter than he was. After all, they dealt with this kind of thing every day.
But not too damn well. Johnny was pretty sure the leave-the-drugged-out-trampy-dressed-woman-in-the-strange-guy’s-motel-room-routine couldn’t have been taught during the first few days of police academy training. Must've been learned on the job.
And he was still a little worried about Frankenboy. Johnny could take care of himself. But the other guy wasn’t usually that damn big. But Johnny didn’t see anybody ten feet tall lurching around outside his window, so that problem would wait.
Then he finished opening the purse and realized he had another problem when he pulled the wad of money out. Drug money? That would explain some of her memory loss. And the amount of money here. The wad was made of twenties, and thicker than his thumb. He didn’t know how much money that was, but it looked like a lot. He put the money back in the purse, and his hand bumped into something else.
He pulled out a stick, but it didn’t look right. It was a slender branch, with a beautiful creamy lemon colored bark that Johnny had never seen before. It took Johnny a second to realize its purpose, for the crafted holes looked natural, as if they grew there. Only a few places, around the holes and near the tip had been cleared of bark. Other than that, the branch didn’t look much different than it must have on the tree. He looked over at the woman. Still sleeping.
Johnny put on end in his mouth and blew softly. A rich glorious high pitched note came out, wonderfully clear. He tried tapping his fingers over the openings and it changed pitch obligingly. It was a flute. Or maybe a piccolo. It was certainly smaller than a regular flute. Johnny hadn’t really played one before, but despite the softly wandering notes, he sounded like a virtuoso.
He looked over again. She hadn’t moved. Something about the sound made him want to hear a little more. He tried a few more notes, still playing low, but holding the notes longer. He closed his eyes for a minute to hear the rich sounds, high pitched, but gentler than any flute he’d ever heard. More like the sound of water over stones, or the rushing of wind through the trees.
When he opened his eyes, the flute was glowing in his hands.
His hands were glowing, too, with a soft yellow nimbus, as if the flute had leaked diffuse light into them. He dropped the flute with a stifled shout, and backed away on the floor. The glow snapped out like a turned off light, and his hands looked normal again.
The woman still hadn’t moved. He picked up the flute. It looked normal now, too, and was unharmed. He put it back into the bag with shaking hands. He slid the purse with the money and the flute under the mattress, to keep it safe.
The woman slept so deeply that he leaned in close to watch her breathing and make sure she wasn’t dead. Nope. Still alive. But he thought she might wake up in a panic, in a strange room with a man she’d never met. He didn't know how much of last night she’d remember, but the parts she did remember couldn't be reassuring.
She slept in the only bed, so he kicked his coat into a pillow of sorts. In a Hollywood movie, this would have been a perfect time for the dazzling attractive leading lady to call out to Johnny, the dashing hero. He looked over. He couldn't really tell what she looked like, at her best. The mound of motel blankets obscured her now, and no one looks good screaming and flopping around in puddles. Also, she still lay like the dead and didn't call out at all. Not a Hollywood movie. He slept fitfully on the floor, sure that she'd wake in a wild panic any minute.
He kept waking at odd intervals, sure that he’d heard some odd sound that indicated that his visitor was awake. She slept like a knockout victim. Once, in the darkest part of the night, Johnny got up and fumbled his way to the bathroom with a parched throat to suck down three of the little motel glasses full of tepid water from the faucet. He left the desk lamp light on when he flopped back down on the floor to try and find any kind of comfortable position. Someone behind him sucked in a breath and Johnny froze. Johnny held his own breath. The woman in the bed in front of him hadn’t moved. A tension crawled up the bumps in his spine, one by one, and settled like a knife blade on the back of his neck.
“You killed the Urebacht, my boy,” a grave voice said mildly. It was right behind him.
Johnny spun in a crouch, hands near his face, backing up in such a rush that he bumped the desk behind him. The lamp wobbled, and Johnny had the impression of a madcap figure dancing in the shadows like a string puppet’s silhouette, only nothing between the light and shadow was there to cast it.
“You’ve killed it,” the voice went on. “And I’d like to know why. Even more than that, I’d like to know how.”
“The Euro-what? I didn’t kill anything. Who are you?” Johnny said. He nearly squeaked. It had to be in the room, but he just didn’t see anyone. Speakers? It didn’t sound like a speaker. Besides, he could feel someone in the room. He kept his hands up to guard his face, though he wasn’t sure what from.
He couldn’t see anyone but the shadow. The lamp fell, while the figure pranced away in an odd whip-like mantis walk. As it pranced, the shadow grew, until it was closer and larger than anything. The lamp broke and darkness swathed the room. Johnny cried out and scrambled backward, trying to the get to the bathroom light. His feet tangled in the lamp cord and he fell. He scrambled to his feet blindly. He couldn’t hear anything but his own labored breathing and the tinkle of broken lamp underneath his feet. Cursing as he cut his feet on the shards, he shielded his face with his hands as he bumped into the desk once more before finally finding the bathroom light switch.
The woman slept on. No one else was in the room. The curtains fluttered limply in the warm breeze from the heater on the wall. A few red smears stained the carpet, from his cut feet. Only one piece of glass was actually in his foot, and he pulled it out with a grimace.
Limping on his cuts, Johnny checked the door and windows. Still locked. No one lurked on the walkway outside. He checked behind the curtains, in the closets, behind the dresser and television. Feeling like he searched for the Boogeyman, he checked under the bed. He tried to examine the room for bugs or anything mechanical, but didn’t find anything. He patted down the comforter around the sleeping woman. He checked the bathroom and poked at the ceiling. Nothing. He wondered if his eyes were playing tricks on him, but the ragged catch in his breathing didn't stop. As an afterthought, he checked the bulge in the mattress, pulling out the purse. It was still there, the scary wad of money and freaky flute right where he left it.
He put the purse back and sat down to look at his feet again. They were cut up fairly well, but he could walk on them. He found some antiseptic and band aids in the hotel drawers, though he didn’t expect to. He doctored his feet as best he could.
Then he pulled out another cigarette. As he lit and sucked the first few puffs to life, something tugged at his memory and he walked gingerly back to the bathroom. Clenching his jaw, he flicked the bathroom switch off. In the weak starlight that trickled in between the curtains, Johnny could still make out the broken pieces of pottery from the lamp, the lump of the sleeping woman and the angular shapes of the furniture. The backs of the curtains glowed intermittently, reflecting the motel sign outside. A second ago, when he first broke the lamp, it had been like an Egyptian tomb, the kind of total darkness that never really happens except underground. Now, he stared at the outline of the table and bed, clearly defined in the normal darkness.
Traffic sounds filtered in through the walls while he sat down and finished his cigarette.
He left all the lights on and slept poorly for the rest of the night.
In the morning, he crept out to grab two plates from the obligatory continental breakfast buffet they always had at this kind of place. This one looked better than most, and he took a generous tower of melons, strawberries and pastries, with two cups of coffee. He moved as fast as he could, afraid that the woman might be ransacking the room or wailing for help.
On his way back, he noticed a sobering sight. One of the large cosmetic whitewashed stones that bordered the landscaping lay partially in parking lot, broken in several pieces. A giant hole gaped in the sod where someone had ripped it up. The stone was far too large for any one person to pick up, but Johnny couldn't get the image of Frankenboy out of his head. He paced the distance from hole to rubble. About twelve steps. He couldn't imagine carrying it this far. Last night, the taxicab had been somewhere near here. Maybe the hole wasn't too far from where Frankenboy was standing. Maybe. It almost looked like the boulder might have been thrown.
When he got back to the room, the woman lay in exactly the same position as when he left. She hadn't moved the entire night. He sat at the table and ate melon and doughnuts quietly, alternating between watching her and the window. He finished his coffee, and an hour later, he drank hers. It was cold, but he drank it anyway.
The sun played with the dusty motes on the table as Johnny waited. It moved slowly across the surface, and then onto the floor. Noon crawled slowly by. Johnny found a pack of cards left in the desk drawer. It had more than a few cards missing, but he dealt out a hand of solitaire anyway.
He cheated his way through several games before she suddenly sat up. Her eyes were wide open and clear, but then she squinted in the sunlight.
"Where are my glasses?" she said.
Of all the questions Johnny might have expected, this one hadn't occurred to him.
"I'm not sure," he said. The sun came in through the window, but hardly enough to be stunning. "Maybe you lost them before the cab. It was night, anyway."
"Am I at the motel?"
"Yeah. You were freezing out in the parking lot. So the police brought you here." He winced. That sounded pretty lame, even to him.
"Oh," she said as she got out of bed. She gave a him a unreadable look. “Don’t say anything. Don’t do anything, or they’ll kill you. I don’t know you, and you can’t ever know me.” She turned and walked for the door without giving him a second look.
Johnny looked at the mattress, thought about the purse and money, and started to say something. Instead, he just sat there. He watched her walk out without another word.
When the door closed he pawed under the mattress. The purse was still there. He pulled out the money and fell back into the chair with a wondrous smile at his good fortune.
Chapter Two
The outside walkway on the motel was a gathering place for shadows of all kinds. Shadows clung to the off-white metal door, to the corrugated steel grating and circled the yellow pools of light likes wolves held at bay. There were no motel patrons in the parking lot, but something moved in the shadows near Johnny’s door, then drifted silently away.
The light on the upper balcony abruptly dimmed, then grew back to its normal strength. The light farther downstairs did the same moments later, then the Motel sign itself flickered briefly as something like a whisper passed underneath it.
The light traffic continued uninterrupted as a man-shaped inkblot slid across the street and settled next to a parked car. Now it looked like a man-shaped inkblot sitting on the curb.
The cultured voice spoke again.
“Who,” it said. “Or what, can kill an Urebacht?”
A solid mass of darkness, thicker than the night, shifted underneath the parked car. The car creaked slightly as the thing shifted weight and jostled the frame from underneath.
Something that might have been a chuckle, or might have been a sewer grate breaking, came from under the car. “I could,” a granite-like voice said.
“You just think you could. An Urebacht would bury you, and no one would care. And you couldn’t do anything about it.” The voice was still cultured and pleasant.
“Perhaps,” the granite voice said. “Perhaps not.” There was a long pause. “I could kill you.”
“Unlikely,” The shape coalesced as it stood up from the curb. A tall black man, immaculately dressed in a dark suit, regarded the parked car with a calm gaze. “But please feel free to try, then I can kill you, scatter your skin to the four winds, and get a replacement not so abysmally stupid. Besides, I wasn’t speaking to you. I’ll find out myself what we’re dealing with. I wouldn’t send you after a mystery like this. Not only does he kill an Urebacht, but he doesn’t even know he killed it.”
He mused for a second, fingering his chin and looking at the hotel room. “Enough. Be on your way and report. I’ve got things to do. People to kill. Too many witnesses tonight. It’s sloppy work.”
The car creaked and the darkness underneath was gone.
The man looked thoughtfully at the hotel room across the street, tapping his bald head absently. Then he seemed to make up his mind about something and turned away, disappearing into the night.
Pagloscowitz was quiet as he steered the patrol car out towards Eight Mile, but Coon wasn’t.
“Hey,” Coon went on, though Pagloscowitz hadn’t answered him the last time. “I’m just saying it was kind of creepy. Don’tcha think? I mean probably just coked out, but still, it was creepy. You think we should’ve stayed?”
Pagloscowitz just kept driving, chewing incessantly on his toothpick. He toggled the flashers once instead of stopping at a red light on Evergreen. He hated training. Most days it was just him, and that was just fine.
“Hey!” Coon said again, this time hitting Pagloscowitz on the shoulder. “You think we should’ve stayed? Maybe we should go back?”
Pagloscowitz knew there was no way he was turning the patrol car around to go back. Coon knew that too, but he apparently needed to talk about it more. Pagloscowitz knew better. It’d been like that in Vietnam. Someone walking on your grave, his mother had called it. Only to Pagloscowitz it felt more like someone sliding a frozen knife into his gut. Either way, the few times he’d felt like that in ‘Nam, he’d found a way to get the hell out of there, and found out later that he’d been the only one to survive a gook ambush, or the one time Smitherson had gotten both his legs blown off. That should’ve been Private Pagloscowitz, only he’d pulled a favor for the C.O. and gotten off point that night. That parking lot had that feel. The soonest out the better. His eyes slid over to Coon. Coon was a lot younger. He didn’t know how things worked yet.
“I mean, really…” Coon was still prattling on.
“Fuck,” Pagloscowitz finally said. “You just need a drink. C’mon. I’ll buy you a drink. We can be in and out in ten minutes.” He steered the car into an alley behind his favorite strip club and killed the ignition. They didn’t want to use the parking lot and advertise their presence. Coon pulled his drop gun, a .45, from underneath the seat and tucked it into the waistband behind his back. He didn’t expect trouble, but you never knew with these places. If he had to fire, he didn’t want to use his registered gun and file a report.
“Dammit,” Coon said as Pagloscowitz dragged him through the front door. Pagloscowitz was sweet on one of the waitresses. They were never out of there in ten minutes, but he went in anyway.
A shadowy figure detached itself from a corner of the building and the black man from the hotel walked over to the police car. Pagloscowitz had driven fast to get here, and hadn't been followed. Still, here the man was. He didn't look winded and he didn't have a car. His shoes were dark and clean, and his midnight colored suit didn't have a speck on it. Seen in better light, he had a thin, handsome face, very dark, with a kindly expression. He tapped his fingers idly on the hood of the police car, and walked back to the wall of the strip club to wait, disappearing instantly and completely in the shadows.
Two and a half hours later, Pagloscowitz and Coon spilled out of the club’s back door. Pagloscowitz had a piece of paper in his hand and Coon nearly bumped into him when he stopped dead in the alley and held it up to the light.
“If this isn’t real,” Pagloscowitz growled. “I’ll come back and drag her away in cuffs.”
“C’mon,” Coon said, pushing him towards the car. “Jesus, it’s dark back here.”
Pagloscowitz just growled again and turned away from the car to try and get the paper in better light.
When they went to opposite sides of the car, the dark man materialized out of nowhere behind Coon. The attacker had a dark baton in his hand, held like a samurai sword. He snapped the baton in two quick blows across the back of Coon's head before they even knew he was there. He didn't swing it like a bat, but used economical snapping motions, almost like a whip, and too fast to follow with the eye.
Coon was still falling when Pagloscowitz pulled his service revolver. The dark man ducked, using the car for cover. Pagloscowitz opened up anyway, moving to the front of the car for a better angle as he emptied half of his shots in quick succession. Ricochets from his fire blew out the tire and passenger window of the squad car, but he kept on going. He pulled his other gun, the .45 from the small of his back before he cleared the front of the car. The politicians on the force didn't approve of this one, but he kept it anyway. He preferred some real stopping power and was more worried about the hackles on his neck than paperwork.
He knew Coon was dead, felt it in his gut when he saw the body.
But no attacker.
The alley was empty, with no cover by the wall. Pagloscowitz backed up, knowing the car presented the only shelter. He kept both guns ready as he crouched slightly to peer under the car.
Nothing.
Then darkness fell on him, and he knew that he was a dead man. There should have been lights from the strip club, from the parking lot, from the street and passing cars, but nothing. It was like he'd been dropped in a cave. He couldn't even hear the traffic passing.
He bellowed like a charging animal as he opened up with both guns, but only got 4 shots off before the baton crushed his throat. He stumbled forward, gurgling helplessly. Another blow struck the back of his head, killing him instantly.
The darkness lifted as Pasloscowitz's body fell to the wet pavement, leaving the dark man standing there alone. He smiled, and the stick dissolved in a puff of dark smoke.
He walked back over to the squad car and bent down to pick up the piece of paper that Pagloscowitz had dropped. He looked at the phone number and smiled. He crumpled it into a ball and tossed it into the bushes. No sense involving some poor girl in the investigation.
He walked back into the alley and disappeared.
Chapter Three
Johnny woke from troubled dreams and sat up abruptly in the ragged darkness of his nearly empty bedroom. He couldn't remember what the dream was about, only someone whispering, maybe for help. He shook his head to clear it better. He sat in the darkness for some time before he fumbled for a cigarette. He took the last one out of the pack and threw the crumpled package in a corner of the floor while he lay back in bed and smoked.
Boards nailed over the windows served as the only curtains, darkening the bedroom. Most of the house was like that. Though errant beams of sunlight penetrated into the gloom during the day, they only served to blind him when he accidentally walked into one, making the darkness that much harder to see in. Not that Johnny cared to view the dilapidated bed or scuffed floorboards, and there wasn’t much else by way of furniture. Maybe he'd spend some of that new money on fixing the place up, or getting a new place. He listened to the rumble of the new heater for a moment in idle contentment. He stretched a foot out to idly play in the sunbeam.
Daylight, Johnny thought. He'd guess at noon from the brightness of the beam. The only sounds besides Johnny were nearby sounds of desultory traffic and a very insistent dog two houses down.
He rumpled his black moppish hair and stumbled in his faded boxers out to the kitchen. He fumbled with the plug for the lamp that hung over the sink. There wasn’t any kitchen switch and the one on the light was broken. He was darkly fatalistic about the opportunity of electrocuting himself while fumbling with outlets in the dark. Everyone died somehow, and he didn’t think his passing would be from old age. Once you accepted that, how didn’t seem to matter much.
He ran water into the sink and cupped some into his hands to drink. Wiping his palms on the boxers, he slumped into the creaky chair near the sink. He started reaching for the cigarettes that he used to keep on the kitchen table before remembering that he’d already smoked the last one. He had to settle for unwrapping the cellophane package of the restaurant biscuit he’d brought home last night. He didn’t actually eat much, but picking the flaky pieces off one small clump at a time kept him occupied while the rest of his mind woke up.
He stopped with a piece of biscuit halfway to his mouth when he saw the muddy foot print on his kitchen floor. It was huge, three times the width of his own. The mark showed a naked foot with huge and thick toes, like a giant orangutan might leave. Johnny looked back at the door next to him that led into the back yard. He jumped and twisted the handle. It should have been locked, but it wasn't. He yanked it open.
His yard was a thatched mess, and three pieces of his privacy fence were lying flat in the yard, but that wasn't new. There wasn't any sign of anyone back there.
He looked at the footprint again. It was pointed in, like someone coming into the house. It didn't point towards the living room, but rather the corner of the kitchen that led to the cellar.
His cellar access wasn't really a doorway, more a hole cut into the kitchen floor, and Johnny had never gotten around to doing a better job. He had two large slabs of particle board laid flat across it to keep the cold out of the kitchen. They always moved around a little, but he thought they might be more crooked than usual. The basement wasn't much, a small concrete area just big enough for some duct work and the furnace. It was usually colder than the outside. Johnny tried to imagine someone trying to hole up there from the cold, but it didn't make any sense. Especially someone with foot prints that big.
Johnny didn't own any guns, but he had plenty of weapons. He went into the living room, and pulled a wide-bladed curved knife from his collection off the wall. He had lots of bigger weapons, including a number of swords, but he wasn’t sure how much room he’d have to swing.
Keeping the knife ready, he reached down to yank one of the boards up.
He nearly threw up.
The stairs were rough concrete steps. The area was only six feet high, and only ten feet square, with the furnace off to one side. Normally, that left a lot of dirty floor to stare at. But now, the area was wall-to-wall with an egg-white slithering mass as what must have been nearly a million maggots crawled and wiggled around the floor. If Johnny had stepped down there, he'd be ankle deep in them. They were starting to crawl up the walls and steps and the lines of creeping maggots formed little milk white trails like reaching fingers.
The planks were kindling, bits of wood scattered like confetti. He kicked some of the larger pieces to one side. There were more boards out in the back yard, but he didn’t want to go out there. Instead, he swept the kitchen table clear, spilling the coffee maker and other crap all over the floor. Glass broke, but he didn’t care. He flipped the table over with an enormous crash so that it was top down and he pushed it to cover the gaping hole.
He recovered the knife and made sure the door was locked. Twice. He picked up his kitchen chair and kicked enough glass and debris to the side so he could set it upright. He sat facing the covered hole and door, still clutching the knife in both hands. His hands were shaking so much he had to set the knife down again, for fear that he’d cut himself.
He sat watching the door, watching the upside down table. Nothing moved.
Finally, he decided that he'd deal with the part of the problem that he could wrap his mind around. He finished getting dressed, and grabbed his car keys.
Mrs. Thressler was on her porch when he went out, as usual, and she started on him immediately, but from the safety of her porch. Johnny looked like a hung over jazz musician, wincing from behind his sunglasses angrily at the nearly dark sky, as if he might find a way to get even. He hustled down the sidewalk to his gate, trying to pay no attention to Mrs. Thressler. He clutched his suit coat in one hand and a half downed bottle of orange juice in the other.
“That grass is too high!” Mrs. Thressler cried plaintively. “It’s not right. I get out and take care of my yard and your grass is too high. Too high!!”
Johnny’s gaze slid sideways for a moment, looking at his lawn despite himself. It was pretty high. Higher than his waist and thick enough to hide just about anything. Vine crawled up the gate and most of his fence making the entire yard something of a square wilderness. The high grass also caught most of the rubbish that drifted by and so like a trashy Christmas tree, his lawn was decorated with the colorful and metallic glitter of discarded wrappers and grimy bottles. It was true that most of the neighborhood was dirty grass and mud, but nothing so bad as this. Considering what might be hiding in his yead, that suddenly became a lot more important to him than before.
Johnny tried unlatching his rusty gate, but the latch was stubborn and did not want to give. He had to wrestle it open, slinging his coat further up on his arm to avoid getting any rust stains on it.
"I'm on it, lady," Johnny called back.
“Rats and birds hide in there, and dogs,” Mrs. Thressler went on. And then they come over and crap in my yard. I’ll call the city on you, get you a ticket. As God is my witness, I will!”
"Yeah, yeah."
Across the street, three blond haired children stood mutely and watched Johnny bolt to his car. Several houses down the street, an overweight black man in a white T-shirt and shorts clutched the street sign like a lost lover.
Johnny opened the back passenger door of his car, a black Audi, beat up and battle scarred, with cigarette burns on the seat cushions. He tossed in the jacket and pulled out three of the dozen water filled anti-freeze containers. The man hugging the pole gave out a loud groan. Johnny propped open the hood of his car, and began refilling the radiator. It had a very large leak, but if he drove quickly, he could get to the store before it overheated too badly.
The smallest of the children walked over to him as he was tossing the empty containers back into the car. He'd need them again. The little girl followed him as he closed the door and fitted his keys into the driver side door lock.
“He’s drunk,” the little girl said. “He’s drunk and no one will help him.” She said it like she thought Johnny would want to know, but not like she thought that anyone would, or should, do anything about it.
Johnny stopped with the car door open and looked down the street. The man stood up with a great cry, staggered backwards for about 15 steps and fell like a pile of wet clothes in the middle of the street. Johnny and the little girl, watched for a few seconds more, but the man didn’t move.
“I think you’re right,” Johnny said. He thought for the briefest of seconds about going over there, but he didn't need that kind of trouble.
The little girl watched with the complete solemnity that only the very young possess as Johnny got into his car and drove away. Then she went back to watching the man in the street, but he didn’t move.
When he came back to the house, he was armed with fifteen gallons of bleach, more than enough to cover the entire basement. He kicked off his shoes and pulled on a pair of once white pants. With this much bleach, they might get white again. Then he fished his boots out from the closet, the raggedy pair. He uncapped the first four bottles of bleach and pulled on a pair of disposable rubber gloves. He took a deep breath and holding a ready bottle of bleach in either hand, kicked away the boards to the basement.
And looked again. No maggots. The basement was empty now. No wild creatures. No maggots. Just rouch concrete and dirt.
“What the crap,” he said, and put down the bleach.
He looked around the kitchen. The broken boards, dishes and glasses still covered the floor. Physical proof. But no maggots.
He decided that he'd better get out of the house.
He only had one place to go, and one person who might listen.
Lipo neatly speared a chili fry with one of her polished bone chopsticks. “So then she just left?” She paused contemplatively with the transfixed fry hanging between them.
“Yeah, she just booked from the motel.” He thought he'd start with the second weirdest story first, warm up to the unbelievable one.
“And what did you expect?”
“I’m not sure,” Johnny said. “I just wanted to know what was going on.”
“A reward?”
“Not exactly,” he said. “Though I think I earned at least a hell of a story. It just bothers me not knowing.”
“And do you plan to do anything about this?” Lipo asked.
“I don’t know what I could do. But she's in some real big trouble, that's for sure.”
“Like someone else I used to know?”
“Yeah,” he said with a rueful laugh. He pointed to the fry, still hovering speared on the end of her chopstick. “I thought you weren’t supposed to do that.” Then he picked the last fry up with his fingers, gathering as much chili from the Styrofoam container as he could. They both knew his manners were reprehensible, so no pressure there.
“That’s a myth,” Lipo lied serenely. “Besides, it is a much greater crime to criticize the table manners of your elders, often punishable by death.”
Lipo had the best deadpan of anyone Johnny had ever met. Her eyes betrayed only the slightest of slants and her nose lay flat. Her mouth, a narrow-lipped slash, hardly moved even when she spoke. Her face was flat, and her eyes unreadable. Her dusky skin fell somewhere in between Africa and the Orient, weathered and brown, and of a completely indeterminate age. Her hair stuck out in a matted dome of short, straight dark bristles tough enough to scrub linoleum, with the whole affair shaped like a sideways black diamond halo with the points sticking to her sides.
“Being born ten years sooner doesn’t seem like such a big deal,” he said with a grin.
Lipo was unperturbed. “Ten years sooner?” She gave him an enigmatic look. “Is that what you think it is? Interesting.” She pursed her lips.
She stood up and raised her eyebrows, waiting to see if Johnny was going to follow her. He did, shaking his head. In ten years, he’d never gotten any closer to figuring out how old she was. Johnny wasn’t even sure that she was older.
After lunch, Johnny followed her into the garden. She moved around a dying hibiscus tree into the open space framed by her struggling garden, and glided to a neutral stance, open and fluid.
He mimicked her stance. Lipo ducked low and moved through a now familiar series of motions. Johnny groaned inwardly and struggled to follow suit, a half beat behind her. He struggled to match her fluid grace, moving through the motions Lipo called Crane Flows Under the Branch, but Johnny had begun to think of as White Boy Flounders Like Broken Firehose and Gets Kicked in Brain Pan.
He shuffled around on the concrete. Left palm stretched out in front, right hand out to the side, right hand curls behind the back, duck, slide low, right hand makes some kind of weird clutching motion, kneel and reach, up and pivot…and he was lost again. Lipo finished the short series and then moved back into position, ready to go. Often she would merely repeat the motion, over and over, with Johnny following, until she thought it worthy to comment on his progress.
This time she couldn’t wait. “Think like the crane,” she said, looking back. “Not like the wounded duck.”
“I’m trying,” Johnny said. “But I’d like to see a crane do this. It isn’t natural.”
She spoke easily as she moved through the athletic motions again. “Don’t talk to me about nature." She crouched low, then stretched her hands out. "The movements came from watching the crane, yes, but it is the ability to improve these things with our mind that makes them special. Eating the small, young, old and the weak because they can’t properly defend themselves is nature’s way. Warfare and murdering anything lower than you on the food chain is natural.” She was up again, then crouched, then up. “The natural outcome is often the strong controlling the weak, because they can get away with it. Nature kept women as second class citizens because they couldn’t throw a spear quite as far as men. Long ago, it was natural to die of old age and fear in your early twenties. Nature is a beginning yes, but some of us progress past the level of beasts.” She finished talking just a she slid to a stop, as if she’d rehearsed it. She started again.
“Now come, again. It is not difficult to attempt, and each attempt will take you closer. What else in life is guaranteed in this way?”
He continued through the rest of the afternoon, but left early enough that the sky had just started growing sooty fingerprints that clung to the building tops.
“Thank you, Lipo,” he said, when she walked him to the gate. He always walked home. It wasn’t far, and Lipo had suggested he start walking long ago. Too easy to ignore the world around you if you didn’t spend enough time in the open, she’d said.
The gate latch still stuck from when he fixed it long ago. A reminder every time he had to wrestle the latch open. It wasn't a happy experience, but the lesson made him smile ruefully and shake his head.
Johnny's first meeting with Lipo had been thoroughly unpleasant.
Six weeks after he left home, he tried sneaking into her yard. It had looked easy, thin wooden fence with hardly any latch to speak of, well-kept house and yard, but old fashioned. Quaint little garden. No alarm, no dogs.
Only he’d apparently broken into the yard of the worst gardener in the city. Mysterious weeds of all sorts clumped in a haphazard pattern all around. No vegetables that he could see. No carrots or cucumbers, nothing for a hungry guy to steal.
Then he noticed that he wasn’t alone in the garden. The small, brown woman had been standing so still that Johnny hadn’t even seen her. She must have heard him. He hadn’t been that graceful breaking the gate to come in.
“Gates are locked for a reason,” the woman said, though she wasn’t looking at him. “Perhaps for your protection, so that you do not wander into harm's way. But you are hungry, and perhaps I can help with this. You will find food inside the house, on the table just inside the patio.”
Hmm. Johnny didn’t see any reason not to check. He walked past a polished fieldstone patio, inside a lacquered room with many windows. An enormous copper bowl seated on a pale wood table held fruit and nuts and three lumpy looking pastries. Johnny picked up the bowl and tried one of the pastries. He quickly took a second bite, they were wonderful, filled with spicy meat and a tangy cheese of some sort.
He wandered further in as he ate, the bowl cradled in one arm. In the next room, more white lacquered walls with simply framed pieces of art adorning them. Several of the paintings displayed stylized scenes with waterfowl and oriental characters painted in bold, dark strokes. Another looked like a Georgia O’Keefe. No sound came from inside. Outside, he could hear a lone car on the near deserted road outside, muffled by the high wood fences. Then it was gone.
Johnny walked back outside, munching on a second pastry while he looked for the woman again, cursing himself for letting her out of his sight.
But she hadn’t left the small courtyard, only moved within it, and he stood transfixed.
She ignored him and stepped into a slow series he would later learn was called “Dragon’s Reach”. It was entrancing, like watching someone performing moving poetry. As a child, Johnny used to watch snakes, sharks or swooping hawks on TV, and admire their sense of purpose. She didn’t have wings or fangs, but she moved with the same sense of deadly purpose, without any more thought than a looming thunderstorm. It wasn’t fast, but she moved with the inexorable air of flowing water.
“Like in the movies, huh?” he said, grinning. “Like Jackie Chan?” It wasn’t really a proper comparison. The woman didn’t bounce or jump like in the movies, but the fluid grace struck him as similar.
She came closer to Johnny, one foot resting only slightly on the ground as she regarded him. Her arms seemed to drift into place in front of her. For the first time, an expression crossed her face. She smiled, long, wicked and slow. She said: “If you leave quickly and do not come back, you might just reach the gate unharmed. If you move very quickly, you may keep the food.”
Johnny stared, dumbfounded, then licked a few scraps of crunchy pastry dough from his lips.
“The bowl belonged to my father, though,” she said. “I’ll need that back.”
“Take the damn thing,” he said, palming the last pastry and flinging the rest at her. She slid out of the way, not quickly, not far, and the bowl hurtled to her left, landing harmlessly in the soft dirt and weeds. She moved slowly closer, with the Cheshire cat grin still wide and strong.
He’d never hit a woman before. But he needed the food badly, and this woman was asking for it. He hadn’t been afraid of Big Joe Dogg last week, or Nasty Slim the week before. And he’d never back down to any mousy-looking woman. It was a rough neighborhood, and he’d grown up snake-fast, snake-mean and snake-tough. He backhanded at her jaw, a vicious blow mean enough to knock a woman her size out cold.
Only she wasn’t there. She stepped in close near the end of his arm’s arc. She moved slow and easy, like she wasn’t in any rush at all. Something exploded at his right knee. He took a wild swing, pain and fear making him clumsy. Johnny didn’t know where she ended up after that, because the fingers in his right eye made his vision tear and go red. Something hit his knee again, and it buckled while the fingers on his face pushed him backward to the concrete. A vise-like grip had his wrist like a lever and Johnny screamed and twisted with the pain as the woman stepped around his body and pivoted the wrist, flopping Johnny over on his belly like a fish. The woman was on top of him now, with her knee in his right shoulder blade and yanking his straight-locked arm against her knee until he heard a popping sound coming from his shoulder.
Johnny had never screamed under abuse. Not with his dad, not since preschool. Not with any of the older kids on his block either. But this small woman put him down so fast that it took Johnny at least half a minute to figure out that the high pitched screaming in his ears was his own.
“Tomorrow,” the woman said when his screams ran down a bit. “You will come back and I will make a poultice to help the shoulder. Then you can fix my gate. If you don’t come back, it’s likely that you’ll never use that shoulder again, unless you have a good connection with a medical surgeon.”
Only after Johnny nodded in between sobs did she step away, allowing his damaged arm to slap limply against the concrete with a jarring impact.
The next day he came back, if only because the flaring pain of his still dislocated shoulder forced him to. He was scared shitless. He couldn't afford any real medical care, and didn't know where to go. And he still couldn’t use his arm. His whole arm swung loosely when not secured, and the crude sling he’d doctored up only made it hurt worse.
When he got to her house, he knocked timidly at the wooden gate. He didn't know what a poultice was then, but anything was better than a four hour wait at the clinic.
She opened the gate with an enigmatic look, guided him to a wicker chair in the garden, then prodded the wounded shoulder with an exploratory finger. He sucked in his breath and she nodded knowingly.
Then she hit him. She struck him with her forearm, her elbow bent like it was in a sling, leaning fully into it with her whole body to drive directly into his shoulder.
Johnny passed out.
When he woke, he was lying on a padded mattress in the house. His shoulder still throbbed slightly, but he could move it without too much trouble. That last hit must have knocked the shoulder back into its proper place. He flexed it again. It was still very tender.
Next to him, on top of a tie-dyed cloth spread on the wooden floor, lay a steaming glass of tea, a bottle of painkillers and the rustiest toolbox Johnny had ever seen.
Later, when he'd finished with the gate, Lipo showed him a few exercises to help the shoulder and made him promise to come back and let her look at it again. The next week, she taught him a few more exercises to help control his temper, or merely calm him when he was troubled.
It was almost four months before he realized that he was learning kung-fu.
The day after he told her about the motel incident, Lipo broached a particular subject. She waited until after practice, and it was over tea that she asked Johnny if he’d found work yet.
“Not yet,” he said. “Nobody’s really hiring.”
He was too busy adding his seventh teaspoon of sugar into the tea to notice Lipo narrow her eyes with a sudden intensity. “I see,” she said quietly. “And yet you have fixed your car. And your furnace.”
“Yeah,” Johnny said casually. “It turned out to be the radiator and a whole bunch of crap besides…”
“And I see the new ring on your finger,” Lipo said. “Gold. And you didn't take any of the food that I set aside for you yesterday. You usually are eager for the vegetables from the garden.”
“Hmm?” Johnny said, finally noticing something was wrong. “Uh, yeah.”
“Forgive me for asking,” she said. “But I am concerned about where you have suddenly come up with so much money.”
“Um, well,” Johnny said. “You know, odd jobs and such. And the magazine’s had a little work for me.”
“I am wondering about your story now,” Lipo said. Pushing her tea away. “Perhaps you have not told me everything.”
“Well, no, not yet. There’s lots more. I didn’t even get to the weird part yet. After that, some guy was in my house and…,” Johnny said but trailed off. That wasn’t the part she was asking about. He just about swore. He'd never even be able to tell the basement story now.
“Crap,” he said. “Well, she did leave some money, yeah. I mean, she left her whole damn purse. See the money was under the mattress and…well…” His voice trailed off as he looked at the stony expression on Lipo’s face.
“Did she have any identification in the purse?” Lipo asked.
“Well, hell,” Johnny stammered. “I don’t know.” The truth was, she had left her purse, as well as the money, but Johnny hadn’t bothered looking inside. He had been far too preoccupied with the money.
“I think you need to leave, Johnny,” Lipo said.
“What?” He shook his head like a confused dog. “Jesus, Lipo, you’re the only friend I have.”
“And perhaps you should think about that before you return. It seems to me that the woman that you told me of could have desperately used a friend that night, but found only a thief, little better than the boy that I once caught stealing food, except perhaps colder.” She sighed very deeply. “And I thought that we had changed that, but now I do not know. I will need some time to think on this before you return.”
Johnny closed the gate with the bothersome latch. He stood on the outside now, with Lipo and her world inside the high slat fence. He peered for a second at the gate of a now forbidden country as if he could see himself in between the slats. Then he turned and headed back out into the rest of the world.
When he got back home, he tried smoking, drinking, rereading a few of his favorite novels and even watching a little TV, but couldn’t pull his mind off what Lipo had said and he couldn’t stop thinking about the woman with the blond hair, wild stories and no glasses. Finally, he pulled out the purse from the trash and spread the contents onto the table.
The first thing he pulled out was a slim pair of glasses, with oval pink tinted lenses the size of half dollars. He tried squinting through them and quickly pulled back. Strong prescription. If these really belonged to the woman from the motel room, it was a wonder she didn’t walk into the door frame on the way out. Then he pulled out the strange and wondrous flute. He set them aside.
The other items were more prosaic. The purse also yielded two ticket stubs to the Bowie concert at Joe Louis Arena. The date was for last week, the night he’d met her. The only other item was a black and white photo of a couple kissing in a doorway.
No license. No credit card. No name. He turned back to the photo. The woman wasn’t her. This one was a redhead with a short bob and big earrings. It was hard to get any more because the man’s face blocked the rest out. He was swarthy with black hair smoothed perfectly back, an overly long nose, thick jaw. Not a conventionally handsome face, but undeniably masculine. He flipped the picture in his fingers. On the back, in tall, precise letters, someone had written two separate addresses. 32840 N. Windemere Lane, Rochester Hills & 412 E. Shane St. No 310, Hamtramck.
He tapped the photo thoughtfully, knowing he was going to investigate further. He should have handled all this differently, but he couldn’t change that. He’d do what he could now, but wasn’t sure if it was only to appease Lipo. There should be more reason than that, but he’d been poor so long it was hard to think that way.
And the blonde woman. He wasn’t sure what he would do if he found her. Even if she had been in trouble, was she still in it? Was it something he could really help with? Why would she even want him to? What kind of crime might she be involved in? None of the answers seemed positive enough, on an intellectual level, to justify his pursuing the matter. Still, if he went through with this, maybe he could get back in Lipo's good graces again. He didn’t like to admit to himself that anyone might be important enough to him to cause him this kind of trouble, but Lipo had saved him at a time when no one else even remembered his name.
“Crap,” he said, and reached for his car keys.
Chapter Four
Most of the nine to five workday slid by before Johnny pulled in front of the Shane St. address. He figured he might as well check out the closer one first. A modest brownstone nearly bumping into a building with a sign that said "Ethnic Bakery" on the corner of Shane and Main. Probably Polish, it being Hamtramck, but maybe not.
Johnny tossed his street maps back onto the passenger seat and drove once around the block. He guided the Audi with pleasure and tried not to feel guilty about getting his car fixed. It might have looked like a crash victim, but it slid through traffic like a great black predator with hunger pangs. When it wasn't coughing up oil, Johnny affectionately called it ‘The Shark’.
A few token trees complemented the ragged lawns filled with broken or momentarily forgotten plastic toys. A few lost kids to go with them, but not many. They owned the street though, no adults in sight. A third of the way down the block, the brownstones gave way to cramped houses with no drives. The workforce hadn't crowded the street quite yet, so the parking spots were only nine-tenth's full.
Johnny drove up the next street to come back around. This street was an exact replica, and though they might deny it, Johnny was pretty sure the kids from the first street had run over while he turned the corner.
A middle aged Asian woman came out of the Ethnic Bakery as Johnny pulled by, so he slowed while she scurried to her parking spot. She glanced back at the alley and didn't dawdle getting her keys in the door lock. Johnny carefully negotiated his car into the spot she'd left. It was across the street from and facing the brownstone, but far enough back so that he didn't feel too obvious.
The alley between the brownstone and the store was a nearly overgrown dirt path with a small gang of young toughs, both black and white. The nearest might have been Arabic. Poster children for The Equal Opportunity Gang of Young Reprobates. Might have made the woman nervous, but it didn't particularly bother Johnny. He kept a mild eye on them, but most of his attention was on the brownstone.
No one moved inside. One light was on, upstairs, but it didn't have to mean anyone was home. Any of the cars around might have belonged to people there. Johnny scratched his chin and tried to remember what he had to gain from sitting in his car and playing private eye. Damn Lipo.
The punks loitered in a threatening manner, giving Johnny sidelong looks. He yawned back at them. After a quick conference, they sauntered over. Johnny noticed, but kept his attention on the brownstone.
The Arabic boy stuck his too-young-to-shave face at Johnny's window. Johnny ignored him until the tough rapped the window again with something metal in his hand. A smoldering anger curled and coiled in Johnny's gut. Johnny gave the fist a speculative look and thumbed the power window switch down.
The tough snapped the blade in his hand open and waved it at Johnny's face. "We don't like…" the tough started, but it turned to a yelp as Johnny captured the fist with a smooth backhanded grab, cranking the wrist savagely and thumbing the switch to roll the power window back up. The yelp reached a higher pitch when the window lodged in the back of the boy's elbow. The motor on the power window groaned, but levered the boy's arm half a foot up until Johnny let up on the switch just as the boy's elbow met the top of the window. The knife tumbled harmlessly into Johnny's lap.
Johnny ignored the boy's screaming, well and truly pissed off now. He switched hands so that he could use his right hand to start up the car. The other kids scattered, leaving their leader. No help from the pack.
"Hey tough guy! How's that feel?" Johnny hollered.
Johnny listened to the kid swear for half a minute, gunning the engine. Then he finally let the kid's wrist go, rolling the window down just enough so the kid could pull his arm back.
"Motherfucker!" the tough screeched, not so tough anymore. He turned and ran with an awkward step back down the alley, trying to catch up with the other fleeing figures. At first Johnny thought the awkwardness was because the boy cradled his arm as he ran, but then the boy gave up on that, pumping his arms to hurry, and the limp remained. Johnny thought he caught the glint of a metal brace on the boy's foot before he passed from sight.
Suddenly, Johnny was feeling more like a heel than a hero.
Johnny picked up the knife, closing it carefully after testing the very dull blade with his finger tips. The blade was about twice the size of a pen cap. The kind you might use to trim models with your dad on a Saturday night. Johnny threw it on the passenger seat, then rested his hands on the steering wheel to keep them from shaking any more.
He spent the next few minutes feeling red, angry and raw, like a throbbing wound. He'd nearly amputated that kid when he could just as easily have talked his way out of it. Or just left. Johnny hadn't really been in any danger.
And Johnny hadn't been much different than the kid with the knife until Lipo found him. Maybe he wasn't any different now, but had only been pretending for Lipo's sake. Crap. A big part of why Lipo taught him was so that he could learn to control this kind of thing. He hated the anger, but it felt warm and familiar, like the handle of his boyhood softball bat.
His troubled state almost made him miss it when the man from the photograph stepped out of the front door. He was wearing a dark suit and ivory shirt that nearly glittered at the front and cuffs. The man walked briskly over to a silver sedan and then threw a briefcase inside. A woman followed behind him, pausing briefly to lock the brownstone door. The man waited and they embraced at the sidewalk. The redhead, also from the photograph. Johnny might have been able to take an identical photo to match the one in his hand, if he had the inclination. He didn't, so he waited while the man got in the silver sedan and the woman got into a beat up white Omni.
He knew where the woman lived, so he could always come back here to try and find out more about her. Time to learn more about the man.
He followed the silver sedan.
He tailed the car out onto Conant, keeping a block behind. He blew three red lights to keep from losing him, but everyone in Detroit traffic seemed to expect that kind of driving. Johnny was idling three cars behind the silver car when a cell phone rang. Johnny ignored it, then realized that it was coming from inside his car. It sounded like the glove compartment.
He didn't own a cell phone. It must be coming in from another car, but he didn't see any likely candidates. After a few more rings he decided it must be coming from his car. He leaned over and pawed open the glove compartment. Sure enough, a little black phone fell out and kept ringing, but Johnny couldn't bring himself to answer it.
What in the hell? No one he knew left it there. How would someone plant it there? Why would they?
It rang the whole time until he made his turn and for three miles down the road until the silver car pulled into a gas station on Mound and 8 Mile. Ring, ring. Pause. Ring, ring. Pause. Johnny pulled into the gas station across the street, turning to face out into traffic. Pause. Ring, ring.
Johnny finally thumbed the button to answer, but didn't speak.
"Mr. Bass?" a man's voice asked politely after a pause.
"Who's this?"
"If I may take a moment of your valuable time, Mr. Bass," the voice went on smoothly. "In regards to your activities this November ninth."
The ninth? Johnny wasn't much good with calendar dates. "Crap," Johnny said as he realized. "You mean last Friday night."
"Precisely," the cultured voice went on. The man spoke with a slight, but unmistakable Irish lilt. "We have reason to believe that you may be contacted regarding the death of Officers Pagloscowitz and Coon."
"Officer Paglos…? Who? Someone killed a cop?"
The man on the other end of the phone was too polite to call Johnny a dope. But he might have thought it during the short pause. He forged on though, twice as polite as before. "Yes, I'm afraid so. I represent a woman who knows far less than you regarding the affair, as I'm sure you know. But her caretaker and family would rather keep her embarrassing situation out of the papers. This is the purpose of my call."
"The woman from the motel," Johnny blurted. He still felt like he was two or three paragraphs behind.
"Just so," the man said. "I'm sure you understand. We do realize that this would represent considerable risk to your person and are prepared to repay your generosity. I understand you contribute to several charities. Could we mail this check to your home address on Elm road? That way you could distribute the funds as you see fit. I would rather send it by courier, as the amount is quite large."
Johnny's head spun. They knew where he'd been, knew where he lived. They knew his car and could get to it. He'd never contributed to any charitable causes in his life, though. But they probably knew that too.
And maybe they knew about the money, or certainly about his money troubles in general. Or maybe that was just everyone, only Johnny a little more than most. Johnny swallowed hard, and suddenly wondered about his own lifestyle.
"Why?" Johnny said, suddenly obstinate. "Why send me money? You didn't even take the time to ask me if I'd do it without a payoff. Who the hell is this, anyway?"
"Mr. Bass," the rich voice purred. "We understand the danger to your person you incurred. You might have taken a fatal shoe to the head, or some other such ignoble abuse. We merely wish to display our gratitude."
"What about the woman?"
"She extends her thanks, of course," the voice said. "But you must not contact her." Not so friendly this time. "You will have no further contact with her again. This business ends here, now. You tell whatever story you like to the police, should they come questioning, but without the woman being involved."
"I didn't say I expected her gratitude," Johnny said flatly. "I meant, what happens to the woman?"
"She will be cared for, I assure you."
"Uh-huh," Johnny said. "By the same asshole that was taking care of her Friday night? Some rich kid of your clients?"
Johnny must have hit a nerve. The man's tone went flat. "You might be grateful for our gener…"
"Who told you about the shoe?" Johnny interrupted.
"Excuse me?"
"You mentioned the shoe that the big guy threw at us, which you might have gotten from the woman, only she didn't see it. She didn't turn around. She was too scared to do more than huddle down and couldn't have seen. I didn't tell anyone about it, not even the cops, and they didn’t see from the inside, so that means that Frankenboy in the tux was your boy."
"Frankenwho? You lousy little fuck!" The Irish lilt and the culture were both gone now.
"Well, now that's not polite," Johnny said happily and grinned a satisfied smile at himself in the rear view mirror. He hadn't really known. The cops might have put it in their report afterwards, but Johnny didn't think so. A report like that would make them look bad.
"You'll regret this you little fuck!"
"Possibly," Johnny said. "I regret a lot of things." A strange sound came through along with the swearing, like cracking plastic. He hung up.
He thought about the strange visitor in the hotel room, the disembodied voice. Only that voice didn’t match the one on the phone. No Irish lilt, faked or otherwise. And the voice in the hotel room had sounded older, and incapable of being rattled.
Then he swore. He'd been so distracted that he'd lost the silver sedan. Damn. Johnny flipped over the picture and looked at the other address. Might as well check it out, if only to piss off anyone that might be watching for him.
When the phone rang again, he pulled his car over to a garbage can by the gas station bathroom and tossed the phone casually into the metal barrel. It clanged loudly in the bottom, still ringing, as he drove away.
He felt a moment's pleasure and pride at how he'd handled himself, then at not taking an obvious bribe. Then he sobered up.
"Don't take any crooked money, Johnny," he murmured to himself. "Just from ladies in distress, that's more your style."
The next address was in Rochester Hills, a suburb some miles North of Detroit. Coolidge opened into quiet suburbia. SUVs and sports cars were parked in the driveways, far from the street. Nobody actually parked in the street. Most of the streets ended in big circle courts. Children might ride big wheels in this kind of neighborhood, if they felt like slumming, but they sure didn't leave them on the grass when they were done. Johnny wondered if the parents might get a ticket in this neighborhood for that.
Johnny cruised past long brick houses with bright colors on the doors and shutters and expansive green lawns slightly smaller than Tiger Stadium. It looked like the kind of neighborhood that had gardening clubs. Surrounding the bright houses each domicile had festive gardens like herbal halos, filled with a dizzying array of ferns and flowers, mostly supported by stone walls or the tiny little brick fences that might give turtles a moment's pause, but wouldn't stop anything bigger.
Johnny thought about his jungle of a yard as he took the first right. He didn't usually pay enough attention, so his mental picture was pretty hazy, but he didn't think that it looked like much, comparatively. By the time he took his left on Windemere Lane, he was pretty sure of it.
Johnny drove by the second address, wondering how he was going to manage here. This was a different world from his last stake out. He'd look more than a little out of place here, and he didn't think he wanted to have any run-ins with the police. That might be overreacting. He wasn't sure. He didn't get to this area much.
He parked a few houses down anyway. He didn't like it, but life was full of risks. The house was the color of dry sand, with a slightly darker wood door and windows. A new sapling was planted near the driveway, looking small but defiant in the shadow of the mammoth house. The wet dirt around the tree was carefully molded with an array of dazzling white cords and wooden pegs that kept it upright. The door had three large copper strips running up and down and a large copper lamp post was set halfway in between front walk and the house. Johnny sat for awhile and wondered how many times a year someone had to come and polish that lamp post. Maybe it wasn't really copper.
The silver car turned the corner down the street behind him and for a second Johnny thought that the car had somehow started following him. The black haired man from the photo maneuvered the car into the driveway of the sand colored house, taking no notice of Johnny. Johnny wondered where the man had been after Johnny lost him. He couldn't have come straight here. The silver car slid easily next to a caramel colored minivan. The man fussed with his tie and hair using the rear view mirror and got out of the car with a briefcase in his hand. He had a cheerful jaunt, the kind of walk that made Johnny think he was humming to himself. The man took the porch stairs in one jump and didn’t use a key to get in.
Johnny watched for a few more minutes. He was parked in such a way that he could see the side of the house, and thought he made out a tall brunette through the kitchen window. Johnny didn’t see any kids, but the house looked pretty big, like the kind that should have kids in it.
Johnny watched the house for another few hours. It was well past dinner time and he was getting hungry. It was warm enough that sitting in the sun was hard work, and he twisted the key in the ignition long enough to power down the window so that cool air could come in. Mild traffic sounds drifted in with it, and someone down the street was playing In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida loud enough for Johnny to hum along. A dog in the house next to Johnny barked at him uncertainly, but it was a suburban dog and a suburban bark. No real threat in it.
Johnny didn’t know what he was watching for or really why he was, and every five minutes or so made up his mind to leave. But he put his hand on the ignition without imagining the woman with the cocktail dress lying in the puddle on a cold night, crying. That was a woman who didn’t have any friends, he felt sure. No one gets out, she’d said. They own me.
Each time he thought about that his hand dropped from the ignition and he listened to another five minutes of Inagodadavida. When the song finally ended, they played it again. Occasionally a gleaming car would coast down and deposit itself into a clean driveway next to a well manicured lawn. Once it was a tall older woman in a dusty old Volkswagen bug. Johnny decided he liked her better than the others, but he didn't go crazy over it.
The disc jockey was in the middle of his seventh repetition when a Lexus down the street let out a small hennish woman. She stalked quickly into her house and the music stopped twenty seconds after.
Just after that a small blue Escort whizzed past him and jerked into the driveway in a hurried turn and stop. A pile of swarthy looking kids exited in a domestic fury and ran into the house, leaving the front door open. The driver fiddled in the car for a minute.
Johnny cocked his head in alarm as a strange hissing caught his ear. No, not hissing, words. Whispering. He felt a sudden rush of familiarity, or déjà vu, and warmth, like the smell of the old oatmeal cookies his mother used to make, or the pleasant nostalgia that old episodes of Star Trek always gave him.
When he shook his head and looked up, the blonde from the hotel was getting out of the car. Johnny got a good look at her face and something in him twisted. A chord went off in Johnny’s head, like the sudden thrill he’d once gotten on the roller coaster. His view wasn’t very clear, as she was three houses away, and she couldn’t have been able to see him very well, but it was still clear in Johnny’s mind, without any scrap of doubt, the blonde woman standing transfixed in the driveway was the same woman.
She reached back into the car for something, then straightened and went around to the trunk. She was blonde, with a coquettish look, but walked with the solemn demeanor of a convicted felon. She wore a deep blue sundress with yellow squiggles. The dress stopped at the tops of her knees, showing nice legs without stockings and blue flats to match the dress. Her hair was pinned back with barrettes of the same color blue, but strands of hair still obscured her face. She was wearing a similar pair of glasses to the ones she'd left, pink tinted.
When she stepped around the car, she stopped and stared directly at him. She might have been wondering about such a dirty and scratched black car in such a nice, suburban neighborhood, but Johnny knew it wasn't that. Just as he knew he wasn't mistaken about who she was or why he was here. She stood there for the longest time, and Johnny just sat there, transfixed.
She whispered something to Johnny, two words, exaggerating them so he could read her lips. It was way too far for that, though, and Johnny couldn't tell what she said.
A woman's voice called out from inside the house, not loud, but they both jumped. She looked back and forth twice, then started digging at the ground near the new sapling with her short blue heels. She worked at it for a short time before another voice interrupted her. This time it was the man Johnny had followed. She jumped and smiled weakly at him and went at once into the house. He stood in the doorway and guided her in, as one would a child. Then he looked over at Johnny and frowned. Johnny clenched the steering wheel and tried to keep the sudden, inexplicable rage from overwhelming him.
The man frowned at Johnny for awhile and Johnny made himself stay in the car until the man turned into the house and closed the wood and brass door. The man didn't look down at the grass.
Johnny waited a few minutes while the anger passed. He shook his head, then got out of the car. He didn't particularly want to let himself be seen, but he wanted a look at the ground more than he wanted anonymity. He walked across the clean street and crouched down on the sidewalk, pointed as if he were looking at the blue Escort. He glanced down.
In the muddy patch under the sapling, the blue shoe had made shallow but frantic slashes in the wet earth in block letters. Two small roly-polys and an earthworm explored the fresh letters in the dirt. The message was short.
R-U-N.
Johnny carefully stepped onto the muddy letters in pretext of getting a closer look at the escort's tires. In case anyone from the house was watching, he carefully didn't let his glance linger on the house or the mud at his feet. He stood and twisted, further rubbing out the letters, and walked back to his car.
Now he realized what two words she'd whispered. Run away.
Johnny stood with his hand on the car door handle for a few minutes, looking at the big wood and brass door, thinking about watchdogs, police and men who cheated on their wives. And the kids. He couldn't quite see himself breaking down the door. He didn't know enough, and even if he did, he couldn't see doing it that way.
Whatever was going on, she could have just made a break for it. Run for his car. But she hadn't, and he needed to know why. He needed to know a lot of things. He got back into the shark. He fished in the glove box for a pen and scrap of paper and wrote down the license plate numbers of the three vehicles in the drive.
No one was looking out the window when he pulled away.
Chapter Five
The nearest branch of The Detroit Public Library stood at Washington and Michigan. It was an imposing building with enough pale stone columns to give Johnny images of Poseidon and Aphrodite waiting in line for the microfiche reader.
When he inquired at the mammoth desk about computer resources, a small black woman with a matronly air and the fuzziest gray sweater Johnny had ever seen directed him to the sign up sheet on the other side of the library.
"Thanks," Johnny said to the woman, but she hadn't really been waiting for a response and so hadn't heard him.
He set his notes from the council meeting on one of the empty tables near the sign-up sheet. He needed some help to make any use of the license plate numbers he’d taken, and Uta was the only one he knew that had access to that kind of information. And that meant finishing his article, even if it was past the deadline. He arranged his notes in order, borrowed a pencil from the surly librarian and went to work.
He got on the computer in short order. The article wasn't exciting, but it wasn't very hard to do, either. He forced himself to keep plugging away and shortly after lunch, he used the library facilities to print up a copy of his final draft.
The printer stood next to the newspaper rack and the front page caught his eye while the printer slowly whirred away.
He knew the two faces starting back at him. The cops from the motel. Their photos took up most of the front page. The caption read: Cop Killer Still At Large!! Johnny knew the faces well. Officers Elvis and Brushcut, but the paper referred to them as Coon and Pagloscowitz. Or maybe it was Pagloscowitz and Coon. The paper didn't say which was which. Sloppy work.
The article was short on helpful details. No assailant was seen and both cops were dead. A female employee had found them behind a strip club. The paper used the phrase "badly battered". The only gunfire was from the police, and there was speculation about how two fully armed cops could be beaten to death. How did the cops miss so many times? One of them never even drew his gun. In the movies, that usually meant it was someone the killer knew. Or someone that didn't look dangerous. Beaten to death by a vengeful stripper? Seemed unlikely. No mention of suspects and no clues. The time of the killing placed it immediately after Johnny had seen them, but there wasn’t any connection drawn in the paper, or even any mention of it.
But Johnny felt it must be connected. Someone was cleaning up witnesses. Since the phone call didn’t work, Johnny could expect whoever it was to try the direct method on him, as well.
Uta glanced up briefly after scanning the pages. She started to say something, and then dropped the pages to her desk. She cleaned her glasses briefly, then stuck them back onto her haggard face. Uta was young for her position, and might have been pretty, but she had a tendency to scowl at everyone. Her slight Russian accent didn't do much to hide the constant scorn. Still, she had put up with a lot more from Johnny than most employers would.
"It's not bad," she said grudgingly. "Not exactly Pulitzer prize, but printable. But that doesn't make up for it being past your deadline. You're still getting docked for being so late. Any other piece and I couldn't use it, but no one really reads about council meetings, anyway, except the people that were already there."
"I don't need the money," Johnny said. "I need a favor. But it's for a story."
"What kind of story?"
"I think I know more about the police killings than the paper does."
Uta snorted. "We're not the big time, we're just a little local paper. Save the big journalist talk for one of them. They'll be printing something more on it tonight anyway."
"Still, it's worth checking out. Right? I just need you to check a few plates for me." Johnny pushed a scrap of paper across her desk. "You still date the guy from the DMV, right?"
"Date's a strong word. But, yes.” She frowned and looked him over. “No promises, but I’ll see what I can do.”
Johnny went back to his house and fidgeted around before deciding that he needed something serious to take his mind off waiting. As a result, he found himself picking up a rusty scythe. It was the only thing he had to try and take out the weed forest in the backyard. He didn't own a lawnmower, and anyway it wouldn't be enough. He'd picked up the scythe at a garage sale, years ago, and never really used it.
After a few minutes practice, he found himself getting into the rhythm and then nearly missed the phone when it started to ring two hours later. He dashed into the house, sweaty and winded. It was Uta, all right. She got back two names. A Frank Donofrio held the titles to both the minivan and the silver car with a familiar listed address on Windemere lane. The blue Escort was held by a Bradley Worthington. 13783 Judson Avenue, Southfield.
Johnny was getting better at reading the street guides. It only took him an hour to find 13783 Judson Ave the next morning. The squat building was pretty ugly, two stories, with an air of depression and meanness that seemed right at home on the south side. Grey industrial paint flaked off the sides and the windows were tinted by a dark grime. A wrought iron fence surrounded a playground area with a slide, merry-go-round and jungle gym, all recently painted in bright yellow. Next year, maybe, they would paint the building and the playground fixtures would be peeling. It didn't seem like the kind of neighborhood where it might all be freshly painted at once.
The sign out front, a large freestanding wooden job as large as any of the playground fixtures, proclaimed the place Hope Center in straight, no-nonsense letters.
There weren't any children in the play area, but a couple of hardened looking youths, one black, one white, played in a desultory fashion on a basketball court fifty yards or so off. The black one stopped and watched Johnny look over the building, but it didn't seem to interest him enough to leave the game. Johnny watched the game for a few minutes. He had an idle and pleasant thought about the racially integrational ideals of Hope Center. Then the black boy scored over the white boy and the white boy retaliated by slugging the smaller boy in the shoulder, sending him sprawling. The smaller boy looked unhurt. He popped back to his feet, angry and ready to hit back, but he started with a little yelling.
Johnny thought about interfering, but instead stepped quickly to the front doors, the large metal kinds with webbed windows like in elementary schools. Johnny yanked one open. Inside, there was a short hallway, leading into a living room with blue cloth sofas and an industrial brown carpet, dominated by a strangely out of place huge wide screen TV, currently off. To Johnny’s immediate right, an open office door showed Johnny a skinny black man sitting with his feet up on a beaten old desk, talking on the phone.
"Hey," Johnny said. "You've got a white kid beating the hell out of a little black kid out here." It wasn't really that bad, but Johnny wanted to see what kind of place this was.
The man jabbed the hold button and put his feet down. "African-American," he said automatically. He had a slight Southern accent. Alabama, maybe.
"All right," Johnny said. "You've got a young Caucasian, approximately 5 feet tall, allegedly assaulting the hell out of a young African-American boy on the corner of …"
"Sorry," the man said, holding his hand up in surrender. "Hey Maurice!" he shouted.
Johnny looked behind him to see a large sleepy looking black face poke around the corner from the living room. "Yeah, boss?"
&nb