by Cari Z
I stepped into my suit pants and put on my shirt, minding the creases and lines as I buttoned up my second skin. The suit was for respectability, the tattoos offered a bit of mystery, and the jewelry, well…
What could I say? I looked pretty pierced. Silver studs in my nose and ears, a silver teardrop by my left eye, and heavy silver rings on my fingers covered in symbols of dubious merit―the jewelry was a distraction, and also a convenient way to make my punches hurt a little more. I didn’t often get physical with a client, but it happened occasionally, and what was my motto? Be prepared. It wasn’t like I knew when someone was going to go psycho on me.
Well, all right, sometimes I did know, like today, but I was hoping I could head it off at the pass before things got serious. I combed my hair back and polished the look off with a short-brimmed gray fedora, a little more battered than the rest of my suit because I liked to wear it more often, and glanced at myself in the mirror. I looked lean, sharp-featured, the kind of smooth that hid knives just beneath the surface. I looked like a predator, like a shark. I sighed and then went back downstairs to help Marisol get ready.
She was dolled up too, like a cross between a fortune teller and a flamenco dancer. Her curling hair was pulled back with a purple silk scarf; she had a peasant-style blouse on that put her cleavage on display, and her skirt was layered with row after row of colorful fabric. She jingled a little as she walked, her necklaces and bracelets announcing her like heavenly trumpeters, and she’d darkened her eyelashes and added lipstick bright enough to draw the eye instantly to her mouth. Marisol had a schtick, same as me, but damn, she looked good while she did it. Unlike me, I knew Marisol was armed with more than her jewelry. Couldn’t be too careful.
Marisol looked at me and pursed her lips. “Not the black suit?”
“You told me it makes me look like a gangster,” I said, turning on the OPEN sign and pulling up the blinds.
“It does, but this guy might respect you more if you look like that.”
“At this point, I think the respect thing is pretty much moot. If he respected my skills, he wouldn’t be coming back, yet again. This guy only respects himself.”
“But you don’t look really scary in that suit either,” she said, a little disconsolately. “You look…Cillian, honestly, you look like you’re out to seduce someone.”
“Is it working?” I asked with a grin as she walked by. She smacked me on the shoulder, but she was smiling.
“Don’t even try it, cielito. I’d give you a heart attack. Besides, then your mama would kill me, and I already know that’s not how I’m going to go.” She did know that; one of the first things Marisol had asked me, years ago when I was still scared of myself and missing my mother so bad it made me sick, was her own future. If I had known then what I know now, I wouldn’t have done it, but she was kind and genuinely hopeful for something, and I gave in. I looked into Marisol’s eyes, and I saw her tangled mess of hope and fear, all wound around a boy who had just left her, who she feared would never come back, and―
Marisol was my first really good lie, the kind of lie that has so much truth in it you can barely tell it’s not what you want it to be. It was the chameleon of lies, the fucking stick insect of lies. I did what I did, and she cried and thanked me, and I still feel guilty about it, but you know…she shouldn’t have asked. Of all people, Marisol should have known better, so my guilt was tempered with a dash of anger and a sense of inevitability. She’d wanted to know, I’d told her, end of story. Just…the end, period.
“She’d be gentle,” I said instead of bringing up Marisol’s fate, straightening out one of her racks of brightly beaded kurtis. “You’d never see her coming. It would be just like falling asleep.”
“Is that how your mama takes care of her personal problems, Cillian?”
“It’s how she’d want to.” I knew that much. My mother had killed one person that I knew of, and she’d done it right in front of me. It had been anything but gentle, but she’d been desperate. That was one of the few memories of my own that occasionally gave me nightmares.
“Well, she always was―oh hey, honey.” She glanced out the front window. “Looks like he’s here. And he brought two bruisers with him. Son of a bitch, I knew it. They stay outside.”
“Marisol―”
“No, they stay outside! He wants to be a big man, he can be a big man all by himself. He doesn’t get to intimidate us on my own property.” She placed herself at the front door and waited for them to arrive.
It was definitely the same guy, big and broad, deliberately bald to help disguise his receding hairline, scowling and sweating in the morning sunlight. He wore a white suit and his goons wore black, which made me really happy I’d opted for gray. Marisol was right. I probably did look like a gangster in the other one, and that wasn’t at all the point.
“Let us in,” one of the goons said to Marisol.
“Sorry, paying customers only,” she said with a bright smile, one hand drifting behind her back to the Glock I knew she had tucked in a holster at the waistband of her skirt. “That means Mr. Klinger and no one else.”
“They’ll each buy a fuckin’ trinket. Just let us in already,” Mr. Klinger snapped from his spot between the two men.
“No, sorry, I don’t allow dogs into my store.”
One of the men scowled. “Now listen here―”
“No, you listen,” she said. “This is my store, and I can refuse entrance to whoever I think might cause trouble. If you want to argue your rights with me, there’s a cop on the corner three blocks down in an unmarked car who would probably be happy to discuss the situation with us. He’s been there ever since the dispensary next door opened, just keeping the peace, but he probably gets bored. You gonna make me call him over here? Because the cops respond real fast to trouble like screaming women and loud bangs.”
To his credit, the goon didn’t try to push the issue, just looked back at his boss. Mr. Klinger grudgingly gave in. “Get back to the car, and keep it running. I won’t be long.”
“Yes, boss.” They left, and Marisol smiled again.
“Come right in, sir.” She let him through, and when he saw me behind the glass case where the register sat, all his badly hidden anxiety came rushing to the fore.
“You.” His hands gripped the lapels of his suit so hard I was a little afraid he would rip it. “You, I need to speak to you, now. In private.”
“Just like before,” I told him. “Both times. It’s always private―Marisol’s just watching the door. She doesn’t hear anything that goes on here.” Which was a lie, of course. She heard everything, but people were easier to convince once they’d seen me in action. “Sit down, Charles.” I pointed at one of the chairs behind the register, and he almost fell into it. “Money.” He pulled an envelope out of his pocket and set it on the top of the case, a thousand dollars in small bills, just like before. I took the envelope and placed it inside my jacket and then sat across from him, folded my legs, and cocked my head with disappointment. “Charles, Charles…what did I tell you last time?”
“I know, but I changed it this time, I really did!” he insisted, sweating even though the air-conditioning was on high. “Last time you told me I hadn’t done enough, so I did this time, I swear. I took care of everything, so it has to have changed!”
“Charles.” I rolled my eyes. “When I told you that you hadn’t done enough, I meant that you could never do enough. You know that, I said the first time not to fight it. You have to accept that what’s coming down on you now―that hammer’s going to fall no matter what. You can’t hide your tracks, Charles. It’s too late.”
“You’re lying,” he snarled. “It’s not too late. I can change it―just tell me what to do!” His demand was accentuated by the sudden appearance of his handgun, which I’d been expecting. Marisol hadn’t; she went pale and pulled her Glock, training it on the man, but I waved her away.
“Charles.” I leaned forward. “Look into my eyes. Come on,�
�� I encouraged when he balked, “don’t get shy now, look into my eyes. Come here.” He bent forward, stiffly, his finger still on the trigger of his―whatever that was―something small and sleek. I looked into his red-rimmed baby blues and said, “You stupid, poor fuck. You thought it was enough to burn your hardcopies, to destroy your computers, to…Jesus, set fire to your office building? Fraud on the scale that you perpetrated can’t be burned away clean. You made money your god, Charles, and you worshipped it and sacrificed to it and gave it everything, and that leaves marks that can’t be branded over.
“Your house, your beautiful house…that’s still standing. Your car, your wife’s car, the very fact that you brought two bodyguards when you came to see me this morning―all signs that you’re in too deep. You can’t trick and you can’t lie and you can’t repent fast enough, not anymore. It’s too late for you, Charles Donovan Klinger.” I looked deeper, past the surface of his future and into his past as well. I cupped his face in my hands, warm silver on clammy skin, and he didn’t even blink.
“It was too late for you the moment you had your business partner killed. It was too late when the pair of you went into business together, both of you determined to find the best ways to fuck your desperate clients out of their cash. Too late at Tulane when you decided you wanted to be a lawyer so you could have the satisfaction of screwing people over without them realizing it, too late when you thought it would be easier to beat your hooker into silence instead of paying her, too late when you convinced your mentally ill grandmother to give you her car, too late from the moment you shattered your little sister’s piggy bank and stole two dollars and eighty-one cents, all of it in pennies. You dream of that sound sometimes, don’t you, Charles?” His pupils were huge now, windows straight into his soul, and I followed the gleam of copper as he chased those pennies over the sidewalk, chubby fingers grasping and holding on tight even then.
“You liked that sound, that breaking sound, that crash. It gets you off, just like cash in hand gets you off, just like watching yourself peddling bullshit on television gets you off. You were always going to go down in flames, Charles, but those commercials were the start of that nasty attention from the DA. They’ve got everything on you, and you’ve got nothing at all. You’ll end just like you began, a nothing, grasping for pennies in the gutter. You’re done, Charles. You’re done, and there’s nothing you can do to fight it.” I let go of his face and sat back, letting the real world filter back into my vision.
Charles was still holding the gun, but just barely, his hand gone limp. His skin was sallow and sagging, his shoulders bent and his head lolling. He looked like he’d had a stroke. I knew better. It was just in shock, but this shock was one he would never completely recover from. All his plans, all his little tricks and schemes―gone. This was what hopelessness looked like. This was ruin, on a base and personal level, and I felt a little sick even though I knew he deserved it.
“Shouldn’t have come back,” I said with a sigh. “Nobody ever really wants the details, Charles.” Marisol was still holding her gun on him, but now she looked uncertain. I waved her vigilance away. “Help me get him up. He’s going to need his guys to take him back to his car.” I used my pocket square to keep my fingerprints off his gun as I put it back in his pocket―stupid way to carry a gun, but it was a tiny thing, and I couldn’t find a holster―and then stood and got a hand under his arm. Marisol grabbed on the other side, and together we hoisted Mr. Klinger to his feet, where he wavered for a moment before his legs decided to get their act together.
We maneuvered him to the front door, which Marisol opened and waved from. The goons were there in seconds, looking dumbstruck.
“What did you do?” one of them asked angrily, appearing ready to go for his weapon. The other one shook his head.
“Nah, don’t bother,” he said, taking over for Marisol. “The boss did this to himself.” He nodded to us and then headed toward the idling car. His buddy gave us a final glower before going to help, and Marisol shut the door behind them.
“Fuck,” I said emphatically, wiping a hand over my face. “I need a smoke after that.”
“In the alley, not out front,” she said automatically. She followed it with, “Cillian? Are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine.” I could still hear the ceramic cracking into a thousand pink shards and see the bright pennies scattering across the pavement. I could feel the way the sight of them sunk into his soul, like little copper claws. “I just need a minute to myself.” I walked into the back hall, grabbed my cigarettes off their resting place by the alley door, and headed outside.
Chapter Three
The alley behind the store was just wide enough for a decent-sized truck to drive down its cracked concrete. It was tufted here and there with surprisingly green weeds―it had been a wet summer so far. I leaned against the brick wall, tapped a cigarette out of the pack, and pulled my lighter out of my pocket. The burn of the smoke in my lungs soothed me a little, distracting my mind with nicotine and giving my hands something to do that wasn’t crawling after fistfuls of imaginary coins. I smiled to myself and shut my eyes, tilted my head back and blew the smoke toward the sky. It could have been worse. Once I’d read a murderer who liked to decapitate his victims with a butcher knife. I hadn’t trusted myself in the kitchen for a fucking week after that―cutlery kept finding its way into my hands without me realizing it.
Sometimes I had to remind myself that it wasn’t me who was ruining these people’s lives. They had managed that all on their own. I was just the one bringing it home, and even that wasn’t really on me. I didn’t seek people out. They came to me, and I told them what I saw, and what they decided to do with it was their own business. How they reacted was out of my control.
Charles Donovan Klinger would be dead before the month was out. I saw how he did it―I saw his wife’s pill bottle and his last fifth of Crown Royal, something he couldn’t drink without thinking about his business partner. I hadn’t seen this stuff the first time around, but looking deeper meant more knowledge for the both of us, all details that neither of us wanted to know.
“Fucking prick.” I opened my eyes and looked up at the clear blue sky. Colorado had ridiculously blue skies, even through the smog of downtown Denver. They were the sort of blue that made you wish you could fall up and keep going, because it looked so much nicer up there than down here. I had drowned in a woman’s mind once, and in the end, everything had been blue, a dark, malevolent blue that eventually faded to black. Nothing like the sky.
Goddamn it. I banged my head hard against the brick and then immediately thought better of it―I was still wearing my hat. I took it off and checked it for damage, resolutely not thinking about drowning. Drowning always made me think about him, and I wasn’t going to do that today; I fucking wasn’t. I propped the fedora up on my fist and turned it in a circle, making sure it was still hat-shaped and didn’t appear like a moron had been smacking it into a brick wall. It had held up to my inadvertent punishment, thankfully.
I needed to get out of here for a while. Marisol wouldn’t wonder if I didn’t come back for a couple of hours, or even the rest of the day. As far as the Ace of Cups and its promise for a new beginning went, well, it could hunt me down. I wasn’t going to wait around for it. I took a final drag of my cigarette, ground it down in the empty flower pot Marisol had set out here for me―she didn’t approve of littering―and headed toward the end of the alley. It emptied out onto Josephine, a busy one-way street that was all businesses where it buttressed Colfax but became formerly elegant houses and apartments farther back. If I went left, I’d hit a park eventually. Right and I’d be headed toward the shabby-chic conundrum that was this part of town.
My phone buzzed, interrupting my musing. I frowned as I pulled it out of my jacket pocket. Only a dozen people had this number, and I wasn’t expecting to talk to any of them any time soon. I unlocked it and looked at my new message.
Move ten paces to the right.
A memory flashed through my mind, one of my personal rare and painful gems. I was in the backseat of an old Lincoln, and I was very small. My feet wouldn’t have touched the floor even if I hadn’t had my knees squished to my chest, and my face was pressed to the knobby joints so hard they were leaving red blotches on my cheeks. The man driving was on a phone―an old-school cell phone, clunky in his hand, distracting. He wasn’t paying attention, but I knew the moment before the car was hit and covered my head with my hands, so when I went flying into the door, it didn’t hurt as much. Metal crunched, and bright spots flashed across the darkness behind my eyelids as the car spun and spun…
I shook my head and took a deep breath, focusing on the present. The van hadn’t stopped, but I didn’t bother trying to catch its license plate number―there were plenty of people exclaiming and getting on their phones. I headed over to the driver’s side and opened the door, but didn’t reach in to touch the woman who had been driving. She was moving under her own power, picking her head up off the remains of her airbag and whimpering softly. “Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god…”
“It’s all right,” I said gently. I might not be a martyr, but that didn’t mean I couldn’t feel compassion for another person, especially one who’d just been thrown into a wall. “You’re okay. Just a little accident. There’s an ambulance coming to help you.” I could already hear it in the distance. We were only a few blocks from a major hospital. “Can you look at me for a moment?” She blearily turned, and as soon as our eyes met, I sighed and backed out of the way. One of the employees at the auto-painting store took my place, and a second later―bam. The fucking Ace of Cups moment. Who found true love as a result of a car accident? This wasn’t exactly the heartwarming scene I’d envisioned getting me through the day earlier.