by Kim Oh
“Not . . . quite,” I said. “Just –”
“Don’t worry.” Lynndie gave me a little smile, eyes half-lidded and mocking. “It’s cool.” She reached up and stroked the side of her father’s head with her fingertips, then looked back at me. “We’ll have a good time.”
“Yeah . . .” I nodded. “A real good time.”
TWO
“You’re not going.”
“The hell I’m not,” said my little brother.
What a jerk. I was so mad I couldn’t speak; I just stomped off into the apartment’s living room. Ten seconds of fuming, glaring out the window at the eye-stinging sunshine, and I was right back in Donnie’s bedroom, standing in front of the exercise machine I’d bought him when we’d first moved here.
“Look,” I said. “I don’t need a ration of crap from you. I’m the adult here. I’m the one in charge. If I say you’re not going along with me, then guess what. That’s the end of the discussion. Got it?”
Donnie lifted himself into a sitting position on the padded bench, letting go of the chrome pull-down bar at the same time. The stack of five-pound iron plates at the end of the pulley cable clanged against the bottom rail.
He looked me straight in the eye. “How do you think you’re going to stop me?”
I couldn’t believe this. Right next to the weight equipment was the wheelchair he got around in. It’s not like the kid was exactly the definition of highly mobile.
“Stop you? I don’t have to stop you, Donnie. I just have to go out the door, and then you’re stuck here.”
As a general rule, I tried not to remind him that however much he built up his arms and pecs, his legs were still pretty much useless.
“There’s an elevator,” he said. Using his smug I’m so smart – you’re such an idiot voice that’s just tailor-made for cranking up his older sister.
“Right, Einstein, then what? You’re going to hitch a ride to LAX, then wheel yourself onto the next plane to Meridién? Hey, I got an idea – maybe you can have the flight attendant strap the wheelchair into one of the seats and put you in the overhead compartment.”
“So what’re you planning?” Donnie pulled a T-shirt on over his head. “You’re just going to leave me here in the apartment?”
“That’s right.” Old habits die hard – even though I was pissed at him for the moment, I reached over and smoothed his hair back into place, the way I’d always done. “You’re old enough to take care of yourself for a couple of days. You’ve done it before, when you had to. The refrigerator’s stuffed, and you know how to work the microwave . . .”
Look, I’ll admit I’m not proud of myself here. This must make me look like the worst big sister in the world, leaving a kid like Donnie on his own for a couple of days. Okay, a few days. But he and I have been on our own for most of our lives, just the two of us against the world. And not with a lot of resources to fall back on, either. This place was a palace compared to all the dumps we’ve had to live in. And a fridge with food in it – not always the case, trust me. So my brother’s had to grow up a lot faster than most other kids his age, same as I had to. And those times before when I’d left him on his own, even before I got into the whole killing people thing – there just hadn’t been any choice about it. That’s the kind of thing you wind up doing, whether you want to or not, when you don’t have enough money. And then when I had gotten into my current line of work, it might not have been a money thing, but instead just not wanting to get him accidentally killed. Or have him there when I got on-purpose killed.
So when I got the job offer from Heathman, to go down to someplace called Meridién – an actual country in South America, though I’d never heard of it – with his daughter Lynndie, to keep an eye on her and make sure that nothing bad happened while she was partying down with all the other college students on spring break, I’d already made my mind up that Donnie wasn’t coming along with us. Only this time, it wasn’t a money thing or worrying about one or the other of us getting offed. The truth of it is that I would rather have him sitting here in the apartment in L.A. by himself, sending out for pizza rather than eating what I’d put in the fridge for him, and spending all day scanning the Internet for hot Korean music videos, than down there in Party Central, watching drunk frat boys get even drunker and bombed-out sorority girls lifting their tops. Call me a prude if you want, but that’s just not the kind of influences I want my little brother exposed to. You might think that somebody who’s killed as many people as I have doesn’t have the right to get all sniffy about what other people do, but hey – at least I’m out there working, instead of getting blitzed in public on my daddy’s dime. I’ve got my standards.
Of course, I had my suspicions that the party action was precisely the reason Donnie wanted to come along. Not that his way-underage self was going to get in on it, but seeing at least some of it live and in person beat streaming video any day. If the kid is this hormonal now, what am I going to do with him when he gets a couple years older?
“Look,” I said. “I’ll make a deal with you. Just don’t give me any grief on this, all right? Just stay here and keep out of trouble, and next year I’ll see if we can swing going to Talladega.” The whole NASCAR thing was still big with him. If he came in first in his on-line Fantasy League again, that’d be two years in a row. “Or what’s the other track you want to go to? Charlotte – is that the one?”
“You said that last year. About going.”
God, those accusing eyes, and that tone of voice. All he needed was three nails and a cross.
“Last year, things happened. Lots of things.” I spread my own hands wide. “Can I help it? It’s like that Joe Gibbs Racing team you were so keen on before Penske snagged Logano. The engines blow up in those Toyotas and that’s it, the race is over for them. Things happen, right? It’s nobody’s fault, but they do.”
“I know.” He eased up on me. “But me staying here this time – I just don’t think it’s going to work, Kimmie.”
“Why not? What’s the problem you have with it?”
“It’s not my problem. It’s yours. Or ours.”
“I’m not following.”
“You’ve got an appointment,” said Donnie. “Remember? With that CPS guy. What’s his name . . . Wheeler. That’s it.”
“Oh, crap.” He was right. And I had forgotten it. Or just not wanted to remember it. “Damn.”
“And you can’t reschedule it. You’ve already done that three times. If you’re not here when he comes by, and I’m just here by myself . . .” Donnie shrugged. “Then I won’t be here when you come back. You know that.”
I did. By now, I was used to my kid brother being right about stuff. And he was way right about this. I was on a short leash with the Child Protective Services people back home – they hadn’t been happy about my moving the two of us out here on short notice. So they’d forwarded a bunch of reports, none of them good, to their counterparts here in L.A. Having a regular paycheck from Karsh had kept them off my back – mostly – but now that he’d managed to get himself killed dangling from a helicopter, they were back sniffing around again.
Donnie’s voice broke into my rat-scrabbling thoughts: “That’s why you should take me to Meridién with you, Kimmie. They know you just got a job there.”
That was true. Heathman had his secretary cc me on the confirmation email I’d asked him to send over to the CPS office. I always try to keep those people up-to-date on my income stream, whenever I have one.
“So just phone up that Wheeler guy and tell him that you have to leave town because of this job, and you have to take me with you, right? Because you can’t leave me here all unsupervised and stuff. At least that’s what they think.”
Hmm. Maybe the kid had a point. The CPS couldn’t ride my butt about staying employed and then get in the way of my taking a high-paying gig. And they couldn’t order me to keep an eye on my little brother and also make a fuss about taking him with me. I’d still have to spin it pre
tty hard when I phoned that Wheeler person, because of all the spring break stuff that’d be going on while we were down there, but I’d just tell the guy I’d park Donnie in some hotel safely out of the action. That should do it.
“Okay,” I said. “But don’t think you’ll be getting away with anything. At all. You’re not going down there to have a good time. Fun is completely off the agenda. You get up to anything, and I will come down on you like a ton of bricks. That’s a promise.”
“Don’t worry.” Donnie gave me one of his cool little smiles he liked to flash whenever he successfully wound his sister up. “Besides, I got plenty to keep me busy.”
“Like what?”
He reached over to the table beside the bed and hoisted a stack of programming manuals. “I still have to get C++ under my belt. If I’m going to get certified by the end of the year.”
I had no idea what he was talking about – some computer stuff, I supposed. “How much is that going to cost?”
“A lot,” he admitted. “But maybe I can get a grant.”
In my world, there was no such thing as free money. “Yeah, well, you get that grant, then we’ll talk.” I turned and headed back out to the front room, where I’d left my jacket on the couch. “In the meantime, I’ve got some phone calls to make.”
† † †
I had a couple of things to take care of, once I got the plane reservations sorted out, plus the business with the CPS guy. Which went surprisingly well – he didn’t give me nearly as much guff as I expected. All I had to do was swear on my parents’ graves that I would absolutely, without fail, keep my rescheduled appointment when Donnie and I got back.
So that left me plenty of time to go over to the hospital and see how Elton was doing. Good thing I did, because I found him in the process of checking himself out – against medical advice, of course.
“Are you crazy?” I watched him buttoning up his shirt; underneath it, he was partly mummified with bandages, for the burns and cracked ribs he’d picked up on the freeway. “You can’t go walking out of here.”
“Guess again.” He dug a pair of new trousers out of the J. C. Penny bag on the chair by the bed, yanked off the tags and drew them on. “I’m not hanging around no hospital – people die in places like this.”
He didn’t need to tell me that. “Where’d you get the clothes?”
“Called a taxi, gave the guy a hundred to go get ’em and bring ’em back here.” Wincing only a little, Elton finished tucking in his shirt. He also was dealing with one of those wrap-around slings they tighten you into when you have a broken collarbone. “Matter of fact,” he continued, “same guy’s downstairs in the lobby, waiting for me. Meter’s running, so I hope you’ll forgive me if I move things along a little bit here.”
“That’s kind of the problem.” I folded my arms across my chest, just as if there were some way I could block the door. “You’re moving a little too fast. You need to stay here and let them finish running all their tests and stuff.”
“Done plenty of those already. I don’t need another CAT scan for them to tell me what’s wrong with my head.” He sat down on the bed and started working on the fresh pair of white socks from the Penny’s bag. “Besides, when I say that people die in hospitals, I don’t mean just from what the doctors and nurses do. Last thing people like us want is to be lying here all doped up from painkillers, then somebody with a grudge against us comes sneaking in.” The socks didn’t go too well. “Give me a hand with these?”
I squatted down and worked them onto his feet. “Exactly how many grudge-bearing enemies do you have?”
“More than you – but then, I’ve been at this a lot longer. The shoes, too, if you would. Thanks.” He leaned back, palms against the mattress. “Anyway, just take my advice on this. You get banged up, just crawl home to recuperate. That’s what I’m doing.”
“You told me you had another gig waiting there.”
“Hey – man’s gotta stay busy.”
“Yeah?” I finished tying his shoelaces and stood up. “So who’s going to take care of this kind of thing when you’re back there in Mobile?”
“My ex-wife. Of course.”
That surprised me. “I thought she hated your guts.”
Elton shrugged. “She’s changeable. All those restraining orders and stuff – she was probably out drinking with her mom, and the old bat made her do it. But she’s a good kid at heart. And bandages bring out the best in a woman.”
“I didn’t get that memo. Liked you better when you were a little less beat-up.”
“Well, well.” He smiled with one eyebrow raised. “Maybe I got a shot after all –”
“Not that much better.”
“Damn. Well, I’m gonna give you your present, anyway.” He stuck a foot under the hospital bed and dragged out something black with thick padded straps. “Go ahead, pick it up.”
It took me a moment to realize what it was, but once I had its familiar weight in my hands I knew it was my shoulder bag. The one I’d left in Karsh’s limo, before all that mess on the freeway got going.
“You’re kidding –” I dangled it up in front of my eyes. “How the hell did you get this?”
“I got friends in the police department. A couple of ’em work the evidence lockers. When the cops cleaned up the mess, all kinds of stuff got stored away. I asked ’em to look around, see if they could find it.” Elton shrugged. “And they did. So I had my taxi guy go over and pick it up from ’em, out back of the vehicle impound yard.”
“I can’t believe it.” I gazed in happy amazement at the shoulder bag. “Never thought I’d see it again. And –” I glanced behind myself to make sure nobody was watching from the corridor outside the room, then unzipped the bag and reached inside.
My hand settled around the familiar curve of the .357’s grip and squeezed it tight. My eyes closed, and my heart expanded a little. Cole had given me this gun. It had been the only thing I had left from him – that, and all the stuff he’d taught me. And now I had it back again.
I opened my eyes and stepped closer to Elton, the bag between us. With him sitting on the bed, I didn’t have to stand on tiptoe to kiss him. I didn’t care whether it was going to complicate things for us or not.
He was smart enough not to say anything. But I did.
“Thanks,” I said. “I’ll keep it somewhere safe.”
“Yeah, well . . .” Elton gave a slow nod. “Actually, I wanted to ask you a favor about that.”
“Name it.”
“You’ve got another job lined up already, don’t you –”
“What do you know about that?”
“Don’t ask me how I know stuff. I know stuff the same way you know stuff. I find it out.”
“Okay,” I said. “Don’t jump down my throat.”
“Anyway. Here’s the favor. Whatever it is you’ve got going, I want you to take your piece with you. This piece.”
I tilted my head, trying to figure out what that meant. “What’re you talking about?”
“The gun,” he said patiently. “Take it with you. That’s the favor, okay?”
“You’re nuts. It’s not that kind of a job –”
“I don’t care. Take the gun with you.” He didn’t say anything more, just gave me one of his hard, unsmiling looks.
“All right,” I said. I’d have to figure out some way to get it through airport security. But if it kept him happy . . .
“Got all your stuff?” I watched him cram some things into the Penney’s bag.
“Anything I’m leaving behind, I figure I don’t need. Take care of yourself, all right?”
I nodded, then he was gimping stiff-legged out the door, then he was gone. A minute or so later, I heard the elevator doors open down the hall, then slide shut again.
I sat down on the edge of the hospital bed, dangling the shoulder bag in front of me. It seemed really heavy now.
THREE
Okay, friends are a good thing to have. I wish I h
ad more of them – but in my line of work, the people you get hooked up with tend to have a short life expectancy.
But there’s one thing that’s kind of a pisser about friends – having to admit when they’re right about something.
That’s what I was thinking when I was lying on my back in some fancy, expensive hotel in Meridién, dazed from the blow I’d just taken to my head. And looking up, just before I lost consciousness, at what seemed to be the mile-wide snout of some big ugly gun, set right between my eyes –
I should’ve listened to Elton, I thought. I should’ve brought the .357.
† † †
It was mainly the paperwork. That was why I didn’t.