by Maureen Tan
“Call me. I have news.”
“Why haven’t you called me?”
“Damn it, where the hell are you?”
I called Beauprix. My call rolled over to voice mail.
“I’m back at home,” I said. “Call me when you get this.”
Then, though my taste buds would have preferred a pot of chicory-laced French roast and my nerves voted for a stiff drink, I boiled water on the gas stove and made myself a soothing cup of tea. Sweetened with honey. With just a slop of whiskey from the bottle that I’d discovered a week earlier in the back corner of a kitchen shelf. And I hoped it would help soothe the rawness in my throat.
I was too tired even to walk upstairs. For a few minutes I sat on one of the tall chrome-and-black stools, resting my elbows against the glossy kitchen counter as I alternated sipping my tea and resting my head in my hands. I reeked of smoke. My chest hurt. My eyes stung. And my feet hurt.
“Stop your whining,” I said out loud. But the words that emerged were little more than a hoarse croak.
A shower would help, I thought. And some sleep. And talking to Beauprix, finding out what information he had. And telling him what I’d seen that night.
Wearily, I rubbed my hand over my face. And caught another whiff of smoke with a strong overlay of damp parrot.
You need a shower, I thought. Right now.
I fixed myself another cup of tea, this one without any whiskey, and left the kitchen. Carefully keeping to the narrow path I’d cleared for myself through the first-floor construction zone, I made my way upstairs.
At the top of the landing, I juggled purse, flashlight and a cup and saucer to open the bedroom door. I stepped through the doorway, pushed the door closed with my foot, and was attacked. My entry had apparently disturbed a large bug who was making its way across the ceiling. It lost its footing—all six of them—and landed in my hair.
The noise that came from my sore throat was little more than a croak. It’s only a bug, I told myself. With deliberate calm, I put the saucer down on the nearest flat surface, making a point of not spilling the hot liquid in the cup. Then, in a movement that would have made my self-defense instructor proud, I leaned forward, knocked the roach to the floor with a swift sweep of my hand, and stepped on it. All in one smooth motion. The roach made a satisfying, if somewhat nausea-producing, crunch beneath my foot.
I’d been trained well enough that I didn’t allow silly disruptions to jolt me from important routines. So I shot the heavy iron bolt to secure the virtually indestructible cypress door, hung my purse on the doorknob as I did every night, took my cell phone and put it on the nightstand beside the bed. After that, I walked around the room lighting candles and stood the flashlight in its spot on the dresser next to the cypress door.
Only then did I focus on the silly disruption.
I wiped up the remains of the roach with a wad of tissue and deposited his corpse in my wastebasket. For good measure, I pumped hand-sanitizer from a bottle on the dresser onto another wad of tissue and wiped the bottom of my shoe. Then I discarded that tissue and pumped another glob of sanitizer onto my hands.
The irony of the moment was not lost on me.
“Oh, you’re a tough one, Lacie Reed,” I muttered under my breath. “Murder. Betrayal. Raging fires. No problem. But let a stupid bug drop on you…”
I shuddered. And then I told myself that the smell I carried into the room with me, not the thought of the roach’s journey through my hair, made the shower a priority. I opened my battered blue suitcase, pulled out clean underwear, sweatpants and a sweatshirt, closed the suitcase and latched it carefully, then opened the door to the bathroom.
Halfway along the narrow balcony, I remembered that my cell phone was still on my nightstand. I looked back over my shoulder. Behind me, as it was ahead of me, the balcony was dark. Clouds had covered the moon and it was beginning to drizzle again. The streetlight at the corner, which cast inadequate light anyway, had been broken several nights earlier. But it wasn’t as if you could get lost on the route between the bedroom and the bathroom, even in the pitch dark.
I was tempted to backtrack, to fetch my phone from the bedside table, to carry it to the bathroom with me. Just in case Beauprix called while I was in the shower. But in the moment I stood thinking about it, the breeze tickled my hair and I could almost feel six tiny feet…
I’d make it quick, I thought, lengthening my stride. Worst case, Beauprix would be pissed when I didn’t answer again and would smoke another cigarette or two.
At the end of the balcony, I grabbed the knob, pushed the bathroom door open, took a step inside and closed the door. The door’s tiny hook-and-eye latch was ridiculous as a security measure, but I latched it every time I entered the bathroom. The long ingrained habit of locking a bathroom door for privacy was uncomfortable to break even when I knew I was alone. Closing the door left me in darkness only slightly more impenetrable than that outside. But I was in familiar territory.
Immediately inside the door to my left was a waterfall-fronted vanity, veneered in a ruddy-colored wood, topped with a round mirror that was at least a yard in diameter. An assortment of lemon-scented pillar candles and a single butane lighter rested on a mirrored tray.
A free-standing tub was opposite the vanity, in the center of the room. Directly above it was a metal hoop, suspended from the ceiling by chains that supported the generous folds of a billowy shower curtain. On the wall beyond the bathtub, two narrow open cabinets stacked with books and towels reached almost to the ceiling.
I hadn’t yet kicked off my shoes, so there was no risk of stubbing my toes, and I walked confidently the few steps to the vanity. My fingers encountered the vanity’s rounded front and I turned to stand in front of it, running my hand over its surface until I located the butane lighter. I flicked it on, lifted it to the wick of the tallest candle. The slight breeze coming in from the bathroom’s tiny louvered window caught the twin flames, made them flicker.
In front of me, the vanity’s thick, round mirror reflected the lighter and the candle. As I moved my hand to light a second candle, the flickering light illuminated my chin, my cheeks, my nostrils, and the upper ridge of my eye sockets. Shadows cast upward created a dark mask over my forehead and around my eyes.
Behind me, the pale shower curtain moved with the breeze and the flames in the mirror flickered. For a moment, my eyes traveled past the wavering mask on my face. Beyond the curtain, at the height of a man, the shifting curtain briefly revealed the edge of another mask. Glossy, black, and feathered.
Then the breeze abated and the shower curtain fell back into place.
But I already knew that a man, darkly dressed, stood with his body tucked between the two narrow wood cabinets on the opposite wall. His shoulder was to the room. And I had glimpsed the bare, glinting blade of a stainless-steel knife he held down beside his leg.
Lingering terror from the last attack urged me to run, to escape. Urged me to panic.
But I didn’t.
I held my breath, then exhaled rather than screamed. I kept my hand steady, trying not to throw shadows around the room, shadows that would let him know that something had startled me.
He was being cautious, I told myself. Otherwise, he would have risked ambushing me downstairs. Or in the bedroom. But those places offered many avenues of escape. Here, he’d waited patiently, knowing that eventually I would come into the bathroom to go to the toilet or step naked into the shower.
If waiting removed risk of failure, I reasoned, he was prepared to wait. So he wouldn’t attack, I reassured myself, until I moved away from the room’s only exit and deeper into his trap. He wouldn’t attack unless I panicked and ran to the door. Where he could see me clearly. And come after me.
It would take me just a moment, I thought, to disengage that token lock on the bathroom door. And in that moment, if he was fast, he would be on top of me.
There was no other way out. So I needed to buy myself some time.
&nb
sp; I carried on with my original task, lighting the pillar candles on the mirrored tray.
The breeze ruffled the curtain again, but I concentrated on touching each wick with the lighter. Though fear twisted my guts and a cold sweat dampened my body, I didn’t look over my shoulder. I started humming softly to myself, keeping the melody slow, predictable, reassuring.
I lit all the candles, watched them flicker in the breeze. Unbuttoned my shirt, took it off, laid it beside the tray. Watch me, I thought. Savor the idea that I don’t know you’re there. Enjoy your guilty pleasure, I mentally urged him. No need to rush.
As I felt the breeze begin to wane, I moved my hands behind my back, fingering the clasp on my bra.
The breeze died down again.
I looked at the reflection of the shower curtain in the mirror, knowing I’d taken a risk by teasing him. He might be tempted to attack sooner, might grow thoughtless, might lean too far to peer around the curtain to leer at a naked female body. And then I wouldn’t be able to pretend that I didn’t see him.
But I’d gambled that he wasn’t the type, that he hadn’t waited so long and been so careful and thought it out so carefully to act prematurely, to risk his plan over one impulsive act.
I looked in the mirror. And saw no mask.
If I couldn’t see him, he couldn’t see me.
Let him keep imagining me vulnerable and half naked, I thought as I dropped my hand away from my bra. Let him picture me standing in front of the mirror, undressing. Just for him. I began humming some sweet little nothing loudly enough to reassure him that he needn’t look, that I was not moving.
And I prayed that no breeze would stir the curtain until I was ready.
I held my shirt in my left hand as I slipped my right beneath the tray that held the candles. Palm flat, fingers splayed to support the weight, I slowly lifted the tray upward, pausing as the candles flickered and sent shadows dancing across the room.
I kept humming as I prayed again and watched the reflection over my shoulder. He didn’t move. So once the flames were steady, I lifted the tray again, this time ever so slightly. Then I held it balanced. I dropped my shirt into the candles’ midst. And I waited.
The shirt caught fire.
The candles flared.
Three steps to the door.
And as I took them, I flung the tray across the room at the carrion bird, who was moving.
I reached for the latch and flicked it upward.
The candles hit him squarely in the middle of his chest. He dropped his knife, beat his body and bellowed with shock and pain as hot wax poured over him. It set his shirt on fire, threatened the mask that covered his face.
It slowed him down.
I ran through the door, pulled it shut behind me, wished that I could lock it, consigning him to a fiery death.
Nothing is that simple.
I’d almost reached the door to the bedroom when he emerged from the bathroom. No longer on fire. Now carrying his knife. And madder than hell.
He screamed an obscenity as he rushed toward me.
I yanked open the door, ran through the bedroom.
The heavy bolt on the cypress door slowed me down, and then he was just a few feet behind me.
But in the house beyond the bedroom, the darkness was on my side.
I counted six steps down to the landing.
Then ten steps to the first floor.
I crossed the room, keeping to the path I’d made for myself and had practiced for weeks. A quick detour around the shattered interior wall and the adjacent heaps of broken plaster and splintery lathe. Through a split in the plastic sheeting that divided one room from the next. And across the second room.
He must have had eyes like a cat’s. Behind me I heard only a single crash, one muffled curse, and then he was running again.
I pushed through the swinging wood door into the kitchen. Considered grabbing a butcher’s knife from the block on the counter and making a stand. But I was no knife fighter, and he had the advantage of size and reach.
Instead, I ran for the kitchen door and let myself out.
He was right behind me.
It was not a race I could win. Not tonight, after the toll that the fire and smoke in the apartment building had taken on my stamina. I was physically drained. And I knew that the adrenaline that now drove me wouldn’t keep me ahead of him for very long.
My screams, if they were heard, would most likely inspire only closed windows and locked doors. Doubtful that anyone would call the police. Not that the police, if called, would arrive in time to be of much help.
For the second time that night, I gambled.
I raced along the driveway toward the front of the house, ducked to run close to the bottom branches of the oleander hedge and stayed close to the rail as I ran up the six sagging steps to the porch. My pursuer outweighed me by at least a hundred pounds, so perhaps I could use his weight to my advantage. His weight and, perhaps, the time I’d spent befriending a stray.
The dog pack fled the porch. All of them. Except for Lucky. The muscular, three-legged red dog emerged from the shadows, his single eye glinting as he stood squarely in the center of his territory.
My pursuer was fast on my heels.
I didn’t try to cross the rotted section of floor between the steps and the front door. I picked a similarly rotted section on Lucky’s side of the porch, trying to stay to the edges where the wood might be stronger, praying that weeks of food bribes and chatter had paid off.
“Good dog,” I said breathlessly, hoping that he was.
My pursuer pounded up the stairs behind me, took two steps onto the porch before a board cracked and sagged beneath his weight. He was overbalanced, but he lunged in my direction as he fell. I had already turned to run, but as he sprawled flat onto the porch floor, he hung on to his knife with his right hand and managed to grab my left leg with his left.
Before he could organize himself enough to pull my leg out from under me, I twisted around, used my free right foot and kicked his knife hand as hard as I could. Kicked through it, rather than at it. For maximum impact. Just as I had been trained.
He yelped and the knife went skittering across the porch, falling into a gaping hole. But I hadn’t injured him badly enough. With his now-empty hand, he grabbed my other ankle and yanked my feet out from under me.
I landed hard. And cried out in pain.
I think it was my cry that did it.
Lucky, who’d begun pacing and growling, launched himself at my attacker. He landed with his front legs on the masked man’s back and grabbed the man’s arm in his broad slash of a mouth.
The carrion bird let go of my leg. He screamed for help. Not something he was going to get from me.
The carrion bird was flailing his captive arm, lifting Lucky off his feet, beating at the dog’s head and shoulders with his free hand. But the feisty little dog was hanging on.
I concentrated on skirting the battle, intent on making my way back to the porch steps. I stepped carefully to avoid the holes I had miraculously missed stepping into when I’d run up onto the porch. But I hadn’t gone very far when I slammed to a stop.
Between the straight branches of the oleander hedge, I’d caught a glimpse of the street. A car was there, its passenger side door hanging open, the interior dark. The second carrion bird had arrived wearing a red-feathered mask. Drawn by the cries of the first man, he was running up the front sidewalk. And he had a gun.
He stopped at the base of the steps.
I stood almost immediately above him, hidden from him by one of the porch’s support pillars and an overgrown oleander. Immediately behind me was one of the pots that was clipped to the railing. As I’d stepped back, it had jammed me in the small of my back.
The first carrion bird screamed again as Lucky found a moment of footing and used the leverage to shake the man’s arm.
“Damn it, Dave, hold still,” the second man yelled, “so I can shoot the fucker.”
I wasn’t going to let him kill my dog.
I twisted, lifted the heavy, red clay pot from its hook with both hands. I stepped out from behind the pillar and cast it downward at the second man.
It smashed against the side of his head.
He dropped his gun. Stood for a moment as shards of pot and clumps of soil showered onto his shoulder and the ground. Then his knees folded beneath him and he fell.
Stunned or unconscious, it didn’t matter. I wanted his gun.
I scurried down the steps, intent on grabbing it. As I bent over to pick it up, the guy was moving, groaning his way back to full consciousness.
In the midst of it all, I’d heard another car roar up into the yard.
Reinforcements, I thought. And, for no more than a heartbeat, I flashed on the image of carrion birds gathered around their prey, tearing bloody pieces from my body.
The fallen gun was my best defense against the present threat. And the new one. Though I didn’t often carry one, I knew how to use a handgun. And, at this range, it wouldn’t matter if I was a sharpshooter or merely competent. Aim at the chest, I reminded myself. It offered the largest target.
I wrapped my hand around the gun, slid my index finger into the trigger guard, began to straighten, readying myself to turn, aim and—if necessary—
“Police! Freeze! Hands in the air!”
Beauprix’s voice. Hard and mean. All business.
I froze. Let go of the gun. And put my foot squarely on top of it as I slowly straightened and raised my hands. I waited, knowing that only two men knew both of my identities and knew where I lived. One of those men was coming up behind me, undoubtedly armed.
He put a hand lightly on my shoulder, and I tensed.
“I didn’t want to startle you, little girl,” he said softly. “Figured you’d look first, shoot second, but I couldn’t take the chance.”
That left only one man—Uncle Tinh—Tinh Vu—who could have directed the attacks.
“You can put your hands down,” Beauprix suggested gently.