Double Threat

by F. Paul Wilson

  “I feel like I’m going to jump out of my skin.”

  (“Why? Usually you’re pretty much a homebody. Except when running one of your tawdry scams—“)

  “‘Tawdry’? ‘Tawdry’? You don’t know what I do.”

  (“I know everything you know, remember? Scams are beneath your intelligence and dignity. Just because you were raised that way doesn’t mean you have to live that way. But be that as it may, when you’re not sullying yourself as a grifter, you tend to be perfectly happy to stay home.”)

  “But then it’s my choice. I’m not being given a choice at the moment.” She checked the window again. “No sign of them for a while now. Looks like they’ve been chased away.”

  (“I wouldn’t suggest we go for a walk.”)

  “How about a drive?” She’d parked her car just around the corner. “I need to pick up some groceries anyway.”

  (“You can have them delivered.”)

  “I need to get out, Pard.”

  (“Very well, then. Not as if I have much say in the matter anyway.”)

  “Exactly.”

  Gathering her phone, shoulder bag, cap, and jacket, Daley hurried down the stairs to the front door. The peephole showed no lurkers so she stepped out onto the sidewalk and quick-walked to the end of the block. Pard glided along at her side. She rounded the corner and—

  (“Uh-oh.”)

  Eight or nine women huddled near her car.

  Oh, shit!

  She couldn’t tell if they knew the Subaru belonged to her or had grouped there simply by convenience. She did a one-eighty and started back, hoping to retreat around the corner before they spotted her—

  “There she is! That’s her!”

  No such luck. Daley broke into a run but skidded to a halt at the sight of three more women at her front door.

  One of them pointed at her. “It’s you!”

  Just like in Dr. Patel’s office, they all converged on her at once, tugging and pawing at her, beseeching her to help them. She fought them off but they wouldn’t give up, backing her toward the curb. She was desperate enough to consider trying to dash across Burbank Boulevard when she heard the roar of a poorly muffled engine.

  Juana pulled to the curb on her hog.

  “Let’s go!” she said.

  Daley didn’t need any more than that.

  As she hopped into the sidecar she blurted, “What about Pard?”

  Juana looked around. “Who?”

  “Never mind. Go!”

  As Juana hit the throttle and they roared off, Daley shook her head in chagrin. At first she’d denied Pard was real, now he was almost too real.

  (“As if you could leave me behind.”)

  A grinning, bareheaded Pard winked from the hog’s passenger seat where he’d wrapped his arms around Juana. A long scarf trailed out behind him. Daley remembered Juana’s Isadora Duncan remark and suddenly realized she now knew who she was: a famous dancer whose long scarf had caught in the wheel of an open touring car back in the 1920s and broke her neck.

  More of Pard’s research, she supposed.

  As they drove Daley pulled the helmet from the front of the sidecar; she reversed her cap and put it on over it. Juana crossed Cahuenga Boulevard and pulled to a stop.

  “They’re not following us,” she said.

  Daley lifted her visor. “But you’re following me. Why?”

  “You know why: to help and guide. And you definitely needed help just now with those ladies who think you can cure them.”

  Her words jolted Daley. “How do you know about that?”

  “Been keeping tabs on you.”

  “That’s kind of creepy.”

  “Not at all. ‘To help—’”

  “‘—and guide.’ I know, I know.”

  Juana pulled her goggles down and let them hang around her neck as she stared at Daley’s hand. “What—?” she said in a shocked tone.

  “Oh, the color? Left over from the injury that put me in the hospital.”

  “The injury to your hand,” she said softly, then shifted her gaze to Daley’s eyes. “Well … can you?”

  “Can I what?” But Daley knew exactly what.

  “Cure them?”

  Daley couldn’t bring herself to say yes.

  “That remains to be seen.”

  (“You’re not being entirely honest.”)

  Well, you told me you couldn’t cure everything, didn’t you?

  (“Yes, but…”)

  Then let me handle this.

  After a long stare, Juana said, “Where to now?”

  “Well, I don’t think I should go back home just yet. I need a place to crash.”

  “I’m staying in Sherman Oaks with family but there’s no room for you there. I’d offer you my trailer but that’s three hours away. Do you have any friends?”

  She had Kenny, but crashing with him could get awfully complicated right now, especially after Thursday night.

  “Not really.”

  Juana gave her a strange look—which she deserved.

  (“Why don’t you have any friends?”)

  I never learned how to make friends. I wasn’t allowed to have any growing up—at least not outside the Family. All my contacts were limited to the Family until I moved in with Gram. She sent me to a real high school, but I was pretty much relegated to outsider status all the way through.

  Gram … a possibility. Although she’d promised a visit just last Friday, Daley didn’t want to impose. The old woman didn’t have a spare room but her couch was good for a bit of snooze.

  “My grandmother has a place in Tarzana. Could you drop me there?”

  “No problem.”

  She readjusted her goggles and they were on their way. Daley was glad she’d worn the warm-up—the cool air was growing even cooler.

  4

  “We made it,” Daley said to no one in particular as they rolled toward the entrance to Gram’s senior development.

  (“Just barely. You do realize we had three near-death experiences on that little twelve-mile jaunt.”)

  You’re telling me.

  She’d expected Juana to stick to surface roads. Instead she’d roared up onto the 101 and driven like a demon, weaving in and out of traffic, cutting off pickups and semi-trailers alike. Daley kept shouting at her to slow down, but between Juana’s leather helmet and the combined roars of the traffic and the Harley’s engine, any attempt at communication was futile. She did manage to call Gram at the outset and say she was coming for a visit.

  They cruised past the sign at the community entrance.

  ENTRÉE

  Sounded like it might be a French restaurant, but the second line burst that bubble.

  The Finest in Adult Living

  Daley directed Juana to Gram’s building where she pulled up before it and killed the engine.

  “I was thinking about you as I drove,” she said, lowering her goggles.

  (“Oh, so that’s her excuse. Because she obviously wasn’t thinking about safety.”)

  Daley pulled off her helmet. “New and better ways to help and guide me?”

  (“When not trying to kill you?”)

  “As a matter of fact, yes. Exactly what I was thinking. Are you serious about this healing thing? Do you want to give it a try?”

  (“How odd … just what you and I were discussing before Doctor Holikova interrupted.”)

  Really odd. What’s Juana’s story, I wonder?

  Daley said, “I’ve been thinking about it, but after that scene back at my place, I’m not so sure.”

  “I think the key will be to start low and slow … locate an out-of-the-way venue, a small town where you can find your bearings, get your footing while you work discreetly.”

  “Leave LA? I don’t know about that.”

  “Too many people here,” Juana said. “Too many loudmouth crazies. One misstep and you’ll be branded a fake.”

  “Torn to pieces in the Twitterverse.”

  “Exactly. Y
ou want a small, quiet place where you can engage in trial and error. You may fail miserably, or you may have some success and find you don’t like it, want no part of it. Or you may find it’s exactly what you were meant to be. Either way you can then return to LA with your head straight and some experience behind you.”

  “Why do I get the feeling you already have just such a place in mind?”

  Juana’s smile transformed her face into a mass of wrinkles. “I have a possible locale in mind. We’ll have to do a little research first. Can you find my place again?”

  “Yeah, pretty sure.”

  “Stop by tomorrow morning and we’ll do reconnaissance.”

  “What time?”

  She pulled up her goggles. “Any time. I’ll be there.”

  She kick-started her hog and roared off.

  (“She appears to be taking this ‘help and guide’ mission very seriously.”)

  Seems more like she’s edging into “nudge and manipulate” territory. What kind of “small town” is she thinking of?

  (“I suppose we’ll find out when—”)

  “There you are!” said a voice.

  Gram waved from the doorway of her unit.

  “Hey, Gram.”

  A lean, lanky woman with high color in her cheeks, Gram’s hair used to be as red as those cheeks but had gone mostly gray. She was always a pretty woman, but she’d lost weight since Pa’s death, leaving her cheek lines sharper and her chin more prominent. Rawboned might be the word for her now. But her blue eyes never lost their shine.

  “What was that horrible racket?” she said.

  “Just my ride.”

  “Well, come in, come in, or you’ll be catching your death of cold.”

  Death of cold? Well, the temperature had dipped into the fifties, and that was pretty much a hard freeze as far as Gram was concerned.

  Daley followed her inside.

  (“I’m feeling that burst of love again. No one else in your world triggers that.”)

  She’s the best.

  Back somewhere around the dawn of time, Gram and her brother Seamus did what most intelligent Irish folk did back in the day—got out of Ireland as soon as they were able. They came over together from the Auld Sod to spend the summer working in the Hamptons. They liked America so much they decided to stay and headed for the warmth of Southern California.

  After more than fifty years here you’d think they’d have lost their accents. But no. They both sounded like they’d just stepped off the boat. Daley suspected an unspoken competition to see whose speech could remain the least Americanized.

  When Pa died, Gram had found the empty house unsettling, so she and brother Seamus, a widower for almost a decade, moved in together. They’d started their lives together, so why not end that way? Besides, it was lots cheaper.

  So they bought this two-bedroom, two-bath, free-standing ranch unit with stucco walls and a barrel-tile roof in a brand-new senior development. The good part about their arrangement was they provided company for each other. The bad part was they were the stubbornest pair this side of Alpha Centauri.

  Daley stepped inside and was immediately reminded of the two things she would always associate with Gram: heat and smoke.

  (“Do they live downwind from the county incinerator?”)

  You’d think so, wouldn’t you.

  (“I feel like we’ve stepped into a house-size ashtray.”)

  Daley worried about them, worried herself sick about losing Gram to lung cancer. But despite her entreaties, they refused to quit the ciggies. They’d say they know they’re poison but they can’t quit. Daley knew they didn’t want to quit.

  Uncle Seamus’s Jack Russell terrier barked once as he charged her, then jumped against her leg, tail wagging. She patted his head.

  “Hey, Brendan.”

  He trotted after her as she wound through the haze of the living room.

  (“Do they realize they have too much furniture?”)

  When they moved in they each insisted on keeping their own furniture. Neither would budge. If I hadn’t taken some of it for my place, this room would be impassable.

  (“It looks like a used-furniture store on clearance day. On second thought, considering all the pictures and statues of saints on the walls, it looks like a combination devotional chapel/secondhand furniture store.”)

  Daley angled around to the front windows and opened one.

  “Lookit after what you’re doing now!” Gram cried. “You’ll be letting in the night air!”

  Daley coughed. “And letting out some smoke.”

  Gram had this thing about night air—somehow it was bad for you.

  She rubbed her upper arms through the sleeves of her house- dress. “I’m going to get a sweater before I catch pneumonia!”

  That didn’t seem likely since she and Seamus kept their thermostat set on sauna. Daley suspected they’d Krazy Glued it there.

  As Gram scurried into her bedroom, Seamus, cigarette dangling from his lips, came out of his. He was built like Gram, but there the resemblance ended. Seamus sported a white chinstrap beard—stained nicotine brown around his mouth, to be sure—a shiny pate, and twinkling eyes. Give him a shillelagh, a cocked hat, and a shamrock, and you’d have a leprechaun.

  She waved as she passed on her way to the kitchen at the rear.

  “Hi, Unk.”

  He blew a kiss from the other side of an overstuffed sofa. “Coming to stay for spell?”

  “Just until the wee hours.”

  Back with these two less than a minute and already she was adopting their lingo.

  In the kitchen she opened the window over the sink and sighed as she felt fresh air begin to flow.

  Gram coughed as she returned, rubbing her hands. “I was about to pour meself some nettle soup. Will you be having a bowl?”

  “I’ll take a rain check, Gram.” Daley had never been fond of nettle soup, but then Gram put on her hurt look so Daley said, “Okay, just a taste.”

  “That’s my dearie. It’s anti-aging and you’re not getting any younger, you know.”

  “Thanks, Gram.”

  Gram’s belief system was what Daley had come to call voodoo Irish. Ostensibly a Catholic—she’d dragged Daley to Sunday mass during her teen years—she carried all this baggage from Ireland’s pagan past. She believed in God and Jesus, and the Virgin Mary—loved the Virgin Mary—but also believed in leprechauns and banshees and even the Morrigan.

  Plus she’d never met a patron saint she didn’t like. The living room/dining room area looked like a shrine to any saint who’d ever set foot on Irish soil. She’d collected statues of about a dozen or so.

  Pard said, (“Where does she find these?”)

  She has a revolving charge account at the Discount House of Holy Stuff.

  (“Rampant religiosity.”)

  But it works for her. Let me give you an example of the voodoo. When Gram put her house on the market, the first thing she did was bury a statue of St. Joseph in the backyard to help the sale. I laughed when I heard. I mean, I know they’ve got a patron saint for everything, but I’d never heard of one for real estate deals. But wouldn’t you know, she wound up with three potential buyers who got into a bidding war. Gram walked away with twelve thousand more than her asking price.

  (“Coincidence reinforces superstition.”)

  And how. That statue—all cleaned up now—occupies a place of honor on her night table.

  Uncle Seamus, on the other hand, was anticlerical to the point of atheism, but could never quite bring himself to step over that line. A skeptic who accepted Pascal’s wager about believing in God: “If you gain, you gain all; if you lose, you lose nothing. Wager, then, without hesitation, that He exists.”

  The nettle soup was soon ladled and the three of them hovered around the kitchen counter to partake.

  “Will you be leaving that hat on?” Gram said.

  Daley didn’t want to explain the white patch.

  “If you don’t mind. My
hair is a mess.”

  “I don’t mind. But what happened to your hand?”

  The gold skin …

  “I was working with some dye and it’s very stubborn. Let’s try your soup.”

  Daley tried but had to stop after two spoonfuls. Blech.

  “Billy Marks has been stopping by,” Gram said.

  Daley felt her gorge rise. If the nettle soup hadn’t been enough to put her on the edge of hurling, mention of that name just about pushed her over.

  “What’s he want?”

  “What do you think?” Seamus said. “Looking for you.”

  Billy Marks was some sort of distant uncle on her father’s side—her father’s cousin. He was the man who murdered her father on the day she was born. Oh, he denied it up and down and no one had ever been able to prove it because of a questionable alibi, but her mother never had a doubt he’d done it.

  “What’s he want with me?”

  “What else? To involve you in one of his scams.”

  She felt shaky inside. She wanted nothing to do with the Family—especially Billy Marks.

  “You didn’t tell him where I am, did you?”

  “Never!” Seamus cried. “I’ve had a mind to get out me Webley and make a few holes in him!”

  “Leave the Webley where it is, please.”

  Seamus had an old revolver—known as a Webley-Fosbery, as she recalled—he’d brought over from Ireland. He’d taken Daley to a shooting range with it now and again when she was a teen. The antique still fired and always caused a stir with multiple offers from collectors to buy it. She was pretty sure it hadn’t left his bedside drawer for a long time now.

  Billy would probably end up with a few holes in him someday, but please not from Seamus.

  “You look peaked,” Gram said. “Have you eaten dinner?”

  “Had a big lunch.”

  (“We’ve had nothing since your so-called breakfast of Pop-Tarts.”)

  Gram coughed. “Well, then I’ll be fixing you something right now. The pork chops aren’t even cold yet.”

  Daley knew Gram’s pork chops: suitable for use as a roofer’s hammer.

  “That’s okay, Gram. Not hungry.”

  (“That name upset you,”) Pard said. (“You might want to consider a little food.”)