Callahan's Lady

by Spider Robinson

  “Not necessarily, if we’re smart. Let me check some assumptions. You’ve been asked not to tell anyone downstairs about what happened to you? And not to call anyone or go downstairs until tomorrow?” I nodded. “Okay, look: if she came back upstairs and we tried to jump her, she’d just ask us to stop. And as long as she’s between us and the front door downstairs she can bolt at any time, and once she’s out in the world we’ve lost her. But if we could just find some way to make a disturbance at the door, and stampede her back upstairs, where someone was waiting with his trusty softball bat…” He paused, looked thoughtful. “Maureen,” he said, distracted enough to use my real name, “I’m afraid for once you are going to have to think like a punster.”

  “Huh?”

  “You know the layout at the top of that staircase. Unless she comes up those stairs at a dead run, it’s going to be hard to ambush her. That means we need our best hitter at that post. So you have to make the disturbance at the door and panic her into running.”

  “But I can’t! She asked me not to. She said ‘Please.’”

  “That’s what I mean. What exactly did she ask you not to do?”

  “The same thing she said to you. ‘Please don’t go downstairs until tomorrow.’”

  “I thought so. But she just asked? I mean, she didn’t write it down, or anything, just asked verbally?”

  “Yeah.”

  “All right, now I want you to cast your mind back to one of your first nights in this House. You’re outside on the sidewalk, your pimp Big Travis has come to get you and is taking you at gunpoint back off to slavery again. Mary kills him. Now: how did Mary get there?”

  My eyes opened wide. “Oh, no. Oh, Phillip, no. I don’t think I could—”

  “—sure you can—”

  “—I don’t think so—”

  “—you’re young, athletic—”

  “—that’s not what I mean—”

  “—what then?—”

  “—SHE ASKED ME NOT TO!”

  We both stopped and let our voices echo.

  “Speaking of Mary,” I said, much more quietly, “how come she didn’t pick up on all this and sound the alarm? She knows what we won’t do: remember that time somebody drugged Lucy?”

  “Maybe Diana asked her not to. Or maybe she did and Diana asked the Lady not to pay attention. That’s why we’ve got to move fast, love, now listen: you did not see her request on paper. Think like a punster, now, let yourself think literally. If I wrote her words down now, I could legitimately choose to put a space between ‘down’ and ‘stairs,’ couldn’t I? People who fall one flight by definition do not go down stairs!”

  Mary had gone out the second floor window, landed on Travis, all two hundred or so pounds of her, and snapped his neck like a twig. If she could do it, I could do it. In theory.

  “Sherry, have you ever heard about the course they make you take at Annapolis, where you are given a theoretical problem and told to cut a set of orders for your classmates, and if any of them can manage to misunderstand your orders enough to screw up the problem, you bilge? Diana is going to bilge that course, tonight. Just start a fire or something to drive her this way at high speed—without letting her see you.”

  I wanted to go along with Phillip. The notion that Lady Sally might even now be dancing to Diana’s tune was primevally wrong; the simple fact was more wrong, somehow, than the specific outrages that had been done to me. I wanted to drink Diana’s blood, and she had never asked me not to. But she had asked me not to go downstairs until tomorrow, and in my heart I could not deny that I knew how she would have written it down. I just could not assemble the will to oppose her expressed wishes.

  “I’m sorry, Phillip. I don’t think I can.”

  “You’ve got to.”

  “If you think it’s that easy, you do it.”

  “I think I could.”

  “Fine, good luck—”

  “How good are you with a softball bat? Can you be sure of silencing someone with a single blow?”

  I waved my hands helplessly, close to tears with rage and frustration.

  “Come on, let’s give it a try, at least. Please? We can’t just sit here: how do we know what’s going on downstairs?”

  He was right; we headed for the door. Maybe I could manage it after all, if I could manage to think like a punster, just kept it fixed in my mind that I wasn’t actually going to be going down any stairs…

  And it blew up in my face. I found that I could no longer walk back down from the third floor to the second. If “don’t go downstairs” meant literally, “don’t descend any staircases,” then this one qualified too.

  “Phillip, I’ve got a problem.”

  “Yeah, me too. I never thought of this.”

  “It looks like I’m a high-living girl from now on.”

  “Atta girl! You’re getting it. Come on.”

  “Where?”

  “Your problem is not changed in kind, but only in degree.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “It’s possible to land safely from a third floor window.”

  “Are you out of your goddam mind?”

  “You’re right; let’s use your plan instead.” He turned angrily and started walking away, swinging his softball bat.

  “Oh, shit,” I said, and followed. “Wait up.” Stop and grab fresh clothes from my own apartment? No, no time, no need, no time!

  I thought at first he went to the wrong apartment. “Mary’s flat is above the front door,” I pointed out.

  “Yeah, but this one is above the dumpster. Garbage is a more resilient landing zone than cement, as a rule.” He went to the window, did not open it, looked out and down at the drop. “Sherry, maybe this isn’t a good idea after all. If you’re really reluctant to do this, you could land wrong; your subconscious could bitch you up to resolve the conflict honorably. Let’s switch: I jump, and you beat her brains out.”

  “No, Phillip. For the reason you’ve already mentioned, and three more. One: the lighter the body, the easier it lands. Two: my Dad was a paratrooper; maybe I inherited something. Three: you’re in no shape for combat. Get out of my way.”

  Like I said, my father was a paratrooper. He always said the classic error was to pause in the doorway, looking down; most of those who did never jumped. So I was careful not to hesitate for a second, just hopped up on the sill, slipped the hook-and-eye catch, flung the side-hinged window open, put my attention on targeting the dumpster, and stepped out into the night.

  Nearly at once, even before I began to be scared, I realized an elementary oversight in my planning. I was naked; it was February. Oh well, it would give me an honorable excuse for shivering.

  Then I began to get scared.

  But by then it was too late; I had landed.

  Take it from your Aunt Maureen: if there is any way you can arrange your affairs so as to avoid dropping into whorehouse garbage from a great height, naked in February, then that is almost certainly the course your life should take. Still, I reflected as I climbed out of the dumpster, nothing seemed to be broken, and I was much cleaner than I had been when I had gone up to Phillip’s place to shower. Most important, I had the use of my brain back.

  Or did I? I had had the two seconds’ resolution necessary to step off a ledge. But the closer I got to Diana, the closer I was to contravening her implied wishes. Could I go through with this?

  So maybe it was a break that it was February midnight and I was naked. My body got me started in the right direction, and my brain got carried along.

  We all take turns working reception. Ruth had it that night. She is the oldest working artist I have ever met (pushing sixty then) and one of the most popular in the House. I can give no better explanation than what she did when she saw me. I was expecting to provoke consternation or at least major surprise when I came in the door, but her unhesitating reaction was magnificent.

  “Oh my God,” she said, “the damn sign fell down again.”

>   Any other time I would have applauded. I was busy confronting the fact that I didn’t have a plan. Create a disturbance that would drive Diana upstairs. Simple. I didn’t have a match…or a place to put one. “G-g-get me a coat, will you, Ruth?” It was cozy in the foyer, I was already warming up—but I couldn’t enter the Parlor naked. As she was getting me one, I heard a distant shout from the Parlor. “Is anything going on in there?”

  She looked torn. “I’ve been asked not to say.”

  “I see. Is it bad?”

  “Yes.” She closed a man’s heavy overcoat around me; it covered me to below the knees. “What happened to you?”

  I too felt strong internal conflict. “I’ve been asked not to say.”

  She nodded. “Then you understand.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I sure wish I could worry about it,” she said plaintively.

  “Asked you not to, eh?”

  “Yes. But for some reason I keep thinking about it a lot just the same. I guess I’m just…interested. You know. Involved.”

  “I assume she asked you not to call the cops.”

  “Not to call anyone—or let anyone else make any calls. Please don’t try, Sherry.”

  “I can’t.” What in the hell would I tell the cops? Officer, we’ve got a woman here at the brothel, and you have to do anything she asks. Lady, quit braggin’. “Look, Ruth, is there any heat in the weapons-check tonight?”

  She hesitated. “Well, yes, as a matter of fact we’re heavy on ordnance at the moment. Johnny Rats is in the House, and you know those two gorillas with him always pack enough for a small war. And there’s some other stuff too.”

  “Finally, some good luck. Unlock it for me, will you, Ruth?”

  She frowned, clearly torn again. “Well, now, that’s kind of a problem, sweetie.”

  My heart sank. Was I going to have to fight Ruth? Could I? “She asked you not to let anybody in?”

  “Oh, she said if any clients came to show them right in. But she said if anyone came who looked like they might disturb her, I should keep them out. You’d probably be thinking of disturbing her, wouldn’t you, dear?”

  “That depends. Would you say a bullet through the head would disturb her?”

  “Now, that’s an interesting question, all right. Kind of philosophical, like. Let me give that some thought for a second.” Her face went through a fascinating interplay of expressions, ending with sad. “I guess I’d have to say that it definitely would disturb her. Not for very long, mind—but a whole lot. I’m sorry, dear; you know I’d like to help.”

  “I know that, Aunt Ruth,” I said gently. “How about this? Suppose you just get me the guns anyway, and I’ll just sit out here with you and fondle them?”

  She felt compelled to split hairs. “Well, but you see, that would amount to the same thing. Suppose you changed your mind, after I gave you the guns, how would I keep you out then? You see my problem.”

  I was running out of ideas and time, and I didn’t much want to fight Ruth. For one thing, she plays a good game of handball for sixty, and knows gutter-fighting. But she seemed to incline toward a strict interpretation of the Talmud, and I knew just how she felt. Thank God Diana hadn’t thought to ask me not to disturb her. What the hell was I going to do?

  And a pun saved me.

  “That’s okay,” I told her. “Kind of ironic, isn’t it?”

  “How’s that?”

  “I mean, all those years of effort Lady Sally put into building and maintaining good relations with the cops and City Hall, and here we are now, victims of Please Brutality.”

  She winced. You cannot wince without shutting your eyes. I didn’t much want to hit even a junior senior citizen hard enough to put her lights out, so I used a pressure point Daddy told me about once, and released it the moment her face lost color. She blinked at me and folded slowly.

  The damndest thing. Just before her face went slack, she tried to smile.

  I made her comfortable. The weapons-check locker key was where it’s always kept. Ruth hadn’t been kidding about Johnny Rats’s goons. I liked the look of the Uzi, but an Uzi does not make a thunderous enough noise to panic someone who is not familiar with firearms: it is a terror weapon only to someone who knows what that asthmatic-sewing-machine sound means. Instead I selected the over-and-under pump shotgun and the Russian handgun. I’d never seen one like it before, couldn’t read the Cyrillic script on the barrel, but its design was utterly straightforward and it made a Magnum look like a cap pistol. My father used to say that you couldn’t trust Soviet technology—unless it was a weapon. “Paranoids,” he said, “can be relied on to make the best weapons.” To complete my disguise as a large dangerous male, I got a big furry sable hat that also looked Russian from the cloakroom and stuffed my hair up under it, found a pair of boots tall enough to conceal the fact that I lacked a pair of pants.

  My plan was to slip through the door, locate Diana, shoot her if possible, and if not, quickly put enough slugs in the ceiling and floor to create the impression that the revolution had begun. She had every reason to feel confident; it would not be easy to stampede her. Perhaps Phillip’s idea of a fire made more sense. But while I was prepared to risk winging a few innocent bystanders—friends!—to get Diana, I could not make myself set fire to Lady Sally’s House. Even shooting it up was going to hurt.

  Let’s see: shotgun in left hand, sloppiest weapon where accuracy is least. Check ammo on both guns. Spin cylinders, pump scattergun. Safeties off. Pause at door, feeling like something out of a movie. Review procedure one last time.

  Earmuffs!

  I grabbed a pair from the cloakroom, put them on under my furry hat. They weren’t very good at muffling sound—why hadn’t I thought to fetch my isolation headphones from my room?—but they would help. I decided if I could not get a clear shot at Diana, I would fire off my first rounds near my ears and trust to that to finish deafening me. But hopefully that would not be necessary.

  Back to the doorway, feeling like a Viking in all that gear. Appropriate. Set a Viking to catch a Viking. Hurry before resolution leaks—deep breath—

  —through the door—

  —located Diana at once—

  —saw that I had no shot—

  —raised both muzzles—

  Shit!

  There is an easel-like affair near the door, on which Lady Sally is accustomed to post allegedly humorous signs to greet the clients. How many other places have a sign saying, “Come again,” on the way in, for instance? But tonight’s sign was peeled back, and on the next sheet on the pad someone had hastily but legibly scrawled a new message with a black felt-tip marker.

  PLEASE DON’T MOVE.

  CHAPTER 7

  THE PARANOID

  In retrospect I’m surprised I didn’t freeze instantly, and fall on my face. My brain must have been a strict constitutionalist, and decided that that moves least which comes to a safe smooth stop: I got to complete my stride before turning to stone. I wished I hadn’t had that inspiration about firing off both weapons close to my ears: they were going to get mighty heavy by and by.

  I was absurdly put out with Diana. What the hell had she put that there for? Didn’t she trust Ruth, for Christ’s sake? But then I stopped thinking even silly thoughts, because by then I was becoming aware of my surroundings.

  Lady Sally’s wonderful Parlor had become a carnival of horror.

  And perhaps the most horrible part was how funny all of it might have been under other circumstances. Even as I cursed Diana’s sign for preventing me from shooting, I blessed it for preventing me from breaking into an involuntary grin for which I could have never forgiven myself. Whatever else you could fault Diana for, she had a literally diabolical sense of humor. I’ve already said I don’t much care for rubber-crutch jokes—but some of hers were inspired.

  Not everyone was naked. Johnny Rats, for instance, was wearing a bra and panties that must have belonged to Big Mary, and Father Newman was wearing a teddy
and hose in addition to his scapulars. Juicy Lucy wore most of the whipped cream that was intended for Irish coffee, sculpted into a bikini; two Maraschino cherries had been strategically and whimsically placed. Tim wore a fetching little blue ribbon, whose tails fluttered gaily. A client named Willa, who always overdressed, was wearing nothing except what appeared to be every piece of jewelry in the room. Most upsetting to me, Lady Sally wore a great deal of lipstick, almost none of it on her lips or even her face; several people had apparently been playing tic-tac-toe on her.

  As near as I could see, every person in the room except Diana was doing something embarrassing or grotesque, and in several cases she seemed to have tailored her requests to the victim’s personality for maximum degradation. Mistress Cynthia was licking Master Henry’s boots, looking as angry as a person can look with their tongue out. Robin, her pet houseboy, was using Cynthia’s own quirt on her while she worked, his face flooded with tears. Even Henry looked unhappy: one of his secret fantasies, no doubt, yet it was ashes in his mouth because the commands had not been his. Ralph the talking dog was trying to extricate himself from some client’s large white Angora (a cat, not a sweater), swearing in German. Father Newman was pop-eyed, sweating, monotonously blessing the room with his rosary over and over again. Brandi, a good Catholic, was kneeling at his feet, looking for all the world as if she were praying, and perhaps she was, too, for all I know. Johnny Rats was noisily kissing one of his naked bodyguards, the fat one called Vito; as I watched, the other one, Tony, tapped his partner on the shoulder with obvious reluctance and cut in. When they traded places, I saw that someone had fetched some blue paint up from stores: Vito and Tony were a teenage boy’s lament come true. I also saw—anyone could see—that even Mary’s capacious panties were close to bursting. I glanced up to Johnny’s face and felt sad for Vito and Tony; whatever else happened tonight, they were dead men.

  All around the room artists and clients were humiliating themselves in assorted ways, alone or in groups of up to six, in an earnest, deadly silence with one ghastly exception. Not all looked anguished: some had apparently been asked to enjoy themselves. Brian, for example seemed to be having the time of his life with Rose—and Brian is strictly gay. And surely Mary did not really find what she was doing exciting.