“Nah, I’m not allowed bras. I have to wear an elastic band to hide what little I got.”
“Ursula,” Danny squeezed in, with a sad party-pooper accent. “We gotta go.”
“Now? I’m not done here!”
“I have to work, and I have to get you home before your father notices you’re gone.”
“Sure, any time now,” she grumbled. “He wouldn’t miss me unless I took the safe with me.”
“I’m serious, Ursula. Go get changed, we’re leaving.”
Ursula pouted, legs shifting to a more confrontational stance that incidentally suited a model on the catwalk.
“You know what’s the first thing I’ll tell my dad when I get back?”
“Oh, come on!” Danny cried. “You’re blackmailing me now?”
“Ugly word. I liked ‘negotiating’ better.”
“It’s not a negotiation when it’s my life on one end!”
“Your life?!” Ursula fought back. “My life will be over in a matter of weeks! What will I have left when you take my parents? Witness protection? Foster care? This could be my last shopping day till adulthood!”
Some other teenager was now looking in her direction, offended to be outshrieked. Danny lowered his voice.
“Ursula, I understand your frustration. But I need to think in the short term now: you just sneaked out from home, and I can’t babysit you. What am I supposed to do?”
The kid grabbed Kimrean’s arm: “I can stay with Zooey!”
ZOOEY: Yeah!
DANNY: No!
ADRIAN: No!
Ursula frowned.
“Are you like bipolar or something?”
“One: bipolars don’t usually turn detectives; they’re naturally gifted stockbrokers,” Kimrean lectured. “And two: I don’t have time to play Mary Poppins; I need to go back to San Francisco.”
“Cool! Let’s go to San Francisco, I need to buy books!”
DANNY: We’re in a mall. Isn’t there a bookstore here?
ZOOEY & URSULA: Pfft. Please.
Danny’s phone buzzed again in his pocket; he rejected the call.
“I can go and come back on the six fifteen train,” Ursula argued. “I’ve done it before! Someone will pick me up at the station.”
“I can’t look after her,” Adrian dug in.
“I don’t need to be looked after; I can be on my own!”
“Danny!”
Danny’s hand was still in his pocket, daring his phone to ring again. He looked Kimrean in the eyes. It was like searching for someone in a multitude.
“Danny, I can do this,” Zooey said. “Trust me.”
He pulled out the hand from his pocket. The keys to the Camaro dangled in it, hovering over Zooey’s palm.
“Zooey, listen to me,” Danny admonished, in the tone he reserved for discussing heist arrangements. “He drives. Do you hear me? He drives.”
“Yeah yeah yeah, I hear you,” said the green eye, joyfully accepting the keys. “No problem.”
Danny turned to Ursula, his unprotected eyes flinching at the color blast. “I am not paying for those clothes.”
“I’ll cover the shoes, you pay for the shirt and the bra,” Zooey said, fishing the $150 they kept from the femme fatale that morning. “Believe me, I know a sound investment when I see it.”
* * *
—
Twenty minutes later, Adrian sat at the wheel, Ursula Lyon copilot, while two Rampage bags oohed and aahed in the backseat, gaping at the brave new world outside the mall. The Camaro zoomed along the road like a yellow-striped zipper splitting the Gran South desert in two.
Ursula spent a part of the trip dialing through music radio stations until Adrian barked at her and she finally switched it off. Currently, Adrian was considering how to switch off Ursula.
“I had a Nicki Minaj phase too, but I’m getting over it. Same with Katy Perry; it’s a little too shallow. But ‘Roar’ hits me every time—I’m only human, right? Lately I’ve been listening to Lorde a lot. Do you like her?”
She turned to Kimrean, their gargoyle profile outlined against the blue sky.
“You would love her,” she added.
Kimrean’s lips had faded away long ago, lost in the frugality of features of their smooth, pale face. The brown eye was fixed on the road, the green one veiled by blond hair.
“I play drums too,” Ursula said. “I dreamed of forming an indie duet with my doubles partner in the Caymans, but we’ve kinda grown apart. I play soccer now. We’re lining up a team at Gillian.”
Ahead, the yellow road lines kept crashing into the car, merging with the hood’s stripes.
“I also play with dolls. I remove their heads and replace them with those of cats I hunt in the backyard.”
She checked the gargoyle again. It didn’t appreciate her grin.
Her attention then alighted on Kimrean’s chest.
“Can I ask you a candid question?”
“Yes, please. The level of sophistication so far is killing me.”
“Were you…Like, I mean, not judging or anything—completely safe space here, okay? But were you born a woman?”
Two utility poles elapsed.
“I’m not fully born yet,” Adrian answered.
Ursula unhooked her seat belt and shifted in her seat, confronting the driver.
“Okay, I know I can do this. There was this really cool girl in there called Zooey a while ago. I want her back.”
She stared at the gargoyle, waiting for a reaction.
Not immediately, but in their due time, lips kindled up like a small blue flame on the featureless face. Kimrean swept their hair to the other side and grinned at her, and Ursula grinned back.
“You know, you can be a real jerk sometimes,” said the child.
“Tell me about it. I spend twenty-four seven with that jerk.” One hand unclasped from the steering wheel to frisk the waistcoat for cigarettes. “Don’t tell Danny about this, okay? I’m not supposed to drive; apparently, I have trouble focus—look! Roadrunner!”
She sprang onto her seat, half her body leaning out the window, gazing in awe at the dumbfounded ground cuckoo that was foraging for critters on the side of the road. She lingered on it until it disappeared in the distance, then she sat back down again, glowing with glee, noticed Ursula holding the steering wheel and calmly relieved her from duty with a customary thank you, all of this at 90 mph.
Ursula exhaled a long-held breath, too wide-eyed for cuteness, then crept back onto her seat and fastened her belt.
“The thing about the cats and the dolls—that was a joke, right?” Zooey asked.
“Yeah.”
“Good. ’Cause I don’t tolerate violence against dolls.”
Ursula chuckled, and a blue sign splattered with buzzard excrement signaled the end of Gran South County.
* * *
—
Four p.m. Sunshine flowed onto San Francisco’s Columbus Avenue, a stray shaft piercing the second-floor window of City Lights Bookstore, the one in the poetry room, and splashing on page sixty-four of the botany manual that A. Z. Kimrean was flipping through, curled up on a wicker armchair. Ursula sat in lotus on the carpet, reading from a pile of paperbacks. They were the only three customers in the room.
Ursula cleared her throat and reread the poem she’d been studying, aloud this time.
The guy from Sicily’s taken a bullet,
And now he has to tear his good shirt up for a tourniquet—meanwhile
He’s bleeding all over the radio
While I drive and try to find a decent music station.
And the little girl lies in the backseat,
Raindrops skiing down her window
against the glitchy skyline.
Zooey list
ened carefully, then resolved: “I’d fuck him.”
The narrow stairway squeaked, foretelling the arrival of a visitor. Lieutenant Greggs glanced over the scene, her jacket folded under her arm and a deli coffee in her hand.
“This is nice,” she said, sitting on the armchair across from Kimrean, on the other side of a coffee table where the unpopular books lay in shame. “Can we do this fast? I have to go back to work.”
“This is work,” Adrian said, not granting her a look from either eye. “I just thought if anyone happened to recognize Danny’s car, they’d better not see it parked in front of the police station.”
“Danny let you borrow his car?”
Kimrean momentarily bobbed up from their book. “Surprise—some people do trust me.”
Greggs lowered her voice, aware of the kid who was sitting on the floor, leafing through the restored text edition of Naked Lunch.
“Demoines checked about the bug. It was the FBI, ten days ago. They swear they didn’t know we had a man inside.”
“Makes sense. Why would the FBI know things? It’s easier to kick the door in and ask.”
“I requested the recording from Monday night, but—”
“Confidential.”
“Right. To be fair, I think there’s something about privacy in the Fourth Amendment. I can get a judge to—”
“Forget it, no state judge wants to antagonize the FBI. I’ll just go to the source.”
“What do you expect to hear in the audio? Anything short of ‘Hi, Mikey Lyon, I’m not related to the Red Chrysanthemum but take this anyway, bang bang’ is no use to us.”
“True, although that was kind of implied in the absence of a red chrysanthemum in the scene.”
“The flower’s not a chrysanthemum? Then what is it?”
“A red rose. A red herring. Who knows.” Adrian closed the book, left it on the coffee table where it so comfortably belonged, and untangled their legs. “The yakuza have been in Southern California awhile. Do they even have a history of leaving flowers on their kills? Is that a thing?” Greggs searched her mental files for a second, but Adrian couldn’t wait that long. “I don’t recall them doing it. Maybe the flower was just there. The Lyons have a big garden.”
“So it’s not the yakuza?”
“Sadly, everything else points to them.”
They both sighed. Greggs’s sight line wandered toward the little girl, if only not to look at Kimrean directly, like spies meeting in a Parisian café.
“There’s something else pointing to the Japanese,” Greggs said. “Demoines got it from our colleagues in the bureau. Are you familiar with the name Yu Osoisubame?”
“AKA ‘the Phantom Ninja.’ Japanese hit man, stealth expert, nineteen jobs confirmed. Yes, it rings a bell.”
“He’s in California. Landed in LAX Monday afternoon, hours before Mikey’s killing. Looks like the yakuza might have outsourced to Jesus Jefferson Christ, that girl is Victor Lyon’s daughter!”
“About time you noticed.”
“What is she doing here?”
“So far? Making censors shake their heads and early reviewers tag the plot as #problematic,” Adrian summarized. “May I say, if the guy who killed Mikey Lyon calls himself a ninja, he’s been relaxing his standards. I’ve seen tropical storms go through the Caribbean more discreetly.”
“Maybe you have too high standards. Have you ever seen a real ninja work?”
“Isn’t the whole point of ninjas not being seen? Anyway, he left tracks. I’ll tell you more when I get access to a lab.”
“Give me what you got; I’ll hand it to forensics.”
“Sure, and by the time we have the results, Japan and California will have been reconciled by the continental drift. I’ll take care of it.” Adrian rose and Zooey snapped their fingers. “Ursy? Kiss Auntie Greggs good-bye; we’re leaving.”
“Wait, Ayzee,” Greggs whispered, concerned. “Seriously: the kid. What’s up with that?”
“Nothing’s on. We’re babysitting. At times, Danny trusts us too much,” Adrian judged, and Zooey added, “Can you pay for her books? I’m tapped out after the shoes. And throw in a puppy-eyed Ginsberg postcard.”
* * *
—
Five p.m. A.Z. knocked on a corrugated metal door while Ursula Lyon leaned over a rusty rail on a catwalk that ran around an abandoned lumber mill outside Oakland. The path and the stairs up to this landing were once smothered in luxurious, not always wild vegetation; now, facing north from the balcony, oil derricks nodded against the brown-and-gray sky like giant robot cranes drinking from puddles of crude. The western wind carried the barks of lonesome dogs and heavy machinery.
Ursula stroked the flaking yellow rail and the yellow leaves of a potted plant. “Who are we visiting?”
“Can’t you just wait literally five seconds?” Adrian said over his shoulder.
Zooey then spoke over hers: “You’ll see, you’re gonna love her.”
Metal bolts slid within the door, and it clanked open. Ursula saw two boots, a fireproof apron, a wrench large enough to jam the cogs of a battleship, and a wicker hat. Under the hat she later noticed the face of a woman, some fifty years old—most of them sunny and windy.
A grass-blade of a grin unbalanced the perfect symmetry of her jaw.
“The prodigal children return.”
Zooey hugged her like a theme park Snow White. “Gwe-e-e-e-en!”
“Zooey, Zooey, Zooey,” the woman soothed her. “What took you so long?” Her voice was chipped, the way of a porcelain teacup.
“I would’ve come sooner; Dickhead wouldn’t let me!”
“Yeah, yeah. That excuse is getting old.”
“I called right after they released me!” Kimrean said, ushering themselves in.
“I know, I got your message. I could’ve picked you up.”
“You wouldn’t have taken me where I wanted.”
The lady was about to close the door when Ursula squeezed through, apologizing. The hostess’s face returned to its default expression—that of a slightly shocked English governess.
“Whose child is this?”
“I don’t know! All she does is follow me and say, ‘Please give me more pixie dust—I’ve got money this time.’ ”
The child eyerollingly ignored the joke and stuck out a hand.
“I’m Ursula.”
“Gwen,” the lady said, shaking her hand. She was courteous but not condescending, a treatment children welcome as unusual. Her bearing reminded Ursula of one of those women who are sometimes interviewed on TV, with a caption pointing out to younger audiences that they are magical and did great things in the past, like Julie Andrews or Madonna. Her waist was set high, and she had the kind of stance that said, I was a sexy blonde once, but also the wrinkled forehead and the glint of an intelligence never patronized by Bridget Jones or Carrie Bradshaw that added, And luckily, I got over it.
Gwen’s den was a wide, diaphanous, rusty mezzanine inside the lumber mill. Large interior windows overlooked the derelict machines, asleep like the contents of pyramids, their dreams suspended in the sunrays pouring in through the skylight. On the outer wall, a smaller window surveyed the bay. Plants chitchatted everywhere, gathered around the different workspaces the area was divided into. One of those workspaces turned out to be a kitchen—Ursula had been misled by the gas canisters and the computer on the countertop.
“Will you have some coffee?”
“I will!” Zooey cried from another point of interest in the loft, where she had gone to greet the caged budgerigars.
Gwen queried Ursula; she shrugged her shoulders four feet above the floor. “Yeah, why not.”
They all sat on stools around a card table shrouded in a vintage flowery oilcloth, and Gwen poured a coffee whose atomic weight granted it a position in
the lanthanides section of the periodic table.
“She’s not from the place I wouldn’t have taken you to, is she?” Gwen asked, pointing at the kid.
“Oh, no, she came later!” Zooey reassured her. She had not yet sat down, nor did she plan to; she just held the cup in her hand and kept abusing exclamation signs. “I’ve got a new office!”
“Really.”
“And a new case!”
“Really? Femme fatale or teeth-pummeling thug?”
“Both!” Zooey said, in ecstasy. “But those came and went; I’m into something better now. Remember Danny Mojave?”
“SFPD? Curly hair, really cute? Wasn’t he the one you helped raid that sex slave trafficking auction?”
“Yeah—actually I only wandered in to use their ATM. Anyway, I’m working with him. We’re gonna stop a gang war!”
“Ooh. How are you gonna do that?”
“I was getting there.” Adrian landed the cup and produced a seemingly empty vial from their pocket. “Can I use your microscope?”
“I feared this would be a business visit.”
“Business and party all around—that’s me, Mom!” And with that and a kiss on the lady’s forehead, they capered toward the laboratory, far on the other end of the mezzanine.
Ursula watched them go while she took her first sip of coffee. She was interrupted by her throat constricting fast, an iron-willed signal saying, No way.
Gwen lit herself a cigarette and slid the sugar toward her.
“Thank you.” She poured five spoonfuls into her cup.
On the fridge, inside a radio, very little clones of the Runaways were singing.
“Are you really her mom?” Ursula inquired.
Gwen waved off the idea like a cheap compliment. “No, I’m not. But ‘mother figure’ is a mouthful. You’re Zooey’s friend?”
“Uh…I guess. For the last three hours.” Then she made sure that Kimrean and the lab were far enough, and lowered her voice: “What is wrong with her?”
“With her? Nothing.” Gwen took a gulp of her coffee and for a moment she smirked at some memory attached to the oilcloth. “Nothing at all.”
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