by Sue Perry
Finally we were done with all we could do and the cop stood to walk us outside. He glanced at number seven, cold and congealed on his desk.
"Thanks for helping me right away. Can I buy you a newer lunch?" This turned him human.
He shot a fond glance at number seven and shook his head. "Good luck restoring your honor." He cast a lingering smile over Anya and advised me, "Don't get stopped for nothing before your hearing," giving confirmation that my concern wasn't paranoia.
"One more thing," I said. "What do you recommend I do with this anklet? Long story but I couldn't wait until my tracking device could be officially removed." I dumped the pieces of my GPS anklet on his desk. Hernandez being Hernandez, it was perfectly cut into five pieces of equal size.
"What is that shit?" the cop sneered.
"It's the GPS tracker your department installed when I missed a few phone calls. I had to take it off, it caused unhealthy reactions."
"Huh. I never knew us to use those."
"What does my file say about it?"
He paged through the folder. "Not a thing."
"I got it at your office on North Fig."
"Since when do we have an office on Figueroa?"
And on that weird note, he walked us out to make sure we left. He kept staring at Anya as though to memorize her for later.
On the walk back to the Henrietta, I got fixated on being careful to cross streets within the crosswalk lines, and struggled to ignore the Arrest Me! graffiti I imagined on my back. Getting my case dropped felt weird and inconclusive. It didn't seem like a normal police procedure but I lacked the experience to prove it. I tried calling Patti for her input, but my calls went straight to voicemail.
It was significant that the cop knew nothing about the GPS anklet. I had assumed the Cysts had co-opted a police technology to track my movement between Frames. What if, instead, the Cysts were so embedded in affairs of this Neutral Frame that they could co-opt the court procedure and trick me into donning their tracking device? Damn, I needed to talk with my attorney. If they had tricked me, they had tricked her, too. Or else she -
My phone chirped with a text from Hernandez.
:: Help. Get truck drive Glendale Blv to Atwater Av east drive slow to
:: On my way. What hap?!
I got no reply.
Anya and I ran the block to the Henrietta's garage. I grabbed the truck's hide-a-key and we were on our way to Atwater Village, where Hernandez was supposed to be finishing his masonry job interview at a Digby construction site.
We made it from downtown LA to Atwater Village in record time, then got trapped in traffic mere blocks from our turn onto Atwater Avenue. This was a neighborhood in the early states of gentrification, with bail bonds flanking the new art co-op. Other days, I would have enjoyed a stroll. Now, I considered mowing the truck through those sidewalk cafe tables.
Traffic was stymied because a farmers' market blocked the route. We could not turn east onto Atwater Av, the way Hernandez instructed. We had to circle back and around and take Atwater Avenue from the east. This route took us past the Digby construction site, which was not engaged in business as usual. Hardhats wandered the fence that marked the site's perimeter, as though searching for something. Or someone. Standing at the entrance was the Cobra, watching everywhere at once.
Mercifully, a shout from inside the site diverted his attention as we passed.
"He's the one who hurt me," I told Anya.
"Yes, I recognize his energy."
Two blocks farther, we reached the last block of Atwater, where Hernandez had said to drive slowly. The block was now a dead end due to the farmers' market. I drove to the market barricade. No Hernandez. I backed, turned, eased east. A white streak shot out from a bush. Hernandez - in white overalls, limping mightily yet at top speed - vaulted into the back of the truck and flattened against the bed.
No way would we drive past the Digby site again. "There," Anya pointed at an alley that could take us south. I took the turn as fast as I dared.
The windshield shattered and a face loomed. I screamed at the creature embedded in the broken glass. Its eyes were misshapen like the bellies of black widows; the pupils were black, with red hourglass irises. The creature's three fingers ended in talons. It grabbed the steering wheel and I pounded to break its grip.
I was dimly aware of other sensations. Anya muttered behind me. More of these creatures swarmed the truck. Hernandez kicked several of them off the back with some rad martial arts moves.
When we shifted Frames, only the one at the steering wheel remained. It pulled itself deeper into the cab and reached for my throat.
"I think not," Tee yelled and the truck began to buck and swerve. The creature lost its one-handed grip on the steering wheel and fell to the road. Tee braked and went into reverse, intending to back over the creature. Anya stopped the truck with a word.
"No. Its threat has ended. We must go forward," Anya said.
Tee took us very forward. She was doing eighty by the time we were back in my allegedly Neutral Frame. Tee dodged incoming traffic, then I got us back on the correct side of the street. I didn't brake until we were across the Los Angeles River into the Silverlake district. At that time I pulled over briefly, intending for Hernandez to climb into the cab. When he didn't move, I got out.
"Give me a sec," he said, and knocked his head back, squeezed his eyes shut.
"Reassure me you're okay," I said.
"Been better been worse. You must be Anya. It's an honor to meet you."
"We share that honor." Anya's smile was the sun on wildflowers. She touched his wrist, stilled to read sensations, and nodded to me. We helped him into the cab. He favored his left side.
I headed south at safer speeds than before. "So much for Frame Neutrality," I said. Neutrality might be boring but it wasn't all bad, if it prevented such creatures from roaming my Frame.
"We brought the creatures into this Frame. They awaited us just beyond it." Anya spoke like it was an everyday occurrence.
"How often do those kinds of thing lurk outside my Frame?"
"They are not rare," she replied.
Hernandez groaned and clutched his side. I was uncertain that he was conscious. I pulled into a subterranean parking structure on Figueroa. The light was dim enough to give us plenty of privacy but too dim to see his wound. I shone my phone on him, pulled his shirt up. At his waist was a nasty stain that looked like a rug burn on top of a bruise.
"It wasn't a job interview, it was an ambush," he said through clenched teeth. "I should have seen that coming. I've been civilian too long, I'm losing my sense." I knew what he meant because he had talked about it plenty. His battle sense, a tightness at the base of his neck when bad shit was about to come down.
"Somewhere under the seat is a jar of Anwyl's salve," I said.
Anya found it and applied it as I navigated us out of the garage speedily. In fact, we made it out within the five-minute, no-pay grace period.
Hernandez groaned again, perhaps at my inappropriate penny-pinching.
"He needs the healers!" My enthusiasm puzzled then unnerved me. Sometimes my capacity for shallowness does that. Life and death stakes, fate of the free Frames in the balance, and I got excited because I wanted to share my new spa with my girlfriend.
"I do not believe that to be the case. Even should you be correct, the salve will suffice until after our petition."
And that grounded me again. Tomorrow morning was show time.
Hernandez let us help him out of the truck, but he got himself up to my office and into the chair behind my waiting room door. He let me fetch him a set of juicepacks and a quart jug of water, then he waved me into my office, where Anya waited. "You need to rehearse, don't you? I'll be right here." And he kept his grimace of pain contorted into a supportive smile until I shut my office door.
34. When Pieces Began To Fall
Our discussion was more pep rally than rehearsal. "There are so many details, you'll need to pr
ompt me," I warned Anya.
"You will tell the story that needs to be told, and the Framekeeps will heed it because they recognize truth," Anya replied.
"That all sounds easy but I know it won't be."
Anya took my hands in hers. "Nica. Tomorrow we take the next step we must take to defeat Maelstrom. I say we because you belong in that step." Anya released my hands just as Anwyl shoved through the door.
"Come now," he greeted her, and took her back to the roof with him.
I joined Hernandez in my waiting room, where he pretended that he was seated, not collapsed.
"They say we don't need to understand the construction scheme in time for the Framekeeps, then they put every waking minute into trying to understand."
"Never micromanage the beings from the otherworld," Hernandez advised.
I laughed but continued to grumble. "I'm kind of an asshole today. Guess I'm nervous."
"Today."
"Speaking of assholes." He pulled out a smile. "You seem a little better," I noted, and felt enormously better when he nodded. I looked around for additional repartee material and noticed an envelope that had been shoved under the door and mostly disappeared under the rug.
"How long has this been here, did you notice?"
"Notice what?" Hernandez felt better but he didn't feel like opening his eyes yet.
Neeks!! yelled the envelope in Ben's blocky scrawl. Seeing it gave me two kicks to the stomach. A, this reminded me I didn't know where the hell he was and B, he needed to find another nickname. The Cysts had ruined this one - when I read the word on the envelope I heard their curdled voices saying it.
I'm gone. Farewell, Neeks, my 1st and best. I won't mess with your life any more. All we've been through. You deserve an exp. so here.
Day you left. The scene at my apt. I saw a lot of things. Getting high is who I am. That won't change. Don't want it to. Even though. Every time I get high I hurt somebody. Actions. Promises I don't deliver. This time maybe somebody died. Wish I could rem. Glad I can't.
Two cops after me. Won't stop. Day they hooked into me I died. They guarantee it. Now I'm making it official.
Don't look for a body you won't want to be the one.
You always loved me. Thick, thin. That means everything to me. You're the one I'll miss.
Benny
P.S. You know me. I don't apologize. Not the jerk way. But I am sorry I went back to sleep. I let you down about the lawyer. Should have got my ass out of bed. Hope you weren't locked up mega hours.
"No fucking way!" I yelled, startling Hernandez into consciousness. I shoved the paper at him.
He read it twice, turned the page looking for more. "Suicide note. Is this supposed to be from Ben?"
"That is from Ben. It's his handwriting, his way of writing. But. If I made a list of all the people in the world in order of how likely they are to off themselves, I would run out of trees to make paper or my word processor would run out of memory before - uh -" I was lost in my own metaphor, or was that a simile, I can never keep -
"Ben isn't the suicide type," Hernandez made my long story short.
"So he leaves me a bogus suicide note when he knows I know he won't. That means it's for somebody else. So who am I supposed to show this to? The cops?"
"That would be my guess."
"Crap. I'll have to wait until after the Framekeeps. If I get in Mathead's face, she'll make sure to bust me."
"What does the P.S. mean? He did find you a lawyer."
"I thought he did. I thought he made the call then forgot about it." And if he didn't, then who put Kathleen Kimball in my life?
"Does he forget like that?"
"Not often since he stopped using. If he stopped. Man, I need a drink." Benny's sobriety does that to me.
"Me too."
"You're fighting to stay conscious. How are you going to drink? How does your side feel, anyway? And what happened? Did the Cobra get you?"
"Naw, a hardhat used a 2 by 4 on me. As I walked into the construction office, I knew it was a trap and I turned and ran. I almost got away. A guy at the driveway entrance whacked me in the driveway. They must have poor day vision. They sniffed around the entrance for me when I was a block away, watching. We could go to that place with the naked sculpture at the end of Flower Street. They have a long happy hour."
"I shouldn't go out in public tonight, I can't risk getting arrested."
"There's a big manhunt for you, you figure?"
"Something spooked me about the way the cop warned me to avoid arrest before my hearing. Anyway, you should go home."
"You're right. I've got beverages at home."
"That works for me! Let's do it."
Headed down to the garage, limping put a wince on his face. Then I mentioned the Framekeeps petition, which added misery to it. He so wanted to see the Framekeeps, but Anwyl and Anya were not supposed to involve Neutrals in free Frames affairs, so bringing two Neutrals with them would look worse than twice as bad. I had much witness to bear, so had to be there. Hernandez had to stay home.
Stopped at a long traffic light, I left more messages for my former attorney, one on her cell phone and one at her office exchange. There was no reason to think that these, messages number 22 and 23, would have special impact and compel her to return my calls. But persistence is how Frank Elder solves cases so I decided to keep trying. I needed to understand how she fit with the ankle GPS.
We proceeded in silence until we crossed the bridge into east LA.
"Are you ready for tomorrow?"
"I think so. I have to be careful not to use words like obviously and clearly. Nobody tells the Framekeeps what to think, Anwyl says. We just state our evidence and they decide whether it adds up and what to do about it. The Framekeeps like their witnesses meek so I can't act too confident. But we've got so much to tell them! Anya and Anwyl are cautious about predicting the outcome, but I can tell they agree. We've got a lot of evidence that the Cysts are back to their old bad ways." I reopened what I considered an unfinished debate, "I know that two Neutrals would piss the Framekeeps off more than twice as much as one Neutral would. But I still think you should be at the hearing, too."
"I can't be away from home indefinitely. Anwyl says you could be there days, or weeks, waiting for the verdict."
"I know. Just sayin'."
"I know." A warm silence followed us up his driveway, across his porch, and into his kitchen. We took Jack Daniels to the kitchen table in the alcove off the front room, where Karina was curled into a corner of the couch. TV blared while she texted and pretended to do homework. She was in remedial summer school because she never did homework without TV and texting - never mind. She texted with one hand, channel surfed with the other, and consulted her homework during commercials. We exchanged the deep tired smiles of the old friends we had fast become.
Hernandez clicked his glass against mine. "You'll convince them."
"I've been told I'm persuasive," I clicked back.
He doubled over, first with a belly laugh and then with laugh-induced pain. "The Framekeeps will wonder what hit them," he gasped.
I darted a look to see if Karina was listening, and resisted the urge to shush him - as if she'd know what Framekeeps meant; as if she thought her dad was worth an eavesdrop. The TV screen caught my eye. "Sss! Look!" I dug my fingers into his arm.
The news had started and the top news item was a horror story. Video of Miles and Monk filled the screen. There was something wrong with the way Miles looked - he was missing his top encircling girders.
The video came with voiceover. "The Watts Towers closed unexpectedly this afternoon for unscheduled maintenance, when pieces began to fall from one of the Towers." The camera zoomed into a section of Miles with dangling snapped girders, raining cement and decoration.
"Tell us about your tour of the Watts Towers this afternoon." The first interview was with a trio of high school students, at the Towers for a class tour.
"All of a sudden, pieces of
glass and cement were smashing everywhere on the ground."
"A piece hit me on the head, just a little piece but it fell from so high! It really stung."
"I looked up and saw the top of the tower was crumbling apart." A close-up of Miles' top girders, broken and awry.
Cut to an engineer who expressed surprise at the sudden damage. The Towers had passed so many stress tests over the years, plus their recent annual inspection. Whatever the cause of the sudden distress, he was confident they'd have the Towers open for public visits again soon. However, for now the facility must remain closed because it wasn't safe to be under that Tower as it continued to shed material. Tomorrow morning, a crane would allow close inspection.
Cut to the reporter, positioned in front of the fence. Two signs alternated and repeated around the perimeter. Closed until further notice. Danger: hardhats required. "There you have it, Dale and Katy, they don't know the extent of the damage, or the cause, but they are working hard to get this beloved attraction back in service to southern California and the world. Last year, the number of tourists who visited the Towers -"
Hernandez grabbed the remote and flipped channels until we had seen four flavors of the same news on the local channels.
Eventually, Karina looked up from a heavy texting session and noticed we had taken control of the TV. "Da-ad! I was watching something!" He tossed the remote back to Karina and grabbed my hand. I clutched back and poured us tall stiff ones.
After those, we were in no condition to drive, so we sat on his porch step for another hour, trying to understand what this might mean and to convince ourselves that what we wanted was true. Miles had disappeared into his dangerous Frame assignment and now he was damaged. Damage to Miles in this Frame didn't have to mean Miles was dead, we insisted. It certainly suggested he was injured. But how badly? We made up a rule that if the damage kept getting worse, that would be a bad sign.
On the eleven o'clock news, the broadcasts were all rehashed soundbites from earlier in the day. We moved to the family computer but found nothing newer. Apparently, no one else shared our need to know how the Watts Towers fared right this instant.