He brought the bill an inch from his face. He wrinkled his nose and waved the bill as if to shake away the smell. He brought the bill close to his face again. His right eye bulged like the lens of a microscope as he examined the bill.
“You got a name?” I asked.
“You must not be from around here. If you were, you’d know who I was.”
“You’re right, I’m not from around here.”
“Then where are you from? Stink-alvania?” He laughed. The shirt rode over his belly again and he pulled it down. “Name’s Earl.” He handed the money back to me. “This is a hundred-dollar bill. No way anyone around here is going to accept that from me. Got any twenties?” He stood with his hand out.
I smoothed a twenty and swapped it with the hundred.
Earl fingered the bill. “Just the one?” He brought the bill to his eye. “You owe me eighty.”
“How do you figure?”
“You offered a hundred to begin with, didn’t you? That’s how I figure. You don’t want my help, then stay dirty and stinking. Move along then, ’cause you’re ruining my dinner.”
A bag stenciled with the name DARRYL’S BAR-B-Q rested in the doorway behind him, along with an upright paper bag big enough for a bottle of wine or a fifth of liquor. I would’ve preferred the aroma of barbecue over my own disgusting smell. I’d pay a hundred bucks for a bath.
“Okay, help me and you get the extra eighty. Where could I wash up?” I asked.
“The rescue mission. But you got to put up with all that preaching and holy-roller shit.”
“I can handle that.” I looked up and then down the alley. “Which way is the mission?”
Earl pointed to his right. “That way.”
“Well, let’s go.”
“Don’t bother. It’s done closed for the evening.”
I wanted to shake a straight answer out of Earl. “Where then?”
“The gas station up the block.” Earl turned around and groped for the bag of barbecue and the bottle. He slipped them under the tarp covering his shopping cart.
“Is the gas station open?” I asked.
“Nope.” Earl pulled the cart away from the wall and guided it up the alley. He pushed the cart in a shambling gait. His heels flattened the backs of a pair of dirty white cross-trainers.
“Then where are you going?”
“The gas station. The folks who own it won’t let you wash there when it’s open.” Earl said this like every idiot in Kansas City knew it as a fact.
I walked behind Earl.
He mumbled over his shoulder. “Don’t get too close and for God’s sake, stay downwind.”
I put a couple of extra steps between us.
We turned on Holmes Street and continued to the next road. Traffic emptied from the interstate and whooshed past us into a spaghetti maze of on-ramps, off-ramps, and intersections.
Earl pushed his cart off the sidewalk. The wheels clattered onto the pavement. As if blind-gee, after all, he was-he trundled across the street. A Lincoln Continental with green lights in the wheel wells and a bass stereo loud enough to drown out an exploding volcano rounded the corner and, not bothering to slow down, zoomed around Earl.
He kept shuffling, rammed his cart against the opposite curb, and levered it onto the sidewalk.
At the end of the next block, Earl veered into the lot of a dark and deserted Gas-U-Mart. Electric wires jutted from the posts where the security lamps would have been. Scarred and chipped plywood sheets covered the vending machines. Behind the mart, a Dodge Caravan rested on flat tires beside a Dumpster and barrels filled with oily water.
Earl pushed his cart until it collided with the wall. It was an inside corner, where the building made an L by the rear entrance. A heavy chain and two hasps, all fastened with padlocks the size of fists, secured the door.
“Now what?” I asked.
Earl folded back the tarp on his cart. He wrestled with a stuffed nylon duffel bag and pulled it free. He hefted the bag and tossed it to land by my feet. “You can’t believe the nice things folks throw out. Find you something that fits.”
I bent over and unzipped the bag. Clothes and shoes popped out like meat from a split sausage casing. I sorted through the first garments: a turquoise prom dress, some kind of blue dress pants with silver stripes, a yellow blazer, and assorted sweats. I picked out a Lilith Fair T-shirt, black sweatpants with cargo pockets, and a pair of sneakers a size too big. Lucky for me, there was a pair of Foster Grant sunglasses in a pocket of the sweats.
“Got any underwear or socks?”
“That’s one thing nobody tosses out. Least anything you’d want to wear.” Earl cradled a box of broken electric appliances that he set on the ground. Someday he might need a waffle iron with a frayed power cord.
Earl pulled a length of garden hose from his cart. He waved to the ground around the door. “There’s a spigot around there someplace.”
I saw it. “There’s no faucet handle.”
Earl rummaged in his cart through yet another box. He fished out a pair of locking pliers.
Earl reached for the wall and stepped close until his shin knocked against the spigot. He grunted and sank to one knee. He screwed the brass coupling of the hose over the spigot.
Sludge caked my skin and hair. “What about soap? Shampoo?”
Earl cocked a thumb to the cart.
I found tubes and bottles of body wash, shampoo, and conditioner stacked next to spray cans of Raid and Velveeta cheese.
Earl locked the pliers over the stub of the valve stem. As he twisted the valve open, the spigot squeaked. Water rumbled through the hose, and its length snaked across the grass.
Earl grasped the end of the hose. He braced one hand against the wall and levered himself upright. “Should be a grate in the corner that you can stand on.”
I unbuttoned my shirt. “Any chance someone can come by? I’d hate to be busted for public indecency.”
Earl chuckled. “Cops come by all the time. But would I care? It won’t be me buck-naked.”
I carried the body wash, shampoo, and a bundle of clothes across the weeds and broken glass to the corner. I stepped on the grate and set the items on the ledge of a boarded-up window. As I stripped, I tossed my dirty clothes into a pile on the grass.
Earl squirted the hose. He missed.
“I’m over here, Earl.”
“Sing something and I’ll find you.”
I hummed “Chances Are.”
The cold spray jolted me. I lathered up and scrubbed at the funk with a rag. I wiped dry with a couple of T-shirts and slipped into the clean clothes. The sweatpants bunched around my ankles and I rolled them up to my shins. I collected things from my old clothes and pushed them into the pockets of the sweatpants.
Earl turned off the water and unscrewed the hose. He grunted the entire time. He dropped the pliers into their box and coiled the hose in his shopping cart.
Being clean refreshed me almost as much as fanging a virgin and drinking her unsullied blood-the Godiva chocolate of hemoglobin.
“Say, Earl.”
He stopped for a moment.
“Thanks.”
He packed his boxes. “I didn’t do it for thanks. I did it for the hundred dollars.”
“I haven’t forgotten. How’d you wind up like this?”
“You asking how is it I’m a homeless bum?” Earl reached into the cart and grasped the bottle in the bag. “Bad luck and bad decisions.” He uncapped the bottle and sipped from it. “Doesn’t help that I stay a little off balance.”
I pulled out my money. “I don’t have any more twenties. How about a hundred?”
“That all you got, then I better get creative about breaking it.” He held out the bottle. It smelled of Night Train wine.
“No thanks. Do you need anything else?”
“My life starting at age fourteen,” Earl deadpanned. “Don’t suppose you can do that?”
“Sorry.”
“Didn’t think so
.” He took another sip. “Since you’re being so generous, then four hundred bucks outta do it. I’ve got a daughter in Cincinnati I’d like to visit.”
I counted the bills. “Here’s four. That’s five hundred and twenty you’ve gotten from me.” I touched Earl’s hand and he turned it palm-up to clasp the money.
“Earl, you never asked me my name.”
“Figured a guy who crawled out of the sewer and didn’t ask for the police wasn’t interested in spreading his identity around.” Earl brought the money close to his eye and scrutinized every bill. “How about I call you Cash Machine?”
“Fair enough.” I put the sunglasses on. “Time to go. Thanks again, Earl. Say hello to your daughter.”
“My daughter?” Earl’s eyebrows worked up and down. “Oh right. My daughter.” He folded the bills into his front trouser pocket and groped for the handle of the shopping cart. “Yeah, we’ll see you later, Cash Machine. Try staying out of the sewers. Might not find another Earl to help you.”
I turned about and started north. A few blocks later I walked up to a mini-mart and approached a man gassing a Ford F-150 pickup. His back was to me as he watched the gas pump.
“Excuse me,” I asked. “You wouldn’t happen to be going east?”
He glanced over his shoulder and gave me a dismissive glare. “Can’t help you, buddy.”
I removed the sunglasses. “Guess again. You and I are going on a road trip.”
Chapter
26
Once we got to Savannah, Georgia, I left the F-150 and its driver in the parking lot of a crowded McDonald’s and proceeded on foot to a bus stop. A mile down the road, I got off the bus and flagged a taxi that took me to the Savannah airport, where I’d left my Cadillac.
The taxi dropped me off near the west end of the airport parking lot. I scanned the cars and searched for the telltale glow of an aura belonging to someone on a stakeout.
The area looked safe. The few people I saw were encapsulated in auras swirling with petty worries. No one cared about me. But I had to assume that my cover was blown and that Goodman knew who I was and what I was up to.
I walked around my Cadillac. A film of dust covered the body and windows. I stood still for a moment and cleared my mind. I held my hands up, fingers raised, at mid-chest level. A faint breeze brushed against my skin, but nothing tingled. My sixth sense didn’t detect any threat.
Didn’t mean I wasn’t in danger. In a previous case, I had an electronic bug planted on me that I had had no idea was there. My car could now have a listening device or a GPS transmitter stuck on it. I got on my hands and knees and inspected the undercarriage. I ran my hand inside the fender wells and the bumpers. Plenty of dead, crusty bugs, but no electronic ones.
As I stood and brushed myself off, I felt disappointed. All this time I’d been looking over my shoulder and priming my muscles for a desperate fight. I could’ve flown back here from Kansas City first-class and spared myself the long drive and a numb butt.
Maybe Goodman and his cronies had no clue about me. Maybe they were so fixed on their plan-whatever it was-that they didn’t bother to notice I was sneaking up on them.
I was done with that. I knew where Goodman should be, and I would go straight to him. No more hide-and-seek. I started my Cadillac, tuned to a satellite radio channel, and cruised directly to the Sapphire Grand Atlantic Resort.
Goodman’s image loomed foremost in my mind. I was sure he had killed Karen Beck and was responsible for me taking a swim in the Missouri River and hiking through the sewers of Kansas City. I rehearsed scenarios, how I would corner him and punish his body.
I passed the first guardhouse entrance. Down the road, orange cones funneled traffic to a security guard beside the second guardhouse. More guards and a phalanx of the Gator utility vehicles waited on the shoulder. Why all this security?
The guard waved me to a halt. He asked if I had a reservation, which I didn’t. He said the hotel was booked up and closed to the public for the weekend. He wouldn’t elaborate and asked that I clear the entrance.
A convoy of white Chevy Suburbans with tinted windows lined up behind me. I couldn’t hypnotize the guard in front of so many witnesses, so I turned around and left.
I stopped up the road and examined the convoy with my naked vampire eyes. Everybody had a red aura with the typical range of emotions. Curiosity. Anticipation. Anxiety. Boredom. Nothing that threatened me.
Why was I turned away and the others let in? What was going on? Feeling not so much frustrated as puzzled, I checked into a multistoried motel off South Forest Beach Drive. I brought in my extra bags from the Cadillac and changed into fresh clothes and put in new contacts.
Despite the heightened security, I was getting back in the Grand Atlantic. However, I couldn’t let myself get complacent about Goodman. Maybe I was tracking all the wrong clues. What if this involved something supernatural that I wasn’t familiar with? What if my pursuers were in plain sight and I didn’t know? Even though I saw no evidence of being followed or spied upon, I remained wary as a cat sneaking through a kennel.
After I inspected my motel room, I sat still in one of the chairs to let my sixth sense magnify the sounds in the motel. A distant toilet flushing. The gentle hum of the ventilation system. The conversations of guests walking down the hall. Nobody made noise like they wanted to kill me.
I got my spare laptop and searched online for a mention of Karen Beck. The Kansas City Star reported that she’d been the victim of an attempted robbery. Her assailant escaped when he ran off the highway to avoid a police roadblock and crashed into the Missouri River. His body hadn’t yet been recovered. No kidding, because here I was. There was no description of the suspect-again, that would be me, though I hadn’t harmed Karen.
Sooner or later I was going to meet Dan Goodman face-to-face. We’d settle the matter of whether he was behind the murders of Gilbert Odin, Marissa Albert, Karen Beck, and quite possibly all those aboard the crashed airliner. And, of course, what was his part in this scheme that threatened the Earth women?
Chapter
27
I turned off the laptop, clicked on the TV, and channel surfed. At this time in the afternoon, my choices were soap operas and talk shows. Most of the commercials were for prescription medications. Corporate America had figured out that turning the nation into a herd of hypochondriacs was great for the bottom line.
The present commercial showed a woman standing before a mirror. She looked dowdy and frustrated. An aura magically surrounded her, like a shimmering cocoon. “Luvitmor,” a woman’s soft voice repeated in the voice-over, “from Rizè-Blu.”
The woman stepped clear of the aura (obviously, the creative talent behind this effect had no experience with real auras). She was now beautiful, confident, and very busty.
“Reclaim the real you with Luvitmor, the only nonsurgical breast-enhancement pill guaranteed to increase your bust size.”
Then the disclaimers: occasional headaches, mood swings, muscle soreness, and heightened libido.
Hold on.
Heightened libido? Bigger boobs? Rizè-Blu was going to rake in millions. Make that billions.
Not surprisingly, the next commercial was for another Rizè-Blu product, Olympicin. “Free yourself from the tyranny of the razor.” A woman marched out of a gloomy dungeon and onto the sunlit sidewalk of the big city. Her bare legs glistened like polished bronze from under the hem of her miniskirt.
I switched channels to a talk show bubbling with women’s laughter. Four women, in their early thirties, I guessed, sat on a stage beside their male partners. Each woman was dressed like she was about to step out for the evening: slim gown, high heels, hair done up. And each had enormous breasts that threatened to avalanche over the tops of their gowns. The women described their use of the trifecta of Rizè-Blu’s new cosmetic drugs. NuGrumatex to restore the lushness of their hair. Olympicin as the world’s most effective depilatory. (Close-ups on their legs.) And with the help of a linger
ing camera shot on their ample cleavages, the women claimed that Luvitmor was the only proven way to enhance a bustline without surgery.
The petite blonde of the group explained that she had been an A-cup; an accompanying photo showed her in a loose and dismally flat halter top. With a shimmy of her shoulders, she demonstrated how proud she was to be the owner of a pair of new FFs.
She and the man beside her shook their clasped hands in the air like they had just finished a race together. “Sex is now more than amazing,” she announced with unbridled perkiness. “It’s spectacular.”
Thanks for sharing. What’s next? Details about the wet spot, aka the winner’s circle?
Forget AIDS, cancer, and the other diseases that ravaged the Third World. Rizè-Blu gave society lusher hair. Smoother skin. Bigger boobs. And, ladies, there’s more: Rizè-Blu can guarantee a libido to match your new bra size.
The elevator on my floor pinged, making a sound as faint as that of a tiny bell. The doors clunked open.
I clicked the TV off. Footfalls clicked softly on the tile foyer and became muted as they trod onto the carpet. The brisk steps were those of a woman. The footfalls stopped at my door.
My sixth sense perked up.
Someone knocked.
My fingertips tingled. The hairs on my arms and the back of my neck stood on end.
Another knock.
Who was it? What did they want? Why didn’t they announce themselves?
I got up from my chair and levitated so that my feet moved soundlessly over the carpet. I stood to the right side of the door. A common trick of assassins was to call upon the target and, when he answered, shoot through the door.
Well, I was not a victim. I took out my contacts. My talons and fangs grew to combat length. At the first shot, I’d spring to the ceiling and counterattack from above.
One more knock.
The faint rustle of clothing.
Silence.
I primed my muscles to jump to one side. “Who is it?”
“Felix, quit screwing around and open the goddamn door.”
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