Too Small For Tall

by Rosenberg, Aaron

  “Olivia Ann Mercer, age sixty-five, passed away on Tuesday from a fatal heart attack. She is survived by her sister Doris Lehaine, her brother Rick Mercer, and her grandchildren Melody, Anne, Daniel, and Jack. Services are for family only, but donations in her memory can be made to the Red Cross and to United Way.” I check the date. “According to this, she died six months ago.”

  “Just before everything started,” Tall says. “Hmph. You’ve got access to DMV files, right?”

  I laugh. “Please! I spent a whole day one time giving fake tickets and DUIs to people I hated in high school.”

  He gives me a big “I’ll ignore that—for now” sigh. “Look for any women, age sixty to seventy, who applied for a driver’s license within the month or two before her death,” he orders.

  “Got it.” Makes sense—she’d want to have another identity ready before she faked her death—and I’m assuming that’s what’s going on, because I can handle aliens of all stripes just fine but if it turns out we’re dealing with real, genuine, bona fide, honest-to-God ghosts, I quit.

  But sure enough, I get a few hits. “Here’s a Mavis Delilah Rhodes, age sixty-eight,” I read off, “and a Nancy Caroline Fry, age sixty-one, and a Waverly Irene Brooks, age sixty-four.”

  “That last one,” Tall says, leaning in. “Pull up her application. It should have her photo.”

  It does, and sure enough it’s a shot of an older but still striking woman with almost platinum-blond hair—natural, from the look of it—and a stern expression. “How’d you know?” I ask Tall.

  He grins at me. “Waverly Irene Brooks. WiB.”

  “Ah.” Great, our crazy revenge-minded take-over-the-world lady has a sense of humor. Delightful.

  “Her DMV record lists her address as Westchester, New York.” I pull the address up on the screen, then call up a map and zero in on it. Then I check around a little more. “No sign that she’s left.” I go to a different site. “Yep, the post office is still delivering her mail to that address, no forwarding requested.” It makes sense that she’d set up there, too. We know that’s where Monsinal Sha’ar and Fah-te had set up their drop point for the Jorbinate Sublimate, and she’d want to stay close to that. And still be able to bop into Manhattan to keep tabs on the MiBs, and maybe take in a show.

  “Excellent!” Tall squeezes my chair one last time—what’d it ever do to him?—and turns toward the front door. He’s already got his phone out, and is typing in a text to someone as he walks away.

  “Wait, where’re you going?” I actually have a pretty good idea, which he confirms when he glances back and gives me what I can only call a wolfish grin, since it looks all lean and hungry and even a bit furry. He really needs to shave soon. “I don’t think confronting her by yourself is really smart—at least call Agent Jones for backup!”

  But Tall shakes his head even as he pulls the front door open. “This one is all mine,” he insists. I hear a faint humming somewhere, and the air around him starts getting brighter and brighter. Uh oh. There’s a color shift or two, and a big flash, and when it all clears away Tall is gone.

  I just hope he knows what he’s doing.

  As for Olivia Ann Mercer, I hope she’s ready. Because she may not even know what hit her.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Why, Granny, what big semi-legal automatic weapons you have!

  I pull up my Tall-cam just in time to see him hop into a car—another MiB pulls up in it, one of their standard “ooh, look at me I’m so subtle!’ black sedans—and walks away, leaving the keys in the ignition—and take off for Westchester. I guess all’s forgiven now that the whole agency’s experienced the joy and wonder of being a cookie zombie. Or maybe Enterprise was just out of dark sedans.

  I can see Tall’s face in the rearview mirror as he drives up through Manhattan, and he looks furious, his jaw clenched and his brow so low he practically needs a forklift just to raise it high enough to peer out from under. His hands grip the steering wheel so tight I’m surprised it doesn’t twist up like a pretzel. Of course, Manhattan traffic always makes me feel the same way—I’m convinced most New York drivers actually got their licenses from cereal boxes and their training from action movies—but this is clearly more than that. And while I’m a big fan of watching Tall tear through things—and people—like they’re paper dolls, I’m not sure that’s the best play here.

  “Listen, Tall, let’s think this through,” I urge into the mike. “I’m serious. You don’t want to just go charging in there half-cocked. This lady’s one tough customer, and she’s probably already expecting you. What’re you gonna do, knock on the front door?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m going to do,” he mutters through his teeth. “Only I’ll be using this car as the knocker.”

  Okay, that can’t be good.

  “What if you’ve got the wrong house?” I point out. “What if she’s in a bunker out back? What if she’s kidnapped some innocent little kid and has him tied up in the foyer to prevent just such a response? Are you really willing to risk little Timmy’s life to satisfy your rage?”

  That makes him pause—at least for a few seconds. “Yes,” he finally answers. Great. Now he’s gone full-on homicidal.

  I call Mary instead. “Can’t you get the Grays to zap him back here?” I ask her. “Then we could come up with a real plan instead of this ‘look at me charging in like a knight at a joust, only it turns out I’m up against a Panzer tank’ bullshit.”

  “They will not relocate him, or anyone else, without the subject’s express permission,” she tells me. “It is part of the accords they formed with the agency, allowing them to continue operating on Earth and in its vicinity.” Presumably because people weren’t too happy about the whole ‘abducted and probed and then tossed back like a tagged wildebeest” experience.

  “So what can I do?” I ask her. I’d be tearing at my hair but feathers are a lot shorter and harder to grasp. Good thing, because a bald duck-headed man would be a REALLY look for me.

  “Stay close to him,” Mary urges. “Make sure he knows you are there to support him, and give him the benefit of your insight and your observation.” See, this is why I love her. She sees the good in me, when most people just see all the other stuff. Which, admittedly, is usually a lot louder.

  ‘Got it,” I promise. “Thanks.” I wish she was here, but she’s doing some kind of scouting mission—when I called I thought I caught a glimpse of what looked like wispy clouds, only made of lava. Not sure I really want to ask her for the details when she does get back.

  Anyway, I focus on Tall, though I let him drive the rest of the way in silence, and soon the apartment buildings and subway tracks have swapped out for large houses with even larger lawns and wide, quiet streets with the occasional luxury car. So this is how the other half lives. Though, actually, I don’t know which half that’d be. Could be the ducks, because we do pass a few small ponds and I’m betting they only ever get tossed high-end organic bread.

  The address I found for Waverly Irene Brooks turns out to be big, sprawling house broken almost haphazardly into small segments that exist at various heights and angles to one another. It’s like somebody took a regular ranch house, got it stinking drunk, and then let it stagger around until it smashed up against a cliff or something and broke apart a bit but still managed to hold onto its components, however loosely. Great, it’s the Drunk House.

  Tall pulls up the nice big circular drive and stops right in front of the house. At least something I said earlier must have gotten through, since he doesn’t just stomp up to the door and kick it in. Instead—he rings the doorbell.

  I half expect big nasty deathtraps to go off all around, or a sabertooth tiger to leap down from the porch awning and swallow Tall whole, or at least an electrified net to envelop him and taze him into unconsciousness. Instead there’s the sound of footsteps from within, then the click of a lock, and then the door opens.

  And there, at long last, is Olivia Ann Mercer.
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br />   Her pictures don’t really do her justice. She’s tall, six feet I’d guess, and still built like a brick outhouse, even at her age—broad shoulders, impressive bust, tight waist. Her hair’s a silvery white and pulled up in a tight bun and she’s got a few lines around her eyes and mouth and across her forehead, but otherwise she looks exactly like the stunning young woman who flustered an entire top-secret agency into almost killing itself trying to impress her. And I can totally see why.

  “Ah. Yes. I wondered when you would find me.” Her dark eyes flick over Tall, no doubt tallying the location of every weapon he’s carrying, and they stay hard and cold even though her lips curl up in a smile as she steps back, opening the door wide. “Won’t you come in, Agent Thomas?”

  “Thank you, Miss Mercer,” Tall replies, refusing to let her see that knowing his name flusters him though I suspect it does at least a little bit—hell, it has me quaking, and I’m a million light-years away!—and steps in. It’s a nice foyer, rough stone slabs for the floor and a wide open space behind where the floor drops away to stairs and then a lower level while the ceiling goes up above a few others stairs to an open walkway running overhead. It’s like what would happen if Escher had taken up with Frank Lloyd Wright—and then the pair of them had decided to sell out and start making McMansions in suburbia.

  “Can I take your coat?” Miss Mercer asks, striding past Tall and stopping just at the top of the stairs heading down. “Your sunglasses? Your sidearm?”

  “No, thank you.” Tall matches her fake politeness. He is at least part bureaucrat, after all. Probably on his cousin’s side. “I doubt I’ll be staying long.”

  “Come, we’ll talk in the family room.” And she leads the way down the stairs, along a short hallway, and into an enormous room. Seriously, this room is almost as long as the Matrix Chamber, though not as wide. And the ceiling in here has got to be at least twenty feet up—again, no match for the Chamber, but still seriously impressive all the same. “Being a WiB for a month ten years ago must pay a helluva lot better than I thought,” I mutter. “Or she’s wicked good at the day trading.”

  “Can I get you anything?” she asks, settling into a comfortable-looking armchair and gesturing him toward the matching one or the couch, both set up opposite it and across a coffee table made from an entire slab of redwood. I know because I had one like it, back in college. Awesome table, really distinctive, got lots of admiring looks—right up until people barked their shins on it. Those untreated edges are sharp! “Coffee?” Mercer continues. “Tea? A few cookies, perhaps?” I can’t quite read the look in her eyes when she says that. Maybe if I knew Braille.

  “No thanks,” Tall answers, choosing the other armchair. Maybe he’s thinking of my couch and assuming hers will be equally difficult to escape, though hers has yet to move or even quiver or change color. Amateur. “I’m on a strict no-cookie diet these days.”

  “I thought you might be.” She actually laughs like this is funny, though I don’t see how. Must be MiB humor. “I’d love to know how you managed that, actually. The addictive element is extremely strong.” There’s a teacup on the table in front of her, saucer and everything, but she doesn’t reach for it. Maybe she’s saving it for later.

  Tall doesn’t even bother answering. Me, I would’ve said something patently ridiculous, like “I just thought of my old gym teacher in a skin-tight bathing suit every time I heard the word ‘cookie’ and that killed any inclination to ever go near them again.” Actually, now that I think about it, yuck! Suddenly I don’t want any cookies, either! But Tall’s done playing games. “What exactly do you want, Miss Mercer?”

  She spreads her hands—I can’t help noticing they’re big, strong, but graceful, with long, tapered fingers and short but well-tended nails done in a bronze polish. What? So I’m observant—and may have spent a few months, at my most desperate, working at a nail salon. So what? I never did pedis, though—even I have my limits. “What do I want?” she replies. “Revenge, for starters. The world, after that. There really isn’t much in between, is there?” Her smile is slow, sultry, and vicious. It’s like a shark decided to get dolled up for an elegant night on the town.

  “Revenge?” Tall sounds genuinely confused. “For what? You were offered a spot in the agency. It didn’t work out. You knew when you accepted the offer what would happen if you left. You were compensated for your time, and reinserted into your life with as little alteration as possible.”

  “As little alteration as possible?” She’s up out of her chair so fast Tall actually starts, and I’m pretty sure I see him reach for his pistol. “You took two years of my life! And tried to convince me that nothing had happened, that I’d been in a stupid car accident and then been comatose all that time! You don’t think that’s a problem? You don’t think knowing what really happened, knowing I’d been a part of something I could never talk about, never find again, and never convince anyone else even existed, you don’t think that took its toll on me? You don’t think that scarred me for life? You don’t think I deserve something for all that?”

  “Geez, repeat yourself much,” I mutter. “How many times can one person say ‘you don’t think’ in a single rant, anyway? What was she, a debating champ?” I repeat myself a lot too, of course, but usually it’s just things like “Hey, now!” or “Really?” or “Worcestershire sauce!” That last one drives Tall nuts, mainly because I’ll insert it after every third or fourth word for a while, just to watch him twitch. And because I really like Worcestershire sauce.

  Tall keeps his cool, and doesn’t draw down on her either, though he does rise to his feet as well. Probably so she doesn’t tower over him—ha, see, that’s not so fun, is it? “That shouldn’t have happened,” he tells her. “The agency had only recently developed the process, and there were still a few flaws. It’s seamless now—you won’t remember anything.”

  I’m sure he thought that would be helpful somehow, all but telling her flat out that “we’re going to wipe your memory again, but don’t worry, this time we’ll do it right!” I could’ve told him, though—as far as comforting statements goes? That one, not so much.

  Clearly Miss Mercer feels the same way, because she swells up like a squeezed water balloon. “So you think you can just walk in here and tell me you’re going to wipe my memory a second time, make me forget everything that’s happened, and that’ll be okay? You think I’ll say thank you or something? Not a chance, buster!” Buster? Yeah, that’s about the first time I’ve really believed her age—who says “buster” anymore? What’s next, “gee, willikers!”? “Boy, howdy!”? “Darn tootin’!”?

  “I didn’t mean to upset you,” Tall says, and I’m pretty sure he’s being sincere. For one thing, he’s speaking clearly, without any grinding. “But obviously having these memories has caused problems for you, and we can fix that.”

  “Can you?” She takes a step closer, and now she’s in his face. “Can you really? Can you give me back the last forty years of my life!?!” She screams that last bit, so close I can count her molars—she has eleven of them, which makes me wonder where the last one went. Is it packed away in a drawer somewhere, just in case she needs a spare? Did she get one wisdom tooth taken out but decide she needed to keep the rest or else she’d be unwise the rest of her life? Did the MiBs take it out and replace it with a poison tooth, and then take that one back when they booted her, in which case I’ve got to be real careful about being around Tall when he bites down on something hard?—and her eyes look all wild and wide, like my old cat right before he went into his “look at me, I’m a whirling dervish of death, aren’t I cute?” routine. Uh-oh.

  “Tall, look out, man,” I warn, but even as I say that, a smirk forms on Miss Mercer’s face. At least I don’t have to look at those molars anymore.

  “I don’t think so, Agent Thomas,” she says, stepping back a pace, and now her voice is cool and calm. Too calm. “In fact, I don’t think I’ll be letting you do anything.” She sits back down and picks up
her teacup. “Are you sure you wouldn’t like anything to drink?”

  “No, thank you.” He sits down as well. Too damn polite, sometimes. If I were him, I’d stay on my feet, both so I could loom over her—Tall’s world-class at looming, too, I’ve asked him more than once if he studied that in college—and so I could back away quickly. But instead there he is, sitting down like this is still some demented social call. “Look, I’m sure we can work things out here. There’s no reason for anyone to get upset.”

  She smiles, but it’s not a good smile. “No, I suppose not.” Then she leans forward slightly. “Actually, can I tell you something?”

  Tall leans in as well. “Of course.”

  “Don’t listen to her, man!” I shout. “Think of Admiral Ackbar! What would he say?” But he doesn’t listen. He’s too captivated by her, which I guess makes sense—he’s pretty much had a crush on her since he first found about her, and now here she is in the flesh, and still looking pretty damn good for all her years, and he’s basically stunned. Plus I already knew he had a thing for Valkyries, tall, busty, broad-shouldered blondes, and Olivia Ann Mercer is practically the model for that type.

  So I can’t do anything but groan when she tosses the contents of her cup full in his face. I’d laugh at how silly that gesture was, but I’ve already guessed that she doesn’t do anything silly. And the way she smiles right after, slow and lazy like a cat about to pounce, doesn’t help any.

  “There, now,” she says, setting her cup back down and straightening in her seat. “Don’t you feel better?”

  “I suppose so,” Tall answers, and it’s a good thing I’m by myself because I’m pretty sure the curses I loose could blister paint and cause deafness, tremors, and partial paralysis. As it is, my couch quivers and tries to curl into a ball in the corner. That doesn’t even slow me down, though, because I recognize the slightly slurred tone in Tall’s voice all too well: