Protection for Hire

by Camy Tang

  So that meant …

  “Good morning,” Mom said as she entered the kitchen, then stopped at the sight of the three of them in intense conversation. “What’s going on?”

  “I was explaining about Duane,” Alicia said.

  Mom’s mouth twisted at mention of his name, then she changed the subject. “Everyone sleep okay?”

  “Yes,” Alicia said.

  “I guess.” Paisley shrugged.

  “Like Def Leppard was playing a concert next door,” Tessa said.

  The three of them looked at Tessa. “Tell us how you really feel,” Alicia said.

  “I’m not sleeping on the couch again. Paisley can sleep there.”

  “I don’t want to sleep on a couch —”

  “How dare you make your niece sleep on a couch —”

  “I’m sure we can fit everyone somehow,” Mom said.

  “I’m six inches taller and almost twice Paisley’s age,” Tessa said.

  “You could just move out,” Alicia said angrily.

  Mom cleared her throat.

  “And live where, on what salary?” Tessa asked.

  “You could get a job,” Alicia sneered.

  Mom coughed.

  “I send out fifty to sixty resumes a week,” Tessa snapped. “And I was here first.”

  “Oh, so you’ll send your sister and niece out into the streets?”

  “You could get a job,” Tessa replied silkily.

  Alicia’s mouth puckered shut and she looked away. “I’ve been too busy raising Paisley to get a job.”

  “A-hem!” Mom nearly coughed up a loogie to get their attention. “We have plenty of space. We’ll clean out the spare room and put that storage stuff in the sunroom.”

  Tessa was a little surprised at Mom’s sudden willingness to clean out Dad’s old office. Right after Dad left, her mother had been hysterical-psycho insistent that they leave Dad’s old office the way it was. A few years later, her bitterness had foamed over and she’d gone through the room, intending to throw away everything inside, but something about being in the room for the first time in years calmed her down, and instead she’d simply boxed everything up and used it as a storage room. She became angry-psycho agitated whenever her daughters asked to clear out the room, so they stopped mentioning it and pretended it didn’t exist.

  “I, uh, think it’s still got the daybed in there,” Tessa said.

  “In the sunroom, that stuff will be fine over the winter, but come spring, the sun will damage it,” Alicia protested.

  She could just say, “I want my sister to enjoy the torture of sleeping for months on a three-foot-long saggy couch rather than work to clean up an old, unused room.”

  “We’ll install those dark shades on the windows,” Mom said. “It can even be a spare bedroom if we can get rid of enough stuff.”

  “And how are we going to afford it?” asked the jobless sister who was too lazy, scared, and unmotivated to find a job for the first time since her daughter was born.

  “We’ll be cleaning out the room — garage sale!” Mom’s face lit up. Garage sales were like Macy’s stores to her — hours of unceasing, endless wonder and amazement.

  This friendly, reasonable version of her mother was completely unfamiliar and maybe a little unpredictable. But Tessa said, “I’m cool with it.” Anything to keep her room. She’d already gotten rid of all the knives and swords from her personal collection, but she never knew if she had forgotten a stiletto hidden somewhere from her teen years, and if Paisley found it, Alicia would go Michael-Myers-crazy again.

  “I’m not,” Alicia said. “Can’t you just find a place to stay with some of your yakuza friends? I don’t understand why you sold your condo. For a supposedly smart woman, sometimes you act completely crazy —”

  Tessa didn’t really expect her selfish sister to suddenly become unselfish and easygoing, but this constant attacking put her back up. “Alicia,” Tessa interrupted in a low, succinct voice, “I am going to tell you this one more time.”

  Alicia paused in the middle of her tirade with surprise in her eyes and pink in her cheeks.

  “The reason I won’t go back to my yakuza friends is the same reason I sold my yakuza-money-purchased condo, and the same reason I won’t work for Uncle Teruo again. I’m done with that life. I’m trying to be normal, which is what you kept harping at me to be all those years before I went to prison.”

  The flush in Alicia’s cheeks deepened.

  “As soon as I find a job, I will move out,” Tessa said.

  Mom pouted, but didn’t say anything in response.

  “When I do, you can rule this castle the way you want. Until then, you’re going to just have to deal with it.”

  Alicia’s eyes narrowed. “Well, work harder to find a job fast.”

  Tessa was quite proud of herself when she refrained from retorting, “What about fifty to sixty resumes a week is not working hard?” Then again, she did bite her tongue hard enough to draw blood.

  “You should take that bodyguard job,” Paisley said. Tessa had forgotten she was here.

  “The unpaid one?” Mom asked.

  “Elizabeth did promise to pay me when she got her money back.”

  “Yes, yes, just take it, take it,” Alicia said impatiently. “She’ll probably pay you before you actually find permanent work.”

  Were the only jobs available to her jobs like the one yesterday? (The interviewer for the janitor position had asked her to take her top off. Tessa had walked out.)

  Not if she was careful. And she thought she’d actually be a really good bodyguard. Hadn’t she worked to disable bodyguards all the time when working for her uncle?

  She also liked Elizabeth, with her maple syrup accent and bubbly personality, only slightly dimmed by her years of being used as a punching bag. She made Tessa feel like a real person, someone she wanted to get to know, and not an ex-yakuza.

  Alicia stomped toward the coffeemaker. “The least you could have done was start the coffee,” she snipped.

  Tessa hadn’t lived with her sister under the same roof since Alicia hightailed it out of the house when she was eighteen. And now she’d be living with Mom and Alicia? She might as well draw a red target on her forehead.

  She went to the living room while Alicia and Mom went about making breakfast. Tessa’s new cell phone — which Mom had gotten for her out of frustration when people kept calling the home phone — was on the coffee table, and she dialed Wings shelter.

  The sooner she moved out of her mom’s house, the less likely she’d turn Michael-Myers-crazy herself.

  Chapter 5

  The Michael Meyers case was going to kill him. Not just the ribbing he got from his colleagues about his client’s name, but because the man had the organization of a monkey. In the wild.

  “Abby, did the interrogatory responses from Meyers’ lawyer show up yet?” Charles entered his legal secretary’s office and glanced up from the documents he was reading.

  Abby, normally efficient and unruffled, had a deer-in-the-headlights look as she looked at him while on the telephone with someone. “Yes, ma’am. Right away, ma’am. No, ma’am. Yes, you are correct, ma’am.”

  Only one woman in Charles’s life would warrant four ma’ams from his Oregon-born secretary. Charles held his hand out for the telephone headset, and Abby almost hurled it at him in her haste to pass the buck.

  “Hi, Mama,” he said.

  “Charles! Did you know that Macy’s has eight floors?”

  Alarm shot through him, and it took icy thoughts of the North Pole to keep him calm. “Really, Mama? Shreveport is really stepping up these days.”

  “Shreveport?” Mama’s light laugh tinkled on the phone. “Charles, honey, I’m in San Francisco.”

  The Eagle has landed. Alert all battleships.

  “Mama, you’re in Union Square all by yourself?” What if something happened to her? He needed to go pick her up right now.

  “Charles, you worry too much.
I’m having a great time.”

  Sure, alone in an eight-story Macy’s store with thousands of strangers around her. “Where are your suitcases, Mama?”

  “Oh, I had the taxi take me to the Hilton, and I asked the bellman to hold my bags for me. Then I headed to Union Square.”

  “Mama, you’re not staying at the Hilton.”

  “Well, if they didn’t bother to check that before they took my bags, that’s their fault now, isn’t it?”

  Outrageous. As always. “You’re early,” Charles said carefully.

  “Your Aunt Coco helped me pack.” The words were bitten out.

  Uh, oh. “That’s … nice of her.”

  “That woman could skin a deer with just the sound of her voice,” Mama snapped. “When she first invited me to stay, all she could talk about was the wonderful times we’d have together and how she was looking forward to eating my cooking, but in the last few weeks, it was ‘Vivian, we might need your bedroom soon,’ and ‘Vivian, your trunks are taking up so much space in the garage.’ And Charles, she had the gall to tell me my Thai-Italian fusion lobster fingers were too minty! The nerve! Why, I almost threw her precious African violet into my frying oil. That would have made it less minty, let me tell you.”

  “Mama, Aunt Coco has other strengths besides … hospitality.”

  “Well, I had already planned to come out to San Francisco, so here I am!”

  Charles covered the mouthpiece and told Abby, “Reschedule all my appointments this afternoon. I have to go pick up my mama. I’ll come back to the office tonight.” He had to if he wanted to catch up on all the work he wouldn’t be doing this afternoon. When Eddie had called Abby to make the appointment with Charles for the indoor climbing wall — without telling him — he should have said no yesterday, but he had never rock climbed, and it had only been for an hour …

  Well, he’d be paying for it now. He’d never make partner otherwise.

  “And Abby, the next time my brother calls to make an appointment with me, tell me right away.”

  Abby nodded, but her gray eyes reproached him gently. “You hadn’t seen him in over a month because you canceled the last lunch appointment you made with him.”

  That’s right, he’d forgotten about that. One of the senior partners had wanted to speak to him, so he’d canceled his lunch with Eddie to squeeze the meeting into his packed schedule. But really, Eddie understood, right? After all, it had been the head of Charles’s practice group.

  Mama’s voice interrupted his thoughts. “Oh, Charles, they have a cannoli making kit! That’s exactly what I need!”

  She had said the magic word. If Charles had a downfall, it wasn’t the beignets he grew up with; it was the cannoli he had discovered when he first moved to California. There was a great restaurant in North Beach that made the dessert, with a crispy shell, decadent mascarpone cream filling with chocolate chips, and smothered in homemade chocolate sauce. “Mama, you’re making cannoli now?” He tried to keep the excitement out of his voice. At least it wasn’t gumbo sushi.

  “And what a fantastic espresso maker. It foams your milk for you. Excuse me, how much is this?”

  He needed to get to Macy’s before Mama started borrowing on next quarter’s income check.

  But he’d make sure she bought the cannoli kit first.

  “I’m here for the food,” Mama told him.

  “The food?” Charles followed her around Macy’s, holding the things she wanted to buy and surreptitiously putting some back when she wasn’t looking. “You already had the clam chowder and sourdough bread bowl on Pier 39 the last time you were here.”

  “No, not tourist food. Oh, this is a nice whisk.” She held up something that looked like a satellite for communicating with aliens. “Do you have a whisk?”

  No, he didn’t. “Yes.”

  She handed it to him to put on top of the pile and continued down the aisle. “I want to eat the different ethnic foods in San Francisco.”

  He “accidentally” dropped the whisk back into the bin it had come from. “North Beach has good Italian food.” And cannoli.

  “And I want to take cooking classes. Oh, now I definitely need this.” Mama brandished a stainless steel snail that had instead of a sluggy body, four wicked-looking circular blades.

  Charles ducked. “Mama, be careful with that thing. What in the world is it?”

  “An herb cutter. For mincing fresh herbs.”

  She handed it to him, and he gingerly took it from her. He’d have to be careful about dropping this one back on the shelf. He might slice off a finger.

  “Anyway, cooking classes. I’m too late to register for the cupcake class at Sur La Table —”

  “Sir La-who?”

  She shook her head. “And you’re part French. What am I going to do with you? Sur La Table. It’s a kitchen store. Anyway, the cupcake class isn’t given again until next month —”

  Shucks.

  “ — but I signed up for the Brazilian cooking one next week.” Her blue eyes were brighter than Xenon headlights.

  “Mama, all next week I’m in court.”

  She pffft-ed away his objections. “I’ll just drive to the store myself.”

  “In San Francisco?” He had a horrible vision of his NASCAR-fan mother going bumper-to-bumper with northern California drivers. Worse, city drivers.

  “I’m a very good driver,” she said, her eyes wide and daring him to disagree.

  She wasn’t a bad driver — she was a crazy driver. “You’re a good driver, Mama, but parking at Union Square is something like $25 per half hour.” He only exaggerated a little. Like eight times. “Maybe Eddie can take you.”

  “Charles, I’m not a Royal Doulton teacup. I can find my way around a city. If worse comes to worst, I’ll get a cab.”

  Before or after being mugged? Knowing Mama, she’d give the mugger her handbag, invite him to church, and promise to cook supper for him afterwards.

  “But there’s another reason for me to be in San Francisco,” Mama said. “I want you to help Elizabeth St. Amant.”

  “Who?”

  “My goddaughter. She used to live in Louisiana, but now she lives in San Francisco. You used to play with her at church picnics. Do you remember her?”

  “Not really.” He had a vague memory of a chubby little girl with dark frizzy curls.

  “She didn’t change her name when she married. But the St. Amants had wanted her to marry some boy they picked out for her — his family owned a million acres of land or something like that — and when she married Heath Turnbull instead, they had a conniption fit.”

  “People still do that? Arranged marriages?”

  “It wasn’t arranged, really, but they’d been strongly encouraging a match since Elizabeth and the million-acre boy had been friends all their lives. Anyway, Elizabeth moved to San Francisco with her husband, but she called me a few days ago. She told me her husband Heath had hit her son.”

  Charles’s hands dug into the cardboard of the cannoli maker box he was carrying.

  “She didn’t say so, but I think …” Mama looked away, her hand dropping from the shiny colander on the shelf. The two last knuckles of her right hand were abnormally swollen, and the pinky and ring fingers stuck out at odd angles, the way they’d been for fifteen years.

  Charles still remembered clearly the day Daddy had broken those.

  “Elizabeth had tried calling the St. Amants, but they’d cast her out when she married Heath and they refused to do anything for her. But Elizabeth’s mama’s family, the Tolberts, had been good friends with my mama’s family for years. None of the Tolberts are alive now, so Elizabeth called me as the next best thing.”

  “What does she need? A restraining order? Divorce papers?”

  “I’m not sure, but I have the number of where she’s staying, and I said I’d talk you into helping her. She told me she needed a lawyer. Poor girl was crying and hysterical.”

  “Sure, I’ll help her,” he said, ignoring th
e clamoring in his head about the mountainous workload he had. He really couldn’t afford to take on a pro bono case unless he dropped one of the cases he already had. And any of his colleagues would be only too happy to pick up more billable hours in their race to make partner.

  But the bastard had hit her son. Had probably been hitting her for years. Charles wasn’t going to sit around and let that happen.

  He had vowed he’d never do that again.

  Chapter 6

  What in the world are you wearing?” Elizabeth demanded when Tessa walked into Wings domestic violence shelter.

  Tessa looked down at her dark gray pantsuit. “What? Are there creases on my shirt?”

  “You look like a gangster.”

  Not the look she’d been aiming for. “I thought I looked professional.” As opposed to the yakuza she knew, who tended to be a bit flashy.

  “I guess I was expecting more Alias and less Secret Service,” Elizabeth said. “Here, take off your suit jacket.”

  Good, because she didn’t like how it constricted her shoulders. Tessa shrugged it off and dropped it over the back of a nearby couch. The two women sitting on the couch looked up at her and scuttled away.

  Elizabeth’s dark eyes flashed after them. “I don’t understand why they do that every time you come in here. You watch the children, for goodness’ sake.”

  “And they watch me when I’m with them. Probably afraid I might get hungry and start snacking on one of them.”

  Elizabeth laughed, then returned to studying Tessa. “Take your hair out of that bun — it’s already falling down anyway.”

  “Oh, man. It took me forever to do it up this morning.” Tessa pulled out all eighty-one bobby pins and finger-combed her straight, slippery hair. She had considered using hair spray to keep it in place but hadn’t wanted to ask Alicia to borrow hers. Her sister might have given her mace instead, just for kicks.

  Elizabeth frowned at Tessa’s white button-down shirt. “Okay, now roll up your cuffs a little. You have such beautiful slim wrists.” She sighed.

  Tessa stared at them. “Really?” She had just thought they were … well, wrists.