Mr Blank (Fill in the Blank)

by Justin Robinson

  “That was an Ana plot?”

  She shrugged. “I thought it was stupid, myself. Kill her young and she becomes a timeless sex symbol that never ages. Still, the Reverend Mother wanted her dead, so she dies.”

  Suddenly there was a horrible screech. My eyes went to my phone. It was smoking, and the sound that came from it had no relation to anything the machine could have made on its own. Brady and I covered our ears. The mirrors shuddered, cracked, shattered. Glass rained down onto the floor. I tucked my head in. Shards sliced along the backs of my hands, but my arteries stayed intact.

  There was a pop, and the screech stopped. My phone had exploded in a puff of white smoke. Brady and I looked at each other, shocked. The fact that my spooky red-eyed friend wanted me alive that badly said I was at least a little important. Silver Bridge in miniature. He had warned others of that collapse, and they hadn’t listened. Now he was warning me, but of what, I had no idea. Probably not worth thinking about while a trained killer like Brady was still within flying-knee range.

  I scrambled to my feet. My steps chewed glass. “It was great talking to you, but I have to run. You might want to stick around, though.” I pointed to her bare feet and the shattered glass. With a slightly nasty smile, I said, “I understand you people have bleeding problems.”

  I ran. Brady fumed, but she stayed put. I was not looking forward to our next confrontation when she’d take that out on my hide, but that was later. I only needed my hide for a little while longer. I retraced my steps at warp speed. I really wished I’d thought ahead and brought some chocolate or bacon or something I could throw like a grenade and make the Anas cower in corners, helplessly hissing.

  I skidded to a stop in the meditation hall. There were the three rows of three, seven, and seven, but no Reverend Mother and no Mina. To their credit, the Anas didn’t stir when I came in. They were deep in some kind of trance, probably all picturing cheeseburgers.

  I ran for the back and tore open the door. Mina and the Reverend Mother both started, looking up at me. The Reverend Mother was sitting in the lotus position, and Mina had her legs tucked under her. They didn’t look like they had been fighting. They might have been arguing.

  Mina’s face changed when she saw me. Surprise went to concern. The Reverend Mother’s face stayed in her Gollum-mask.

  I started babbling, definitely too excited, but I was on a severe adrenaline high. “Hey! How’s it going?! Listen, Mina, we should probably be leaving!”

  Silently, she mouthed, “What the hell happened to you?”

  I smiled bigger.

  The Reverend Mother raised an eyebrow. “You should not be here, Mr. Cohen. I was in the middle of informing Miss Duplessis about her cleansing regimen.”

  “Lots of water and B-12.” Mina didn’t sound pleased. She couldn’t keep her eyes off the right side of my head where Ingrid had slammed me into the mirror. I touched it. Blood. That explained it.

  “Oh yeah. I tripped upstairs. Broke a mirror, Reverend Mother. Really sorry about that.”

  She waved a hand. “It’s nothing. You brought us such a promising new recruit.”

  “Oh, happy to do it. Just thrilled to help out. The thing is, Mina, you’re late for that thing. The, uh, shoot with the folks from Pizza Hut.”

  Mina cocked an eyebrow. “Pizza Hut?”

  The Reverend Mother, employing some kind of conversational jiu-jitsu, lectured us. “She should not be performing her job until we can make her presentable, and certainly not for that death-peddler.”

  Death-peddler was a little harsh. Tummy-ache-peddler didn’t really have the same ring, though. “Right! Exactly, but if we want to keep her in good with the modeling community for when she’s, uh, presentable, we at least have to tell them why she has to bow out, right?”

  “I suppose…”

  I grabbed Mina’s arm. “I’ll bring her right back. You know, after that, and after she takes me to a hospital.”

  “Yes. You seem to be dripping on my floor.”

  “Sorry about that. Mina, let’s go!”

  I hustled her out of the room and that’s when I crashed. I stumbled out the front door, but she supported me easily. Bless those hips and their center of gravity. She said, “Whoa. Are you okay? What happened?”

  “It’s not Ingrid Brady. She’s not Mr. Blank.” I explained the Candidate’s real target.

  “Was Tariq at Union Station?”

  “He must have been. Probably hunting you.”

  Mina looked at my head and winced. “You have glass in your scalp.”

  And that was about it. I made her drive down the hill before I let her check it out. I tried not to bleed on the upholstery and thought about Statler. I’d have to find him, and there was an avenue open for that. It wasn’t an avenue I liked, but like it or not, it was what was there. I’d probably end up losing more blood. I hoped I’d have some left when this was over.

  -TWENTY-

  Mina said, “It doesn’t feel right, that’s all. You’d think the chemicals would, you know, do something.”

  “What? You think I’m going to mutate into some kind of atomic killing machine?”

  Her face was inches from mine. I could see her blue eyes narrow, and I filled in the rest of the exasperated expression. “Or, you know, something actually reasonable.”

  “That’s what Superglue is for. Originally anyway. It sticks to your fingers because that’s what it’s designed to do.”

  She said, “Right. Let me fill in the rest. In 1947, Nazi agent Cyrus T. Superglue developed the formula for the CIA, who immediately used it to glue our pouches shut. Oh yeah, and by the way, we’re actually marsupials.”

  It was hard not to laugh, but her fingers and the glue applicator were by the cut on my brow and every time I almost broke up, it shot a new bee sting into my face. “I didn’t mention that? Seriously, no. Superglue was originally Vietnam-era medical technology.”

  “I still say you need stitches, Rabbit.”

  “The glue’s fine. Either way, I’ll have the sexy scar.”

  “What story are you going to tell people?”

  “What, you mean I can’t tell the truth? That I was beaten up by an anorexic?”

  “Your knowledge of women is mostly theoretical isn’t it?”

  “Well, I only just now found out you guys have pouches. Out of curiosity, where is it exactly?”

  “You’re going to have to save my life at least one more time.”

  “It’s still early.”

  I had bled onto my shirt. The bruise on my jaw was starting to turn yellow, but my left eye was still nicely purple. Add to that the red over my right eye, and my face was starting to look like a bowl of Lucky Charms. At least there was no way I could get any orange on me.

  Mina said, “So we know for a fact it’s the Anas that tried to have me killed.”

  “Yep.”

  “And now that they think I’m defecting?”

  I shrugged. “It’s possible they called off the hit. I mean, we know the Assassins aren’t collecting anything, and the Russians are probably a little distracted by that whole ‘leading them into an ambush’ thing, not that they’re going to tell anyone that a bunch of spacemen shot them up.”

  “So I’m not really in any danger.” That got me. She had no reason to tag along with me. Her problem had been solved, at least in the short term. By staying with me, she was actually putting herself back in harm’s way. I was a liability.

  “Yeah.”

  “Great. I’m going home.”

  I tried not to look like she’d just shot my dog and thrown it in a mass grave with the rest of the doggie dissidents. “No problem. Where is home exactly?”

  Home for Mina was Silver Lake. She lived a few blocks from the reservoir, on a low hill. Our places were only ten minutes away from one another. She had me pull up to a one-story house with a long driveway that ran along one side. The house was white, with large windows that reminded me a little of a church. It looked like old LA
to me, a place where a bit player had probably died in the ’40s and was a stop on one of the lower-rent tours. She had a small lawn and even some rose bushes planted under her windows. There were none of the concessions to paranoia that I might have expected from a single woman, but to be fair, my perceptions were a bit warped and I was running on something like two hours of forced unconsciousness.

  I pulled up and stayed put as she unlocked her door. She was half out before she noticed I hadn’t turned off the engine. She said, “Aren’t you coming in? You look like you could use some coffee.”

  Coffee was only ranked third on what I needed: a Scarface mound of cocaine would be number one, and a giant syringe of adrenaline into my left ventricle would be number two. Coffee had the advantage of being both legal and less stabby. I didn’t say this because my mouth had chosen that moment to dry out. “Yeah, sounds good.”

  I turned the car off. Mina pointed to the briefcase of phones. “You should take those. You know, just in case.”

  This was true. I never wanted to miss a call from that creepy seven-foot bastard, especially if Mina were planning to poison me. I grabbed the case and followed her. We went up her tiled steps and she said, “Could you? My spare keys are inside.”

  As I knelt to pick her lock, I noticed something. “How scratched was your lock yesterday?”

  “I don’t know. Why?”

  “Someone might have broken in.”

  “Shit,” she said. Yeah, that summed it up. “What’s the plan?”

  I tried the door. It was locked. “We should go.”

  “No. I’m going in there. We’re going to check it out, stay on our toes, and if someone’s in there, we’re going to knock them out, call the cops, or both.”

  I said, “That was going to be my next suggestion.”

  I picked the lock, paused, listened. Opened the door, paused, listened. If Mina really was loyal, I should probably go first; and if she was gearing up to betray me, better now than later. I listened some more. The place was completely silent.

  We stepped into a short hallway. Small arches on the left and right opened into other rooms. Farther down the hall, I could see doorways. There was a door right next to us. Mina opened it. Closet, some coats. Mina reached in and pulled out two golf clubs. She handed me one. “See, now we have an actual plan.”

  I waved the club. “This is a hobby, not a plan.”

  She brushed past me, locking her eyes with mine, but she didn’t say anything. She made it to the two arches and peeked. Nothing. I followed her. Turned out, they led to the living room on the left and a little breakfast nook on the right. No assassins, upper or lower case, waiting in either. The kitchen was empty; so was the bathroom, which was ridiculously clean and stuffed with products that had fruit and flowers on the labels. We opened the door to her bedroom. No one was waiting. Her bed wasn’t made, still mussed from when she had last slept in it. She had a framed poster of Laura on one wall, Double Indemnity on the other. On the wall behind her bed, a patchwork quilt. Her makeup table looked obsessively organized. The drawers of her antique dresser were closed. Her bookcase had names like Hammett, Chandler, Reichs, and Mankell.

  She said, “If someone was here, no one’s here now.”

  “They probably came in yesterday or the day before and just got tired of waiting.”

  She was silent for a minute. “Do you want an ice pack? For your eye, I mean?”

  “Which one? No, it’s fine. I’ll, uh, I’ll go sit down.”

  I turned around and went into her living room. A window looked out onto her street, and the curtains were open. This was the room she presented to the public, and it was spotless. I put the case of phones on her coffee table. She had some personal knickknacks strewn around. Some of which I expected: the Venus figurine, the collection of Isises and Basts, the subscription to EW. Some of which I should have expected, but I never imagined: photos of Mina with a beefy blond guy, an older couple that was probably her parents. She had a rack of CDs that showed taste that I found annoying: everything but Boston. One thing that I maybe should have guessed: a picture of Mina holding a mottled lop rabbit, snuggling it for all she was worth. Her couch was covered in so many pillows and afghans I wasn’t sure where the couch part actually was. Still, I sat down. I was looking at her mantle and the flatscreen over it, wondering if I should snoop further. I thought I’d rather lie down for a bit.

  The last few days were heavy on me. Maybe I should rest my eyes for a bit. No harm in that. I could still hear Mina if she tried to sneak up on me with an icepick or something. Quick rest, then run the last few miles of this marathon.

  Suddenly, I was in that room in San Pedro, but it was also the living room of my apartment. My axolotls were the size of border collies. Mina came in, naked. She gave me a come-hither look and walked back into my bedroom, which had turned into the reservoir. I tried to follow her but I ran into a hammer, but the nice part was that the hammer had made me some coffee that smelled like vanilla. Mina was trying to get me to find her, but she kept repeating, over and over again, “I’m Mr. Reznick’s associate. I’m Mr. Reznick’s associate. I’m Mr. Reznick’s associate.”

  I opened my eyes. There was a cup of coffee on a coaster sitting in front of me. Next to it, my case, open, cell phones in a pile.

  Mina’s voice filtered through. “Whatever you want to say to Mr. Reznick, you can say to me.”

  I blinked. My tongue felt thick. I was lost for a minute. I sat up and nothing swayed. I blinked again, and turned around. Mina saw me and grinned. She was on a phone. My Mason phone.

  “If that’s the case, be at Silver Lake Park in half an hour.” She hung up the phone. To me, she said, “You fell asleep. It looked like you needed it.”

  “I hope I didn’t bleed on your couch.” She shrugged. I looked out the window. Red-gold light was coming in: sunset. “How long was I asleep?”

  “A couple hours.” Mina had cleaned up; put on makeup, too. I suddenly felt very skuzzy. I still had desert dirt on the tops of my shoes. She’d had a ton of time. If she wanted me dead, she could have bludgeoned me in my sleep, drowned me in coffee, thrown me in a trunk.

  “Who was that, Stan or Neil?”

  She said, “Neil. He wants to meet. It’s about the Chain. I thought the Masons were after the Stone, not the Chain.”

  I rubbed one eye, winced, rubbed the other, winced more. “Dammit. The Masons are, but Neil’s not working for the Masons. Well, he is, but he’s with someone else, too. I smelled it on him in that bunker in San Pedro. Not sure who yet, but whoever they are, they want the Chain. I’m supposed to meet him in Silver Lake Park, then?”

  She nodded. I took a sip of the coffee. Cold. I didn’t taste bitter almonds, but I did taste French vanilla. I couldn’t recall any poisons that fit that description.

  I stood up. I had that hot muzzy nap feeling all over, but I had a meeting to get to. “Listen, Mina, I’m sorry about all of this. Thanks for, you know, the coffee, the place to sleep, the last couple days. You know. That stuff.” I stuck my hand out. “Stay safe, okay?”

  She had the same look on her face that dogs get when you make cat noises. “Um… okay?” She took my hand and tentatively shook it, like she was waiting for a punchline. I noticed she’d put earrings in.

  I took my cellphone back and put it in the case, and took that out the door. “You should feed your bunny. He’s probably wondering where you’ve been for the last couple days.”

  Her eyes flickered to the picture on the mantle. “He died in March.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry.” That would have to go down in the annals of bad goodbyes: let’s bring up her adorable dead pet. I could top that off by punching her in the stomach and keying her car.

  “Are you going to be okay? At your meeting?”

  “Neil’s pretty harmless as these things go. He had some interesting associates, but they like me better than they like him. As for his real loyalty, chances are whoever that is knows me, too. I should be fine.” I w
ent to the door, stopped, turned. “Listen, if you need anything…” I opened the case and took out a card and a pen. I wrote a number on the back and handed it over. “Call that.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “Which phone does this go to?”

  “Mine.”

  “No, which phone? Which conspiracy?”

  “Mine.”

  Her mouth opened slightly. Blood buzzed in my ears. Her eyes were locked on mine. Something tangible passed in the air between us, a presence. It was there, in that hallway, pushing the floors and walls away until nothing remained but Mina and me.

  I opened my mouth. “I should be going.”

  And it was gone.

  A minute later, so I was I, driving for the park. I didn’t turn to look at the house as I did. Was she in the window? Either option would have probably kicked my ass more than I wanted to think about. At least now when I left her, it was comfortably at home rather than in the belly of the mothership.

  I drove past the reservoir, past the place where I had climbed the fence and planted the weapon that was once again in my trunk. That was a nasty trick Mr. Blank—Statler—had pulled on me. I still needed a name on him. Maybe Neil had it, but probably not. There was a source for it, but that wasn’t going to be pleasant. Probably a good thing that Mina wouldn’t be around for that, if only because they were such weirdos. Little Green Men and the Clone Wolves were one thing, but the guys I’d have to go visit for his name were truly bizarre.

  I pulled up in front of the park. The rec center was ahead of me, the sandbox and jungle gym directly parallel. I didn’t see Neil. Briefly, I thought about snipers, but then I pictured Neil chowing down on that sandwich in the parking lot the other day and got out of the car. I should probably ask after the rest of his conspiracy. It would be good to know if the Whale was planning to do something horrible to me. I thought of Vassily carrying around one of those inflatable donuts you needed for ass-related injuries and I felt better.

  I walked through the gate in the chainlink fence, chose a bench, and sat. Part of me wanted to lie back down and pretend it was Mina’s couch, but that struck me as the gateway drug to homelessness.