Shadows in the Water

by Kory M. Shrum

  Her lipstick was a dark purple today, the color of bruises or rotting meat. And every time he looked at her, his stomach turned. He kept his eyes on the mess in his hands.

  “I’ve never seen the bones in my fingers,” King countered. “Fortunately.”

  Why did assemble-yourself projects have to be so goddamn complicated? The only easy part had been the one-piece jaw, which snapped into place and hung from the base of the skull. Every other step in this endeavor was like pushing a boulder up an oil-slicked hill.

  “This skull face is so awesome.” Piper leaned forward and adjusted the hood on the skeleton. Every time she leaned toward the skeleton, the ladder beneath her wobbled and King’s heart hitched.

  His emotions warred. He was both furious she might touch the skeleton in a way that’d decimate his hard-earned progress, and simultaneously fearful she would fall off the rickety ladder and break her neck.

  “Can’t you be careful?” King snapped, uncomfortable with the tight whine of his voice.

  Piper ignored him. “It’s going to scare the bejeezus out of the customers.”

  “Are you sure that’s what you want?” King asked, looking from the finger bones to Mel hopefully. “You don’t want people to run screaming from the shop, do you?”

  “I’m tellin’ y’all. Spooky foo sells! Since I installed the door chime—”

  “Mel, that isn’t what spooky foo means,” Piper interjected.

  “—since we installed,” King said, seizing the ladder as it started to tip.

  “Sales have gone up by 200%. This guy here is going make it even better.”

  “200%?” Piper snorted, righting herself. “So what? $50 this month?”

  Mel cast her a sharp sideways glance. “Perhaps you haven’t seen the full vision yet.” The fortune teller reached behind the skeleton and flicked a switch on his back. “Piper, go on outside and then come back in.”

  Piper descended the ladder and King was grateful for a chance to let go. His arm ached from clutching its rails. A warm breeze followed Piper into the shop as she strolled in, and King became aware of the time. Morning was nearly over and he hadn’t made any of the phone calls he’d intended to make on the Venetti case. But he’d promised Mel he would help her with this skeleton and he couldn’t duck out before he’d finished, no matter how strongly the case file called to him from his coffee table upstairs.

  A shriek blared through the shop and King fell back, dropping the ladder. It was as if someone had grabbed a cat and swung it overhead, helicopter style. No. Five cats howling in fear and fury as the skeleton’s jaw dropped down low enough to accommodate an infant. The eyes burned bright red. Twin bulbs shone in their sockets.

  King’s body flushed with adrenaline. An immediate tremor seized his hands.

  Then the sound ceased, the jaw closed, and the red lights dulled to a flat black.

  For a moment, no one spoke.

  “That’s—” Piper searched for a word, eyes wide, one hand on her chest.

  “Perfect!” Mel clapped her pale palms together.

  “Shocking,” Piper said, licking her lips. “Uh, what’s the return policy on this thing again?”

  “We’re not returning it. We’re going to move it closer to the door,” Mel said, her face lit up with her excitement. She practically danced from foot to foot.

  “Okay but you better add some good health insurance to my work benefits package. Every time this thing goes off, I’m sure I lose a decade of life. By the end of the week, I’ll have gray hair.”

  King pointed at the gold Mardi Gras beads hanging from her neck. “Did you have those a moment ago?”

  Piper grinned and wagged her eyebrows. “Nope. I just got them.” She jabbed a thumb over her shoulder at the street beyond the windows as if this explained everything.

  Mel’s excitement dimmed. “Must I remind you that while you work for this establishment, you must maintain a respectable reputation? This isn’t Bourbon Street.”

  Piper pursed her lips. “I know. I don’t get paid enough to forget it. And haven’t you ever heard of gender equality? Or I think your generation called it ‘women’s lib’? Bottom line: I’ll show what I want, when I want.”

  King shoved one finger bone onto the peg of another, trying to arrange them from smallest to largest. This must have upset the skeleton because it emitted another toe-curling shriek.

  Once Mel’s shoulders dropped away from her ears she said. “It has a 60-day return policy. But we won’t need to return it, because we’re going to see sales skyrocket.”

  “Oh, so we’re going to make $100 a day,” Piper huffed. She rolled her eye. “Sounds magical.”

  King felt Mel go still beside him.

  “Pippy, go to the back and see if we have anything that’ll go with this.”

  “What goes with a plastic skeleton?” Piper snorted, twirling her newly earned beads between her fingers.

  “Look around,” Mel said. But King heard the hard edge to her voice despite the simple instruction. And he thought it was no coincidence Mel wouldn’t look at the girl as she spoke.

  Piper disappeared down the aisles toward a door marked Employees Only to the left of the curtained nook where Mel dispensed fortunes.

  “You all right?” King asked. He hoped he sounded nonchalant, but he didn’t. As he shoved the stump of a hand onto its wrist, the force and irritation with his task bled through.

  “God help me, I love that girl, but sometimes...” her voice trailed away. King thought she was finished, but Mel’s voice came hot and fast on a fresh wave of anger. “I mean, does she think I’m trying to tank my business? Does she think I’ve got nothing better to do than let this place eat me out of house and home?”

  “She’s a kid,” he said. “She doesn’t realize what she’s saying.”

  And this is my home too. Even though he’d only been in the city for a few months, it was home. He had a breakfast place which served buttermilk flapjacks and the best eggs hollandaise, with a thick yellow sauce he could mop up with a salty biscuit. He had his coffee place. They knew not only his name but to put four sugars and a creamer on the counter with every order. What would horrify Mel, he knew, was his first-name-basis with a few of the bartenders at local watering holes, and he knew what drinks they did best. Kevin made a smooth dirty martini. Hank was a master of whiskey sours. Gemma made an unbeatable gin and tonic.

  And there were the places themselves. The quiet streetcar stops. The steps outside the aquarium and Spanish plaza, a quiet place perfect for an afternoon stroll-and-sit. And he could have a beer there too.

  All of this on top of the place where he put his head every night and the balcony from which he said goodnight to the world.

  “You could raise my rent,” he said and gave her a nudge with his shoulder.

  Mel stilled beside him. She considered the face of the skeleton with the same intense stare she gave young girls with their smooth palms in hers. What did she see in those black sockets? The dark glass of the unlit bulbs shining in the dim light around them.

  “We’re gonna be all right,” she whispered to the boney man. “Life is all about cycles. Up and down. The tide in and out. We’re down and out now, that’s all. When I saw this broken shop, I knew I could make her fly. I believe it, Mr. King. After these ten years, for better or worse, I still believe it.”

  Her eyes were glistening and wet when she met his gaze again.

  Hurricane Katrina swallowed up the city and spit her out the other side, and many of the shops and businesses in the French Quarter were damaged. Fresh from a divorce with money in her pocket after a hefty settlement, Mel bought the place on the cheap from a couple of northerners who had neither the interest nor the patience to deal with FEMA or the insurance company in order to rebuild. One breaking dam was enough for those New Englanders.

  And King couldn’t help but wonder if she’d seen something of herself in the boarded-up shop. Hollowed out, half-drowned in an ugly divorce and nowhere t
o go but up. She had to remake more than these four walls. She had to rebuild a life after thirty years with a man who drank too much Johnny Walker and couldn’t tell a punching bag apart from a jaw bone.

  “I’m going to have to let Piper go. At least for a while. I can cover her this week and next, but after—” Mel’s voice hitched in her throat. She sucked in a deep breath through flaring nostrils. “It’s gonna break her heart.”

  The muscles in King’s chest tightened. “Don’t do that. What do you pay her? $10 an hour? Twenty hours a week?”

  “There about.”

  “I’ll cover her. I can get her to do some of the little jobs for my case.” King’s offer was out of his mouth before he could consider what he was saying. But he was right. He could cover her. Brasso had hired him as a freelancer to find the Venetti woman, and he’d added the open-ended plus expenses clause. Piper could be his plus expenses.

  He wasn’t sure how long he could draw out the case, but if he could ease Mel’s financial burden for a while, he’d do it.

  Mel’s black hawk eyes narrowed and her lip curled. “Out of the cast iron and into the blaze!”

  “Not dangerous work,” he said, pretending to be wounded. “Photocopying. Googling. Maybe a few innocuous phone calls.”

  King hated making phone calls. He’d pay anyone to do that unpleasant task for him.

  Mel worked her lower lip, chewing off a great deal of the purple lipstick. “She’ll love it. Any excuse to be nosey as hell.”

  “I’ll talk to her if you want,” King asked with raised eyebrows. “Or she doesn’t even have to know I’m paying.”

  “No, I’ll talk to her,” Mel said scratching at an elbow absent-mindedly. “You know she’s here morning and night. Yesterday I gave her a shift from 10-2. So, I had enough time to run to the bank and pick up a shipment from the French market. Then at midnight when I was taking out the garbage, I caught her sitting on the curb across the street, smoking a cigarette and playing on her phone.”

  King didn’t add anything to this. He wondered what Piper’s home life was like. The girl lived with her mother, he knew, but this wasn’t unheard of for a twenty-year-old. Young women came by the shop asking for her. Never boys, or men. Mel didn’t mind, because sometimes they bought candles or incense. But the fact remained these girls weren’t meeting Piper at home, or at least, he didn’t think so. And King’s nose told him there must be a reason.

  The door banged open behind them, and their conversation ceased. Mel and King turned in unison, reluctantly pulling their gaze away from one another, and saw Piper’s butt first. White jean shorts cut off mid-thigh and halfway through an almond-colored birthmark. Then the rest of her came up, and she straightened, smiling.

  She wore oversized sunglasses, a feather boa the color of wine, and a red and yellow foam finger with Loyola Wolf Pack printed on it. She shook her hips in time with her pumping arm while humming the basketball team’s entrance tune.

  “How’s this for our slender man?”

  Mel’s eyes met King’s. “She’s all yours.”

  13

  The line was quiet.

  “Well?” Konstantine urged. He tried not to let his desperation for answers seem too obvious. He feared it was too late for such caution.

  “Nah, it’s nothing,” the lookout said at last. “The roof is empty.”

  Konstantine’s disappointment fell like a weight against his shoulders. His phone beeped. The number was blocked, but he knew whose voice he would hear when he answered.

  “Report to me in an hour,” Konstantine said and terminated the call. Then he switched lines. “Hello?”

  “Konstantine? Mr. Konstantine?” An American voice with an exaggerated drawl responded immediately. His name was like rocks in the man’s mouth. Kon-stan-teee-nnna. Horrible. Who taught him how to speak?

  “Yes? Who is this? How did you get this number?” Konstantine hoped his irritation was authentic. He was disappointed his crew had not spotted the girl, but he wasn’t surprised. He knew what she was and how difficult it would be to snare her. He hoped the trap he was laying for this caller proved more fruitful.

  “I’ve heard your name around, in certain company. I hear you are a man of many talents, Mr. Konstantine. I’m looking to employ those talents.”

  Good. The bait Julio had placed worked.

  “I am a busy man,” Konstantine said, soaking his words with indifference. He dragged his fingers across his forehead and thought of the stakeout happening on the Austin rooftops as he spoke. It was difficult to switch the mind from one task to another. “Please skip the flattery and tell me who you are and what you want.”

  The man laughed. “Direct! I can appreciate that.”

  He told Konstantine who he was and what he wanted.

  Konstantine’s heart was pounding by the time the man finished.

  “Are you still there?” the man drawled. “Did I lose you?”

  “I’m here,” Konstantine managed to say. He’d broken into a sweat and his shirt stuck to the high back leather chair in which he sat.

  “After Colorado legalized marijuana, we have five other states trying to push the same bill,” the man said. He spoke as if Konstantine should find this news horrific. “We’ve got to curb this as fast as we can. And it will be beneficial for your own enterprise, won’t it?”

  “We do not deal in marijuana,” he said, digging deep for calm. He’d wanted the man to take the bait and he’d taken it. Don’t fuck this up now.

  “They’ll legalize marijuana now and cocaine tomorrow and heroin the day after. It will be a disaster. Did you know they have clean needle exchanges on the streets?”

  Konstantine knew of the same policy in the EU. Mitigating the spread of blood borne pathogens was more important to health departments than keeping drugs off the street.

  “Come here, on my dime of course, and get the information we need. Information is as good as gold to these men. If we have the right information, we can swing the votes. We can keep the system running the way we like it. I’ll make it worth your time. I promise.”

  This man was willing to pay a gross sum to protect his larger investments and wealth.

  Konstantine thought Americans fretted over their money the way one worries over their children. They had no idea how much they truly had—or didn’t—or where the bottom of the barrel sat.

  So much of the world suffered from this illness. These men believed their money made them powerful. Omnipotent.

  They sit on mounds of money and wish for more. But money makes a man lazy. Unimaginative and limited. Those who do without are forced to be clever, forced to keep their claws and minds sharp.

  He had money from Padre Leo and a name from his father. True. But he would not let it weaken him. He eyed a more valuable prize than an unending bank account—true freedom. True and limitless power.

  And once he had Thorne’s daughter, it would be his.

  “I do not have to come to America in order to do what you ask,” Konstantine said, wearily. “I can produce information on these men here.”

  Silence on the line.

  “I prefer to work with men I know. Whom I’ve actually seen,” the man said. His tone set the hairs on the back of Konstantine’s neck to rising. “And you should come to Texas so you’ll have a chance to see how your stateside affairs are working. I understand you have contacts right here in Texas.”

  Julio had done his job well.

  “I do,” Konstantine said cautiously.

  “Perhaps they would benefit from direct attention.”

  And if I came to America, did this hacking job for you, then I would have a chance to look for her myself. I could come to her.

  “If this price is right, I will come,” Konstantine said. He imagined the moment of meeting her. In a dark club, seeing her at the bar watching him, measuring him the way she had measured Castle. Would she take him there? Kill him in this winter paradise Castle spoke of? Would he learn firsthand what happened to
Angelo and the others?

  He knew encountering a leopard in the wild was a death sentence. But he still sought her out, convinced that if she only heard him out, she would know the truth of his vision. Of his plans.

  “Can you come tomorrow?” the man asked.

  “No,” Konstantine refused. Outright. On principle. He agreed to board a plane, a private jet sent by the man himself, in three days and then terminated the call.

  Konstantine turned his cell phone off and sat back against the headboard.

  Again, he saw her. Tight black clothing hugging her firm body. The way she looked up at him through her lashes. The glint of metal pressed to his cheek.

  He reached up and touched the small scar under his chin. It was rough, catching on his fingernail. It was an old wound. The skin puckered into a line where no hair grew.

  He would never forget what she’d looked like that night, the moment she stepped out of his closet and pressed a knife to his throat. The way she’d made his heart race.

  She wasn’t more than nineteen or twenty and it had been at least a year since he’d seen her last. This was the first night she’d appeared to him awake, and not as a sleeping doll in his bed.

  The sight of her body so close to his, the smell of her sweat and skin. It gave him an erection. Then and now. Already his hand was on the button of his pants, undoing them, slipping a slick palm beneath the waistband.

  Blood thrummed between his legs as he saw her lying beside him. Her hair fanned over his pillow. Her cheeks flushed with color as her brows knit together against dark dreams.

  “I want you,” he whispered to the woman made of darkness, the woman unfurling in his mind. As if admitting it aloud, he could summon her across the distance. But she did not come when called.

  He would see her again. He’d find a way.

  Unlike the lazy and greedy American, he knew true power when he saw it. And what was worth having was worth waiting for.

  14