I dragged out my unflattering drivers’ license. He checked it, then schlepped back to his delivery van and started strapping the big plastic crate to his heaviest hand truck while I gathered up all the junk mail to ensure he didn’t fall and break his neck on it. He seemed reluctant to bring the massive crate any farther than my front hall, but I told him there was twenty bucks in it for him if he hauled it down to the basement for me, and he grudgingly acquiesced. The noise of it thumping down the stairs one tread at a time was enough to finally roust Jacob, who managed to get the guy to help him uncrate the damn thing on charm alone. It occurred to me as the console emerged that Jacob and I probably came off as a couple of nelly antique collectors…but I’d rather have a deliveryman think that about me than know the truth—that I was a prime target for Five Faith, or any other nutjob flavor of the day, if they ever figured out who I was and what I could do—so I could live with the queer stereotype just fine.
And there it was: the GhosTV. In my house. Or the basement of my house, to be more specific; I try to pretend the basement doesn’t exist. I’d always thought owning a GhosTV of my very own would be awesome—that I’d be in control of what I saw, or didn’t see, and with that kind of power, I wouldn’t be anybody’s bitch ever again. But instead it just reminded me of stretched heads and slime coatings. The basement where I never went was the best place I could think of for it…at least until I figured out if I could even handle cranking my talent up higher than seven, or not.
Lisa and I stared at it in silence for a good few minutes, and then finally she said, “Maybe you can use it for something positive. Like making sure there aren’t any really old spirits here.”
“There aren’t,” I said quickly. The ghost who’d sold me the cannery told me so. And if she’d been wrong about that, and I’d been living among repeaters all these months…well, I didn’t want to burst my own bubble. Lisa glanced at me to see if I was okay, then dropped her gaze to the stack of junk mail I suddenly realized I’d been holding in front of my chest the whole time like a shield.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing.”
As Jacob jogged back down the basement stairs, she pulled an envelope out of the stack and said, “This doesn’t look like nothing.” She checked the address, then handed it to Jacob. Red lettering on the envelope caught my eye. It had been stamped, Important: Do Not Discard. “It’s from your gym,” she said. “Thick paper, too. Really official. Did you let your membership lapse?”
Heaven forbid. “How do you know what his gym’s logo looks like?” I asked her.
“He brought me there on a guest pass last time I was in town. Cute trainers. Too bad they all like boys.”
Jacob opened his letter and read. His eyes skimmed side to side at first, but then the telltale vertical furrow appeared between his eyebrows. Lisa and I both caught on that maybe it actually was important. We watched him intently, and finally, once the tension was thicker than the fancy envelope, he started to read aloud.
“We regret to inform you that our confidential customer email list has been breeched. The unfortunate incident occurred last weekend, when a new hire who passed all of our background checks copied the database and forwarded the information to a group that claims to promote the ‘sanctity of marriage.’ We at Halsted Fitness Club appreciate the business of all our clientele, and we would not be the top-rated fitness center on the north side four years in a row without the support of the LGBT community. Halsted Fitness Club intends to pursue damages to the fullest extent of the law. Also, please be assured, your credit card information was not accessible to this individual at any time.”
So Jacob’s email hadn’t been bibled by Five Faith because he was psychic. His whole gym had been targeted—gay and straight alike—by a bunch of anti-gay creeps. Even Lisa, who’d only been there once. I supposed it was a relief. Maybe.
“They’re giving me a free month,” he said.
“I guess that’s better than nothing.”
Chapter 41
Jacob folded the letter and slipped it into his pocket, then planted his hands on his hips and scowled at the GhosTV. Did he want it upstairs…or did he want it gone? I couldn’t tell. “Maybe we should put it on a pallet,” he said. “What if the basement floods?” Just as I was thinking we probably would have noticed in April or May if the basement took on water, Lisa said, “No.” We both looked at her.
“It won’t,” she said. “It’s safe here.”
Okay, then.
As we headed toward the stairs, I wondered if maybe I’d gotten off easy in regards to the si-no up until now, at first because Lisa was hiding it, and then later because she was unsure of the moral ramifications of using it. Her time in the astral had changed her. I might not know exactly how pronounced that change was until we were able to spend more time together, but I had the sneaking suspicion that her days of being able to fake normalcy were over.
The land line started ringing when we were halfway up, and by the time we got upstairs, the machine caught it. “It’s me.” A woman’s voice. Barbara. “Listen, I know it’s last-minute, but if you and Vic can make it, Clayton’s team has a tournament in Beliot at one.” Beloit was the approximate halfway mark between our place and theirs…or maybe it was just the point at which I always had to stop and take a leak when we were on our way to visit. Jacob paused with his hand hovering above the handset, and looked to me. I wasn’t especially interested in soccer, particularly children’s soccer, but I realized I wouldn’t mind seeing Jacob’s mom and dad, and his Uncle Leon.
Especially now that the “Level-Five PsyCop Medium from Chicago” was just “Jacob’s boyfriend,” and Leon’s ghost arm didn’t make such a spectacle out of itself for me anymore. It would be a normal thing to do. Like normal people. It might even be…dare I say it? Fun.
“…he could have mentioned it sooner,” Barbara yammered on, “he always pulls this…”
“We should go,” I told Jacob.
“Really?”
I nodded. “Yeah. Let’s go.”
He picked up the phone. “Hey, Barb….”
If we wanted to make it, though, we’d need to get our asses in gear.
The poor performance of the water heater actually got us all showered in record time, since with Lisa there we only had about three and a half minutes of water apiece instead of our usual five. I made sure I wasn’t being stingy with the sunscreen. I even scrubbed it into my scalp along the part in my hair.
As I stood in my bedroom wondering which drawer I might have shoved my baseball cap in, a tangle of crap on the top of the dresser caught my eye instead. I hate clutter. It lurks there in your peripheral vision and hides the nasty supernatural stuff you’d rather be able to avoid. Jacob’s usually the culprit behind clutter, however, this particular offense was mine.
Faun Windsong’s necklace had twisted up with one of the nylon ties from the wrist restraint training in the pocket of my blazer. It sat there like a tangled jumble of trash you’d spot in the gutter grate after a big storm. We’d be going right by Sticks and Stones on the way to the expressway, since it was easier to hop on 90 from there than it was up by our place. If I shoved the necklace in a drawer, I’d probably forget it even existed—so I might as well drop it off.
It seemed like a plan. Until we actually got there, and realized every parking spot within five blocks of the store was taken. Jacob’s mood had been subdued all morning long, and though the idea that I actually seemed interested in spending time with his family had raised it up a couple of notches, the luster wore off a little bit more with each time he circled the block.
On the third revolution, I’d finally untangled the nylon tie from the necklace—although I found myself somewhat carsick from looking down. I shoved one in each pocket of my flannel shirt to keep them from getting tangled up again, and then I called Crash to see if he could meet us out front before Jacob ground his molars down to a powder.
It rang five times, and then his voicemail p
icked up.
Weird, the store should be open. I waited a few seconds, and tried again.
Voicemail.
I checked the time. Five after eleven. Maybe he was with a customer…but now we were running the risk of being late for the game, especially if we hit any snags by the tollbooths.
A car in front of us slid into a parking spot, and Jacob made a sound of annoyance deep in his throat. I tried Crash’s phone one more time—voicemail—and then I said, “Fuck it. Let’s just go. We’ll stop on the way back.”
“No.”
I glanced over my shoulder at Lisa in the back seat.
She gave me an exasperated look that conveyed, Look, pal. How should I know why? It’s not called si-no-WHY.
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, then double park and I’ll run it upstairs. I’ll be in and out in two minutes.”
Jacob flicked on the hazards. “Fine.”
Hopefully, I really would be in and out in two minutes. Crash was probably dying to hear about the California trip. Dying to see Lisa.
I wished he could have come along with us, but in a sense he was married to his store, and if he wanted to do anything social during the day, he’d have to close up shop and take a financial hit—and probably alienate his regulars who wouldn’t take too kindly to walking up all those stairs for a Fast Luck Money Drawing candle only to find “closed” scrawled on the door in chalk.
I saw the door was ajar as I rounded the landing—which was good, because I’d been starting to think that maybe Crash wasn’t answering his phone because he’d gotten lucky—so lucky that his good time had extended all night, all morning, and right though store hours—and that I’d be setting myself up for a really awkward moment of, “Hey, Vic, this is…what’s your name, again?” And there was no doubt that whoever’d been rocking Crash’s world would be very, very athletic.
But, no. No awkward moment with a nameless trick, not today, at any rate. Incense was burning, the radio was playing, and the fake dollar bills that hung from the ceiling on fishing line fluttered silently as I shouldered open the door. I was just about to call out, “What, you don’t answer your phone anymore?” when I saw the top of a head through a gap in the shelving, and realized Crash actually had been with a customer the whole time.
They were talking, and as I drew closer I could pick out the customer’s voice through an ebb in the music on the secondhand boombox.
“…don’t believe in evil, like Christians believe in evil. But there’s still darkness in the world…”
Ugh. I’d had about as much New Age philosophy as I could handle at PsyTrain. I’d be glad to ditch the ugly necklace and…oh, fuck. The guy had a knife.
And I recognized him, even from the back—his hair was all tangled, and there was lint stuck in it. His knife hand shook. It was the same guy I’d seen there the other day. Same time, come to think of it. The regular who was always buying curse deflections—Crash had said that guy creeped him out. He should have listened to his gut. “You should thank me,” the creep said, and his voice was getting louder, and edgier. Crash, I now saw, was filling a plastic bag with the money from his register.
Where was Miss Mattie? Then again, even if she was there, what could she have done? I reached for my sidearm and patted empty flannel. Great. The one time a gun would do me any good and I was unarmed. Call for backup, then. I went for my phone.
“Money is so, so dirty,” the creepy guy said. His voice was a little sing-song, in a pretend-friendly sort of way. Gooseflesh sprang up on my arms from the mere sound of it. “They don’t call it ‘filthy lucre’ for nothing. It’s a stain on your karma. Don’t you get it? I’m saving you from the darkness…wait a second—you’re not holding out on me, are you?” Crash’s arm trembled as he extended the bag to the guy, who didn’t move to take it. It did seem like a really paltry amount of bills there in the bottom of the bag. Given the utterly dismayed look on Crash’s face, I’d guess that was the whole register. Shit. “Don’t you know that lying blackens your soul? When you speak an untruth, the one you hurt the most…is yourself.”
I really didn’t like the way his voice was pitched—and the way his knuckles went white as his grip tightened on the knife, either. It was a kitchen knife, not a fighting knife. Whacked-out schizos with kitchen knives are a hell of a lot more dangerous than hardened criminals who just want to get the money and get out.
As I chose the most covert path back to the stairwell so I could call him in, I heard him say, “Do you suck cock?” Conversationally, almost—the way he’d observed that Crash cut hair. “You look like you’d be good at it.” And that was when I realized I couldn’t wait. Not for a patrol car. Not even for Jacob, who was right outside. From where I stood in relation to the creep, he was ripe for a chokehold, but since I was one of Chicago’s Finest, a chokehold would only end up getting me sued. Normally, my reaction to that would be, fine—sue me. But I’d recently done half a million wristlocks on my buddy Sando. From every conceivable position.
I’d always figured training maneuvers couldn’t possibly carry over into real life. Perps move faster than trainers. Perps are actually trying to hit you, and to run. They’re holding real weapons. But I’d never accounted for the fact that I’d be looking at my friend on the opposite end of that real weapon, and that my own adrenaline would be sky-high.
“You’d hold back on that too, wouldn’t you?” the creep said. “You think you’re better than me? What makes you so—” Right hand, wrist, left hand, chin. I didn’t need to execute a chokehold when grabbing someone from behind by the chin and yanking their head back to throw them off-balance was totally whitelisted. Sando had even encouraged me to master the chin maneuver, since it works best when the perp is shorter. And so far they’ve all been shorter.
Snap, snap, pop and twist. Fulcrum—wow, I even got the fulcrum in place—and the smelly-looking guy was face-down on the floor before I’d even hollered, “Police—drop your weapon.”
The tone of my voice was enough to make him think some thick-necked beat cop had caught him in the act. Sure, I was unarmed, and I was wearing my Converse All-Stars, a T-shirt under an old plaid flannel, and my favorite pair of jeans, but seeing as how his face was mashed into the floor, he didn’t know that. I planted my knee between his shoulder blades and got him trussed up with my nylon tie, and then I turned my attention to Crash. “Are you okay? Did this asshole hurt you?”
Crash shook his head slowly from side to side. I think it was the first time I’d ever seen him speechless. I was glad he wasn’t hurt.
Otherwise I might need to “accidentally” punch the creep in the neck.
Five or ten times. My sciatic nerve twinged hard as I straightened up, and my hand was bleeding again. All in all, though, I felt pretty damn pleased with myself.
I called in the robbery attempt, then immediately called Jacob to let him know what was going on. So much for the soccer game—but that was the way it was, being a cop. I’d caught on pretty fast that scumbag criminals had no respect whatsoever for my social life.
Jacob and Lisa both left Jacob’s car where it was, and thundered up the stairs. “Are you okay?” Jacob asked Crash, and then me. We said we were. Then he looked down at the creep, considered him for a moment, and asked me, “How are those nylon cuffs, anyway?”
“Not bad.”
I glanced back at Miss Mattie’s closet door, but I didn’t see the telltale flutter of the paper Saint Anthony fan. It didn’t make logical sense to me that she’d just stood by while a paranoid schizophrenic who’d gone off his meds threatened her little Curtis with a knife. Then again…if the si-no was something that existed outside Lisa, something that was more than a simple channel to her inner knowing…when she asked about the necklace, someone out there had told her what to do with it. Guardian angels, she’d called her contacts, when she saw them in the astral. I didn’t think Miss Mattie would mind the Judeo-Christian connotations of that term—though, like everything else in the world of Psych, I imag
ined it was also incredibly subjective.
Crash made his way around the counter, caught me by the upper arm, and turned me to face him. When he draped his forearms over my shoulders and pressed himself against me, he did it so deliberately that I was relieved Lisa and Jacob were both there—because if he’d mashed himself on me like that while we were alone, I might have gotten the wrong idea. He cocked his head to one side and stared me in the eye for a second or two, then put his mouth to my ear and whispered, “Can I take back every single time I’ve ever teased you about being a wimp? ’Cos I’m not ashamed to admit when I’m wrong.”
“Yeah, well.” I took a step back to put some distance between us, but it didn’t work. His body flowed with mine, and somehow he managed to use the motion to fit us together even more tightly. “Good thing all your friends are cops,” I said.
“Not all my friends.” He pressed his cheek to mine, and tilted his head slightly, so his skin brushed against mine. The bristle of his stubble dragging over my jaw sent a fresh bolt of gooseflesh down my arms. “Just the hot ones.”
Chapter 42
The cops who showed up to collect the creep were not particularly hot, but they were efficient—and they didn’t realize I was a PsyCop, either. Just a detective. I let them think that. They’d probably hear about it later and kick themselves for not sneering at me, but for now, it made the afternoon a hell of a lot easier.
Lisa decided to stay with Crash, which I was glad for. But she told us that if we left right away, we’d make the second half of the game.
And also that we should go.
So, we went.
Being exposed to the full force of the si-no was definitely going to take some getting used to.
We arrived in Beloit at the end of halftime, just as the players were straggling back out onto the field. Parents sat on the sidelines in folding chairs. A typical kid’s cheering section must have been one person strong. His mom. And most of the moms weren’t even looking up. They were talking to each other, or talking on their cellphones, or reading books, or even knitting.
PsyCop 6: GhosTV Page 33