Touch of the White Tiger

by Julie Beard

  “Laugh as you may, Lieutenant,” I said gruffly, “the killing has to stop. There are two more murders. Another retributionist and another kid.”

  “The press will have a heyday with that, I daresay,” he replied. “Getty Bellows poisoned a young teen. When he realized he was dying, he killed her with her own weapon. This is the second time in as many days that a retributionist has turned into an assassin, and again the victim is an innocent child. I’d suggest, Miss Baker, that you hire a public-relations consultant in addition to that high-profile defense lawyer of yours. You’re going to need both.”

  I put my hands on my hips and shifted weight as I tried to comprehend the extent of his arrogant and misguided assumptions. “Excuse me, Lieutenant. Can your logical mind wrap around the concept that there might be some sort of conspiracy going on here? Or am I completely wasting my time expecting help from your end?”

  He sniffed and looked down his nose at me. “What sort of conspiracy?”

  “To frame retributionists for murders they didn’t commit and then kill them so they can’t expose the truth.”

  He considered this a moment. “And who do you suppose would be behind such a plot?”

  I shrugged with exaggerated ignorance. “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe one of the mobs running our fair city? Criminals do tend to consider retributionists like me a real pain in the ass, and Corleone Capone has good reason to want my scalp.”

  Townsend crooked his mouth in a half smile. “You may be on to something. But I still think you’re guilty in the Alvarez murder.”

  Chapter 13

  Date with the Devil

  Marco drove me the short distance to my home. On the way we talked a little bit about Getty’s murder, then fell silent. I think we both wanted to forget about it, if only briefly. It was all getting to be too much. There was only so much bad news a person could take before tuning out on some level.

  Instead, I focused on the interior of Marco’s hydrocruiser. Unlike aerocars, which hovered just above the pavement, hydrogen-powered cruisers had wheels. Marco had purchased it used, but it was fancier than his previous SUV, which I had accidentally destroyed. The polyurospandicottonastic seats of this vehicle were plusher, and I settled in to enjoy the comfort.

  When Marco pulled up in front of my two-flat, something was different. It took me about ten seconds to realize what.

  “How about that?” I mused as my seat belt unfolded. “The press has finally given up.”

  “For now,” Marco amended as he glanced around the quiet neighborhood and killed the engine. “They’ll be back as soon as they hear about Getty.”

  “You’re right.” I turned slightly in my seat and allowed my eyes to feast momentarily on Marco’s physique. I hadn’t really taken a good look at his outfit until now.

  He wore a retro short-sleeved, sky-blue shirt with pressed mother-of-pearl studs, taupe twill pants that hugged his muscular legs and a bullet gray Aussie outback bush hat. He looked tanned, rugged and casual. I guess he was enjoying a day off.

  Smiling, I said, “You look like Harrison Ford in Indiana Jones.” I reached across the seat and grabbed his hand. Heat warmed my palm and the air thickened like soup on a slow burner. I could make love to him right now. Hell, I could make love to him in the middle of a three-ringed circus.

  “I look like who in what?”

  “Harrison Ford.” I chuckled at his blank reaction. “Never mind. I forgot that you don’t watch movies.”

  “I do. But only ones that have come out in the past fifty years.”

  “You don’t know what you’re missing. The black-and-whites are the best.”

  “Why?”

  “I guess because you have to color them with your own imagination. With movies today, all you have to do is strap yourself into a hydraulic seat that moves with every action. The olfactory and sensory effects leave nothing to the imagination. And now, with hologram-in-the-round, you may as well be in the movie instead of watching it.”

  “I think that’s the point, Angel.”

  I smiled at his gentle sarcasm. “I know, I’m such a fuddy-duddy. I guess I like to make things hard for myself. Somehow life seems more meaningful when you have to put in some effort on your own.”

  “That explains a lot,” he said, teasing.

  Simultaneously, we sighed and tilted our heads against the headrests, becoming lost in each other’s eyes.

  “Marco?”

  “Hmm?”

  “I really, really loved making love with you.”

  “Likewise,” was his husky reply.

  “You really know how to make a woman feel…good.” I almost said loved, but after I had momentarily suspected him of murdering Getty, it seemed hypocritical to mention the L word.

  “You’re pretty damned good yourself.”

  His words flattered, but the barely contained hunger gleaming in his eyes thrilled. I felt like a vamp. He leaned forward in slow motion, each millimeter a lost battle for self-control.

  “I can’t resist you,” he groaned, then murmured with a hot breath in my ear, “I want you, Angel.”

  “I want you, too,” I whispered, shivering and nestling my ear to his caressing mouth. “But we have miles to go before we sleep.”

  He rubbed his sandpapery chin lightly along my cheekbone, inhaling my scent, but managed to pull himself back no more than a second before I was going to give in.

  “Okay. You’re right.” With a sigh of resignation, he resumed his position in the driver’s seat, gripping the wheel with an almost comical look of determination. “We can’t make love now. I’m glad one of us can resist temptation.”

  “Right,” I said without enthusiasm. “I’m going to meet with my colleagues. We’ll be hit from all sides with this latest double homicide. Anything you can tell me about your committee efforts to shut us down?”

  He pushed his hat back and eyed me speculatively. “I can’t reveal anything confidential. But I can tell you my committee members are out for blood now that you’ve been charged. They think this is the perfect opportunity to demand action from legislators, and they’re right.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  He smiled wanly. “For your sake, nothing. At least not now. But you know where I stand, Angel. As soon as your name has been cleared, our little truce will be over.”

  I nodded, not happy that Marco was still camped out in enemy territory, but grateful that he was cutting me some slack when I needed it most.

  “I understand. By the way, Cyclops was staking out my place earlier today. He was released from jail on a technicality.”

  “Cyclops?” The muscles in Marco’s square jaw tightened. “He wants to kill you, Angel.”

  I raised my hands in a je ne sais quoi gesture. “Who knows? Maybe he’s bluffing.” After a dead pause, I said, “It’s a joke. Blind man’s bluff. Get it?”

  “I get it,” Marco said, but he didn’t laugh.

  Neither did I.

  When I went upstairs, I found Lola trying on outfits for Jimmy Stewart. Open clothing boxes littered the couch, chairs and coffee table. I entered just as Lola came out of the bathroom in a sleeveless white beaded formal gown. Her arms looked like deflated beige balloons.

  Jimmy made a wolf whistle. “Now that’s a good-looking dame if I ever saw one.”

  I wondered if he ever had seen a good-looking dame. At the very least the image of Grace Kelly, who co-starred in Rear Window, had been imprinted in his memory bank. But my mother was a far cry from Princess Grace.

  From Lola’s fringed hem to her ample and glittering tabletop of a bosom, she looked darned good for a sixty-year-old recovering alcoholic and ex-con. Whoever had done her makeup, though, should be shot. It was so thick it looked like somebody’s final project for a PhD in Mortuary Science.

  “You like?” Lola said coyly, doing a pirouette on high heels that bound her feet better than any three-inch Lotus slipper could.

  “Looking at you is enough to make a m
an wish he wasn’t in a leg cast, Lola honey,” Jimmy said. He turned to my Personal Listening Device in the corner. “What do you think, Gigi? Isn’t she something?”

  The eyes on the PLD opened in an instant, going from the human equivalent of a deep sleep to fascination in seconds flat. It gave me the creeps, which is one of several reasons why I never used the darned thing.

  “What do you think of this outfit, Gigi?” Jimmy asked.

  “It’s beautiful,” the robotic device said in an eternally buoyant voice. Her head turned toward the compubot. “You’re right, Mr. Stewart, she is something.”

  I pinched the bridge of my nose as it hit me. My PLD was having a conversation with my compubot. My world really had spun hopelessly out of control.

  “All right, let’s break up the love fest,” I said, revealing my presence in the shadows of the doorway.

  “Oh! Angel!” Lola said. Her self-satisfied grin faded. “I didn’t know you were back.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t, or you would have had this little fashion show downstairs. Come to think of it, why don’t you and Jimmy use the elevator and get this stuff out of here?”

  “What do you think of my dress, honey?”

  I grudgingly gave her a closer look, and she worried her lower lip, awaiting my approval.

  It touched me and made me mad at the same time. We were hopelessly codependent.

  “It’s…nice.” I couldn’t bring myself to say anything more positive than that.

  “You think it’s too much?”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “But you thought it.”

  “Lola,” I said in a slow, threatening voice, “don’t start.”

  “Honey, I just—”

  “Wait a minute, I just thought of something. Where did you get the money to buy these things?”

  She puckered her fire-engine red lips and pinched her heavily blushed cheeks. “As a matter of fact, I have an admirer. He’s picking me up tonight to go dancing.”

  I tried to keep a straight face. However unlikely a boyfriend might be, it was possible. To me, Lola looked like Delta Dawn of the Dead, but I knew she had a way with men. Her enthusiasm was infectious, and she loved games—especially poker.

  Still, she wasn’t exactly trophy-wife material. Whoever she’d hooked up with had to be not only rich but a geezer as well. She’d probably been staking out the skilled nursing facility over on Waveland Avenue.

  Twenty years ago, when Lola was on trial for bookmaking, prosecutors revealed that she’d managed to talk three elderly gentlemen into naming her executor of their estates. Turned out they were broke, but Lola didn’t know that at the time.

  Five years ago she informed me out of the blue that I had a new grandfather. She’d managed to get herself adopted by a billionaire only ten years her senior. But a year later when Gramps died, his relatives contested his revised will and Lola was left with nothing but disappointed fantasies. She could have saved herself a lot of trouble if she’d simply bought a losing lottery ticket instead.

  “What?” Lola said, crossing her arms and frowning at me.

  “What what?”

  “Why are you looking at me like that?”

  “Like what?” I asked.

  “You’re frowning at me in disapproval.”

  “Honestly, Lola, you’re way too sensitive. I just don’t think you should be buying all these clothes when you have no money.”

  “Don’t be too hard on her,” Jimmy said, waving me off with an amiable smile. “She deserves it.”

  “Yes, she deserves it,” the PLD parroted.

  “That’s right!” Lola smoothed her hands over the glittering beads. “Besides, this has nothing to do with you.”

  “As long as you’re living in my apartment—” I stopped abruptly when I realized I was sounding like her mother. I held my hands out, trying to get my mind into the right frame. “Just be careful. Okay?”

  “Sure, honey,” Lola said much too quickly. Scooping up a box, she singsonged over her shoulder, “Come along, James. I’m going downstairs to try on the pièce de résistance. Take the elevator and bring the rest of my clothes.”

  “Sure, doll,” he replied.

  I waited until I heard her stilettos spiking their way down the wooden steps, then I went to Jimmy’s side and said in a low voice, “I want you to keep an eye on her.”

  “On Lola?”

  “That’s right. See who she’s going out with tonight. Give me a full description. Better yet, take a photograph.”

  He pursed his lips and pressed them against his steepled fingers, giving my suggestion a great deal of thought. “You’re suspicious of your own mother?”

  Was I? I suppose I was. I didn’t think Lola would intentionally betray me, but it was possible she’d taken money in exchange for another television interview. She might have been contacted by one of the national daytime talk shows. Maybe this date of hers was really an appointment with a producer.

  “I don’t know, Jimmy. I just want to be careful.”

  The hint of intrigue in my voice was of more importance to his program than the hots he’d momentarily kindled for Lola. He reached out and shook my hand.

  “You have a deal,” Jimmy said. “You can count on me.”

  “Thanks.” I started to walk toward the back of the flat, but realized Gigi was watching me with those perfect topaz glass eyes of hers. I scowled in return. “What are you looking at?”

  “You,” she said in her equally perfect and serene cadence. “You look lovely today, Angel.”

  I looked questioningly to Jimmy. “I thought PLDs were only supposed to respond to direct questions.”

  “It’s an updated model. I set it to random-sequence-voice-activation mode. The newest programs allow for conversation initiation.”

  “I’m turning it off, and I want it to stay that way.” I marched around the back of the head-and-shoulders unit and flipped the switch. “I have more than enough chaos in my life as it is without adding her—its—two cents into the mix.”

  “Aye-aye, Captain,” Jimmy returned with a tolerant smile. When he flipped two fingers off his slicked-back hairline in a mock salute, I left the room shaking my head.

  Men! You can’t live with them. Even if they’re robots.

  Chapter 14

  Meeting of the Minds

  The CRS meeting was just north of Irving Park Road on Clark Street, near historic Graceland Cemetery. The spacious 119 acres of rolling grass and trees and an idyllic pond contained the remains of Chicago’s original power brokers. Names like Marshall Field, George Pullman and Potter Palmer graced mausoleums that looked like miniature Parthenons.

  I always enjoyed the sense of history as I passed by the tall, stone walls that enclosed these ancient graves. I liked to think my life would be worthy of a mausoleum. But when I died, my remains would probably be cremated and pressed into a man-made diamond and wind up in some resale shop. At least that’s what would happen if I predeceased Lola. If for some reason I did end up with a headstone, I’d be on a budget, so I’d need a pithy epithet. So far I’d settled on, “No Comment.”

  I arrived at the CRS meeting just as Mickey Larson, the head of our organization, waved his hands overhead at the podium, trying to command order from the buzzing confab. Mickey was a short, squat man whose face looked like it had been broken and glued back together. He was both tough and humble and prone to wincing with impatience, as he did now.

  “Okay, okay,” he shouted in a gravelly voice, “everybody take a seat!”

  About one hundred of our colleagues milled around, commiserating over recent events, catching up, sharing new weapons and combat techniques. By nature, retributionists tended to be loners, so we crammed a lot of socializing into these rare get-togethers.

  I stood just inside of the doorway, indulging in a few moments of anonymous sentimentality. Aware that our very profession was at stake, I savored the camaraderie. Those who spotted me gave me a hug or a word of encou
ragement. I welcomed the support and relished the rich and exotic blend of personalities. Getty Bellows hadn’t been the only odd egg to excel in this business.

  There was a retributionist who called herself Mae West. She wore a white wig, a black sequin dress and a boa constrictor around her neck. Mae was dating a guy who called himself Kent Clark, a sort of reverse Superman. He wore a red cape in his off-hours and put on a conservative suit and brass knuckles for retribution jobs.

  DCR was an incorporated group of four men about my age who modeled themselves after Dead Corpse Rising, a band that was popular about thirty years ago.

  At the moment all I wore was the blue dragon tattoo on my forehead. Tory Rockwell was a twenty-two-year-old knock-out who looked like a football cheerleader. She used her all-American smile, blond hair and sweet disposition to seduce criminals to locations she’d arranged with her clients.

  Of course, there were lots of retributionists who didn’t need to adopt iconic personalities in order to command respect. Roy had been your average middle-aged white guy who used his intelligence more than his fists, although he had been a boxer when he was younger. His generation rarely used costumes or alter-identities. My generation had picked up the costume trend from New Orleans, which set the CRS trends for the rest of the country. There was no question that an intimidating prop or outfit could help give you the upper hand. But Roy had never needed that.

  Stupidly, I glanced around the hall, looking for him, then shook my head, trying to comprehend that I would never see Roy again. I realized that my mentors and professional friends were more than half the reason I stayed in this business. Without them, I’m not sure I’d continue.

  “Okay, that’s enough!” Mickey shouted. “Quiet down now. It’s time to get started.”

  This time, the crowd quieted and everybody sat in the rows of chairs Mickey had set up. I lingered in the darkened rear of the studio, giving quick hugs to the few who noticed me. As soon as I took a seat in the back row, a shadow loomed over me. Then two fangs bit into my neck at the carotid artery, not breaking the skin but coming damned close. Expensive cologne flooded my nostrils.