Damn Him to Hell sd-2

by Jamie Quaid

  “Paddy can do that if he inherits, can’t he?” I grabbed my cushion and scooted out of his range.

  “There will be court battles and power struggles if Paddy tries to take over, but we need to see he has the chance,” he agreed. “It just won’t help Bill right now. I think there’s more going on over there than even Gloria knew. I can’t keep an eye on Acme from a jail cell. Haven’t you felt the rumbles?”

  Damn, I’d been afraid those mini-earthquakes weren’t my imagination. Andre knew damned well I couldn’t abandon Bill to potential disaster. “What can I do?” I asked.

  “Be my lawyer,” he said without inflection. “Keep me out of jail so we can stop Acme.”

  He might as well have come after me with the bat again. Except I knew how to tumble and roll from a weapon. I didn’t know how to avoid a responsibility so huge I figured it would crush me like a spider under a steamroller. I gaped in amazement, but I doubted he could see me.

  “I don’t have one iota of courtroom experience,” I protested, shoving back to lean against the wall. “It’s a murder one rap! I don’t own a law library. I don’t have a defense team of any sort. You’re asking the insane.”

  “Not totally,” Andre argued. “No one else will take my case, so you’re a better option than nothing.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered, neatly put in my place.

  He ignored that. “My father’s available to offer his expertise and experience. He just won’t leave the house, so you have to be his face in the courtroom. He has the library and the contacts. And you have one advantage that no one else does—you understand the Zone and what’s at stake. To anyone else, we’re scum. They have nothing to lose if I go to jail.”

  I had enough conceit to entertain the idea with great glee. I could rub Reggie’s nose in my dust. But I’m a realist as well, dammit. “You’re putting your life in feeble hands, Legrande. If money isn’t an issue, we can go outside Baltimore for representation.”

  “The Zone needs its own lawyer, Clancy,” he said wearily. “Paddy needs someone to handle the estate’s probate. We need to see that he has full access to Acme. We have problems that no normal lawyer can address. And you have the key to justice.”

  He had a point there, possibly in more ways than he understood. I pushed the heels of my palms into my eyes and tried to work around it. The legal system didn’t recognize shape-shifters and snake conjurers like Sarah and Cora. It didn’t understand dollar bills that turned to winking Georges or traffic lights that blinked purple. The law liked black and white and not the shades of neon that existed here.

  And once I had enough evidence for a case, I could make my own justice—without court approval. Heady—dangerous—stuff. But I wasn’t certain Andre fully comprehended that I could be his judge and jury.

  “Julius is on board with this?” I asked, stalling. I’d seen that look Julius and Paddy had exchanged. This was their friggin’ idea. They’d just had to run it by Andre first.

  “I wouldn’t have asked otherwise,” he said, as expected. “If nothing else, it will give my father something constructive to do besides mope over what can’t be changed. I wouldn’t ask if I thought you couldn’t do it. I wouldn’t ask if I thought you would move on and have a life. But whatever you are, Clancy, it’s not normal.”

  “You’re such a flatterer.” I pushed off the wall and snapped on a light. Andre appeared paler than he should have, but there wasn’t anything wrong with the rest of him. Giving his bulging trouser front a look of regret, I headed for the kitchen.

  “I can set up an office for you across the street,” he called from the front room. “It’s still clear from Zone interference and not too damaged from the explosion. You can have the latest equipment, access to online libraries. I can’t promise you’ll make a living wage.”

  Which would mean a huge step up for me, actually. With my own office and equipment, I could make more money than I was as an intern. It would be far more satisfying than serving coffee and answering phones. Although I’d have to answer my own phone. I couldn’t afford a secretary.

  I needed to cool off and quit thinking with my hoo-ha, which was twitching with a desperate craving for what Andre had started. I took a couple of cold drinks out of the refrigerator and returned to the parlor. Andre hadn’t moved from the floor. His weird blue-green eyes were light against his dark lashes and regarded me questioningly, but he took the drink and gulped half the can while I settled back on my floor cushion.

  He was wearing brown silk tonight, with the buttons half undone. Khaki trousers, so he was going for informal. I had a hunch that T-shirts and jeans represented his old life, and he was making a statement with his choice of business attire. I could dig that.

  I sipped my drink and tried to settle my rampaging hormones. He could have taken my ribs out with that bat. He would practically own me if he provided office and equipment. I always looked gift horses in the mouth. I’d learned a lot of life lessons by watching westerns. I surely hadn’t learned any from my nonexistent father or hippie mother.

  “I can handle probate,” I told him. “Traffic court, zoning violations, petty civil stuff, with Julius’s knowledge, sure. A murder case, no way. I’d have to list Julius as senior partner just to keep the judge from throwing me out. The state’s attorney would have to send all evidence to your father, let him make the inquiries we’ll need into the background of the witnesses. . . . I don’t suppose Paddy can give us any insight into his mother’s state of mind or even on the goons she hired?”

  Andre almost purred in satisfaction. I had to check that Milo was still asleep in the bay window to be sure they weren’t one and the same. Andre finished off the rest of the drink in a few more swallows, then stood up.

  “We’ll set the office up in the morning. Paddy won’t testify for me. He needs to stay neutral so he can have access to the plant. The new and improved senator might say a good word, if you provide incentive. I give you permission to spend whatever you need to investigate Gloria or anyone else. My father can handle the paperwork as long as you make the court appearances. Start with Paddy’s probate, though. I’m still dubious of his new sanity. Let’s get Acme settled before he dumps blue goo or pink fairy dust in MacNeill’s coffee. Two murder cases might be pushing your limits.”

  That was the Andre I knew, back to being Boss of the World and the reason we were not going to get it on. Ever.

  I didn’t get up to see him out. I was thinking I’d rather he’d hit me with the bat. Bumps on the skull merely rattled the brains. Andre was rattling my soul to the core.

  He honestly asked the impossible. Licensed or not, no way could a law student step out of class and into a courtroom alone, especially on a case like this. I could be a freakin’ genius for all I knew, but I really wasn’t an arrogant idiot.

  Except, with Julius as my senior partner . . . He’d been out of the world too long to realize the respect he’d earned in these past years of writing textbooks. His name would open doors.

  If I could legally put Paddy in charge of Acme, we could rescue Bill and Leibowitz before the next disaster, knock wood.

  I could hope I’d gather enough evidence to justifiably red-rage Andre’s accusers into another dimension.

  Damn, I was actually going to do it. I needed my head examined.

  Instead, I unlocked my stolen tablet computer. Someone—presumably Andre—had left a charger and Boris’s invoice on the table. I plugged in the tablet and began surfing websites, hoping to find knowledge in my mother’s graduation gift. Looking for evidence that I wasn’t out of my skull was probably a better description.

  Computers are only a minor weapon in my arsenal. I’m no expert. But from my first quick scan, I judged the websites listed on Saturn’s page as amateurish. Themis only had a page advertising her services, with no obvious means of e-mailing her.

  Fat Chick’s page was little more than a blog. It contained links to sites containing everything from scientific analyses of obesity to far-left
political diatribes to academic-sounding astrological advice. Unlike at Saturn’s site, however, I could leave comments on her blog. Not many people did.

  Words are another weapon I know how to wield. I pondered mine carefully. Thx for the message, sister, I typed. Preach on. I didn’t have a cool tag of my own, so I simply signed in as Justy in D.C. No point in giving away everything, and D.C. wasn’t that far away.

  I didn’t have a website—I’d have to hire Boris to set one up for the law office—so I just signed in on Facebook before typing it.

  By the time I’d worked through half the sites on Saturn’s page without learning anything except that the participants were as weird, and varied, as I was I had a direct message waiting on my Facebook page: For real? You got the rule? Friggin’ awesome! You have any for me?

  Oh, wow. I stared in incredulity at the seemingly innocuous words on the screen.

  I’d found another Saturn’s daughter? And she didn’t have a rulebook, either?

  I didn’t know whether to sob or laugh. Saturn was a deadbeat dad.

  20

  Tuesday morning, I’d barely rolled out of bed when my door knocker rattled the dishes.

  “Emergency evacuation!” a stranger’s voice shouted.

  I froze. Had those earthquakes disrupted gas lines? I waited for the low rumble I feared would blow the neighborhood sky-high.

  Nothing.

  Milo growled from his nest at the foot of my mattress. Milo’s growl is my paranoia alert.

  Thinking on my feet, I jerked on jeans and a hoodie, shoved Milo in my bag, stepped onto my balcony, and shimmied down the support. I know that’s not a normal reaction to a knock on the door, but my few attempts at normality usually got me hurt. After Andre’s lesson the previous night, I was taking security to new levels.

  Hitting the ground, I pondered my next move. I could take the Harley and get the hell out, or satisfy my curiosity and sneak.

  I sneaked. Maybe I should tell Fat Chick the next rule is: Knowledge is power. We could start a Rules of Justice handbook. Or a comic book. That was a pretty cool idea that I could get excited about if I wasn’t always running for my life. Or someone else’s. Which might be why the book had never been written.

  I peered through a crack between the fence boards at the back alley. A plain white sedan blocked the nearest exit. If I tried escaping out the opposite end of the alley, I could be spotted and outraced.

  I didn’t think emergency personnel drove plain sedans or blocked alleys. Not normal, warned my suspicion-ometer.

  With back alley escape blocked, the only cover between me and whoever was in the house would be the houses themselves and their overgrown shrubbery. Lacking Andre’s nifty tunnel, I had no way of getting out of here, if it was called for.

  Before performing any stunts involving the Harley and white sedans, I crept under the shrubbery between Pearl’s and the house on the far side from Andre’s, intelligently avoiding the hornets in the bushes next to Andre’s place.

  Another unmarked white car waited in the street. Very weird. Acme’s goons usually arrived in fancy black Escalades. Cops would have used marked emergency vehicles.

  Tim had been taking care of the potted plants on Pearl’s porch lately. They were finally showing signs of life, but the greenery didn’t conceal Pearl standing in bewilderment just above where I crouched. She was wringing her hands in her apron and talking to a tall guy in a gray suit and shades. He had the confident stance of a fed and not a shifty goon.

  Another one stood on the steps of the neighboring house, speaking to one of the nameless and interchangeable med students. I shrank back into the bushes, hit Leo’s private number on my cell, and willed him to answer.

  “We have what appears to be feds evacuating the neighborhood,” I whispered when I heard his tired Whassup? “Where are you and what do you know about this?”

  “I’m on the shit shift and just about to head home.” He sounded a little more alert. “I’ve not heard about any evacuation orders. No black-and-whites?”

  “None. Which means someone’s bluffing, right?”

  “They have to have court orders to force you to leave your home. Uniformed emergency personnel can only suggest evacuation, not legally enforce it. At this hour, I’m going with intimidation tactics. They’re after our patients.”

  I liked the way Leo thought. “Can you send us some cops? Or do you want me to do this my way?” I was already mad enough to conjure a gate to hell for thugs harassing old ladies. But evidence was still light on any other wrongdoing. Hell is a stiff penalty for being a bully, and I didn’t want to end up in a wheelchair. Guilt did not necessarily equate evil.

  “I’ve got two cars in the vicinity. Give them ten. I’ll be there in thirty.” He hung up.

  The brute who must have been pounding futilely on my apartment door appeared on the porch, wearing the same menacing attitude of his comrades in arms. He glared at poor Pearl, who shook a little harder. Silver-haired and toothless without her dentures, Pearl was harmless. I was sure, like everyone else, she had a story. That didn’t justify scaring her half to death.

  “No one’s answering. It’s a matter of life and death. If your tenants are asleep, we need your keys to wake them.” Gray Suit stuck out his hand, using his authoritative voice and appearance to pressure my landlady.

  It occurred to me then that if these were Acme’s goons, they didn’t know to which house the warehouse tunnel led. What they really wanted was in Pearl’s basement, without any witnesses to see what they were doing.

  If these pretend feds were from Acme, someone besides Gloria had sent them, which meant Gloria might not have been the only ugly over there. Bad, bad news. We really needed to rescue Bill and the others from the plant before Acme turned them into Frankenstein monsters. Or turned them blue like the buildings. I only hoped it wasn’t too late.

  Schwartz had said ten minutes until his men could get here, but I could hear sirens screaming in the distance. I had to hope they’d been closer than Schwartz thought and that they were heading this way, because I was about to get obnoxious. Shoving aside the bushes, I sauntered onto the square patch of front lawn.

  “Good morning to you, Mrs. Bodine,” I called cheerily. I waved at the confused med student wiping sleep from his eyes on the other porch. “Bit early for visitors, isn’t it?”

  Pearl’s jaw relaxed in relief. Paddy had said not to underestimate her, but she seemed happy to see me. The med student narrowed his eyes warily, which was probably the more intelligent reaction to my unusual gaiety.

  “These gentlemen say we need to evacuate, dear. Something to do with the chemical cloud, I think?” Pearl said as I approached.

  “A little late for that, gentlemen. We’ve all been exposed and we’re all still alive.” Milo leaped out of my bag to sniff trouser cuffs and growl. I never knew whether he was half bobcat or dog. I just let him do his thing.

  The creep on the stair edged away from Milo. My cat’s reputation probably preceded him. He’d nearly ripped the head off one of Acme’s guards in the past. I used the cleared space to elbow my way to the porch.

  “Federal orders, ma’am,” the unfriendly guy behind Pearl snarled. “Mandatory evacuation.”

  Ignoring him, I patted Pearl’s shoulder. “Leo is on his way. Why don’t you fry up some nice crisp bacon while I talk to these pretty men?”

  “Can’t allow you back in there, ma’am,” Unfriendly warned, blocking the door with his bulk.

  “Unless you have a court order, you can’t keep us out,” I said, keeping the anger down and the cheer level up. “Legally, by blocking our access to the door, you are giving us no avenue of retreat, which means we can act in self-defense. So let’s see the orders, boys.” Legal educations are so very useful—at least mine would be, right up until the point I flung the creeps into the bushes.

  “Orders aren’t needed for an emergency evacuation,” the scaredy-cat afraid of Milo countered. “These orders are straight from the t
op.”

  On the porch next to us, the med student was listening to our argument and conspicuously blocking his own door. On the other side, Andre’s door opened, but no one appeared on his porch. Which probably meant Tim had come out to spy. Julius wouldn’t leave Katerina’s side, and who knew where Andre was. But knowing I had support just yards away, I managed to keep from losing my cool. There’d been a time when I’d been all alone, and my obnoxiousness got out of hand as a result. These days, I was enjoying company and going for sane.

  “We don’t have to comply with emergency evacuations,” I countered. “Only a court-ordered one. I’ll have to see your documents.”

  The sirens were screaming closer. The gray suits grew restless. Scaredy-Cat on the steps finally produced a packet of papers from an inner pocket and handed them over.

  I was angry enough to contemplate ripping them up and flinging them in their faces, but med students and Tim weren’t totally reliable bodyguards. Stalling until the cops arrived was the safest route. I bolted down the lid on my pressure-cooker temper and glanced through the bogus legalese, almost laughing at their feeble attempts.

  “Very nice, boys,” I said. “I could have done better and it would have cost you less, but these appear impressive enough to scare an old lady and a few exhausted interns. Probably wouldn’t pass Julius, which is why you’re not on his doorstep.”

  I folded the papers up and handed them back. “You said it yourself, the governor doesn’t write up court orders in an emergency, and that’s all these papers are declaring. Next time, try to remember who’s ordering us out, use a little more imagination, and conjure better excuses. Now leave before we have you arrested.”

  Which shows where conceit gets you. I’d stupidly thought I could intimidate the intimidators, forgetting that goons carry guns. The one barring the door pressed one into my back.

  “This official enough?” he asked, shoving me toward Scaredy-Cat.

  Fury fully engaged. I struggled with the red rage, ready to damn them to hell whether they were evil or not. Except, for a change, I’d actually planned ahead and knew precisely how to do this using my smarts. I didn’t need Saturn’s powers or to risk my eternal soul.