by Leahy, R. J.
We exit the truck from the passenger side and huddle close to it as people continue to flow by. I recognize one of them, a short stocky man with a full beard who works as a runner for a local fence. I grab his arm. His face is flushed and sweaty and he’s carrying a long piece of wood.
“What’s going on?” I ask him.
“Cosags. We got the bastards pinned down up ahead,” he says, grinning.
“They’ll send reinforcements soon.”
“Yeah but until then we’ll get our revenge!” He lifts the club. “I’m going to get me a Counselor’s head,” he shouts, then pulls himself away and runs back into the crowd.
Abby looks horrified, but there’s no time to discuss it. Things are going to get bad unless we get out of here. Even if the crowd doesn’t turn on us, the Council will send in reinforcements soon—en masse and with weapons.
We look around. There doesn’t seem to be anyway forward through the mob. “Now what?” Abby says. “We can’t stay here.”
She’s right. There’s no choice but to get off the street. I grab Pen’s arm and begin pushing through the crowd toward an alley. With the mob concentrating on reaching the entrapped Counselors, the alley is almost empty of people and we move through it quickly, coming out on the other side onto a narrow, one-way street.
This section of the Huenta quarter is almost as poor as the Bonifrei and it shows. The buildings are old and crumbling in decay and so close together, that little sunlight filters down. The street is dim and gloomy, made all the worse by the wisps of smoke from the fires and gunfire. A foul scent fills the air. Somewhere nearby, a sewer is backed up.
I stop in front of a four-story brownstone, only slightly less decrepit looking than the rest of the block and bang on the door. There’s no answer. Maybe Dane took my advice and moved with her girls to the other side of the wall. If so, then even better for us. Maybe the place is deserted. I draw my leg back and kick, striking the door near the lock.
“What are you doing?” Abby asks. What if someone lives here?”
“Then I guess they’ll come and answer the door.”
I’m just about to kick again when the door swings open. A heavily muscled man with tattoos covering most of his body, including his face, appears in the doorway. The body art is distracting, but not as distracting as the pistol he has pointed at my head.
“Yeah, that’s it, kick it again, motherfucker,” he says. “Kick it again!”
I lower my leg and raise my hands. “Calm, friend. I’m not trying to break in. I just wanted to get someone’s attention.”
“Yeah? Well you got mine and I ain’t your friend, asshole. We’re closed. Now you got three seconds to back down off the step and get outta my sight.”
“I’m here to see Dane.”
He pulls the hammer back. “Three…two…”
“Well I’ll be damned,” says a high-pitched voice from somewhere inside the building.
I look past tattoo-man and see a heavyset woman descending the staircase. A shock of terminally-teased blond hair falls like brittle straw on either side of a cherubic face, painted up in primary colors.
“Hello Dane. I wasn’t sure you you’d still be here.”
She lumbers to the doorway and elbows tattoo-man in the arm. “Put the gun away, Buck. This here’s an old friend.” Bright red lips pull back in a grin. She looks me over, shaking her head and laughing. “Well, well, look what the storm blew in. Ain’t seen you in so long, I thought you might be dead. But I should have figured if anyone was fool enough to go looking for a little action on a day the whole city explodes, it’d be you.”
From the corner of my eye, I catch a glimpse of Abby’s expression, and ignore it. There’s nothing to explain. Before I met Reed, this was my life. Besides, between the headaches and the occasional blackouts, most nights I spent here were more restive than carnal. The girls didn’t care. They got paid the same either way. “I’m not here for fun, Dane. I’m making for the Bonifrei but I can’t go any further today with the riots raging.”
“So you thought to spend some time with me? I’m flattered.” She glances at Abby and Pen. “And you brought two girls along with you? Well ain’t you the resourceful one.”
Abby starts to answer but I figure whatever she has to say won’t be helpful, so I talk over her. “We just need to get off the streets for awhile. At least until things calm down.”
She frowns. “Now honey you know I love you, but I ain’t no hotel—or charity.”
Buck-the-tattoo-man, eyes me closely as I reach into my pocket and peel off two large bills.
Her smile returns. “Now why didn’t you mention you had money? I can use it, I won’t lie. With all this rioting, business has just about come to a stop. Come on in, come on in, before somebody cuts your head off.”
She leads us past the narrow entryway into a small sitting room. The “parlor”, she calls it. Thick curtains cover the windows and the only light comes from two floor lamps, ancient and tilting, throwing sharp shadows on the faded, torn wallpaper. Abby and Pen take a seat on a lumpy and stained settee, both girls looking uncomfortable. Dane falls into a large, overstuffed chair. I remain standing.
“Dane, this is Abby and her sister Pen.”
“Sisters?” she says, raising an eyebrow. “You hold their contract? If they’re willing to work as a team, I can get them top money.”
Abby flushes slightly, but Pen just looks confused.
“They aren’t in the business, Dane. I’ve been hired to escort them to the Bonifrei. Ladies, this is Dane, the owner of this… establishment.”
“Not much to this business a girl ain’t born knowing how to do,” Dane says, lighting a cigarette. “And there’s no reason to be so circumspect. This is no establishment girls, it’s a whorehouse.”
Abby’s face is now a bright crimson, her expression stony, but Pen laughs, her mood still slightly euphoric from the drugs.
Dane blows out a long stream of smoke, studying her with a bemused smile. The black smudge on Pen’s nose has not gone unnoticed. “Looks like one of you is having fun, anyway.” She turns her attention back to me. “How long?”
“A day, maybe two.”
“You running?”
No reason to lie. I nod.
“Counselors?”
“Yes.”
She shakes her head. “Bad time for that. Since that angel girl was killed, the city’s gone crazy; people in the quarters fighting Counselors and other tribes and the damn Counselors shooting anything that ain’t in a trench coat.”
At the mention of “angel”, Abby looks away nervously. Dane takes a drag from her cigarette, watching her closely. “Then again, maybe you all know more about that than I do. All right, you can stay—two days, no more. And I don’t want you getting in the way of my girls’ business.”
“I thought you said business had come to a stop?” I say.
“That’s just temporary honey. The locals need time to blow off some steam. I figure things should settle down a little after curfew and if it does, we’ll be open for business. After all, even with the whole city killing each other, some men still got to have what they got to have. Ain’t it always been that way?”
TWELVE
We follow Buck up the stairway and down the hall, past poorly lit rooms with open doors. Most are unoccupied, but a few reveal young girls, naked or nearly so, some lying stretched out on the bed, others sitting up in a chair, smoking or doing their nails. All gaze up as we pass, but none show any real interest. They look bored.
We head up another stairway to the third floor. The hallway is darker and the doors to the rooms closed.
“Dane don’t use these rooms unless we get busy,” Buck says. “And we ain’t been busy in a while.” He opens one door and flicks on the light. The furnishings consist of a large, uncomfortable-looking bed, one chair and a dresser. “You gonna be sleeping here too?” he asks.
“No, I’ll take the room across the hall.”
He shr
ugs. “Suit yourself. Bathroom is down the hall.”
“Probably best if you two stay in the room as much as possible,” I say, after Buck has left. Pen lies back on the bed and groans, closing her eyes. I flip the bottle of pain pills to Abby. “Space them out. They’re all we have.”
“How long do we have to stay here?” Abby asks.
The question rubs me the wrong way at a time when it isn’t smart to rub me in any way. “Have to? You’re welcome. Or maybe you’d rather be back outside, caught between a mob and an army of Counselors?”
But she doesn’t back down. “Did you see the girl in the last room? She was no more than a child.”
It’s an exaggeration, though not by much. What does she want me to say? I could point out that she was probably sent to work here by her family, but Abby wouldn’t understand. She never had to choose between watching your child die slowly of starvation, or sending her off to live as a whore. I’d call it a hard choice, except that it’s not really a choice at all. Innocence is short-lived in the city. It dies of old age still with its baby teeth.
Anyway, not all these girls will spend their lives here, blowing what money they make on dust and pan. A few will save enough to leave and start a new life; maybe open a store in one of the lower districts where the rents are cheap and no one looks too closely at your background. Maybe a jewelry store.
Her self-righteous tone just adds to my already rising irritation. “Yeah, I saw her. She’ll cost you twenty,” I snap.
Abby looks horrified, her mouth open in disgust.
“Now just stay in the damn room.”
My eyes open to the sound of water banging through pipes somewhere behind the walls. The sun has long since set and the room is dark. I hold my watch near my face but I can’t make out the time. I must have slept for hours, for all the good it’s done me. My head feels no less thick and my thoughts no more coherent. Abby; Pen; Devon; I try to weave together the last four days but I know there are holes, things I can’t remember. I sit on the edge of the bed, collecting myself, before fumbling over the wall looking for the light switch.
I need a shower, as much to break up the cobwebs in my head as to get clean, and stop to check on Abby and Pen on the way to the bathroom. Abby is lying on the bed sleeping soundly, but Pen is gone. I decide to hold off cleaning up and go down stairs in search of her.
I find her in one of the second floor rooms, sitting on the bed with one of Dane’s girls. As soon as she sees me, she turns away, rubbing her face with the back of her hand. When she turns back, I see that the black smudge on her nose now extends to her upper lip.
“Having fun?”
A pout. “My leg was hurting. Besides, I got bored.”
“Running to stay alive not exciting enough for you?”
She ignores the comment. “This is Tuli. She’s from the Aramaic quarter.”
I nod to the girl but she doesn’t respond. She’s staring at the wall, her gaze unfocused, her head cocked lazily to one side. Like Pen, she’s young, with olive skin and wide, dark eyes; pretty eyes but empty. Her nose is completely black.
“Dane asked you not to bother the girls while they’re working.”
“You sound like Abby,” she says, frowning. “And I’m not bothering anybody.”
“Just the same, why don’t you go back up to your room. Abby will be worried if she wakes up and you’re not there.”
She sighs dramatically but stands and walks unsteadily to me. I get a lopsided grin and a hand on my chest. “You going to help me upstairs?”
“Your leg seems better. I think you can manage alone. Besides, I want to talk to Dane.”
She shrugs. “Fine. Bye Tuli.”
The girl raises her hand, but never looks up.
I enter the parlor searching for Dane. Buck sits near the door leaning back in a chair, pistol in his lap. The noise outside hasn’t let up: the muffled roar of the mob; sirens; gunshots. I pull back the curtain. The street is dark, but there’s an orange glare to the sky. I can’t see the horizon for the high-rise buildings surrounding us, but fires are burning somewhere close. Luckily, most of the fighting is still two blocks over on the main thoroughfare, but mobs, like fires, can change direction in an instant.
“Still looking over your shoulder, I see.”
I lower the curtain and turn around as Dane sits. She’s changed into a low-cut gown as brightly colored as her face, revealing breasts large enough to rate their own satellites.
She lights up a cigarette as I take a seat across from her. “Looking over my shoulder is the only reason I’m still alive.”
“Can’t argue with that. I never met a shade as good at staying alive, as you.” She nods to Buck. “Give us a little space, honey. Jeddia got herself a new client; make sure he’s behaving himself.”
She waits till he’s gone, then smiles. “How you been?”
“Can’t complain. I’m surprised you’re still here. Last time we talked you were going to move the business to the other side of the wall.”
“No honey, last time I saw you, you were trying to talk me into moving, but you never said why.”
“I told you, things are going to get bad in the Huenta soon.”
She nods toward the window. “You mean like out there?”
“Worse.”
“And you can’t tell me what that is.”
No Dane, I can’t tell you because you wouldn’t believe me. And if you did, what would you do? Tell others? It will be hard enough for you to gain acceptance in a strange quarter. A flood of people pouring out from the Huenta would be seen as an invasion. They’d be massacred. It’s why it won’t be allowed; why the wall is the only solution.
“You’re a strange man,” she says in answer to my silence.
“But not a very complicated one.”
“What?”
“Nothing. Just something someone once told me.”
She draws on the cigarette. “Anyway, even if I was of a mind to move, you think the Heights would let me in?”
“I told you before, go farther east—the Chojo or the Bonifrei. I could help you get set up again.”
She shakes her head. “I was born in the Huenta and I’ll die in the Huenta. These are my people. Ain’t no riots going to drive me away, you hear?”
“Yeah Dane, I hear.”
She leans forward. “So now you tell me, what are you really doing out in all this?”
“I told you, a job.”
“Escorting the princess and her sister, yeah, so you said. But why not wait until the killing dies down? What’s so important about getting two girls from the G.D. to the Bonifrei?”
I don’t answer, but the question takes me by surprise and it shows.
“I’ve had a few boys from the Garden District spend money here. Not many, but enough to recognize the accent.” She takes a drag from her cigarette. “They say the Angel was from the Garden.”
“Yeah, I heard that too.”
She blows out a stream of smoke. “That was some kind of crazy, her getting broke out of the station house like that. Never heard anything like it. People say she got help from a shade.” She grins. “Some kind of saint, if you believe the talk. No name, but they say he was good-lookin’—in a rough kind of way.”
I’ve known Dane for years, almost since I left the Council. She’s never given me any reason to doubt her. Why should I? She runs a whorehouse. She has almost as many secrets to keep as I do—almost. If there’s anyone in the city I should be able to trust with this, it’s her. And yet, I don’t trust her.
I force a smile. “I thought you were smarter than that, Dane. There never was an Angel.”
“Oh, please.”
“You ever see her?”
“Don’t know that anyone has, but that don’t mean she isn’t real.”
“Sure, a self-proclaimed leader of the resistance, able to operate in the open for over a year. Then, when she finally is captured, she escapes from a station house, something that’s never ha
ppened before.”
Dane isn’t stupid, though she’s willing to act like it if she thinks it will benefit her. Maybe she’s convinced, maybe she isn’t. With her it’s hard to tell. She twirls her cigarette as she watches me, the smoke curling in a narrow spiral between us. “Council propaganda, huh? Why?”
I shrug. “Who knows. Probably trying to lure the real leaders out in the open.”
She crushes out the cigarette and stands. “All right then, have it your way. Just remember, I want you all gone in two days. And keep an eye on the young one. If she keeps bothering my girls, I’m going to put her to work.”
The sounds from outside are a little less fierce the next morning. A few customers come in early with rumors that the heaviest fighting has moved north toward the Delphi quarter. Counselors have set up a barricade. Bad news for us, since that’s the way we’re headed.
Dane catches Pen chatting up a customer in the hallway and there’s an argument. Abby comes in search of me to intervene, but by the time I get there, it’s over. Pen’s so glassy-eyed she’s almost falling over, but at least it doesn’t look as though Dane got physical with her, which surprises me. I’ve seen her light into a few girls in the past hard enough to put them out of commission for a few days. But although neither woman says much, it looks as though they’ve come to some sort of understanding.
Business picks up after dinner. Riots are still raging throughout the city, but not in our general vicinity. The relative peace is all that’s needed for some men to take a reprieve. Most are dirty and all obviously poor, paying a few coins for an hour’s entertainment. In this economy, Dane’s willing to barter and many exchange goods for company, things probably stolen in the riots. But no one here is asking for a bill of sale.
I try to make myself scarce and let the girls do their work, but by midnight, I’m restless and decide to risk a walk outside. I figure most Counselors and Blueshirts are still too busy to concern themselves with routine surveillance. All eyes are on the riots.
I pass one of the rooms on the second floor as Pen walks out. Before the door closes, I catch glimpse behind her of a short, grimy man stuffing himself into his pants.