“Vic,” Jacob said. I tensed, because I really thought I’d successfully weaseled my way out of that awkward conversation without resorting to an untruth, but I didn’t bolt when he reached toward me. I was prepared for a caress, or maybe a hug, some sort of attempt to entice me to stay and keep trying to convince the girls we were all still one big, happy family. But instead he just plucked something off the back of my shirt and handed it to me.
It was a puzzle piece with a tacky smear of jelly on the back of it. I turned it photo-side up. Fake tan flesh-tone—and it looked suspiciously like a set of washboard abs.
Chapter 2
Parking sucked by Sticks and Stones, but that was nothing new. On the first floor of Crash’s building, huge sheets of plywood covered the place where the palm reader’s front window used to be…now that was new. I found a spot on a side street and sprinted toward the store with my cooling pizza. At the front door, I paused briefly to consider the board-up job, then toed some sparkly chunks lodged in the crack of the sidewalk to see if they were rock salt or broken glass. Hard to tell, especially while I was balancing a large double-cheese veggie supreme in my hands. I went upstairs before the cheese could congeal any more than it already had.
Thanks to a formidable boiler system, the temperature in Crash’s building is subtropical, even in the dead of winter. Although it was below freezing outside, Crash answered his door in bare feet, holey jeans and a skimpy white T-shirt at least two sizes too small. The shirt was gray with age and half-hearted washings, and it clung to him like a second skin. Next to the dull T-shirt, the ink on his arms looked twice as vivid. I don’t think he’d been aiming for that specific effect. It looked more like he’d just grabbed the first clothes he laid his hands on. Instead of standing in its usual careful spikes, his peroxide blond hair was damp, finger-combed back, showing dark, wet roots.
“Aren’t you a sight for sore eyes?” he said. He acted like he was talking to me, but I suspected he was addressing the pizza. Business hours were over, so he locked the door behind me, whisked the pizza over to the cash register and plunked it down on the plexi countertop.
He doesn’t have much by way of furniture. Even if he owned a table, there’d be nowhere to put it. There are four tiny roomlets behind the shop: a cramped office, a galley kitchen, a closet of a bedroom, and a bathroom where you can hardly turn around to pee. It was easier to just hang out in the shop where we had some elbow room. I enjoyed Sticks and Stones that way, after-hours dim with a couple of lit candles flickering behind the register and the scent of sandalwood and myrrh lingering in the air. It felt safe from prying eyes—psychic eyes.
It usually felt safe from your garden-variety mayhem too, tucked away on the second floor, out of harm’s reach. But not tonight. “What happened to the windows downstairs?”
“Smash and grab. Not that Lydia had anything to grab—the storefront is basically a waiting room with a lot of black curtains and some cheesy esoteric symbols on the walls to get her clients in the mood for their readings. They trashed her big neon palm reader sign, too. I loved that thing…I hope she can replace it.”
“Won’t insurance cover that?”
“Dunno. Maybe she can’t afford to carry any. One thing’s for sure, my insurance bill got shuffled to the top of the stack this month.”
Crash handed me a folding chair and I set it up on the customer side of the counter while he delved back through the beaded curtain. “I’m out of pop,” he called from the kitchen, “but I can make iced tea.”
“Don’t worry about it. Water’s fine.” I had thought about picking up a 2-liter at the pizzeria but it seemed like too much trouble to carry. I opened the box and peeked at the pizza. There was a bit of slideage going on. I nudged the cheese back into place as best I could, closed the box, and licked the grease off my fingers before he came back with the drinks.
Crash set down a stack of McDonald’s paper napkins and a pair of coffee mugs filled with water, then whisked open the box. “All the toppings. You sure know how to spoil a guy.” By now, the pizza was at that temperature where you might end up with an empty triangle of saucy crust if you pulled it the wrong way. But he finessed out the perfect amount of cheese and toppings…then ate it as if he hadn’t seen food for days.
Maybe it had been a while since he’d been shopping. Or maybe he needed to choose between groceries and insurance. I wondered how little I could eat without seeming too obvious, and I wished I’d had the foresight to not only add soda, but breadsticks to my order.
“So Carolyn seems pretty pissed off,” I ventured.
“The operative word there is seems. She can’t pretend something’s not bothering her when it is. It’s actually pretty refreshing…once you get used to it.”
“Jacob’s trying to lure her over to the dark side.”
“Oh? And what—you’re jealous it’s not you he’s wooing?”
I choked on a mushroom, coughed it up into my mouth, swallowed it again and said, “Right…I’m jealous.”
“Don’t be that way. Here’s what I’m saying: it’s obvious the pigs and the feds should both be plying you with cocaine and handjobs to try and buy your allegiance. But Jacob hasn’t messengered you any offers yet, has he? How long has it been?”
I’m not sure if Crash realizes how hard-hitting his flattery can be. I’m not even sure he was trying to flatter me. “Couple of months.”
“A couple of months.” He looked at me sagely and tapped his tongue stud against the backs of his teeth. “And no one’s offered you so much as a quick stroke or a tasty bump? C’mon, it’s so obvious. They’re scared you’ll take off in the opposite direction if they so much as lean toward approaching you.”
“The FPMP doesn’t need to sweet talk me. I owe them an exorcism.”
“True. But still, F-Pimp hasn’t sent out anyone to break your kneecaps and collect the debt.”
“I don’t see what they’d want with me in the long-term anyhow. Once they’re clean, they’ll stay clean.” Presuming they stopped killing people in their offices, anyway.
“You’re smart to keep your distance, if you ask me. You’re a better fit for the police.”
“I…am?”
“Sure. As much as my left-wing, bleeding heart, painfully liberal Buddhist philosophy requires that I razz the cops every chance I get, it’s obvious that when you work, you’re in the zone.”
I’d never thought much about it. Then again, police work was the only sort of job I’d ever done…despite my own personal and philosophical aversion to the force.
“Today, for example,” Crash said. “What did you do today?”
“You might not want to hear about it while you’re eating.”
“I’ve got a cast-iron stomach. Try me.”
I thought I’d stared hard enough at the dumb jigsaw puzzle to numb the day out of my brain, but apparently I hadn’t. As soon as Crash asked, everything rushed back. The victim’s ghost. The vehicle. The fucking bully of a husband who had his wide-eyed-innocent look down pat. The homicide had been given up for hopeless, but my chat with the dead woman had obtained the search warrant to seize his blood-riddled 4x4. The evidence wasn’t fresh and gory, though it was extensive, dried to invisibility on a black paint job that lit up like a disco ball with a few spritzes of luminol and a pass of black light. As bloody homicides go, since the evidence was old and dry, it was one of the less gruesome scenes. It’s not just blood that sticks in my mind, though. The thought of what atrocities one human being can commit on another was the part that haunted me.
Crash’s appetite wasn’t visibly dampened. “If that’s not an example of being in the zone,” he said, “I don’t know what is.”
I’d never considered the idea that I had a “zone.” I can’t say it felt good, exactly, though it did feel satisfying. But before I could get too carried away with myself by reveling in the thought, a sharp knock on the front door startled me back to everyday reality. Crash went very still, listening. Or maybe fe
eling. Softly, I said, “You’re not expecting anyone, I take it.”
He shook his head as a guy on the other side of the door called, “Hello? Hello, are you there? I saw lights on from the alley.”
“A friend?” I guessed.
Crash cocked his head and focused on the voice. “Doesn’t sound familiar.”
If it was a casual hookup looking for a repeat of the action, I couldn’t blame the guy for trying. Except if I were to drop by some casual lay’s shop in hopes of scoring, I’d at least attempt to sound a bit more…flirty. And I don’t have a flirtatious bone in my body.
The knocking turned into banging. “Hello? I really need to—look, I tried to get here earlier but the buses run so bad in the snow.”
I looked to Crash to see if he recognized the voice yet. He shook his head.
More banging, and then the guy yelled, “Your store’s hours fucking suck.”
Crash’s eyebrows shot up toward the dark roots at his hairline. “Sometimes the whole non-violence discipline feels incredibly limiting.”
“You want me to…?”
“No, you’re my guest, not my bodyguard. Keep eating.” He rounded the counter and headed for the door. “I’m happy to provide a refresher-course in manners.”
Right, as if I was going to just sit there and keep stuffing pizza in my face while he dealt with this guy. For all we knew, this was the same creep who’d robbed the downstairs neighbor, coming back for round two. As I grabbed the entire stack of napkins and began buffing the grease off my fingers in anticipation of drawing my sidearm, a calm and familiar voice said, “Let Curtis handle it.”
Not that I didn’t value Miss Mattie’s opinion…but I kept de-greasing anyway.
“You care ’bout him, I know, but he still a man. You can’t fight his fights for him. When you let people make their own choices, you show them your respect.”
Darkened store, agitated customer, recent robbery—whatever cop-sense I’d developed over the years was shrilling “danger” at its highest volume. I crept up the aisle, right hand ready…and then I saw the guy who’d preempted my dinner wasn’t brandishing an ice pick or a chain-wrapped baseball bat. He had a can of incense in his hand. “I need to return this.”
Crash flipped on the overhead lights. They flickered to life, and my ominous sense of foreboding ebbed. He took the can from the guy, shook it a few times, and said, “It didn’t light?”
“It lit…but it was wood, mostly wood.” He was a normal-looking guy, but normal-looking guys can carry a switchblade or a pistol in their pocket just as easily as an obvious thug. I kept my eye on his body language, his aggression. Now that he had six feet of tattooed Crash up in his face, he was nowhere near as cocky as he’d been on the other side of the door.
Crash is assertive, but he’s not aggressive. He doesn’t maneuver like a cop—he steers situations with words. “That’s characteristic of this type of self-lighting incense. Anything you get in a canister will be tinted sandalwood infused with oils and resins. The wood is what keeps it burning without charcoal.”
“But it’s awful. All the different types smell the same, like wood.”
I spied movement out of the corner of my eye. Miss Mattie was fanning herself with her paper St. Anthony fan beside me. I wondered if her fanning had anything to do with the hissing radiators or if, since she was non-physical, it was simply habit. “That man is just here for an argument,” she said. “And Curtis happy to give it to him.”
Taking into consideration the posture, the gestures…I’d have to agree. Since I’m the type of person who avoids arguments rather than feeding off them, I wandered back to the counter. “Is he okay?” I said under my breath. “In general, I mean. He’s not…starving or anything. Is he?”
When Miss Mattie didn’t answer, I thought maybe she’d disappeared. She hadn’t, though. She was gazing off into eternity, gently fanning her broad face. Finally, she said, “Curtis grew up with money. Big house, out in the suburbs. Only child. Two parents working, jobs that pay good…jobs they hate. His daddy dropped over dead the day after he turned fifty. His momma fightin’ an ulcer.”
I tried to picture Mattie in this well-to-do suburban scene, and couldn’t quite see how she’d fit in. “And you were their neighbor?”
“That’s just how his momma explained it to him.” She snapped her fan shut. “I cleaned their house.”
“Oh.” If that was a mental shift for me, I couldn’t imagine what Crash would make of it. I sure as hell wasn’t going to be the one to break the news.
Miss Mattie disappeared as the argumentative guy’s voice carried up the aisles. “Aren’t you going to offer me a refund?”
“I might have, if you didn’t barge in here after closing—”
“I told you, the bus—”
“And on top of that, it’s almost gone. How bad could it have been if you used it up?”
“The can was half-empty to begin with. The contents settle. Open a new one and you’ll see.”
How long was this guy gonna carry on? I swallowed the last of my water, then delved through the beaded curtain to the inner sanctum for a refill. Okay, and maybe to snoop while Crash was occupied, so I could reassure myself that I wouldn’t swing by and find he’d starved to death because I hadn’t thought to bring bread sticks.
The fridge looked pretty sparse. There were condiments on the door, soy sauce and chili paste, and jars of who-knows-what covered in colorful Asian characters. An egg carton with ten eggs left. Numerous packets of McDonald’s ketchup and Taco Bell salsa. I tried not to imagine him living on fast food condiments, but I didn’t see any way to drop off some vegetables without coming off as incredibly condescending. The freezer, in which you could usually find some microwave vegetarian dinners and a big bottle of vodka, now contained nothing but a two-inch layer of frost and a few trays of ice cubes. A package of marked down Halloween cookies, crumbled as if someone had stepped on them, sat on the countertop. The cupboards held a canister of generic oatmeal, a bag of dried lentils, and a stack of ramen noodles as long as my arm. I’d endured the occasional all-ramen menu when I was first sprung from Camp Hell. I hadn’t ended up with diabetes or scurvy, and actually, I didn’t mind the taste. Were they still ten for a dollar? Maybe, in the local bodegas. Nowadays, I wouldn’t dare bring any home for fear of an all-night lecture on the dangers of sodium. I closed the cupboard door before I got caught rifling through Crash’s stuff, refilled my water from the tap, and made my way back through the piles of books, recycling and dirty clothes to the store.
Crash and the disgruntled customer were now standing in front of the incense display. “You’re gonna have to upgrade to charcoal and resin. If you don’t like that wood smell, it’s the only way.”
“You’re probably just trying to get me to buy an expensive incense holder.”
“Absolutely not—a heavy ceramic ash tray will work just fine. If you don’t wanna buy a new one, wash an old one in salt water and say your favorite cleansing ritual over it first.” The guy grumbled a reply, and Crash said, “Tell you what. Try some of the primo stuff, and I’ll throw in your first roll of charcoal, free.”
“Free” must have been the magic word. The guy picked out his incense and Crash rang him up around the now-cold pizza. He even had the decency to look slightly chagrined for interrupting our dinner. Once we heard his footsteps recede down the stairwell, I said, “How much did that encounter net you?”
“Pff. Maybe five bucks. Plus the satisfaction that I didn’t give him a refund for the used up thing he was trying to return.”
“And the charcoal?”
“Costs me a quarter.”
He was a savvy salesman and he knew how to handle a customer, but it seemed like a hell of a lot of effort for a measly $4.75. Especially when he was living on ketchup packets. I didn’t want to come right out and say it—he hadn’t asked for my financial advice, after all, and Miss Mattie’s assertion that too much interference would emasculate him was fres
h in my mind. I cared about him, though. I couldn’t just say nothing. I closed the box on the cold pizza and said, “Retail seems like a tough business.”
“You’re telling me.”
“I’ll bet you’d be good at marketing.” This wasn’t necessarily a hundred percent accurate. His flyers were artsy, but also cryptic and vaguely disturbing. Although maybe, for the right sort of customer, that sensibility would be a bonus. Truthfully, I added, “You seem to enjoy it.”
“As a full-time gig? I dunno. I’d need to go back to school. Plus I’d end up having to deal with a lot of corporate dickwads.”
“And how are they any worse than tonight’s charmer?”
Crash pulled a pack of gum out of his pocket and offered me a stick. I shook my head, no. He unwrapped a piece and said thoughtfully, “Maybe I’d be good at marketing, maybe I wouldn’t. It doesn’t much matter. This store is my world. It’s my life. It’s who I am. I’m my own boss, and I make my own rules. I couldn’t close up shop any more than you could turn in your badge and start taking orders from F-Pimp.”
Chapter 3
Trouble shared is trouble halved—that’s how the saying goes, anyway. Unfortunately, describing the bloody truck to Crash brought back the day I’d been working so hard to forget. The ghost was so young, maybe Lisa’s age, not even thirty, and she was still hung up on the guy who’d stabbed her…twelve times, by my count…three of them in the neck. The only reason she’d told me it was him was to ask me—to beg me—to help her understand why he’d done it.
And unfortunately, I had no good answer for that.
Spook Squad Page 2