Got Luck

by Michael Darling

  With one paw holding me down, Toto used the other paw to draw on my face. More specifically, it used the tip of a claw to etch the skin of my forehead. I heard screaming and realized it was me. The lines felt molten but instantly cooled. When Toto was done, it backed away. It looked at my forehead almost approvingly. Then it met my eyes and snorted once and disappeared.

  Blink.

  A few leftover sparks drifted up toward the ceiling and faded away.

  At lunch, eating kimchi, I would have bet good money that getting shot at would be the strangest and most frightening thing that would happen to me today.

  I sat on the floor and unashamedly moaned in a way that wasn’t masculine at all. From fear and pain but also relief that it was over and I was alive. My leg hurt and my side hurt worse, so sitting got uncomfortable pretty quick.

  Gravity played devil’s advocate, but I finally won the debate over getting to my feet. I padded down the hall. No need to hesitate or be afraid. There was nothing in this world that could scare me anymore.

  My reflection stared back at me from the bathroom mirror, and I thought that guy looked as shocked as I felt. How about that? Since I was already staring, I examined my brow. There were faint lines in my skin, thin as threads, in a gently-glowing baby blue. I had seen a pattern like that somewhere before, but I couldn’t place it or imagine what it might mean. It was like a Stain but contained in a small circle instead of a ribbon.

  The lines were fading. Over the course of about ten minutes they became fainter and fainter until they melted away altogether. Other than Stain, I hadn’t seen anything this messed up for at least ten years. Maybe my teenaged misbehaviors at The Mama’s were coming back to haunt me.

  I sat on the side of the tub and fingered my bruised leg and ribs. I said some bad words.

  The tub was right there, all handy-like. I filled it up with hot water, and while the faucet ran I got some Ibuprofen out of the medicine cabinet and swallowed four of them. When the tub was full, I stripped and eased into the hot water. More bad words ensued.

  I soaked for a good thirty minutes, until the water had cooled and I had let some drain out and refilled it. I wondered if I should report this latest attack to the police. What would I say? A giant liondog got in the house and used my head for a neon art project? Oh, and don’t forget, Officer Friendly, it was invisible. Make sure you write that down.

  The pain wasn’t getting better but it wasn’t getting worse. I wrapped myself in a towel and gimped to the bedroom. I put on some sweats and gimped to the kitchen, but I wasn’t hungry for anything even though I knew my body would need fuel for repairs. I poked around in the fridge. A sandwich would be easy to make, so I assembled a ham and cheese with some brown mustard and ate it standing over the piano. It hurt to swallow.

  Big long gouges still adorned the wooden top. I could see quite a few shattered CDs on the floor. I’d have to replace some Peter Gabriel and Frankie Goes to Hollywood. Chopin was all broke up too.

  The tile looked cold and hard, especially in the places where I had fallen. I needed more rugs.

  I thought I’d lie down for a few minutes, just until Max and Sandretta got back. I curled up on my bed and fell asleep.

  When I woke up it was dark. Four in the morning by the clock. I thought I could hear music, but it was only a lingering melody from a dream I couldn’t otherwise remember. I got up to walk off the tightness in my leg and side. I walked down the hallway and cursed at the pain as I stretched.

  The French windows were open in the great room. If I had opened them, I had forgotten. Probably hadn’t been me. There was a nice waning moon over the river, and its reflection flickered at me from the water. The reflection changed and for a moment there was a face. Female. Human but with an exotic glimmer of something other, and it was all just a trick of flowing water and light and me with a fuzzy head. That’s what I decided.

  I took more Ibuprofen and went back to sleep.

  Chapter Three

  Office Visits

  Erin O’Connell was the sexiest medical examiner in the world. Her career trajectory had been notably meteoric because she had an uncanny ability for analyzing information, and she was also famously beautiful. When you watch a television drama and see an impossibly attractive woman working as a lab technician or forensic pathologist and you say to yourself, “There’s no way a woman that gorgeous would be stuck in a regular job because she’d be earning a million dollars as a supermodel,” well, Erin is that woman. In a regular job. And that gorgeous.

  She wasn’t freakishly tall, but she always wore high heels to work so she stood about 5’ 11” and that made her taller than almost everyone in the office. The heels never seemed to bother her in the slightest even when she spent the whole day on her feet. Her deep oak-shaded hair was cut past the shoulder and arranged to set off the heart shape of her face. Her mouth was small but her lips full. A heart within a heart. Her eyes were the color of warm toffee, but I’d seen them change to emerald green when she was angry or upset, which has been known to happen with me around. She always wore a lab coat at work which somehow did absolutely nothing to hide her curvy figure. except where it better served to lead the imagination to speculation.

  I might be in love with her a little.

  I’d met Erin at a crime scene. I was on the force and we were canvassing the street where a serial killer had left another victim. Erin was comforting the wife. At one point, when she was alone, I said “Hi.” She instantly replied, “Nope. Don’t do drugs,” which made me smile. I later found out she helped the wife get into counseling, and she volunteered once a week at a women’s shelter. She was much more than a pretty package.

  Oh. She was also Stained.

  I strolled into the lab. Okay, limped.

  “Of all the gin joints, in all the towns, in all the world, I walk into yours,” I said.

  “Luck, when are you going to stop mangling Casablanca?” she asked. She didn’t look up from the lump of something pink and squishy that she had in a metal bowl. She was poking it with a scalpel.

  “When you come with me to Paris,” I replied. “Then I’ll be able to say ‘We’ll always have Paris.’”

  “Can’t happen,” she said. “That’d only work if I got on a plane after and you never saw me again.”

  “That does seem to be a flaw in the plan.”

  Erin set the metal bowl and scalpel down on a table. She looked up then and I caught the full impact of those smoldering toffee eyes.

  “Got something for me?”

  Boy did I ever have something for her. Plus, she’d given me a tempting straight line. I took the high road. “Two things. A bullet and a story,” I replied.

  “Okay. Bullet first,” she said.

  “It’s in evidence.” I did have my copy of the incident report, which I held out to her. That simple motion was enough to make me wince. I hoped she hadn’t noticed.

  “Then you can tell me about those ribs.”

  She’d noticed.

  She took the report and started reading. She hummed a little while she read and I just waited, not wanting to rush her.

  Erin’s Stain was actually quite beautiful. Instead of the oppressive, ugly black ribbons that Milly carried, Erin’s Stain was a forest green band that encircled her torso, right over her heart. It had a pattern that looked like stylized leaves and vines, although that was just my interpretation. Not a Stain really. On her, more of an embellishment.

  She finished reading. “So when ballistics are done, I can check it against the database for you, okay? See if I can find a match.”

  “That would be great. I don’t think the police will pursue it themselves.” I smiled.

  “And now the story,” she replied.

  I told her about the meeting with Milly MacPherson Mallondyke. Erin’s left eyebrow went up at the name. I could respect that. And I told her how
, after Milly left, the bullet had presumptuously shattered the front window of my office and ended up in my wall.

  She listened carefully. When I was done, she said, “You don’t think your new client shot at you?”

  “Why would she? She just hired me to do a job.”

  Erin moved her lips around in distracting ways while she thought. “Maybe she just wanted to identify you. You said she checked the door repeatedly before she came in. So she was really intent on making sure she had the right place. Then she talks to you and gets a good look. She hires you to make you comfortable. Justification for checking you out. Then she leaves, sets up with the rifle. Kills you. The check she gave you never gets cashed. It serves as her alibi.”

  I nodded while she spoke. I nodded a lot. “This is why I like talking to you. The feeling that you’re dangerously close to putting me out of a job,” I said. “But my feeling is she’s sincere.”

  Erin shrugged. “So cash the check. If it clears, she’s probably legit. If it bounces, keep looking over your shoulder.”

  “You are wise,” I replied. I made to give her a bow, Jackie Chan style, and groaned.

  “I’m guessing the bullet had nothing to do with your limp and your ribs,” Erin said.

  She’d noticed the limp too. I thought she’d been completely focused on the pink and squishy thing in the bowl.

  “Sit over here,” she said, indicating a stool.

  I sat. She brought another stool and sat across from me. She pointed at my leg and gave me a “gimme” gesture. I entrusted my left lower extremity to her tender care.

  “How did you injure your leg?”

  “Bumped into a table,” I said. I left out the part where I was being chased by a giant, invisible liondog.

  She gently rolled up my pants leg a little and slid a warm hand up along my shin. She carefully manipulated my leg and foot. Her probing fingers were firm and—yowch! That hurt. “Not a fracture,” she said. “Open your shirt.”

  I unbuttoned my shirt. Her hands ran along my side and then along each rib, starting at the bottom and working her way up. It both tickled and hurt at the same time, which was just wrong. I held myself together with some effort. I wanted to giggle and swear simultaneously.

  “Take a deep breath,” Erin said.

  I inhaled and stopped halfway and groaned again.

  “Uh-uh,” she said. “Deep breath.”

  I had to clench my teeth together, but I managed to fill my lungs with air and expand my chest.

  “How did you hurt your side?” she asked.

  I let the air out of my lungs, relieved. “While I was distracted by the table, the chair snuck up on me.”

  Erin looked at me with her head tilted to the side and gave me a dubious expression like she was watching I.Q. points falling out of my ears.

  I laughed, which hurt, and said, “I’m just stupid clumsy. It was embarrassing. Like I was trying to dance with the furniture but the furniture was drunk.”

  “Ok,” she replied. “There’s nothing broken but stay off the leg as much as you can and take ten deep breaths every hour. It’ll keep you from getting an infection in your chest.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Can’t put a splint on a rib,” she replied. “Just barbecue sauce.”

  I laughed again. It hurt again. She smiled. “Ten breaths. Go.”

  “I already did one. Plus, you made me laugh several times which counts for another one.”

  Erin rolled her toffee eyes at me and waved me off. I took ten deep breaths and every one set my side on fire.

  “Can you look at one more thing?” I asked.

  Erin kept her expression neutral but I could tell she was thinking. I pointed at my forehead so she wouldn’t get the wrong idea. “The skin across here hurts. Weird, right?”

  The circlet of her Stain touched me when she drew close. I swear I felt a tingle. Unless it was just my imagination. She frowned a little and squinted and ran a finger across my brow. She smelled like soap and jojoba and cinnamon and butter and sugar. Sexy and clean. Possibly edible.

  “What happened to your forehead?”

  “Shaving accident?”

  “Uh-huh. No abrasions. No bruising. Not even a pimple,” she said. “Maybe you just slept on it funny.”

  “Maybe,” I said. The symbol on my head had faded completely. Or my imagination was trying to kill me. And kill my piano.

  I looked into Erin’s eyes and she backed away.

  “I’ll see what I can find out about that bullet for you,” she said, getting back to business.

  “Sounds good,” I replied. Señor Nonchalant. I buttoned my shirt back up and readjusted my pants leg. “Thanks for your help.”

  “Mmm-hmm,” Erin said. Already back to the pink and squishy.

  * * *

  I made my way over to the downtown police station, which was only one rock song away as the crow drives. Practically everything in Chief Cuevas’s office was brass. Brass bookends on the shelves, brass paperweights on the desk, brass pen-and-pencil set. If the Chief had thought of a more subtle way of making it clear he was the top brass in the building, he’d long ago shot it down with a brass bullet.

  Cuevas motioned me into the brass fortress the second he saw me.

  “Luck, get in here,” he said. Ah, just like old times. Dumbrass.

  “You’re reviewing the Mallondyke case for Milly,” he stated.

  “Good to see you too, Chief,” I replied.

  The Chief ignored me. He stood up and unlocked a filing cabinet and pulled out a binder. As far as I could tell, there wasn’t anything else in the drawer. He shoved the binder at me. I took it and tucked it under my arm.

  “Before you take another step, you’re going to keep your trap shut and hear me out,” he said. “I continue to maintain you’re a colossal screw-up. You don’t like following rules and you have a pathological dislike for authority. In this case, I decided that kind of behavior may be just what Milly needs. I had a long talk with her father and he wanted someone who wouldn’t mind coloring outside the lines. I thought of you. We play golf at Palmetto every week. I want you to meet us there next Sunday at ten in the morning and tell us what you find. We’ll let you know what Milly should be told. Anything you find out between now and then, you keep to yourself until you clear it with me. I know how you operate and I don’t want to hear any baloney about how Milly is your client. I can see that coming a mile away. You drop that kind of thinking into the toilet right now and flush it. Her daddy’s money is paying for this and he’s willing to go along with bringing you onboard because his daughter is hurting.”

  He handed me a pen and pointed a thick finger at the piece of paper that was sitting on the edge of his desk. I bent down to read it. Standard sign-out sheet for the murder book. City of Miami PD loves its documentation. A brass monkey—one of Cuevas’s paperweights—was looking up at me to make sure I was behaving myself. I stuck my tongue out at it.

  Cuevas said, “No photocopies of the book. No taking anything out of it. The book doesn’t leave the building. You return everything back to me.” I signed and Cuevas kept the paper. He fixed a particularly dangerous expression on his face and half-squinted at me. “You go ahead and find out what you can. I’m relying on you not to mess it up. Are we clear? Do you have any questions? Good. Now get out.”

  Of course I was clear—and that’s precisely why I had questions. In typical Chief “Tequila Cuervo” fashion, he was dictating his terms and leaving no room for argument. If the Chief believed I was going to fall in line just because he was yelling at me, he was conveniently ignoring precedent. He could think whatever he wanted. Since I needed to read through the book, I didn’t say anything except, “Thank you, Chief.”

  I stood in place and let Cuevas glare at me for a second while he tried to decide if I was being smart. I entertain
ed the possibility of the Chief owning a large, invisible liondog. Then I left.

  Chapter Four

  Symbols

  I found a quiet spot outside the break room where there were some unoccupied tables and chairs. Most of the policemen ate at their desks or in their cars while on duty, so there were rarely any crowds. I had some snacks, the murder book, and the rest of the day to see what I could find out. Perfect.

  At the front of the book was a summary of the case notes. These were used to give an overview of the investigation, primarily so the District Attorney could determine what kind of case the state would present if it went to trial. Since there hadn’t been an arrest, the summary was brief.

  The rest of the book went more or less in reverse chronological order. The first material entered was at the back. As the case progressed, papers were added at the front so the most recent additions were behind the summary. I flipped to the back in an effort to see the case as it unfolded.

  The responding officers’ report was the first entry. The body was found by the hotel maid, who used her master key to access the room for housekeeping at 11:14 in the morning. The door had a “Do Not Disturb” sign on the handle, so she had skipped the room until it was the only one remaining to be cleaned on that floor. She knocked and announced herself because people sometimes forget to take the sign off the door when they leave. When there was no response, she went in and found the body. She contacted the hotel manager with a frantic call and the manager called the police. When they arrived, the responding officers secured the scene and did some initial interviews until the detectives arrived along with the medical examiner.

  There wasn’t a lot to be gleaned there, except the killer had probably left the “Do Not Disturb” sign to delay discovery.

  The medical examiner’s report was a little more useful. Another examiner from Erin’s office had been on the scene. Erin hadn’t done the examination herself. I flipped forward and saw that the same examiner had done the autopsy as well: Sean Graver. I guess he was a new examiner. I’d never met him before.