Spy Mom

by Beth McMullen

  “Shall we dance?” In an instant, I was spinning out on the dance floor, being led by Ian Blackford in a dark suit and pale blue tie. He looked clean and crisp, as if he’d walked in through a wall of fairy dust rather than out of this hot, steamy night.

  “Didn’t the invitation say black tie?” I croaked, unable to maintain anything resembling my cool.

  “I don’t know. I didn’t get an invitation.” He spun me through a waltz as if we’d been born dancing together. I tried not to think about how good he smelled. “You didn’t take my advice.”

  “I have to try once more to convince Sovann not to sell to you,” I said, with as much conviction as I could muster. My comment didn’t seem to register. I started to pray that the music would stop, but it kept us turning around and around the dance floor.

  “You look decidedly unlike yourself tonight, Sally,” Blackford said.

  “Anything for a good cause.”

  “Yes. I guess sometimes you have to jump off the rock, don’t you think?” I shook my head. I wasn’t following him.

  “Never mind. Here is something you may find interesting. The Blind Monk is going to take out Sovann tonight. Here. He’s always gone in for the dramatic, that one. It’s going to be ugly, so don’t be surprised if you end up running in that crazy dress you’re wearing.”

  “You don’t like the dress?”

  “Quite the contrary, Sally. Quite the contrary.”

  “But why kill Sovann? The deal isn’t done yet. Wait a minute. Is the Blind Monk planning on killing Sovann and stealing his stash? That seems unprofessional even for you criminal types. Besides, Sovann’s got a small army out there guarding the place. I know. I saw them recently.”

  “The warehouse is empty, Sally,” Blackford whispered in my ear.

  I suddenly felt sick to my stomach.

  “No, it’s not. I saw it on the security cameras. Last night. The warehouse was full of …”

  Blackford smiled, enjoying my confusion. I was too late.

  “Best there ever was, right?” he said. With that, we spun in a graceful circle and Blackford released me ever so gently into the crowd of guests.

  When I regained my footing and frantically scanned the crowd for him, he was gone. I grabbed a glass of champagne and drank the whole thing in one gulp. Before I could wrangle yet another and get to work on getting seriously drunk, a scream erupted on the other side of the ballroom. Guests started to run, charging the exits in a panic. I pushed, like a salmon swimming upstream, toward the source of the screaming.

  Blackford was right. Sovann was very dead, his throat slit in such a way that most of his blood was already spread around him in a shiny puddle. Two of his guards were also in the same condition, lifeless eyes staring up at the freshly painted cathedral ceiling. I searched the massive ballroom for the Blind Monk. He was walking, very slowly, toward the kitchen. He was not in a hurry. He even stopped to take a cold glass of champagne off of an abandoned serving tray before turning to survey the madness behind him. I was standing over Sovann and his dead friends when our eyes connected over the emptying hotel. The Blind Monk, grinning like a Cheshire cat, raised his gun and aimed it right at my chest. I froze, unable to save myself, unable to run. He casually pulled the trigger as if I were nothing more than an injured dog on the street. I felt the impact, the searing hot bullet ripping through my flesh, crashing destructively into bone, tearing and shredding my insides. I hunched over, placing my hands on the blood gushing from the wound.

  But to my surprise there was none. No blood, no hole, no torn-up guts. The Blind Monk looked as confused as I was, shaking the gun and opening the barrel. The sounds of police sirens drew closer.

  That was all I needed to hear to snap me back to reality. No need to hang around while the Blind Monk reloaded. I was swept up in the last wave of fleeing guests and found myself out on the dusty street in the middle of the night running for my life in a too-tight black dress and uncomfortable shoes.

  15

  Simon is waiting on my front porch, sunglasses on and a hat pulled down low over his eyes, when Theo and I return from preschool.

  “You’d look less obvious,” I say, “without the hat and glasses.”

  “It’s the man who won’t play trucks,” chimes Theo. “Does he want chocolate milk too?”

  “I don’t know,” I say, staring at Simon, “but my guess is probably yes.”

  I unlock the front door and the three of us pile into the foyer. Simon does a quick appraisal.

  “Nice place,” he says. “You chose wisely with old William, Sal. Keeps you in the style to which you had become accustomed.”

  “Theo, can you go and play with your toys?”

  “Yes, Mommy,” he says, like the Dr. Jekyll to this morning’s Mr. Hyde, and skips off to the playroom. Simon follows me in the other direction toward the kitchen. My heart is beating too fast and I can’t slow it down.

  “Okay, so tell me,” I say without preamble.

  “The plan is very basic. You will go about your business, live your normal life, and Blackford will find you. When he shows himself, we’ll pick him up. Easy.”

  And it sounds easy. Except in my experience, easy never works. Easy always ends up being complicated. Remember me dangling over the Chao Phraya in Bangkok?

  “That’s not a plan, Simon. That’s just a hope.”

  “Well, Sal,” he says, a little exasperated, “you go to war with the army you have, not the one you wish you had.”

  “That might be the stupidest thing I’ve heard all day. And it doesn’t even make sense in this situation.”

  Simon continues. “We are going to install an agent as your nanny to give Blackford a chance at you when you are alone.”

  “No,” I say, automatically, “that’s not going to happen.”

  “Do you want your kid in harm’s way?”

  “Oh, stop acting like you care, Simon. You’re the one who put him in this situation in the first place.”

  “I’m sorry, Sal. But this is the way it has to be. It will be over soon. I promise.”

  A promise from Simon Still is not worth much, but I don’t point that out to him. I pick up the Matryoshka dolls from the kitchen floor. I methodically begin taking them apart. When I reach the littlest doll, I shake it. The rhythm is soothing. I put the dolls back together and place them on the counter. Simon watches me silently.

  “I’ll send her over for you to meet in the morning,” he says, finally. “And all the old rules apply. No one needs to know what is going on.” With that, Simon gets up, puts his coat on, and heads toward the front door.

  “Good luck, Sal,” he tosses over his shoulder.

  “Lucy,” I yell after him. “My name is Lucy.”

  “No, it’s not. But I won’t tell anyone.” And he is gone, but the idea of him lingers in my kitchen like the smell of bacon three hours after you are done cooking it.

  I find Theo curled up on his bedroom rug, clutching his favorite blanket in one hand and a toy train in the other. I sit down on the floor next to him and watch him sleep. I run my fingertips over his cheek and he twitches at my touch. As I slide both hands under his little body and lift him into his bed, the train falls from his hand, but he keeps a tight grip on the blanket. Once in bed, he rolls onto his belly, buries his hands under his chest, and pops his backside straight up in the air. I stroke his hair and silently promise him I will not let these particular monsters out of the closet.

  Even before Simon Still showed back up in my life, I would be the first to admit some cracks were starting to show. Not so many that I couldn’t manage them, but some cracks nonetheless.

  Like the incident in East Palo Alto, for example, a part of town the residents would really like to see go away. Or, at the very least, have the decency to change its name to something like, say, Nothing to Do with Palo Alto. I was taking a shortcut back to the freeway when my very new car suddenly got a very flat tire. And looking at the road littered with nails and glass, I tho
ught of the Ivory Coast and had the sneaking suspicion it was all a setup meant to conclude with the jacking of my fuel-efficient hybrid. Theo continued to nap in his car seat as I climbed out with a sigh.

  “Inconvenient,” I muttered, stepping back and appraising the situation. Did fuel-efficient hybrids have spare tires or was that considered a luxury? I pulled out my cell phone and called roadside assistance, or at least my version of it.

  “Does this thing have a spare?” I asked the second Will picked up. “I mean, is it included, full of real air and all that, or is it a do-it-yourself kind of thing where I need to blow it up?”

  “Lucy, there is a spare right in the trunk where spares usually reside. Would you like me to call Triple A for you?”

  No, I just want my old car back.

  “No,” I said. “I can manage. Theo is asleep anyway.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Palo Alto.” Sort of.

  “Okay, call me back if you need help and I’ll send someone. Call me back anyway.”

  “Fine,” I said, still a little huffy at his having stolen my car and replaced it with this fuel-efficient go-cart. Secretly, the thing was growing on me, but I’d never tell Will. He’d give me that “I told you so” look and I’d be bitter all over again.

  This particular neighborhood is crowded with bungalows in disrepair, shutters falling off, paint peeling, fences tipped over and broken. Sadly, a few miles down the road, these same houses would sell for millions. I surveyed the street and saw no one hiding in the bedraggled shrubs waiting to leap out and rob me. Maybe I was wrong, guilty of always thinking the worst.

  I headed to the trunk to get the jack and the spare. Opening the trunk, I knew two things: 1) There were more stuffed animals jammed into it than seemed possible for the space, and 2) they were behind me, probably seven or eight of them. Young, I could tell from the sounds of their nervous shuffling feet. Okay, so if pressed, I’d probably describe them more like thugs than anything else, complete with do-rags, jeans down to their ankles, newly minted gang tattoos, and bad attitudes. I had to smile at the scene. Gangsta wannabes land Prius with woman and very small sleeping child. It was too easy. How could they resist? I almost couldn’t blame them.

  They approached with that walk that I can’t stand and don’t get, sort of sliding along, holding their pants up with one hand. It’s hard to look cool with your pants falling off, but I guessed no one had mentioned that to them. It’s also hard to run away with your pants bunched up around your feet. But we’ll get to that.

  For a moment, I thought they might offer to help, but that was only for a moment. The leader stood over me. I held a two-foot-tall, striped orange Tigger in my right hand. How it ended up in my trunk is anybody’s guess.

  “You shouldn’t be here,” the boy said, eyeing the stuffed tiger with a hint of confusion.

  “Well, I don’t plan on staying,” I said. “I’m changing a tire.”

  “There’s a penalty for that,” he said. He couldn’t stop looking at Tigger.

  “No,” I said, shaking the tiger at him, “there isn’t.”

  “You dissin’ me, suburban lady?” His eyes darted side to side, surveying the reaction from his buddies. He was a newcomer to this gang leadership thing and suffered from a touch of performance anxiety.

  “No,” I answered, getting irritated. “I’m changing my tire and you’re distracting me.”

  He turned to his boys. “You hear this? She says I’m distracting her.” His posse, on cue, started hooting and hollering and pumping up this teenager who had nothing in his life but the hooting and hollering of these wayward children.

  “Listen,” I said, “you seem like a smart kid. Probably could do something more interesting with your life than this. So why don’t you turn around and head on back the way you came. You can even have the tiger, if that will help.”

  His eyes widened in response, equally shocked that I wasn’t afraid of him and that I was offering him life advice, not to mention a giant stuffed animal. He hitched up his pants, first on one side and then the other. They immediately started to slide back down his skinny hips, pulled by gravity and a huge studded belt.

  “And what is with the pants?” I asked, sitting Tigger on the bumper.

  All the boys looked at their pants.

  “What’s wrong with our pants?” someone asked from the back. The leader gave him a dirty look for speaking out of turn, but the boy shrugged, as if to say he really did want to know what was wrong with his pants.

  “Your intention is to jack my car, right?”

  The group nodded in unison, looking all of a sudden innocent and very young.

  “But you are not all going to fit. It’s a Prius, if you haven’t noticed. You know, gets great gas mileage, doesn’t require a key in the ignition to start, and even if you have perfect hearing it stands a pretty good chance of running you over, it’s that quiet. But this particular car has a seating capacity of five and that’s if you squish yourselves into the backseat. Are you following me?”

  All the heads bobbed up and down, except for the leader, who was starting to look frantic.

  “So let’s do the math here. Five seats, eight criminals. What does that leave us?”

  “Three criminals with no seats!” the youngest boy, hidden in the back, shouted out.

  “Very good. So three of you are going to have to run because you won’t fit in the car. And running very fast in those pants, well, we all know how that goes.”

  Silence. “You’re fucking with us,” the leader said. “Now get out of the way so we can take the car.”

  He stepped forward, sliding his fingers under the handle of the rear passenger door, behind which my baby continued to sleep peacefully.

  “Get your hands off my car,” I said quietly. He laughed, a cynical, sad laugh.

  “Or what?” he said. I took a step forward, eye to eye with this boy.

  “Step away from the car and we’ll call it good.” But even as the words left my lips I knew this was going to end badly for this kid. He couldn’t back off now, not in front of his boys. If he did, he would lose their respect and be relegated back to the rank and file, which I knew he’d worked hard to rise above. I almost felt bad for him. Almost.

  “Please,” I said, tossing him a last chance, “take the tiger and head on out.”

  “No one tells me what to do in my ’hood,” he replied with his most intimidating snarl.

  The moves came with ease, sort of like riding a bike. The tire iron connected with the soft flesh of his throat with such force that he immediately dropped to the ground, gasping for air. To help him out, I grabbed his hair and pulled his head back, straightening out his windpipe and letting him take a breath. One of the boys in the group had, by now, pulled out his gun and, although his hand was trembling, he aimed it at me the best he could.

  “Put that thing away,” I said, pointing at him with the tire iron. That seemed to be enough. The ringleader was still sucking wind at my feet. “Take your friend here to a hospital. He needs treatment.”

  The boy with the gun nodded.

  “Yeah, hospital,” he repeated.

  “Now,” I said. “And give me that Glock. You’re going to hurt someone.” The boy, still shaking, handed me the gun. I dropped the clip and ejected the remaining bullet from the chamber. As it fell, I caught it in the air and simultaneously pushed the button to the side of the safety that released the slide from the body of the gun. With that, the entire thing fell into ten pieces on the ground. I kicked them to the curb for emphasis.

  The boys stood watching, dumbfounded.

  “Your friend here doesn’t feel so well,” I reminded them, pointing to the ringleader now flat on his face in the dust. “Hospital. Now.”

  I went back to the trunk to take out my spare tire. The boys gathered up their friend. But they found it hard to hold up their pants and hold up their friend at the same time. There was some internal discussion about how to manage this situat
ion and still look cool. Two of the boys rolled the tops of their pants over a few times so now they almost fit correctly. Finally they scooped up their leader, whose skin grew more ashen by the second.

  “What do we tell them at the hospital?” one of the junior thugs asked, looking a little sheepish. “They always ask, you know, when there is blood and stuff.”

  “Well, what do you usually tell them?”

  The boy shrugged. “Gang stuff.”

  “Why don’t you try telling them the truth?”

  The boy’s eyes opened wide. “I don’t know about that.”

  “Well then why are you asking me? I’m busy here. Have to change the tire that you boys ruined. Now go.”

  They nodded their heads and started toting their wheezing leader down the street to an old Honda Accord, probably stolen right here, arguing amongst themselves about what to tell the hospital.

  I finished changing my tire and went home, ready to tuck the incident away in the catacombs of my memory.

  Two days later, there is a tiny mention of it in the paper, something about a woman with a flat tire and beating up a local gang member and how police were looking to question her. Will didn’t say anything, but he did cut the piece out and leave it on the kitchen table, under the salt shaker. Did he mean it as a cautionary tale, an indication that I should probably stick to the main routes nowadays? Did he think it was me the police were looking for? Either way, I crumpled it up and tossed it into the recycle bin, hoping that would be the end of it.