by MB Mooney
“Richard is a weird dude, yeah, but he’s my friend. I’m going over to see him this afternoon.”
“Where does he live?”
“In an apartment over by the school. I’m gonna walk there.”
“You think that’s wise?” she asked, sitting back.
“Come on, Mom, he’s not your traditional student, but he’s a smart guy, loves to read and do art stuff. He’s harmless.” A picture of Richard throttling the best athlete in the school roused in his memory, however. “Well, harmless enough to me.”
“Be careful who you choose as your friends, Matt,” she said after a pause. “We all need good influences in our life.”
“Okay, Mom,” Matt said.
He wondered what his mother would think if he asked out a girl.
Vikki Wagner was truly a vision. Her long, straight blond hair fanning along her dainty shoulders, her striking, crystal green eyes, her hips and the curves to her perfect body, they all mesmerized Matt like nothing he had ever seen. What could be more beautiful? He watched her every time she was near, his heart beating a little faster, his palms a little damper, his stare a little less in his control. He tried to pay attention when she talked, when anyone spoke if she was near, but it seemed to be beyond his control. Although he had always been good at school, even with all the moving around from city to city, his grade in Bio class was beginning to suffer. She spoke to him now as their morning Bio class began to wind down.
“Could you, Matt?”
Her voice, ah, the voice of an angel. Vikki had somehow dodged the redneck Spackle of speech that most of the girls in the school possessed. She spoke intelligently, and Matt was sure she had a lot to talk about, if he could only pay attention.
“I’m sorry, Vikki,” Matt stammered. “What was that again?”
“Are you okay?” Vikki asked, suddenly breaking from her own focus, concentrating instead on Matt. Her brows came together with a concerned look.
God, she is cute, Matt thought. “What do you mean?”
“You look a little ... tired and pale. Are you feeling okay?”
“Sure. Yeah, just haven't been getting a lot of sleep lately. Don't worry about me. What was it you wanted to ask me?”
Vikki looked down, holding her hands together in her lap. “Well, we're going to be dissecting this cat next week,” he saw the disgust in her eyes as she frowned, “and I wondered whether or not you would like to do it together, you know, as partners or whatever.”
Was she nervous? Why would she be nervous?
“Sure. Yeah, sure. I’d love to. I mean, that would be great.”
Vikki looked up at him and smiled. “Good.”
Matt watched her turn her attention back to her books, and he saw the pleased look on her face. Had it been more than academic curiosity? he thought. Continuing to gaze at her, he tortured himself with his hormonal imagination. Why would she want Matt when she could have any guy in the school? Surely there were better looking guys than he.
“Vikki?” Matt said, his voice cracking as he said her name.
She looked up from her studies, giving him her full attention, her eyebrows raised.
Matt forced himself to speak. “I'd like to ask you a question. But I don't want you to think that I'm … weird or anything.”
“Too late,” Vikki commented with a grin, then straightened her mouth when Matt didn’t laugh. “Sorry. Ask away.”
“Okay. I was just wondering, you know, if you'd like to, if you weren't busy or anything, you know, go and ... um ... do something sometime?”
Vikki smiled at him. “Matthew Walker, are you trying to ask me out?”
Matt nodded, smiling sadly at his clumsy attempt.
She reached out and touched his hand. “I’d love to.”
-----
Andrea grabbed the pole at the front of the stage on the run, spinning around it with one arm holding on for dear life, one hand raised in the air as if in victory, her head laying back, her long, sandy brown hair flowing behind her. The hoots and hollers below her reached her on the stage. As she stopped spinning, she straddled the pole between her legs, feeling the bass of the blaring sound system shaking her body. She enjoyed the music at such a high volume; if only it were loud enough to drown out the men who paid to see her dance. Wearing only a red thong bikini bottom and long, black gloves, she lifted and lowered herself on the pole.
The hands that held the dollar bills drew her to the edge of the stage, like leaves fluttering at her, and she welcomed the hands at her waist, pulling at the thong, inserting the bills. She didn’t tarry, however, because she knew they wanted to see her dance, not accept more of their money. Her greed did not turn them on. Her naked body did. They wanted to see her seduce them, and seduce them she did. They all would want her after she was done. They wanted her now.
She had done this for a long time – use men for their money. It hadn’t always been this legal or this safe, but she had always done it with ease. She didn't exactly know what it was about her that allowed her to separate herself from her surroundings, to let the men use her so she could have the money at the end of the night, but she possessed it, whatever it was.
There had been more than a few men in her life that called her “whore,” but most of them were dead or poor from dealing with her. Not many of them ever knew her real name. Andrea Gorman. Oh, if they cared enough to check her out, they could have found it. She did nothing to hide it from any of them. She told them her name was Dee Dee or Bambi or some other slutty name, and they smiled, accepted it, and went on with their dismal little lives. But when she thought about it, was her life any better? For all her manipulation and deceit over the years, had she improved her life at all? Her present situation – living from week to week stripping in a second rate club – provided answer enough.
Her shift was almost over. She bent over in front of them, shaking her buttocks in their face, making sure her hair fell straight down her back. They always liked that. The song ended, and her time on stage was over. After a few more dances on the floor, she would be done.
She had tomorrow off work, and she wondered offhand what she should do. Maybe she would drive down to Savannah to see her brother; he did a show down there. Andrea always tried to convince him that the gay and transvestite scene was much kinder and more diverse here in Atlanta than in Savannah. Maybe this weekend he would believe her. Making her way offstage, Andrea thought, Yeah. Savannah sounds good.
It was a slow saunter to her favorite customer of the evening. “Hello,” she said. “Did you miss me?”
“I sure did,” he said, smiling at her. “I’ve been waiting for one more dance.” He handed her the money.
Beaming back at him, she knew her pleasure looked genuine, even though she felt nothing. “All right. Just this one, then I’m done, you hear?”
“Yes. This last dance before you're through.”
The next song started, and she danced for him. He said his name was Ray, but he probably lied about his name the same way she lied about her own. A lot of them did. She had been doing this type of thing for a while, and wasn’t easily fooled.
She didn't know why, but he was especially interested in her. He seemed genuine and sincere before. But as she danced for him now, his eyes took on an air that was different. They were blank somehow, as if he wasn’t there anymore. It could have been the alcohol, but she didn't remember him drinking all that much. It wasn’t his face or his body language as much as his eyes, not drunk and glassy but hard eyes that had been so soft earlier in the evening.
As she continued to dance, Andrea became more and more uncomfortable. She couldn’t wait for the song to end. She prayed for the song to end. His eyes kept peering at her, staring through her, as if he were focusing on something inside that she couldn’t see.
The song ended, and she grabbed her clothes and pulled them to her.
She said, “Well, goodnight,” then hurried away from him.
He didn’t give an answer, and s
he didn’t wait for one.
Andrea took her time dressing to go home. She stopped Big John as he walked by the back door. “Hey,” she said. “Do you think you could walk me to my car?”
Big John looked at her curiously. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, just wondering if you could walk me to my car.”
“Sure. It’s just you never asked me, you know.”
“I know.” She put on her coat and walked out the back door in front of Big John. “A little change of pace every now and then never hurt anyone.”
“I guess not.”
They walked quietly together through the parking lot until they arrived at her blue Honda. Heart still pounding, Andrea got out her keys.
“This one's mine.”
She turned to Big John and faked a smile through the anxiety. “Thanks.”
“No problem,” he said.
Andrea got into her car and waved to Big John as she left the parking lot. It was a ten-minute drive to her house. She made it in seven.
At the door of her apartment, she breathed a sigh, relieved. She was home safe. Undoing the first of three locks, she thought of the bath she would have, the warm water surrounding her body, the lather feeling good all around her. She unlocked the second and third one, wondering what late movie would be on to help her unwind. Maybe she would call her brother if it still wasn’t too late.
The apartment was dark as she entered it and closed the door behind her. She locked all three again, carefully making sure the door was secure. She took two or three steps into the apartment before she saw the shadow standing in the middle of her living room. It was a tall, human shadow. She froze.
“You've danced your last dance,” the shadow said, a man’s voice, a man’s figure, a man’s smell.
Andrea recognized the voice. The man in the shadows began to walk towards her. “Ray?” she said, but she knew his name was not Ray.
He got closer to her, slowly, but she couldn't move. She could see his eyes now, and they were the same hard eyes she had seen earlier in the club. “You've danced your last dance,” he said again.
“Who are you?” she asked.
Keep him talking, she said to herself. There’s no way to outrun him. The locks to the door would take forever.
“Ray?”
And when he said the name, she knew he wasn’t correcting her. She knew the name immediately. It had been long ago, but she hadn’t forgotten it, no, not at all. He was two or three feet from her now. She could feel him breathe. She could see the long knife in his hand reflecting off the moonlight.
“One more dance?” she said.
He shook his head as he buried the knife into her abdomen. Andrea cried out in pain and sadness, mostly pain. She fell against him, trying desperately to catch her breath. Grabbing the knife, she felt the wetness there. Her own blood.
“I'm sorry,” she said, breathless, whispering.
He pulled the blade upwards, cutting through her abdomen and through the breastplate in the middle of her chest. She passed out as she began to spit up the blood.
Chapter 4
His mother named him George Washington Shade after the first president of the United States, but few people knew that fact. Most who ever knew were dead. He preferred the name Shade; however, every now and then someone would ask what G.W. stood for and when he explained, that person would laugh.
“A black man named after a white president who owned slaves? What a riot.”
He would laugh too, but if he felt the guy was being an asshole about it, especially if they were making fun of his mother, he would kill the guy a little slower, give him a little extra pain. But he never killed for fun. Shade saw what happened to those that killed for fun. He killed for money … or to survive.
Just past midnight, Shade could see his breath in the Italian cold. Under the dim light of the street just past midnight, Shade watched his boss, Mr. Smith, walk into the front door of the hotel. Alone. Shade had told his boss that this made him nervous. There was no telling who was here, in this place, in this strange little city just north of Rome, Italy, and Mr. Smith was paying Shade to protect him. Mr. Smith – not that Shade believed that was his real name - told him not to worry at all about him, speaking with that strange accent Shade couldn’t place.
But Shade had wired him for sound anyway, and without his boss’ knowledge. He used a little bug he placed in the boss’ suit jacket. Easy to do without notice, and it was state of the art equipment. Mr. Smith’s safety was a business concern: who would pay him if Mr. Smith died? Besides, Mr. Smith was up to something, and personally, Shade wanted to know what it was.
Shade sat in the front seat of the van, stuck the earpiece in his ear and listened. State of the art equipment. He hated it with a passion and thought people relied too much on it. Shade grew up learning that a good ass-kicking was what most people needed, if not to cease living, but this was indeed a different century. I can’t get away from the technology, the computers, the crap, he thought. He swore for years he would never use it, didn’t need it, but he decided in the late nineties that he would rather live with the technology than to die without it. Sometimes he regretted that decision.
Noise came through the bug. A man, no, two men greeted Mr. Smith. One called him … what was that name? Shade tried to adjust the digital pad in his palm for better reception, but he had missed it. Maybe it would be on the recording.
“This way sir,” he heard one of the men say to Mr. Smith.
The three of them, including Mr. Smith, were on an elevator now. Going up? Down? Shade couldn't tell. No one spoke, only the sound of the moving elevator on the earpiece.
Shade thought in passing that it would be nice to see the city while he was here. Rome was beautiful this time of the year, he heard. He had never been able to take the time to see the sights in Rome before, and that grieved him, although the money and the nature of the work he usually did in Rome made his quick exit from the city a necessity. Shade actually entertained the idea that Mr. Smith was Italian and somehow connected with international organized crime. If true, Mr. Smith was one of the few men in the international mob that managed to keep out of the dossiers of G.W. Shade.
That was very difficult to do.
But Mr. Smith was not in the international mob. He was some type of independent entity, a loner with a lot of cash and a definite plan, a big plan. He never shared this plan with Shade, and Shade never really asked. But it did make him curious. Curiosity was never a characteristic that extended your life, especially in Shade’s line of work. Shade had his suspicions, but Mr. Smith attended meetings in secret, invested heavily in different industries.
A mercenary for hire, Shade a personal bodyguard of a sort, although Mr. Smith enveloped himself in such seclusion that Shade almost never had to face a physical confrontation as a part of his job. It had happened once in the past two years that he worked for Mr. Smith. His superiors had trained Shade well, the best of the best, as an assassin, commando, and overall soldier … with some extra heartlessness thrown in.
His skin was dark, even for an African-American, and Shade’s eyes were the color of night, without any noticeable difference between the iris and the black of his eye. His shaved head didn’t seem as long or narrow as it had when he was younger. The past few years he had seen a slight change in his body, a settling, just the biological act of aging creeping up on him. His abilities, speed, and strength had not changed, however. His nose was wide, and his full lips could spread in a wide smile. Only he never smiled.
The sound of the elevator moving was still in his ear, and Shade waited patiently for it to stop. Shade heard the elevator door open, and listened carefully, the footsteps on a hard floor, maybe polished wood. A door latch clicked.
“Right this way, sir. The Assembly is ready.” The same voice as before. A little static as Mr. Smith seemed to be moving where his chaperone led him. Shade surmised a high probability they were underground based on the weakness of the audio signal.<
br />
Shade heard the door close, a heavy door, and the two chaperones seemed to leave Mr. Smith alone in the room.
A woman’s voice, very far away, an echo in the earpiece. Must be a big room. “You have called this meeting,” she said. “State your business.” Her coldness translated well across the digital equipment.
“My business?” Mr. Smith said. “You mock me with your politeness.”
The woman. “You mock us with your presence, since you have done nothing but work against this Assembly since its inception. You are fortunate we agreed to meet with you at all.”
“You speak as if this Assembly is deserving of honor,” Mr. Smith said. “When all present know that it is not.”
Bodies shuffling in seats, quiet murmurs. The woman. “What are you implying?”
Mr. Smith. “This Assembly has a great amount of power, but they do not share it. Of all the beings able to contribute, world decisions and directions are guided and influenced by you? Eleven people picked by one man, one individual with flawed intentions …”
The woman. “Careful. He is not here to defend himself.”
Mr. Smith chuckled. “But is that not the point? Gone. Left on a mission that was too dangerous and irresponsible. Did you not even tell him so? I am sure all of you did. But he did not listen.”
The woman. “What is this to you?”
Mr. Smith. “It is everything. My plans, my wishes, my actions are sanctioned or condemned by a body with their own agenda. After the destruction your founder caused, it has taken thirty years to build what I have come to enjoy, a lifestyle worthy of who I am, what I am. There are thousands more without representation, without a voice, without a chance to speak freely.”
“You are speaking freely now,” the woman answered. “We called this meeting per your request. But do not bore me with talk of freedom or shared power. When have you ever fought for freedom, for the individual rights of others? When have you ever shared power? You only think of yourself and the power that you may acquire. You know our rules against what you seek, and that is why you have been an enemy of this body since the beginning.” There was an anxious pause. “You requested this meeting. What is it you desire?”