Jesus, only two days, Ricky was thinking. Are you lucky you ran into me so quick. Going to save you six months of turning into your mommy, then a short lifetime waiting for the hammer to fall. You’re a lucky girl, little Nicola. Lucky, lucky, lucky.
Part of him was also shaking, because of what he knew he was going to do later. He didn’t normally do it. He just disposed of them. Take a drive down the ’glades, dump the body, no-one’s going to know or give a shit. He didn’t like doing anything else, made him feel like a pervert though he wasn’t, he was a professional. Every now and then was okay though, even if it was clouding his mind right now, making it hard to make the street names out. Some guys bought themselves new guns, went on a coke bender, hired a couple of whores. Everyone needs a treat. Incentive scheme. Keeps your wheels turning.
Ricky gripped the wheel tightly, tuned out the noise of the kid’s nattering, got himself straight. Eventually he got himself in what looked like the right direction. Found his way down the grid of streets, each lined with houses, some streets like the 1940s, some the 1950s or 1960s. Or like those times would have been if they hadn’t been shit, anyhow. Like those decades were if you looked back at them now and forgot everything that was wrong with them. The streets were quiet, because mostly the people in the houses were too old to be out walking this late.
Homeland 3, along with the four other near-identical districts which spread in a fan around the Beautiful Realm, was one of the newest parts of the Wonder World. Five years ago, the suits who ran the parks realised they had another goldmine on their hands: managed communities of old farts. Cutesy little neighbourhoods in the sun, where the oldsters could come waste their final years, safe from the world outside and bad afternoons where they could be walking home from the store they’d used all their lives and suddenly find three guys with knifes standing on the corner. Not only safe, but coddled, living somewhere their grandkids could be guaranteed to want to come see them. You want to go visit granny in Roanoke? I don’t think so. Wonder World?—that’s a pretty easy sell. They built the houses, any size, any style, so everyone from trailer trash to leather-faced zillionaires had somewhere to hang their trusses: houses that looked like whatever you wanted from a space podule to a mud hut on the planet Zog. All this and stores and banks and shit, all built to look like what they sold. That’s what made it so difficult to find your way around. Was like being in a toy store on acid.
It got so popular that even the smallest houses started getting expensive, and a year ago Ricky had an idea. You’ve got house after house of old people. With money. People who can’t defend themselves too well. With things worth stealing. You get yourself into one of the Homelands—with a cute kid, who’s going to question you?—and you help yourself to some stuff, using the kid’s voice to get the door open. You’re in and out before anyone knows there’s a few old people gone to meet their maker sooner than intended: kid’s the only living witness, and not for very long. All you got to do is make sure you never get recognized at the gate, and with millions of people going in and out every week, it’s never going to happen.
And the kicker—Wonder World covered the burglaries up. Of course they did. Very bad for business, because they showed the magic retreat was a crock of shit. Plus, and here Ricky witnessed something which made perfect sense to him, something which placed the whole world in context as he understood it—the families often didn’t make too much fuss. Why? Same reason that, after a couple months, Ricky had a new idea and moved onto a different line of business, made himself a professional.
Lot of times the families weren’t exactly too sad to see the old folks go, because they wanted the old people’s money. Which is why Ricky didn’t bother to steal any more. Now Ricky took contracts instead, made it look natural. Much safer, more secret, more lucrative—for the time being. Sooner or later the suits would catch on and increase security somehow, and Ricky would move out, and start blackmailing the families instead. Even the kind of people who’d pay to have gramps whacked had to be living in a Wonder World of their own, if they didn’t realise it would come back to haunt them some day.
Ricky finally found Gecko Super Terrace III, drove a little way along it. Pulled over to the curb, looked up at a house and checked the address. Grunted with satisfaction. He was in the right place.
Margaret Harris, eighty-four years old, was worth maybe three hundred and fifty thousand dollars, all told, including the Homeland house. Not such a hell of a lot, but her son and daughter-in-law could get the bigger boat a couple years earlier, and without working all those unsociable hours and missing cocktail hour. Upgrade the satellite, get a widescreen TV for the den. Maybe they’d throw their children a bone too. A games station. A bike. A last visit to Wonder World.
As John Harris, the son, had put it while slurping a large scotch to blur his conscience: they were just realizing an unwanted asset.
Margaret Harris had herself a kind of tiny Tudor mansion, dark beams and whitewash, exaggerated leans in the walls and gingerbread thatch. There was a light on in a downstairs room, behind a curtain. The grass in the yard was all the same perfect fucking length. Maybe it was animatronic grass. Maybe it sang a happy wake-up call in the morning, a million blades in unison.
Nicola looked at the house too. ‘Is this where she lives?’
‘That’s right. You remember what I want you to do?’
She looked away, didn’t answer for a moment.
‘I had a grandma,’ she said, in a moment. ‘I saw her twice. She gave me a ring, but Mommy took it. She died when I was six. Mommy got so drunk she wet herself.’
Ricky nearly hit her then, but stopped himself just in time. It was like that with the ones like her. Part of wanting to fuck them was finding them just too fucking irritating to bear. He forced himself to speak calmly. ‘This isn’t your Grandma, okay? Do you remember, Nicola? What I want you to do?’
‘Of course,’ the girl said. She opened the door and got out.
Swearing quietly, Ricky got out his side, slipped the gun into his pocket, then followed her up the path to the Harris house.
Nicola rang the doorbell a second time, and Ricky heard someone moving inside the house. He stepped back into shadow. Nicola stood in front of the door, waiting.
‘Who is it?’ The voice was old, cracked but not quavery. The kind of voice that says I’m pretty old but not ready to drop just yet.
‘Hi grandma!’ Nicola piped, leaning forward to peer through the diamond of swirled glass in the door. She waved her hand. ‘I’ve come to see you!’
‘Theresa?’ The oldster’s voice was uncertain, but Ricky caught the sound of locks being tentatively drawn. This was the second key moment. This was the one where the kid had to be good enough so that the old woman didn’t press the Worry Button put beside the door of every Homeland house. The button that would alert Wonder World’s version of security that something was sharp and spikey in the dream tonight.
The final slide bolt, and the door opened a crack. ‘Theresa?’
Margaret Harris was small, maybe five feet tall. She was grandma-shaped and had white hair done up in a curly style. Her face was plump and lined and she was wearing one of those dresses old people wear, flowers on a dark background. You opened a dictionary and looked up ‘Grandma’ and she was pretty much what you’d see.
‘You’re not Theresa,’ she said.
‘Oh no,’ Nicola laughed. ‘I’m Theresa’s friend. Theresa said if we were passing by we should call in and say hello.’
Ricky stepped into the light, an apologetic smile on his face. ‘Hi there, Mrs Harris. Hope this is okay—Theresa’s telling Nicola here about you all the time. John said you probably wouldn’t mind. Meant to call ahead, but you know how it is.’
‘You’re a friend of John’s?’
‘Work right across the hall from him at First Virtual.’
Mrs Harris hesitated a final moment, then smiled back, her face crinkling in a pattern which started from the eyes. ‘Well I gues
s it’s okay then. Come on in.’
The hallway looked like a painted background from an old Wonder World cartoon: higgledy stairs, everything neat, colours washed and clean. When the door was shut behind them, Ricky knew the job was done.
‘You can’t be too careful these days,’ the old woman said, predictably, leading Nicola through to the kitchen to make some coffee. Right, thought Ricky, following at a distance: and you haven’t been careful enough.
He hung outside for a moment, scoping the place, listening with half an ear to the sound of Nicola chatting with the old bag in the kitchen. Jeez, the kid could lie: what’s happening at school, party she went to with Theresa last week, Theresa borrowing her shoes. Listening to her, you’d think she really did know the woman’s granddaughter. Make believe again, some life she wished she had.
Ricky debated disabling the Worry Button, finally decided it wasn’t necessary. Difficult to do, anyhow—and just smashing it would leave a clue. This one was too easy to make it worth taking the risk.
The kitchen was small, cosy, tricked up to look like the kind of place where there would always be something in the oven, instead of ready-made shit in the microwave. Pots, pastry cutters, a rolling pin. Probably Wonder World sent someone into everyone’s house every day, made sure the props looked just right. Grandma Harris turned as Ricky entered and handed a cup of coffee up to him. She smiled, twinkle-eyed, relaxed—the kid had put her at ease.
Ricky made a mental note that the cup and saucer would need wiping when he was done. Nicola had a glass of Dr Pepper—that would need washing too. He sipped the coffee—might as well—and deflected a couple of questions about working with the great John Harris. Pathetic, really, the way the old woman was eager for any news of her son, wanted telling how people liked him. Suddenly he wanted to lash out and shove his cup right down the old fart’s throat. It would be a whole lot quicker, and put her out of misery she didn’t even know she was in. But he knew how it had to look, and death by ingestion of china tea set wouldn’t play.
Meantime Nicola and grandma sat at the table, yakking nineteen to the dozen. Nicola had a lot of grandma-talking to do, even if she had to make do with someone else’s. Ricky let his eyes glaze over, mulling what he was going to do to the kid later. He enjoyed doing that, getting the comparison, just like he liked looking at girls in the street and imagining them on the job, their hands or mouth busy, face wet with sweat. They’d never know, but they’d been his. Ricky rode that line, that fine line, between the life they lived and the life that could come and find them in the night.
‘Isn’t that right, Daddy?’
‘Huh?’ Ricky looked at the girl dully, having missed the question. ‘What’s that?’
‘Nicola was just saying how you and John were planning a joint vacation for the families later in the year,’ Mrs Harris said. ‘That’s wonderful news. Do you think you might be able to make it up here again? We’d have such fun.’
‘Sure,’ Ricky said, abruptly deciding this had gone on long enough and was getting out of hand. ‘No question. Hey, Mrs Harris—meant to ask you something.’
‘Of course.’ Grandma was beside herself at the prospect of another visit later in the year. She’d have agreed to anything. ‘What is it?’
‘John told me about some pictures, old photos, you’ve got at the top of the stairs? Kind of an interest of mine. He said you might not mind me taking a peek at them.’
‘I’d be delighted,’ the old woman said. ‘Come, let’s go up.’ Nicola jumped to her feet, but Ricky flashed a glare at her.
Grandma raised an eyebrow. ‘Wouldn’t you like to come too, dear?’
Nicola avoided Ricky’s eye. ‘Could I have another Dr Pepper first?’
‘Help yourself, then follow us up. Now come on—Rick, isn’t it?—let’s go take a look.’
Ricky sent another ‘Stay here’ look at the kid, followed grandma out. Made interested grunts every now and then as the old woman talked and led him across the hall to the stairs. A couple of objects caught Ricky’s eye on the way, and he planned on picking them up later, before he left. Little bonus.
Up the stairs behind her. Feeling very little. No fear, no excitement. Just watching for the best moment. Mrs Harris took the stairs slowly, hitching one leg up after the other. Her voice might be strong but her body was saying goodbye. She wouldn’t be losing much.
They got to the first landing, and Ricky saw that there were indeed a whole bunch of really fucking dull-looking black and whites in frames there on the wall. John Harris had the whole thing planned out, gave Ricky this way of getting her up to the scaffold. Ricky debated telling the old woman about that, letting her see what lay beyond her wonder world, that the son she’d raised had sat in his study one night drinking cheap scotch and working it all out. But by then Margaret Harris was standing right by him, and he knew the time was right and he wanted to get it over with. The real bonus was waiting for him in the kitchen. He didn’t need any cheap thrills first.
This picture was her mother, that one her grandpapa. Gone-away people, stiff in fading monotone.
Ricky leaned toward her, apparently to get a closer look at a bunch of people grouped in front of a raggedy farm building—but actually to get the right angle.
For a moment then he was distracted, by a scent. It seemed to come from the old woman’s clothes, and was a combination of things: of milk and cinnamon, rich coffee and apples cooking on the stove. Leaves barely on the trees in Autumn, and the smell of sun on grass in Summer. These things weren’t a part of his life, but for a moment he had them in his mind—like they were part of some story he’d read long ago, as a child, and just dismissed.
Then he pushed her down the stairs.
Palm flat against her shoulder, feeling the bones inside the old, thin flesh. He straightened his arm firmly, which was enough—and wouldn’t leave a bruise that some forensic smartass might be able to talk up into evidence.
The old woman teetered, without making a sound, and then her centre of gravity was all wrong and she tumbled over sideways, over the edge and down the stairs.
Thump, crash, thud, splat. Like a loose bag of sticks.
Ricky walked briskly down the stairs after her, reached the bottom bare seconds after she did. Held back from kicking her head, which would have been risky and was clearly unnecessary. Huge dent in the skull already, eyes turned upwards and out of sight. Arm twisted a strange way, one leg bent back on itself. The usual anti-climax.
Job done.
He stepped quickly over the body and to the kitchen, stopping Nicola already on her way out. She ran into him, crashed against his body. He grabbed her shoulders, warm through the thin T-shirt.
‘What happened? I heard a crash.’
Usually he killed the kid at this point, before they got hysterical and made too much noise or ran out of the house. Ricky pushed Nicola gently back into the kitchen, felt his temperature rising. He needed her alive to do things with, but he couldn’t do them here. ‘Nothing. Just an accident. Mrs Harris fell down the stairs.’
‘Grandma?’
‘She’s not your grandma, sweetie. You know that.’
‘We’ve got to get help…’
Ricky smiled down at her. ‘We will. That’s exactly what we’ll do. We’ll get in the car, go find one of the security wagons. They’ll help her out. She’ll get fixed up and we’ll catch the end of the parade.’
The girl was near tears now. ‘I want to stay here with her.’
He pretended to think about it, then shook his head. ‘Can’t do that. Security gets here while I’m away, finds you with an old lady at the bottom of the stairs, what they going to think? They’re going to think you pushed her.’
‘They won’t. She was my grandma. Why would I hurt her?’
Ricky glared at her, good humour fast disappearing. ‘She wasn’t your fucking grandma. Just some old woman.’
Nicola pushed hard against him, momentarily rocking him on his heels. ‘She was too.
She knew about me. She knew things. She said not to worry about my mom any more. She said she loved me.’
Ricky lashed out with his hand, shoved the kid hard. She flew back, ricocheted off the table and knocked the coffee pot flying. It struck the wall, spraying brown gunk everywhere, just as Nicola crashed to the floor. Ricky cursed himself. Not clever. Just going to make it more difficult to get her out of the house, plus it was going to look like signs of a struggle. He took a deep breath, stepped towards her. Maybe he was going to have to simply kill her after all.
‘Nicola? Are you okay, dear?’
Ricky froze, foot just hitting the floor. Turned slowly round.
Grandma stood in the doorway. One eye fluttered slowly, the one below the huge dent which pulled most of the side of her face out of kilter. The arm was still bent way out of place. Her body was completely fucked up, but somehow she’d managed to drag herself to the door, to her feet.
Nicola struggled into a sitting position against the wall behind Ricky. ‘Grandma—are you alright?’
Of course she’s not fucking alright, Ricky thought. No way.
Grandma leant against the doorframe, as if tired. ‘I’m fine, dear. Just had a little fall, isn’t that right Rick?’ Her working eye fixed on him.
Ricky felt the hairs on the back of his neck rise like a thousand tiny erections. Then her other eye stopped flickering. Closed for a moment, reopened—and then he had two strong eyes looking at him. Tough old bitch.
Ricky reached for the table, grabbed the rolling pin lying there. This job was getting very fucked up, but he was going to finish it now.
More Tomorrow: And Other Stories Page 14