Double Dose, page 14
Santo grinned. “If that’s the way you want to play it, fine. Without mentioning your name—I haven’t mentioned it to anyone—I told a friend I went over to give Lugo a pounding and found him dead. Together we took him and some of the carpeting under him out to the foothills and buried him. Then we left his car in Brawley with the keys in it.”
“Won’t somebody miss him?”
A slow shake of the head. “Nope. He’s gone and no one’ll look for him. We’re going to have a celebration at the Range tonight. Most people won’t know what it’s about, but we will.”
“What about his place?”
Santo shrugged. “We’ll let it sit empty for a while, when maybe move somebody into it.”
“And nobody’s gonna say nothin’?”
“This is the Slabs, man. People come and stay, people come and go. There’s no electric bills, no water bills, no property taxes, no nothin’. Lugo beat up Jimmy. When word came that Jimmy died, Lugo hauled ass outa here. That’s all anybody needs to know.”
He glanced past Jeffrey and his gaze fixed on something. Jeffrey turned and saw the newspaper he’d rolled up around GK lying on the passenger side floor.
“What?”
Santo said, “I’m figuring you’ve got some stains on that paper there. We have a trash fire on Saturdays now and again. You want that burned?”
Jeffrey grabbed it and GK fell out.
“Want me to take care of that too?” Santos said.
“No fucking way. That’s a sacred knife. It’s been blessed with the blood of a goddess.”
Santos gave him a funny look. “Yeah. Okay. Maybe you better keep it then.”
Jeffrey was about to hand Santo the paper when he saw the photo on the front page. Blurry, yeah, but re recognized her right away.
The goddess!
“I’ll take care of this myself. Something I gotta read first.”
“Have it your way, but I wouldn’t keep it around too long. I—”
“Yeah-yeah-yeah. I ’preciate the offer but I gotta read this now. I mean like right now. See you later, okay?”
“Yeah, okay, whatever,” Santo said. “Come over to the Range tonight. I’ll buy you a drink.”
He waved absently and paged through the paper. He’d heard about the Range—Slab City’s open-air nightclub. No way was Jeffrey going to hang out there. He hadn’t come here to make friends.
He found another photo on page 3. Nobody knew who she was but some people thought she was curing horrors patients. No one could cure horrors patients except maybe this mystery woman.
Maybe? Ain’t no maybe about it. She was a goddess. If she could raise herself from the dead, she sure as fuck could cure a horrors patient or two—do it with her eyes closed and standing on her head.
It came to Jeffrey then that maybe the Goddess wasn’t through with him. Because it sure as hell looked like she’d sent him a sign. It pieced together so nice: He uses GK to bring divine justice to Lugo and what’s waiting for him there to see? A picture of the goddess. Really, how obvious could you get?
She was telling him he had a part to play in all this. But what? He couldn’t ask her—she’d banished him.
Maybe his aunt would know. His mother’s sister lived all alone out in the desert. He was pretty sure those two probably hadn’t spoken since his mother ran off and got married to his asshole father. Now that those two were dead, maybe his aunt felt bad. He knew where she lived. Not far. Maybe she could tell him what to do.
Might be a good time to move on anyway. If Santo knew what he’d done, sure as shit others would know soon enough. People just couldn’t keep their mouths shut.
Yeah, he’d just drive out of here like he was heading to the Buckshot for breakfast and keep on going. He’d been here less than a week and hadn’t given his last name to anyone. Nobody’d miss him—most people didn’t even know he was here—and only Santo would know he was gone.
Yeah, time to go find his Aunt Juana.
37
Lucy missed breakfast. She rarely missed a meal, but if she ever did, breakfast was the one. Usually because she’d been up extra late. So Tom ate alone this morning and was perfectly happy with that.
Breakfast was the one meal they didn’t order in. Not that they actually went shopping. That would involve Lucy leaving the house. No, Lucy made a list—of course—and Instacart delivered the groceries every week.
Tom had finished his usual Wheaties and skim milk and was perusing the Pasadena Star-News when Lucy breezed in wearing a dark-blue kimono embroidered with a golden dragon. Well, damn, he should have moved to the den. Maybe he’d be lucky and she’d be in one of her blessedly frequent silent modes. At least she’d left her katana upstairs.
“Finally broke through that firewall,” she said in her Minnie Mouse voice.
Oh, hell. She was going to gab.
Okay, he’d bite. “What firewall?”
She rolled her eyes as she popped two Eggos into the toaster. “We went over this: the Welsh clan out in the desert with the private fund and the incredible investing record.”
Vaguely familiar. “You wanted to know their method but they were heavily encrypted, right?”
He remembered her furious expression: They know something I don’t know, Tommy.
“Right. Very heavily encrypted. Had a tough time. I mean, can you believe it? Took me five whole days.”
Well, color him shocked. Five days? As a rule Lucy could waltz through any firewall.
“And what did you find—insider trading?”
“Nope. Star trading. The clan uses astral configurations to guide their investments.”
“Astrology?” He couldn’t help but laugh. He didn’t need an MBA to know astrology was not much use for investing. Not much use for anything, in fact. “That’s crazy.”
“What I thought, but you can’t argue with results, which have been too consistently good to attribute to luck.” She reached inside her kimono. “Here. I made a list of all—”
Lucy and her lists. He waved her off. “That’s okay. I’ll take your word.”
The waffles popped up and he watched her slather them with butter, filling every indent, and then drown them in Mrs. Butterworth’s Syrup, making sure every indent was suitably flooded. Tom considered mentioning her bulging waist under the kimono but thought better of it.
“What I didn’t find was why they’re selling off. They’ve consistently sold off before every major downturn so I’m taking it this means another.”
“We’re not in the market so what do we care?”
That furious expression. “They’re hiding something and I’m going to find out what it is. I copied all sorts of stuff from their server. They’ve got a family history and this huge translation of some ancient scrolls.”
“What could ancient scrolls have to do with the stock market?”
“Apparently that’s the source of their investment advice—the star trading. The scrolls’ official title is Teachings of the Empty Places.”
Tom turned to the obituaries. “Sounds fascinating.”
“I’m going to start with their family history, because that’s lots shorter. If that doesn’t answer my questions, I’ll have to plow into the Scrolls.”
“Go for it, Lucy.”
And she would. Part of her Asperger’s spectrum thing—if indeed that was her problem—was relentlessness.
38
Jeffrey was glad for the high clearance on his pickup. The path that passed for a road out here in the Santa Rosa foothills was uneven as all hell. If you didn’t take it slow you risked busting an axle.
Finally he found it: a tiny RV painted puke lime green. Two aluminum lawn chairs sat out front in the shade of a canopy strung from the door. He parked about fifty feet away and turned off the engine. He could hear a generator running somewhere in the back. Obviously the two solar panels on the roof didn’t produce enough watts. She’d probably be better off living in Slab City than all alone out here. Safer, at least. Although, considering what happened to Jimmy, maybe not.
He got out but didn’t approach. Instead he stood by the driver door and called, “Hello, inside!”
This looked like his aunt’s RV but that didn’t mean she still lived in it. And you didn’t just stroll up to somebody’s door out here. Some people lived alone for damn good reasons—either cooking some product they shouldn’t, or bug fuck crazy. Either way, you didn’t want to startle them.
The door opened and a vague shape stood in the shadow under the canopy. He couldn’t make her out very well but no question about the big revolver she held waist high and pointed his way.
“Who goes there?”
“That you, Aunt Juana?”
“‘Aunt’? I ain’t nobody’s aunt.”
“It’s me—Dominga’s kid, Jeffrey.”
The barrel dropped a little, angled more toward the ground now, but still pointed in his direction.
“Jeffrey?”
“Yeah. Jeffrey Kendrick.”
“What do you want?”
Not exactly a big welcome but he hadn’t expected one.
“I need some help.”
“If you’re looking for money—”
“No-no-no. Advice. I need advice. Mom always said you were the smartest sister and knew everything.”
No harm in stroking the old gal, right? Couldn’t hurt.
“I wouldn’t listen to your mother. She never had a lick of sense.”
“Well, I can’t listen to her no more on account of she passed.”
“Oh?” Softer…”Oh.” Then, “Well, what do you need advice about?”
“This is gonna sound weird, but I met a goddess.”
“You found yourself a girlfriend?”
“No, a real live goddess.”
The pistol barrel lifted again. “You high on something?”
“No way. She’s real as can be.” He reached through the pickup window and grabbed the newspaper in the front seat. He held up the front page for his aunt to see. “And here’s her picture.”
Aunt Juana stared a minute, then stepped out of the RV and pointed her pistol at the pair of chairs.
“Sit. I want to hear how you know this ‘goddess.’”
He did as she directed and took the chair nearer his truck. Aunt Juana sat in the other and laid the pistol in her lap, but still aimed at him. Big muzzle on that thing. Wouldn’t do to have it go off on accident.
“I’d feel a whole lot better if maybe you could point that the other way.”
She angled it toward her RV, which he noticed was studded with seashells. You could find them everywhere in the valley. What she do—dig them up and glue them to her home? His momma had said Aunt Juana was smart but she’d also said she was weird.
“Talk,” she said, then jabbed a finger at the paper. “How do you know her? And is that blood?”
He glanced at the brownish smears from GK. “I was painting something.”
During the drive out here Jeffrey had rolled this conversation over and over in his mind: How could he put this? How do you just up and tell your aunt you killed someone? And then how do you explain how that someone came back to life? But he finally figured since his Aunt Juana didn’t know the goddess, he could just come out and say it—after swearing her to secrecy, of course.
“Okay. It’s kind of complicated but you gotta promise me that what I tell you here don’t go no farther.”
She frowned. “Is it bad?”
“Well, yes and no. You promise?”
“Okay, okay,” she said, looking annoyed. “I promise. Now get to it.”
“Okay. Here’s the thing: I was hired to kill her.”
Aunt Juana’s face got this real shocked look—real shocked. Not something you hear every day from your nephew, for sure, but she looked like a mother who’d just been told her kid had been killed.
“What?” she yelled, coming half out of her chair. “What? Who—who hired you?”
“Oh, I can’t tell you that. I—”
“When are you supposed to do this?”
“I already did it, but—”
“You killed her?”
His aunt had the pistol up and pointed at him. The rage and grief in her eyes told him she was going to kill him. In desperation he swung his hand at the barrel and connected, just before it fired, sending the bullet over his right shoulder.
“What the fuck?” he shouted, ripping it from her grasp.
Damn, his ear was ringing like he had it pressed against a fire alarm.
But she wasn’t through with him. She leaped at him with her fingers curved into claws that raked at his eyes. As he dropped the pistol and grabbed her wrists, it dawned on him:
“You know her? Goddamn, you know her!”
Shit, if he’d had a clue about that he never would have come here.
He shook her. “Calm down, calm down! She’s still alive!”
But his aunt wasn’t calming down a bit.
“You just said you killed her!” she screamed.
“Yeah, but she brought herself back from the dead!”
She froze and stared at him. “What?”
“You heard right: I stabbed her in the heart and killed her but she rose from the dead and threatened me with the worst kinda hell if she ever saw me again.”
“Wh-when was this?”
“A week ago…early Sunday morning.”
Aunt Juana stumbled back and dropped into her chair.
“A week ago? You stabbed her in the heart…and she didn’t die?”
“Oh, she died all right. I know dead when I see it and she was dead. But she came back and knocked on my door and showed me how I’d spend the rest of forever if I didn’t disappear. So I been sorta hiding out ever since. I mean till I saw this in the paper. How do you know her?”
She stared off at the horizon and spoke in a low voice. “I helped her set up her shop.”
“Yeah? I never seen you there.”
“I’ve been in and out. I was there yesterday and she seemed…fine.” She looked at him now. “She’s very important.”
“Hey, tell me about it. She’s a goddess.”
“Goddess?”
“Hey, what else do you call someone who can rise from the dead? Plus she’s curing the horrors.”
“Yes…she is.”
“So that’s why I’m here. I didn’t know you knew her, but maybe that’s even better.”
“You must tell me who wants to harm her.”
Jeffrey shook his head. “Naw. Can’t do that. I can tell you he’s probably pretty pissed at me for not getting the job done.”
“All right then, don’t tell me. I have a pretty good idea who it is.”
“Yeah?” No way she could know. “Who?”
She hesitated, then said, “Elis Pendry.”
The words escaped before he could stop them. “Holy shit! How’d you guess?”
She shook her head slowly. “Not a guess. I know a lot about Elis Pendry, none of it good.”
“But he can fuck off, y’know? I ain’t harming a hair on that gal’s head.”
“You must do more than that. You must protect her. You must become her guardian.”
“Is that what she’s trying to tell me?”
“‘Tell’ you?”
He didn’t think Aunt Juana needed to know about GK and Lugo. He tapped the newspaper.
“This picture…I get the feeling she’s sending me a message.”
“Perhaps Pendry will try again.”
“Well, if he does, he won’t do it himself. He ain’t the type that wants to get his hands dirty, and he ain’t got many choices waiting around to do that kind of dirty work for him.”
“But she’s going to go public soon. Everyone will know her name. That will probably protect her from Pendry but not from the desperate and the deranged who will be drawn to her. Once her name is out there, you will have to keep watch.”
“But I can’t let her see me.”
“When the time is right, I’ll talk to her. Where are you staying?”
“I was up Slab City, laying low in my truck, but I moved out this morning.”
“You can park here for now.”
Jeffrey looked around and liked that idea. Nobody—not Pendry, not the goddess, not anybody from the Slabs—would ever find him out here.
39
(“You’re not opening today?”)
“Nope.” Daley said, shaking her head. “Not tomorrow either. Taking the weekend off.”
She sat at the kitchen table sipping her morning coffee and chewing on a breakfast sandwich from the Coyote. She’d decided to take Arturo’s suggestion and try his Taylor Ham special: thick slices of fried pork roll with cheese and a drippy, over-easy fried egg on a Kaiser roll. Pard sat opposite her, munching on a virtual version—so she wouldn’t have to eat alone, he’d said.
“Damn,” she said around a mouthful. “This is delicious. Why didn’t anyone tell me about Taylor Ham before?”
(“It’s been an ongoing conspiracy to keep you miserable. But back to not opening: That’s because…?”)
“Because my picture is everywhere.”
Not just her picture, but movies—CCTV footage of her walking down hospital hallways on every news show in Southern California—maybe the world. Arturo had provided the icing on the cake this morning as he’d poured her coffee. He’d pointed to his little TV behind the counter where a news show was playing the footage with the insistent and recurrent plea for someone-anyone out there to identify this woman.
“You know,” Arturo had said, “there’s something really familiar about her. I almost feel like I know her.”
Daley had abruptly changed her order to takeout and scooted back to her apartment.
“The more people who see me, the greater the chance of being recognized.”
(“So you’re going to spend the weekend in hiding?”)
“Yep, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. I might even crawl back into bed.”
(“Why don’t we simply go public?”)
“And have Amber Seabolt labeling me a grifter? They’ll run me out of town.”
(“Not after we start saving people from the horrors. Her accusations will hinder your credibility, but not my effectiveness. Once we prove ourselves—”)
“But what if they believe her to the point where they won’t let me near the victims?”
