Torch Song: A Kickass Heroine, A Post-Apocalyptic World: Book One Of The Blackjack Trilogy (10 page)

She was on that “come home” rant again. Whenever I was away for too long, she’d use those ratty old taped-together cards to hint that something dire was about to happen. I wondered how many times that day she’d laid them out on the rusty iron garden table before she got the Death card. I wished she’d toss the Tarot in the nearest ditch and tend to her own life. Get a boyfriend. I hated it when she worried. I didn’t really want her to love me less, but I needed to feel she was okay, happy, when I wasn’t there. I tried to reassure her in my return message.

“Gran, I can’t come home. This is a good job, not dangerous, and we need the money. I’ll be there soon enough, maybe in a couple weeks, at most a month or so, I promise.” I hoped it wouldn’t take that long.

I stayed online, sitting on the edge of the bed, to send a report to the chief. I told her what Scorsi had said about Blackjack’s army and hints about his own and that he was expecting, hoping for, a reprisal. She came online just as I was thinking I was finished and could sign off.

“Any sign of that Blackjack army he’s talking about? Or his own?”

“Not yet. I’ll track it down if there is one. From what I’ve seen so far, I wouldn’t be surprised if the Colemans had some kind of home guard, if only to protect them from Scorsi’s jealousy. But the people I saw fighting the mercs seemed mostly to be casino employees defending their turf. As for Newt, he must have more than those dozen mercs or he wouldn’t be goading the Colemans.”

“Does he have anything you could turn into proof about the Colemans breaking the law?”

“He’s not telling me everything he knows, but it’s also possible he knows even less than he says he does. By the way, he’s burned you didn’t send the guard instead of just me.”

“I know Newt’s not too appealing, but be careful. The Colemans are no angels. Jo’s ambitious and Judith’s smarter than most people.”

Apparently she didn’t think Newt’s complaint about the guard worth addressing.

I mentioned something else I’d been wondering about. “There’s no government here. Why doesn’t Sierra come into Tahoe and take it over?”

“How would we do that? By force? By appointing a mayor? No one would like that. Besides, the problem’s on the way to being fixed. The Colemans have promised to see to it that a new mayor is elected.”

The Colemans? And that was all right with her? “But then they’ll have their own mayor, won’t they? And if they’re really doing the things you think…”

“I don’t know what they’re doing. That’s what you’re there to find out. And for now, they’re doing what we need them to do. We can’t really interfere with local politics for no good reason.”

Talk about wandering in circles. We don’t trust the Colemans, we think Newt Scorsi may be right when he says they’re trying to control the town or maybe the world, but we won’t fill the current political vacuum because the Colemans are going to do it. Prove they have an army, prove they’re up to no good, skimming and stealing and god knows what else, prove they killed the last mayor, and then maybe we’d dare to tell them to stay home and mind the casino.

I wanted to ask the chief what she was afraid of, but it went without saying. Power. Power that might, eventually, take her job away.

I told her I’d be in touch. She said thanks and we both went on with our business. I scrolled down my messages and learned the New Orleans assignment was still waiting for someone to take it. There were no more messages from Iowa. The chief there was probably dead or running for his life. A possible new job— a feeler from Desert about some “disruptive” godders they wanted me to check out. What did that mean? Godders could be anything from mild smiling windbags to intolerant toxies to mass murderers. There weren’t a lot of them left. Just enough to be trouble. I told the people in Desert I’d get in touch with them when I finished this job.

While I’d been reporting to the chief, Gran had come back from wherever she’d gone and sent more messages. Why hadn’t she waited and talked directly to me? Because she preferred to nag with the written word. For some reason, she thought I’d read when I wouldn’t listen. Maybe she was right.

“We could get along with less money. Our needs are really very small. I worry about your lack of peacefulness. You can’t be happy swimming in a pool of adrenaline. Find someone. Bring him or her back here and we’ll make do. Nobody’s getting sick any more. And if you get killed you can’t bring home money anyway. So what if?”

She knew better. My mother, her daughter, and my father died when I was little because we couldn’t afford the vax. She was just 23 and he was 22. They got very sick— dengue, Gran told me later, a virulent strain some lab had developed so they could study it and fight it if terrorists developed it, too. Something crazy like that. Anyway, a bunch of thieves, looters, and lunatics decided to break into the lab and look for black market-bound plague vaccine somebody thought they had there. They didn’t, but the thieves carried the dengue out with them and managed to spread it all over the North Bay. I was barely four years old, but I’ve never been able to lose the image of my parents, clinging together on a bloodstained bed, bleeding from their eyes, mouths, noses… even now, just letting it back into my mind for an instant, I saw them everywhere I looked in this room at Blackjack, heard my own baby screams, felt Gran’s hands pulling me away. I choked, my throat closing on a cry that brought me back to the here and now. I fell back against the pillows.

They were gone. Their kisses, their hugs, their voices, the home-smell of them.

No one could save them. There was no vax that Gran could buy and it was too late anyway. We were more than a decade into the Poison then. Everyone dead or sick or dying. No medicine. We all four went to the hostel, where the doctors did what they could, but there was no help. Gran and I didn’t get very sick, and we survived. She told me later that a couple of weeks after my parents died, and we had gone home, a mob set fire to the hostel thinking that would kill the disease. There were still sick and helpless patients there. Like lepers stashed away out of sight, feared, hated. Killed.

Memories of what the world was like when she was young made Gran cry sometimes even now, and I would hold her and murmur and she would pat my hand, knowing I had flashes of baby memory that still left me shivering at night.

Despite the loss, Gran was glad enough to be alive. She was one of the last to escape when a mob of feverish, crazy, rash-covered carriers— they were calling them spotties by then— destroyed the county building where she’d been working, killing everyone they could find, even people who had no vaccines, no power, and no connection to either the black market or the labs. One of the rioters had brought a banner and hung it over the shrubs near the entrance. It said, “We Who Are About To Die Won’t Go Alone!” She’d told me that story more than once.

There was vax to be bought now. But it would only protect people who could afford to buy it.

I couldn’t earn enough any other way, and Gran was 75. Healthy, but it’s not like she’d ever earned much. She’d trained as a lawyer while she raised my mother, starting her practice only a few years before the world changed. She’d been involved, for a while back in the late thirties, in setting up a local council in Western Redwood. Worked for several years in the six-member faction-crippled excuse for government for almost no pay. Managed to buy a house— they ranged from cheap to free— that had never been abandoned and didn’t need much rebuilding. Food and clothing took the rest of the money.

She always had a little power, a few enemies, a lot of friends.

One year, when I was just 15, a fellow council-member sent a dose of vax our way as a favor. That was the same year I earned us some food helping to scavenge materials from abandoned houses that had been burned, vandalized or already partly cannibalized and were too far gone to even try to save. We found the remains of a family of three in one of them, butchered, probably by a gang of bandits who had rampaged through the year before.

Eventually, Gran got bounced for being part of the wrong faction, did this and that around the periphery. And as she’d gotten older she’d drifted into what she called the “woo-woo” culture of the Bay Area. Bits of Buddhism and astrology, palmistry, meditation, nature worship. But making a real living? Not her strength. I had to do it for both of us.

It was crazy to think we could just settle down in our woodsy little hollow and live happily ever after. The only people who were safe were the ones who could buy the vax. I didn’t plan on losing either one of us to some hideous plague. Maybe things were better because all the most vulnerable people had already gotten sick and died or were doing it now and maybe those who were left had mutated or started out immune or got that way, but no one had proved any of that to me.

There were a lot of times when I would have loved to give up the merc life, go home and maybe open a theater or a club. I got tired of the spying and the lying and the fighting and, occasionally, the killing. More than tired. But I didn’t really have a choice, did I?

I sat up again and sent a quick answer.

“What if? What if the moon crashes into the bay or Mount Tam erupts? What if, hell, Gran. Let me do my job in peace, and I’ll have peacefulness.”

She must have been waiting for my answer because she was right back at me, and this time it was her voice coming through.

“Oh, the hell with it, Rica. I tried. Have fun. Do good and be bad. ‘Bye for now.”

“’Bye, Gran.”

He was dealing seven stud at the center table, his yellow-striped black hair shining in the light of the chandelier that hung over his head. This had to be the dealer, the adopted Coleman, that Newt had been talking about. Samm. The big man who had fought so well against the mercs. He wasn’t wearing a name tag. Was that because everyone knew him? I still had a few minutes before my restaurant shift, so I leaned against the rail that separated the poker tables from the slots and watched.

He had four players. A fat man who looked like he was upset about something, his face red and sweaty; a guy in a cheap shiny suit who showed no emotion at all, a woman close to Gran’s age who was drinking beer as if she were thirsty, and a woman with a long scar down her cheek, a glass of something brown, no ice, at her elbow, who looked more relaxed than any of them.

Samm noticed me. He nodded, smiling. I did the same.

“Want to join us?”

“Only have a few minutes. Maybe another time.”

“You work here, don’t you?” He was dealing seven stud as he spoke.

“In the restaurant.”

He dealt the first up card. An ace, a five, an eight, a jack. The beer-drinker had the ace. She tossed in some chips. The scar-faced woman with the five folded, lifted her glass and swallowed, grimacing as the brown stuff went down her throat. Whisky? Brandy? Something strong.

“Thought I saw you helping out last night.”

I shrugged modestly.

“You’re Rica Marin, the one who’s going to sing in the lounge. Pair of eights bets.”

“Soon as it’s open.”

“I’m Samm Bakar. I’ll come and see you. Pair of aces showing.”

Flirtatious, gorgeous man. Those cheekbones were astonishing. The almond eyes a light brown or maybe hazel. So this was the general. He didn’t speak again, concentrating on his job, but he glanced at me once or twice in a friendly way. So did the scarred woman.

Time to get to work. I was almost at the restaurant door when I heard my name being called. Turning, I saw Jo headed toward me.

“I saw you at Samm’s table, but you took off so fast… I wanted to tell you. The lounge is opening Saturday night. I assume you’ll be ready?”

“Sure.” As ready as I’d ever be.

“Good. Did you enjoy watching Samm deal?”

There was that quirky little smile again. Alpha bitch, sees all.

“I like poker. Maybe one of these nights I’ll play a few hands.”

“Aha. Checking out the action, then. Well, see you Saturday night.”

She turned and walked away.

Showtime. It was really going to happen. I hadn’t been sure.

Waldo greeted me with a scowl.

“I’ve been told I have to change your shift because you’re going to be singing in the lounge. Not very convenient.”

“I’m sorry.” Like hell.

“You’ll have to work a split shift until I get it figured out. Early dinner to 8:30, back again after the show.”

“Okay.” I wasn’t going to show him that a split shift was “not very convenient.”

“And with Drew injured I’m short a busser. Lizzie will help, but you’ll have to bus your own tables until we find someone.”

I nodded. A demotion of sorts. One step up, one step down. Waldo would never forgive me for tossing him.

A fixer would make a popular candidate

Jo was first to arrive at the family meeting that evening and took the corner of the flower-patterned couch nearest to Judith’s desk. Deep red was not Jo’s favorite color and a childhood failure with a petunia bed she’d forgotten to water had left her feeling uneasy and somehow guilty at the sight of flowered fabric. But the couch was comfortable, not too soft, and provided a good power position, at Judith’s right, for any discussion.

No one was there yet but Judith, sitting behind her desk scribbling on a notepad. She looked up and smiled, waving the pad.

“Making some notes for the Scorsi treaty.” The scam treaty Judith hoped would keep Newt quiet for a while. She flipped the page over. “And some points we need to consider about that attack the other night.”

Samm pushed the door open, followed by Drew and— Lizzie. What was she doing there? Samm and Drew took the chairs at either end of the long coffee table. The girl headed toward the couch where Jo sat.

“Lizzie?” The girl stopped, still standing, eyes focused on Jo’s face, a frown creasing her brow. Jo hadn’t meant to sound so surprised, it just slipped out. She was still young for a family business meeting. Wasn’t she? Had Jo missed something? She caught Judith’s eye. Judith gave the tiniest lift of the eyebrows, a barely visible “what could I do?” shrug.

“I told Mother it was time, Aunt Jo. I’m seventeen.” She lifted her chin, eyes still meeting Jo’s in a look that was half defiance, half plea. Lips tight, she added grimly: “And I think that killing a merc makes me a grownup.” She shifted her gaze toward her mother, then sidelong again to Jo, and sat beside Jo on the couch.