02. The Shadow Dancers (2 page)

In the end, we busted those suckers, got back one kid, and exposed a crooked cop who shielded them, but it didn't stop there. Fact was, I knew what I saw in Sam, but I never will know just what he saw in me, but he's the only white man I ever been around who never showed one ounce of racism or racial hangups. Sam quit the Bristol force-he never was too comfortable on the vice squad anyway-and came down with what little he had to try and make the agency work. We kinda hoped if maybe a white ex-cop was around some of the black folks would give us more business, and it did bring in some, but not nearly enough. We got married at city hall-the bride wore jeans-and even that had a price. My relatives didn't approve at all, and his relatives were even madder than mine. I was still poor and broke, but it didn't really matter no more.

Fact was, I grabbed for Sam 'cause I needed somebody bad, but I really fell in love with him. Real bad. I ain't never been in love with nothin' or nobody before or since like this. From the moment we moved in together, he was the only thing important in my whole life. He kept the agency goin' by sheer willpower mostly for my sake, as it turned out, and he never would believe me when I told him I'd be happy if he got a salaried job doin' most anything and I played house and mommie, but it's true.

I know, I know-on the outside it looks like black woman makes it in the cold world, but I never saw my case written up in
Jet
or
Ebony
or even the
National Enquirer.
If you got the brains and the education and the skills and the drive then go for it, baby, but I ain't ever gonna have them things and I just ain't one for crusades. If Women's Lib wants to nail me for it, that's all right, but I didn't see no cases from them when I was a woman-owned business. Sam told me he didn't mind if I kept my name, but
I
minded; outside of the bed, it was the only way I could really show him just how much he meant to me. Besides, I like the look
I get from people when they find out somebody who looks and talks like me is Brandy Horowitz. A Jewish American Princess I'm not.

The trouble is, my life's still all cliffhangers. I was about to pack it in when Sam showed in the nick of time and saved me. When we both were gonna pack it in as detectives and him take a security guard's job down in Delaware and me be a housewife, in walked a case that changed everything. Started out as a little mob-related thing and wound up with us discoverin' the biggest secret since the A-bomb, maybe bigger.*

*For a complete account of this case, and all the gory details, read
The Labyrinth of Dreams,
Tor Books, 1986.

Don't ask me how it works, or how it's possible, but it's so. It ain't possible, but it is and that's that. Sorta like if God came down and worked miracles in front of everybody -it would convince even most atheists. Well, this thing's like that. I ain't sure I believe in flyin' saucers, neither, but if one landed in front of me and little green men got out and asked for directions, I think I would.

There ain't just one universe, there's millions of 'em, maybe more, and they all exist smack dab on top of each other. No, that's not right-they're all in the same place, only nobody and nothin' in one can see or hear or sense the existence of the others. They all started from the same creation, but they spread out at different speeds and don't ask me no more. I ain't the smart one, and even Sam can't really explain it. They say there seems to be no end to them-they stretch onwards to eternity on both sides of us. Because there's so many, almost anything that mighta happened in our universe but didn't happened somewheres else. Like, everybody says how lucky I am-I always seem to get better when it can't get no worse, like I told you. But there's maybe a couple of hundred other worlds so close to ours that I exist, and this is the only one in which I married Sam. The other me's wound up whores and maybe addicts or stuck in lousy marriages or dead or somethin', but I'm the lucky one.

Now, not too many people know about this, but one world found out that this was so and figured out a way to go between the worlds. How the hell they ever did that, or even figured out that the other worlds existed, I can't imagine, but they did. This network to go between is kinda weird, like a long tunnel, but it runs mostly like a railroad, with switchmen and stations and stuff like that. Of course, even the ones who run the thing, called the Labyrinth, which Sam tells me is a word that means a maze and comes from one of them ancient mythology stories, only have stations on a few hundred, or maybe thousand, worlds. They're pretty closemouthed about that. They keep explorin', keep lookin' in at ones, until they find ones that have somethin' they might need. Might be an invention, or just a bright idea, or some raw material they need-anything. When they find somethin' like that they set up a station and put in a permanent crew and then they also recruit locals to help run things.

They don't really care about the worlds they move into, 'cept as how they can make a profit from it, and one of the things they move into and eventually take over is organized crime, which seems to exist one way or another everyplace. Like here the Mafia and a bunch of other big crime groups are really wholly owned and operated by these dudes from another world-and most of the crooks don't even know it. They also got a legit arm, the General Ordering and Development Corporation, or G.O.D., Inc. as we all call it when we don't just say 'the Company.' You may never have heard of it, but chances are you're one of their customers. You know all those things they advertise on late-night UHF TV stations and all them cable stations-knife sets, pen sets, crazy gadgets that never really work, discontinued and outdated merchandise, cheap imports, that kind of shit. You know what I mean. They have an 800 number to call to order or an address at the station, but down right at the bottom, in real small print, they have to put their name and headquarters address of who they really are and where they're really at. Well, that's where you find General Ordering and Development, Inc.

Most all the folks who work for that company don't know who or what it really is, neither. Just the ones at the very top, and some of the company security people, and them that run and secure the stations.

They can't have a station just anywhere. First of all, most places each world is totally isolated from the others, but there's always a bunch of weak points. A lot of disappearances, people bustin' into flame, visions, ghosts, you name it come from them weak points. Most of them ain't too useful, though; I mean, you build a station in downtown Philadelphia somebody's gonna find out sooner or later. They go for the isolated, middle-of-nowhere places, which are few and far between these days, and they also got to be ones they can buy up lock, stock, and barrel. The big station here's out in a hick town in redneck Oregon called McInerney-the only place they could buy up and control that was away from everything and everybody. They got a second little station up near State College in Pennsylvania, which is also middle-of-nowhere wilderness, but since they stuck both Penn State University and the biggest state pen up in there it ain't the favorite spot. It's mostly automated and used only when necessary.

They got the company headquarters smack in the middle of downtown Des Moines, Iowa. It's on a weak point, but they can't risk usin' it. All they can do there is send messages back and forth through it.

They don't have but a fraction of the worlds with stations. They only been here since the early fifties, and not in force till later'n that. I guess it was only then we came up with somethin' worth stealin'.

The Company and the Mafia and whatever pay real good and more than pay all expenses, and also cover up whatever it is that faraway home world wants here that we got and they want to steal. Don't ask me what it is-that's a closely guarded secret.

Still and all, we came out winners from that one in spite of a bunch of close scrapes and even more cliffhangers. We also did the company a big favor by exposing some rotten apples, and unlike the last time we got somethin' out of it. A fair amount, really, considerin' where we came from. We got a small suite of offices for the agency in a midtown Philadelphia high rise the company owns rent-free, our old bills paid off, several thousand bucks in seed money, and we also got some pretty good payin' clients referred to us by the Company or their people.

Not that the cases were any different or any more thrillin' than the old ones were, but there were
lots
of clients and they all paid and paid real good. At rates that started at two hundred and fifty bucks a day plus expenses, we did all right. Got us a fancy two-bedroom apartment in one of the new developments right in town, too, which is where I was that night, lookin' out the window and wishin' Sam were around. He wasn't, though; he was in Pittsburgh until the next afternoon, checking out an accountant livin' way beyond his means.

It was crazy, but right then, with a lot of what I'd always dreamed of all around, I was thinkin' 'bout quittin' the business. It was really Sam's anyway, now-I just helped out and gave support and advice now and then. Fact was, I was what the bankers call more a liability than an asset. We was movin' in higher circles and higher society with these clients. They was all educated, well off, rich-and I ain't talkin' 'bout race here, since some of 'em was blacker'n me. I wasn't the good-lookin', glamorous type, didn't know what fork to use or what wine went with what-in my old circles, Thunderbird was a step up-and it was like them and me come from different parallel worlds. You didn't have to walk the Labyrinth to find that kind of thing. All I had to do was open my mouth and I was low class, uneducated, ignorant. Most folks thought I was the receptionist anyway, or maybe the cleaning lady.

Oh, Sam made a big thing about how he needed me, couldn't get along without me, and all that, and I think maybe he believed it himself, but it wasn't true. Just goin' in to work was gettin' more and more depressin' every day, even when I had a lot of work to do. We needed more people, sure, but we needed nice, clean-cut young folks who were college grads and talked just right and all that. Most of my friends, the few I had, were from the old neighborhood in Camden or among some of my cousins all over the place. Now that we had money I was discoverin' just how many relatives I had, too. I could sure buy company, but none I felt good with.

In the end, I guess, it was just that I was beginnin' to feel useless and without much to do. We was just too removed from what I'd been used to and brought up with. All this
new wealth built a wall between me and the kind of poor folks who were all I knew all my life. I could drop over there, but it was never the same. I had what they wanted and probably would never have and they knew it. Crazy thing was, too, I didn't really feel safe over there anymore.

See, that was the reason for all the trouble I got in, and maybe the reason a lot of black kids get screwed for life. I mean, there you are, a kid in a neighborhood where there's so many poor folk a lot ain't got nothin' to lose and a lot more just give up. Crime's real big and deep rooted there, simply 'cause it's the only real source of jobs and steady income. Most folks there don't wanta kill you, they just don't think two steps ahead. If you're wearin' a jacket and one wants it, he'll just go up and off you and take it. The only way a kid's got any real chance if they don't wanta be like that themselves is to join a gang. I guess it's always been that way. I seen
West Side Story
twelve times. The boys in the gang, they give you protection 'cause it's the code, and the girls, well, they give the boys whatever they want. Most times, you're as safe as you can be, but you grow up feelin' dependent on folks and with no real confidence in yourself, even though you wind up actin' tough and talkin' tough so nobody knows how scared you are, and the boys grow up thinkin' of girls as dependent, weak,
things
and not people.

The leaders of them gangs ain't got much smarts; they're all muscle and nerve, so they don't like anybody to be smarter than they are. You gotta talk gutter talk, like what they like, do what they say. That way you wind up with your first kid at fifteen or so and a life on welfare.

That's why when Daddy took me outta the gangs he also took most of my protection, my security. By the time he took me out, I was set, you know. A part of me will always be that little girl, and I'll always talk and act like I had to all them years.

Over there now, though, I was nothin' but a target. Nailin' Daddy's killers got me some respect but it didn't do nothin' for my nerve deep down. When I was with Daddy, or Sam, or the cops, it was somethin' else, but all alone I'm just a scared little ghetto girl.

I never was much for church goin', neither, so I didn't really have that to fall back on. Most of 'em I knew were either preachers on the make for some kind of political office or cause or decidin' on how the blacks got to hold a revolution or make some new country somewheres, while the rest just sat there and sang and prayed and said we might be down now but wait till we die and then we'd be in the Promised Land. Well, I never seen where that country was gonna be, and they wouldn't let Sam in, anyways, and I just ain't so sure about no Promised Land, or at least if they'd let me in when I got to the gates. Lookin' at the folks who were sure it was there and sure they'd get there, I ain't so sure a place filled with them types is where I want to be trapped for eternity, neither. Daddy never did have much belief in God, even on the battlefields, but he belonged to a church 'cause it brought in some business. Maybe that's why men got more power in business than women-they make better hypocrites.

So, I was cut off from my old neighborhood and people, and my relatives weren't no damned good to me when I needed 'em and I didn't see why I should be so damned good to them, now, and I didn't feel comfortable anywhere in the business society of most all our clients-Sam didn't like 'em none, but he could pretend he did for the money and jobs-and 'cause I was rough and foul-mouthed and talked like a poor ignorant nigger I wasn't invited to no parties or social occasions.