Torch Song: A Kickass Heroine, A Post-Apocalyptic World: Book One Of The Blackjack Trilogy (11 page)

Jo considered arguing that point. Killing might make you a lot of things, but it didn’t make you a grownup. Lizzie must have noticed the flicker of doubt on Jo’s face because she glanced at Drew, sitting next to Samm, his solid stocky body young-looking next to Samm’s long-muscled build, his bright blue eyes watching his sister. He looked tired, holding his bandaged arm close in the sling. He nodded.

“She’s earned it, Aunt Jo.”

Jo was surprised at his response. The two were competitive and he liked to make a point of being the older brother. But then, she’d killed the merc to save him. He probably thought he owed her.

What did Samm think? He was like an older brother to Lizzie, too. Was she the only one who felt uncomfortable with Lizzie’s grab at adulthood? Apparently. He was just sitting there, a quizzical lift to his eyebrows, as if he was wondering what Jo’s problem was.

Well, what was it? Protectiveness? The bite of awareness of her own age, the reminder that she was approaching 40, now that Lizzie was suddenly not a child? With the promise and threat of so much changing and about to change, she wanted her family to stay the same.

Lizzie brought her back from her wanderings with a light touch of fingers on her forearm. Jo looked up. Lizzie grinned. “Everybody knows I’m smarter than Drew.” Drew snorted. Jo laughed. Just like Lizzie to use a joke to punctuate— and puncture— emotion.

Samm smiled but shifted restlessly. As always, he wanted to get on with it. He spoke quietly but abruptly, “I’ve got something for the agenda, Judith. I just heard about a border incident. One of my soldiers has a brother in the guard. He told him about it.”

Wonderful,
Jo thought
. A soldier. Somebody’s brother
. As usual, her spies were ten paces behind everyone else.

Judith glanced down at her notes. “I’ve got the treaty. Intelligence. Military report. Response to aggression. Political candidates. I’d say a border incident comes under several of those headings. What did you hear?”

“Bunch of Rockies tried to come through. A dozen or so. The border guard didn’t like the look of them, so he asked a lot of questions.”

“The look of them?” Jo asked.

“They were loud, pushy, and they were wearing long coats. He made one of them take his off and he was dressed in some kind of uniform. Khaki.”

“Rocky military?”

“Well, that’s the thing. Military, probably, but one of them tried to talk the guard into going back with them and making babies, and another one was spouting some crap about the immorality of Sierra.”

Judith stared at Jo, who blurted, “Military, breeders, and godders, all together?”

As long as Rocky was split into factions, their bluster was limited to infighting. She hoped this was just a fluke, a gang of rejects, and not a first sign of an alliance.

“I’ll find someone I can send,” she said. “I haven’t heard anything about this from the people I have there now.” Brave word, “people.” Jo had two spies in Rocky. Looked like she’d have to be deploying more. Just when she needed to focus on Scorsi. “What finally happened between the guard and the Rockies?”

“Some of the Rockies had guns, and waved them around threateningly, but the guard called for help and the Rockies turned around and headed east again. No way to know if they sneaked in some other way.”

Everyone sat silent for a moment. Then Judith broke the spell by asking, “Anyone else got anything they want to report?” Jo knew that Judith wasn’t downplaying the subject of Rocky. But their eastern neighbor had been posturing and puffing for a long time. A mixed mob of hoodlums didn’t necessarily mean anything.

“I’ve got something,” Drew said. “Waldo.”

Judith’s mouth twisted. “What about him?”

“He knows when we’re having meetings. Every time we have one he’s even lazier and meaner at work. He’s always watching. The host station has a great view of these stairs. I’m sure he knows we’re in here now. He always makes some remark to me. Like ‘I’m a Coleman, too.’ Or ‘What’s the big secret this time?’ I don’t know that it’s such a good idea to leave him out of everything.”

Waldo also hated that Samm, who was not born a Coleman, was part of the inner circle while he was an outsider.

“Too bad,” Jo said. “But that’s not going to change. I don’t trust him. I think he’s capable of selling information to Scorsi.”

Judith nodded. “Or stupidly blurting something we don’t want blurted.”

Jo added: “Or telling a secret to a woman to impress her.”

“He’ll just have to keep not liking it, Drew,” Judith said. “Even if he had something to contribute to the discussion, it wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“But, Mom, if he’s burned all the time, doesn’t that make him more likely to do something against us?”

Judith shrugged again. “Yes or no, either one.” Jo smiled. Exactly. She remembered a time when they’d tried to make Waldo feel like a Coleman in more than name. But he’d said something to Frank about skimming tax money and they’d been forced to start paying the sheriff a percentage. They’d kept him in the dark since then and the only way they held his supposed loyalty and kept his mouth shut was by letting him keep his well-paying, high-status job. He was an irritation they lived with, like a poison-oak rash that never went away.

Judith was careful to ease away from talk of Waldo in a way that didn’t make Drew feel his words were being dismissed along with the topic. “Drew, you’re absolutely right about him. He’s crawling with resentment. This is something we’ve been deciding and re-deciding for years. But unless we want to kill him, there’s not much we can do.” Drew laughed nervously, as if he wasn’t really sure she was making a joke. Samm looked only mildly interested. He didn’t have to deal directly with Waldo, and he avoided him. Jo had often thought killing Waldo would be the best solution, but Judith said they couldn’t kill their own cousin.

“But that does bring up another topic,” Judith went on. “Drew, I wanted to ask you about someone else you work with. The new woman, Rica— what do you think of her?”

The boy— well, he really wasn’t a boy anymore— blushed. Uh oh! Not that Jo couldn’t understand it.

“I think she’s great. Nice. And smart. And I loved that she tossed Waldo.”

“Jo? What do you think?”

Jo hoped she wasn’t blushing, too.

“I like her. But there’s a lot there to wonder about. She’s smart, and she goes deep. Why do you ask?”

“I don’t know. I like the way she carries herself, I think she might be, well, helpful. But I don’t know how and I don’t trust it. I ran her through a verbal maze about Blackjack having enemies, and loyalty, all that kind of thing. She didn’t bullshit me but she looked nervous and then she slid right through and out the door. We need good people. So, Drew, when you go back to the restaurant, keep an eye on her.”

He nodded eagerly. This was an assignment he obviously liked.

So Judith had hinted to Rica that Blackjack might have more to offer a smart woman than casino work. She did that kind of thing sometimes, hinted at hidden power and a hidden agenda with near-strangers. Jo knew that it was deliberate and never because of lack of caution. Judith believed that rumors were good; that they created confusion and speculation among their enemies. And for those who were not their enemies, rumors built mystique: a political weapon.

And she wasn’t wrong. One thing Jo’s people in Rocky had noticed— the Coleman name was known there. Through spying or gossip or both. If Rocky believed the Colemans were creating a buffer in Tahoe, the rich and well-defended gateway to Sierra, if they saw only the image and didn’t bore too deeply, they’d be less likely to try to move in. But she didn’t want Rocky slipping tentacles, political, military, or economic, into Sierra. Not before the Colemans had a chance to take over.

Consolidation was coming, one way or another. The countries would merge and grow large. She didn’t like the way Rocky governed itself; xenophobic, overrun with godders and cops and stiff with laws; hostile, tight-assed. She sure as hell didn’t want people like that governing Tahoe and Sierra.

What a trio we are, Jo thought. Judith and her mystique. Samm and his army and his drive to war. And Jo? Well, like Judith and Machiavelli, she believed it was essential to make yourself legendary. And like Samm and Machiavelli, she believed the foundation of power was both good laws and good arms, to inspire both love and fear. And there was so much more. The old expression: hearts and minds. Get to people where they lived, their homes, their health, their sense of powerlessness. Make them believe you could deliver them out of bondage, discontent, or dispersal. Bondage to the vax and those who could get it for them, discontent with weakness and fear and dispersal into nonfunctioning or malfunctioning little countries with populations too small to build anything of consequence.

Samm was reporting. He was planning on running a training all day Saturday. Weapons practice, tactics, hand-to-hand. He said he now had a total of 48 fighters, up a few from the last time he’d reported. Hardly an army, but more than a police force. Of course, they had no idea how many of those soldiers would actually fight if it came to that, or how many of them would fight for the Colemans.

Samm’s next words sounded like he’d been reading her mind. “Thing is, I can’t give you a real count. Don’t know how many of them are really ours, how many are in Scorsi’s pay.”

Judith laughed. They all knew that was not a problem. The army could be full of spies for all Jo cared. Scorsi would be so busy getting reports from renegade soldiers he might forget to concentrate on winning people over, on giving and getting economic and political favors.

Lizzie was biting her lip, scowling, puzzled by something. She burst out: “I don’t understand why he would send those mercs against us if he knows we have an army. With fifty fighters we could level his stupid casino.”

Jo answered. “Knowing Newt, he probably thought he’d scare us off. Show us he has an army too.” Jo hated him. Back when they’d been teenagers, he’d tried to rape her. She’d hurt him badly. Broken his hand and his nose. He was the one person in the world she thought of as a personal enemy, besides the bandits who’d murdered her mother as her father lay dying of plague. Mother had been trying to defend the vax she’d just bought on the black market. Judith was a young woman at the time, Jo a child. Jo had run out the back of the house when she heard Judith screaming. When she’d crept back later she found her sister bleeding, ravaged, and her mother shot through the heart. Their father died two days later.

That was thirty years ago. Those bandits were probably dead by now. But Newt was still alive.

“Which brings us to the next item on our agenda. Samm, you had something to say about the merc invasion.”

“I do, and Lizzie’s already brought it up. If we’re ever going to use our fighters, I think we should do it now. Go back at him, tear Scorsi’s Luck apart. Scare off his customers and give him some real damage to deal with. He sends a few mercs at us, we send four dozen soldiers— or however many are real— at him. Might be a way to find out who’s loyal, come to think of it. Teach him a lesson. Back him off. I’d really like to show him what happens when he jumps us.”

Uh-oh, Jo thought. We’d better cool this off. Judith opened her mouth but before she or Jo had a chance to speak, Lizzie jumped in, her face glowing with excitement.

“I think that’s a really tribal idea!”

“Yeah,” Drew agreed, glancing ruefully at his injured arm. “Stop him dead right now, no more trouble from that bunch.”

“No. We don’t want to do that,” Jo said, sitting forward, hands clasped. “Samm, you know we don’t.”

“Why not? This was an outright act of aggression.” Samm tilted his chair back on its hind legs, crossing his arms, looking calm but stubborn.

“We don’t want to do it because his little attack wasn’t much more than a provocation. He wants us to fight back with everything we have so he can see what it is we do have. And he’ll try very hard to make us look like bullies in the process. I wouldn’t put it past him to shove women and children in with his mercs. Enough of those get hurt we’ll lose a lot, politically.” It was an old and despicable ploy, and it always worked.

Judith nodded. “For now, I’ll go with Jo on that. Let Newt look like a hoodlum while we keep on making friends. Pretend that we want peace, that we’re above his crap. Because we have important things to do for Sierra.” She slapped her notepad. “Which brings us to the treaty. We present him with a plan for peace. An alliance between the two families.” Samm grinned. He thought the treaty idea was funny. He liked it.

Lizzie spoke up again. “I know you’ve talked about this, but I don’t know why you want to do it now.” She turned to Jo. “Do you want the Scorsis to think they scared us?”

Jo laughed. “No one else will think that. Fine if he does. We just rattle on about everyone benefiting financially if we work together.”

“It’s okay, Liz,” Drew said. “This might be fun.”

“Work together how?” Lizzie still looked doubtful.

“Well, that’s the trick. We need to be so vague the agreement is meaningless, but convince him with one or two small concessions that we mean it. For instance, we say that we agree not to attack or damage each other’s businesses. Then we say that in consideration of that, Blackjack agrees to return to negotiations about the Gold Bug.” The Gold Bug was a very small casino down on Stateline, right next to Scorsi’s Luck. The Colemans owned 60 percent of it and the rest was owned by Newt and a few other investors. Newt wanted it. He wanted to own more of his side of town. When Judith had refused to sell all of their percentage to him, he bought out the other small shareholders and then tried to negotiate enough of the rest so he would have the controlling interest. Judith had ignored his offers.

There wasn’t much more to it than that. A few little bits and pieces of a few more shops. Judith read her notes, Jo added some thoughts, including a clause that said they would continue discussing several other deals Scorsi wanted. She knew they’d never get to them. The treaty was just a move to keep Scorsi at bay a little longer and keep him out of their hair. It might or might not work.