Torch Song: A Kickass Heroine, A Post-Apocalyptic World: Book One Of The Blackjack Trilogy (8 page)

“Was there a particular time frame you wanted to look at?”

“No. Just wanted to see what’s been going on around here lately.”

“Oh. Well. Here they all are.” She dropped the papers on the table. “Happy reading.”

“Thank you.”

After a half hour of flipping pages, I didn’t have much more than I’d come in with. The mayor, a man named Arthur Madera, had been found a month before by Frank Holstein, the sheriff I was not supposed to contact. Frank had been on early morning patrol. Driving past a town park near the mayor’s home, he saw a body hanging by the ankles from a low branch of a Douglas fir. When he investigated, he discovered the dead man was the mayor himself, with an old-fashioned bullet through his brain. It didn’t look like intruders had broken into the house and nothing seemed to have been stolen, but the locals weren’t ruling anything out. So he was either kidnapped and dragged to the park or grabbed while he was strolling on his own the night before or very early in the morning. In a random or a deliberate act of thievery or maybe not.

There were no suspects.

Holstein might have found the body but he hadn’t found much of anything else. The mayor had been shot with a very old gun. Antique. A .38 police special. I wondered where they’d have found a thing like that. And gotten it working. Anyway, they shot him dead with it and then they hanged him upside down from a tree.

Hanging upside down from a tree. Interesting. A radical-hugger style killing. The fad had mostly died out back in the forties, but it still happened from time to time, though not necessarily at the hands of huggers and not often, any more, as punishment for poison. Copycats, pranksters, and people who liked doing things the old-fashioned way. Sometimes they tied their victims up there alive and left them dangling, screaming and crying for help. I’d cut down one or two myself.

Was he a toxie, I wondered? Did he own a factory? No, the story said he was a retired grocer.

It also said the mayor’d had no known enemies, which in itself seemed odd. The man was a politician. He had some power or was connected to someone who did. He had to have enemies.

There was no vice mayor, no official who could or would step quickly into the dead man’s shoes. Replacing him would wait for September’s election, and no one had yet agreed to run, at least not up until the night before when the last edition of the Star had come out.

Just shows, I thought, how unnecessary government really is.

“That’s really something, about the mayor,” I said to the blonde woman.

She shrugged. “Yeah. Sad. He was a nice man.”

“Doesn’t seem like anyone wants the job.”

“Would you?”

“But who’s running the town?”

She thought about that for a minute. “Pretty much runs itself, I guess. I kind of thought the Colemans—over at Blackjack?—would put up someone from their family, but maybe not.”

“Why’d you think that?” Should I mention I worked there?

She shrugged. “They have a lot of, I guess you’d say, influence.”

“They seem like good people. I just started working for them.”

“Oh, yeah?” An involuntary glance at my hair. Maybe I should do those stripes, after all. For credibility. “I don’t really know them well, but a lot of people like them.”

“What about that other big casino? Scorsi’s Luck. Don’t they have influence, too?”

She looked like the thought had never occurred to her. “Scorsi? Well, maybe they do. Sure, I guess so.”

I could see why the Scorsis thought the Colemans were out to grab power. They already had more than the Scorsis, at least in the eyes of this woman.

I was about to leave when a small man with salt and pepper hair appeared in a doorway behind the counter.

“Hello,” he said. “New in town?”

“Yes. Working at Blackjack.”

He nodded, which made me think he’d been listening to my conversation with the clerk. “That’s great. I own this paper, name’s Iggy Santos.”

I told him mine. He peered at me. “We just got a picture of you. For an ad. Singing in the lounge, right?”

I smiled modestly.

“Great people. Been friends with Samm for years. Samm Bakar—two m’s, three a’s.” He grinned an editor’s grin. “Blackjack’s our biggest advertiser. I’ll try to come and catch your act.” He turned and disappeared back inside what I presumed was his office. I wondered who Samm Bakar was.

Just forty-five minutes before my meeting with Newt Scorsi, I headed back to the casino.

Still not as big a crowd as the day before; the raid had hurt business. I wondered how long it would be before the customers got over it.

The house sys in my room was blinking. The message had come in half an hour before. “Come see me in my office right away,” Judith Coleman’s voice said. I might be late for my meeting with Newt.

Again, the door was slightly ajar. I knocked.

“Come in.”

Judith was sitting behind her desk. Today she was wearing a purple dress that made her look like a Santa Rosa plum. A man with a star on his chest was leaning against the window wall. He watched me walk in.

“Good. You got my message.” She waved toward a guest chair. “Sit down. Frank, this is Rica, she’s a new employee.”

“And you were here last night?”

“Yes, I was.”

Judith said, “Rica, this is Sheriff Frank Holstein.” I’d already figured that out. “He’s talking to everyone.”

He shook my hand and studied my face like he could see right into my brain. I thought it was an affectation. He didn’t look that smart. Holstein was a stocky, medium size man with muscular arms and a flat stomach. His too-long brown hair—it fluffed over his ears—was combed up in front in a pompadour wave. His jumpsuit fit so well it must have been tailored. He swaggered over to the second guest chair and clamped his stubby hands on its back.

“What do you do here, Rica?” I told him. “Where were you when the bandits showed up?” I told him, trying to sound friendly and helpful. He asked me who was in the casino that I could remember, and what I remembered of the battle and of the bandits themselves. I kept my answers minimal, not offering anything, certainly not saying I thought they were mercs. I couldn’t be expected to know a merc from a bandit.

He straightened up, nodding like I’d given him something to think about.

“Okay. Well, thanks a lot. Judith? I’ll get back to you when we find something. We’ll get ’em.”

“Thank you, Frank. I know you will.” I doubted that she knew any such thing. I made a note of the blank expression she wore when she expressed confidence in the sheriff: This is how Judith looks when she’s lying.

I stood. “Is that all?”

Judith shook her head and pointed at the chair again. She still wanted to talk to me—about what?

When Holstein was out the door, Judith looked directly at me. Her eyes, intense as Jo’s but lighter, hazel, were wide open, unhooded by their circle of fat or the slightly drooping lids of early middle age.

“Jo tells me you taught Waldo a lesson.” No smile, no clue of expression.

“It was a reflex. Life on the road…”

“Not everyone has such strong reflexes. Congratulations.” Still no clue.

“Thank you.”

“Jo says you sing a hell of a torch song.” An odd and sudden change of subject. Where was the woman going with all this? “A secret sorrow, perhaps?”

Nervy. People didn’t ask strangers such personal questions. My shock must have shown because the corners of Judith’s mouth quirked in a tiny smile. But she didn’t apologize; she waited. The queen of Tahoe, I thought with a quick flash of anger. Maybe I didn’t like her after all.

“Everyone has secret sorrows.” A vague, evasive answer; a challenge I tossed right back at her.

“No. Everyone does not. Not so they can express them anyway. That’s a talent. Shows a certain depth of character. I apologize for seeming to pry.” She didn’t look apologetic. “But I like to get to know the people who work here.”

“I can understand that.” I could, too. Especially if she had things to hide.

“And everyone is not capable of throwing a 200-pound man to the floor, even one as weak as Waldo. Are you a fighter, Rica?”

“No, I wouldn’t call myself a fighter.” I could feel sweat collecting in my armpits. This was quite an interrogation.

“It’s a violent world. You travel in it. How do you survive?”

“I try to avoid trouble. And I try to live by my wits.”

“I suppose that so far, then, that’s worked for you. But you’re obviously capable of taking care of yourself. Blackjack has violent enemies. You saw that for yourself. Does that worry you? You work for us now. At some point you may have to help defend us. What do you think of that?”

Watch out. Too fast. Way too fast. Just last night, Jo had blandly insisted that the raiders were nothing but bandits. Bandits were everyone’s enemy and so they were no one’s. Now Judith was saying something else entirely. Odd that she’d open up to a stranger that way. She sounded like she was recruiting. Did she think she’d already bought my loyalty? Was she so arrogant that she assumed all her employees were loyal from day one? Bernard sure as hell wasn’t.

If I said yes, I wanted to fight, would I be swept right up into the Coleman inner circle? Would it be that easy?

“I’m not sure what you’re asking me. Do you expect more raids? I would certainly help to defend myself—and Blackjack—if it comes to that.”

“But you didn’t fight last night. Against the bandits. Only against Waldo.” An edge of humor that seemed mildly unfriendly. I’d been careful not to join the battle, not to show I could fight. Possibly that was the wrong choice. Possibly I’d been so busy staying undercover that I’d lost a chance to be a Coleman soldier from day one. I wasn’t sure which way to go with this. I had to stay cool. Couldn’t let her rattle me. For all I knew, getting me rattled was her entire purpose: see what the new girl’s made of. For all I knew, she pulled this shit on everyone who came in the door. She was, after all—I felt my eyes darting toward the snow globes—a very strange woman.

“I’m a singer, a performer. I travel. I see my share of violence. I learned to take care of myself. But I didn’t know what was going on last night. It took me completely by surprise. I didn’t really even know who was who. And I have to say that as happy as I am to be working for you, I’ve never fought for anything but self-defense.”

“That’s a reasonable answer, Rica. I hope you’ll come to think of defending Blackjack as self-defense, but that’s up to you. And I am grateful for the help you gave. You can go now.”

Good thing. I was exhausted. And late for my meeting. I stood. “I hope you don’t think I lack loyalty.”

“Not at all.” She smiled what seemed like an uncomplicated smile. There was no way I believed it.

“Good. Thanks.”

Judith had shaken me a little, but any employee challenged so obliquely would react cautiously, so my tension didn’t give anything away.

A few more customers had wandered back in, a scattering at the tables, a dozen or so at the slots. Maybe some of them hadn’t even heard about the invasion; maybe the ones who had heard about it had managed to convince themselves the place was safe now.

Waldo came out of the restaurant. He walked aimlessly through the casino, stopping at the roulette table, staring at the spinning wheel. Scratching his stomach, wandering to the bar. He took a stool and raised his hand at the bartender, who nodded and poured him a beer. How did the lovely Waldo fit into all this? I couldn’t imagine that grabby asshole being loyal to anyone.

I pushed out through the back door, heading for my car. I tried to tuck Judith’s interrogation into a dark corner of my mind where it could cook a bit, and worked at focusing on my meeting with Newt.

I didn’t know what Newt was planning to tell me, but I knew what I wanted to ask him. Were the mercs his? If so, what was the purpose of the attack? Was there a connection with the mayor’s murder? How many people at Blackjack were actually working for Scorsi? Who were they? Would they be any use to me if I needed them?

But once I got to the subject of self-preservation, my mind couldn’t help but kick Judith out of that dark corner and set her right out there in full daylight again.

What kind of game was she playing with me?

Traitors. They’ll sell us all.

The meeting place was two miles outside town. I was supposed to look for a boulder, close to the road, carved with the initials K.S.+R.L. inside a heart. I found it and parked my Electra on a dusty patch of dirt behind a stand of fir.

The heart was lopsided. The carving was weathered and barely readable, left there by some teenager who was now either old or dead. Depressing. I hate reminders of mortality— anyone’s.

A shiny new silver floater was tucked just beyond the boulder. A narrow trail led into the trees.

I found Newt Scorsi in a clearing, waiting under a rocky outcrop. He was slumped on a log gnawing at an enormous sandwich that seemed to be made of an entire sourdough loaf. He sat up straighter and mumbled something that might have been a greeting, might have been “You’re late.” Hard to tell through the mouthful of bread.

He was no more than five feet six, gut-heavy with spindly arms and legs, his dust-brown and black hair cropped to half-inch bristle on his big head, the head balanced on a scrawny neck. He squinted at me and frowned, trying, I thought, to look shrewd and tough, succeeding only in looking hostile. Maybe he was socially inept, or maybe he didn’t trust mercs.

Gran once told me, “Never trust a suspicious man.” What about a suspicious woman? I’d asked. “Women,” she said, “have more reasons for it.”

I nodded back to him, returning the frown, meeting him eye to eye. Okay, Newt, I was saying with a look, you don’t scare me. So back off. He shifted his gaze. That was almost too easy.

“Are you sure no Colemans followed you?” he asked the trees behind me. “Blow your cover in the first week or however long you’ve been there— how long have you been there?” He took another large bite of his sandwich, jumped to his big feet and paced around the clearing. A string of pink meat dangled from his lip as he chewed.

“Two days now. Why are you so worried? If I blow my cover I’m the one in trouble— you don’t have any cover to blow.”