Страница 8 из 83
Pam nodded.
“And stupid, slow me, I was cleaning the toilet, like my boss Michael had told me to do. No one was more surprised than me when I went in the office later and found Rudy dead and Michael flaking away.” Mohawk rolled his eyes theatrically. “I must have just missed the killer.” He gri
“Right,” Pam said.
“So off you go, ladies! Have a nice night!”
After a moment of silence, we got in the car. Mohawk watched us as we drove away.
“How long do you think he’ll last?” I asked Pam.
“Russell has a reputation for acuity. If Mohawk is a good club manager, he’ll get away with killing Michael, for a while. If he doesn’t earn money, Russell will make sure he doesn’t last. And Russell won’t forget that Mohawk is patient and wily, and willing to wait for someone else to do the dirty work.”
We drove for a few minutes. I was anxious to get back to my room and wash away the atmosphere of the Blonde.
“What did you promise the vamp that helped us?” I asked.
“A job at Fangtasia. I had a conversation with Sara—that’s her name—after you went to bed last night. She hates her job in Tunica. And she used to be a stripper, which gave me the idea of planting her here in case we needed some help. Besides extra costumes, she brought a number of handy items in her bag.”
I didn’t inquire as to their nature. “And she did all that for us.”
“She did all that because she wants a better job. She doesn’t seem to have much . . . pla
“In the end, the trip was for nothing. It was a trap.”
“It was a bad trap,” Pam said briskly. “But it’s true that because of Victor’s greed, we were almost in serious trouble.” She glanced over at me. “Eric and I never thought Victor was exactly sincere about his motives in sending us here.”
“You think he was trying to hamstring Eric by getting rid of both you and me? That he knew Michael really wasn’t going to defect?”
“I think we’re going to keep a very sharp eye on our new master’s deputy.”
We rode in silence for a couple of minutes.
“You think Sara would mind if we kept the costumes?” I asked, now that Eric was on my mind.
“Oh,” said Pam, “I’m pla
The Boys Go Fishing
SARAH SMITH
Sarah Smith’s YA ghost thriller, The Other Side of Dark, will be published in November 2010 by Atheneum. She has written the modern stand-alone Chasing Shakespeares, about the Shakespeare authorship controversy, and three historical mysteries: The Vanished Child, The Knowledge of Water, and A Citizen of the Country. Two of her books were named New York Times Notable Books of the Year. They have been published in twelve languages and have reached bestseller status in the United States and abroad. She is working on a novel about the Titanic and another YA thriller, A Boy on Every Corner.
for Yuki Miuma
TIME could lie lightly on Mr. Green. He could choose to be young, his face smooth, his hair black. He could catch an explosion in a force-field container. But under the weight of loneliness he is just another old man.
His friends have gone. Robin grew up, came out, moved to San Francisco, he’s in politics now. The Bat retreated into “scientific experiments.” The last time Green saw him, the Cave smelled and the Bat looked like Howard Hughes: long fingernails, dirty beard. Iguana’s dead. Atom, dead. Thunderbolt, dead.
And Lana. His girl, his only girl. He remembers every moment they spent together, but the good times are fading. They’re places he’s gone to in his mind so often he can’t see them anymore. The bad times don’t fade at all, the sonsabitches. Toward the last, when she could barely speak, he visited her in the hospital, changed his face and hair back to what he’d been, changed into the costume, the whole thing, the mask, the green cloak. “I remember you,” she whispered. But she really didn’t know him.
Sometimes it isn’t worth getting up in the morning.
“I need your help,” says the red-haired girl.
Her knocking wakes him. He squints out the door of his cabin into early-morning sunlight, sees a face that reminds him of girls in old comics. The sultry Chinese villainess. But the sultry Chinese villainess would wear a red silk dress cut up the side and she’d have black hair. This one has he
The Thompson brothers’ rental SUV from town is parked by the fence. Whatever she wants from him, she drove forty miles on logging roads in the snow to get here.
Which means she’s trouble.
“Whatever it is, I don’t do it anymore.”
“Hi, I’m from Worldwide Travel? I left you voice mail?”
He doesn’t check his voice mail.
“I have a job for you. From some special fans.”
Special has only one meaning for him now. “I don’t do hospitals.” Never hospitals.
“Not that kind of special.”
“Or comic book conventions. Or”—he curves quotes with a finger—“ ‘media conferences.’ And I don’t talk with people who use the word special. Or supernatural powers or superhero. Town’s back there, you can get going.”
“You take people fishing,” she says. “They just want to go fishing.”
It’s been his cover for the past forty years: ice fishing. Up here, northern Maine, the lakes region. He doesn’t do summers, never joined the Ice Fishing Association, doesn’t have a Web site. People hire him, they don’t, it’s all the same to him.
Back when Lana was alive, he pissed clients off regularly, so none of the fishermen kept coming long enough to notice that Lana got old and he stayed young. Now he pisses folks off out of habit.
“They want to go fishing with you.”
He stands in the doorway, keeping her outside.
“They’re Talents,” she says.
“No, they aren’t. Those days are gone.”
“They are real Talents.”
“What do they do?” he jeers.
“They don’t know.”
This tugs at him. He knows about that kind of talent. Strength and special powers don’t cure AIDS or end a war, and they don’t keep a woman from dying. What does a Talent do, these years?
“I heard the story,” she says. “I heard about you and the other superheroes going fishing, once.”
For a moment he visits a worn old place in his perfect memory. He’s among old friends, laughing friends. Let’s go fishing like superheroes, boys. And they did, for the only fish worth having.
“Yeah? So?”
“They’ve heard, too,” she says.
“We were showing off.”
“Talents were heroes once,” she says. “Talents knew what to do with their powers.”
Super cleanliness isn’t one of his talents. He points back into the cabin at the pile of gear in the corner. “Auger,” he says. “Ice adze. Ice saw. That thing in the box, portable cabin. The ice gets thick. Fisherman bores holes in the ice. Cuts a bigger hole. Shines a flashlight through the hole. Waits for a fish to come investigate. Ice fishing. Boringest thing known to man unless you fall through the ice. ’S what I do now. That’s what I know to do with myself. They want to go ice fishing? I’ll take ’em ice fishing.”
She crosses her arms, purses her lips a little, disappointed.
“No,” he says. “They want pow, bang, thump. Big fights with big fish. Superhero fishing. There’s no fishing like that anymore.”
“Let’s just say they want pointers,” she says. “They’re looking for advice.”
“I don’t give advice.”
“What’s your rate?” she asks.