Sing Her Down, page 18
“You’re the one who said she’s got no anchor here.”
“She’s got Baum. She’s chasing Baum.”
* * *
The city vanishes as Lobos hurries to the station. Easton is a torrent of questions. How and where and why.
“Trace it back,” Lobos says.
“What’s that mean?”
“There’s a moment, a point of connection, something in their shared history that leads them to the present. Some story of Sandoval and Baum. Something that links them and draws them together.”
“And what is that, exactly?”
“Damnit. Shit.” How long has her mind been out of the game, her eye off the ball? Two perps and she’d written one off because it was more convenient to do so. Easier to focus on Baum—her LA story, her good-girl-gone-wild tale, a woman who became exactly what she was not expected to be. A story that so perfectly suited her own.
“I fucked up.”
“We’re just figuring this thing out.”
Just. Just now. Finally in this game instead of in her own head.
And whose fault is that? His—her husband’s? Or hers?
Time to stop blaming him for her mistakes.
“Lobos, slow down.”
She’s hurrying. The streets blur. The tents slip past, a moving train of tattered, torn fabric passing in the other direction.
“Lobos.”
If she keeps moving, she can accelerate past this place and back into the case, free from the distraction her husband has proved. These streets are their streets, not his streets, not a place to search for him.
She stops walking a block from the station and whirls around so she’s facing Easton, her eyes level with his chest. “Listen, Easton. You’re right. I was looking for someone in the tents.”
“Was?”
“It doesn’t matter who.”
“You sure?”
“If I’m telling you, I’m sure. We have work to do.”
* * *
It’s like an apparition the way he is standing there. Right there on the steps of the station. Her workplace.
Lobos is two feet away before she notices.
In her mind—in the place between hope and despair—she imagines there’s a chance that he might not actually be there at all. Like she could blink him away or shake him gone with a flick of her head. Make the world settle back into reality.
“Hello, Detective.”
The tricks the mind can play—the fear it can conjure in three goddamn dimensions.
“I said, hello, Detective Perry.”
No regard that she dropped his name. No regard for the restraining order. No regard for her place of work. Her line of work. Because she and Easton and the scores of other cops a few feet away can take him down, bust his ass, read him his rights, and lock him away.
“I said—” Lobos’s husband reaches for her arm as she passes on the steps.
She jerks away before he can grab her.
“I said—”
“I think she heard you,” Easton says. “Whoever the fuck you are.”
“You don’t know who I am? Essie, didn’t you tell this man who I am?”
“Whoever the fuck you are, you back off these steps,” Easton says. “Whoever—”
Lobos is already inside, the heavy station door blocking the rest of the exchange.
FLORIDA
How long must she run? How far? This time up Olympic, into the stoppered heart of downtown. That’s just for now. Later she will have to keep going, keep ahead of the woman on her tail.
Her footfalls echo on the quiet streets, her speed rustling their stillness. This is how it’s been for the last twenty-four hours—to move she must expose herself in the dormant city. There is no end in sight, no goal, no purpose, no harbor or haven. Just more running, more hiding. More surviving.
It’s funny when you think about it. Dios, who had always wanted Florida to become the predator, has made her prey.
She turns on Broadway and shelters under the marquee of a century-old theater reborn as a hip music venue before being shuttered.
About three hundred and fifty on her debit card. In the before times that would have been a fancy dress, a pair of cab-to-curb shoes, two nights in Las Vegas, one night in Malibu, a night of taxis and drinks and food and drugs. A spa treatment. A cut and color.
Now it is everything. Safety. Shelter. A bus ride back to Arizona. Because that is the only sane thing to do—to return on her own before she is returned and stripped of what few freedoms remain.
But first, that debit card.
* * *
Her sides ache. The bruise on her stomach has blossomed into an inkblot that covers her abdomen. The cut on her head beats a one-two rhythm.
She leans back against the ticket booth and stares at the street, where discarded masks and gloves swirl like tumbleweed.
The facades are boarded with plywood. The plywood is covered with graffiti.
Then, like an apparition from a different apocalypse, an army tank rolls by, its caterpillar tread grinding the asphalt, flattening the trash, and scattering dirt and dust. The soldiers clearly bored patrolling a city where nothing’s doing.
But this is another signal not to rest. When the tank recedes to the north, Florida gets to her feet once more, plunging south.
* * *
This is what happens to other people, right? Battered, bruised, hunted, haunted, and hiding. This is not what happens to Florence Baum.
But now, digging through a dumpster at the northern edge of South Central for something sharp. And finding a scrap of sheet metal.
Those women inside, women like Dios, and rougher, tougher customers making shivs and blades out of everyday items. Every dustpan, hot pot, pencil a potential weapon. Every prisoner a target. That was someone else’s violent lockup. Now it is Florida’s outside.
Her hands probe the junk. She slices the meat of her palm.
What’s one more injury? Her body, a bloody, bruised map of each mistake since she got on that bus.
A piece of metal. Some twine. A stick. Now she has the makings of a weapon.
Florida glances in the direction of downtown, where helicopters have taken to the sky, vultures circling the carrion city.
She begins to wrap the stick with the twine, giving herself something solid to grip. Then she threads the string through a hole in the sheet metal, lashing it into place. She finishes and swings her blade through the air, slashing at nothing. The metal whines and whips.
Now it is time to wait for the slow crawl of night. Time to slither and slink back toward the Flower District. Time to make a quick survey of Renny’s block. Time to check for the short woman in the suit. Time to double-check that her assailant is still crashed out on the doorstep.
The sky is a wash of gray. The sun, never having shown itself, begins to set.
The streets are a slow stir, a pre-night crawl.
More choppers take to the air, anticipating a disturbance their presence is likely to summon.
* * *
Hunger has made Florida sharp, alert to the task at hand. The woman sleeps in her doorway at the center of her miscellany.
Florida touches her makeshift blade, wondering how it will feel when it slices skin, when it separates flesh from flesh, when it hits bone.
Is this what Dios thought about before she drove that fork into Mel-Mel’s cheek, or was she more taken by the emotional thrill?
Will it be like sawing into an overcooked steak or slicing open a package? How fast will the blood come?
The woman on the doorstep stirs.
There is no more time to waste.
Florida crosses the street and pounces, her knee on the woman’s back, her blade to her cheek.
“Give it back.”
She feels the skin’s momentary resistance. But then the woman’s cheek opens like a peach releasing warm juice. The woman howls.
A warm trickle of blood wets Florida’s finger. She stares at the crescent she’s carved with her blade. How easy it was to rip that hide.
The woman puts her hand to her face. It’s a shallow wound, but the blood comes fast.
“Murderess. Temptress of the dark and the devil.” She fixes her yellowed stare on Florida, eyes wild with pain and drug-dulled. “Killer,” she spits.
Florida lunges at her with the blade, but the woman curls up and backs deeper into the doorway, sheltering from the attack. Florida reaches for her arm, dragging her forward to accept her beating. “Coward.” She slashes at the woman with the blade again, opening a gash on her forearm where blood streams out, mixing with the rivulets of dirt caked onto her skin.
“How dare you try to kill the queen. How dare you kill the empress. You brought the universe to its feet. You brought down the stars.”
“Shut the fuck up,” Florida says. “Just give me what’s mine.”
“There’s nothing in this world that belongs to any one of us alone.”
Florida drops to her knees, straddling the woman, her blade to the woman’s throat. “I don’t have time for that shit. Give me my card.”
“What’s mine is won in fairness. What’s mine has been given,” the woman croaks.
“No one gave you anything.”
“The universe gave it to me.”
“Fuck the universe.”
Florida presses the blade into the woman’s neck. She feels the skin’s weak resistance once more. She feels the taut sinew and cord. She feels the inches, millimeters between life and death. The power makes her palms itch. “Give it to me.”
“Thief,” the woman says. She thrashes side to side. The blade cuts a streak across her neck, a lopsided smile. It’s another superficial wound, but still Florida recoils at the blood that trickles toward her victim’s clavicle.
“Thief,” the woman repeats, getting to her knees, lunging for Florida like a wounded bear.
“What the fuck did I steal from you?”
The woman waves her hands wildly, blood spattering the air from her fresh wounds. “This. This. All of this. You stole my air.”
“Give me the card or you’ll have no use for any fucking air,” Florida says.
“You tried to steal my spot. I earned what’s mine.”
“You’re the one who stole from me. You’re the one attacked me first.”
The woman clutches her dirty hands over the slice in her throat. “You made a hole where my soul could slip out. Thief.”
Florida places a boot on the woman’s chest. “Give me the card or I’ll take more than your soul.”
“Our soul is all we have.” She fixes her cloudy eyes on Florida. “Though you’ve squandered yours already.”
The streets are stirring. Helicopters thwack and vanish. A man with a voice like sawdust starts an incantation.
“Give it to me.” Florida presses her boot harder into the woman’s breastbone, feeling the bones beneath her garments and flesh. “Give it.”
“When you lose your soul, you lose your way. You are just a collection of actions, each one taking you closer to your death.” She raises her arms. Florida kicks. The woman falls back, pinned to the ground by Florida’s boot. “You think you’ve won. But I see the loss that’s coming for you.”
“Give me my fucking card.”
The woman reaches into her garment. She works her hand down through the folds, fumbling. She pulls something free and hands it to Florida.
Florida takes the card and removes her boot. She flips it over. It’s not her bank card. It’s a business card that now is smeared with bloody fingerprints.
“I said give me my card.”
“That is your fucking card,” the woman says. “That’s all the card you got left.”
Florida grips her weapon and raises it over the prone figure beneath her. “This is a business card.”
“I made a trade.”
Florida runs her finger over the embossed seal and squints at the letters. Detective E. Lobos, LAPD. “What the fuck?”
“I made a trade with the devil,” the woman says. “And the devil has your soul.” She sits up. There’s blood everywhere—down her neck, along her arms, dripping from cheek to jaw.
Florida looks at the wreckage in front of her, the bleeding woman, the strewn parcels and packages of her camp, the tumbled icons. “I don’t give a fuck about the devil.”
The woman laughs. “But she cares very much about you.”
* * *
Florida holds the card in her hand as she makes her way up the street.
This woman—this Detective Lobos—is a shadow she can’t shake.
She flips the card over and over again, trying to rub away the bloody prints from the woman she’d attacked. But now she must carry this reminder of her violence along with the name of the woman who holds her only chance of rescue.
“Watch it.”
Head bowed over Detective Lobos’s card, Florida rams into a man heading in the opposite direction.
“Watch the fuck where you’re going. And put on a fucking mask.”
The man is wearing a red bandana over his mouth and nose. His black hair is speckled with gray. The skin around his eyes has worn paper thin from nights that never end before sunrise. But it’s unmistakably Renny.
“And get the fuck out of my way.”
Florida doesn’t move.
“The fuck is wrong with you people,” Renny says, sidestepping her.
You people. And like that Florence Baum keeps going, leaving only Florida behind.
KACE
Some stories come like a broken dam, like a tidal surge, a stampede across the plains. Some stories can’t be stopped. Who am I to try, to bend against a will stronger than my own?
The voices won’t allow it.
I do it for them. And for you.
And now I’m doing it for Tina, who’s been screaming and screaming, as loud as she did the night they brought her down. She’s been screaming over Marta. Screaming over the screaming down the line.
I scream too so that soon she will be quiet.
You know when it started, Kace! You know!… In the dark … the blackout. I was telling you. Them. You are all goddamned murderers and liars and devils. That’s all I was saying. That’s the truth I was telling. You all are. You … you … you …
And you know it. You know. You know. It’s nothing you don’t know.
Unlike me, who can’t remember.
Got told what I did. Feel like I’m doing time for someone else’s crimes.
But in the dark, I knew it was time and I was telling you.
You, Kace. Florida. Dios.
Because you needed to hear it.
“Shut up, Kace. Shut the fuck up.” Voices in the hall. Down the line. Everyone telling me to be quiet.
I’ve heard it before. I’ve heard all their voices telling me to be quiet.
Don’t they fucking know that I carry this shit for them? I have to let the noise inside my head out. I have to make them hear. “So shut the fuck up,” I holler. “Listen up. Listen to Tina.”
“Shut up. Someone shut her up.” Them shouting over the coughing. All the coughing. Shouting until they are swamped by coughing.
Now two COs are trying to stop me. Pinning me. Restraining me. Binding me so I can’t thrash this way and that.
“Fuck Tina,” the women down the line say.
And that’s when I let the guards have it. That’s when my limbs are everywhere all at once, my fingers becoming claws, knives. My feet battering rams.
That’s when they jab me. That’s when they haul me off to the psych ward.
But Tina. She’s still talking—screaming.
I told Florida that she was one lucky-ass bitch. Told her. Told her. Told her. I told her she was able to fucking atone for what she did. Able to know what she did. And still she lied about it.
Liar.
Always a liar.
And I told her. Finally. Once and for all. At the end.
In the blackout, I couldn’t see her anger. In her eyes. I couldn’t see her come for me. I only felt it when she got me from behind, when she drove her fist into my stomach, knocking the wind out of me.
I told her that I always thought she was a liar. That I knew why she lied. That I knew she wanted to watch those desert rats burn. To light that match.
She punched me again. Hard and fast. Each breath felt like my lungs were splintering. I could feel the joy in her fists. I could. Believe me.
“I did. Did it. Did it.” A prayer she repeated as she pounded me. “I did it. I did it.”
Each kick driving her point home until I couldn’t hear anymore. Until I was past pain.
I only saw her for who she was the moment before I couldn’t see again.
You better listen. If you aren’t paying attention, you will think she beat me to shut me up. But at the last, she wanted me to know who she was.
In the end, Florida showed me what I did to that woman—because until then I didn’t fucking understand.
She showed me.
And she showed herself to me. Still wanting it both ways—wanting me to know the truth but never to speak it.
She left me for Dios to finish off. Because Florida was always halfway to anywhere and never fully one way or another.
* * *
I’m losing steam here. They jabbed me again and my thoughts are flying free.
But Tina’s said her piece.
Her story is now part of my story.
Our story, Marta reminds me.
Then we fade to black.
FLORIDA
Even in the dark Florida can tell someone has been here. The pool towels are out of place. The loungers scattered. The glass window in the garage has been shattered. The pedestrian entry door swings loose.
At the far end is her Jag. The dustcover has been pulled back. Florida rushes to the car. The top is up, but it looks as if it has been wrestled or wrenched out of position. She tries the door. Locked. Both locked. She pops the hood. There are fingerprints in the dust on the battery. Next to it a bouquet of loose wires.
