K.A.R.M.A, page 10
Hackett left Fats in the attic, lost in a series of electronic messages to his techno-brethren as they gathered the latest information on revamping his security system with a backup generator and emergency cellular. Hackett decided it was time to return home when Fats asked him what type of handgun he preferred.
As he entered the lobby, Hackett was surprised to find his young cousin, Frankie, sitting on the steps outside his apartment. He had a plain brown envelope clutched in his hand and his face was streaked with tears.
“Christ, Frankie, what are you doing here?”
Frankie sniffled. “Ask your friends.”
“What friends?”
“They said I was to deliver this to you.” Frankie shoved the envelope at Hackett. “They said if I didn’t do as I was told, they would kill dad, just like they did Uncle Bob.”
“Ah, Christ, Frankie,” Hackett moaned. “I’m really sorry. Come inside. Does your dad know you’re here?”
Frankie shook his head as Hackett unlocked the apartment and let him inside. The security system shut off as soon as Hackett gave it the password.
“We should call Frank.” Hackett slipped out of his jacket and studied the envelope.
“Don’t bother.” Frankie’s lower lip still trembled. “He’ll be asleep or passed out. Besides, Karma told me not to tell anyone. Just get my passport and come over with the envelope. I’m supposed to go with you.”
“Go with me?” Hackett asked, confused. “Where?”
“How should I know?” Frankie scuffed the carpet with the toe of his sneaker. “Did this group really kill Uncle Bob?”
Hackett sighed and rubbed at his eyes. “They claim they did.”
Hackett studied the envelope some more before ripping it open to find a digital pager the size and shape of a Zippo lighter, and a neatly folded piece of paper. Hackett read the note:
Welcome aboard. We hope Fats is okay.
Give the pager to Frankie. He is to stay with you at all times.
Don’t fuck up and no one else will get hurt.
At 6 a.m., drive to Vancouver, Canada.
Await further instructions.
— CYPHER
P.S., Are you as good with that camera as you say you are?
Hackett laughed, the stress of the evening bubbling up from his chest like pockets of trapped nitrogen.
Fuck you is what he wanted to say, but he knew that despite his anger he would be on the road in less than three hours.
He handed the pager to his cousin.
“We should get some sleep,” he said. “What do we tell your parents?”
“They won’t even notice I’m gone,” Frankie said quietly. “I always take off for school before they get out of bed.”
Hackett organized the couch for his cousin before retreating to his own bed. The last thought that crossed his mind before sleep overtook him was maybe he shouldn’t have dismissed Fats’ suggestion of a gun so easily.
28
Chandra awoke with a groan and slapped blindly at the radio alarm clock until the morning news was silenced. Getting up at six a.m. was bad enough without the annoying voice of Viñuela ‘Vinnie’ DeCastro.
Vinnie had been bugging her for the last three weeks to switch shifts at the radio station, but who in hell wanted to go back to starting work at midnight?
Besides, Chandra justified, Vinnie was the newest and youngest member of the broadcast team and needed the experience of having no nightlife. That way he could blame the job for his inability to attract the opposite sex rather than his bland looks that just screamed overprotected suburban youth.
Chandra forced herself out of bed and into the shower. She wished she had bought the shampoo advertised on TV that made you want to shout out in orgasmic glee rather than the orange stuff on sale in aisle three. It did, however, have a decent scent.
After drying her hair and carefully applying makeup to achieve a natural look, but with bigger eyes and brighter, more kissable lips, Chandra studied her wardrobe. Being on radio essentially meant she could work in a pair of baggy sweatpants and comfortable bra, but where was the fun in that?
Chandra chose a sleek, mid-thigh skirt with matching suit jacket in silky periwinkle. She added a smart, collarless blouse just two shades lighter that could be buttoned to the throat or allowed to peep open by a button or two, depending on her mood.
Nude pantyhose and her good shoes went into the backpack, along with a fresh supply of cinnamon breath mints and a Granny Smith apple. For breakfast, she popped a handful of chia and hemp seed into her mouth and washed it down with half a cup of skim milk.
After slipping on a pair of white ankle socks and sneakers, she took one last look at herself in the full-length mirror behind the bedroom door: hair good, face good (except for the slight puffiness still evident around her left eye. Mental note: knuckle twist Akira’s balls next time we spar), tits good, legs good, ass great.
She smiled.
Nothing beats a great ass day.
BY THE TIME she arrived at KXLY, Chandra was wishing she had never left her bed.
Both buses had been packed, her ass had been pinched twice — once, she was sure, by a woman — and a salesman who needed to have his suits custom made by Eureka Tents had stepped on her right foot and jabbed a sharp elbow into her left breast.
Limping slightly, Chandra retreated to the woman’s washroom, unbuttoned her blouse and checked her breast. She was relieved to find that although the flesh felt tender, there was no discoloration.
“Breast exam?” asked a chipper voice as one of the stall doors swung open to the accompaniment of a flushing toilet.
Chandra turned to see LuAnn Cherry, secretary to the station manager but with aspirations of becoming on-air personality. Although she didn’t look the part — a black Loni Anderson with bigger hair and bigger boobs — the Sports desk had quietly admitted that LuAnn knew more trivia, history and stats than the two of them combined.
“Elbowed in the tit,” Chandra explained. “Just checking my nipple is still an outie.”
“Ouch!” LuAnn adjusted her own ample bosom, which had an annoying habit of going lopsided on her. “Hope you kneed him in the balls.”
“Too small a target.”
Both women laughed.
“You hear about Suzi Q?” LuAnn moved to the sink beside Chandra and checked her lipstick in the mirror.
“No, what?”
“Channel 4 picked her for the breakfast show.”
“Shit! How did she manage that?”
LuAnn flashed her a sideways eye roll. “Just look at her. Young, blonde, legs up to her perky, silicon-enhanced boobs. Just what every man wants to wake up to.”
Chandra looked in the mirror. Her great ass day had completely gone to hell.
“I auditioned for those bastards three times,” she said quietly.
LuAnn tilted her head to one side and gave Chandra’s reflection the crotch to forehead once-over.
“Face it, girl, you’re just too ethnic for this crowd. Asians and whites rule the television market and I can count the number of Asians on one finger. You may be looking fine and in your prime, but you ain’t never going to be white. Best to stick with radio.”
Chandra remained staring into the mirror until LuAnn left.
“Sonofabitch!”
Slipping off her runners and socks, Chandra stuck her feet in the pantyhose and wiggled them up to her hips. She slipped into her good shoes and dumped the discards back in the pack.
The shoes had a slight heel, which automatically arched her back, making her ass look even better.
Chandra sighed.
TV wanted tits and legs, not ass — and they wanted them to be pure white meat.
“There’d probably be too many early-morning heart attacks if I got the job,” Chandra consoled her reflection as she worked on making her mouth twist into a cheery smile. “Besides, at least I didn’t have to get down on my knees and suck the entire hiring panel.”
The cattiness of her own comment made her laugh aloud and she left the washroom with a natural, although somewhat predatory, grin.
29
As news of Suzy Q’s upcoming elevation to the bright lights of television filtered through the station, Chandra found herself becoming overwhelmed by the number of single men who stopped by the news desk to talk to her radiant colleague.
While Suzy was rewarded with handsome faces and invitations to lunch and dinner, Chandra was stuck with armpits and assholes.
Bored with being ignored, Chandra checked her email.
The newest message was from Vinnie who wanted to know what Suzy’s departure meant for his chance to get off nights.
Chandra hit reply and typed:
Unless she takes you with her, you’re stuck.
Whiny little white boys are a dime a dozen.
She was about to send it when a pang of conscience stopped her. It wasn’t Vinnie’s fault that he hated nights and she was in a bad mood.
She erased the message and typed:
Sweet talk LuAnn and she may put in a good word with the station manager. Just be careful what you wish for — Suzy’s opening is an assistant position, not on-air talent. Course, she’s probably making more than the two of us combined now.
Chandra hit send and with a bored sigh began to systematically clean out her in-box of the usual office clutter: updates on computer viruses, security revisions and a petition for better coffee.
The final message had been received in the pre-dawn hours and was labeled: Important! From A Friend.
Curious, Chandra opened it and read:
Do you know why Bob Collins was punished?
Your boyfriend does.
This is only the beginning.
— K.A.R.M.A.
Chandra hit reply, but the sender’s address was blank.
Karma?
She felt an excited sweat bead on the back of her neck. The cops had been asking about karma the previous morning, but Chandra had assumed it was just a word, not an organization.
Only the beginning.
Christ, this is what reporters dream of, to be on the ground floor of something big; a chance to really be noticed.
Chandra made a printout of the message and saved a copy of it in her private folder. Then she grabbed the morning paper and skimmed over the front-page article below Hackett’s attention-grabbing photo.
The paragraph that interested her was third from the bottom.
Police sources close to the case say they have no motive for the brutal slaying. Police are looking for witnesses who have any information on Collins’ whereabouts before the time of his death. The public washroom in Volunteer Park where Collins’ body was found is known as a hangout for same-sex couples, although police won’t say if the victim was known to frequent such areas.
Chandra picked up the phone and punched in the number for the police department’s media liaison.
“Murphy here. I don’t know nothin’,” answered the gravelly voice of Jake Murphy.
Murphy was a former crime reporter with the Post-Intelligencer who ended out on the street after a nervous breakdown over a child rape case that hit too close to home.
Murphy had managed to track the suspect down thirty minutes before the police arrived, and in a moment of blind anger had proven the fist was sometimes mightier than the pen. Although assault charges against him were eventually dropped, the newspaper lost its trust in him. The police officers handling the case, however, found a new respect for the bone-thin, bespectacled reporter and privately rallied behind him when he applied for the job of keeping the media out of their hair.
“Hey, Murph. It’s Chandra from KXLY.”
“Chandra!” Murphy bellowed. “You know I prefer to talk to you in person.”
“And why’s that, Murph?” she teased.
“I think it’s your perfume. It always gives me an appetite.”
“And a skinny guy like you needs all the appetite he can get, right?”
“You got it in one.” Murphy laughed. “So how can I pull the wool over your eyes today?”
“I’m calling about the Collins murder. Just wondering if your guys have a motive.”
“Nothing yet, Chandra. We’re still trying to figure out why he was in the park in the first place.”
“It is an odd place to go for lunch. You’re thinking he was looking for some man-on-man action, and it all went wrong, right?”
“Can’t really comment on that. But that particular spot does have a certain rep.”
“He was married with two kids.”
Murphy chuckled. “You know better than that, Chandra. Married, kids, who cares? Nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors — especially not the wife.”
“So you’re looking into the possibility he was cruising?”
“We never rule anything out, you know that. But we’re still investigating and so far nothing points to that conclusion.”
“Did you test for AIDS?” Chandra asked.
Murphy sighed. “Yeah, of course we did. It’s procedure.”
“And nothing to do with where he was found, I suppose?”
“What are you trying to do, break my balls? Sure, the location indicated to the officers that they should exercise caution. But the ME tests all victims for AIDS nowadays. Hell, he tests himself about once a month, too.”
“Have you seen the lab results?”
“No.”
“Could Collins have been set up for a hit?” Chandra thought about the email: The sender used the term punish.
“Where did you get that idea?” Murphy fired back.
“Just hypothesizing.”
“We’re looking into his background to see if he pissed off anybody enough that they’d want to whack him, sure. But again I have to emphasize that so far nothing points to that either.”
“So you’re telling me you’ve got nothing?”
“No, I’m telling you we’re investigating and as soon as we have any solid information we’ll let you know.”
“Wow, Murph, that sounded almost genuine,” Chandra said.
“Yeah, I’m getting better at it don’t you think?”
They both laughed.
“Oh one more thing, Murph.”
“Shoot.”
“What does karma mean to you?”
Murphy paused. “Where did you hear that?”
“Just something a couple detectives mentioned. Does it have something to do with the murder?”
“I’m not at liberty to discuss that. Sorry.”
“So it does mean something.”
“Look, I can’t go on record with anything. We don’t know what it means.”
“How did it come up? Was the word scrawled on the walls or something?”
“Chandra, I really can’t say.” Murphy sounded like he was pleading now. “It’s just something that popped up that might be related or it might not. We’re still investigating here.”
“OK.” Chandra’s brain whirred. “Let me know when you have any new info.”
“Yeah, I will.” Murphy hesitated. “Oh and Chandra, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention the karma thing. We really don’t know what it means at this point.”
“Sure, Murph, whatever you say.”
She hung up the phone.
Chandra’s next call was to Hackett’s apartment, but instead of his usual sleepy voice all she got was the robotic tone of the answering machine.
“Hey, Hackboy,” Chandra said into the mouthpiece. “Call me as soon as you get this. We need to talk. Urgent.”
She hung up and reread the email. It was full of questions: Why was Collins punished? What does Hackett know? Only the beginning? Who or what is K.A.R.M.A.?
If she could answer those, Suzi Q wouldn’t be the only shining star.
Chandra closed her email and glanced at the clock. She had less than ten minutes to prepare for her first broadcast of the day.
With determination, she opened her word processing program and began to write.
An organization calling itself K.A.R.M.A. is claiming responsibility for butchering a local businessman in a public washroom in Volunteer Park earlier this week.
In a KXLY exclusive, K.A.R.M.A. claims it was exacting punishment against mutual funds salesman Bob Collins. K.A.R.M.A. has also issued a warning to this reporter that this is only the beginning of its bloody campaign.
Collins, a married 47-year-old father of two, was found slumped in a toilet stall, his throat slashed from ear to ear. His blood-drained body was identified at the scene by his brother, Seattle police officer Sgt. Frank Collins.
The Volunteer Park washroom in question is known as a hangout for same-sex couples although police won’t say if the victim was known to frequent such areas.
Media liaison officer Jake Murphy confirmed to KXLY just moments ago that police are busy looking into Collins’ past. Murphy also noted that Collins’ blood is being tested for the AIDS virus.
Chandra stopped typing and reread her opening paragraphs. She grinned wickedly as she loosened the top two buttons of her blouse.
Channel 4 was going to have a shit when it realized it picked the wrong damn woman to co-anchor its morning show.
30
Thirty minutes before Chandra’s broadcast, Hackett and Frankie drove beyond the station’s range. Hackett twiddled the knobs on the radio in search of something upbeat, but gave up and popped in a CD. The raucous British punk satire of short-lived ’80s band The Monks filled the Jeep’s interior like oxygen.
