Commando Bats (4 page)

I showered then wrestled into my best linen drawstring pants
and tunic-top as my laundry finished. The cafe was near Wilshire and Ocean
Avenue, and this time they got there first, choosing a table that looked out
into the street. I enjoyed the linen napery and the pretty silverware and
dishes, all of which seldom come my way, as we went through greetings and
ordering.

That done, Bettina said, “What’s on your mind?”

Cecile leaned in. “I’ve been learning something about
strength. It impresses people, but it also scares them.”

“Power,” Bettina said, “makes the powerless angry.”

Cecile flicked a look. “Ralph didn’t make a peep about my
hoodlum story.” Her diamond flashed as she turned her palm up toward me. “I
didn’t know what else to say. When I got home the other night, I found him
standing in the middle of the mess, staring around like he’d been shot. I was
afraid to tell him the truth, that he’d use it as an excuse to lock me up in
some mental ward.”

I thought, you could bend him into a pretzel. But I guess
she still saw herself as weak.

“So I told him the hoodlum story, and he nodded, but he kept
looking at my hands.”

While Cecile spoke, Bettina had been gazing out the window
at a bunch of teenage boys moving along in that typical teenage-boy drifting
slouch.

Cecile was too busy talking to notice. “Yesterday I got up
and left early, so I wouldn’t have to talk to him. I did some shopping, and my
mother wanted to meet in Westwood for brunch. I told her about Ralph wanting a
divorce, and she was so angry that she insisted we drive straight to Beverly
Hills so she could change her will. After that, I went to see Jack,” she said.
“Because I know him.” She faced Bettina. “I remembered what you said, and I
asked him straight out. He gave me a typical lawyer’s noncommittal reply, but
yes, he knew. But there was something else. He was on the alert. He and Ralph — all of them — I usually only see them like that with other men. Ones they are up
against, I mean.”

Bettina said, “You think he heard about the furniture.”

Cecile said, “Yes. He took me to Spago for a late lunch, and
was full of reminiscences and aren’t-we-old-friends, but he didn’t offer to
represent me. Instead, he recommended someone else, about whom he thinks
highly, blah-blah-blah-de-blah. I think he was afraid of me. Just a little.”

Bettina was staring out the window again, still watching
those teenagers. Surprised at her rudeness, I said to Cecile, “You have to
clean up the mess?”

“That’s just it. When I got home, it was nearly six. I found
the place looking like a showcase. Not a speck of glass anywhere. New
furniture, even. And there was Ralph, offering to take me out to dinner, so we
could talk things over. Hearty and smiling, like he talks to that hotshot
district attorney he hates. I don’t know what to think.”

Bettina hadn’t looked away from the window. Before the pause
could stretch into silence, I said, “I might have an idea.”

They both turned my way, but then Bettina said in a low,
urgent voice, “I am sorry to be rude, but I think I saw one of my students. One
of the ones I worry about. I need to walk over to that bank, just to put my
mind to rest.”

“Bank?” Cecile said in a sharp tone.

With a quick “We’ll be right back,” to the wait person, we
left, me doing my Lurch routine from walker to scooter.

At the bank, the thick glass made the inside indistinct. I
perceived someone frantically motioning us away.

Bettina yanked the door open. I got a glimpse of ski-masked
figures holding guns, and bank customers all standing around with hands high
when Bettina snapped, “Marcus Clark, what is going on here?”

From one of the ski masks a shocked teenage voice exclaimed,
“Miz Wilson?”

Silence. Then one of the figures swung a pistol toward the
boy who’d spoken, and another whipped his weapon toward Bettina.

Someone else inside the bank screamed, splintering the
robbers’ and the customers’ attention alike. In that moment Bettina made her
knitting needle hand and a thin beam zapped out, hitting a waving pistol. Her
second zap went too high, and a shot rang out, shattering a decorative clock on
the wall.

Everybody started yelling and running, or hiding behind the
desks. From the back came a loud male voice, every other word a curse, the gist
being, “Get back! Get back! Down on the ground!”

Cecile shoved the receptionist’s massive desk. It skidded
across the smooth floor like a runaway train, catching two of the masked boys
squarely in the backs of their legs. Both hit the ground hard, and were
promptly dogpiled by angry customers.

Budda-budda-budda! The shocking stutter of an automatic
weapon froze everybody. A woman’s low sob was the only sound, then the guy
who’d been cursing yelled in a harsh voice (freely inserting the F-bomb as
verb, adverb, and adjective), “I will kill this broad if you all don’t shut up
and lay face down on the ground.”

“
Lie
,” Bettina said,
sinking with dignity to her knees. “You
lay
things down —”

“Shut up! Shut up! Shut up!” And to the woman he was holding
against him, “Now open the vault!”

The customers had all prostrated themselves. The masked guys
slowly got up and began to sort themselves out.

I crouched over in my scooter, with my left hand in my bag.
I quietly pulled out my little robot copter, shut my eyes to get its schematic,
and then let it go, my heart pounding.

It seemed impossible the robbers wouldn’t see it, but they
were either looking in the direction of the vault or glaring downward at the
people lying on the floor as my minion shot up to the ceiling. I kept my eyes
on it as I flew it toward the vault . . . Ah.

It crashed into the massive door, then one of the guys said,
“What’s that?”

The toy hit the ground, a robber stepped on it, and Nasty
Voice said, “Who did that? Who did that?” He followed with escalating threats
which I didn’t hear, because I had the entire bank’s schematic.

Things happened really fast after that. I triggered the
silent alarm as the vault swung open, and Nasty Voice forced the woman inside.

Then I cut the overhead lights and slammed the vault door,
shutting off the commander from the rest.

From the floor, Bettina sent out four beams the thickness of
a knitting needle, and four guns went flying. At that point, a bunch of men
plus the security guard began tackling the robbers again.

Cecile whispered, “Open the vault.”

I caused the vault door to open. The robber inside swung
around with his weapon — and then the massive chair Cecile had hurled
torpedoed him smack in the chest.

“Thought he’d put the woman on the floor,” Cecile murmured.

The woman scrambled out, rubbing her bruised neck as she
stabbed repeatedly at something behind the counter. Already done, I thought as
I slammed the vault door shut on the groaning robber.

Then Bettina emerged out of the crowd. “I hear sirens.”

Nobody was looking at three old women. They were all talking
adrenaline-spiked questions and comments at each other as they hovered around
the men who’d subdued the robbers, waving cell phones around as they filmed the
robbers, the men, the robbers, the rest of the room.

Cecile swung the bank door open and I scooted out, Bettina
behind me.

We reached the cafe two seconds before a fleet of cop cars
drove up, effectively cutting off the street. Inside the cafe, customers were
all staring past us through the windows at the street, exclaiming and
wondering, as we sat down.

Our food was there — the whole thing couldn’t have
lasted more than five minutes max. My heart juddered against my ribs, paying no
attention to its daily dose of blood pressure medicine; Cecile pressed her
hands against her face. Her fingers shook. Bettina stared out in the street,
her profile grim.

Presently, Cecile dropped her hands, and I saw that she was
laughing silently. Hysterical laughter bubbled up inside me, and I pressed my
napkin to my face, as Cecile said in a tiny voice, “I threw a chair. What is it
with furniture?”

Nobody answered. I got control of myself, then said, “Do we
tell anyone?”

“No.” Bettina’s voice was short.

I said, “That boy —”

“I expect that all Marcus will remember is seeing me come
in. He probably thinks I was a customer.”

“Security cams?” Cecile whispered.

Bettina turned her way. “Didn’t you see? Smashed. The boys
must have done it right before we got inside.” She glanced down at her lunch,
and began eating.

Taking our cue, Cecile and I did the same. It was delicious,
and food helped to re-establish a sense of normality.

But nothing was normal anymore. Maybe would never be again.
The first one to speak was Cecile. “Is that what we should be doing?”

Bettina said to me, “You said you had an idea?”

It took me a little time to get it all out, as I have to
concentrate on my enunciation (and try not to drool), but I told them about
Twila Dewey, ending with, “If we want to find wrongs to right, who better to
ask about problems in their local community than old women? Maybe we could
start a network.”

Bettina said slowly, “I’m still trying to adjust to the idea
that there might be a hidden world overlapping ours. What are these other women
doing, who received Hera’s gifts? Are they fighting demons?”

Cecile tapped her spoon against her cup. “What I still want
to know is, what is wisdom? Why didn’t Hera fly her broomstick out to USC and
corral a group of PhDs? But I admit, that was fun. I don’t think I’ve had fun
like that since I was small.”

Bettina said, “It was fun, but everything has consequences.
Those boys were just hoodlums to you, but every one of them is some mother’s
son.” She nodded at the bank, around which police and detectives swarmed,
yellow tape extending every which way, and TV cameras filming everything.
“Marcus Clark used to sit in my classroom drawing diagrams of motors. I want to
find out what made him do that. And fix it, if I can. That is my definition of
wisdom.”

A small silence ensued, as people chattered and forks
clinked and outside, police began to roll away, one by one.

“I like that,” I said.

Bettina raised her water glass.

“I feel that I must begin with me,” Cecile said. “Fixing.
But I agree.”

I lifted my water glass, and so did Cecile. We clinked them
together, and I thought, Commando bats, a new beginning.

Did I hear unearthly laughter?

Commando Bats

Sherwood Smith

Book View Café Edition: September 18, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-61138-551-9
Copyright © 2015 Sherwood Smith

First published:
Athena’s Daughters,
Science in the Library, 2014

Cover illustration © 2015 by Amy Sterling Casil

Production Team:

Cover Design: Amy Sterling Casil

Copy Editor: James Hetley

Proofreader: James Hetley

Formatter: Vonda N. McIntyre

This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Digital edition: 20150902vnm

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Sherwood Smith writes fantasy, science fiction, and historical romance.

Crown Duel
A Stranger to Command
Senrid
Fleeing Peace
Remalna’s Children
A Posse of Princesses
The Trouble with Kings
CJ’s Notebooks
Over the Sea
Mearsies Heili Bounces Back
Poor World
Hunt across Worlds
The Wren Series
Wren to the Rescue
Wren’s Quest
Wren’s War
Wren Journeymage
Exordium
(with Dave Trowbridge)
The Phoenix in Flight
Ruler of Naught
A Prison Unsought
The Rifter’s Covenant
Short Fiction
Excerpts from the Diary of a Henchminion
Being Real
Book View Café Anthologies
Beyond Grimm
Brewing Fine Fiction
Ways to Trash Your Writing Career
Dragon Lords and Warrior Women

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