Giving Him Hell: A Saturn's Daughter Novel (Saturn's Daughters Book 3) (21 page)

“They’re killing themselves,” Frank said unsympathetically through the wad of gum he was chewing.

Diverted, I looked up. Sure enough, one of the drivers clearing ground zero toppled from his dozer as it scooped up harbor mud. An ambulance marked with Medical Science Inc’s logo immediately drove over the rough terrain to pick him up, as if it had been stationed there just for this purpose. As if it had happened more than once.

Maybe MSI was already collecting rats for their experiments.

The guys at the geyser didn’t even look up.

“Looks like OSHA needs to step in,” I said, debating angles.

“Could be interesting,” he agreed. “Won’t get Acme off our backs.”

He had that right. Can’t say that I liked the way Frank’s mind worked, but he was nicely feeding my wrath. “Acme has money and power. We don’t. How can we level the playing field?”

He thought about that as the ambulance lumbered away. “We either get rich, or Acme gets poor.”

“Very helpful, Frank.”

“Yeah, I thought so. Leo called and says your hard hat guy is on the prowl and you need to get home. I’m going in to fix the water main.”

He slipped into the shadows as invisibly as Tim. Frank was creepy, but he was usually on our side as far as I could tell.

Hard hat guy—Kaminski, the utility worker who wouldn’t turn into a gnome. The one I’d had arrested. Not someone I wanted shooting at me again.

“Wouldn’t being bulletproof be a whole lot more practical than visualizing idiots to perdition?” I asked the universe while I checked my surroundings. If Kaminski was wearing his hard hat, he’d blend in perfectly around here.

I retreated down the alley to the main drag, halting before I left the shadows. Tall, dark and dangerous—minus the hard hat—leaned against my bike. Damn.

Twenty-one

Having learned I couldn’t toadify Kaminski or visualize him into a statue, I intelligently avoided the menace—and my bike. I returned to Dumpster alley and set out in the direction of Acme, past the idiots setting up hot spring spas, and away from my home and office. I needed someone who knew how to
physically
intimidate without using the weapons the former frogs liked so much. I missed Max’s biker buddies. Out of nostalgia, I dialed up Lance, one of late-Max’s biker friends.

No sushi joint this time. Lance answered. “Tina! Moving into the governor’s mansion yet?”

“Not quite. Still down here cleaning up his family’s dirty work. I’ve got a man who wants me dead leaning on my bike. Any chance you’re free to tell him to move on?”

“Buy me a beer?” he asked cheerfully.

“A whole case,” I agreed. My spirits picked up just thinking of Max’s rebel friends.

I had no idea if Kaminski would wait around long enough for Lance to show up. Didn’t matter. I’d get to see the boys, and in the meantime, I’d taken a hankering to see Paddy. I’d be safe behind Acme’s walls, and my need for a normal approach to our problems would be assuaged.

Our resident eccentric scientist should have been a thorn in Acme’s side now that he was on the board of trustees and not quite crazy. He’d hated his mother’s greedy chemical wars. Why wasn’t he holding up his end of the bargain and stopping Acme’s outrageous depredations?

I walked up to the chemical plant, knowing there were men inside who wanted me dead. Or on another planet. But unlike Krazy Kaminski, they wouldn’t shoot at me. So I stopped at the guardhouse, showed my ID, and asked to see Paddy. I really liked entering lawfully for a change.

He had me buzzed in. I hoped no one was standing at a window aiming squirt guns of chemicals at me. Last time I’d been here, I’d turned their violent goons into frogs and impaled their demented head chemist—not that anyone but Andre actually knew that for certain.

Paddy met me in Acme’s sterile lobby. New management hadn’t improved the plant facilities, but Paddy had cleaned himself up nicely. With his beard and hair trimmed, and wearing his white lab coat, he looked like any respectable scientist.

Since he’d been forced to act crazy for years to keep a toehold in his mother’s monstrous chemical factory, Paddy knew better than anyone that the walls had ears here. He greeted me with an innocuous, “Good to see you, Tina. Come on back.”

Instead of taking me to a quiet office, he led me to a lab with music blaring from a computer and gadgets humming. I wandered among the beakers, gazing in admiration at nothing I could understand. “Nice set-up,” I said.

“Annoys the devil out of MacNeill that he doesn’t know what I’m doing down here,” Paddy admitted, checking a gauge and making notes on his tablet computer. “I take my work home with me and keep it off the network, so it’s frustrating a lot of people.”

“Which means they’re probably not letting you see what they’re doing either, doesn’t it?” I might not get science or understand chemicals, but I knew people.

“They have to make reports to the board. As trustee, I get to read them.” He almost smiled as he checked another gauge. “MacNeill has no idea at all what the reports mean.”

“But MacNeill knows how to wield power and money. I take it you haven’t been able to stop this devil pact with the clinic?” I leaned against a lab table and looked for cameras in the ceiling. New management or not, I trusted Acme as much as I would a viper crossed with a piranha. For all I knew, Acme was another of hell’s dimensions.

“Can’t say the clinic is all bad,” Paddy admitted. “We cured cancer with the X-element. Experiments need to be done. Not totally sure that condemning the Zone is a bad thing, either. Andre will be reimbursed.”

As I’d feared, Paddy was being assimilated by the Borg. He used to sarcastically call the
X-element
the Magic particle.

“Want me to start reciting a long list of chemicals meant to save lives that ended up killing or crippling people?” I asked. “How about the flip side of pink particles—the stuff that made seniors beat each other up for no reason? You don’t think a can of that wouldn’t explode the Middle East?
Chemicals
are the reason the Zone is what it is.”

“And uranium is radioactive and can heat homes or blow up cities. I’m not ignorant, Clancy. The chemicals aren’t at fault. People are.”

“Guns don’t shoot people, people do,” I mimicked nastily. “Let’s kill people then.”

“What do you want, Clancy?” he asked wearily.

“I want Acme to back off, to leave us alone, to plant their nasty clinic somewhere other than on our backs. I’ll let you deal with the guilt when you render half the population of Baltimore comatose with your experiments. We just want to get on with our lives.”

“I’ll see that you’re all hired by the clinic,” he said helpfully. “Perhaps we can arrange for apartment houses to be built up the road so you can still have a neighborhood.”

“Boy, you really drank the Kool-Aid, didn’t you?” Disappointed, I prepared to leave. “I guess it doesn’t matter to you that the chemicals probably turned your mother and son into demons, and now they’re probably working on you?”

He looked up, and I studied him carefully. I hoped the glitter in his eyes was the overheads. I’d always liked Paddy. Now, I had to be wary.

“Demons exist only in your head, Tina,” he said sympathetically. “That’s where Gloria’s demons were. And Dane is turning out much better than I’d hoped. I don’t agree with all his policies, but he’s a fine senator.”

That’s because I’d sent the demon to hell, and Max inhabited Dane’s body now. But no way was I explaining that to Dane’s father.

“I’ll cross you off my ally list then, Mr. Vanderventer. Thank you for seeing me.” Putting on my lawyer face, I walked away.

Disappointed that I had no one on the inside to help my case, I hurried out. My memories of Acme’s interiors were not pleasant, and wouldn’t get better if they were sitting on a portal to hell.

Cursing, I checked my watch. I wanted to give Lance plenty of time to remove Kaminski. Since he hadn’t called, I didn’t go any farther into town than the security of Bill’s Biker Bar, just a block down the road from the plant. I was feeling like a law-abiding citizen by not taking a tire iron to Kaminski’s skull as I’d once done to a rapist.

Of course, the fact that I hadn’t been able to turn him into a gnome kind of skewed my self-confidence.

Bill’s was still warm and packed. He must have got his generator back. Realizing I hadn’t had lunch, I ordered a fish fry—think crab cake without the crab—with my beer, and studied the crowd.

It was Monday and Acme was still operational. The usual lunchtime crew was here—workers from all the industrial plants up the road. Some of the D-Gers had set up shop in a corner and were enthusiastically discussing world peace or whatever turned them on. The half of the Zonies who weren’t parked in my office were down here trying to get warm and fed. And even a few utility workers hung out.

I still didn’t understand why utility workers would be down here if our utilities were shut off. Wasn’t the point of shutting them off the safety of workers?

They looked at me. I looked at them. And a creepy sensation crawled down my spine.

When Bill delivered my plate, I waved him down to my level. “I sense hostility at nine o’clock.”

He glanced down the bar and nodded. “They used to work security for Acme. They recognize you without fondness.”

“More frogs,” I said with a groan. “Next time, I’ll send them to Antarctica.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.” Bill returned to polishing his glassware.

Other than transforming into a gentle giant and losing his need to break other people’s bones, Bill didn’t seem to have attracted any of the more notorious Zone disabilities. He respected our individual weirdnesses and had our backs when we needed him. I wouldn’t disturb him more than necessary.

Besides, my latest theory was that once I’d visualized a thug into an alternate life form, I couldn’t transform them a second time. If I couldn’t turn frogs into gnomes, could I transport them to another country? I still didn’t have a Saturnian rule book.

My phone rang and I glanced at the ID. It just said
Terminator.
Either Schwarzenegger or my guy Lance. What were the odds?

“Find Kawinski?” I asked as I tuned in.

“Yeah, I think I persuaded him that you’re a little angel, and he should leave you alone,” Lance growled. “Real punk, that one.”

“How many broken bones?”

“Just a kneecap. His skull is too hard. You owe me a beer.”

“I owe you a case. I’m down at Bill’s. You want it all at once or shall I set up a tab?”

“Sweet. I’ll be right down.” He whistled off.

I lifted a beer to my non-existent daddy. Sometimes, it didn’t take superpowers to get the job done.

Lance was six-feet, two hundred pounds of heavy muscle, beer gut, leather and graying hair. People stared when he sauntered in. He didn’t bother noticing. He made a beeline back to me and caught me up in a bear hug. “Babe! How do ye do?”

I pounded him on the back. “I do fine, lug. Put me down, and I’ll do better.” Especially since the utility thugs would soon realize I’d sent Lance after their buddy. Oh well. I liked Lance’s simple, direct honesty.

I signaled Bill. “A case of beer for my friend here, anyway he wants it.”

Lance and Bill exchanged male gestures and a foamy mug appeared on the bar in front of him.

An ambulance siren wailed on the street outside. One of the hardhats checked his phone. An instant later, they all lumbered out. Probably not a good sign for me. Lesson learned, Tina, if you can’t do it yourself, find someone a little more subtle than Lance.

“You got any more jobs I can take care of for you, babe?” Lance asked through his foam mustache, not acknowledging the reason for the siren. “Me and the guys are running a little short since Max left.”

The
guys
were the usual suspects—dopers, vets, slackers, and the chronically unemployed who had a hang-out biker club in the country. It would be fun to turn them loose on Acme, but not healthy for either side.

“No money here, either,” I told him regretfully. “Looks like we may have to shut down.”

Lance’s gang had been Max’s friends. They’d relied on his leadership a lot more than anyone let on. His loss had devastated them.

And then I had an evil thought. I held up my finger to indicate silence, pulled out my phone, and dialed Max/Dane.

After the fourth try, I got voice mail, of course. “I’ve got Lance down here. He and the boys are running a little short. Could you use a security detail?”

Lance snorted into his beer as I hung up. “Who’s gonna hire us for security?”

“Senator Vanderventer,” I said smugly. “He sent the Do-Gooders down here to improve the Zone. It’s only fair we do something nice for him in return.”

Lance thought my reply was pretty funny. I left him laughing and ordering a second beer. My job here was done.

As I sauntered back to my bike, I got cocky. Walking over a glowing manhole cover, I decided to study the situation. I took off a glove, wet my finger, and tapped it against the metal. When it didn’t steam, I put my glove back on and tried to lift the thing, just to see what I could see. I couldn’t even rattle the damned lid. Add one more bit of knowledge to my useless encyclopedia.

I kept a wary eye out for hard hats as I aimed for my bike, but they must have accompanied their pal to the hospital. Kaminski had carved his initials into the bike’s leather seat before Lance popped his kneecaps. Rat bastard. I wouldn’t have a single whole piece of leather left at this rate.

The wonky traffic lights were back on, I noticed as I cruised past Chesty’s. They were actually a normal red and green, in honor of Christmas, I supposed. Except both stop and go lights were on at once.

Since there was no traffic, I didn’t worry about mixed signals. I saw cars in Chesty’s lot, so I swung in, hoping that meant Frank had worked his magic and we had what passes for electricity again.

Canned music was playing as I entered. Chesty’s was never bright even when lights were working, so the dimness was no surprise. I saw only a few customers at the tables. The naked murals were standing around, smoking, not bothering to writhe for an empty house.