Giving Him Hell: A Saturn's Daughter Novel (Saturn's Daughters Book 3) (24 page)

Hanks handed me a paint brush and pointed at an unfinished corner. “Everyone’s welcome as long as they work!”

Maybe the Zone needed more innocent idiots. I painted and I ate cookies but I couldn’t forget that by Saturday, we might all be out on the street—and Andre would be moving on.

***

Thursday morning I woke up realizing that If I wanted to save the Zone, I couldn’t do everything myself. I needed my own posse, by own Do-Good Inc. It’s not that I hadn’t been aware that I could do more with a little help from my friends. It was more that I didn’t want to be responsible for anyone’s actions but my own. But our problems were community wide, so the solution had to be also. Big duh, Tina.

I called Katerina and asked how she and Julius were progressing on getting the Zone recognized by the city council.

“They’re all eager to talk to Julius, of course,” Katerina said with an exasperated sigh, “but they believe he’s playing Don Quixote for a condemned wasteland. Progress is not good.”

Julius had a brilliant legal mind and had written textbooks still taught in schools today. He was a local legend who’d dropped out of sight for a decade. Of course every politician in the county wanted him on their side.

Which was why MacNeill had shown up in the judge’s chamber yesterday. Duh, again, Tina.

“It’s getting too late to go the city council route,” I said, trying to think this through before breakfast. “Could we go straight to the governor? The state is responsible for eminent domain. The city has vested interest in the MSI clinic but the state doesn’t. Mostly. Julius will need to speak to our state reps. I’ll see if Dane can do the same.”

“We’ve thought of that, but Julius hates using influence. And he’s in a weird situation with Andre owning that property,” Katerina admitted.

“Then I’ll talk to Andre too. Let me think about this some more.” I hung up and went to wash my head before I got in any deeper.

I still wasn’t intellectually convinced that keeping the Zone open was a good idea. But emotionally, I knew I couldn’t bear seeing it destroyed—even if Sarah sat outside picking off rats with her Walmart automatic.
Home
wasn’t a rational decision.

After damning a bad guy yesterday, I was real reluctant to check my mirror for fear Daddy Saturn had rewarded me with horns or haloes beneath my shampoo-ad hair. I hated these physical reminders that I’d sent a soul to hell. Or wherever. But I’d postponed my ablutions long enough. I showered and peered nervously into the foggy glass. Nada—except for shaggier hair and the scrape from yesterday. It had scabbed over nicely.

Maybe sending the creeps home was all I got. I was more than happy with that.

I took scissors and whacked off the worst of the burned patches of hair that I could see in the mirror. I was looking pretty ragged by the time I was done. Maybe I could be a trend setter.

Grabbing a bagel, I ran across the street with tons of determination and no more plan in mind than I’d given Katerina.

Inside, my once empty lobby had turned into office heaven. I had copy machines and color printers and telephones and
people
. People everywhere. Jane was on the phone, sitting on the edge of Ned’s desk. She waved as I entered. Do-Gooder Hanks had a crew on the floor making posters. Ned had a pencil clenched between his teeth as he typed on his keyboard and gestured in different directions to people standing in line at his desk. I had no idea what that was about.

Had Katerina set all this in motion without mentioning it to me? I didn’t think Andre capable of this level of organization. He’s more the lone wolf type. But Katerina was a different force to reckon with. I already had community action—now I just needed to refine their approach.

I hurried into my office and closed the door. I needed to get my head straight, and as much as I enjoyed a beehive, the activity wasn’t conducive to clear thinking.

I reached for the phone before I realized—I had a desk phone. With blinking lights. I wondered if it worked or if I’d end up with raw shrimp from Alaska if I tried it.

I pulled out my smart phone instead. It had Dane on speed dial.

“This better be a booty call,” he said with surliness, actually picking up the phone for a change.

“Only if there’s no booty involved like last time,” I said cheerily, hearing Max behind Dane’s voice.

“I’m not going back to hell no matter how good the sex,” he growled unhappily.

“I totally concur.” Although the sex had been unreal, and I wouldn’t mind trying it again. “So want to start this conversation over? How are you doing?”

“Hagatha’s ointments work better than hospitals. I’m fine and I hate this place. What do you want, Justy?”

“How’s the haunted house?” I asked, just to keep reminding him that he
owed
me.

“Cold and drafty and empty. I’m thinking of selling it to a funeral home. The kitchen is full of workmen cementing over hell, and your weirdoes are back there chanting and throwing in crucifixes or something. I’m thinking of siccing them on the Zone next.”

“My, we are in a fine mood this morning. I take it Granny’s not been back, so maybe sending your exorcists down here wouldn’t be a bad thing.” I contemplated the possibility. If they’d worked on Gloria, why not on Acme’s hell hole? I added another item to my agenda.

“Offer them money and they’ll follow you anywhere,” Max conceded. “For all I know, Granny will do the same. What’s wrong now, Justy? If you’re not going to keep me warm, we’ve got to move on.”

“You’re such a sweet-talking charmer, Max. That’s what I love about you.” And I wasn’t lying. Max’s blunt honesty had always appealed. Dane’s political charm didn’t. “We need you to call the governor and tell him eminent domain is fine as long as it involves tearing down Acme and keeping the medical center out of a dangerously polluted environment.”

If Acme was the evil down here, then they needed to tear down more than Andre’s buildings.

Max actually fell silent, considering it. I waited.

“You might have a point,” he agreed. “The city will resist. They want the money MSI will bring to the coffers. They’ll pull the governor’s strings. I’ll have some people talk to the EPA and a few environmentalists. I can’t technically get involved because it’s a family business, but I think you’re on to something.”

Tearing down Acme was what he’d always wanted. He hated his family’s business as much as I did. I had just hoped that they’d clean up their act with better management so people could keep their jobs. But it might be too late for that. The demons running Acme would be breeding zombies next.

“I don’t like it,” I admitted. “People need jobs and homes, but if they’re losing them anyway, then it ought to be for the right reason.”

“The family will scream bloody murder,” he said with satisfaction. “Merry Christmas! Thank you for the gift.”

He rang off. My Max was one sick whacko.

Twenty-four

Since I had no legal secretary, I typed up my own letters. I prepared a few and sent them to the printer. The machine was apparently now on my desk instead of Ned’s. Wondering why I even had an assistant, I signed the letters and took them out to Ned to package up.

He added them to his empty inbox while gesturing to a dowdy, bespectacled female who had to be one of the Do-Gooders. “Third door on the left. Tell Tom you can do graphics.”

I stepped in front of the next person in line, propped my palms on his desk, and got in Ned’s face. “
What
are we doing here—besides working?”

“As you requested, Mrs. Montoya is planning her petition for recognition of the Zone district, and your partner is battling eminent domain. The DG’s are helping out in return for housing vagrants in the Morgan building. We’ve got a protest march scheduled for one o’clock and Jane has TV crews lined up in front of the florist shop and uptown at city hall.” He checked off a name on a list and gestured at the person behind me. “Big room on right. They’ll tell you what to do.”

Fine, battle lines drawn—with me smack dab in the middle. Andre versus his parents. The Zone versus Acme. Max/Dane versus both his fathers. I needed to plan my fights better.

“Tell Julius to take a good long look at MSI and their connections to city hall,” I recommended.

“We’ve got detectives asking questions about MSI’s missing CEO and security guards,” Ned reminded me. “Now might not be a good time for investigating them.”

“Tell the city that Graham Young had a penchant for Nazis and the lot of them are probably all practicing World War Three in a forest somewhere,” I grumbled, before heading for the stairs.

It was probably time to produce a missing CEO, if possible. I had a few ideas, none of them safe. But I didn’t have time for detailed planning. I had to act now.

The climb up four flights was invigorating but even the cold wind on the roof couldn’t clear my head. I glared at the Graham Young gnome. He didn’t appear to be shivering.

“The rest of the world doesn’t see evil,” I said to the statue, testing my theory. “They sort of see greed and perversion sometimes.” The gnome didn’t respond. I figured him for a greedy pervert. “But I saw evil in Granny’s eyes when she died and evil in the frog’s eyes before I heaved him into the harbor. That, or Acme’s magic element.”

From the roof’s edge, I looked down the hill at the Zone in mid-morning mode. Trucks and beat-up old cars straggled down the street to Acme and the other industrial plants to the north. Morning fog still lay over the harbor area, and tentacles of gray crept up alleys to Edgewater. One of the spa vans was back, setting up shop where chain link used to be.

A bum wandered out of the Morgan building and kicked at a manhole. It didn’t gleam as red as earlier in the week. Disappointed, he ambled to the Dumpster at Chesty’s, probably looking for not-quite-empty liquor bottles. The Dumpster shifted, confusing him.

Street crews had dug holes in the pavement along Edgewater and left them surrounded by orange cones. Tim’s bedraggled Christmas tree lot was empty, its inventory no doubt stolen now that the florist’s door was boarded shut.

If I was the only person who could see evil blighting the streets, then I was the only damned person who could fight it head on. The others were merely treating the symptoms.

I tucked the gnome under my arm and proceeded back downstairs.

I set the statue on Ned’s desk. “Call Dr. Abdul Bakir
at MSI and have him meet me at the Morgan building at noon. Same with MacNeill and Paddy at Acme. If Andre and Julius are interested, tell them they’re welcome to come. Representatives from OSHA and the EPA might be good. Tell Jane to stay far, far away, but if she has any reporters she hates, send them in. I believe in the south they call this a Come-to-Jesus meeting.”

“You want me to call it that?” he asked, raising a plucked eyebrow.

“Sounds better than a meeting with the devil, doesn’t it?”

He poked uneasily at the gnome with his pencil. “I like it here,” he declared, irrelevantly.

Or not so irrelevantly if I followed the path of his thoughts. “Yeah, so do I. And no, I don’t know if we’re sitting on hell. I’m going with letting the EPA test the soil, okay?”

“My old pal Kaminski got his kneecaps broken the other day,” Ned continued. “Sarah killed Harry. And now Ben is missing. That’s three of the guys who were with me at Acme when Bergdorff went bananas. The plant manager is still gone.”

Probably because he was now a perverted bull frog and with any luck, got run over by a big truck. Before he’d eaten the pink articles, Ned had been little better than his hired goon pals. These days . . . I got the point. Ned was afraid.

Crapola
. I rubbed my brow and looked for some way of reassuring him, but really, I couldn’t. It wasn’t just me. Things simply happened in the Zone that didn’t happen elsewhere. “I’ll understand it if you need to look for a safer place to work. But everyone in the Zone likes you. No one liked your old pals. I think you’re safe from us unless you pull a gun.”

Ned hid his look of relief by straightening the pink handkerchief in his coat pocket. “I haven’t been to the gun range in months, but I could start practicing again, if you need me to.”

I opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Judging by his body language, Ned-the- former-tough-guy didn’t want to commit any more violence. I could get with that. I wasn’t partial to being shot at. Do unto others and all that . . .

I stuck the gnome under my arm and shook my head at his suggestion. This time, Ned didn’t bother disguising his relief. “You get to be a good guy,” I finally said, grasping a few of his fears. “I’m still learning, but I’ll get there. Maybe. Meeting. Noon. Don’t forget.”

I left him pondering his to-do list. This was why we had to have the Zone. Yeah, we were freaks, but Ned had been a gun-wielding steroidal thug just like Kaminski and his pals, and now he was a teddy bear. Where else in this universe could that happen?

I studied the evil gnome under my arm with interest. Time for experiment number two.

Experiment number one had ended ignominiously with wailing shrieks, evil bats, and Super-heroes Milo and Tina fleeing the premises. I didn’t want to go in any more tunnels, so I had to hope this next experiment would be more successful. And not quite so humiliating—for me, anyway—since I’d have to conduct it before an audience.

I admired the formerly gun-toting gnome that Tim had half-hidden under our lobby Christmas tree. This Nazi had apparently been holding out his automatic when I’d stoned him. Tim had neatly cracked off the gun and added a bowl of peppermints to the statue’s outstretched arms. Then he’d painted him red and green and added a sparkly elf cap—presumably so I wouldn't notice that he’d ignored my order to leave the gnomes alone. Tim was weird, but I accepted that. He gave me some of my more creative ideas.

I carried my own personal elf across the street and up to my apartment. Concrete is heavy, and my wounded arm still ached. I set him on my counter and eyed him with suspicion. “How far do I push my luck?” I asked of no one in particular.

Milo leaped up to sniff the intruder. He tried scratching but the gnome didn’t topple. Milo is not a small cat, nor a stupid one. He pushed his kitty shoulder against the concrete in an attempt to shove it over the edge. The concrete didn’t budge.