Elizabeth Basque - Medium Mysteries 01 - Echo Park (11 page)

“
Sorry.” Carla was sincere. “You looked so peaceful.”

“
Bah!” Mack exclaimed. “This woman takes a nap every day. Wake up, Bazo.”

“
Piss off, you old fart,” I said, lighting a cigarette. So much for not smoking inside. I yawned and rose, and, still flexing my hand, made my way into the kitchen for some leftover coffee. I kept my back to Carla as I added a little rum.

Seated on the couch again, I faced the two of them. “So,” I directed this to Mack, “to what do I owe the honor of your visit this time?”

Mack opened his mouth, but Carla spoke up first. “We found Michael,” she said with enthusiasm. “I talked to him.”

“
Ahem,” Mack coughed.

“
We
talked with him,” she corrected herself. “And we want to talk to you about it.”

“
Oh? About what?” I waited for more.

“
We thought of a plan. Something that might help him…you know…”

I did know. Carla was a sweetheart. She almost had too much life in her to be dead.

“Well, where is he?” I asked. “And what’s this plan of yours?”

“
I’m here,” Michael said from the other side of the room. I hadn’t even known he was there. Now he moved toward me, and I detected a change in him. He wasn’t quite as sad as he had been before, only this morning. “Hi,” he said, his lips curling ever so slightly into a hopeful smile.

“
Hello.” Would I ever get used to the fact that practically the only beings I spoke to were those of the spirit world?

“
When Michael told his story,” Carla explained, “I began to wonder what went wrong. Why he didn’t go, too…like my mother went. Then I thought, well, maybe, that was because being a ghost is part of his life’s plan.”

That was a curious thought. I considered it. Could be. In my line of work, you never knew what was just around the corner. “Okay,” I told her, “go on.”

“So, I went to find him, but I couldn’t.”

Michael looked downward again, but Carla went on. “So I decided to find Mack.”

“The lass has moxie, no doubt about that.” Mack’s tone was a mixture of irritation and admiration. “She told me
huh
ideah
, and I have to say, it’s not half bad.”

Michael was quiet; he seemed to need some form of approval before speaking. He was still guilt-ridden.

I risked a disapproving glare at Mack. I didn’t want him filling Carla’s and Michael’s minds with hopeless encouragement.

“
Not in the least, my deah,” he shot back.

He’d caught my thought, but Carla hadn’t. She looked at him with brief curiosity. “We think we’ve come up with a way Michael can fulfill his destiny.”

“And,” I said, stubbing out my cigarette, “what do you think his destiny
is
?”

“
I have to stop those dealers,” Michael declared. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”

“
Wait a minute. Wait
just
a minute,” I said.

I glared at Mack again.
Stop the dealers. Stop the drug dealers? That was like making world peace.
Mack moved his hands downward in a gesture for me to calm myself.

“
It could work,” Carla said, excited now. “I mean, if we all pull together as a team.”

“
Not all of them. I know that’s impossible,” Michael now ventured. “But I think I could at least stop the ones I know.
Knew
.” He tried to correct himself. He still knew them, but they thought of him as dead, long gone.

“
What could you
possibly
do to keep them from - -” I stopped talking midsentence. What could a ghost do, indeed? Better yet,
three
ghosts?

Carla, Michael, and Mack smiled down at me from where they hovered. It dawned on me just what they could do, and I grinned back at them, nodding.

Mack bellowed a
bwa-ha-ha-ha
laugh in a disembodied, terrifying roar that gave me goose bumps, and said in an exaggerated tremulous voice, “Ebenezer! Wake up, Ebenezer
Scrooge!
”

“
Oh my God, Mack. You are s
oooo
bad,” I said, but couldn’t help laughing until tears came out of my eyes.

Chapter Nineteen

“
Here’s the plan,” Michael said with growing enthusiasm and a look he shot my way that was clearly hoping for my support and approval. I thought he was a little frightened of me. I didn’t know why. Maybe he’d never met a psychic before. He was warming up, though. “Three dealers. One for each life I stole from this Earth.”

“
Sounds logical,” I said.

“
And, one ghost-haunting for each dealer.”

I raised an eyebrow.

“Carla and Mack have agreed to help me,” he explained further.

“
Really?” I glanced at Mack out of the corner of my eye. “I can see Carla helping with this, but you, Mack?”

“
Hey.” Mack looked hurt. “How often have I helped you?”

“
Only when you want something in return,” I shot back. Now wasn’t the time to argue with Mack, though. I wasn’t petty, but I did like my friends to have my back, as I had theirs. I turned back to Michael. “So, you’re going to stop three drug dealers?”

“
If you think I should take care of more, I could,” he offered. Apparently, he considered me an expert in the redemption business.

I kept on topic. “The way I see it, you would be saving a lot of lives. Of course, some addicts will just find other…sources, as you call it, but it all depends on how you go about this.”

“What do you mean?” Carla asked. She wasn’t in the least frightened; she was just as excited as Michael and perhaps Mack, although he kept his tough demeanor throughout the conversation.

“
I mean, sure, you could scare these losers into stopping. That will definitely be a good deed. But you might just be stopping new ‘clients,’ as you call them, from becoming addicted,” I said.

“
That would be great!” Michael exclaimed.

Michael had had three main connections in his previous life. He gave details about where they lived, and how they did business. He was forthcoming about a little on their personalities, too.

I listened to his plan, impressed with the thought he’d already put into it. He was a smart kid, I thought to myself. He gave Carla and Mack the names and addresses of two of them, saving the one who had driven Michael to his own death for himself. I began to believe that it could really work.

“
So,” I said, when they had gotten all the specifics down. “When do you plan to start this pre-Halloween prank?”

“
Uh, there’s just one thing,” Michael looked at me as he said this.

“
And what’s that?” I asked.

“
We’re going to need your help, too.”

“
Me?” I let out a nervous laugh. “What could I possibly do?”

Carla cut in. She knew she had a soft spot in my heart, and she was no dummy either. “Well, Pauline, we can haunt them, and scare them. But we might not be able to explain to them why we’re doing it.”

That shut me up.

Mack folded his arms across his chest and looked at me with a plea in his eyes. They wanted me to play Medium for them, to communicate. That meant I would have to…

“I’m not having any of those people enter my home,” I declared. “I’m not crazy. But they are.”

“
We would never ask you to do that. We’re not stupid,” Carla said.

“
Then, what do you want me to do?”

“
Well,” Michael hesitated, “after they are good and scared, we thought you might be able to come with us…and help us explain. To make it clear they have to stop selling drugs, if they want us to stop haunting them.”

Now my jaw dropped. Me? Visiting illegal drug dealers? “Look,” I tried to reason with them. “None of you really have anything to lose. No one can kill you. You can’t even be arrested. I, on the other hand, would be risking both.”

“We won’t let anything happen to you,” Carla said. “I promise.”

“
I can keep any undesirables away from you,” Mack said. “Don’t worry about that.”

I was stunned. I glanced around at my nice, safe apartment, which I hardly ever left now. I loved it up here, at the top of my little hill, where I could look down…look down at the city below, a city full of crime and drugs and gangs.

“Now who’s being selfish?” Mack asked me point blank.

“
Quit reading my thoughts, old man,” I said irritably.

But Mack had a point. It was all very well and fine for me to sit back, drink martinis, and watch TV while they did the dirty work.

“It’s all right.” Michael tried not to sound dejected. “I don’t blame you. You’ve earned your place here. I understand.”

“
Well, I don’t,” Carla said. Her eyes were angry, glowing a little now. “You’re the one who brought us all together. You’re the one who insisted on hearing Michael’s story. I thought it was your job to help people.”

“
It is.” I was grasping now. “And I have helped you, haven’t I?”

“
Yeah,” she said, “but do you only help the dead? Can’t you help us with the living, for once?”

Each of them watched me, and I returned their stares, one by one. They had a point, and I couldn’t argue it.

I rolled my eyes. “Oh, all right,” I finally said. “But you’d better have my back. I’m not used to this kind of thing. I don’t even know how to act around drug dealers.”

“
Just don’t try to act cool, because you’re
not
. No offense,” Michael said.

“
None taken.”

Chapter Twenty

When Julie found out the plan, she freaked. I had to calm her down. She’d grown very protective of Carla, plus, there was the fact that this would actually take away time spent with the girl, time that was limited before Carla saw the light again. I knew it was coming for her soon. We all did.

Once I convinced Julie that no harm could come to the girl, she decided she wanted to be a part of this mission. She couldn’t accompany Carla, but she insisted on sticking with me when the time came.

She insisted that we dress for the part. “You can’t be bad-ass if you don’t look it,” she stated, taking in my colorful capris and matching top. “You look a little too J. Crew. We have got to go shopping.”

“What’s wrong with my clothes?” I asked.

“
Nothing,” she said, “that is, if you’re going to a PTA meeting. But if these guys are going to scare those assholes, then we had better play the part, too.”

She glanced at my outfit again.

“I do try, at least, to dress cheerfully. It can’t hurt.”

“
Unless you have some bad-ass clothes, maybe some nice black boots, none of these guys are going to take you seriously. You look like you just stepped out of Starbucks and you’re on your way to Whole Foods.”

“
I have an orange caftan with a big tiger on it.”

“
Oh, Pauline. Surely you jest,” Julie said.

“
Pajama jeans? They’re stretchy, but they
are
black. I have black Ugg boots, too, I just remembered.”

“
No Ugg boots. Don’t you have something that looks more like a burglar’s outfit?”

My smile faded. I rolled my eyes at Julie. “I don’t have anything like that.”

“Come on,” she coaxed. “Shopping will be fun. It will be like putting together Halloween costumes.”

“
Yeah, and afterward I can dress up like a cat burglar for Halloween. Can we stop at Dollar Tree for black eye masks and black watch caps?”

Julie laughed. “Sure.”

We wound up at the mall, and Julie was definitely better at shopping than I was for the clothes we needed to play the part of two tough, intimidating women.

By the end of the afternoon, we were hauling our shopping bags into my apartment, exhausted but excited.

Chapter Twenty-one

“
Welcome back, ladies,” Mack said in a deep voice when we walked in with our shopping bags. He was touching the ceiling light fixture so Julie could see him, too. He floated upside down, grinning wickedly, his eyes glowing in the dim room.

“
Oh! You startled me!” Julie said.

“
Sorry, I’ve been off stalking the crap out of Snake, the drug dealer. I guess the thrill of it went to my head.”